one. Good evening. I am Bernard Green, chair of the Brooklyn Select Board, and this is the meeting of the select board for April 15, 2024. We're going to start off with our executive session. So I move that the select board go into executive session
for the purpose of we don't have any minutes right? No no minutes. Okay. Purpose of discussing strategy related to bargaining with union employees. Bargaining with union employees must be discussed in executive session because an open meeting may have a detrimental
effect on the bargaining position of the town. And the chair so declares an executive session therefore to be necessary. All in favor, please indicate by saying I. John Vancoyak, I. Michael Sammon, I. Paul Warren, hi. David Burman, I chair votes I. Uh, we will
return to open session after our executive sessions um in approximately what 6:30. Yes. Good evening. I'm Bernard Green, chair of the Brookline Select Board, and this is the regular meeting of the select
board for April 15, 2025. Let's start out with announcements, updates. We're going to do something a little different tonight. I want to read a statement in honor of the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution with the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, but I'm
going to make my statement under the public comment section, but without taking any time away from any others making public comment. My statement will lead into a comment by Barbara Brown, who will discuss some of the connections of Brooklyn to the revolution. So be
before we go there, any other members of the select board have uh announcements or updates to make? John? Well, speaking of uh Patriots Day, um for the last time uh at a select board meeting uh this year, I'm just going to plug one more
time team Brooklyn um and also plug there are two charity runners for the senior center. And so, um, if you really want to enhance your marathon viewing experience, become a sponsor of one of the charity runners for Team Brookline,
all of whom support, uh, Brooklyn nonprofits, or become a a sponsor of one of the charity runners for the senior center. Um, and you can look up how to do that by just visiting the website of team Brookline or visiting the website
of the senior center. Um the other thing I want to mention and bar maybe Barbara Brown will mention this I'm not sure um that um one of one of the ways that Bookline observes Patriots Day and it's you know one of my sort of favorite occasions of the year um is we we
welcome William Daws on horseback and uh if if you you won't get too many chances to see someone in Revolutionary period costume riding a horse down Harvard Street but you will if you show up at Devotion House uh right in front of the
Flora Ruff and Ridley School um the historic devotion house on Harvard Street uh people start to gather around 9:30 usually uh William Daws the reenactor of William William Daws from the National Lancers um gallops in at
around 10:00 and it it is really an extraordinary experience and the historical society welcomes people and has all kinds of information to offer about Devotion House and and other aspects of Brook Brookline's history. And the uh person portraying William
Dawze always recites um a poem that was written um in celebration of William Dawze, the the the other writer who was not recognized in the midnight ride of Paul Rivere, but who was just as important to that special day in
American history um when two men on horseback um alerted the um colonials to the presence of British troops and set a lot of things in motion that were still living with to this day. Matter of fact, as I recall, William Daws actually made
it to Lexington and Concord was arrested by the British. That's right. So, yeah. Yeah. Why doesn't he have a poem? Well, he does. It's a not not as well known as the other. And it's very it's it's very sort of funny in an ironic kind of a way
plays with the whole idea of him as the the unrecognized other writer on that day. There was an article in the Globe talking about the difficulty of rhyming with doaw. Yes. Yes. Right. Okay. Any others
comments? Okay. Then um Tiffany, please uh first set out the rules for public comment and we'll give Barbara Brown uh five minutes uh which she asked for a couple week a couple days ago. Um and then I will make my
statement. Okay. Uh, this thank you for joining us for public comment. This is an opportunity for us to hear your perspective on the issues in Brooklyn that matter to you. Each person speaking tonight is limited to 3 minutes unless otherwise authorized. You don't need to use the entire time, but you may if you
like. Once 15 minutes has been met, there's an opportunity at the conclusion to select board's business for additional comments. Members of the public sometimes raise questions during public comment. We may be able to provide a quick answer to a question, but are more likely to work with staff to get a more thorough answer and
respond over email. The on-screen timer will flash orange when you have 30 seconds remaining and red when your time is nearly up. Please conclude your remarks at that time. If you have more to say, you are welcome to send an email to board members expressing your thoughts in greater detail. Any person wishing to speak must begin their
comment by identifying themselves with their full name and either their Brookline precinct number or street address. Um, and so the first speaker tonight will be Barbara Brown, followed by Deborah Brown. Uh, wait a minute. No. Oh, I'm gonna make the statement first.
Sorry. Barbara, I forgot. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So, my statement um it's a reflection of u current events as it relate to the historical um um historical period that we're we're talking about. Um, so America is
celebrating the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution when the first shots were fired at the battles of Lexington and Concord. That revolution ushered in our democracy that is not a stagnant pool of platitudes,
but is constantly evolving towards a more perfect union. Starting with the Constitution and then the Bill of Rights. Then the Civil War and the Civil War War amendments. The 13th abolishing slavery. The 14th establishing equal protection of the laws and due process
for all persons. The 15th giving the right to vote to all male citizens. Then the 19th giving women the right to vote. Then the civil rights laws of the 1960s giving substance to the Civil War amendments. These evolutionary steps and the
promises in the constitution gave people the tools to wage a 250ear struggle to establish the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans,
people of the Abrahamic religions, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and other religious traditions, women, refugees, and immigrants, the LGBT BTQ and transgender communities, people of color, and other people from around the
world, all yearning to breathe free and struggle to enjoy the rights of liberty under the Constitution. Those rights, including free speech and the free press, the right to peaceibly assemble, to petition the government, the right to
either exercise your religion or to be free from having the government forcing its religious preferences down your throat, the right to be treated fairly and with due process. But as Martin Luther King said in his speech at the March on Washington in 1963, when the
architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promisory note to which every American was to fall heir. The note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interest on that promisory note has been paid, though sometimes late or not in full. But we have been collecting on the promises of liberty, maybe until
now. There are dark clouds over our democracy. Everyone every one of the aforementioned steps forward in the in the evolution of America is under attack. We risk losing this grand experiment in
democracy unless we all including the great institutions of our country, the local and state governments, the courts, the powerful law firms, the universities, and the big corporations mutually pledged to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in defense of the great democratic experiment that began with bloodshed. 250 years ago. So that's my statement. Um, yes.
Oh, okay. Not finish. Like like and here's my introduction to Barbara. Like all of history, the history of the American Revolution was written by the victorious he hegemonic faction of a war or other
struggle and contains a lot of their mythology. As a result, his excuse me, as a result, history is often one-sided, which is why is it it is important that we add to the official history the
additional facts and perspectives that help make history a true story of our past. I'd like to introduce Barbara Brown who will present some relevant research on some of the African-American people of Brooklyn who were part of the
war the beginning of which we are celebrating this year. So, Barbara, I'm Barbara Brown. I live at 44 Waverly Street in the house that my husband's grandparents bought 102 years ago. I um am the founder of Hidden
Brooklyn, bringing to light the hidden history of slavery and freedom in our town. We've been around since 2006 and I'm so pleased to be here at this 250th anniversary and to follow what you just said, Bernard. Thank you very much.
Um I want to start with the first slide, please. Sorry, I don't have your slides. I sent them. Oh dear. Um, I have a PowerPoint. I have a a little what do you call it? Flash drive. Yeah, if you get
that few other things while you need to talk in the into the mic. So, wait. Three, four, five, and six. and it's the thing called um it's the PowerPoint for um the senior
center in Temple Israel. I will start by saying um that back in 2006, the head of the diversity office, Steve Breler, at the time said to me, you know, Barbara, we just brought to
light the um three underground railroad sites in the town. He said, you know, you really ought to go take a look at that plaque in town hall in the foyer. I said, Steve, whatever for. He said, not going to tell you. And so with that and no mother no other information um and
here's the plaque. Um I went over to look. The first thing I looked for were the women. There were no women. Then I looked for um there were I looked for Jews. I looked for Ducakuses. I looked for everybody who did not have an
Anglo-Saxon name. And I came up short until now. Can we go to the next slide? Thank you. I then found what he was suggesting because I had no clue what he was
talking about. And so this is how I began our walking tour. The next one is on April uh 27th, Sunday at 2 o'clock. You can um sign up and I know a number of you have not gone yet um on Brookline Adult Ed. Now what I ask
my students or audience to say is to see if they can find the names of three enslaved men here. There are certain men whose names begin with ESQ standing for Esquire. That does not mean they were lawyers. It's more like in Robin Hood.
Um and so I then give them a help and I go down to the lower part of the plaque and I ask them if they can find the names. And so now I and there are three visible clues there. I'm now asking if any of you on the select board or anyone
in the audience can find any of the names of the enslaved men. Yeah, they're at the bottom. Right. Go ahead, Michael. Oh, well um uh Pierce, Adam, and Peter. All of whom it's
Prince. It's Prince. Prince, I beg you pardon him. Couldn't read me. Prince, Adam, and Peter. And what are the three clues? Well, they all uh follow Esquire so and so apostrophe s. It's the possess their property. Then there's another
clue and that is that none of them has a last name. And if you don't have a last name, then you're not an adult. And then the third clue is guess where they're found? At the bottom. So with this information, I started hidden Brooklyn because this was
hidden history. I didn't know it in some sense. I wasn't surprised. But Malcolm Cawthorne took his students to Brooklyn from Brooklyn High and he asked them to do the same thing. And one of he asked them afterwards, "What did you think?" And one of them said, "I've been lied to
for 12 years." And I had been lied to as a child and perhaps you had too been lied to and said that this was a country of freedom. And at the time of 1775, all 13 colonies were enslaving
colonies. Uh in the 18 in the 1700s, there were about 80 enslaved people in Brooklyn, and that was 1/4 of the uh households in Brooklyn, enslaved people. Now, I want to tell you about these three men, what we know. First, I'll
tell you about um Peter. We know what happened on April 17th and that is all we know about him. We don't know where he's buried. We don't know if he was sold away. We know just simply that. On Esquire Gardener's Adam, we know one
thing about him besides the 19th. He is buried in a cemetery. We don't know where. Perhaps in the potter's field. Esquire Adam um Esquire Gardner died at the Battle of Lexington in Cambridge on the way back to um Brooklyn and Adam
stayed by his side until a wagon were brought for him to come home. Um Adam did not get his freedom and Prince did something quite unusual, quite courageous. He decided he too wanted his freedom.
And several years later, that's November 30th in 1779, he took his freedom and left Brooklyn. Very dangerous because there was slavery everywhere in the state at the time. And um he probably went to Salem, as it says there, because once
you get to Salem, you can get on a ship. Once you're on a ship, you're safe. If he'd gone into Boston, he might have been recognized. And so Prince is, I think, one of the most heroic men Brookline has ever known
because he knew what freedom meant and he wanted it. There were other people who did different ways of finding freedom. There were two couples who um were able to marry that it was almost illegal. It was possible, but it was technically very difficult. They could
not live together because they were enslaved to different people. Um, but they made a marriage and they had more children than other people had. So there's all kinds of things that happened. I want to end by saying one two things. One is now imagine how long
slavery in the United States lasted. Started in 1619 as you probably know and it ended in 1865 as we all know. How many years is that? That's 246 years. How many years of freedom have we had in
the United States? We will have to wait until 211 to have more years of freedom than of slavery here. And it's so easy and it's been easy for me to forget the extraordinary length and pain of slavery
in this country. Slavery in Massachusetts lasted for sorry um 179 years and that would take us up to 1942 for the for having more years of freedom in Massachusetts than of slavery. And my
sister was born in 1942. So it's quite present for me. Now I have a idea and a suggestion for what we might do. Lexington has had a banner has had banners of the people who lived in Lexington who were black and who fought in the
revolution. I thought why not put up a small sign right near the plaque saying there are the names of three extraordinary men here who fought for the independence of their country though they were not free. Can you find them?
Thank you, Barbara. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Just so you know, this is what Brook 1740s everything in red blue is enslavement property.
Thank you. The next speaker is Deborah Brown. Deborah, not a problem. My name is Deborah Brown. I live at 26 Parkman Street here in Brooklyn. And uh I'm here today to uh thank the select board
uh town administrator, planning, community development department, and the health department uh for really getting us moving. Uh I'm here to talk about the Brooklyn Community Development Corporation. And I'm doing it now because I wanted to be able to say this
to Mike and I'm going to be babysitting toward the end of the month. So, I'll miss his last days, but it is really important to me to to do this now. So, I wanted to say thank you for your tough questions,
uh, for being so demanding, but also showing up. Um, and you know, it's it's paid off. We're in the process of refinancing our properties and and and I would not be surprised if there weren't a few people
thinking they're never going to pull that off and we are. Um we had a groundbreaking at our Beacon Street property. Paul was there. Thank you. Um we got an RFP out on the street for our
Boilston property. Um, we've had 60 Brooklyn residents call about rental assistance over a over a 3-week period. We ran a holiday gift drive.
We're we're doing lots of things. We assessed three different properties for new development. Sadly, because of the high cost of development, none of them panned out. you know, we've we did a donuts with the delegation event and I thank most of you
guys were there, but thank you. Um, we're trying to represent Brookline as best as we can and we don't get there without the support and the commitment of the town's
leadership or the town as a whole. And sometimes it's, you know, it's it's not the easiest process, but it feels like a process that's that's fair, that's that's respectful,
uh, that's curious, and I'll use the D word again, demanding. So, I I just wanted to say again, thank you for believing in us. Um, and we want to do something really,
really special for Brooklyn. So, thank you. And Mike, you've been here for much of it. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. That concludes speakers who signed up in advance of the meeting. If
there's anyone online who wishes to speak during public comment at this time, please raise your hand using the raise the hand feature. Or if you're in the room, please make your presence known at this time. Okay, there are 20 participants online and six in the room and it looks like no one else is indicating their desire to
speak. Okay, thank you Tiffany. Going on to miscellaneous our miscellaneous calendar. Uh I want to move approval of items 5A through 5P in omnibus fashion and then add 5Q after
there's been an explanation of theou contemplated in that item. Could you give a summary of that? Why don't you do that first and then we can Sure. Um so um theou in question is between three parties. The select board, the um town moderator and the town clerk. Um this is
being uh this is an update of an MOU that was signed in last October and the purpose of this is updating town meeting in the public on the progress of warrant articles. The town meeting is passed. Um right now the proposal is to ensure that um the town clerk has almost completed
his work um with a contractor in getting the e-code up to date for our um our general bylaws. Uh and so this um in conjunction with uh the petitioners of a warrant article and this town meeting warrant um brings thisou into uh uh into
accord with their wishes. Um and it's our hope that in passing this modified version that the um the petitioners then will seek to convert that um uh proposed bylaw into a resolution um and therefore um uh everyone will be hopefully uh be
satisfied with the outcome there. So there's no change to the requirements on the select board side. What our office is asked to do is not changed. And I want to thank Tiffany in particular for taking the lead on um following through on this. She's done a great job of
updating um regularly um on the spreadsheet on the town meeting website um where we are in all of these things and you can see for example the attorney general's approval of recent bylaws where things are and all of that. So thank you Tiffany.
So uh it's it looks like this does not mean that um warrant article u the warrant article that was submitted will not be withdrawn. It will be converted to a resolution as the proposal of the petitioners, I believe. And and what what what would be the purpose of the
res resolution if we have the memorandum of understanding? I think it would be to support the memorandum of understanding and to have town meeting say, you know, that they hope the memorand the both the memorandum and the e-code updates are are honored. Um, you know, making sure that folks know that town this what town
meeting requires and that, you know, the potential for the bylaw to come back if we are slack in our obligations is still present. John, did you have your hand? I was just going to You asked a very good question and um you know, I I think I think that
it sounds to me like a really good arrangement has been worked out. Um you know, may maybe there could be some question as to whether we even need the resolution. Now, I I don't think that's any sense a deal breaker in terms of the the significance of thisou. Um it it's a
much better path towards achieving the same ends um as the original town meeting uh warrant article u would have achieved um through you know through force and within you know very sort of unfortunately narrow limits of uh once
you create limits a as to enforcement um thresholds um and put them in a bylaw it can really complicate things and a memorandum of understanding is an understanding and it'll achieve the same thing as the Warren article would achieve. So I I want to thank the
sponsors of the Warren article to the extent that they have helped to uh transition this to anou and a resolution. Paul. Yeah. And just to provide a little more context here, there this um the memor memorandum of understanding is something that we had
already approved. Um it was put in place um I know Chaz a year ago, a year and a half ago actually October. in octo it was just October um in response to um the petitioner bringing a suggestion that uh before uh and instead of having
a warrant article go to town meeting um Chaz and I and that uh the moderator and the new town clerk got together and and hashed out a solution in the memorandum memorandum of understanding that has now been amended. So, I think this is a much
better path, frankly, for actions where um there's multiple bodies involved and you don't have to enshrine it in a bylaw, right? Um it saves a lot of time for town meeting and also provides us with the flexibility to adjust um you know, things that we're doing to try to innovate uh without having to go through
the the long process of uh of debates in the process for town meeting. So, I appreciate the work that everybody's done on. Okay. So, um, unless there are any other comments or questions, I'd like to move approval of items 5A through 5Q. Uh, all in favor, please indicate by
saying I. John Vancoyak. I. Michael Sandman. I. Paul Warren. I. David Pearlman. I. And chair votes I. Bernard, did you want me to read the resolution as part of that? Yeah. I'm sorry. Should have mentioned that earlier. No, that's okay. And this is a
resolution honoring um Aaron Ferson. Aaron Fenson. Yep. So, um, as some of you may know, um, I, uh, would not be sitting in front of you here if it wasn't for the an individual named Aaron Furriststein, um, who I had a connection to many years ago, um, and and worked
for Aaron actually at Malden Mills. um and he played um an incredibly uh giant role in helping me to be able to um uh make it through college and and start out a life of my own through his generosity. And I won't go into a lot of
detail about that. Um but um we are going to be honoring Aaron on Sunday, May 18th at the Brookline Village Library at at 2:30 from 2:30 to 4:30. There'll be uh I understand that former Congressman uh Barney Frank is going to
be coming and speaking. All right. Yep. Yep. As well as a number of other dignitaries uh will be speaking as well uh to to honor uh the legacy of of Aaron Friststein. And as part of that uh the select board just approved a resolution as part of its uh consent agenda. And
I'd like to read that resolution for you at this time. Um, it's entitled Resolution of the Brookline Select Board Honoring the Legacy of Aaron Furriststein by designating the third Sunday of May as Aaron Furriststein Day. And here's the resolution. Whereas the
select board rightfully honors those Brooklyn residents who live who whose lives enhance those of other people across the Commonwealth and whose legacies embody the very essence of justice, kindness, and economic
fairness. And whereas Aaron Furriststein, born and raised in Brook Brooklyn, is one such individual. And whereas Aaron Furriststein as CEO of Malden Mills, the Lawrencebased firm
that created Polar Techch, acted with singular generosity when after a devastating fire destroyed Molden Mills, he used his insurance money to pay the salaries of all the now unemployed workers and to rebuild the factory
instead of solely keeping the money for himself. And whereas Aaron Furriststein was in a class of industrial leaders who were once not uncommon but are now rare, who viewed the welfare of his workers as his
responsibility, like his greater family, and judged his own success not just from a standpoint of profit and loss, but of profit and loss to his workers, to his community, and to his commitment to his Jewish values and practices.
And whereas for his extraordinary generosity, Aaron Furriststein was honored by President Bill Clinton during the 1996 State of the Union address and was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage and Conscious Award. His story has been
featured in numerous media outlets including the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and Forbes magazine and is used in business ethics courses in universities around the country. And whereas by honoring Aaron Friststein,
Brooklyn sends a powerful message of its values that can be conveyed to its young people for many generations to come about the importance of labor rights and business ethics. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Brooklyn Select Board
honors the legacy of Aaron Furristine by designating the third Sunday of May, which is American Jewish Jewish Heritage Month. Aaron Furstein day. Thank you.
Clap. Yeah, it looked like you were about to clap, Mike. I was I was indeed. I I knew Aaron and I actually had done some consulting work for Malden Mills and have a lot of respect for you. You may have been there. It's if you're doing sales consulting when I was there.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Next, uh, we have boards and commissions interviews, starting off with the Brookline Housing Authority. Now, we have, uh, four candidates for this position, and I want to make sure that we ask each of them
questions that are similar, so that's fair in terms of our evaluation of uh, the applicants. So, I've come up with three questions. Um, nothing sacred about them. So if you want to add something else just let's just make sure that everyone gets asked
the same questions roughly the same. My questions are have you attended meetings of the housing authority trustees and what is your impression of how they function? Secondly, do you have outside work or other experience that would be valuable in serving as a trustee of the
housing authority? And third, how familiar are you with the regulations, bylaws, and relevant sections of the general laws that relate to housing authorities? Those questions are acceptable to the select board. We'll
proceed on those. Sure. Okay. Um, who's first, Tiffany? Erica Pureibbia. Okay. And we have three applicants to tonight and then one who's going to u be interviewed on the 29th. Yes. Good
evening. So, first introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and then we'll start asking questions. Um, good evening. My name's Erica Pereibia. Um, I live even closer to the mic. Thank you. I live at the Brookline
Housing Authority um on their Eggmont Veterans um property. Um, I'm a mother and I have a 10-year-old and I don't know if anything else I should say. Um, so I'm a bit nervous. I just want to
interviews always make me nervous, but I wanted to start off by saying good evening again and thank you for inviting me here to interview for this opportunity. um very interested um and open in the open tenency on the Brooklyn Housing Authority Board of
Commissioners. Um I feel that I'd be a great candidate and that I have a great tenant perspective on um issues that affect the family seniors at Brooklyn Housing Authority. I'm passionate and about advocating for all of the BHA
tenants. Being part of the board would allow me more of an opportunity to do so. um currently a board member for the Brooklyn Community Development Corporation. Um and we have a similar mission to the Brooklyn Housing Authorities's mission, which is to provide and maintain safe, sanitary, and
affordable housing for um seniors, families, and individuals with disabilities. uh with this with my experience on the BCDC board, I've had the privilege of working closely with the seniors and families in my complex by assisting with
the holiday gift drive where we were able to include the seniors this year um after hearing their feedback. Um I also led the summer wellness challenge last summer where we partnered with um women thriving, BHA, and BCDC. I was able to
complete the first-time home buyers course that BCDC provided in partnership with Brookland Housing Authority. Um, and that was to for the tenants and for the BHA tenants and the section 8 tenants. Um, I feel that I have a good view and understanding of what's going
on in the BHA community and I'm open and available to um to however else that I can contribute and navigate for BHA tenants. Um, I would work closely with the current commissioners and collaborate with them
um and listen to what their concerns are and I'm willing and open to learn from them as well and and I thank you again for considering my candidacy. Thank you. So, have you attended meetings of the housing authority and by
on in person or on Zoom and uh what are your thoughts or reflections on those meetings? I've attended both in person and on Zoom. Um, and I my thoughts are I I think they
function very well as a board. Um, and I agree with what they stand for as well. Okay. So, you talked a little bit about your um experiences, but um could you just mention again, you
know, your experiences that uh um lend themselves to working on the board of the trust board of trustees of the housing authority. Yes. Um I am a board member for the Brickline Community Development Corporation. Um
and I am also um part of the women thrivings planning committee. Um and I am also um trying a blank. I'm sorry. Right. So uh why don't you um tell us you if
you're familiar with the various rules, regulations, and statutes that govern housing authority. Um I'm famili I'm somewhat familiar not um not fully and but I'm willing and
open to learn more about it, right? Um just what I've heard in the board meetings as well as um what I know as a tenant for myself just to be able to advocate for myself. Great. Any um other questions from the select board?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. probably be making our decision after the May uh the April 29th meeting. Um so stay tuned. Okay, the next candidate is William
Brown. Is William Brown in the room? Do you not I do not see William Brown online either. So, let's go to Arlene Hill and I will contact William Brown in
the interim. Okay, but we'll take you now. Thank you. So tall. Hi, my name's Alen Hill and I too live at housing. I live at the Veterans High Street Apartments. I'd lived there for 20 years and uh when I came here, I used
to be a CNA and I ripped my tendons and couldn't work anymore. And not working was something that was brand new to me and it brought me back to my childhood which was one of extreme trauma and I more or less flipped out and had a
nervous breakdown. And I was the tenant that housing was made for because it allowed me to see a therapist and get work and pay rent on the little bit of disability I had and still function and live. And it gave me the opportunity to
learn and grow the past. I went to school to college and then COVID came in my last year of school. I was supposed to be doing an internship and I ended up doing nothing and I got involved with GBIO. You are all familiar with GBIO,
Greater Boston, Interpate, and the housing campaign. They've just finished. I've met with the governor four times. I broke my wrist on the steps of my housing, and we called it the billion dollar arm. And we got the governor to
give us a 2.2 billion in the bond bill. That's the next five years. We're working on getting her to make sure she keeps her promise and gives us that. Everybody seems to be saying, "Oh, the federal government's going to change, so
we can't." And as far learning the rules and regulations, I got the forms that Ben uh it's Ben's last name. He's our new director. He used to work for the uh
community development and the fed and now he's working for us, Ben Stone. He's our new director. I and Michael who was a director previously met with Ben to ask him about changing the rules for the
kids. We're working on get I and a group of fellow tenants have been working for two years now with the housing about getting rules changed in the union at our developments and that's
coming close. we're ready to hand them a paper saying we're starting the union and I involved with trying to figure out the paperwork for that too. And something I noticed all these paperworks that involved tenants being involved
they're all written in legal ease. I'm I didn't go to college to be a lawyer. I was going to be a social worker. A lot of the tenants that I go to the board meetings, I see them and they're mostly, "Yes, you can do that. Yes, you
spent that. Yes, we'll buy that." They're not gee, maintenance talks to us like they own us. What do we do about that? And that is a problem at housing. Um, when Michael left, certain attitudes
popped right back up. my garden. It was 80° and they shut the water off and I'm like, "But it's 80°." Nope. The date the water goes off, so the water goes off. There's there's no talking. There's a lot of things that housing is marvelous at. It's the whole
world. I live with neighbors from the whole world around me. And I think that's the best thing housing has for it. and that it allows you space that if you're hurt and if you don't make money, you can live here and get better and get
well. And if you're like me and you get so well when you're old, you still got to live here. They don't throw you out. So, that's a great thing, too. But there are things that can be better. We are not inmates. We are not owned by the
state. We pay our rent like everybody should at 32% of their income, not 500%. Which is what's been going on. So, you can ask your question. Well, you've answered actually all night. Um, but I'm
going to ask them again any rate or at least a couple of them. Um, you didn't say whether you've attended meetings. Sounds like you have. Yes. Um, do you have any thoughts on how the um housing authority operates? And it does operate
well in as far as it operates. That's part of what I'd like to I'd like to try to bring the tenants more into it for their own growth and for housing's growth. Yeah. Um you sort of answered this but um you
know tell me a little more about your work experience other experiences and you went went to school right that would help with um being on the housing authority board. Well my experience with boards and this kind of stuff has only been the last four years. Before that I
was a CNA. I love the elderly. I love history and they were the talking living history. what have been a job could you get? So that's what I did in social work. I'm a people person. That's why I came in person face to face. Here's how we talk, you know. Um but it's a
struggle because of the legal ease and I don't understand why everything that's for tenants and about tenants is written like we all went to law school. Okay. So that's something I'd like to maybe get talked about in the board meetings.
Okay. So, I'm not going to ask you about uh the regulations, bylaws, and staff. Well, I don't care. I eat them up. Okay, good. Um, any other questions from the select board? Thank you. And as I said, we'll be
making our selection after the April 29th meeting. Oh, yeah. No, you you'll be notified. Um there's someone named Lisa Brown online and I'm wondering if um William is sharing an account with this person.
So Lisa, I'm promoting you briefly. If you could um unmute and let us know if William Brown is with you. No. Okay. Thank you. Well, okay. Well, you you'll contact him and try to set it up for the
29th. Okay, thank you. Um, so it's William Brown and Karen Rojos that we'll speak with on the 29th. Next, uh, Conservation Commission. Sorry. Um, this will actually be
postponed. The candidate requested a reschedule for the 29th. Oh, sorry. You probably told me that and I That's okay. So busy. Um, okay. the next uh five-year consolidated plan for the CBD CDBG
program. Wana, I take it you're going to be presenting Good evening. My name is Iwana Lindo Smith and I'm the housing and community planning director in the planning department. I have here with me um Jacob
Collins. He's the um community planner and David Guzman and he's our CD administrator. They both will be speaking. Um we're here tonight. Thank you for having us. Actually, um we're here tonight just to let the board know
ahead of time um what we have discovered. And in terms of CDBG, we have to do an annual plan, a five-year plan every five years for for us to apply for the CDBG funds every year. So,
we're here just to um lay this out for you guys to let you know um let the public know what we have discovered and um what our plan is. We're also here because we have to do annual plan. We're also here to let you know about the annual plan and to give you the results
of our meeting that we had which we do every year with the um with our advisory board. We have a CDBG advisory board. We use them every year to determine to make the recommendation to the select board how CDBG funds will be spent. So we're
here to let you know what the results were and how that goes. At this time we are tentatively going with level funding because as you know the federal government has been having some issues. So we'll be hopefully we got message the
other day that by May 15th we should hear what our actual allocation is but at this time we made a re they made a recommendation on level funding and I will start with Jake will talk about the five-year consolidated plan and David
will talk about the annual action plan this year. Thank you so much. Is there music coming from somewhere? Yes, there is. Oh, it might be Regina's. Uh, there you go. Okay, great. Thank you.
Um, thank you all for having me here tonight. As I wanna mentioned, I am Jacob Jake Collins, the community planner in the town's planning department. Uh, you may know me from my work with the comprehensive plan, but tonight I am before you to discuss another project, the five-year community
development block grant consolidated plan. So, you may be wondering what a consolidated plan is. As Aana mentioned, it's a five-year plan required by HUD. Um, it focuses on identifying housing and non-housing community needs. It
basically acts as our road map uh for allocating CDBG and home funds. Of course, we couldn't do this without um public input. So, of course, we went out into the community. We met with residents and community partners. And then we are anticipating roughly six and
a half million uh to allocate over the next uh five years. That is of course subject to change. So before I get to the current plan, I want to kind of um recap what we were able to accomplish in the last 5 years. So first up I have the CDBG
housing allocations. Um these were recommended by the CDBG advisory board of which Paul Warren is the current chair. I believe Bernard, you were the former chair. Yep. And then, um, Erica is actually a member of. Um, so over the
past five years, um, the Brookline Housing Authority has been has received just over $2 million. Um, and they were able to leverage quite a bit more money using this funding. Uh, the Brookline Community Development Corporation uh, has been given over $200,000.
Hebrew senior life at 616,000 of CDBG and home. The CDBG funding was used to acquire the property or lease on the property. Uh 30,000 for specialized housing and then an additional $50,000 per
kitas. Uh next up we have the public service allocations. And this is a little trickier. Um by law public services are capped at 15% of the entire um allocation. So, we have a lot of worthy applicants each year and we wish we could give them more. Um, but you
know, we do the best with what we can. Um, so over the past five years, the Council on Aging and the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health have received over $150,000 and the Brooklyn Housing Authority, uh, the Steps of Success, and the Brooklyn Food Pantry have received
over $200,000. So now we'll move on to the fiscal year 26 um to fiscal year 2030 plan. Um so over the past or over the course of six months we collected um input or we met
with stakeholders and collected input uh through consultations with nonprofit partners, meeting with town department leaders, many many tables and um in-person activities and online community needs survey. And then we were also, interestingly enough, able to um
draw data from the comprehensive plan neighborhood survey which we knew going into it would kind of serve two purposes. Um and here's a list of uh groups, agencies, and departments consulted. Uh we wanted to make sure that we heard from groups that were
addressing a variety of needs and served a variety of populations. And then we of course just wanted to include a few photographs of some of our outreach events. So at the top there I am at Brookline day and there's our activity from that day on the right and then you see David holding
the same poster at the food pantry at the on the photo in the bottom left. So there were four key takeaways from consultations. Um affordable housing was a top priority for many many many of the groups we spoke to. Um, not
only did many people say that we need more affordable units, we heard time and time again that the existing affordable units could use some modernization, increased support for vulnerable and underserved populations. We heard a lot about supporting people as they age, allowing them to age in place, ensuring that the infrastructure
is there for them to succeed. Um, and providing opportunities, particularly economic opportunities for low and moderate income youth. collaboration with 15% of the allocation um only 15% rather uh allocated towards
public services. They have already started kind of collaborating to expand programs or create new programs. So that not only allows um more of a financial investment but also a wider breath of services and then food insecurity and health needs. Um, as we all know, food
costs keep rising and food insecurity is a greater problem now than it was in the past 5 years. So, we did consult other regional, local, and town efforts um when creating or developing our goals
and um priority needs. So, here's just a list of them and who was the responsible agency. So um we solicit public input in a variety of ways but I am highlighting two opportunities where we received really excellent feedback. Brooklyn day
on the left and our online survey on the right. In both cases we asked um participants to rank the needs of uh in the order of priority. Borderable housing by a wide margin um was the highest priority in both surveys. public
surveys, services and infrastructure two and three respectively. Uh economic development was fourth for both. And then for the survey we added accessibility um which unfortunately is listed last but I will note that a lot
of people either listed it first or last there were very few in between. So for those who need access um accessibility uh it was a higher priority. And so the takeaways from this is that once again people want affordable housing. Uh they feel that
the town could use more. Uh we feel that we did a really really great job uh reaching broad and diverse audiences. And then um finally uh people are excited to use common spaces and they really want to see them improved
and enhanced. So using all this information and data we gathered we were able to identify a few priority needs. So affordable housing, construction of new units, rehab of existing and then acquisition of new units through deed restrictions
or renewing de restrictions. Uh economic development, job training particularly for youth and then support for local businesses, public services, um blanket, there are many needs and um we want to be able to serve them. And then public
facilities and infrastructure improvement. We will continue working with the town um and when the need and opportunity arises and invest in those improvements. And then finally, homelessness. Um while we don't have the same issues that some of our neighboring or peer communities have with
homelessness, um Brooklyn Center for Community Mental Health does work with the homeless population and um we do work with the state to ensure that people stay housed. Uh thank you for your time. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague David Guzman who will walk
you through the fiscal year 26 annual action plan. Thank you. Well, thank you and good night and thanks for this opportunity. I just want to introduce myself. I'm the new city administrator um for the community planning division and I just want to
talk about the um the fiscal year 2026 annual action plan. This is um pretty tiny piece that actually fills and fits on the consolidated plan. Um so this is actually a strategy that we are
going to follow for fiscal year 26. And as Jake was mentioning the five-year consolidated plan lays out this strategy for five years and everything that we are proposing here is actually aligned with the um United State Department of
Housing and Urban Development through the CDJ program. So we are trying to provide decent housing or supporting the provision of decent housing, suit our living conditions, expanding expansion of economic opportunities but mostly and more importantly we are looking to uh
benefit to low to moderate income uh households and individuals. So right now as I was mentioning so we have an available fun of 1.38 million for this year and that number may change before May 15. It all
depends on the um the odds allocation. Um, so I want to talk about I think that the most important and pressing issue here is just the process making sure that the community is involved and that
the Brooklyn actually has active participation in the process and we are really proud. Uh so for this process we release uh an RFP process inviting you know uh inviting soup recipients and social
agencies and housing providers in order to capture tentative projects and and activities that they may be eligible under the CG program. So we have a period of u one month that RFP was released between December 16 and January
23rd 2025 and it works as an office as a notice of funding availability and then after that we have a couple of uh public meetings as required by the statuto uh in the uh in the uh CDJ program. So we have on
January 15 and January 29 a couple of community forums and we got previous current and future uh soup recipients sitting on a table having a conversation with them talking about affordable housing needs and public services needs
in the context of the uh Brooklyn community. So it was a really really well attended event and we draw some interesting conclusions as uh Jake was mentioning in the consolidated plan. We also have and this is the piece that is more uh tied to the um to the process to
that annual I'm sorry to the annual action plan process. We have a couple of um CVG advisory meetings on February 24th and the 27. And we just want to thanks you know all the CVG advisory committee Mr. Paul Warren, Jennifer Seel
as part of the community foundation, Susan Ferris bill from the um uh school system, Rita Magnali as a hub member and Erica Pivia which was present recently. So, and then we present the memo that
you have in front of you with all the funding recommendations, you know, staff by the community planning division, but definitely recommended by the CDG advisory board. And then now today is an informative session and we release the
draft of the consolidated plan and the annual action plan on April 4th. We are required to have 30 days for public comment and we are expecting to come back um to the select board public hearing on May 13 and looking for a vote
for the submission of the annual action plan to HUD and then to authorize actually a couple of um documents that needs to be processed in order to submit the application and some crosscuting requirements like environmental reviews tied to each of the uh to the um the
activities that we receive. So now I want to talk about the uh basis for allocation and the estitude for the C program requires actually that the annual allocation. So and Jake was mentioning this we have a 15% cap and that's
applicable for for public services. That's the reason we release an RFP. So we have a competitive bidding process and you know organizations are coming and applying for funding in a really competitive way and then also we have a
20% cap on program administration cost that usually the town spends less money on that piece in order to allow more for the use of CDG funds towards eligible programs and activities and then the remaining in this case could be 65% of
the allocation uh to be allocated for eligible activities and programs. So after deliberation and the opportunity to you know sub recipients and applicants to present their projects. So the CDG advisory board and
the uh the community planning staff came up with this set of recommendation broken down in three pieces. So one is the uh the component uh housing then BS component public services with the 15% cap and then the staffing which is all
the uh the housing uh salaries comprehensive planning activities and city administration and cost related. One sec the number here. So in terms of
housing, we received a couple of proposals and one is related to BHA. So this is a senior high development and still they're trying to do more capital improvements and the allocation came up
the um the recommendation came came up $571,625. We also have an application coming from Two Life Community and this is for 384 Harbor Street, the Brown family house. They are looking to make minor
capital improvements that wasn't included in the whole uh proposal four years ago when they finished uh this housing development project. And then in terms of public services, they are capped at 15%. So we have an application from the RU 19 center that you know
unfortunately was withdrawn and the reason is this is they were trying to apply as an economic development activity to be out of the 15% cap but the way that the institute requires to produce some outcomes like particular trainings and people placed at jobs was
extremely complicated and then so we also have the uh community uh center for mental health in the recommendation I just want to read as well they were concerned about whether this year's proposals uh which include access to an
online application will be effective without dedicated personnel for outreach and support. While there was recognition of the community's mental health needs, the committee ultimately determined that more fully funding other public services program will be more advantageous to the
community than partially funding all application. C could you wrap it up? Could you wrap it up? A lot of this stuff we have in our package. Okay. And then as you may see, so we have the allocations for the resident services
program with BHA 53,9892 uh Brooklyn Council on Aging, the trips program related transportation, step to success work connections and Brooklyn food food pantry food cost. Great. And then I we are just want to invite for any questions if there are and thank you
for the opportunity. Any qu David just if you could go into a little more detail about the withdrawal of the teen center application. Was there a cost that was also associated with that because I see everything else on that page had an associated cost. So so we
were working really hard with them. They were really supportive of the consolidated plan feedback and we got a lot of valuable information and what happened is um so when you have a project trying to qualify for an economic development activity you have
to show hot an outcome that you are going to be creating jobs and those jobs are going to be full-time permanent jobs and the concept that they were providing it was for seasonal temporal jobs for youth during the summer time. So, it was
really difficult trying to make it qualify and we had this conversation with our hot representative. Um, so our recommendation is why don't you try the public services gap and then we'll go from there because we really
want to have this program in the in the in the near term in the future. Uh, and they, you know, made the call just to, you know, withdraw it. Yeah. But we have that conversation. Great. Yeah. Any other questions, John?
Um I thanks thanks for the presentation and thanks for the work of um allocating these very important funds. Um and all of the allocations seem worthy to me. So I I have no quarrel with that. Um I have um I I want to be absolutely certain
that nobody takes this as a as a as a criticism of of the people who put this application together, but um those who have heard me speak on this before will recognize um what I'm about to say. Um I I find the overhead for the CM CDBG
program, excuse me, to to be inexplicably um excessive um in excess of $500,000. and uh you needn't go into an explanation for it. Um past um presenters have have offered explanations for it. I'm satisfied that
the explanation is what it is. Um but um uh you know I think when people and this is happening a lot lately you know worry that um federalized programs come at a very very
heavy um uh overhead cost. um uh th this doesn't the CDBG program which has been around for a long time and has done a lot of good in the Brooklyn community um doesn't help by the by the nature of the processes the complicated processes the
the many many many many many hoops that have to be jumped through um by local organizations to even be considered for grants. Um and and then an awful lot of the money is burned up just in administration of the grants. Um so I've
made that statement before and um I thank you for the time to make it again this year. Anything else? Did you have some concluding remarks, Wanda? Yes. I just wanted to say that if you have any other questions
or any other concerns, please feel free to reach out to David or myself or Jake um in our office. We are more than happy to answer questions. On May 13th, hopefully if we get our actual allocation, we will be back here asking
you for a vote to um authorize us applying for the funds from HUD. So this this is for you to this this session is for you to understand and know what's what we're asking for in May. And if there are any public comments, please
email David. He should have those and he will attach them to the application when we send it into HUD. But feel free to ask us any questions. We're happy to help. I I have one quick comment. I just want to thank um all three of you for your work. Uh Jake, the work that you're
doing on the comprehensive plan um is incredible and the energy that you put behind it um and also for yourselves, you're just doing a great job. Um you made the process of allocating these funds for the five people that get together. Um the amount of preparation
that you brought to our meetings and the level of knowledge about what we could do and what we couldn't do and why was really exceptional. So I just want to thank you for your service. Thank you. Welcomed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, have a good night. You too. Thank you.
Next, we're starting on the exciting So, sorry, Mr. Chair. We actually need to have the first of two public hearings um on the first one of the five-year consolidated plan tonight. The second one will be on May 13th, which will also include the public hearing, the one and
only for the annual action plan. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was a public hearing. Should have remembered that from previous years, but I didn't. That's okay. Would you like to open the public hearing? Yes. Uh let's open the public
hearing on the five-year consolidated plan. Um yes. Now that the chair is and the annual action plan, not annual action plan will be next time. Okay. Oh yeah. So just the five-year consolidated plan. Not voting on the five-year plan. We're
just having hearings. Correct. Okay. So now, sorry. Now that the chair has opened the public hearing, we did not have any individuals who signed up in advance. Is there anyone online who wish uh who wishes to speak on this item? If so, please raise your hand using the raise the hand feature or if you're in
the room, please um make your presence known. Deborah Brown. Uh Deborah Brown, I live at 26 Parkman Street, Brooklyn. Uh, I skimmed the plan and what I what I found helpful and
informative about the plan was it really did track a lot of what so like uh the Brookline uh community foundation report it pulled a lot of interesting results from that. If you
look at uh some of the research that HAB has done, you see the alignment there. And so as we think about the five-year plan, I I would ask that you not necessarily go, oh, this was just what
the planning department did for CDBG. I I would ask that you see it as part of a a a broader envelope of research that has taken place in the town and by the town and that it just aligns really
well. So job well done. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Regina. Thank you. Uh Regina Frolley, precinct 16. Just a question really as we have a commitment and it's been even been mentioned tonight of
people aging in place. It is not just happening in public housing. It's happen in in private homes whether it's condos or single family or two or three family homes. Um, does any of the CDBG money ever be
able to go to assisting uh seniors in particular in their homes or is it strictly for the public housing? Thank you. Or other uh incorporated housing. Go ahead.
Um at this time um Miss Frowley, I'm sorry. um CDBG does not allow us to actually you and especially in Brooklyn homes in Brooklyn it's not they're not um cheap houses. So one of the things is many years ago we were able to help to
rehab places because at the time the prices were down and people were at that time would fall under the low to moderate income. at this point because your assets is so much. It is very hard for us to the the rules won't allow us
to fix a multi-million dollar house while there's, you know, some other poorer person not living anywhere. So that's so that that's the the rules that we have to live by. Um that's one thing I always tell folks when you're thinking
of using CDBG funds. There's a lot of rules, a lot of attachment to it. It's not just oh here you can have some money go. It is always there's always a lot of rules underlying spending those funds because they want to be sure that it goes to low to moderate income folks who
really need the help. So if there's but let's not engage in a back and forth in the audience. No no no sorry you can't you have to No, we can't have that. I'm sorry. Okay. Um, if there is anyone else who wishes to make a public comment at this time,
please make your presence known. Okay. There are no individuals indicating their desire to speak. And Mr. Chair, I just want to uh reiterate the next public hearing opportunity on the 5-year consolidated plan will be on May 13th. And that will also be an
opportunity um for folks to comment on the annual action plan. Great. Thank you. So, uh, I will officially close the hearing and we'll move on to the, uh, department departmental budget reviews. You Thank you.
Yeah. Isn't there a second hearing? And Dan Bennett is with us online. I thought we were going to have separate two separate hearings. Not tonight though. Not tonight. May 13th. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. No problem.
Okay. Uh, we're starting off with the building department and Dan Bennett, as you said, is on the, uh, screen. Good evening, Dan. Can can you hear me? Yes. And can you see my um presentation? Yep. Yes, but it's not in presentation mode,
Dan. Uh, what do I need to do that? Um, at the bottom near the Zoom, there's like a little projector looking button. If you click on that, go right. That one. That better.
All right. Thank you. Um, thank you for having me. Um, I have with me, uh, Paul Campbell, my deputy building commissioner, and I think Charlie Simmons is on, although I didn't see him. He was trying to get on. I don't know if he's around, Tiffany, or not. I'll I'll go through my my slides. Uh
there's about eight slides with some information on it. Then I got some pictures and then at the end I'm just going to make a statement on another part of my budget. So um following the guidelines from the um
budget presentation that was sent out by Chaz, our biggest accomplish accomplishment accomplishments this year were um we were able had some really good successful recruiting. We were able to hire a local inspector. So that's the fifth position that we've had that was
vacant for quite some time. We hired an unlicensed technician uh for HVAC that has helped out. That's town buildings only uh the way that funding has gone and um we're working with the school department to try to get them on board for this maybe in the future. And we're
able to hire an EMS specialist. Um in addition, our capital improvement plan is moving along. uh Driscoll School. We finished that last year, but uh this year we're able to bring the geothermal installation online. Uh we've commenced construction um of the Pier School. You
can see the demolition outside town hall. And we are in the process of beginning um uh fire stations um um one and two. Uh I'm sorry, one and four. Um those will um they're bid out. We get
the bids we're in. We're probably permitting sometime over the summer and um that's uh stations one and four and that that would make them all uh fossil fuel free. So that's moving towards our sustainability um goals and assumptions. I just want to
go back one slide quickly. This uh this first slide after the uh title uh shows some of our um our um performance indicators. It identifies the different divisions. It identifies the in-house work orders and the contractor services that uh the public buildings has done.
It identifies number of permit applications, inspections and uh complaints we've responded to and addresses um what I had just said with respect to the DISCL school, the heating um geothermal as well as the uh pier
school. Um, back to the goals. Um, in addition to the capital improvement and recruiting sustainability, we're moving along. Um, as of January 1st of 2024, we've got 35 new structures that are all fossil fuel-f free and those either
brand new or meet the definition of major renovation. We commenced work on the senior center uh electrification that was funded by OPA. And as I mentioned previously, the um stations one and four, which will be all electric when they're done, are um uh we got the
bids in last week and they'll be moving forward over the next, you know, one to three months. Um goals coming up for the next um for this current physical year is we want to advance uh solar installations. Um we did have a conversation with the building
commission last time with respect to Driscoll. There's some extra money they're looking on what to do there. So, we've had that conversation. Alexandra was part of it, the sustainability director. Uh, the Haye School is something that we wanted to talk about that was taken off um a town meeting
calendar uh a few years back. And then we've got the future, you know, of Pier School and what we, you know, would want to do there. Uh we will continue to implement the CIP. Um we've got the roofing and envelope uh replacement program that's been funded. Uh that
should start. We're going to be bidding that out and um hopefully doing a lot of work over at the high school and again advancement of electrification for town buildings. That is going to be very expensive. Uh we're still working with Alexandra, but we will going to need
some funding some way somehow. And to date, other than the uh fire department, you know, $65 million renovation program that we've started and ARPA, uh we haven't had, you know, um much funding in in that area. So, that's something that we'll all have to collaboratively
work together on. And then we want to increase our our departmental workflow um on the Asella permitting. And that's kind of something that's always, you know, in in flow. Um, next is some of our long-term goals. You know, again, it's all
sustainability, zero emissions, fossil fuel free. This this um aligns with the the select board goals um and and um some of their guidance in their documents. I'm looking at some point for some sort of zoning enforcement or
zoning program within the department. It would probably require a new position. that person would be dedicated to um code enforcement complaints, uh short-term rentals, lighting investigations, you know, sorts of um
the the outliers that are out there that aren't really, unless it's a health and safety issue, they're not a priority for us at this point in time. I'm trying to come up with a plan to educate or do some public outreach to educate the public and some contractors on zoning
process as well as uh the construction process in town. That is something that um I did do last year uh with the planning department before town meeting. There were a lot of zoning articles. So, we're able to do that and it um it worked and was was I think you know
pretty successful. Um with respect to operations, the goals and objectives for the for the um the select board again it's fossil fuel free sustainability and some you know code enforcement and other
you know um uh division uh to uh help us uh handle those uh specific tasks. Uh the department demands have increased. Um you know a lot of these new buildings the Driscoll school and the PS when that comes online there are uh they're bigger
buildings. Uh there are a lot more points for our energy management system there. You know in the future we're going to be looking for another um energy management system specialist um to assist with this. We went to 35,000 for Pierce and I think the um I'm sorry
35,000 for Driscoll. Pierce is going to be around 40. Uh the buildings are are larger. They're tougher to maintain. A lot of local regulations that we've got are um um not problematic, but continue to
create more work between ADUs, fossil fuel free, construction management plans, tree bylaw, exterior lighting, again, new zoning districts. Um we work as as best we can to achieve this and and and and keep them you know in in
check as as best we can. Um and then the zoning by the um the building code where right now we've got two codes working the 9th and the 10th edition. Uh the 10th will go into full force in effect in June. Uh and these codes continue to be revised and get more and more
complicated. um pursuing you know in the future uh again it would be Excela uh um online applications uh I know the select board's office is doing this now with some of their licensing we work with it
in the same manner and try to do our best to uh bring those all in line as well as bringing other departments uh on board um also that is a kind of a new the sustainability division is new our deputy director of operations is new and
we continue that line of communication. I think they meet at least um not quite once a week but probably every other week Sarah and and Alexandra to just review what we're doing, what she's doing and try to make sure that we're all, you know, on the same page.
Um there are positions that we would want to, you know, add on. Um some of them are part of our reorganization plan, some of them would be new. Um, we're looking for, you know, some foreman positions and it would be existing positions that would be promoted to foreman would be not not a
new whole position. Same with the senior inspector. And I mentioned earlier, it would need another assistant for the um energy management system specialist um to assist with these schools and larger buildings as as they come online. And lastly, a a code enforcement officer
type of um you know, position, whether it's a zoning uh um advisor or a code enforcement um something in that area to help with our uh keeping, you know, our bylaws in
check, complaints and other um things. Um if we were, you know, not limited by any budgetary, you know, reforms, obviously, it would be a full electrification of all the town buildings. I think probably a year or so ago, Charlie put out some numbers that were in the hundreds of millions. So,
it's going to be expensive and we'll work it in under because the bylaw require bylaw requires it for new buildings, but we can work it into capital programs or some other you know funding mechanisms. Um detailed report on all the buildings giving us a good
idea of the roofs, envelopes, HVC, plumbing, gas, the infrastructure and where we are. We have those out there, you know, certain plans, but it hasn't been a holistic um review and then expanding again code enforcement division or zoning administrator
somewhere in that that line and um to help with um you know enforcement. Uh these are some just photographs. This is the pier school. It's demolition. Um I believe based on last last week's building commission meeting, they're going to start putting foundations in
either this week or next. um near completion. We've got 40 Center Street. We're looking for TCOs there probably in a maybe a month, two months. 108 Center has TCOs. They're looking for a full CO. Uh the New Bri of Brooklyn um that was
completed. I went to a nice grand opening there last week. There was a great event. That's a mix of independent living assisted and memory care. Uh same picture there of the um existing mansion that was worked into the into the design. uh TCO's issued at the 250 unit
uh hands putting stone, excuse me. 15 seconds. Okay. And then these are some of our van uh that we have um all electric van on the right and we got two Equinox on the left that we got this year for vehicle
electrification. And I did want to just make a comment um if if I could, Tiffany, on just the school department and the the uh the cut that they're kind of proposing. Um, you know, most recently I've heard it's up to $600,000. I appreciate all the work that
the select board advisory and um, subcommittees have done on our behalf, but um, you know, 600,000 is is a very large cut. Um, it is going to be very difficult for us to, you know, continue with that. Um, Charlie and I have worked
very hard to build this, um, budget up to where it is. this cut would eliminate any of the two and a half percents that we've had, any override monies that we've gotten and really set us back, you know, quite a bit. I did put a memo in the packet and sent one out a couple of
weeks ago. So, um, you can read that and and see what the ramifications of that are. And just remind everyone that, you know, several 19 the department was created under a town bylaw to keep the building
department to do the maintenance and carry that out and not, you know, carry over funds into the school department. So with that said, if there are any questions, um, be happy to answer them for you. Okay, any questions from the board?
Mike, I have one. Uh um it's actually not a question, it's more of a request. Um you've got a list of objectives and things that you that you plan to accomplish in the coming year. And one of them is continuing to work continue to work with the IT department to
improve workflow, permit, process, categories, inspection, certificates, and many other details to make the accelering system more efficient. And all I can say is bravo. Um, I know that that is uh um I think it's very
important. Uh Tiffany is leading an effort to make it easier for restaurants to get common victual licenses uh more efficiently and more quickly which is very important as well as more efficiently. Um because the process of
permitting currently is a barrier or has been a barrier to getting into business and similarly the process of getting building permits and ultimately certificates of occupancy can be a barrier. new construction and the CO in particular until the the building has
that the land the property owner can't begin to especially if it's commercial um can't uh begin to derive income from it. So, what I would hope is that you would take a look at doing the same sort of thing with um staff to the extent
that uh you can get some help um from the select board's office on uh trying to streamline the process and those processes permitting and and uh and certificates of occupancy and look beyond Excel. look beyond, look at some
peer communities and see what uh what they're doing because I think that would be instructive. You may find that we're just where we uh where our peer where our peers are or you may find that there are some things that they're doing that
would speed things up. Uh so I would appreciate if you you just consider that request. Thank you. Sure. So, so just so you know, so I do I do do uh temporary certificates of occupancy and that kind of helps a little bit. It doesn't work all the time. Banks don't always accept
it in certain instances and it doesn't let our um affordable housing go on on the the SHI. So, there are some barriers there. But, um it isn't always just the building department. There are a number of other factors in signing off a full CO that I will work with these other
departments and see if we can do our best to stream streamline that process and um and make it work, you know, a little bit better. And on the plan review side, just issuing permits, um there are, you know, a lot of additional new reviews that we have to do. We send
something off for the tree bylaw. We send something off for demolition to the preservation commission. we um have to do additional work for the stretch energy code. So there are some some um additional reviews that are uh creating
uh some time timeline issues on on our behalf and we'll do our best to work through them. Uh but it just hasn't been all that easy um to date. So, we we do understand that, you know, time for these people is money and um I'll do
what I can to streamline and make it more efficient. Certainly. Okay. I certainly respect I respect all of the things that have been put in your way. Basically, that all those things exist. Um it it just it it just needs, I'm
sure, continued attention to uh to try and figure out how to get things done more uh more efficiently. Thank you. Got it. Thank you. Oh, yep. Uh Dan, thank you for your service and all the work that you do. I echo what Mike said about expediting permits, but you've heard that. Um I'm going to make a quick
statement and then I have a question for you. So, first uh I agree uh and appreciate your concerns that you've raised about uh the school department cutting uh the maintenance budget. Um I you know I want to I want to say that I
I do not believe that user organizations should be able to make determinations about how building maintenance is done. Um user organizations end users um will always if they can uh under cons under under significant budget constraints
take money for maintenance and transfer it over to operations. Um, and I think that's actually a mistake uh for us to be heading in that direction. We've spent a tremendous amount of time getting our uh budgets up properly
aligned to be able to do maintenance. Um, every dollar that you spend on maintenance uh saves, I think, tenfold in the long run. Um, and this is an absolute step backwards and some way we need to we need to restructure our budgets to protect building maintenance.
Our buildings are an asset of the taxpayers um and they should not be um put into disrepair because someone wants to grab the money for for for their operations. So, anything that we can do going forward uh Chaz to restructure the the the budget in such a way that it
protects maintenance of our our uh important assets for the community, I would support that. Uh Dan, this is maybe a little bit off topic, but um we recently had uh an very unusual circumstance with a home demolished uh
on Beverly Road. Um and it seems like it was way outside the norm. Um it was it was uh demoed while the gas was still connected, the electricity was still connected. Um done starting on a Friday. Um two questions. one, is there anything
that that we could have done permit-wise or monitoring wise to to prevent that? And two, what is the p the penalty to this uh this developer? I hope I hope there's some significant consequences for putting that neighborhood at serious risk.
Uh yeah, well, thank you for the comments and uh you know, this specific site, it I don't think there's anything we could have done. this contractor just um uh I I I really don't understand where he thought he he felt that he had a full demo permit between him and the
owners and they said that the water was shut off and things were done that were not done. Uh we did get an email. It was sent to us. We sent an inspector right out. He was the one that re realized very quickly that there was a live um wire, you know, electricity going to the
house. He called 911. Fire department got there. They smelled gas. So this whole thing, you know, blew up, you know, relatively quickly. Um, currently right now the site is under the jurisdiction technically of D because
they did find some asbestous there. I think the demolition we were notified on Monday or Tuesday. We were out there on a Friday with health department and D. Uh they implemented a number of um uh protections, cover the site, come and get some permits. So, my understanding
is that permit was issued earlier this week or maybe late last week. Um, so they're going to they're going to they've got a license contract that's going to go in clean up the site. Uh, once that's done and it's kind of released back to us, I can do what I need to do. Uh, with respect to moving
forward and cleaning, you know, getting the chimney down, the foundation, they're going to have to go back to the zoning board of appeals. The they were fined, I think, $1,500 from the state. I'm working with town council's office to uh move forward on um a court case or
some method to get the fines. Building code fines are up to $1,000 a day per violation and zoning is up to $300 a day per violation. So, I will be going I will be recommending you know some fines
certainly. And they and they can still I'm sorry. And they can are they still able to do work in Brooklyn this contract? Well, you know, I'll I'll be filing paperwork with the state on the on the contractor's license, but I' I've done that on one
other guy in town, but they're about nine months behind on that action at the state level. So, um, at a minimum, it would have to wait nine months. But um this is the first this is the first and only job this specific contractor has
done in Brooklyn. I'd never really heard of them before. Let's let's hope it's the last. David, thank you. I have a related question. So if the state fine is $1,500 and the fines are on a per day basis, what is there to deter
contractors from just doing whatever they want? Because $1,500 is probably a rounding error for them. And I worry that it's actually more expensive to follow all the rules and this creates a disincentive for following rules. And we
obviously want contractors to follow rules. So is there something that we can do to increase penalties so that it's not based on per day necessarily, but by the scale of the act. So the the the fines that were issued right now are
through D and are for the asbestous the fact that they tore a house down with asbestous in it. The fines that I'm talking about the $1,000 a day under under the state building code for performing this demolition without a permit and the zoning bylaw. So, I will
sit down with town council and come up with uh either the daily fine or is it, you know, 3,000 a day cuz there are three other violations that we want. And then when they actually come in for the permit, because we're going to have to do an after the-act uh demolition permit, there are fines built into our
fee schedule. Uh that would come into play, although they're not they're not that high. Um they are out there. It's the normal fee is $20 per thousand. The the uh fine is $50 per thousand. And um
so I'm not sure what or how we would would kind of move forward with that, but certainly something I can step back and take a look at and see what we could build into the into the system of the process. Then relatedly, you mentioned that one of
your goals is zoning and code enforcement. Do you have an estimate as to how many fees have accumulated that we haven't yet collected and uh what do we need to do as a select board so that we can empower you to collect on those
fines? I I do not have that number calculated. Um typically my goal whenever I try to get is is just to get compliance. I'm not always out there looking for fines. Although lately um I have been issuing
quite a few fines. Some get paid, some don't. We work things out. There's I got one property in town where we're up to quite a bit on fines and I'm going to work with um town council's office to you can there's a way that you can take
that from the fine and attach it to the property. So if they go ever go to try to sell it, uh they have to pay the fine first. And that's something I have had conversations with town council and it's something that I do or would like to move forward on. J, you want to say
something? No, I just wanted to point out too that the other thing we have in our power is a stop work order, right? You know, it's not just that they get fined, it's that they can't do the work. Uh, and to Dan's point, eventually if they uh continue to not pay the fines, it then converts into a lean, which was
against the, you know, runs with the land. So, it's not just doesn't stop them from doing the work, it stops them from selling the property. It's a it's a significant deterrent. Um, so I do think it's important to note that in addition to fines, the strongest tool the building department has at its disposal
is a stop work order. Good. And again, the issue with this one is by the time the demo is by the time we found out the work was done, so was nothing really to stop. although we did post it after the fact and um so yes
that is a a tool that we have as well. I have uh one small question you're working with the commission on disability uh to establish reasonable um accommodation policy. So, um, I'm sorry. Well, that's not my qu my question is not related to that,
but jumping off of that, um, do we have any buildings, um, in town of our buildings that are not, uh, handicap accessible for people with walkers or wheelchairs? Charlie, you want to take that one?
Yeah, I can jump into that. Most of the buildings are modernized, um, all brought up to code, including the ADA. There are some older buildings including the Baldwin School that you cannot get from one level to another and we had looked at a wheelchair lift but all other buildings are fully accessible all
floors accessible bathrooms and so on. Do we use the Baldwin? Oh, I'm sorry. Baldwin, not there are two Baldwin schools in Brooklyn, right? You're thinking of Sue. You're thinking of Sue. There's this one. Baldwin. Baldwin. The one. What's What's the school up near uh
Whole Foods. Or is that in That's technically Boston. It's right over the line. Okay. Yeah, that's Boston. Never mind. Oh, there is a there is a Baldwin. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. George Baldwin. Okay.
Okay. Any other Yeah, I do. Yes. Dan, thank you so much. Um, so this question kind of uh overlaps with um we're going to hear from I believe Susan Given on the school budget. Um and uh people may have sort of caught wind of the fact
that there's this to me confusing question kind of hanging in the air because the school department is and the school committee are trying to u reach you know a break even in their budget and the idea all of a sudden get floated having something to do with
$400,000 um that would be saved theoretically by basically not doing um scheduled maintenance It's an upkeep of some buildings. Uh, and it got sort of
conveyed as if the school committee, if it so choose, could cut $400,000 from the building department budget. And that that didn't make sense to me. Probably doesn't make sense to anybody who who heard what I just said. But would would
you just do your best to explain exactly how does it work when the building department has a schedule of of repairs and maintenance items that it regards as essential? And then um because the sh the expenses are shared between the town and the schools when the project is a
school project. Um does the building department build into the the school department budget um $400,000? In this case, it was the $400,000 of several items that they were talking about for a while. That number has changed. I don't want anybody to be
confused. Um, so I'm not sure I understand the question, but I I'll go back a little bit. So the there was an original cut that we heard about of $400,000 from our repair and maintenance line item, right? By the by the school committee, which didn't by the school
committee. Yeah. Yeah. Then they then they went and um I guess they had some discussion and attempted to reduce that to uh I'm going to say 163,000. It was a little lower than that 162499 something along those lines. And
then more recently it's gone back up to 600,000. And they their idea is to um cut from the repair maintenance money which is where we use uh we pay outside services
to do fire alarm testing, elevator testing. Um we buy materials. Um we do outside contractors to do certain services for us. And Charlie can get into more detail in that specific line item. and Charlie has a list that starts
at at the top with the most critical and at the bottom with the less critical. And as they cut, we just kept going up that list. And um in my memo, it describes where those cuts stop. And it's somewhere in the carpentry and um
masonry and some preventative maintenance. And all that is going to do is if we don't do that work, it's going to not get done and it'll go on to a deferred maintenance uh list which we have been actually doing very well at
over the last um few years and bringing that down. But this will I think select board member earlier said earlier this will set us back. I'm saying, you know, 5 years or so. And I have no idea uh whether this money would ever be
restored back to our repair maintenance um line item. And um that's very concerning. I'm not sure. Charlie, you got anything you want to add? Well, just one thing I think adding to what John said. So for the Pier School when it does come online, I don't have an an
adequate maintenance budget to take care of the peer school because with the override, it was only to build the building and not to actually do maintenance. that was not voted on and decided upon by the school department. So apparently in two years plus I'll be asking for
more monies in the repair and maintenance just to take care of the peers assuming I get back the $600,000. Yeah. As you say, well to John's question about the mechanics of this. Yeah. Um there's part of the this is something that the expenditures and
revenue study committee is going to be taking up. It's one of the mo more important tasks that they have to talk about which is the broader town school split. How do we split revenue and then how do we share certain shared services and buildings is one of the more arcane ways that we handle that. Um what we do
in this instance there are certain services that are shared between the town and the schools where if it's handled on the town side that is building department is the town department. Um we assess the school department and so we say at the start of the budget okay the building department believes and again it's discussed with
the schools and the principles the schools want to do X um the cost of that is why the assessment to the schools is this amount and then that amount is the schools effectively it's part of the school budget but then it is paid to the town. Yeah. On the town side of
services. So it comes out of the school allotted revenue and that is how um in this instance what the school committee has voted is to reduce that number is to reduce we've said here's the um here's the assessment for this year and they've said we're going to pay that minus
$600,000. Yeah. So uh if I may just offer a comment. I mean to me the summation of all of this is that the school department to the extent that they are discussing this seriously is talking about balancing their budget by neglecting their buildings basically. Um
and that's gotten us into trouble in the past and it's going to get us into trouble again. And and as far as I'm concerned we got to figure out some way around this. And if it means that we, you know, we just basically move some numbers around and say, "All right,
school department, you're not going to pay your assessment for all of your maintenance needs this year." Um, we'll find the money for it, but guess what? Um, our next allocation of the split is going to take is going to recognize that
there's some 400, 600, you name it, amount of th hundreds of thousands of dollars that uh you you uh failed to meet your obligation in terms of the u protection of your buildings and you expected us to suddenly just sort of
step in. We didn't have the money either, so it's going to have to come out of your next year revenue split. That's that's the only way we can do it. Yeah. I think um and Charlie, maybe you can help me with this because I um I think they went further than just saying we don't want to paint some window sills
or repair some uh some shades. Um, if I I I watched the the meeting where they had this discussion. I'm talking about the school committee and when the school committee school comes up and gives us their budget, maybe they can explain this, but they actually reached into your budget and took positions. You had
three positions that you used for HVAC that um that you've been unable to fill, but you use those funds to use the outside services, right? And they actually reached and cut three positions from your budget and reallocated that money to themselves. Um, you know, this
there's Chaz, the mechanics of the town school partnership are important here. Um, this money that's above the line and below the line. Um, no department should be able to reach into another department and cut staff positions um to fund their own budget. There's something
fundamentally wrong with what's going on here. Um um if I may say the um it's important to recognize that what the school department has asked for is not uh necessarily what the school department is going to get. Uh and uh the
membership on the town school partnership uh committee was we had a robust discussion about this yesterday. Uh so uh I I think um it's I think u many of us including really the school department recognize the importance of
maintenance. Uh the question is whether they feel like they have more important issues and the rest of us don't. Dave, I'm sorry Jeff. No, my my point was touched upon. I I want to say more broadly about this issue. So there are a number of cuts on
the school department side that have impact on townside operations. Dan has written the memo on this side about the impact on the building department side. Fung has done a great job with uh in conjunction with Susan and Lionus and the whole team um Dr. G, Dr. Gillery, the whole team on figuring out how to
make the IT reduction work. Um we've been able to come to a reasonable conclusion there. There is an outstanding issue with the wreck department. Um people don't realize that wreck relies on the bus service in order to run the afterchool program. I've been told uh we get we can accommodate up to
40 families. We currently have 27 in that program. That would be a pretty serious uh problem if we're unable to run that program. So what we're doing on the town side is understanding right the schools are looking for any port in storm. They have a significant deficit to deal with. We want to be mindful and
respectful of that and try and work collaboratively to solve that problem. But when there are impacts to townside operations like this, we've got to one alert the broader town school partnership body and two try and work on ways collaboratively to solve for this
issue. Um we view this obviously as the schools trying to solve their problem. We understand what the dire situation is that they're in. However, we've got to come up with a more balanced way of addressing these issues. So my hope is that we will take the information we have from Dan and from Tim on the rec
side and from Fun and talk through it and say here's, you know, here's here's what you're saying. We understand what it is that you want to get rid of and why and what you think. Here's the actual impact. Here's what we think we can do. Um and hopefully through the town school partnership, all three of
the constituent bodies can come to an understanding of what the actual numbers in terms of potential reductions can be. Okay. Anything else? Thank you, Dan. Thank you, uh, Paul. And thank you,
thank you all. Uh, before we get into the school budget, I wonder if we might have a break because I think that will take some time. Wait until uh after get through, but no, it's 8:30. Why don't we take our break then? Yeah, let's do that. This is going to take a while
obviously and you want to give proper attention. Okay. How much time do you need? Five minutes. Five minutes. Okay. Susan Given has left the room by what that's all one. Okay, we're back and uh next item
on our budget reviews or next department on our budget reviews is the uh school department. So, is Dr. Gillery or Dr. Given going to start off? Well, Dr. Gibbons is walking to the mic.
There we go. We need something. I believe you also have Good evening. School committee on. Uh Andy Lou is in the audience. Good evening. And it's getting rather late this evening. So, um I'm just going to give you a brief overview of um our
FY26 budget and where we are in the process of uh reconciling um our request with the town revenue. So, um first as we um look at revenue
um the override projections are presented to you here. um what what the actual revenue we received or has been allocated schools is in the first column and then the override and then the dis difference. So when we first started the
process this year um the revenue projection that we received was um several million dollars lower than what it is right now. So we do appreciate um the effort put forward to um make some
adjustments um in the revenue forecast uh so that the shortage of revenue available to us this year um has been close to the 726,000. Now we'll take a peek at uh you know what's going on enrollment wise or
what we're anticipating. Of course, uh our budget is built around the needs of students and um our student population changes and their needs change. And so based on um our our student population, we build our budget
accordingly. So what we're looking at next year is a slight increase overall in enrollment. We're anticipating about 64 additional students. 27 of those are anticipated to um come from our early
childhood um uh age range. At the elementary level, we're looking at approximately 77 um additional students and um slightly lower at the high school. We saw that when we looked at um longer term enrollment projections last
year. Um and so it is playing out um uh similar to what we had anticipated. So few more students um than in the current year distributed at different grade bands. Um so that's what's that's
what our population is looking at like overall. And Dr. Gibbons, will you take a moment to say a little bit about the Craropper McKibben the 10-year study that was done also? Sure. Uh last year we had Craropper
McGibbons um perform a uh demographic study um and we presented that as part of our budget last year. Um and the patterns here are similar. However, we are seeing um uh enrollment at the early
childhood level a little um higher than what uh Craropper Mcibbons had uh projected. You can go to the next slide please. Okay. So wh there we
go. So again this is at a very high level. Um 85% of the school budget is salary um related. Um, obviously we provide uh a service and um uh not a and
and so therefore the majority of our budget revolves around staff and so that's about 128,000 128 million worth of our overall budget is associated with salary and non- salary which is um
everything else represents uh about 22 million. So, the initial budget proposal that was brought before the school committee um was uh just a little south of $150 million. So, what are the cost drivers?
Um I'm often asked, you know, what are driving the costs? Our budget went up over $13 million, and when you look um um at that number, it seems rather large. And so I think it's important to understand the b the the composition of
what drives um those costs in the school department. So the breathing costs which are your steps and columns and your co cost of living increases um is about uh $5.3 million. So those are breathing costs meaning that um next year and the
year after those are typical costs that our budget go up regardless of um of any changes let's say unless it was a significant change in population um extra comp grants in um the FY25
um new positions. In other words, this year in our budget, uh we um set aside a certain number of FTE um to run our school and um some students have moved in and require additional supports and so we've had to
add some additional staff members in the current year and those staff members um then need to be funded in future years. And so the um increase in extra comp and um positions that were previously
uh funded through grants, the grants uh dried up, but many of those were supporting essential services um then had to be absorbed in uh the operating budget. And uh then extra comp um is is
the uh funds that we pay that are um outside the uh school day for additional uh programming that's provided for students. So that would be like athletics and the siphons for coaches that's for clubs um summer school
programming um and the like. So the increase there and this is largely structural. we're seeing um this uh this gap um showing up in the FY25 budget and as you all have heard we have been um in
the process of finding up uh ways to you know including spending freezes and um um looking at different ways that we can leverage uh uh funds that are available um in our revolving funds in order to
close the gap. But there's been a lot of dialogue around that. Um but in large it's it's due to this particular structural deficit that uh you know we have to close this year and is impacting us financially next year. New positions
uh we have a variety of uh student needs that um we uh you know need to add some staffing in order to be able to support them. And so, uh, in the initial budget, we had approximately
$1.9 million in additional staffing requests. That's entirely in the area of um, uh, student services and, uh, teaching and learning. None of those positions um are for any kind of
administration or um, uh, finance or operational staff. In addition to that, uh there's a whole host of little adjustments that are made throughout uh the process, including people returning from leaves of absence and shifts in in uh salaries there. Uh
information that came in late um related to step and lane changes, retirements, all of that. So that that category called miscellaneous salary adjustments, it's about 300,000. then knowing that we never um are able to fill all positions
for the entire year. There's always uh um uh staff that are coming and going. And so there'll be periods of time where we have um uh a break between a person who's leaving and a person filling it. And we call that breakage. And so I've
uh reduced our salary lines by half a million dollars to account for breakage. Um and so our total increase on the salary side based on these cost drivers is uh 9,525,623. On the next slide, we will
look at the non-s salary drivers. And um so as we had uh last year, this year we're we're still seeing um increasing costs in the area of uh special education. And so our out of district um
tuition lines were forecasted to go up by 1.62 million. Um special education transportation. So those of course are related. um increasing by about 700,000 and and that's not just due to students.
Of course, we um uh have a new contract and that contract will go up, but the majority of the costs associated with uh this increase is is due to um student transportation needs that are related to the out of district um students in the
first line. online books and subscriptions. Um there's a variety of uh online tools that we use. Uh some of those were previously funded through some grants um and have been used in the school district for the last several
years and uh some of the that grant money has uh dried up and so some of the um costs associated with the online books and subscriptions um have have now moved over to the operating budget. You'll notice uh too
if you follow the school committee meetings, there have been reductions in many of these areas, but I'm just going over with you what the cost drivers were at the time that we presented the budget so you have a full understanding of those um areas that um tend to um
increase and drive our costs in the school department. So textbooks and printed materials. Um largely this is for our literacy program that will be implemented. Um this year we have done some training and uh preparation but the
roll out of the literacy program at the uh at the um lower levels at the elementary school will occur next year. And so um this is the costs primarily associated with uh implementing that um literacy program. In legal services,
we've increased our lines in this area. Um 50,000 was in the area of student services and and this was in anticipation of having a shift in our senior leadership position. um knowing that when a new person comes in um
they're going to need um some support uh from the legal department um with ongoing um uh settlements and and and some other challenges that are going to bleed over from this year into next
year. Um and so um the person coming in will not have had the history and so we wanted to make sure that we increased uh the resources in that area for um to help support the transition. In addition, next year is uh a negotiation
year and so all of our um uh BEu uh units, so that would be the teachers, our um mid-level uh administration and our pair professionals. those contracts will all be negotiated next year. And so we've increased uh we increased the
budget uh by about $100,000 for that purpose. And then last, there's a whole host of other uh um expenses that we have that are supplies and technical professional services. So that would be,
you know, um um you know, copers and uh you know, calibrating our microscopes and all of that. um it would be field trips and some professional development and you know of course the customary supplies that that you would have in any educational
um uh program. So altogether on the non- salary side our budget drivers um were approximately 3,621,375. So that is those together make up the $13 million increase to our
budget. So expenses uh going up um at a pace greater than obviously the revenues. The next slide um is really you know a summary of uh kind of where
we're at. So uh revenue allocation as it stands um uh uh now is uh 141,93732 and uh the operating budget as presented uh was
149,994616 creating a budget gap of a little over $8 million. And the school committee for the last several months has been actively engaged in the process of reviewing and deliberating over a whole host of um either revenue
enhancements or um uh expenditure reduction measures and uh before you is the uh summary of their work. So to date, uh, they have reduced the gap by 6,340,
601. Um, as you can see, the majority of those reductions show up in our salary expense, which is not surprising because 85% of our budget is salary. Non- salary reductions have totaled uh 2,324 446. And then we have a few
revenue enhancement um proposals that have been um uh supported by the school committee totaling $422,794. So the budget gap as we stand here tonight is uh and this is the gap between the revenue allocated through
the town school partnership and our current expenses um after these reductions have been taken um is 1 million uh716,984. And that concludes my presentation. Okay. Uh thank you Dr. Given. Um, Dr.
Gillery, did you want to add anything? No, I think uh Dr. Given has done a nice summary, so we uh stand for your questions. Thank you. Uh Paul, yes, like your hand was up. Thank you. I shot my hand up. Uh thank you for the presentation. First, as you know, I have two young children
in the school system, so I uh appreciate all that you do, and I know the incredible hard task that you've had to go through. I've been watching most of it and it has not been fun for you or us. Um, so I I do I do appreciate the
work that you've been doing. Um, there is and I really want to get your your your thoughts on this. There is a fundraising effort underway to restore the Office of Educational Equity. Uh there's a private organization that's raised about
172,000. their target is 204,000 uh to restore the office. Now, of course, restoring the office with that money would only do it for one year. It's onetime money. Um, and I I
wanted to get your thoughts on um where you stand on on these funds and would you recommend uh taking the grant to fund uh ongoing operations uh by
bringing back uh the office of educational equity? Well, I just want to make one clarifying comment and then um either uh Dr. Lou or Dr. Gillery can can respond to the bigger question, but my understanding is
that the fundraising isn't to restore the entire office. It's only to restore one of two positions. That's my understanding. I just want to clarify that. It's not the entire office. That's okay. But just to be clear, that's how it's been presented. So, okay. Just to be clear, I mean, well, I'm just reading by what
what uh Dr. Fernandez is is promoting publicly. I I just want to make sure that if whether it's one preser position or two or three or five, it doesn't matter. It's only one-time money. It's not they're not raising money to fund it
ongoing uh for for next year, the year after, the year after. you'd still have to come back and find that money for FY27 uh because it's only a one-time fundraising effort. Correct. It's a basic financial
question. It's an obvious question answer, I guess. So, I don't know. Is is uh is uh Dr. Lou or uh or um is anybody Dr. Gillery your thoughts on this? Yeah, I think that's I think that's part of the the struggle
that we've had is um and Dr. Given talked about this notion of the soft money that has draw um expired in the past that has left us now with sort of a structural deficit. So, it would be hard to recommend moving forward with
one-time monies to fund recurring costs. Uh Chaz, can I ask a question? Um, this would be a gift and I I take it the select board would have to approve it. Believe gifts to the school committee are approved by the school committee. I don't know if the select board has a
role there. I will double check. It's not not an important issue, but well, I guess I I just and I'll make one comment. Um my one first I appreciate the efforts of the community trying to help you close the gap by fundraising which um I you know I give them a lot of credit for raising the amount of money
that they did but um Dr. Gillery I I would tend to agree with you. You know the the digging the hole that we dug ourselves into was by using one-time money from time to time to fund the operations and that money is going away. Um, and to take to take a one-time gift
to fund ongoing operations is just continuing to dig the hole that got us into the mess that we're in. Um, so I would I would hope that um that you would not use gifts to fund oper ongoing operations of the of the school department. Thank you.
Yes, Mike. I'm sorry. Um, so first of all, um, you made a comment earlier. uh expenses are going up greater than revenues. And so we absolutely understand we're we're we're both sitting in the same boat. Water is
slushing over the gunnels. Uh and the question is how do we bail the boat out without you know and how do we avoid sinking sort of one half of the boat without the other? Uh it's a very difficult situation and I appreciate um the work that that you've
done and the work that the school committee has done. It's not not a simple thing to sit there and say, "Well, okay, let's cut this and let's cut this and let's cut this." Um uh we did ask uh yesterday at the town school partnership for um what a level
service budget would have looked like. Um because as you've said, the numbers that you gave us here were the the original budget which was not a level service budget. there were some expansions in that budget and now those expansions have been removed and some
other things as well. Uh but um anyway, we got a chart. It was a one-page chart and had major categories on it. But in order to produce a level service budget, somebody must have sat down with the 2025 budget line by line and said,
"Well, okay, if we were to do exactly the same level of service, recognizing that in special education, you can't. you had to increase services. Um but in everything else um this is what we would have to spend and it's that's a tedious
piece of work but my assumption is that somebody had to do it in order to come up with that chart and so it would be very helpful and obviously not going to be able to produce that tonight. Uh but it'd be very helpful to if that sort of work was done um to see it uh so that uh
we really understand um what the what the level services would have cost and it's not so much for the select board which honestly doesn't go through these things in the same level of detail as the advisory committee but I think you'll helpful you'll find it helpful when you get to
the advisory committee. Um the other question is a much more a much narrower one and it it's in relationship to beep. Um 27 of the 64 net new um students that
you're expecting will be going to BEAP which my understanding is is a self- sustaining program and you're saying no and that's very helpful to know that. And I also know that there was like a 19% bump uh
in um tuition for kids that go all the way through extended day, which is a huge increase for families to um to take up. So I wonder if you could give us sort of a sense of what's happening with beep and whether that 19% will enable
you to cover the full costs or whether to the extent to which that subsidy is and it is a subsidy uh is um is affecting the school budget. So uh beep there's there's two components to beep. Um, BEAP is actually
um our early childhood program. Um, and we're required to provide early childhood programming for um students who are on IEPs that are not yet of age to attend uh school in kindergarten. And
so based on the guidelines, there's a certain number of peer students that you need to include in your population when you're running an early childhood program. So the so the majority of the
students are are part of the mandated component of uh our early childhood um uh program and um and those cannot be funded through tuition. We cannot charge
students who are on IEPs for the services that they are receiving. And so therefore, BEEP is not a self-funding program because there a large portion of it is for mandatory services. Um but the
the just if I could interrupt the stu the additional students that you include to bring to to bring the ratio up to the required level, do those students pay tuition? So, those students pay tuition um unless they're eligible for financial
assistance through our financial assistance program. And there's approximately 40 slots now available for families who are not able to um or or qualify for financial assistance, but other than that, um yes, they pay a
tuition. Would we get reimbursement from the state or the feds uh for those children on IEPs? Well, the federal contribution comes through the IDEA grant. So, you probably
have heard of the IDEA grant, and that's the federal government's contribution to special education services or public schools. It's not specific for uh any particular program. Um rather, it's just their contribution. um there aren't any
early childhood expenses that are charged off against the idea grant. So if I could just get back to the 19% increase, presumably costs haven't risen or have they by 19% rather there's an effort to reduce the subsidy that's going to beep.
Is that a fair statement? Um the effort so there's two parts to it. There's the regular tuition. Um, and the idea is for those that are tuition paying to uh bring the tuition up to a
level that um supports the expense associated with um the non-mandatory component. So there is that is why those um rates are going up on on the extended program. Um the idea there is uh to uh
generate enough revenue to cover both the salary component as well as the benefits because having the um extended program is not mandatory rather it's it's it's a um an additional service that we provide. If if we didn't provide
that then we wouldn't have to pay the salaries for the extended program and therefore we wouldn't have the benefit costs. Mhm. Um so the idea with the uh raising the tuition for the extended program was so that we could begin to um
uh have a self- sustaining um extended day program for BE and the benefit cost for those uh teachers is not included in the non-EP departmental budget. Correct. Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you. John. Um, Dr. Given, thank you very much. Dr. Gillery, thank you very much. Uh, I'll admit that one um bit of data that I uh often um either miss or or just find
lacking um during these discussions every year of school department budgets uh is um the the actual number of full-time equivalent teachers um in in the system. And um uh there are several
numbers that I just been looking up you know during this discussion um and my my puzzlement continues. So, I mean, just going back four years, the number that is reported to the state of full-time equivalent teachers in the Brooklyn
system, um, four years ago was 664. And then it was, um, after that 674, then after that it was 610. And then in the most recent year for which numbers are available, it's
581. So all of a sudden it's um dra drastically less. Um can someone give me the number for this year for the budget we're looking at right now? The so the calculation um that you're
looking at I'm I'm guessing it's on the but yeah I don't have that tonight because they count things differently than we do and some things are included in one number and not included. I I'm just talking about the number in the budget. Yes. I don't have the translation for you tonight for what the
DESIE reporting equivalent would be. What what number do you use? We if you look at the budget, you'll see for every single cost center, there is an accounting of how many FTE staff members are associated with each um cost center
area and the total in the budget of teachers. Do we I mean just if if we don't have it, we don't have it. But um like I say, it's a number I I look for first and foremost and and often have a very difficult time finding it. Sure. So
what I would point you to is say around page 16 uh page 15 is a summary of all positions. Um, so from principal's
office in this document on page 15 rolls up from every school to give you a summary districtwide. It's not broken out teachers versus um though there are notations about what are teachers versus pair professionals in each area. Yeah.
Yeah. Um but this is this is more aligned to um how a how a school is staffed and um so that people can understand uh the relationship between the staff in the building and the costs associated with those staff. Yeah. So
it's a little bit different than the way that Desi asks you to um report and we do that reporting um I think it's at the October one uh time frame. I don't have the translation for you here. I don't run the numbers um frankly of at this
time of year. Yeah. You know, and I I'll just say one more thing and then I'll I'll just bow out of this conversation. I'm just a select board member. I'm not a school committee member. Um it would be kind of unusual if on the town side we couldn't say, you know, how many full-time police positions do we have in
our budget or how many full-time fire positions do we have in our budget or building department positions or, you know, I could go down the list. I I I've just never been able to figure out why it is so hard to just get a number. How many full-time equivalent teachers are in this budget? Um, and if we don't have
it tonight, we don't have it tonight. So, be it's here on page 15. Full-time teacher equivalent or just all positions. Well, all positions. See, that's not the same as teachers. Understand? Yeah. So that's I'm talking teachers not not not like teachers plus
this plus this plus this because I look at that big number for all I don't know how many of them are teachers the information is in the budget but I have not come prepared to count them um for your best I see yeah could you could you um maybe next couple days send that
information you know full-time teachers I know it's complicated because you you chop and and separate teachers into various functions But if you could do that, I think that'd be helpful. Yeah, it's reported to Desi over here. I mean, and this Well, she says it's reported
differently to Desi because Desi Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Paul. Yep. Uh and this Thank you. And I know it's hard to to get the information, but maybe that'll come to us. Um Andy, I a quick question for you. So, at this point,
um it's reported that you're at one point, the gap is 1.7. Um, I actually think it's probably more 2.3 because I don't think you should be going after the building maintenance. But, um, do you do you have is the school committee going to continue the work of to close
the gap? We are going to continue the work. It seemed that this was a good time to check in with our town partners because what we've done so far is uh come to the end of uh the list of proposed cuts that the superintendent was willing to put in
front of the committee. like we've reviewed them all, accepted some, um not accepted others. Um and so, you know, what we have hanging over us right now is a deadline of May 1st for sending out pink slips for anyone who um who, you
know, we may not be able to renew next year. Um but at this moment, right, we've come to the end of this part of our process. Um and we're checking in now with our town partners. Come on. Someone has a question. Well, I I mean I could I I I could have a follow-up question. So, um Andy, you
said that that you've come to the end of the the changes recommended by the superintendent. Does the school committee have ideas um uh that that that you may want to uh take action on that are perhaps different than what the
superintendent had suggested? that may be. I mean, I think individual members may have ideas. Uh I'm not sure it's good process to have the school committee um sit there and throw out ideas that are not uh underpinned by um
by staff work. Um but that that might have to be the next step, right? David, so a related question maybe for Dr. Gillery. Is there going to be a commitment by u central office
administration to propose potential additional cuts beyond the ones that have already been presented to school committee at this juncture? Uh David, I don't believe so. I mean, we've looked at uh we've taken quite a bit of drastic cuts
at this juncture. And so there the the tone and tenor at this point has been that we want to stay away from cuts within the schools. I mean that's the uh a lot of the decision points and as Susan just has shared 85% of our budget sits in staff. So at this juncture um
we're running fairly tight. I mean given the um the structures uh the new curriculum that's being put forward um the progress that we are actually making um we've have a number of schools this year as you all may recall that are in
the top 10 uh performance across the state. And so we're getting to a point now where we're talking about removing structures that then would definitely impact um our school-based operations and performance. We've taken a number uh
a good number of these positions have been removed from central office and so at this juncture uh that work the bodies of work still remains where the number of people doing that work has been significantly reduced. So now we're we are in the process of once we get to the
end of this to say then what does central office look like next year in terms of being able to adequately support um our school, our operations, our students and families. So that work it in and it of itself hasn't been done based on the number of reductions that
have already been taken. Um so there there are some ideas that some committee members have put out there but those are not that any that I would recommend at this juncture. Um but we do depending on how you split the number it's either 2.3
as Paul is saying or 1.7 based on the actions of the committee at this juncture. Well, so I do I have another comment and I'm loathed to do this make this suggestion, but I do think I'm but I'm going to
um because it is getting late uh in in the process before town meeting and it would be uh I think it would be really helpful for perhaps our next meeting jazz to have and I'm not suggesting that
these be recommendations but um some options that we could discuss. us if we wanted to try to close the gap. I don't know what all those options are. They they every option comes with pain. There's probably, you know, from bad to
really worse to awful um as to what what could be done. Um, I know there's been some ideas thrown around and I'm not going to suggest that we talk about those tonight. But I do think um if if we don't have that discussion, a town meeting member is
going to force that discussion on the floor of town meeting. Um and I um I would rather not have um town meeting debating various ways uh to to potentially close a gap um or not close
a gap frankly um outside of the select board weighing in on what could potentially be feasible and what the consequences of that type of action is. But the only thing we could do legally would be to say these town expenses are
moved over to the schools. I mean, I I assume you're not suggesting that we go through their No, no, no. Nope. Nope. Nope. I think I think that there are a series of actions that that are um that we could take um that are are not good
actions, frankly, for the long term. they could be an action for the short term um to get us through to to next year uh at at such time that the the revenue and expenses uh committee evaluates what cost structures look like longer term um
which may result in in in something being brought to us. May maybe there'll be some ideas coming out of the the um review by CLA, the auditing firm that we could talk take up. I I guess I'm low.
So this so but so so this is so this is what I'm concerned about and then I'll stop. I'm concerned that without some intervention by us to at least understand what the options are is that you will see a budget amendment made on
the floor of town meeting to allocate money from some place to close the gap. Um, and I would prefer that that that not happen by town meeting. That that be something that we think through what the potential options are and what the
consequences of such an action would be. Yeah. Couple couple I think it's it's an important point and it was one that I you actually have on your agenda coming up the discussion of the budget warrant article um and the public hearing for that. Um, and I wanted to talk about
that in that context, but I'm happy to talk about it here. Um, town school partnership yesterday, we talked about some of these issues and put some preliminary conversation pieces out there on the table. Um, there are a number of things that we on the town
budget side would like to see and have played out before committing to uh, let me take a step back. My goal, I hope all of our goals is to have alignment between the select board, the advisory committee,
and the school committee on what our numbers are, where the budget is. That's my goal. And that presents a united front at town meeting. It demonstrates that we are all working together to solve this problem. And it cuts down on the risk that you have a rogue amendment. I still think the chance of a
rogue amendment is high. Um, regardless of what we do, um, you know, I think you can explain it however many times you want. Um, I have requested to the moderator that we take a hard look at whether or not our practice of allowing
an unbalanced budget amendment is legal. I tend to think it's not. Um, but of course, that's the moderator's call. I don't believe that town meeting members should be submitting unbalanced budget amendments and then just leaving it hanging out there. I think they need to have the courage of their convictions
and tell us what they'd like to cut. So I think that too would ideally be a protective measure. Um however I do think that it is important for us to think through strategy there. And so before we talk
about final course of action one way or the other, we need to have an understanding of potential for any sort of shared service consolidation. We've talked about that. We're continuing to talk about it. It's not likely to come close to closing the gap. So, it's not a panacea, but it at least we'll get some
numbers down. We need to understand some of the reserve funds that are remaining on the school side. There aren't that many. We understand what they're being used for. The team at the school side has been very helpful in explaining that. Um, we just need to be able to explain it to advisory satisfaction
because that's where pressure is coming from. So I need to understand Melissa Charlie Lincoln and I need to understand that so that we can present to advisory um on that front. Um and then we need to see you know the problem with the CLA issue is that it's going to come too
late for the May 1st deadline. So I do appreciate Bernard's point that we have to see what some of those recommendations are. I do think that those will hopefully, you know, fingers crossed have some impact there. But before that happens, we're going to need to present some potential alternatives,
right? Um what we talked about at town school partnership yesterday with all of those caveats in place are some potential areas um of one-time bridging funds that we may be able to put forward. The most obvious place to look is on capital projects in the general
fund on the school side. Um the largest of those is the new Lincoln school playground which is a $900,000 project. Um that may need to get pushed back. Um folks have talked about not and CHZ Chaz
that that um that Lincoln school that's the design not the actual building of construction, right? Yep. That's just for the design phase. Um um and we've also talked Dr. Giller and I have talked about maybe not maybe reducing that number rather than eliminating it, trying to phase the
project, figuring those stuff out. Similarly with the affordable housing trust, we have to be very careful there. You know, I know the housing advisory board and constituent members are concerned about that. We want to make sure, for example, as Deborah Brown was here talking about BCDC's work, um that we're not shortch changing the tenant
protection work that they're doing um or anything else on those fronts that that's already been funded, right? It's been funded, but again, they're going to come back. kids. Yep. We got to make hard choices. So I again my my my my point is um I'm very sensitive to the fact that a few years ago we had the all
the pink slips went out. Um it was incredibly traumatizing not only for for the teachers and the positions but for the family members and the students. Um and it was a very awful time. And if there's something that we can do in the
near term before May 1st to to uh to I'm going to call it a bridge loan to plug the hole. I don't know what the hole is. Is it 17? Is it 23? Is it something less? Maybe they're going to go back and try to close close some more. But I think we need to be prepared um to take
some action. I for me I think of it in the terms of a bridge loan. um if we went after the housing trust money and we went after uh a design for a park, I don't know what if if these are the actual things um that should uh the the revenue and expense committee get
together and they realize that this is the trend for expenses and something would need to go on the ballot next year, then the community could decide whether they want to fund these things or not. Um but I think that we need we couldn't react this year to ask the community what they thought. Um, and I think that we should seriously consider
taking some action. Um, I think they've done a hard work at cutting. Um, I'd like to see them do more, but it sounds like they're they're getting close to the end. Um, and we're not going to see some dramatic changes uh that are going to be put in front of us. Um, and I do think that without some action by us,
um, you will see something done on the floor of town meeting. Um, and it will the outcome won't be good. I think so. That's just my view. I think we, you know, within the the next couple weeks, the process is to work collaboratively to try and solve for this. Um, I think two quick other two quick points. When
we talk about a bridge loan, what I view it as is it's the floor for an override, right? That's that's really what it is. Um, unfortunately, um, it's an acknowledgement that there is an operating cost that is not being met. um and therefore it's got to be the subject
of and when you start that way you remember um we've had discussions about this in other contexts. When you start with that then there is at the end of the day a set amount that we would ask the voters to support and the schools are not the only body that are going to
be making that level of ask. We're going to see asks from the public safety world. We're going to see asks from DPW. We're going to see asks across the board. and the expenditures and revenue study committee is going to have to make hard decisions about how to prioritize that. So I just want us to be realistic
that it's less alone and more a floor and and Chaz, honestly I because we haven't had this discussion and then I'm going to I'm going to be done. Bernard I think it's just important at our next meeting which I think is the 29th that we have a full open discussion around what does it mean to go after the
housing trust? What does it mean to go after design money for a park? What does it mean for other other things that we've heard floated? I think we need to really for the public talk through an option, what the consequence is, an option, what the consequence is, and
from bad to really awful. Um, I think it's important that we have that discussion at least as a board. We may decide that we don't want to do any of them, but I think it's a conversation we need to have. May Yeah, I'm sorry, John. Yeah. No, it's fine. And thank you, Paul. And
um you know as a followup to what Paul just said and as an excuse for me to repeat my point if we if it comes to the point where we on the select board and the town administration has to sell to the public the idea that we're going to make
sacrifices here there and over there and over here because we've decided we have to bail out um the school com department and the school committee in this school system in this situation. Um I don't
know how we can do that if we have no answer when people ask us how many teachers are we paying for in this budget and the numbers I cited and these are desi numbers but you know um they
calculate the numbers by whatever means um or method um we choose as long as we can compare last year to the year before to the year before to the year before we have some kind of a number for teachers in this budget. And if we see for
example as in the numbers I quoted the DESIE numbers that there is sometimes variation of as many as 50 teacher positions in the budget from one year to the next. At $100,000 per teacher, 50
teachers equals $5 million. So it covers the gap we're talking about. And if if adjusting the number of teachers can cover a gap, um first you have to know how many teachers
you have, how many teachers are you paying for, how many teachers did you have the year before, how did that compare to enrollment, how did the number this year compare to enrollment. Um but without that number, we will never be able to make a
case to the town that we should sacrifice in other areas in order to bail out the the school budget. So, uh Dr. Given, did you agree did you say that you can get that number to us in the next couple of days? Okay.
Okay. What what what John is asking for is a number emailed to him that says there are x number of teachers of teachers, you know, and I'm sorry if I sound if I raise my voice. Um I I know what you're talking about. I I I have
gone through the book and I have seen how there are numbers for the teachers for each individual school and yet for whatever peculiar reason there's no number for the total number of teachers in the system. whereas we deal in the number of the total costs of the budget
you know when when we're trying to figure out you know can we afford this budget um so um if it's not too much to ask I think just giving a number that equals the numbers that you have shown in the schools because I don't even know
if that's all the numbers of teachers you know it's great to say it's school by school but until I see the number which is agreed to by the department as being the total number of teachers in the system just the way they have to report a number not necessarily the same
number to DESIE but a number that's a total hey Michael so um John I will say when I was chair of the advisory committee's school subcommittee um it took me um about eight hours to go
through the budget book and pull together the kind of summary that you're looking for and it there was a brief period of time when the budget book, I think, was modified to include some of that, but it is I'm sympathetic to the
um I I'm I'm not necessarily sympathetic to the idea of cutting staff, but I am sympathetic to the question that uh that you're asking. The the budget book, I'm sure you you can recite numbers or you know it in your sleep. uh the rest of
the um community active that actively interested in it doesn't. So to the extent that you can pull together the kind of summary that John is asking for I think would be helpful in the same way as the um uh line the level service
budget that line by line that I was asking for would be helpful in providing confidence. I mean there people are saying well do they re is is the water really washing over the gunnels are we really sinking and I know that the answer is yes but we have other people
to convince. Um by the way we're not uh denying that the way teachers are sliced and diced and allocated to different sources of funding and all that other stuff does not make this very very difficult. But
yeah, I think John you is right that we need a number. Paul Yeah. I just wanted I just want to say in in conclusion I I hope it's in conclusion. Um necessarily well for me anyway. Um I meant for me not for
for the group. Um it so we have two weeks before the 29th and my ask is that we have a series of options amen not from you but this is from our town administrator but a series of options
from you know painful to incredibly painful and what what the what the outcome of the cost of those those changes would be to the town uh and to its residents um so that we can evaluate. But I do think what you're hearing uh Dr. Given and Dr. Gillery is
that that in order for this body to take serious the potential of having some pain on the town side, there's just some basic questions and understanding to help bring us along uh to better understand what you know your budget and
and that you've done done the work and answer the questions that we have. I think it's reasonable to ask for those things. Um I think the level service budget's a good is a reasonable question. I think the headcount is a reasonable uh question. Hopefully those can be those can be brought forward and I think we've taken a big step by even
raising the option of going through these on the town side. What are some of the things that we can do to help you? Um so hopefully it'll be collaborative. I think we've got two weeks and I'm really looking forward to the 29th to see what those options are for us. Uh let me ask a question. Um May 1st is
the deadline we always talk about. That's not the state deadline. That's your contract deadline. Is that correct? Okay. So, is there is there a drop dead date under the state deadline when you can't bring a teacher back?
I think Dr. Gillery has the details on that. So, this I believe it's later in June. Um, Bernard, but the problem is is in two places we're obligated under our contractual obligations right now. and
the and again it's not that the there's a problem with the contract. It would be nice if the dates in the contract were actually aligned but that the more notice that we can give to an individual um that about the possibility of not
being able to return to work um it affords them the opportunity to go and look for employment elsewhere. So the dates that we have right now in our present CBA, May 1st is in the teacher evaluation portion and May 15th and
that's for our I'm sorry, let me be clear. May 1st is in the teacher evaluation guide and that's for our pre-p profofessional status teachers. And May 15th is the deadline for riff uh
riffing um professional status teachers. Okay, don't see any other questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very night for your um engagement. Thank you, Dr. Given and Dr. Very informative. I appreciate that.
Okay, it looks like uh Melissa is next and she's going to talk about uh debt, right? Debt service interest, CIP or the capital improvements program. Easy. Well, I have a slide that hopefully make
it a a little bit easier. So, if you just give me a minute. Okay. So, um we're talking about some non-ED departmental expenses. Uh our capital improvement plan, our debt and interest, and our unclassified
budgets. So, for the CIP, um this should be familiar. We talked about this both at the forecast and when the financial plan was presented. Uh we have a CIP of $222 million, uh an average of $32 million a year. um picking up the select
board's guidance. Our focus has been on deferred maintenance and you can see yeah some particular accounts that are um evidence of of all the efforts that we are making towards um taking care of what we have. Um, we we also talked
about um that we in order to support the schools, we uh are diverting from our CIP policy and and providing an additional $2 million to the operating budget as a one-time measure to help the schools. Obviously, um that is something we'll talk about with the expenditure
and revenue committee. Um as of right now, I have that built in the forecast as a one-year relief valve. um whether or not that continues uh that's something to discuss with that committee as well. So this is uh our CIP funding policy um and what it looks like under
normal circumstances where we look to provide 6.6% of prior year net revenue for the um revenue finance CIP. Uh it's a mix of both um debt financed and revenue finance CIP out of that 6.6% 6%
and then we use free cash to get to an overall target of 8.1. So this is how the CIP actually landed um within those goals. So we had 7.7 million available for the 6.6% policy. Um obviously we did not allocate
the full amount. Uh 2 million of that shifted to the operating budget and then we used 14.6 6 million to get us to our overall uh targets with free cash. Uh so this is the summary of the allocation of free cash. Um we do have a
final free cash number. When we go over um the budget article, I'll talk about the differences between where we were when we first presented the allocation of free cash and how we ended up landing. Not too many differences here um in in what we're recommending um but
this is the overall level of free cash and um what we're using for additional funds to provide funding in the CIP. This is just a replication of the earlier slide. Uh this is uh for fiscal 26. Obviously the CIP is a multi-year plan,
but I thought maybe focusing on 26 would be what the board would want to look at. These are the projects that are recommended for fiscal 26. Uh and then the funding source for those projects. So you can see that most of the funding in the CIP for fiscal 26 is revenue
financed. So that's coming from a combination of property tax and free cash. Um and then we have I'm sorry I went too fast with these slides. The first slide is uh general government, public safety. Uh a lot of DPW slides.
um things that you are intimately familiar with the uh street rehab account. We have some water and sewer bond funded projects. We have some parks coming in. Uh then we also have uh a recreation project and then um school
repair maintenance projects. Um money going towards uh a roof and masonry plan, our elevator renovation program. These are all kind of ongoing uh expenditures within the CIP. So, uh, after the CIP, we talk about our
debt and interest budget. So, uh, $44 million going towards debt and interest, and a lot of that is excluded debt, uh, covering the high school, the Ridley School, the Driscoll School, uh, the Pier School. Um, coming up for our uh,
bond sale, we've got about 1.124 uh, planned borrowing for projects within the levy. So, that's Lars Anderson, Amory Park, and the Hammond Woodland Road. um project. And then outside the levy, we're adding 7.16
million uh in debt for the Pearson Fire Station projects. Um we're planning on uh bond sale later in the year. Um likely we'll be coming to you either at the end of May or beginning of June. Um just working out the timing with our
financing uh advisor. Um and that will likely need an adjustment in the budget once we get finalized numbers around the the debt exclusions. Then we have our unclassified budgets. So these are essentially departmental budgets that don't belong in any town
department but they support overall town priorities. We have our transfers for affordable housing, our liability fund and our stabilization fund. Then we also have um funding that provides our audit and professional services budgets. Uh our dues for the Mass Municipal
Association. Um we do have property insurance for most of our buildings and some and the firet trucks as well. Uh the select board contingency um support for town meeting uh particularly around the mailing of uh the combined reports and the financial
plan and then v vocational technical is account for students that don't participate in Brookline public schools and uh participate in uh vocational programs. So that is a quick run of um the CIP debt and interest and
unclassified budgets. If if you have any questions, I'm happy to take any questions you want me. Yeah, Melissa, thank you very much. Um I don't know if we can get the uh page back up on the screen, but there was one page and one
item that delighted me. Um and it's $5 million plus for street repairs. It's almost like you knew what I was going to say, right? So my next question, and I I asked this question because I have seen such a list, and in fact, it's in the
current town administrator's April newsletter um uh there there's a list of the streets to be encompassed in, you know, in FY26 um or in calendar year 2025. I'm
never quite sure which it is. Um would it be um is there anywhere in the budget where that a person could go to find the cost of each of the street projects that we're going to be doing in
FY26. So that you know there's an answer to the question when a street project is proposed um and people want to consider whether they think it's you know um should be done with all the bells and whistles or just done in the simplest way possible. Um they have some kind of
idea of like what would the budget be to do it with all the bells and whistles and and what would the budget be to do it just as a simple uh repaving. um does that belong somewhere in the budget? So I think that varies yeartoear especially
with inflation and the current bid environment. So I think the DPW can probably give you their most recent experience with the bids that they have have produced around that. Um but I I do think that is um a moving target especially um you know we recently heard
from DPW about you know the impact of inflation on the current PCI and and what that's done to what we thought was our target for the roadway account and and kind of how that's elevated since since that you know two years ago how that's shifted pretty dramatically. Um,
but I think that there's um, you know, a level of maintenance that maybe we could get them to provide a, you know, a cost per um, roadway mile or something like that that might help give you a little bit more context. Yeah. And um, you know, there's there's a number of ways
to kind of um, crunch the number once you have the number. Um, for example, um, okay, so the line item is 5 million plus and we've seen a list of, you know, let's say 8 to 10 streets that are going to be done. Um, how much of the 5
million plus is going to actually go to those streets and what is the other what is the rest of the money going to? You know, that those are the kind of questions I' I'd love some clarification on eventually. And I always think the
best place to have the numbers reside um is in the annual budget so that you know we can go back and quickly find you know well what what was in the budget a year ago, what was in the budget two years ago. Um what's in our budget versus
what's in say Newton's budget. Um um so th those are just thoughts I I had. But I am delighted with that number and I'm delighted that we have put out um in the town administrator's newsletter the list of um streets that are going to be done
in the 2025 construction season. And I'm just going to let the public know right now that if if they go to the Brooklyn Town website and they then click on the town administrator's newsletter, um on page 19, they will see the streets that are going to be done in the 2020 25
construction season. It's a good list of streets and and I'm really looking forward to seeing that that work get done. Paul, yeah, I just want to make one comment about about that. Um, and I know there's only a few a few days left of his tenure. Um, but um, you know, Mike
Mike was uh, instrumental in helping to get the DPW to revise their complete streets policy so that we could actually do roadway maintenance without having to do a tremendous design. So, um, Mike, I know you were heavily involved in that and I just want to say thanks for your
work. Uh, that list, that long list of streets is due in part because, um, you helped make that happen. So, it's important you were a partner in that effort. No, I didn't want to say that. Good for you. Okay. Anything else?
Thank you, Melissa. Stick around for the next item. Yep. Sorry. Okay. Next we have um horn articles. These are public hearings and we're going to start off with uh the budget appropriations article article
nine. So Melissa, I you're going to tell us Yes. exciting things in that article. Yes. I have another PowerPoint for you if you just give me a minute for me to call that one up. So, so we're a little earlier than we normally are in this process. Normally,
we would have another week um before kind of providing you a snapshot of where we are. Um but since we're not meeting next week, um we only have really one more meeting after this before we need a budget vote if we want to hit the deadline for the combined reports. So, um, this is just to provide
you with an update on where we are with the budget. So, uh, 418 million in in general appropriations, and you've been spending a lot of time with department heads understanding what's in their budget. Um, and I think we've pretty much wrapped up everyone uh that that
you need to to review. Um what's changed since we uh presented the financial plan is we do have um the GIC rates and there was a memo that was in your packet um from March um that talked about um we were able to get a little bit of savings
um edged out of the health insurance budget um about $300,000 of that and um for the town share of that uh savings we're looking to uh recommend that go to the collective bargaining reserve. um free cash was certified and I I have a slide that articulates what the changes
are from from what we um originally recommended and then um you know obviously you've just had a a interesting conversation with the school department on where they are with their um their allocation and then we had a meeting yesterday with the town school partnership where they went uh through
all of the um recommended reductions and what actions the school committee took uh against those recommendations. And um then advisory committee has also been doing their reviews. Charlie and I have been covering all those meetings uh to the extent that we're not double booked.
Um and the capital subcommittee has reviewed all of the CIP projects. The full AC will be taking a vote on that momentarily. So this is uh the slide that shows the recommendations for free cash. Um and the the only real changes
that happened from the original financial plan are uh the following. So, um the 3.5 million in the stabilization fund is unchanged. The unappropriated amount just went up by 29,280 and that's just to balance out um what was
allocated versus uh what was in the existing waterfall. Um so, the major change is just adding $500,000 to the liability fund. um that is to try and address the impact of the settlement with the police department or the police
um employee that was recently uh approved by both the select board and the uh the advisory committee use of the liability fund. So with that balanced down we know that there's going to be an infusion needed of free cash. So just so just trying to address that um in
advance of uh kind of depleting that fund. Um and then a small adjustment to the CIP allocation 3316. Um knowing that there was a little bit of a balance issue that would be resolved once we had a final uh free cash number.
Uh then Melissa. Yes. So free cash has gone up over last year. What was what was it last year? So it it went up over what we were projecting. Um and then over the year prior um it's a little bit higher. I can I can give you that total. I don't have that one on the top of my
head, but I can um update you that once I stop sharing my PowerPoint. I can I can pull that number for you. And could you go back and tell and let me see the uh pre-cash number for this year? Sure. 24032596. Okay. Thank you. Yep.
So then uh this is also another opportunity to provide you with an update on where the advisory committee is. Um to date the votes that we have seen with all the town departments have been in line with the town administrator's recommendations and the financial plan. Um we did have the DPW
budget uh tabled uh due to some discussion that was needed on the sanitation changes and the um the tree bylaw as well. So, um that I believe that the ad hoc subcommittee met this evening with the DPW commissioner and the full advisory committee is scheduled
to make um to meet on the DPW budget on Thursday and both Chaz and I will be there to support the commissioner as well. Um so, the CIP still needs to be voted by the um the full advisory committee. Uh there are a couple of projects that we're still discussing
with the capital subcommittee. Um, I think the the board is aware that we've been talking about the school street lighting project and whether or not the Pierce School had the capacity to cover some of the work there. So, that's still kind of getting worked out. Um, with the recreation department, we talked about
the Elliot recreation improvements. Um, there was some concern about making an investment given the potential for the rec um, administrative staff to move over uh, if that were a recommendation of the Fischer Hill study committee. Um but I think that the recreation uh
department still believes that there is need to address um the conditions at that site and kind of improve the overall office environment there. Whether the offices be used for administrative staff or whether or not be used for afterchool programming staff, they still feel like there
there's some work that's needed in that building. So that is a quick update. Um and then obviously you'll you'll have your um your public hearing and any other questions that you may have. Okay. Any questions before we go to the public hearing? I I just have a quick
question because it was so Thanks. It was just really quick. Um so the um so free cash um there's an Are we funding the um housing trust fund out of free cash?
Currently we do. Currently that is a recommendation. Um obviously we've talked about the potential for that to get revisited in light of the school uh financial pressures but uh currently the recommendation is for 1 million683203 uh to to go to the affordable housing
trust fund. A million63,000 okay um a million what? 683 683 1.6 million 1683203 Yes. 16832. Okay. 1.7. Okay. Um and then
um the uh the amount of revenue that's going to the CIP. I know we've already reduced that by I think we moved 2 million at some point, right? Away from revenue CIP. What's the balance that we're doing now? We reduced what we were um originally um going to provide to the
CIP by $2 million, but we are funding $20.3 million dollars worth of cash projects in fiscal 26, $1.4 million of bond financed CIP um within the levy and then 5.5 million of water and sewer
related uh utility bonds. I'm sorry, I didn't ask the question right. So there was a slide I thought I saw where you were revenue generated CIP. So money that came out that comes out of revenue. So it's not free cash, it comes out of a recurring revenue um was going to CIP.
Was that 6 million? 7.7. It's 7.7 million. Okay. Is coming out of revenue. No. So that's the total amount of revenue finance CIP coming from property taxes coming. Okay. 7.7 is coming from
taxes and operating. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah. Anything else from the select board here? Let's open the hearing then. Now that the chair has opened the hearing, there are no individuals who signed up in advance. If there's anyone
who wishes to comment on word article 9 at this time, please raise your hand using the raise the hand feature or make your presence in the room known. Uh, John Haver, I'm promoting you now. And if you could state your name and precinct or address for the record and begin your three minutes. Uh, yes. Hi,
I'm John Hever. I'm uh address 21 Auburn Street uh here in Brooklyn, of course, uh town meeting member in uh precinct 7. Um and and just to first of all understand and get my feet on the ground
relative to the overall budget. Um so I've done a total of all of the capital improvement projects uh that I have in the information that I have available to me right now. And the the total comes up
to about 27 million dollars. But the uh the amount that I've uh that I've heard is uh 24 million or perhaps less for this for the CIP. And I'd like to know first of all where the where the differences lie if if I'm understanding
that correctly. Sure. So we have $20.3 million uh in revenue finance CIP, $1.4 4 million in um sorry something just flashed in my screen $1.4 million in bond finance CIP
a million dollars coming from state federal grants 5.5 coming from utility bonds for a total of 28.27 27 million um in fiscal 26. Okay, that that is those are the revenue
sources. What I'm uh asking about are the expense items which is what I understand to be article article nine if or perhaps perhaps I'm not seeing eye
to eye here. So, if you look in our um capital plan, there's a spreadsheet that is um and and I I can also um provide you with the link as well um that articulates all of the projects and then summarizes the funding sources for all the projects at the bottom. Um and so
those totals were um what I was reading from that spreadsheet. Okay. There is um and perhaps let me go at it this way. There's one project in in particular that I'm um interested in understanding a little better and perhaps you know it
would be better answered by the Department of Public Works, but I will I'll bring it up anyway. And it is um item number 19, an appropriation of $970,000 for the design of the
renovation of the new Lincoln School grounds. And what I what I'm amazed over is that it's almost a million dollars for design, not even for the actual work
that uh would be done. And I'm I I I guess I'm I'm just I just want to make it known that I'm somewhat appalled that that much would be spent for design. And I'm curious to know if there's if anybody um on the call
tonight or in the select board or you Melissa would know approximately how much the project would cost. Sure. So the the construction budget for um the new Lincoln school grounds is $4.8 million. So that design is based on um
based on that value of the project. So, um that that is a pretty intense site. I actually visited the site this summer um because of the the needs that were happening and and you know the principal and the school committee members were really urging that it get pulled forward
in the CIP. It's a very complicated site in that there's also some water runoff on the hill um that is kind of further eroding the conditions of the of the playground. So, um it's it's both the upper and lower um play structure areas
and then um dealing with the water issues that they've been kind of addressing peacemail. It's it's kind of to provide a fullscale solution to that problem. But um you know, I think that the parks and open space division would be able to provide a little bit more information about um kind of what is
planned for that site. I'm impressed with your knowledge of that and I appreciate the answer to the question. Thank you very much. We all are impressed with Melissa's knowledge coming from the departments who are the ones that with all of it. I just pasted
in the chat the um the CIP spreadsheet so you can see how each of the projects are articulated and um the schedule for them as well. Great. Thank you. Okay, there are 25 folks online and one in the room and no one else is indicating their uh desire to speak at this time. Okay, I'll close the hearing. And Bernard,
just to answer your earlier question, last year free cash was certified at 22,7875. Thank you. Okay. Any uh questions from the select board? Any further questions? Okay, let's move on to um uh the next warrant
article, which is um warrant article 14. Actually 14 and 15 probably should go together, right? Or does that make sense? It does. Yeah. Okay. And we'll have one hearing on both of them. That works.
Okay. I see Don Oats is um on the screen. Do you want to talk about your warrant article? Sure. Hi. Um thank you everyone. I think you all know my name's Don Oats. I'm going to give you a little bit background about 14 and 15 together
and then Paul from Anderson Kger uh from our legal team will walk through some points of both rather than one at a time and then answer questions. So I think we can possibly make up some time and come out under the 10 for each the 10 minutes allotted for each. Um about a year ago a
young man I know in Brooklyn became suddenly disabled. He was paralyzed after he got cancer in his spinal cord. And when he was ready to be discharged from the hospital, he couldn't go home. His childhood home was located in a historic district. It had stairs, no lift, and no accessible entry. A friend
submitted a reasonable accommodation request to the town. There were no abutters notices, hearings, public comment, no neighbor opposition influencing the town's decision. And within two weeks, a vertical lift was was installed in the front of his home despite that it's not allowed by right
and he went home. He lived another year and he would have died without ever setting foot in that home if his reasonable accommodation requests had followed the same path as my family's. Now, let me tell you a little bit about that. We started this process more than 5 years ago. Our daughter, who was eight
at the time, is medically complex and needs a safe, independent, ADA compliant access to our home. We submitted a reasonable accommodation request to the same office under the same federal, state, and local laws. Our request was granted on paper, but only after a protracted process spanning
about two years and riddled with requirements that we now know are barred by disability rights laws. It definitely wasn't approved promptly. And despite the granting of the accommodation, we would later learn that it would be impossible to execute
due to the process the town then had us follow. Because of neighbor opposition, we spent months waiting for ZBA appeal hearings that unanimously upheld the decision the town had made. Then came the neighbor lawsuit and two years of litigation. We were named last on the
lawsuit, which was a procedural dispute between the neighbors and the town. And yet, we had to fund the defense of the entire zoning board of appeals and the town of Brooklyn and I believe the building commissioner. The town said at that time, town council said they were taking a passive role in court. So, my
family was left alone to defend a permit that the town unanimously upheld and agreed they were legally mandated to grant under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act. After two years of litigation, we were then forced to give up the permit because the neighbors demanded aggressive discovery that would have
exposed our daughter's private medical information. That should never happen. Reasonable accommodation is a civil rights entitlement. It's not a discretionary zoning matter. And yet, because Brooklyn still has no clear process, we've had to defend our rights in court in public hearings. And now we
have something like nine different municipal meetings coming up in the process that is ownorous and unduly burdensome for a kid with a disability who has an indisputable need for an accommodation and no clear path to get it. Literally, no one at the town can
tell us a legally compliant path to move forward. The only compliant proposal before you today are the bylaws that I drafted with my attorneys in less than a week. Town council's draft policies we reviewed in January. There were errors. It allowed public input against the
attorney general's warnings. It failed to preserve confidentiality. It lacked a definition of reasonable. It included no prompt timelines and it conflated accommodation review with discretionary zoning relief. And unlike a bylaw, a policy does not have the same force of law. It can be changed at any time
without notice or oversight. It offers no protection to the next family who needs help and no consistency for staff who must implement it. Even our neighbors who are opposing us argued in court that a bylaw is necessary. But now that we've proposed one that complies
with the ADA and FHA, they oppose us yet again. First time they cited property value, then speculative safety concerns. Then they filed a 4A lawsuit. the the neighbor has exploited every loophole that they can find, forcing us into endless appeals to drag this out in
hearings and litigation for years, and they've been doing that pretty effectively. These same neighbors violated demolition and preservation bylaws to modernize their own historic home on the National Register of Historic Places did not go through the demo delay or the 4A process at all, the
same one that they are insisting of us. Some have asked whether removing public process for people with disabilities is fair. They've misrepresented it as sneaky rather than private like you would get at a doctor's office. But as Attorney General Andrea Campbell has said repeatedly, public processes are
not allowed in reasonable accommodation reviews. They chill participation, invite discrimination, and violate federal law. The public does not get a vote on whether a disabled child can enter her home. Yet, the only group to agree with her and us is, of course, the group who knows the most about
disability rights laws, the disability commission. Everyone else has kicked the can down the road in these proceedings or deferred to town council who led us down the original path under their guidance to begin with. You heard what happened and now the work is stalled on the the policy draft and they're still
pushing a policy despite that a final draft does not actually exist. We are guaranteed to be sued by Nimi neighbors if we request another accommodation using a policy. If and most likely when this bylaw fails at town meeting, people with disabilities will be left with nothing. no policy and no process and
still no path forward for families like mine. And because of warrant article rules, it'll be two more years away from having another opportunity to bring this forward at town meeting. And by then, my daughter will be 15. When we end up in litigation again, which we will, as we've been told, she will have spent
nearly her entire childhood with the town, sending the message that it does not care what happens to her. Whether her power wheelchair shortcircuits in the rain and leaves her stranded without mobility, whether it slides backwards on an icy ramp that exceeds the legal slope limits, whether she is trapped inside
her home in a fire, trapped outside of her home in the cold, or whether she's simply denied the basic autonomy that everyone who can walk takes for granted the freedom to enter and exit their home independently, safety, and without danger or fear, like my daughter does every single day. Brooklyn has had five
years to create a compliant policy and 11 town meetings to pass a bylaw. The town supported our original request, but resisted our solution. We're still stuck, likely because the town fears another lawsuit. But if a fear of being sued by neighbors prevents you from
complying with civil rights laws, then you're already on the wrong side of it. Please don't let this happen again. I'd like to see us do what Paul Warren said earlier. Talk through what are the options and what are the consequences of it. As the reasonable accommodation statement at the bottom of this meeting's agenda says tonight, I'm
asking for you to support a change in the town's policy and procedure for deciding reasonable accommodations to the extent that it currently exists because it does not exist. I think it's become very clear that we need to pass a bylaw and not as a quote long-term plan as Dan Bennett's presentation indicated
for 2026. We just finished the first quarter of 2025. This neighbor-driven opposition denying prompt disability accommodations and zoning has been going on in Brooklyn for at least 17 years. It's not tracked by the town, but the people have been finding me since we
propose this bylaw. And I know who they are. So, please don't delay anymore. There are a lot of stories out there about neighbor opposition leading to influence and denial of of reasonable accommodations under federal law. Please, I'm asking you to protect people with disabilities from nimiism and end
the burden that this process has placed on my family and others like us for years. I'm going to hand it over to Paul and Paul will be able to walk you through the the um bylaws and take your questions. Thank you. Um good evening everyone. My name is Paul Commoners. Uh I'm an
attorney at Anderson Friger. Um I will do a very brief um review of the bylaw. Mindful that this of the proposed bylaw mindful this was provided to you and that uh considering the hour. So the process set out in the proposed bylaw um
is as follows. An individual requesting a reasonable accommodation provides information to the building commissioner. The bylaw assigns primary responsibility to the building commissioner to review and consider requests for reasonable accommodation. um just like the building commissioner would review and request cons review and
consider requests for do protected uses and other uses um that supersede zoning in certain respects and we've in fact modeled it on a provision for administrative site plan review for do protected uses and you'll find that the language of the proposed bylaw tracks
that section fairly quick fairly closely. So an individual requesting an accommodation provides information to the building commissioner. Um the building commissioner uh is already the official responsible for reviewing projects for zoning compliance in the first instance.
Um they um as the ZBA recognized in 2023 um in most cases even with protected uses. The building official preliminarily reviews the project, deter makes an makes their determination if an exemp if an
exception from zoning is appropriate and if so issues the building permit. That is simply what we are proposing here. Building commissioner should consider the request and issue a decision within 30 days. Uh I understand the staff uh
memorandum responded with 120. Uh that is 30 days longer than the town than state law requires for the issuance of a special permit. 20 days longer for a variance. Um and an accommodation delayed is an
accommodation denied uh as HUD and DOJ guidance recognizes. They suggest that 30 days is typically appropriate. 30 days, I is I believe what Somerville has adopted in its comparable reasonable accommodation
bylaw. And even for projects with major impacts that are protected under the do amendment uh under the parallel provision we based ours on, the building commissioner gets 45 days. So we think 120 is um completely uh is completely
impractical. The building commissioner should engage in an interactive process with the applicant as needed. Um, he can request additional information from the applicant and the 30-day period is stayed while he's waiting for a response to any requests, which should also help
address any timing concerns. Um, especially if he is considering granting a request for the modification, he should discuss this with the applicant first. Uh, he could also determine if information from other town boards or committees would assist in reviewing the application.
Um those boards and committees uh should receive the application promptly after the building commissioner makes that determination and follow up promptly to keep the process moving. The building commissioner should issue a written decision so that um both the uh so that
the recipient, the town and if there are ultimately other interested parties, anyone else um understands the basis for the decision. The criteria for the determination are set out in the bylaw and they closely track federal and state fair housing laws. The reasonable
accommodation should be used by a person with a disability necessary to make housing available to an individual with disab disabilities protected under fair housing laws. Should not impose an undue financial or administrative burden on the town. Should not require any fundamental alteration in the nature of
the town's land use and zoning building program. um and per uh chapter 40 section 3 should be necessary to ensure that local land use laws, regulations, practices, ordinances, bylaws and decisions are not discriminating against
a disabled person. Um the bylaw proposal also includes confidentiality provisions, an appeals process, uh requirement that the applicant seek their building permit promptly after receiving the accommodation, and a process for emergency requests. And I'm happy to go through any of those in more
detail. Um, article 15, the proposed amendment to the demolition bylaw, uh, is consistent with the other provisions authorizing early issuance of demolition permits and appropriate circumstances. It's much shorter. Uh, I won't walk you
through it in detail. I will say only that it is again designed to ensure that uh accommodation is not an accommodation that is granted from zoning is not delayed for the better part of a year or more
due to a dem demolition delay. It is meant to ensure that uh disabled people can actually exercise their rights exercise and their rights to accommodation and enjoy um their right to housing. Um, as Dawn said, uh, we have
serious concerns with the policy that the town has proposed. Um, it is only a policy. Uh, in the litigation that we were involved in, a land court judge and a single justice of the appeals court suggested that a policy may not be enough and the town may need a bylaw,
uh, in order to grant exemptions from zoning, which is of course itself a bylaw. Whether or not those judges were correct about that, the fact is that a family proceeding only under a policy uh is risking an appeal and being forced to
defend the procedure the town followed on the town's behalf. And it will always be an opportunity for uh for a plaintiff challenging the grant of zoning relief to obtain leverage and draw out the process, making it harder for the
recipient to uh make it harder making it harder for the recipient to enjoy the accommodation to which they are entitled. Um it can take a proceeding in land court can take years and that's before you get to
appeals. Um the policy also authorizes the planning board to hold a hearing on accommodation requests. Uh my colleague Christina Marshall and I have been reviewing uh what the attorney general has how the attorney general has responded to other proposed reasonable
accommodation uh bylaws in municipalities. The attorney general has uniformly rejected uh requirements that a reasonable accommodation request be reviewed and decided in an open public meeting. Uh
the rationale seems to be that it places a burden on uh disabled people that is not placed on anyone else uh seeking what is ultimately an as of right use and a reasonable and a reasonable
accommodation um pursuant to uh federal and state disability anti-discrimination law is ultimately an as of right use just like use protected by the do amendment uh just like just like
uh many other uses protected under section 3 and other provisions of federal law. Um so with that um we are available to answer any questions the board may have. Thank you.
Uh David a question regarding the uh 30-day window for making a decision. How did you come up with 30 days and do you anticipate that there could be times where 30 days is not tenable? Do you have any flexibility on your time
interval? Um 30 days again was drawn from the comparable Somerville zoning bylaw and a model bylaw out of California that we used. Um, of course there will be complex cases and again when the building commissioner seeks additional
information from the applicant, um, it pauses the 30-day timer. And I might add it was also sorry I should I should add we also looked at the 45 fiveday timer for um I believe educational uses protected by the do amendment and we thought that 30 days
for reasonable accommodations uh would were re was a pardon me reasonable figure relative to 45 days for protective educational uses. But just so I understand, so if the building commissioner needs more information,
makes that request, that pauses the 30 days until that additional information is received. Correct. It it if the request is to the petitioner, yes. Um the period may also be stayed by the written request of the applicant. Um
that's subsection 5E. Okay. And the uh and the process authorizing the building commissioner to seek information is 5C. Okay. Uh Paul, you want to say something? I just I had a quick question, but did you want to was it? Did you want to do that first? No, I
want you to Okay. Okay. Um I just first thanks for the presentation and and the uh the explanation and I I'm very sensitive to this issue. I know it's important. Um I wanted to hear uh just from is town council on the uh John Bou
is on and available to answer. Okay. I was just hoping to hear uh from from our legal department about the policy that they're working on where they're at. I did hear um the attorney mention that um it may be problematic to have a policy, but
it's not guaranteed that it's a problem to have a policy. So, I was hoping to just understand where our policy was at and is it going to get to the point where it could accommodate this this type of request? Sure. Thank you. Um John Bukite, Associate Town Council with the Office
of Town Council in Brooklyn. Um so um we the litigation in this matter in Langport wrapped up um in July of 2024 and uh in January uh 6 months later we presented a draft of the
reasonable accommodation policy that uh that's been referenced here to the uh commission on disability. Um and um you know I can say that we got some really good feedback you know including from um the uh the Os at that uh at that meeting
and um you know but uh so some of the the main thing that we've done is we've solicited comments from um from the Mass um office on disability uh which is the state agency that uh that kind of hand handles disability matters um their general counsel
reviewed our policy. she gave us some feedback on it. Um and uh those so we've so we're continuing to work on it. Um I can say that with the filing of the um these warrant articles are you know we paused um to sort of consider you know
how we should proceed. Um my clients who you know are the sort of other departments who co-signed the memo which include the building department, planning department um the uh I always get this wrong. The uh I'm sorry. Yeah. O o ODIC R as well.
Um uh you know we put this memo together which is before you. Um so so what I can say is yeah the the memo the um the policy is a work in progress. Um and uh you know currently we're waiting for we've submitted it to the um the
attorney general's office um an attorney in the civil rights division who uh we're waiting for comments. Um so that's where we're at. Um, you know, I can say obviously this this process has provided us with a lot of information. Um, we've
been carefully looking at it. Uh, we don't think that we think that a policy would allow us to comply with fair housing laws. Um, perhaps not, you know, maybe in its current form there some problems with it. Uh, but I think that um there's no um there's no requirement
that that a bylaw be enacted. And and frankly I you know I know uh I don't I've read the decisions that have been referenced um in the presentation the the both the appeals court decision and the um uh and the land court judges decision
and and I I don't see in either of those decisions anything stating that about a policy or a bylaw and what has to occur. So John, thank you John. I just one quick followup. So without going into too much detail, um what are the key
differences between the policy draft or the direction that you're going with and versus versus the bylaw? For example, who's overseeing the process? Is it is it the building commissioner within your policy draft policy or is it a different a different group? It's the building commissioner. Yes, it's still the
building commissioner. Okay. Correct. Correct. Um I would other other key things that you just maybe want to highlight a couple of different key things that are different. Yeah, I mean I do think there's a role for the for the planning department here. Um and you know either the department or a member
or members of the planning board you know who have design expertise you know for example um you know where where you know certainly in a project where um you know just a wheelchair ramp or a lift is being requested then those are routinely granted very quickly. I think as you
know was noted in the um uh in the top of this presentation um um I I think um so so I think the policy allows for it allows the I think a little more flexibility for the building commissioner. It allows the building commissioner to seek input from the
planning board who can sort of say you know we think this cladding material or maybe like modifying a roof line um where you know we're talking about a big a bigger project a bigger modification project where that could make it more compatible with the neighborhood without detracting in any way from the utility
uh for the for the you know disabled person who needs the accommodation. Okay. Thank you. May I have an opportunity to respond to a couple of things? Yes. Go ahead doc. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um I'm a little bit incredulous at some of the
things that I'm hearing, but I'm going to do my best to uh the question, will the policy be effective? Uh the answer is blatantly no. It will not be because um uh Mr. Bukai was in the same courtroom that I was in with the judge
when the judge did say uh I can't believe it. I'll just call it an admonishment. I can't believe you have nothing after all of these years. And we the abuter submitted a memo to the court, an official memo that Mr. Bukite
saw and my attorney saw and I saw that said the only legal process that they will accept is a bylaw. It was stated for the record that it was a bylaw. Now, we we disagree with that, of course, but I know that if Mr. Bukai and the town
choose to move forward with a policy, I will most certainly end up in court again and Mr. Dr. Bukai will again be taking a passive role I assume and I will be stuck with all the legal fees and I will be stuck putting together a defense team to defend myself against discrimination. That's where we sit
right now. So, excuse me for being very direct about it, but it a policy is guaranteed to land my family in court again with zero help from the town to defend an accommodation that they recognize and have said they are mandated to grant.
Thank you. Second thing I want to say is that in terms of design expertise, I am shocked and a bit appalled to hear Mr. Bukite mentioned design expertise when is very clearly outlined under fair housing laws and it's
it's design has absolutely no bearing and the decision should not influ be influenced whatsoever by design and aesthetics. There are so many missteps that happened in the original granting of this accommodation originally years ago that I went along with knowing that
they were not legally compliant. I was being asked to do things like counterbalancing amenities, making it pretty, spending extra money to do this, that, and the other to appease the neighbors, shrinking pieces of the project because the neighbors wanted that. And those things are all in clear
violation of federal disability rights laws. So I ask you, if I were to file a reasonable accommodation tomorrow, who would I go to? What process would I follow and what protection against nimiism would there be? I don't have an answer to that and I've been waiting 11
months for it. I have had a chilling effect and that is something that these laws are designed to prevent. Thank you. Yeah. Um I'll just um respond briefly. Um the I mean I just want to point out here that um anytime that uh
the ZBA decision I think grants um relief to any property owner uh the town basically puts the onus on the uh the party that was granted the relief to defend the decision. I think attorney commoner can can sort of attest to this.
um when you go into land court uh and you're the town and you're in one of these cases, the judge typically looks at you and I've had this very experience and says, "Oh, the town's here. This is, you know, so this is not this is our policy with everyone. This is what we we do." Um you know, and I was asked the
question, I think an astute question by a member of the um uh advisory committee um what would happen if the person who requested and received a reasonable accommodation was indigent and they were sued? what would what would the town do?
Um and while you know I haven't run this by my boss um I you know in that case certainly we would defend but you know I mean in this case there were two law firms uh I think lobbying the town at the time that the oats requested the reasonable accommodation. Um part of why
it took a long time was because you know there was a lot of a lot of um I mean negotiation and demands which we thought were fairly simple requests. Um anyhow, I I just wanted to kind of explain why, you know, the policy of the town to take a passive role in these matters. Okay.
Thank you. Uh Tiffany, let's open up the U hearing. Uh if I may very briefly on um since my my expertise on town's defending zoning matters has been called up. Um, no. No, let's let's have the hearing
and um this is not a zoning matter. It's a civil rights matter. And that's I want that corrected for the record. This is a civil rights request, not a discretionary zoning matter. Got it.
Okay. Now that the chair has opened up the public hearing, um there are no individuals who signed up in advance. Um, if there is anyone who wishes to speak on either warrant article 14 or warrant article 15, um, please raise your hand using the raise the hand
feature at this time or make your presence known in the room. Okay, we have four individuals in the room and 25 online and it looks like no one is indicating their desire to speak on either warrant article. I'll close the hearing and um if the
attorney for Miss Oats would like to uh now make his uh comment, I'll take it. Thank you uh Mr. Chair. Much appreciated. Uh so I I do represent towns uh and I do
defend towns in litigation and while it is true that where there is while it is true that the towns are not usually the prime mover in uh litigation over uh permitting decisions. It is certainly the case that where
there is a question of whether the town has acted in good faith which was raised in this case or construction of the town bylaw or rectitude of town process we do engage we do typically engage uh to the extent required to uh to the extent
required to ensure that the town's position and the town's reputation are protected. Um ultimately, uh a policy ultimately as my client explained
um a decision made under a policy is just a is just a decision made under a policy. Um it does not have a policy does not have the force of law. And while it is true that a pol that a decision made under a policy might skate
by um a decision made under a a decision made pursuant to a process made under a bylaw is ironclad at least as to process and for uh individ for individuals who
are vulnerable that is important. Um, everyone the the one thing that everyone involved in this quite contentious piece of litigation could agree on was that uh the town would have
would have been in a better position and the parties would have been in a better position uh had a bylaw been adopted. The plaintiffs raised it at length. We recognize it. I do believe the town said it before the judge and the judge certainly said it as well. So, we're
looking at this as an opportunity for the town to put uh to put itself and people in better in a much better position moving forward and for the town to for the town to lead in a space where um many Massachusetts municipalities are
uh lagging behind. Okay. I see Polyelco is um on the screen there. Did you want to add anything? No, I looking in.
Well, Paul and Sarah both Sorry, go ahead. Say Paul, I have another question. Wait, hold on. I was just both Polly and Sarah from ODICR online if you have but they they were gracious enough to come by if there were any questions related to either planning or the office of disability. Yeah, I I'd actually like
to hear um Sarah's uh thoughts on this as our director of um disability issues. Hi, Bernard. How can I help you? Hi. Can you give me a Can you say your question again? I just want to get a
sense of, you know, what what your your thinking um is on on this issue or is there something that uh some insight you can provide that uh would be helpful as we um you know consider this by this uh Warren article?
Um, I'm not an expert in zoning. Um, but I do understand that reasonable accommodation requests need to be taken seriously and I believe the town acted in good faith when they they created the process
that they just originally went through. Um, I was consulted the the uh the commission on disability was consulted and we you know we the the commission
told the building commissioner that they supported the reasonable accommodation request based on their understanding of the ADA um and and then this process happened. I do understand that the Otis have had to go through a court
proceeding and that is horrible for them and I'm I'm sorry, but I I I can't speak to how the town has chosen to defend or Okay, I'm not not asking you to I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Well, I'm I'm just trying
to understand exactly other than to say that the Warren article as it's currently constructed um puts a puts the onus on the building commissioner and I I would want to make
sure that uh the building commissioner doesn't necessarily always understand disability in um in all its etcies, but as long long as he was able to seek my assistance or assistance from
other um other parts of from the commission or there the the I would like there to be a place for people who have expertise in this area to provide the town assistance. Um, I
don't I I do understand that we don't want to be debating on in open public meetings about whether or not um somebody has a disability or they're entitled to to the reasonable accommodation they're asking for. That is legal and we should not be doing
that. Um, I'm I am I I've been I have sat through some of these meetings, not all of them. I was not in the commission meeting last week, for example. I was sick. But I I
have sat there sat through these meetings and I've heard I I do understand that not everybody understands um the rights to privacy for people with disabilities and there there are concerns being raised about people faking it. I don't believe that
um those sort of things I don't believe those sort of things happen but even if they do like they need to be all of these things would need to be done privately. I don't I don't necessarily not support the Warren article. I just want to make sure
that the process um you know doesn't create a uh like fundamental alteration of any of the processes that the town has and I and we we are seeking assistance from
other from mod and from uh the attorney general to make sure that the pro the process we are developing would you know be compliant with the ADA and compliant with fair housing law. Um I was not, you
know, I I hear that um that the are saying like the feedback from the judge was that the best thing that the town could do was have a warrant have a bylaw. Um but we don't we don't and we
we we use the we used what we had at the time which was a which was this process. Uh David, so just a question for the petitioners. Is there anything that would prevent the building commissioner
from consulting with an ADA expert or even someone from planning? No. Um we've actually been in conversations behind the scenes with some other people from other commissions and we've been talking about ways that we could and
would like to have um someone like Sarah and the commission more involved. I believe there's some amendments that we're working on to the draft. U I think we're heading in a positive direction on that. I mean, I would say that we're willing and open and flexible to to some
changes provided that they do comply fully with with Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. And so, as something says, well, we need preservation to weigh in on uh how pretty it is. that is prohibited under
disability rights laws. If you need historic preservation rather to weigh in on a structural issue that an accommodation might create and or a danger then then yes of course it's relevant. So originally we said relevant
departments because if you open up to everybody in the town for discretionary input then you risk being unduly influenced by bigotry, discrimination, ignorance and all of the things that we've seen when people show up at for
example the ZBA and say oh well this is absolutely going to be a danger to everybody. Well, we know that DDN village of Wilmet said you cannot have you can't use uh uh speculative safety concerns as a reason to deny the accommodation. That's
case law. And we're hearing it play out at the ZBA and being conditioned on, oh, okay, well, now we have a condition of the accommodation that's based on illegal speculative safety concerns and now we have to do a mirror, a backup camera, or whatever because somebody
decided that they were just going to think that they knew the law and they didn't. So the qu the you know the the concern is the the wider you cast the net the more you're going to get people who just want to give an opinion versus people who are knowledgeable at the at the law. And that brings us back to the
question should the disability commission be involved? Sure. Should Sarah be involved? Absolutely. We want that. In fact, like I mentioned earlier in the in my uh in my remarks, the disability commission was extremely understanding, extremely empathetic, and
when they did see our plans in executive session three years ago, they unanimously voted that this was compliant, that it was reasonable, that it was necessary and that it was not only that, but it was a model of inclusive design, and that people wanted
to stay on longer and talk about it more and see more of the plans that weren't relevant to the discussion because it was such a a a a thorough effort to be ADA compliant. Okay, Paul. Yep. So, Mike, thanks, Don.
Uh, so I and I um Oh, you have to go. I know the article um Mike has to leave him, right? I'm sorry. Actually, I don't want to make a comment of this. I just want to say that I apologize, but I do need to leave based on what I said to you um earlier. So, um, my apologies to
all of you and to the petitioner. Thank you. All right. I didn't understand what you're signaling me. See you later, Mike. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Thank uh thanks. Uh, so Don, just around the the the notice or the lack of notice. Um, and I'm I'm very
sensitive to the issue of of privacy that, you know, you don't want every person across the town to come and throw all kinds of barriers up because of all the things that you mentioned. Um but share with me why the direct a butter or a butter
that's going to be directly affected uh by by a project. Why would they not be uh be um accommodated notification to give feedback not on the disability, not on the privacy issue, but on the fact that you know there's going to be it has
to be reasonable accommodation, right? And reasonable also would take into account the abut, right? You're you're you're using a gen a generic word reasonable definition, not a legal term reasonable which is defined in the bylaw. It's it's two things that it's
considering. It's does it cause an undue burden to the town and does it destroy the town zoning scheme? That's it. That's what reasonable means. And it's written right into the bylaw because we knew we get questions about that. And so in a butter is not in a position to be
able to decide for the town what the town's responsibility is to prove that it fundamentally alters the way the town does zoning overall and two that it creates an undue financial or administrative burden to the town. How in the world would a neighbor be able to
decide and prove that if the town already says, "Hey, this is reasonable if it meets these two criteria then." So, Don, are those my opinion, Mr. Warren? That's federal law. It's black and white letters. Andy, Andy, Andy,
so again, I try not to be so combative with me. I'm actually trying to learn here. I know I know you're passionate about it. I'm just I'm just trying to learn, Don. So, cut me some slack. I know. I I sit through a lot of these where I'm not allowed to speak, so it gets frustrating where they, you know,
they shut me. There's intro corrections that need to be made to the record, things that are misspoken into the record, and I don't get that opportunity to address those things and then we leave these meetings going, "Wow, they actually didn't read the bylaw or they don't understand the law." So, my
apologies. Please continue. That's fine. I just again I want to get to my question. So and I'm trying to understand so reasonable accommodation you've defined reasonable accommodation in the bylaw as you know it's reasonable in that it it doesn't kill this damage
the zoning scheme townwide or it doesn't unduly burden um you know the town administratively or something like that. I know I'm not reading the words but I'm I'm hearing what you said. Is that your definition or is that is that a federal definition? I just I thought I just
answered that. It is a federal definition. I'm going to answer that question. White. Thank you. That's the federal definition of reasonable accommodation under the ADA and the Fair Housing Act. That's the federal Okay, that's that's what that was my question. It's a plain reading of the Fair Housing
Act and the ADA. Thank you, Sarah. That's why we want you involved, Sarah. Okay. Any further discussion? Oh, I'm sorry, David. I'm very supportive of this warrant article.
I think maybe we might want to make some relatively minor changes just to make sure that the 30-day window uh fully works. I'd like feedback from the building commissioner on that. But overall, the general thrust of it, I
think it's quite necessary. I'm not comfortable relying on a policy. Our own town council said policy is not 100% foolproof. Uh this is a basic matter of civil rights. This is not something that uh planning considerations should be a
major factor. Uh as a petitioner notes, there's nothing that explicitly prohibits the building commissioner from consulting planning, from consulting ADA specialists as part of the process. But ultimately, this should rest with the building commissioner when you're
providing a reasonable accommodation as defined by federal law. So, I'm I'm definitely very supportive and I hope that we support it as a board. Thank you. Okay. Um, we will show our support on
the 29th unless people want to vote today. Mike left. So, I think we we can't do Yeah, we should wait as we do with all complex pieces of legis and this is a you know not a simple
straightforward uh warrant article. So thank you um Don Oats and Paul Keminar Mr. Commoners but I've heard worse Mr. Chair. Okay, thanks Mr. Chair. May I make a
final uh comment if we're not voting tonight? You're so late. Um it's it's getting really late so make it quick. I understand. It's past my bedtime by hours. Um, you know, HUD and the DOJ in the statement about reasonable
accommodations back in 2004, they said if a jurisdiction has a procedure for requesting reasonable accommodations, it must be administered so that it doesn't unduly delay or hinder the process. And a jurisdiction may not condition the granting of a reasonable accommodation on the approval of neighbors. It's not
ambiguous at all. public input particularly from abutters may object to disability related con uh construction that can't be part of the process. There's ample case law that talks about require zoning varian uh invite
don we got it. Thank you. I just want to say if you need case law please feel free to reach out to us. Okay. We very much appreciate your time and consideration. Thank you. Okay. Uh next Warren article is uh Warren
article number 25 legislation to create established a climate change super fund which is a state statute uh that the Warren article is urging us to support or a state bill not not statute
it's a it's a bill in the legislature. Yes. Yes. John Harris. Go ahead. And this is a resolution in support of that bill. Uh my name is John Harris. I'm town. Can you move the mic up a little bit closer? Can you speak into the mic? Oh, sure. Is that better? Yes. Okay. Uh my name is John Harris. I'm a town
meeting member precinct 8 and I'm co-chair of Climate Action Brookline or CAB. Warned article 25 originated at CAB. It has 16 co-etitioners. It's been endorsed by Climate Action Brookline and by Brooklyn Mothers Outfront. and I hope
to earn a vote of favorable action uh of our resolution by the select board. Uh this is part the history here is this is part of the it's called the make polluters pay movement. It began as a national movement and which culminated with the polluters pay climate fund act
of 2024 now 2025. Uh but with the changed political situation uh the campaign now focuses on state level action. In Massachusetts, the state campaign asks each municipality to pass resolutions in
support of quote an act establishing a climate change super fund filed with the Massachusetts House and Senate. And by the way, uh there are new numbers that were assigned to this year's uh uh uh acts when it rolled over from last year.
And the uh the uh the new numbers were assigned after the uh deadline for uh for uh uh after our warrant closed. So this has last year's numbers, but I can give uh this year's numbers for the same article. Just an updated thing. Uh, the
payers into the Massachusetts Climate Change Super Fund will be US-based and foreignowned fossil fuel extractors with ties to Massachusetts that were responsible for at least 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane gas emissions globally between
January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2024. That is big oil, very big oil, not your local gas stations or really any Massachusetts-based company. Um, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs would be charged
with establishing a climate cost study that would determine the climate damage that was done by these fossil fuels, the costs of that damage using a reasonable estimate standard, would identify the responsible companies, and would
allocate proportionate uh cost recovery demands, payments to be made over the next 25 years uh to help fund projects such as transit infrastructure upgrades, building weatherization, urban tree canopies, coastal protections, wetland restorations, etc.
The projects would be chosen by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Um, the principle of polluters pay has now uh a is now a matter of clear legal precedent in environmental regulation. It's been employed by all major US pollution
control laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the original Super Fund Act, which was a federal program uh to clean up clean up abandoned hazardous substance waste sites in response to Love Canal and disasters like that. uh administered by
the EPA, passed in the year uh uh 1980 and amended in 1986 and strengthened in 1990 and butressed by Supreme Court cases against Exxon, Atlantic, Richfield, etc. Uh so as I say, the the
campaign is being waged at state levels now and Vermont uh it's the state with summertime floods etc. in recent years passed the the u its version in the year 2024. In December of 2024, New York
State uh were victimized by Hurricane Sandy in 2014. Uh in December, uh New York State passed its version. The legislatures in California and Minnesota are now considering their versions. In Massachusetts, Malden, Medford,
Cambridge, and Boston have passed this resolution. And several municipalities as we speak are engaged in campaigns just like this one. Um Tommy uh I should say being formal Representative Vlo this is a resolution and not a home
rule petition. I love it for the same reason and this is yet an additional reason to support it because if the state bill succeeds uh it will prove the power of going the resolution track as opposed to home rule petitions. Does it have a serious chance of passing
or is it just a publicity stunt? It is the serious aspect of it is the US super fund bills became real and very effective uh uh tools to fight chemical pollution in in wastelands etc.
The state leadership of this is also very serious. Representative Vtollo has endorsed last year's version said he would consider this year's version. I think they're unchanged just different numbers. Um and uh in Massachusetts uh uh Massachusetts passed significant
climate bills in 2021, 2022, and 2024. Uh so it's serious about this kind of business. Um if this one fails, it is still worth doing because of the educational component. Uh the issues have been debated extensively at recent
Climate Action Brookline and Mothers Outfront meetings. And I was just talking earlier today about scheduling at the Brooklyn High School climate club. Uh so seeking their uh endorsement as well. The only obligation of the town
of Brooklyn and uh town capital T is that the final resolved clause asks that the town clerk sends a copy of the resolution to Senator Cream, Representatives Vatlo and Schwarz, the House Speaker, the Senate President, and the Governor. there are no other costs
and there's no followup required on the part of the town. Um the issue has come in terms of political exposure. Uh in February 22 states uh uh mo most of them uh serious coal states or oil producing
states um uh sued to block the New York version of this law. Um and but it's important to know that the it was the state governments that were passed uh and they were the ones
who passed legislation, not merely a uh resolution passed by any municipality. Um also uh it's been pointed out in conversations about this bill that Boston has been under crossfires for immigration and
university funding issues. Crossfires from the federal government. Uh I will point out the fossil fuel industry donated more than $75 million to uh Mr. Trump's presidential campaign, say his the second campaign. Uh so the issue of whether passing this town this
resolution by town meeting would cause the uh federal administration to focus on Brooklyn. That I think is an issue you might want to debate. Uh but I would conclude that uh Warrant Article 25 is not radical. It is merely sensible. It's the principle of you dirty it, you clean
it up. Uh Brooklyn would be acting in consort with other leading states and with Massachusetts municipalities. Um I now welcome any questions or comments and I hope the select board votes favorable action of warrant article 25. Thank you. Okay, I'll start off by
saying that um you know to some degree this is sort of like a Christmas tree. A lot of bobbles for various interest groups. Um and that's troubling. Well, for example, yeah, uh section three or 2T
um which is the requirement that uh projects that are funded by the fund include by America provisions for iron and steel. I mean that creates huge problems for you know a community like Brooklyn. I any community not like like
Brooklyn. Um, so I mean the adding all these Christmas decorations to it as I call them um sort of creates problems uh sort of in the bowels of of the legislation. It's just my observation.
Yeah, just a response is that you know that would be in the language of the state legislative proposal that's not included in the language of the resolution. Right. But but you're you're asking the state to impose for to put that language in their statute. So, I
mean, it it it might as well be in the resolution because that's what you're supporting. I don't think Yeah. But, you know, these when our when when uh entities endorse these issues, uh it doesn't there could well be further
negotiations tightening it up or, you know, deleting that passage or whatever. and and uh uh you know if municipalities I mean and if that happens it's the issue is not going to come back to those
uh municipalities for uh you know to see if they still want to endorse that resolution in support. So uh amendments can still happen with the state bill. Any other questions? John, did you have any or
just stroking my chin? Mhm. Uh this is a public hearing. Uh Tiffany, can you open up public hearing? Yes. Now that the chair has opened up the public hearing, there are no individuals who signed up in advance. If anyone wishes to speak on or article 25 at this time, please raise your hand
using the raise the hand feature if you're online or make your presence known in the room. There are um four individuals in the room, 17 online, and it looks like no one is indicating their desire to speak on warrant article 25. Okay, we'll close
the war artic or close the public hearing and uh Paul. Yep. So, Bernard, my question is actually for you because I'm trying to track your comment. Um so, this is a resolution. There's a bunch of whereas clauses. I read the the explanation. Could you rephrase or
what's your the Christmas decoration thing? Yeah. I mean, that was just No, no, I know. I know. I'm just trying to like Where is there something specific in here that Well, I mean, there a number of things, but the one that I focused on was uh section Are you looking at the statute? He's talking about the act itself, not talking
about part of the act. I'm sorry. Okay. So, you have a problem with the act itself. I got you. Okay. I thought you was with the resolution. David, you mentioned that the general concept behind this is if you dirty it, you clean it up essentially. Can you
describe uh what happens currently? Gee, not enough remediation. Put it that way. That's the easy way. Wow. Right. I mean, basically the where this comes from ultimately is it's an issue
that an economist would call uh the question of externalities. you know, um, uh, the, uh, you know, chemical companies did not, you know, they would sell their chemical products at various prices, but still, uh, those prices
wouldude cleaning up the land under the factory or whatever you the issue was. And the same is true of of, uh, you know, fossil fuel companies, their impact on uh, on the climate crisis. Um it has been known that uh since the
1970s or 1980s that uh you know fossil fuel use uh is the major source of the climate crisis. But rather than the fossil fuel companies at that point uh beginning to do uh you know uh you know
uh uh fold the costs of remediation into their pricing and clean up the damage they were doing. They didn't do that at all. Instead uh what they did is try to fool the public. They try to create confusion on the issue, create doubt about the issues. I what merchants of
doubt I think is the the book that an that really looks into their uh their strategies. So um basically uh you know the the the chemical super fund bill has had significant impact on positive impact on cleaning up the uh
you know the the chemical spills etc etc by chemical companies and the hope is that a climate fund uh you know uh climate super fund would do the same thing on climate issues. Final detail on that is that it you know
it imposed significant costs on these big oil companies. Um but there are clauses in the language of the state statute where um where these costs would not be imposed at such a high level that it would drive any given company out of
business and so therefore could not continue paying through the full 25-year cycle. Any other comments? By the way, I'll just mention one other thing that I it bothers me
because I think it makes this the bill I'm talking about the bill, not the state bill. Yeah. Um less likely to really get any traction. Um, a responsible party, which includes all the oil firms or fossil fuel companies, shall be strictly liable
without regard to fault for a share of the total cost determined by the most recent version of the climate cost study. Um, and I just throw that out as as an example of how this sounds, you know,
good in terms of, you know, the title of the bill, you know, because the polluters should pay. Um, but when you get down into the details, I wonder if it's really that serious a proposal. So, gee, I mean, we all know about the Clean Air
Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Super Fund Act. I mean those have been major major major in addressing their respective problems. I'd also point to the ozone but addressed it to specific polluters as opposed to you know the the
entire industry. Uh okay you know using particular chemicals the chemicals that in this case would be in the fossil fuels etc. Right. So yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, just to your point, I I think the idea is that just by virtue of them being in this business, they are emitting chemicals into the air and into the environments that we want to them to help remediate. Yeah. It's part of the
business. I get that. I just wonder. It's a little different from a chemical spill where you do have a very clear actor. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, they could, as I say, uh the the climate implications of fossil fuel use with
incomplete cleanups uh have been known since the 1960s or or sorry, 1970s or 1980s. Nathaniel Rich, I can't remember the name of his book, but he goes into this in great detail. Um and so the the companies could have incorporated that
remediation on that back then in their costs if they had. it would have been the honest thing to do, you know, uh and if they had, we'd have a fraction of the uh the climate problem we have worldwide right now, right? So, and you're right.
I mean, basically, this is a fossil fuel focused warrant article. And you know um if uh the the uh you know the the the the u the the funding demands of the of this artic of the bill uh increase their
costs. Well, that's just reality, right? That's not the issue. Who cares about their costs? Well, I mean, yeah, it's if they have to jack up their prices as a result, that makes things even better for uh the non-fossil fuel, the cleaner fuels, right? solar panels etc etc right
so it's mo it would be moving things in the right direction so okay any other questions comments or you just scratching your head just I'm scratching my head scratch thank you
thank you thank you John next warrant article warrant article 27 resolution expressing support I'm sorry no that is it yep for back from the brink of nuclear war resolution and other associated efforts to eliminate nuclear
weapons. Um, yes. I don't see uh Lieovitz or Udelova online, but I think Beck is online. Beck, I've promoted you now. Yes. Hello. Can you see me? Yes, we can see you. Um, I have slides.
Should I share my screen to have those? Yes, you can share your screen. Perfect. One sec. Um okay. So actually I might just read from the slides like this. Um I'm in the uh co-etitioners on war on
article 27 the back from the brink resolution and um I'm part of the students for nuclear disarmament chapter of Brooklyn High School and I'm here speaking in favor of this. So um so the back from the brink resolution um uses five main strategies
to try to accomplish uh um multilateral nuclear disarmament. So these include actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, meaning a multilateral approach, renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first, ending the sole unchecked authority of
any president to not to launch nuclear attack. taking US nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert and finally cancelling the plan to to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons as there's a plan um in the following years to modernize a a lot of the uh US
nuclear arsenal. Um the so this uh resolution um would also support the treaty of for the prohibition of nuclear weapons which is um been uh passed in countries around the world and this is a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in
any nuclear weapon activities. These includes not developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. and it obligates states parties to provide adequate assistance to individuals affected by the use or
testing of nuclear weapons. Uh so there is a large Brooklyn uh a large precedent in Brooklyn. In 2018, the town of Brooklyn passed warrant article 35 or the back from the brink resolution. Resolving that the town of Brooklyn, Massachusetts, calls upon our federal leaders and our nation to embrace and
sign the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and make nuclear disarmment a centerpiece of US national security policy. And um so Warren article 27 um first it reaffirms warrant article 35. So it's reaffirming Brooklyn's
commitment to uh urge federal leaders and the nation to make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of US national security policy. uh it reaffirms Brooklyn's commitment to advocate for the US participation in signing the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and uh endorsing the policy provisions of the back from the
brink resolution. However, um uh this one also in addition urges the passage of existing state and federal back from the brink resolution. So um it also is related to action on the state and federal level whereas the uh first one or in article 35 was only on the local
level. Um so it's important not only to add the um aspects on the state and federal level but also to reaffirm because first of all just it reaffirms Brookline's commitment to disarmament and it is uh very important to reform after six years especially amid rising
political tensions and in addition this reinforces support for other municipalities working to pass similar resolutions just as in 2018 other Massachusetts municipalities passing it um helped us and we can make the same change for others. Um, and this would be
a large step towards peace. There's uh no financial impact. It reflects Brookline's values and commitments and creates a foundation uh for crucial change. So, in conclusion, uh please vote favorable action on war article 27. Thank you.
Okay, any comments? Any want to open up the hearing? Yes. Um, now that the chair has opened up the public hearing, there were no individuals who signed up to speak in advance. If there's anyone online who wishes to speak on warrant article 27,
please raise your hand using the raise the hand feature. If in the room, please make your presence known at this time. There are three individuals in the room, 16 online, and it looks like no one is indicating their desire to speak on this warrant article.
No one has any comments. I I do have a question. Okay. So, I I notice uh some very specific language here that part of the uh be it resolved paragraph uh ending the president's sole unchecked
authority to launch a nuclear attack. I'm not saying I want the president to launch a nuclear attack, but aren't there some constitutional issues there? Doesn't the president have essentially sole authority in the ambit of national defense as long as there's
not a declaration of war? Well, he don't he's not the sole he's not the only person who can launch a nuclear weapon, right? But the specific language here mentions the president launching nuclear war. Ultimately, it does fall on the president constitution.
Is it a constitutional issue? Yeah. So, I can I can try to answer this. That's a great question. I think um uh first of all the um some when you're trying to relate the constitution uh to such as
nuclear and wait sorry um uh the fact is having sole unchecked authority is extremely dangerous. These are unprecedented weapons especially uh the kinds we have now are continuing to be uh modernized and extremely dangerous. And so that's not the only uh step to
nuclear disarmment. In addition to this, hopefully there would be multilateral disarmament. So, this would be um an issue and um we don't believe it's a it's a constitutional issue. Yeah. And the constitution says the um
Congress Well, that's for war. And whenever you throw a nuclear weapon, it's war. Stop being late. Can we go? Okay, let's let's move on. It's been a long time since we declared a war officially. Usually, it's the president does what? It's now after Okay.
Uh, okay. Let's let's move. Did we have the hearing? Yeah, we did have the hearing. Yes, you closed it. I closed it. Did he getting really late? He closed it. Okay. U, let's move on. Thank you. Next article is article 28, resolution affirming the town's
commitment to democracy. Why would we want to do that? We have no objections. Do you need any time? Yeah, we will love you. We'll stipulate that. You need more time. I I just a little bit of
time. Thank Thank you. We do want to end this meeting in the day that it started. Okay. Yeah. This would not be the first time that where I said it's nice to come before you this, you know, this morning, but not tonight. Yeah. Uh I'm Neil Gordon, precinct one
town meeting member and a member of the advisory committee. In 1969, I raised my right hand this swore ane oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath didn't come with an expiration date. And so, I asked the
select board to join with me and with Andrew Fischer, my co-patitioner. Join with us as we stand against Trump and his corrupt administration. Join with us in defense of the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. Join with us in
protecting those who are today being unfairly targeted because of their race, gender, gender expression, sexual preference, country of origin, immigration status, or other unfair, illegal, or immoral immoral
characterization. Join with us because silence is complicity and this is not a time to be silent. Petitioners were asked in the advisory committee's questionnaire. I quote, "Do you know whether town meeting previously considered any warrant
articles that address the same or similar topic?" I answered yes and quoted this from the minutes of a prior town meeting. voted that this town thinks itself happy to be always ready to add
their might, that smell spelled mi t towards withstanding any arbitrary or despotic measures which may be carried on to overthrow the constitution, referring then to the Massachusetts Constitution. Silence is complicity, but
on January 3rd, 1773, 11 months before the Boston Tea Party, Brooklyn Town meeting was not silent. We made a difference then and we can make a difference now. I asked the select board to take a stand. A stand
for democracy and the rule of law. Silence is complicity and as the advisory committee was not silent in a unanimous with two abstension uh vote a week or so ago. The select board should not be silent either. Recommend
favorable action on article 28. tell town meeting that you as the town's executive stand with the petitioners and the advisory committee in defense of the constitution, the rule of law, and all that flows from that. Silence is
complicity. Let the select board not be silenced. I thank you for your time. Okay, any questions? If you're if you don't say something, you're complicit. And if they finished Oh, I'm sorry, Andy.
Um, I won't repeat uh or I'll start by repeating the uh one comment. First of all, I'm Andrew Fischer, town meeting member, precinct 13 and co-etitioner with my colleague uh Neil Gordon.
I'm I'm going to start by repeating the quote that Neil made from the Brooklyn town meeting January 3rd, 1773, some months before the Boston Tea Party, which voted quote to add their
might towards withstanding any arbitrary or despotic measures which may be carried on to overthrow the constitution. In this case this morning, uh we had some very
specific measures uh to undermine the constitution and freedoms guaranteed in it. Um today we again confront the self-appointed monarch uh who is taking measures to overthrow our constitution.
The advisory committee suggested we initially had uh worded this in terms of defending the um uh victimized who are being victimized uh by by the occupant of the White House,
Mr. Trump. Um the advisory committee uh advised that we not list the specific grievances uh as we had in our original article and suggested that we leave it because we w
didn't know what might transpire between the time that we that the wording of the article was finalized and what Trump may do and and town meeting what uh Trump might do next. and uh Trump proved the advisory
committee correct this morning. um suggesting that uh the imprisonment of a lawful citizen holder of a green card um with a wife and children, gainfully employed
um who was imprisoned in a super cell super jail in El Salvador at the behest of the American government by mistake, as admitted by the American government um but would not be released. And not
only would he not be released, but next they would seek to come after not just uh the what they called the um uh illegal immigrants, but
the lawful immigrants that American citizens would be the next if they spoke out. Um so uh I close by reminding us of the words of Martin Neim Miller the um cleric in
Germany who said first they came uh for the socialists. Uh first they came for the ones who spoke out uh and I did not speak out and then they came but when they came for me there was no one to speak out. Um,
today Trump said that they're going to come after us next. We need to stand up to the tyranny the way our forefathers did in 1773. Otherwise, there'll be no one left to speak up for us.
Any discussion? Thank you. I Thank you. trust that we that you will follow the words of the uh or the good good advice of the advisory committee and u adopt the article 28 as
worded by the advisory committee. Thank you. Okay. Uh this is a public hearing. So definitely let's open the public hearing. Now that the chair has opened up the public hearing, if there's anyone online who wishes to comment on warrant article 28, please raise your hand using
the raise the hand feature. Or if in the room, please make your presence known. Okay, there are four individuals in the room, 15 online, and it looks like no one is indicating their desire to speak on more article 28. I'll quickly close the hearing then. Any further
discussion? Okay, let's move on to next article. Um Warren Warren article 29 resolution providing support in declaring sanctuary status for transgender non-binary and uh gender diverse
people. Do we have one of the petitioners here? Yes, the petitioner is online. I've promoted Kevin. Kevin, hello. Thank you. Uh, I will be as fast as I can be since I have about 2 hours uh up past my bedtime and wake up at
5:00 for the children. Um, hello Kevin McKenzie. Uh, live in precinct 13, chair of the, uh, whatever my acronym is, the diversity commission. Um, uh, presenting or article 29 on behalf of the petitioners tonight. Um, which has the revised title of Brooklyn as a town of
safety and protection for transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse people. Um, there is the national context which is grim at this moment. The federal government has taken a lot of steps against people that belong to this community, but as part of that, we want to reaffirm and restate the steps that
Brookline has taken in the past. So again, the national background is pretty grim across the country at state levels, let alone the federal government are taking actions to curb the rights of LGBTQ individuals, specifically transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse individuals, many of
which are focused towards children and those in the care of schools. Um, in Massachusetts itself, there are currently, depending on the tracker, eight active laws, uh, state level proposals that could impact this as well. Um, hopefully though, right, those won't
pass. But again, it's at this grim national moment where there's over 500 or 700 depending on the count of these anti-LGBTQ laws. Again, many of which are aimed at transgender children, um, it is pretty grim. And then not to mention the wave of executive orders
from the federal government um from the executive which I won't go through but there are many many that have been uh rolled out. Um and ultimately what affirming the rights of gender diverse people does is it improves their health. It leads to reductions in suicidality both attempts and ideulation. It leads
to reductions in depression anxiety and overall improvements to mental health and quality of life. Um and then again the importance of continued access to professional and safe health care at a time where that itself is also being restricted. Um in terms of Massachusetts, there has been a movement
to pass similar statements. Northampton was the first in September 24. Um and then up to recently just several days ago, Salem passed one this April uh preceded by Worcester and Boston. So hopefully Brookline will join the ranks at this soon of town meeting. I won't
walk through all the different clauses in terms of what the resolution would accomplish, but I will note that the petitioners have agreed to accept um the amendments from the advisory commission uh sorry the advisory committee and that those are reflected in the um uh version
that was in the packet for you tonight in the agenda. Um and then so far just to recount for you uh so far the article 29 has support from the advisory council of public health um from the advisory committee human services subcommittee and then the advisory committee itself
and that is all I have for you. Um thank you for your time and I'm happy to take any questions that you have. Um but you know there we go. Okay any questions? Let's open up the hearing. Okay, now that the chair has opened up the public hearing, there's no one who signed up in
advance to comment on this. If there's anyone online who wishes to speak on warrant article 29, please raise your hand using the raise hand feature or make your presence known in the room. There are three individuals online and 15 sorry three individuals in the room and 15 online and no one else is
indicating their desire to speak. Okay, close the hearing. Any further discussion? Hey, let's move on to Warren Bernard. I'm sorry. I was just going to say briefly that uh I do appreciate these whereas clauses that really highlight
the gravity of the problem. I mean 652 anti-transgender bills in 2024 alone in the US and 350 pending as of a couple months ago, including four here in Massachusetts. That's quite a bit. So
clearly I think this uh resolution is uh ripe for us to be voting on. Okay. Um any further discussion? Okay. Let's move on to the next warrant article. Warren article 30 resolution regarding the work of the
moderators committee on forms of government. Oh, this should be quick, right? Marty's online. Marty, you've been promoted. Remember Marty, it's 11:20. Marty, you're on mute.
Am I on? Yep. Yes. 11:20 a.m. Is it? It's soon going to be am. Yeah. Um before I'm I'm hoping to be under five minutes or at most five minutes and I was hoping to reserve a minute at the end in case anything comes up that I
didn't get to respond to. Um and I hope that's okay. So, I'm going to assume it might be okay and I'm going to proceed as fast as I can. So, I'm Marty Rosenthal. I'm PAX co-chair. I'm a town meeting member Precinct 9 since, believe it or not,
1978. Long ago, I was on the advisory committee, then a town leader like you all, and a chair like Bernard, then COS for about 25 years, and then blah blah blah blah blah blah. I'm not only the lead warrant article 30 petitioner but
also I'm proudly been called a harasser by the MCFG uh the moderates committee form of government and I'm one of thousands like you and formerly U5 of what war article
30 calls poster children for what governor Dukakus C war article 30 appendix A calls our quote inclusive grassroots civic engagement. End quote. One of our several 800 pound form of
government. I'm going to call that fog gorillas that MCFG's majority ignores indeed trashes. Get your pencils out. Please see appendix six and our explanations very brief high and low
lights. I'm not going to go over them now. from my history and more compellingly Denell O'Neal's C MCFG's April 9th meeting tape after 14 months of only pro city so-called
experts they had Darnell and me as too little too late city skeptic guests and I said to them and I'm going to mention this now that I'm also a poster child for the power of developers money to elect mayors because I fell with the
stellates on the rent control sword in 1985 after getting as the Brooklyn Chronicle said the highest vote count in memory 1985 and then 1988 getting tsunamied by a falsely projected 21%
property tax increase at falsely blamed on rent control and by $100,000 in 1988 money from landlords, developers, and conservatives. So see Warren article 30 explanation
page four and Michael Dukakus's statement about mayors and campaign funding. This issue exceeds even rent control as an existential threat to our community. That's why we are some some as some allege are obsessed with this.
And by the way the ballot process is deeply flawed. WA30 has in my has too much information for most people and I'm just going to highlight a couple of points. Very respectfully, the four-person majority
of MCFG was wrongly augmented by uh is wrongly augmented by our otherwise great moderator who and has been a perfect storm of unconscious bias with I would also add Stockholm syndrome by three of
its very herculean protown members who have very superly very super respectfully been too colleial to that storm. And as WA30 whereas number six says who has and what is the burden of proof?
They've never discussed that. See whereas 6 62D and explanation page two with their grossly wrong and very misleading and I've never heard of this before never
discussed quote compendium of individual reports. In fact, some of those reports have changed since they were discussed at meetings. I I believe unbeknownst to most of the committee members since the explanation, we've seen another of
Professor Barry's gigantic errors, appendix B4, page five, saying one sentence, Newton has traditional separation of powers with council authority over the budgets. That's just not true. It flunks both the state
straightface test and the smell test. It shows the majority's pathetic credibility. Like Lysia Shhatz's report saying, Newton city council members all felt their city form of government is better than our town form. For both of
those and for most of those reports, I use one of my favorites. Falsus in UNO, falsus in omnibus. Shockingly, MCFG has not only flouted the 23 Warren article 18 that created
them, but also ignores this warrant article. In my opinion, clearly disdaining our form of government. Finally, as of February 26, their eight reports had only three very parenthetical PS sentences by Sandy
Gatsby and their Warren article 30 whereas number six talks about how great has Brooklyn's government been. And that's what Sandy talked about as an addendum to an otherwise really irrelevant report. And
there's nothing at all but very disrespectful misstatements about our great executive branch like you people and the town administrator's office which unlike citizens cities has both checks and
balances against concentrated power and more accountability than cities like Boston and Newton where mayors almost never get diselected. Cities show us show us the money. Finally, this is my real finally.
Most of MCFG would say if they had enough respect for our form of government to be here that Warren Article 30 is moot. What they mean is they're assiduous assiduously ignoring it. Their moot really means to them
irrelevant, which is only telling about their majority's objectionable sentiment about our form of government. Please don't fall into the false moot trap. And for that, see also resolve number five,
a solution to the moot mooteness. I'm sorry if I went over five minutes and thank you. Thank you. Uh Neil has that will be for the public hearing. Pardon me. For the public hearing. Oh, I thought Neil was gonna speak. Yep. Neil's not a
co-itioner. Oh, sorry. Actually, he is, but Oh. Oh, I didn't see him on the list. Okay, then, Neil. Yes. Sorry. Hey, thank you, Bernard. I brought the uh I brought the short version. Uh thank you. Uh again, I'm Neil Gordon, precinct
one town media member and a member of the advisory committee. There's much wrong with the moderator committee's work. Bias oozed from a majority of their members and their guests. Tonight, I'll rebut some comments they made at their meetings. First, that our town
elections aren't about issues. Our competitive campaigns have focused on racial equity, policing, housing, and more. Current races are focused on fiscal responsibility, school funding, housing, and economic development. Another myth, incumbent advantage and
low turnover. Three years ago, every town meeting seat but for 10 seats in precinct 16 was on the ballot. When the votes were counted, a third of town meeting was new. A third at the expense of some long-term incumbents. The committee was told by moderator and
former select board chair Neil Washinsky that town meeting elections are, and I quote, beauty contests, unquote. But three years ago, he and former moderator Sandy Gatsby lost to wellorganized candidates who reached out to voters and
ran on surprise surprise issues. On a different point, town meeting diversity, which the committee ignored. Gender balance is near 5050. Town meeting is whiter than Brooklyn, but it's also blacker than Brooklyn. There are and have been more disabled members than
you'd expect, as well as more members living in subsidized housing than we'd expect. Compare that to a comparable city council. How about this one? Mayors get things done with Rebecca Stone citing Mayor Manino's saving of the
Huntington theater. I'll see her Huntington and raise her Brookline's Coolage. Is town meeting slow to respond? The committee never cited an example of a lost opportunity or failure to act in an emergency. There are numerous examples of special town
meetings called on short notice, which hasn't stopped committee members from repeating the myth that town meeting only meets twice a year. My last comment, the moderator's committee exists because of the will of town meeting. In May, town meeting will again
express its will as to whether the committee should continue its work. Petitioners ask that the committee respect town meeting our civically engaged citizen legislature. But in the words of a committee member, quote, "One of the compelling reasons why the
committee will be completing its work before town meeting, thereby mooding the Rosenthal article, is to staunch the constant flow of criticism and one might say harassment from you, meaning Mr. Rosenthal, and your comrade in arms,
likely referring to me," unquote. I can think of better ways the committee might have staunched criticism. Mar's article and related explanation are a tedious read but boil down to a simple request. Moderators committee respect the will of
town meeting and do your job. I ask you for a recommendation of favorable action on warrant article 30. I thank you for your time. Thank you. Any questions from the select board? Uh Paul. Yep. Uh thanks Neil and Marty.
Um, I actually want to talk about Neil's last comment about timing. So, the the moderator's committee is supposed to be done with their work in reporting to this town meeting. Um, and then you're the resolution's asking them to extend
their date. Is this committee going to be dissolved uh by town meeting? Are you asking it will would it be reformed? Um, I'm just I'm curious about what what this accomplish if it does pass. Is there is there still a committee to
continue? May I answer? Yes, that I I would hope you would. Well, I wasn't sure if you wanted me or Neil, but I don't know. I'm looking at both of you. Well, that's all right. But um Neil's carrying another article, so I'm taking the bonus on this one more.
Anyway, the point is I I I mentioned this briefly in my comments, but if you look at resolve clause number five, that's your answer um that that new members can be appointed and um in fact another alternative to
number five would might be a referral motion of the of the entire article. So if if I I'm guessing that the current members will not want to continue. The pro city people are happy with what
they've done, which is a bunch of reports that are don't pass the straight face test if you really read them carefully. with all due respect to somebody who's present that has praised them. But um I think they've had enough
and they've had enough from me and Neil and we had about 12 people to their public hearing. So whether it's a new committee, whether other people stay on the committee, that's going to be up to them and I I hope up to moderate assistant
moderator Karen because I've discussed with moderator Oinsky that I feel he's got too much involvement in this issue. He was the treasurer of Rebecca's group before becoming moderator and he's done things with this committee that I've
been troubled by. So Marty, did I did I hear you say that you were thinking that someone might refer your resolution to a moderator's committee? Well, that's another option. Are you looking at resolve clause number five? I have I'm
not my my eyes have stopped working about an hour ago. So um Well, do you want me to read that? Looking at my screen. No, no, no. I just I do not want you to read. I just one you I think you answered my question adequately that that your expectation is that the committee would likely be reformed,
right? Um even if it's been dissolved, right? So a lot of this is probably dependent upon what what the moderator does. Um I assume it's at his discretion as to whether the committee is dissolved or not. Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, um, once the committee's in
place, I I'm not sure what role there is for the moderate in terms of telling them when to dissolve. The the original date to dissolve was supposed to be this next well in May. But that was on the assumption there'd be a ballot question,
and that assumption is no longer true. So, I don't I believe under our bylaw uh a moderator's committee could continue if they wish no matter what the moderator thinks. But resolve clause
number five or a referral motion would solve that in any event. Okay, thanks Mike. Okay, thank you. Uh let's open up the hearing. Yes, there was no one who signed up in advance for uh this public hearing. If there's anyone who's online who wishes to speak on warrant article
30, please raise your hand using the raise the hand feature. Or if in the room, please make your presence known at this time. There are three individuals in the room, 14 online, and it looks like no one is indicating their desire to speak. Close the hearing then. Okay. Any
further discussion? Let's move on to the next item which is uh oh these are warrant articles that uh we out hearings on previously and we're voting and I see three um warrant article 23 is that
still with the approval of theou um they're going to take a look at that and and uh put it in transform it into a resolution. Uh, so they asked for your forbearance. Well, it goes back to advisory, so you don't have to vote on
it. Okay, great. Uh, warrant article 20, um, bylaw banning the sale of fois. Uh, warrant article 17, restrict the possession of firearms. Uh, anyone object to those? You do. Uh, oh, okay.
Well, I I which let's start with warrant article 20. Yeah. Is that the full graph one? Yeah. So, I'm just I I'm I'm I'm uh I've read the um the notes that we got from a couple of the businesses, what one of them
Lavoy or whatever they're called in Lavois. Lavois. Thank you. That's why I don't speak French. Um but um you know they they they make a case that it's you know it's damaging
uh to the local economy and also the the suppliers that supply them because they're dependent upon these products. Um, and it's it's for them, and I think I mentioned this at the hearing, that it many of these things are cultural in nature, and I just I I'm just
fundamentally opposed to the banning of things like this. Um, so I would be voting no action. Did you want to add something, Ch? Yes. Um there is uh or should should have been but I believe there is included in the packet the language of an amendment which is um to
be offered by among others uh people from uh at least at least one person from EDAB uh someone from the small business small business development committee um someone from the chamber of commerce and the gist of the amendment
is very simple it what commonly known as kind of a grandfather other clause uh for the legislation to apply only um in the future to you know businesses that um are not already present in Brooklyn
and purveying you know the band um uh fuagra so it would it would protect existing businesses from having to uh strip their shelves or take off their menus fuagra the petitioners agreed uh well that that's the big question of the
hour. Um, so we can't we can't vote on uh well, but I did note that um I think we have in our package um language that seems to take h have somewhat the same effect. Um but maybe I just misinterpreted it. There was there is there is there's language in our packet
that uh was being proposed by uh the chair of the small business development committee. No, I'm saying there's language in our packet that I think was um revised language by the sponsors of the petition um that uh I'd have to go back and look
at it specifically. It it almost said this is for the purpose of taking a stand on uh but not necessarily banning the sales. Um taking a stand on the product that's in our package, John. Well, well, I saw I saw a redline
version. The redline version still is still a ban. Um it is still a ban. Okay. Because it says right no person entity food service establishment. Maybe I just found it ambiguous. Self fogra or offer. Yeah it's it's um there's some edits to
the um I would I would characterize them as like clerical or cleanup edits the petitioners have proposed. Uh and then there's this proposed amendment but I don't know the status. I am not hopeful that the sponsors will uh accept the amendment because in fact there were
conversations about you know would would they do so and they um initially indicated no um and that's why individuals went ahead and prepared the amendment and it has been um submitted and I believe is on the website as a as
an amendment to be considered with the petition. Yeah. I so I so I I'll tell you what I I would like to see the article amended at a minimum to what was being proposed where uh existing businesses would be grandfathered in so they would be protected. I would support
that amendment. I'd still vote no on the article, but I would I would support amending the article. Why don't we wait until the amendments ready and and approved by the petitioners? Well, it is it's in our package. Um Okay. The petitioners have agreed. Oh, no. No, we don't know. Okay. So, so, well, we can
Well, we can make our we can make our own amendment to that. We don't need to have the petitioners agree with what we want to do, but also, you know, Mike's talking. Yeah, maybe we should do that. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, let's wait for Mike loves Rock. Yeah. Well, okay. So, we're here. I think Yeah, we have
to, I think. Okay. Uh, I'd say the same thing about War Article 17. I mean, it I'm sure that we're all in support of this, but you know, I'd rather wait for Mike to be able to And which one is that again? The the guns in Oh, yeah. We'll
just say the public safety subcommittee on in advisory had made some minor technical edits to it. You have that version in there. That was adopted by the full as well, but it's lined in the report. Okay. Okay. Okay. That leaves uh
only boards and commissions appointments. Question of appointing Francesca steps to the what my notes commission women's commission on women isn't it? Isn't it
my agenda? The yes says bow commission on women be careful line commission on women. Okay. Okay. Um, all in favor, please indicate by saying I. John Vancoyak, I um Paul Warren I. David Pearlman, I
chair votes I and that is the end of our formal meeting. Is there anyone who would like to speak? Yeah. Now, be careful though at our special end of meeting. No, it looks like there are no additional speakers. Okay. So, we ended
the meeting the same day we started it. So that's that's a uh well done victory.