All right. Good evening. We'll call to the uh Can someone mute their speaker? Yeah, that's me. That's the TA. TA like to call the select board meeting for Tuesday, June 24th, uh to order. We
have all select board members in attendance and I will quickly run through tonight's agenda. And where am I getting that echo from? Still mute button. So, we're going to lead off with community input followed by appointments and resignations. Uh
then we'll move to vote to vote to award the $2 million bond anticip anticipation note for the police station renovation project followed by the fisc year 25 endofear financial transfers with our good friends from the finance committee followed by the DPW building
presentation with our good friends for the municipal facilities committee followed by the joint meeting with town meeting study committee more good friends followed by the wetland bylaw amendment presentation with kanscom uh followed by a response to the land
use licensing discussion at our previous meeting, town administrator report, warrant and minutes approval, liaison reports, and finally end with community input. Debbie has her hand up. Okay, let's begin with let's open it up to community input first. Let me ask in the room,
does anyone have any community input? Seeing none, I will uh recognize Debbie if you could just state your name and address, please. Yes. Um Debbie Bentley, uh 128 Heels Road. Um at yesterday's planning meeting, uh one of the towns
appointed the committees announced that they had voted not to support one of the options that the planning board is currently in the process of figuring out. The next few months are going to be very intense for the planning board and our town staff as they work through the
required process of creating a zoning overlay for the MBTA communities. I strongly believe that it's time for the town boards and committees to work together. We have no time left and the and help so we help the town reach a thoroughly thought through decision. One
committee making decisions before the mandatory community review process and before the planning board has finalized the schemes is not only far from helpful, it actually undermines the whole planning process. I hope the select board will remind committees that
they have to let the planning board do their job. They can of course provide input as we all can, but they should not be voting for or against any of the different options before the planning process is completed. Thank you very much.
Thank you. May I ask which committee is taking a position? The EDSC. Thank you. Why? I don't quite understand the Well, never mind. We can follow up. Thank you. Any other community comments at the outset?
Okay. Seeing none, let's move on to appointments and resignations. We have uh I believe one employee appointment and four volunteer appointments.
Do you want me to make a motion? Please. All right. Um, oops. Hold on. I was at the end of the You got him. I move to appoint Jeffrey Katowski as the town of Carlile representative to the LOL Regional Transit Advisory Board.
Is there a second? I have no memory. Second discussion. And Jeff is our director of the COS. Okay. I know this has been previously discussed. Any additional comments from the Ryan,
from you or any other select board members? All right, seeing none, let's uh take a vote. We can do by voice vote. Yeah, just do voice vote. All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed.
Motion passes. On to the volunteers. Uh should I do all four of them together? They're all representatives to different committees. Yeah, let's do all four and if anyone has any comment, we can discuss it. Okay. I move to appoint Andrew Rogers to the agricultural commission with the term to end 2028. I
move to appoint Chris Gagas as the planning board representative to the conservation restriction advisory committee. I move to appoint Mark Lamir as the trails committee representative to the conservation restriction advisory committee. I move to appoint Sarah Smith
as the planning board representative to the historical commission. Is there a second? Second. discussion on any of these appointments. Do any of the members of the respective boards or commissions have any comment?
Okay, let's move to a voice vote. All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Great. Motion passes. So, we are moving on. This is the vote to award. I feel like this is a game show. vote to award the
$2 million bond anticipation note for the police station renovation project. Um there's a motion in the book. I don't know, Ryan, do you want to just say a few words about what this is? Yes. So Sandy, our treasurer is here to
to explain it all. Great. Hi Sandy. Hi. How are you? Um, so this is a bond anticipation note for $2 million. Um, it's for the renovation. We're going to use the money
for the renovation of the police station. Um, we received four bids. Of those four bids, Fidelity was the lowest bidder.
Um, they came in with a 5.25% interest rate, but then they gave us what they call a premium of $15,820. [Music] And that is money we can, it's like a
bonus they gave us to use to um pay down some of the costs of borrowing. Um there's always costs associated with this. So that is um it's a note that will expire
on December 19th of 2025 at which time uh we should be doing a permanent borrow for the entire amount of the police station as was voted at the annual town meeting. Thank you.
Sandy, I have just a quick question for you. I went through that document and one of one of the things that I noticed that you have certain um distribution timing that that they take place that they you have to you know use the money by certain dates. What's the penalty if
we are unable to meet that? So because the penalties are at the bond is only for 169 days. So it's up in December. Those penalties come in after one year, three years, that kind of
thing. So they're totally irrelevant. So why do they have them in there? Did that do? They wrote like all these like they're I get my head swam with all the different timelines. None of them were consistent. Why did they put us through all that? I think it's just it's
standard language. if if we took out a longer note and they just used that. So, uh Sandy, walk us through so this is only good till December. What happens between now and then? Like what are we doing bondwise?
Um, so we will probably go back out to bid with this sometime late October, early November so that on December 19th we can pay this um loan off and we will have another one
um that will be a long-term loan. The hope is that the um the elevators and the library coils will also be all rolled into one large
loan. Um and we will finance all that through this one large loan. This is kind of just cash flow for the time being, right? to keep us keep us moving along,
right? But okay, so if we didn't have the other projects, let's just say this was our only project and we yeah, we had town meeting like a month ago. Wasn't I'm sort of wondering I never questioned it before, but why why have a
ban I mean wouldn't there normally like if this was the only thing would there just normally be enough time to just bond it and not twostep it? So, we don't know the cost yet, which is why. So, you we could just pay for the and stop me if I'm wrong here, but we could just pay for this. Yeah. And then at the end of
the year square up with with a loan, but because of cash flow, we don't have enough cash on hand to pay for this project as it's going on. So, we need to increase our cash flow so we can get to the end of the year. This is a faster vehicle and it does not require hard quote. It's just a placeholder money.
No, because as you know with the contingency, we're not sure what the permanent borrow will actually end up being, but we won't also know that in December. We won't know that either. Well, she's saying the hope is that we do. We're hoping the project's done by then. Probably not. But the project's for three and a half, four million
bucks. We're borrowing 2 million. So, how does that work? so that we can we would have enough to pay for the construction part and we have enough cash flow in order to to fill the gap until we do another temporary borrow and then eventually do a permanent borrow. Okay. So are
normally like in larger projects that take longer, do you generally have the ban open for the entire part of construction? Yes. All right. Yes. Okay. Um Yep. We're also hoping that by December um the Feds have lowered the
interest rate a little bit and we get a better rate for a long-term borrow. Maybe hopefully I would take it now. I know what the Donald wants, but you know, we got a global war and who knows what. So, all right. These are so these
are good questions and I would just that we're going to be doing a lot of borrowing. Yeah. to to accomplish these projects. And we we want to make sure we're maximizing our efficiency with them to save money. So, it it is going to be a little more complicated than just doing one project at a time as we roll all this together. Yeah.
if the projects go like the the library renovation is still the timing is unclear so the coils are unclear the elevators in bid protest and so there's just all kinds of moving parts are the but the the borrowing that we would do for library is the net of what we owe
not what's been privately raised I presume that's sitting in cash somewhere so the that funding will come to the town from the donation funds and the CPC y There is a delta maybe or maybe not depending on the final design and
specifically we're talking about borrowing for the elevator and the library coils which are part of the project but our part not our part right but like the CPC sits with cash right yes you guys are sitting on a big pile of cash okay okay where's the cash
what are we earning on the cash that we have um in the banks right now I have some money markets that are earning about 4%. Okay. So, um that's not bad. The delta is not too bad then, right? Yeah. So,
they're charging us five, but the net rate is really like three. Is that what all is correct? 3.02 something. 3.0 is what I That's the yield. Yes. 3.250. 5.25. No, minus
three. Oh, minus three. Okay, that's good. I got those. So the net is 20k after the 15 rebate. Is that how you calculate that or is it So it takes the formulas that they use. I I have a
hard time understanding myself, but um the $15,820 bond proceeds, they actually deduct that from the amount of what the interest would be. So they come up with a net interest cost.
That's what I was saying. I think it's 20k. Um and that was in their um 28,000 change. So it kind of offsets some of the interest that we would have to pay. All right. Thank you. Does the is the finance committee at all
involved in this or have a recommendation or Okay, we've discussed it. Okay. This is just a Okay. It's all on us and there's nothing all the language aside there's nothing unusual or atypical about what we're doing here. Correct. This is just standard practice.
Yep. Okay. Want me to make the motion? Please. I move to approve the sale of 2 million 5.25% 25% general obligation bond anticipation note of the town dated June
30th, 2025 and payable December 19th, 2025 to Fidelity Capital Markets, if any, plus a premium of $15,820 along with the provisions provided in the select board packet. Second. I
second it. Any additional discussion? I have one more comment, question rather. Um so let's say it's I think it's 20k in interest. I can't quite follow but let's just say it's 20k in interest for the you know year. Um is that interest cost
where do we budget that? Do we budget that in the capex that we approved? That's an exciting question we've been talking about a lot. So the the debt exclusion that was passed allows us to capture those costs. So we have to accumulate our cost throughout the year
and then and paid off at the end and then that that can be added to the tax recap. So it comes from taxable dollars, but it's not part of the capex that we approved. Like it's not it's its own thing. It's just interest expense. So we've been saying the police station is
a tax on top of the average tax bill. Yeah. This year it'll be a tiny amount. I mean tiny is relative. You can say that the dollar is a lot, but um it'll come on top and then when the project really hits, that's when you'll see the full impact that we've been discussing, right? But you don't roll that into a
capitalization. You expense it as you it's a interest expense, right? Yeah. Year to year, you have to account for it. Okay. I look at the account. Okay. Okay. I'm done. Let's move to You got to vote. Do a voice vote. Yep. All in favor
say I. I. I. opposed. All right. Motion passes. We are on to the fiscal year 25 end of year financial transfers. Finance committee. Do you want to call your meeting to order? Question. Oh, please. Yes. Before you move forward, can I ask that you all sign the documents? We have to get those
out the mail first tomorrow morning. I believe I have it here. I'm serving this for hands. Oh, good. Is this it or is There's two pages here for only you to sign. And then these pages are for everyone else. So, you have them, too. What is this? Is this the same thing? I
don't see any pages. Okay. There were seven seven signature stacks. Do we sign in any order, Kelly? Doesn't matter. I just have one document we can pass around if it's Do we just sign in any order or the chair get the top? Let
the chair get the top. A bunch of blue pens. Does it have to be signed in blue ink? Reverse order. Sure. All right. while we're signing. If you want to call your front center, it goes here. Um, whoever's speaking, it would be help. Well, does it pick him up? Okay. Kelly's
going to present. So, we have to wait until Okay. If they're sitting relatively close, it's fine. All right. Okay. I'll call it to order at least. Yeah. Um, so we can do a roll call vote to open the finance committee's joint meeting.
Kachio here. Brown here. Sorry. We're missing Christine. Yeah, a couple that are missing a couple ideas back. Okay. Wait, wait. This needs Travis. He's missing a couple. That's one for her. Okay.
What did I just sign? So in seven seven wet copies of this thing. Sandy has rules. Maybe she know she'll know better than I just serving as her answer. It is a complete. All right. This needs I think Christine. That's what happens when you bring
financing. We cause a little chaos. This one's complete. I would have just won. It's you. Okay. And Travis. Travis. The last one. I think so. Nope. No. You got to add another one. What am I buying here?
Buying a police. By December. Yeah. And lightly used. Yeah. Right. A used host. Yeah. Um Ryan, what's the expected like start date or groundbreaking? So we have a kickoff meeting on Friday. Know the exact timeline on Friday. Signing the
contracts today, confirming all the documentation. Notice to proceed will be issued tomorrow. We'll have money ready to go. Good. We have not purchased the golden shovel yet. Is that what this is? Yes. I'm assuming
this is what we just signed in seven different ways. Yes. Okay. So I won't this won't be signed. All right, let's roll. Sorry for the disruption. No worries. Okay, so we are at the time of year where we start to close the year. Um, with that, we have several
departments that several departments or budget line items that either experienced an excess in funds that they can help use to support other departments that saw, you know, a negative outcome um in the fiscal year. So that's what this represents. Any positive numbers are additions to the
budget. So those are the accounts that are basically in deficit or expecting a deficit at the end of the fiscal year. Any negative numbers are numbers that represent departments which based on the high numbers that uh that were needed. We kind of pulled from a lot of
different areas this year in progress to make it whole. Net effect is zero dollars on the budget. So, it's really just a matter of kind of reorganizing what exists. Um, I don't know when it's what's the net.
So, zero. So, all the pluses and minuses are zero. So, we're not adding any money to the budget. We're not subtracting anything from the budget overall. So, if you remember from town meeting, you voted town hall line item. We have to make sure that line item is chewed up. the the big number 144 is swapped out
because of different chart changes we had this year. So, it truly is a zero number. The the ones you really want to pay attention to are the group insurance, the snow and ice, and the communications department. So, the communications department absorbed a new requirement for managed IT services for
all police computers for about $25,000. So, this could have gone into the IT budget, but the police is going to slowly absorb it or the communications department is going to absorb it over time, which is why they're overbudget. They also had a payout on July 1 of a of a long-term employee who got another
position. So, that that caused an overage there. Snow and ice. There's not much we can do about snow and ice. Um, it's a required payment. Well, you do it every year. You underbudget, right? Isn't that where you're chronically under budget for some reason? I forget. It's a legal deficit. So, you can run a deficit in that account legally. It can
be raised on the recap or if you have the funding source it makes the most sense to true it up at this stage. You can't claw it back if you overbid. Right. Correct. So you never over and luckily last couple years we haven't needed it. So this is the first time in a couple years. And then the big one is the group insurance and Medicare. This
is primarily because of people adding the adding on or coming on to the plan. And we did account we believe we accounted for this fully in the 20% increase in this year's FY26 budget. uh we knew there'd be a deficit a little higher than we thought, but
that's where we're at. So, those are the three big line items in the whole budget that are of note to you for budgeting purposes. And the negative numbers, Kelly, they are showing that those departments didn't spend as much as was allocated to
them. Correct. Okay. At this stage, they have excess funds that wouldn't be spent by the end of the year, aren't, you know, contractually obligated at the end of the year. So they'd be closed out to free cash anyway. So by making the adjustment, we can kind of correct for the overages and then if there is still
excess, it'll still close out at the end of the year. I can tell you why those overages exist on any of those lines if you're interested. DPW DBW is primarily because of vacancies. I have not been able to fill the mechanic position, right? And we've had a few
vacancies in the labor position, which which I think is a trend that's going to continue. So we've we've asked Jim to overcome some of the road maintenance and do additional road maintenance and work with those funds. But even with that, there's still that that large excess in that department. I
presume COHS similar situation. We're really working with the COS to to un so the COS has multiple revenue lines and we're trying to make sure that we're spending the non-taxable items first. So those are grants, LRTA, and a lot of it
has to do with transportation funding, which is why the finance team's been recommending that we have um some flexibility in those lines. And we've decreased them the last couple years because we think when we true up that that budget, it's going to be about where it is here
and the town hall maintenance and facilities. So that if you look at the very top of the schedule and the very bottom, you'll see those numbers are pretty close in line. when we recreated the chart of accounts in August, that's when it went live. At that point, we started kind of
maneuvering some of the accounts. So, facilities is focusing on facilities, building maintenance grounds, whereas the TA's office is managing certain contracts, you know, the water cooler, some of those other things that originally used to tuck under the town hall line. So by splitting those out,
I'm it's really an accounting movement to make it so I pick a department, I run an account, and it spits out the budget versus trying to it was all comingled before. So that's really just there's no major no major scares there. It's really
just an accounting maneuver. Okay. On the sorry contract on on the surface, it looks like, you know, we've been saying we need to, you know, we need to put in more fac there's more money, more facilities money and that's been in the
budget, but looking at this, it looks like there's $150,000 that was put in the budget for facilities that wasn't getting spent. Um, is that not the case or is that So, is that the case? Not speaking accountant, it's just it's a
classification thing. So, the um what was caught up or classified as facilities should have been town hall. So, it's really just an accounting. It's not that we are are not spending facilities. It's just where it lives in the budget. That's why they're about the same. Okay.
So, there is a $150,000 out there that was budgeted that we didn't spend on facilities. I wish there was, but that's not the case. Okay. Like an example of one of the lines would have been like computer maintenance. So, our annual contract, our monthly contract with the 20 for our computer maintenance and support that was under town hall, which
kind of fell under what's now facilities. So, by moving that out, it goes in a different account. So it's more clear what is true facilities versus other other items that are really town hall related. And so this isn't actually moving next year's budget. Next
year will still be that budget. So we won't have to do this. Correct. And if you were to look at this year compared to next year, you'll see facilities drop down quite a bit. It's mostly because of these changes. But next year, we're combining the um facilities budget between the town and
the school. At least that's the goal. So the true answer to your question, Nath, it's gonna be worse depending on how it will get better, but then it'll be better. And why not just pay for the snow and ice out of the $83,000 of Department of Public Works? So that's essentially what's happening
is because DPW was so understaffed and they had the excess funds, Jim Hall was able to say, "Hey, I have this extra. I can cover my own snow and I step to it this year." I get you can't you can't just move these things around. You need I need I need everybody to bless it. Yes. Yeah. And you to approve it. Yep.
Got it. Yep. And we're on track to close more than this to free cash by the end of the year. We're only showing what we need to cover deficits here. This isn't the full picture, right? Correct. Yep. This is just movement between accounts, but expense side is tighter than you're
used to. As as we tighten the budget, it's going to get tighter. Okay. I mean, well, what's the process here? Does is FinCom already approved this? Nope. That's why we're in joint. So, you both need to approve these transfers. Is it one vote or do each does each committee Select board first,
then comp second? Okay. I move that the select board vote pursuant to master general law chapter 34 section 33 333b approve year-end transfers between various line items of the fiscal year 2025 budget as detailed in memo from the
town accountant dated June 24th 2025. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion from the select board? Why do we go first? Mass general law. No kidding. I thought the fin and then we approve with the fincom. No. No.
No. Final final line. Okay. Uh if there's no further discussion, let's take a voice vote from the select board. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. Off to Fincom. All right. Someone want to make a motion for us.
Fin. It's right there. Suggested motion. Good eyesight. By the way, chapter 44, section 33B year end transfers between various line items of the fiscal year 2025 budget as detailed in the memo from the town
account June 24, 2025. I can see why you would do this, but it's finance committee, not select board. Oh, okay. I'm going to amend my say finance committee. Thank you. Any further discussion from finance? All right, we'll need to do a
roll call because we have someone ver virtual. I Julia I Leman I Great. Okay, so we can continue. I do have one other transfer, but it's really just a pincom vote. Okay. Are you guys You guys are moving upstairs, right? We
are. This needs to be done here. Oh, okay. Great. Um Sorry. May I? Yep. Okay. Um the police department at an earlier fincome meeting you had earmarked $35,000 to help cover the deficit due to
a retirement payout. Um based on contractual payouts that are they fluctuate yeartoyear u because they're it's a choice that the officers get to make if they get paid out for their certain vacation comp time personal time. This year there were a couple officers that opted to have the payout
option. So that increased the expenses. So our ask is a finome reserve fund transfer for $44,000 instead of the 35 to help supplement that deficit. So it's it's a $9,000 increase from what we discussed earlier this year. Yes. Okay.
But it's the same same topic topic. Thank you. What's that with us with what's that us? Anything else? So in the reserve fund I believe we still have about $58,000. So this 9,000 is actually getting offset by
the n the 9,000 that was earmarked for consom that they don't they won't need. Um so it's really that one wasn't that one wasn't voted voted. So we're we have room to use it elsewhere. Okay.
Any further questions or discussion on this? Is this the current fiscal fiscal year 25? Yeah. This is Sergeant Mac's retirement. Um he was here for a very long time which is why the pay payment is larger than normal. If anyone's wondering about that
payout, do you have language for or is it on that? I don't know that I was good enough to do that. No, it's not on here. Um I can't make a motion, but um a motion to approve a
reserve fund transfer in the amount of $44,000 to the police budget. Can I say so moved? No, I don't think that's allowed. One quick procedural. So, if we already did this earlier with the 35 and change, do we have to do only the $9,000
delta as the motion or the full 44? I wasn't at that meeting. I would amend your motion to 44,000. So, the motion should be amending the prior motion to update it to the 44. Would someone like to make a motion to
amend our prior reserve fund fund motion to 444,000 from the prior amount of the police from the reserve fund to the police budget? So move. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Do we get a roll call vote? Yeah.
Iman I. All right. So the the last date to do this is your next select board meeting, but sometimes things happen, so we didn't want to put it off, which put a ton of pressure on Kelly. She did a tremendous amount of work. This is just the end of many movements and what you
were calling Jenga, I think. Jenga. So um just appreciate Kelly's work on this. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. And Sandy and Sandy. Sy's still there. Hi, Sandy. Bye, Sandy. Thank you both. Can I bother you for one more signature? You can promise it's the last one. Just
one. You're on the left. Oh, just me. I look at this first. Okay. I didn't change anything. Thank you. I trust you. Sure. And are you guys uh closing your meeting
or just moving? Are we here for the DPW presentation now for DPW? Okay, great. It can be good. I think that you are welcome. Jerry, are you are you presenting the DPW? I guess I think you're
very lonely up here. Is MFC meeting or There are several other people, four total. Yes. Yep. So, do you want to open your meeting? I would like I'd like to call to order a meeting of the municipal facilities committee at 7:32.
You want to do a roll call vote? Do we need a roll call vote to open it? Yeah. Okay, roll call vote. Scott Jameson present. Bill, are you still there? So I
Lurman I Snell I The eyes have it. Okay. Um I'd like to kind of get things rolling by doing a little background. Um, so as most of you know, the DPW
facility started its life as an indoor horse arena. Not sure exactly when, but it came into town possession in 1980. Um, there are several problems with the building and there are probably too
numerous to mention, but I'll just go through a few of them. Um, the roof leaks, the walls leak, um, there's poor ventilation. It's hard to work on vehicles. They have to keep the doors open when they're working on vehicles.
The HVAC system, HVAC system is mostly past its useful life. The electrical system is well past its expected lifetime. There no sprinklers in the building. Um, the roof can't support a photovoltaic system.
the building is not ADA compliant. Um, when we had heavy rains in the springtime, they had a lot of flooding. Um, so the building clearly needs some help. So, approximately six inches of water inside the building that the
trucks are parked in as they're Oh, goodness. So, in light of all of these issues, we commissioned a study by Lero and Mark Anderson of Lero is here. he was a major part of that study and we asked them to look at three things. One
is what it would take to repair the existing building. Um how much it would cost to replace it with a new building and then we added on to that what it would cost to replace it
with a pre-fabricated structure. Um, and Jerry, before we get too far into it, tonight you're just presenting an initial set of options. We're Yes. In terms of the process. Yes. So, this is kind of informative. We're not necessarily getting into debating or
deliberating between options. I don't I can tell you what the MFC Yeah. selected. Um, so there are these three options and kind of the executive summary. The existing building is 7,200 square feet.
The new building, either in new construction or pre-fabricated construction, would be 9,000 square ft. So, it would get a little bigger, which would allow for additional um storage space and work space for DPW
and it the trailer would go away. Um, so the cost, the overall cost for the renovation would be just about $10 million.
The cost for all new construction would be about 14 $14 million. And the cost for a pre-fabricated structure would be 13.7 million. Um it's kind of surprising that the
difference between all new construction and prefabricated construction is not larger. Um but we're relying on the estimates that we got from our consultants. One of the differences in prefab construction is the time it takes
to do the building is somewhat less. Um, whichever path we take while the construction is going on, there'll be some cost to the DPW to rent some space to store all their equipment.
Um, that's estimated at about $122,000. That's not built into those numbers and it's kind of the same regardless of which path we take. Um, so in in in the report that that you have a copy of,
there's a rather detailed study by Lero of the state of the existing building and what they're proposing for a new building and a detailed breakout of the costs of all of those procedures.
In looking at at um the three different choices, the MFC voted unanimous unanimous unanimously to select the prefabricated structure um
for several reasons. Repairing the existing structure um will not have as long a useful lifetime as building a new structure. it doesn't get a lot of the the features that the new structure has. Like for
instance, the new structure has doors on both sides, so you can drive all the way through it. Um, which is enormously convenient. Um, so for those reasons, we we selected the pre-fabricated structure, which
provides all of the facility, all of the expanded um uses of the building and saves about $500,000 over the cost of all new construction. Um, so that's all by way of introduction. Um, Mark, are you out
there? Yes, sir. I'm turning my camera on right now. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, we can. Okay. So, great. Do you have anything you'd like to add? I think you captured it pretty well,
Jerry. And that you know the the three major pillars that we were looking at right was operational efficiency you know the town's desires to be moving uh towards net zero and keeping the environment in mind. Um
yeah those were two big ones and I think we achieved that. What was surprising to us going through the process with the folks was at the end of the day with with the costing and originally we started out with the renovation in place. We're we're looking at targeting
different systems, right? And the problem with that and why it adds up so quickly is once you attack the envelope for instance uh based upon the code that triggers updating of other systems, right? So
then you get into the snowball and you're essentially trying to create a new building with old bones, right? So you're uh the the juice is not worth the squeeze, but the price per square foot at the end of the day is actually cheaper with either
halfway to or or three with the new build if you include the site. So that was kind of a fascinating discovery for us when because we all think that or hope that renovating and upgrading what we have is is the best pathway.
So, we did I think now you have four doors. I think we're looking at seven now and they are double deep for both storage and maneuverability. So, that's that's pretty significant um and a much better work area for the crew and
sleeping orders under one roof. And uh part of this one other thing I'll add Jerry and team is that we were thinking about this through the lens of upgrading your f fuel island. I believe is that will occur around 2029. So you
know that really we wanted to look at the the site in its entirety and see how we could best serve you well into the future. And the fuel is not part of this project. That's correct. Correct. that's on the calendar for 2029. That's a big ticket item,
right? Yeah. Yeah. But um from a circula site circulation standpoint, which is pretty significant with the DPW, right? They're very large uh automobiles and whatnot. So, also fire trucks. Yep.
Also, fire trucks. Oh, yeah. Great. And Mark, did you say what the square footage ended up being? The cost for either pathway two or three. Oh, yeah. Let me tell you. One moment, please. It was the repair square foot.
It's hard to say the way it was presented because he had the trades as one like 300 and something per square foot and then he had some other line item. It's like a thousand square foot. So, yeah. All in. Right. And this includes your your GC markup, all of
that. The price per square foot for pathway one was $1,93 at 3,000 ft. And pathway two or three is 1,088. So it's is what? 1,088 per square foot. Now again, that's a it's seemingly
inflated because the GC find that so difficult. markups are included in that. How is that not There should be more than that. I think it's a little higher than that, isn't it? Because it's 136 divided by 9,000 square feet because those this so it' be 1,500 per
square foot. So our new our new u facility is bigger than 9,000 square ft. We're uh the the existing one is 7200 the EW proper. Then you have that trailer next door, right? So that brings
you up in in between 8 to 9,000 square feet for what you have today in terms of a footprint, right? But when we're the the both the new options or the new build option is a little over 10,000 square feet. It's 10,000. Okay.
So it's it's 9,000 plus plus the trailer or you get rid of the trailer. The trailer will go away. When you do per square foot, you take the total and just divide like a whole ratio, right? You know, yeah. Exclude anything from that. So, what's the
police station came in? Well, you can't really count because that's a rental. I mean, the initial fire station is is around 800 to a,000. Yeah. Less. So, why is this so expensive? It's double height. No, I No. So isn't the I will comment that at
least talking with Tecton on the fire station, they didn't they were also commenting that there's not a big cost delta between prefab and construction. But I mean if Travis is saying it's 50% higher than even a fire station. I mean a fire station seems like the most technical building we've built. Correct.
So why would this be something? That's also a a renovation slash addition. Uh true. So you're benefiting from some of the envelope. So you're taking credit for the square footage even though some of it is rena. Yeah. Okay. So this is
and and prefab not giving you any advantage. So what's the advantage of preability? Well, it is half million dollar difference. Yeah. Is it less disruption in terms of time? it. Well,
it's it's it seems reasonable to expect it to take less time, but we don't have a schedule. No, we don't like plotting. I know if you look at residential construction, prefab is significantly faster than than custom
build, right? Yeah. But this says it's this is 12 months versus the Renault of 9 months, right? Your construction time frame here. That's the estimate. Yeah. Yeah. Just I just want to make sure we're on the right numbers though because he you
you'd said it was about a thousand a square foot, but I think it's more like 1,400 a square foot. If it's 10,000 ft on 14 Yeah. Right. or 14.2 or 13.6 would be, you know, 1300
a square foot. Um maybe, you know, there's some be helpful. There's a bunch of sort of architectural sketches and then there's some obscure looking long building. It's not really clear what we're looking at, but it would be nice if you could put
those up and walk us through. Not all the detail. And the other question I have, Mark, is I mean it seems I mean it's impressive, but like we went through like four fire station meetings and we didn't have all this detail and
then this has like how many window sashes we're going to have. Like it's really detailed is part of that was we wanted to get a a accurate cost estimate and to get there you had to do a lot of you had to do the site prep. So if he pulls up the site
map, we had to think about traffic flow, how we're going to do that. Are we going to move the fuel tank facility? Like there were a lot of moving. Why didn't we do that for a fire station? It seemed like we had way less information. Well, in hopefully we've started the fire station work at this point for the
at least the sight service stuff. Again, I don't mean it critically, but we did many meetings of sort of wool gathering and deciding what we wanted to be when we grew up. And now we're at that point. Whereas this one, they just do you guys dove right in and like here are the
options, right? It just seems like I mean it it's a simpler problem I guess, but it was a much more it seems much more efficient of a process. You got A, B, and C. Here's all the detail like you know I'm just you were part of both. No, I don't know. I'm just asking part of
this and we've gone I think we did fire. I mean lesson learned. It's it's not critical of this. It's more lesson learned. like why did fire station do this and then we finally got like where we're at. Well, I I I think you can give Lero and Mark Anderson credit for that.
I'm happy to give him credit. Okay. So, it would be great if we could see some pictures here. So, yeah. May I May I walk you through it quickly? Yes, please. Um I did send a request to share or Oh, can I approve it? Yes.
All right. I'm going to share and then I would like to first just u dovetail back into the pricing comment because I I just realized something that is is the discrepancy that we're talking about. So the numbers right at
the executive summary let me do a split screen for you Sean to the beginning. Can you bring him up please? Okay, let me get back here. So, I just want to
we are we are all speaking the same thing. I'm just going to clear something up. So, on the left is the executive summary where we we took the actual estimate and then we layered on expected soft costs,
right, to make the next leg of your journey happen, right? So, A&E design fees, OPM services, owner's contingency, those those are added on top of our So, let's look at pathway 2 for example, right? We took
the 11 one and change and that's where I was looking at the square footage from not not without the soft cost. That's why Yeah. Not with the layers. That's why that's why we Yeah, I just just wanted to highlight that for you folks.
But what's industry Mark? What's industry standard? The all-in cost divided by the square footage or do you parse it out that way? Yeah, I mean we uh we wanted to we looked at it this way, right? Because uh this is this is
the the cost of your building, right? And just from a comparative analysis perspective, you know, it's you know which pathway this is really this exercise was a a kind of gives you a an accurate depiction at 3,000 ft to help
you make a decision. That's really what it is, right? We want to make sure that it's accurate enough to meet all your needs well into the future. That it's very easy to realize, but um at the end of the day, it's it's it's really a
steering tool for your community to help you make the decision you're going to in the next however long and make sure it's the best decision for you folks. So, let me uh if there's no further
questions around the front end and the overall magnitude of cost, I'll jump back to the plans. Okay, me do rotation. Okay.
Can everyone see my screen? Okay. Yep. Little small. Make it a little larger, please. Yeah, that'd be great. A little larger. Okay. So, I just wanted to give you a glimpse of where we started because this is where in terms of reality and even
though it's high level feasibility, we went through the programming exercise uh with Jim and Ryan and team. Uh we came in with more program We were very effective at trimming it so it's appropriate to Carla. I I do want to
make that point because we did cut a lot out. And uh so that gave us our out this is without square footage built in. So 9,000 square feet roughly. Right now that was
we we held four bays here at the programming stage. But once we started laying it out, which you're going to see here in a moment. So this is your current site, your current DPW facility and the the trailer for
more administrative and a weather event dwelling function, etc. So here's your 72, you know, and here's about 1,000 square feet, we'll call it. Um this is our final rectangular
footprint all in for either pathway uh two or three from a roof perspective anyway. So again we we took the fuel island which is currently located here an effort to optimize municipal and DPW
circulation. So there will be fire uh trucks, police vehicles fueling up accessing this island. So, we also wanted to kind of dedicate a some DPW work parking and uh so we did that down
here on the southeastern edge. We allotted for a few public parking spaces up at the front entry. We did maintain all your circulation arteries as they are today. Just kind of uh optimize circulation around and through the DPW
building. So in a future state going through uh going with this model, the trucks can pull through, park and continue driving through instead of uh Jim and team jockeying vehicles around as they need
to. I should I should point out the site is is severely constrained by wetlands, right? So the amount of space available is limited. Well, it's also not level, right? It's close. Close. Are you Jerry, are you planning to pave like that whole
ginormous area because a lot of it's dirt now, right? Yes, that that would be the plan. This gray shaded area where my hand is, it will be paved. Yes. Does the wetlands by the cost? No. See the
distance to the No. What is it? Yeah, but it could be considered. could be semi-p permeable or permeable paving and it it could be arranged with drainage. We just pass a wetland bylaw. You won't be able to build it anyway.
It'll be in the buffer zone. Correct. It's something to think about. Um we're already in those zones though with our current facility. Mark, is the is the paving included in the cost? Yes, it is.
Okay. And I I I included that in pathway one too, just so you folks are really looking at apples to apples. Like if you could choose to not do the site on pathway one, but at the end of the day, right, you're still
you're still patching up an old facility, right? So this is a site plan. I will uh move into a floor plan here if you will. Yeah. So, here we have uh our extra bays,
double deep drive-thru. Uh we do have a couple shortened bays here that are option optional to use for storage or otherwise. This is this is option one. We're looking at the renovation. No, this is option No, this would be two.
Yeah, two. Okay. So, so really we have um our apparatus bay all on the left side and a salmon color. our administrative and dwelling emergency dorm area on the right side connected by
a public seam. We have an entry for the public to come through on the north edge and an employee entrance from the back edge. And then in the center we have some some common supporting spaces like bathrooms,
janitor closet, it a laboratory, shower, electrical room, mechanical fire protection and then a tool room with a a mezzanine above it. So for storage or further storage. So that right hand bay is not really a bay
then, right? It's not a drive-thru bay. It's not a drive-through bay, but you could still utilize it for there are some smaller pieces of equipment um on Jim's list. Why wouldn't you just have that mezzanine thing one side or the
other so the other piece is usable as a 3/4 size bed? Not trying to understand what you mean. You see the orange block like if you moved all that down to the corner of the corner of the then you could at least have sort of more usable space on that
bed. You could put a dump truck in there or something that's not super long. Now you chopped it in half, but it's useless. The one at the bottom is useless. I presume those are so we were Yeah, I will say that this is
a feasibility study. Whoever moves forward with it, uh I don't know could be a different animal. Things things will be massaged and you're going to go through a schematic design process. Yeah. line development CDs. Uh there there may be different folks involved.
One of the things we were shooting for here was to maintain circulation around this core, right? Both from just for for ease of functionality depending upon who's working on what uh etc. Okay. But these guys are not it's all up for for
massaging, right? There's nothing fixed. Well, consultants. Yeah, they are. They employed an architect. They are. This is Yeah. Okay. That would be a separate RFP though. That's so this is this is what I call the napkin. Yeah. This is the nice the
design would be next. No, but well that was that goes back to my question earlier. If you go to the the level of detail is not napkin level of detail. All the trades and all these things. They got a lot of stuff in there. Well, our that's the way our estimators
typically work. I mean they do this. It's not that we provided them you know we provided them the reports and these plans right so but but they know the temperature and the climate for a variety of facilities the that gives
you a pretty good estimate of the cost of this building right I see and whether the building we actually build is this the next step would be a schematic design funding for a schematic design well right Yeah. Okay. Or that would be
essentially the prefab structure if we went the prefab route would be that box, right? Yes. Yes. They would give you So when we when we went after that third piece, right, we wanted to compare it against a pre fab just to see what that delta
might be. Uh what they will provide is just the shell and just a rectangle. Uh they don't they'll block or build out the fenestration openings. Um but yeah, they come in with your rib frame. Yep. Insulation.
So yeah, this is this would be the front. Um that's your entry point. The office spaces are here. Your seven uh door bays here. It's a simple shed roof design to maximize and optimize your
solar potential. Uh it's one of the reason that we did look at a variety of roof styles. We did look at a variety of roof angles too. Um, this one seems really more appropriate for the scale of building and structure.
Uh, we looked at a c couple of um skin options here with to optimize your thermal value and uh the best approach for solar attachment. Uh, this is coming around the back side. So this would be the side administrative side the
director is your break room and then it goes into the dorm sleeping areas those wrap around into your employee entrance high level question the general timeline um you're looking for so we're having this discussion
tonight I assume you're toward the end of this feasibility study stage Right. Is this kind of the end of the feasibility study? It's complete. Yes. Yeah. So, the next step in this project is putting it in the capital plan. Yep.
And well, you should keep in mind that the further out we put the project, the more the cost is going to be. Um, that's kind of a given. Um given the capital spending that we know about, then it's
up to the select board and the finance committee to determine when is the appropriate time to to initiate this project. And working back from that will initiate the actual design. Mhm. And
then that would be a multi00,000 schematic phase would be the first ask which would be the ask at Springtown meeting spring 26. Well, depends on when you want to slot it in. This is as fire station. Yeah.
The reason why you authorized your MFC, which has really been your design committee here, to do this is because it was always talked about police, fire, and then some other DPW. And we really wanted to give you what that other DPW was because it's just as impactful as
the fire station. Y and now you'll know so you can now project out cost and tax impact. Well, and what one of the things that really is in in here is what's the cost of doing nothing.
Um, we have a a deteriorating building with deteriorating systems that will cost a lot to keep going for as long as we want to nurse them along until we actually do the project to replace it.
And the trailer's gone a long way to help with with employee safety and other concerns, but the facility is not adequate for a modern DBW. Just like we we toured it. You know, police and fire. But there's a second building. What would happen to that? We looked at two
buildings, didn't we? The other shed. The other shed. Yeah. It's going to remain. And then there's a salt shed that we had looked at. That all will stay. That will stay. We'll let him let Mark go through. He's got a couple cartoons he wants to show.
Well, while you're here, I'll just I just want to show you that we did explore right off the bat a few scenarios. So, these are your napkin diagrams, you know, that you're thinking about, but we do use accurate square footages, but we were just really
looking at trying to optimize or where is the best place for the the tool node or Jim's major mechanic node. So, we looked at it in the center. Uh, keeping admin over to the right again. Uh, here's another iteration.
Very different, but you can see the the differences in in some of the vehicle sizes, right, that we're able to work with. So, some of those smaller spaces, right, gentleman asked about the validity of them. Yeah, those could be talked
through for sure, but there are some smaller pieces that can be accommodated and this is just us uh furthering the decided concept that we wanted to go with. Jerry, have you you guys are Travis? Did you do the Scott type
analysis with how many vehicles do we have? How many have to be in there and all that jazz? No. Yeah, we kind of left that up to Jim. He's got he's got some actually he's got we we went through Jim's recommendation of what vehicles there were in currently in
place, but we didn't evaluate every vehicle as a committee and say if we thought that should be in or out. Right. That's correct. Right. And to just add to that, not every vehicle fit in here, but we did over double the capacity of
storage. Right. Say that. And right now are there some DPW vehicles that are not uh under shelter? Yes. Yeah. But there also there is a storage issue of stuff that isn't vehicles. They have
plows and and sand bodies. Same like fire, right? They got a lot of stuff. You have to put the stuffs on. Yeah. But to the the question is, is some of that equipment sitting outside? And I guess the answer is yes. Go around back. You'll see it. I know
where it is. Okay. Yeah. Ask a question. Uh so pre I guess for the police no fire station the select board gave right early on like here's here's how
much money this is our cost goal. I think you haven't done that here. Is that true? No. We didn't give them a have $10 million designed via a TPW building. I Yeah, we didn't do that. And
I think that it stem from what Ryan was suggesting that we just needed to get a starting point for what this was going to cost. um you know and if the select board and other committees and the town says we need to cost engineer or we willing to do this we're trying to take
it from here and see what what's the plan what is the appetite I mean do we know like if we I'll just make something up if you took two bays out and shrunk the building by two bays and just figured out just live with it
whatever you had to do what how much less would it cost Well, this is very expensive. Obviously, you can I mean you can just do a simple ratio of looking at the size of the bay reduce. I don't know how much isability and how much is on the well or we could just bring the bays
down to zero and it would be free. I'm asking I'm asking a a very appropriate question here. We haven't seen we don't know what the requirements are. Maybe the requirement is only five. Well, go to the um the sheet with all
the vehicles, Mark. Go down to the It's later late in your packet, but there's like a big list of vehicles. I mean, I assume this is essentially a level service requirement based on the existing fleet. I just want to throw something out
there. We'll go to that list, but um to to go through that exercise you were talking about and I'm happy to Hey, if you want me to run any numbers for you, I'm happy to do that, Brian. And you can just reach out or Sherry, but I would take the square foot number without the
markups, right? This is direct trade for pathway two or three. We're at 483 square foot. And the bay are like I think 18 feet wide center to center by 80 feet wide. So that you have a rectangle there. And then we could just
play around with uh the square foot cost with that reduction. So So you ran through those numbers quickly. What's the bay dimension? Oh, uh 80 feet back to front to back. Yeah.
And then I think we're at 18 feet center to center. Okay. So, 1440 times basically 500 bucks a square foot. Yeah. Okay. So, 720,000 per day because
everything else you have to do anyway, right? Yeah. So, that would be, you know, you want to to try to recognize a quick way to do it. You know, a little under 1.5 million. Yeah. But you're giving up. I mean, it's back to kind of Lever's argument on fire station. The
most important thing is put your stuff under roof. Yeah. But again, I mean, the purpose of this exercise was to get an idea of what it would cost and looking at that and looking at what the town
wants to allocate, we can. So, Mark B, look at that list. All that stuff's got to fit somewhere. You don't have to read this. appreciate there's a lot of 31
like we said maybe some can be outside maybe no maybe winter I would think our our one of our objectives is to get everything inside I mean if you're going to do it is that different than the fire station right
it was you know it was well maybe all this stuff doesn't need to be there have to spend that much money so there there is one the fire station has one They have trucks filled with water. Yeah, they have to be in. No, I'm just saying for the fire station it was not all this
has to go in there and for this it's all has to go in there. I'm just Well, we I mean no I think there's an opportunity to put anything outside but is it wise? Right. Well, we also, you know, could have the
option of a, you know, how the um with the fire station, they came up with the idea of a separate sort of storage shed. They already have that building. I don't know exactly what that non vehicle equipment would be, whether it could go all the stuff at the bottom on the right
hand side is like it's a really a question for the select board, I think, to determine the next steps. If you think that we should value engineer or do something have a committee or I mean is this you know the the first step and
we should proceed from here. No. Yeah. I mean my view is with as Jerry Randy points out costs only go one direction right. So I think you got two $15 million projects and now it's math.
I think we got to do math now. We have about five minutes left for this agenda item. We don't do it now, but No, I know. But yeah, that would be my I think it's a good proposal. I mean, I think they actually came up with Yeah. a pretty good idea. You know, I have one
question. Yep. That when we were I think it was the trailer, but there was some site work that was being done there. There was concern about the previous use of the site and what might be uncovered. Solar panels. Were you thinking? I was
thinking we were going to put solar panels when we did the school. There was something worried about digging and what we might find. Well, I mean there if if you go there, the trailer is sitting between the building and a large hunk of
rock that could be the tip of of We don't really know what's down there, right? Because well the site was previously does this plan have to blast that out previously? Is it we don't I don't think we have money in there for blasting. Do
you have is demo? No, there there is there's there's some assumptions for that removal is is demo of the existing building it's in there right I believe. So there is some amount for for for dealing with
ledge but it's making assumptions about what's there. But I think also just taking a look at previous use of the property. Make sure any surprises. Nathan's talking about maybe there's like something.
We're going to find Jimmy. Well, because right when we were looking at the solar panels, although I thought that was primarily in the transfer station section that that was a problem, but you're right. That's a good point. I don't know where the delineation is and where the bad stuff might be. Right.
That's just my point. No, it's a good point. So, Jerry, just one last question though, back on, you have the prefab versus the, you know, I'll call it the custom build and the delta is only 500K, but you're saying the prefab meets all of your objectives. It's not You were just going with it because it's it will
it will look a little different. I mean, the the design is a building that isn't strictly a rectangle. There are little insets for doorways and things, right? Right. The prefab building will be a rectangle, right? Rectangle. Okay. So, okay. I am
still surprised that that is not a bigger delta 500k. Okay. I Yeah, me too. And we were told earlier on by our estimator that it's really a scale thing. What does that mean? Right. Yeah.
Meaning it were larger, it would cost less. You you recognize more savings. Yes. On a square. Didn't you say that the custom the custom build is a larger building, right? It's 10,000 square feet. Oh, but the prefab warehouse or something. Oh, yeah. You
drive by my area in Chelsea, they're just putting it this 100,000 foot Yeah. warehouse. Just ginormous like slabs of concrete that just like I see. Yeah, I get it. Uh, so the bull is in. Oh, I was just
going to jump in for com real quick. Y Erin, yeah. Hey, sorry to interrupt. I just want to uh point out just in follow up what Mark brought up on on sort of affordability. So, I just ran the
numbers quick on $14 million of debt. Um, not saying we'd just pay it with debt, but if we did, it's about $851,000 of debt service per year for 30 years.
If we did 30 debt at 4 and a half, that's 2.3% budget increase just for this. So, so basically, you double that if you do two buildings. Yep. just to put it in perspective
uh to support my FinCom member. There you go. So, I I think now that we have a lot more clarity about the capital requests, can we update the capital plan and merge it with the operating plan to see what tax increases would look like over the next 5 years if we did all
these things? And you know, I think we've got a pretty good idea of police and fire. Or we could have this as a variable that slots in well if we did it for 14 million two years from now this is what it would do each year here on out and and make make an assumption on opex growth like a 3% operating budget
growth over the next handful of years what would layering this on due to the average tax bill increase you know each year over five years. Yes. Because even even talking on the fire station project when we present to the town we can't
just say fire station project we also have to give people visibility into this project. It's not we don't we can't peacemeal a plan where we know oh by the way we'll be back in six months or 18 months with another we need to let people know even if we don't know the
exact number the scope of that and where we how we would tackle both. Right. Yeah, because the there's a there's an urgent need in both cases. We have to figure out how to how to manage this from a time and expense standpoint. Hey, Scott, that was going to be my question.
How did we prioritize uh fire versus DPW? Squeaky wheel. Yeah, I don't I mean I know that I know the fire station discussion has been renovation has been going on for six, seven years. Um I don't know if it's just higher
visibility. Well, we were also looking at both of them. Remember originally public committee was looking at did you find a new site and put both fire and and police together somewhere? Um right.
So I think it was being discussed earlier on. It was being discussed as part of the public safety building and then it said independent buildings and then the police was a priority and then but it was like we you can't ignore fire so you got to keep pushing that forward. So that's essentially why fire was
moving. I think it was also hope that that trailer would get us further at the DPW. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I the only reason I asked is that you know in doing this exercise I think it it was it
became clear that this is a pretty high priority item in in many people's views let's put it that way so just based on the condition of the existing building and whatnot. Yep. These have been looming urgent projects. I mean, the
other thing, Scott, was that we were um hearing from, you know, the fire chief that in order to continue to staff uh our fire department as an on call fire department, if we didn't make some changes, you know, relatively soon, it
was going to be very hard to keep attracting people to do this. And that's a very expensive proposition if you were to move to a that's another thing we're looking at is the cost to move to a career. But that's a whole another kettle of fish that we'll be getting to in the not too distant future.
Um, okay. So, with that, we're kind of at the end of our aotted time. Are there any other final comments? We'll we'll figure out what the next steps are from a select board standpoint. MFC, if there's any additional information or direction, you'll let us know. And I
think getting it all slotted um and figuring out how this could work. two projects of this general size is important in the in the short term. So that work should begin ASAP. Great. Okay. Sounds like I need a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn the um
facilities meeting. I'll second. And we need a roll call vote. Amos and I. Riso I. Snell I. Lurman I. All right. We are returning to
you want to go? Can I get a motion to adjourn? Well, I'm closing this one and then open callatri. Thank you everyone. Thank you Jerry. Thank you. We got two. We just did it.
Thank you, Mark. If not, we'll Thank you. I appreciate the study for another 20 years. So, should I move to open the uh uh meeting of the town study committee?
Yeah. Yeah. I move to uh open the meeting of the town. You're the chair, don't you? Oh, I sorry. Sorry. I am the chair. Yes. Uh, I move to uh open the uh the meeting of the town meeting study committee.
Do I have a second, Brian? Yep. Second. All right. Roll call vote. I state your name, please. Oh, Wayne. Sorry, I'm not used to this. Mr. Moderator. Watson, present. Bernstein, present.
Nancy, present. and Modell present. Okay. And Don's there too. Who? Don. Oh, Don. Drink water. Hello. Say present. Take yourself off mute. Yeah,
we can do the mute. Okay. We think you said present. So, we will open. Okay. Can't hear you. Still can't hear him. John, try to get yourself off of mute or is he present? There. There you go. All right. There you go.
Okay. So, we have 30 minutes. All right, let's dive in. Can you put the town meeting presentation up on the screen, please? Yes. Um, are we opening the next warrant tonight? Out of joint meetings today. Yeah, this is good. We're knocking them off. Knocking them off
then. Yeah, they're all done for the year after. Sorry, Dad. Just give me one sec. This one's probably the least costly. Yeah, right. I think that's a fair bet. Well, this is your last meeting of this fiscal year,
right? It is. Yeah, you're right. So, we had to do this. So, you're done for the year. Yeah. Well, perfect. Okay. The rest of the year. Oh my god. The fiscal year. Yeah. Yeah.
Almost there. Sorry. This is the PowerPoint that was in the packet. Yeah. Okay. Great. All right. You're chewing into my time, McQueen. All part of the plan.
All right. Okay. So, who want We didn't really figure out who's, but you want to u Wayne, do you want to light off or you want me to? Uh, no. I haven't looked at it. So, bottom line, right? Bottom line up front. I I think we believe or I
believe anyway that the changes we worked on had a net positive impact. Um, attendance was up. Now, one never knows if it's because of the things we did or the issues. So, but it was twice the norm, which is it'll be up again next meeting. It will be up again. Double it
again. Um, however, however, the demographic didn't change a lot. Still a lot of people who don't have children at home. And one of the things we were trying to do was tap that segment. Yeah. So, uh, generally speaking, and I'll let Nancy speak to the, uh, the survey in a
bit, but, uh, people liked having it on a Sunday afternoon. Um, the meeting went long. We know we talked about that with Wayne last meeting, and we can talk a little more today. Uh, and one point Wayne makes we would make is better prep, which we feel we did, also
leads to more debate. And maybe that's, you know, good. We don't want no debate. That's why you have town meeting. Weather was pretty nice. So I think people certainly wandered in on an casual basis. And there we did uh we also did not run a complete conflict
check. It happened to be a very big college reunion or graduation week weekend. And because my kids just are in the process of finishing high school graduation, it really wasn't on my radar screen, but we could have done a better job at that. Uh I think Wayne uh was a
proponent of an early warrant close and that was a good thing. That gave extra prep time to the people who have issues. Uh the amenities I think we tried but not didn't really uh it generated some
buzz but not really a lot of interest. And then we still have things we'll cover that we could do better on uh next time. Okay, next slide. So brief rundown of changes uh you know kind of more of the same. Closing the warrant early I would say is a yes it
did work. Board and committee reach out which was another big initiative of ours where we again with the luxury of time between the close of the warrant and the meeting. We were able to tailor uh individual meetings with boards and committees about their issues and get
them on kind of a marketing plan. I think that worked. Uh, I think Aubrey and the town staff did a great job at at uh the podcast issue of the day uh more content on the web, which we have to keep driving it that way. Uh
Wayne did this time, the first time he did a full presenters meeting all at once and I think that seemed to work well. Uh we had a reach out to Carile School, which doesn't by itself improve the meeting, but it's I think very good to get kids engaged in civics. It's a
great civics lesson. How and you how did you do that? Did you talk to specifically to a a went into the eighth grade into the uh social studies whatever they call civics class? Got it. and and um we'll I'll be
getting together with uh with the teacher Mickey Kil Martin actually in August or September this year so that there'll be more advanced planning and he made we I just did one session one 45 minute session with each section. Uh he
was potentially interested in doing a little bit more. Wayne ran a mock town meeting in the classroom and it was a the article was about banning cell phones. That's great. Yeah. I mean to me I guess
just on a personal note I think one reason I like being in town government in Carlo because it's it's a scale thing right you can really understand issues and have an impact. And I think it's a great learning experience for kids about how government runs. It's a great microcosm under underutilized in my
opinion. Did you say four students ended up going to town? This is how you reach out sometimes. So, four eighth graders went with parents to town meeting because they could get extra credit for Yeah. going to town meeting. Yeah. How many? Four. Four out of All right. So, start 70. Anecdotally, data point of
one, but my daughter's 18, so she went to town meeting to vote at my suggestion. Um, and she stayed very late and I I got home a little later than her and I'm like, man, that was a long one. and she said, "I it was actually really interesting." So, um I think some of us
can get um a little worn down by the process by the end, but you know, she found it very interesting. And so, I think there's probably other kids of that age that would similarly find it interesting. So, more outreach young could go to the high school because they college requirements. A lot of the kids
have just gotten home from college, they're 18, 19, and they I think it's great. Yeah. Good. Um, okay. So, moving along. Um, as I, as we said, the amenities, the, um, the child care we had to pull because it just wasn't enough interest to make it economically
justifiable. The food truck we also wrapped some money around because we had a guaranteed minimum and we didn't meet it. So, that's things that, you know, we tried. Um the expanded consent agenda seemed like a good thing and I think Wayne you
have an idea of maybe even being more aggressive with that in a future meeting. uh Dwayne decided to shorten the presentations from 8 to six or something like that and that seemed to work out fine and 100% electronic voting it's
been great right I think it's been yeah much more efficient and the I think the anonymity of it is really for some issues is really good to get some dissenting votes right okay next slide please all right but there are things to
do still I think um a clear timeline for premeating deadlines. And one suggestion we we have in the warrant book and we or we don't make it even in the warrant book sometimes, but the select board votes in favor of the fing. There's no
reason that we can't engage especially the relevant other committees and get their names in the warrant because people want to know, right? Instead of coming up to the mic in real time, I think it would be better. But what that requires is we us guys here have to
impose certain deadlines on those boards that have issues and say, you know, you need to make your vote by this date. Right? So that's that's a lesson learned in my opinion. Um when somebody suggested that uh all the podcast and videos that Aubrey and Ryan
did that we should be able to get uh some statistics. Nancy, was that you or was that you Mark who had the idea that that was me? Yeah, Ryan's working on Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. It's a summer project. Okay. And that's to see what who who actually watched or how many or
what. Whatever data. Yeah. We're working on the data. It's not that simple. I do know the YouTube videos collectively there was over 700 views. So, they're okay. They're being watched. Gives you an idea. I mean, part of this Go ahead. about 20% of the people who answered the
survey had either watched a video or listened to a podcast. Okay. How many people How many people Nancy actually answered the survey? Yeah. Why don't you speak to the survey, Nancy? Okay. Uh there were a
total of 109, but we closed it a little bit before the last one. So there were actually a total of 108 people who went to town meeting. There was a separate survey of people who didn't attend and that was much lower. That was um 50
about 50 people answered that survey. So you know it's not a great it's not a it's not half but it's better than And do you have any preliminary things? I know you haven't done your analysis yet. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I I I mean
There are just so many different things. I don't know. I I think one of the things that I would say is um I was actually impressed by there was a question about what people thought about the debate and I actually although there were still about a third of the people
who answered the survey who said it was tedious or a waste of my time there was another maybe 35 or 40% of people who either said they that I learned something that changed my mind or I
learned something new from the debate which I thought was kind of a a posit you know that's the argument for as Dave said why why we have town meeting so I was pleased to see that um and uh about
the other thing that I would say is that I think about the about the child care and some of the other day of things that we tried I think it's probably worth trying to find somebody who's a little bit knowledgeable about
the problem to do a deeper dive about all the complications of trying to provide child care because I read the open-ended answers. We asked parents, "What else could you what else could we do to make it easier for you to come to town meeting?" And besides saying, "It's
way too long," they had many different and I think somewhat practical suggestions about how to think about it in the future. So, I don't think we should completely drop the idea or maybe it's time to revisit the Benfield idea.
The Benfield idea being satellite. Well, one thing just to say, Nancy, we only closed the survey and Nancy still over the summer, we're going to do more analysis. She's very detailed about analysis, but um Brian, you had a theory, I get anecdotally, I guess
maybe, wasn't it, you because it was on a weekend that it made child aspect easier for a lot of people. Yeah. A lot of people need as in they didn't need child. Yeah. I mean, so for example, for my wife and I, we send my
kids to my parents for the weekend. Um, you can't do that on a Monday night. You know, Monday night, it really is only one of us can attend because everyone's got to get to bed. Um, the weekend just gives you more flexibility for for options. Yeah. Um,
Nancy, anything else you want to share right now on the survey? That's just that's all I wanted to add to what um Yep. I'm not trying to keep it secret, but we don't have too much time. Yeah. Okay. Well, we are going to Yeah. I mean, we are going to meet We're meeting a little
less frequently, but we're going to work on some things. We'll talk about at the end. Let's just finish the list. So, um on time and start. I think Wayne certainly agrees. Like, as I like to say, you know, if your flight at Logan is 2 o'clock, you
don't when do you get to the airport? Not at 2:15, right? So, we got to start when we have a quorum. I think that'll help get people start to be on time. Uh the AV side, uh you know, we still I think are under
utilizing the screen for example and all the things it could do to help us. Um there's some technical issues with that and somebody maybe it was Nancy had the idea of using PEG funds and there will be conversations this summer with the school um to get a better what we might be able to do that
um promote the so some people reported anecdotally that it was hard to find the meeting link on YouTube or Minute Man I'm not sure but that was a piece uh and then the amendment we already talked about this last time but we again select board we need to kind of be much more
for they have to have better procedure for amendments on the fly and how that works and then make sure that those amendments show up if we have it on the screen and we marked the text like that. That's clear because there was some confusion and it's reported that there was poor audio visual in the That's you
right. That was me. It was very poor. Yeah, you had to really be uh wanting to be there to hang on in the in the AV room. So there was no visual until about halfway through. I think Sue was in there. She was a hero. She's actually
got it started that the visual and then the audio was delayed. So we would see a speaker on the screen, but whoever was speaking was entirely different. We're going to get that fixed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to That's worked That's worked for the prior 30 years. So
it's not it's it's not an insoluble problem. Okay. Yeah. when why don't you take the next one because the next town meeting the one coming up will be very different than most town meetings. Do you want to say a few words? You are at the uh the moderator should move more aggressively to limit debate one. Well,
that's what some people think and some people think. Well, you but you are researching some other town options, right? You mentioned the andover model. So, yeah. You want to speak to on that? No. Okay. Okay. I'll you know I I had
some informal you know I I had the opportunity the opportunity to meet with most of the planning board members informally over old home day and I'll be I'll be uh talking um with them as well as various citizens groups in the runup
to the November town meeting and we'll we'll figure out a tailored process that will work for what we need to deal with that day. Okay. Uh and then the select board again this we mentioned you know citizen petitions we needed sort of a
better process we learned how to manage those citizen petitions I think is something we should look at and then this again I think comes from Wayne but I agree with it personally which is I believe certainly speaking for myself
I'm a select board member I should be very cautious about weighing in on my I It kind of goes back to what Debbie was saying this earlier like you shouldn't advocate for this. Well, no, you should. I mean, there's no reason why if we strongly believe in a position, we
should advocate either individually as citizens or collectively as a board and I believe that we, for example, in the uh town the town administrator bylaw, which we were clearly in favor of, right? We didn't say much. Yeah. Yeah.
And we didn't counter those arguments and so our silence I think was damaging and again I'm not here to be prescriptive but we should think about that. Good example. So anyway that's what we got and now we'll open it up for well and you you also suggest that the
meeting should be either skip that one. Yeah as I said we we went a little late. There were reasons why we went late that had nothing to do with the weather. Just we needed more time. Right. that wasn't driven by this the town meeting committee. It was a select board decision. But in hindsight, it was too
nice and it was too late and and so maybe when it's not super nice, but it is at least, you know, maybe it's right after the we do have the school break, so you have to work around that before the school breaks probably too early. And
you also don't you start to have um sports. Well, sports comes in and that but sports Sunday Sunday afternoon one reason we did consider Sunday afternoon Saturday mornings is clearly sports and Saturday and Sunday morning is often
sports and certainly church and stuff. Sunday afternoon I guess in my my experience of having young athletes for a lot of years it's not usually on Sunday afternoon. It's changing a bit. Yeah, I was going to say some but some now more May and
June than Anyway, anyway, we believe we believe it should be earlier next time. Now, so that's uh and we believe we need to pick it pretty early, right? this fall. I the I think and
Mark Mark's still here for the thing come certainly the earlier you decide it that the better is and also um particularly it it turns out that it's import and I've heard anecdotally and talking to people in the last couple of
weeks that by moving it to a Sunday it's actually especially important to publicize the date earlier right because there um there where uh any number of people I'll just call them uh town meeting veterans who love to come to
town meeting always come to town meeting and were so disappointed because they um had make travel plans and they hadn't realized when it was going to be right so we we ought to look at that calendar with relative to school vacations and other things pretty soon like pretty
soon like by the fall we ought to pick okay and get the wheels in motion because I mean going back to an earlier point establishing it early and getting expectations set for people who have articles and and compress you know I
used to sort of laugh at conquered because they were so early but it's not that stupid it's really not a bad practice to like force people to do it and I've shared with some of you but I've now gotten to experience the conquered side of things a lot this past year they do a very good job in
September here are all your key dates from now to get to town meeting and you just you pencil them on the calendar and you know what you're working with. Y and I think that's very helpful. Mhm.
I have a a comment about something that didn't come up on here, but again, anecdotally, I I heard this from a number of people, which was um and maybe it maybe it works with the food truck question, you know,
where we we had paid for we didn't use up what we had paid for is to plan a break. assume that the meeting's going to run, let's say, four hours, five hours, but you pick a time that's not
past the most, you know, the last kind of exciting vote. Um, but you pick a time that there's going to be a break and you could make it a food break where you do have a or maybe it's not a food truck, maybe it's the Girl Scout having
cookies and coffee or something. Yeah. Or something. and also allows people that want to go to the bathroom. And do you lose a few people if you do that after two hours? I think a lot depends. I'm not worried about losing the people, but I I certainly am, we talked about that quite a bit. I I am personally concerned that the mechanics of getting
people up and in line and back. It's like going to be like 45 minutes. I mean, it's going to end up being kind of I don't know. For school plays, people are in and out. They know get to the bathroom, the lights, it's all good. I think if you do intermission at a you can go through with a triangle just like
they do at the opera. I think you'd have to be very clear about what's morning business and what's afternoon business, you know, and that it's only articles 1 through 10 and whenever you're done that's when the break is and to reconvene at 1 because here um so you can plan your day but I wasn't thinking
morning. I was thinking you still start first half second. Yeah. Yeah. Act one and two and then act. Right. Right. Yeah. But be clear what's in act one and what's in act two. Right. I would just commend the committee and commend our town moderator for this. I think this
was excellent. I mean truly excellent work in your willingness to evaluate what you're currently doing and lots of times people don't want to take you know even if it's constructive criticism but just change in general and you were willing to change things up to try it
and that's exactly what I think the select board was really looking for you know more engagement from citizens and I think it you know it's working in a in some sense it's not you know 100% but I think these are good and these discussions are fantastic for making it
better and conquered went like 12 hours or something if you if you had a lot of stuff. I wouldn't use them as the model. No, no, but it's always nice to check the scoreboard. Yeah, there are things that Conquer does better at town meetings such as making motions to end
debate and just Yeah. Moving along. Moving things along. An hour on whether to use electronic voting was very painful to sit through at the Oh, at the start. But you you don't we don't have we just do it. We just Yeah, we just which is good. So Nancy, you mentioned
the Benfield model, by which I presume you mean more satellite locations, right? Oh, yeah. I'm not necessarily advocating it, but I don't want us to lose track of it because so many of the things that parents who wrote answers to
the open-ended question mentioned had to do with problems about children's snack times, about when children might need to eat or need a little bit of attention. They the the thing that people asked for was remote voting, which we know we
can't do. But the Benfield idea that we had had and then rejected for this town meeting sol resolved some of those problems without being fully remote voting. So even though it is going to turn out to
be probably a huge pain to organize, I think we ought to consider maybe not for November but maybe for next spring trying out one satellite location to see if that attracts or makes it easier for parents who want to attend to be able to
manage to do it in somebody's house. That's all. I'm not necessarily arguing that we should do it because I know it's complicated, but yeah. Okay. I have three quick points from from the staff. So, the the idea of setting these
dates even a year in advance is not is not absurd. So, the reason why most of the committees weren't able to weigh in prior is the ADU bylaw and the town administrator bylaw were not finalized until a couple weeks before the town meeting. So, if you really do want people to to weigh in and be ready for
the meeting, we have to move everything way way back and demand um so they'll demand a copy of the actual bylaw to weigh in on, but you you'll have to demand them to actually consider it prior to with the deadline. Second thing is the citizens petition is great. Like
the idea of bringing a citizen's petition staff is not talking about that, but the the mechanics of it aren't often understood. So when they submit a citizen's petition, they have circulated a a wording that everyone signed and said this is what we believe should go
before the town. After that happens, if there's changes to summaries, intent, presentations, it's almost impossible for us to to vet whether or not everyone who signed on to that petition agrees with the changes or the presentations, etc. All right. So, unless it explicitly
says this person has the right to change anything. So, I I think you solve that some somewhat by making people submit the presentation, the summary, and the citizens petition all up front without the ability to change it. That way, it
can be properly vetted and analyzed. And maybe that's a second deadline so it gives people more time. And then, um I'll just stop there. So, that's the last thing. So the the timing of things and the uh the citizens petition were
were were staff issues. We can put deadlines on those as well like process and deadlines expectations. Is that just policy? It's like policy decision. It doesn't require it's not a general law like how you submit a petition or
anything there. there is laws some so no I you're you're correct the you know the the deadline deadlines for submitting or you know so the number of number of signatures is set by the state
the deadline for submitting is really set by you when you say we're going to close the warrant um and then from there uh the rest is largely policy Um
the there is some varied practice around the the state about how much a moderator will allow uh petitioners to change the language of the motion from what was in the warrant.
And I've discussed with you previously that warrant article is really just an agenda item that you're putting notice to the public. But with a citizens petition, precisely because of this issue, um, we actually want the motion to be
pretty close to what actually was in the the petition that people signed. And I and I'm pretty conservative on that. So, that's not really the issue. The summary, you know, we can set deadlines for that. Um, controlling the presentation, that's that's a new one. I
hadn't heard that issue before, so I won't comment on it without having given it some further thought. But the summary is certainly something that we actually had in the published procedures. People were supposed to turn that in and I did I wasn't aware that there was any issue
or contention about that this time, but we'll we'll talk more about that. We we mainly had difficulties. So we were things you don't know until you try them. So the the be around the video and the podcast it was Oh. Oh. around those. Yes. What what can the um the advocates
for the petitioners say because that that hasn't been circulated and signed. So those we didn't have any problem with what was said. It's not it's more predicting things that could be a problem in the future. So, if someone's on a podcast talking about what they believe and and maybe that wasn't within what you're
talking about, the four corners of the article, it's hard for us as staff to say, well, you can't now put this video or not up because it's not really governed by Mass General. Yes, we and then they're like first amendment. Yeah, we need we need we need to look at this
and then probably talk to town council and come back on it. Yeah. And the last more practical thing, I'm sorry, remember the third thing. the if you look at problems when towns around us in big controversial articles which I anticipate MBTA being they've had to
cancel their town that's a nightmare scenario for us is there's too many people in the auditorium or the school or whatever we have set up and we have to cancel town meeting and readvertise and that type of thing because November 2nd you're running up against the December 31st timeline so we really
should overprepare and have tons of remote capacity so that we can advocate over a thousand people for this and hopefully it's overkill and everyone says we overdid it. But if we can't hold the meeting, it's a real problem. Where would we put where is
that spot? Well, the cafeteria, how much does it hold? That's we should estimate what we think for numbers at a contingency and maybe the gym and the classrooms maybe, but it's going to take a lot of work to set that up. Okay, which by the way is not the charter of
the on scope. Well, right and I would just say broadly and we'll finish there is we've extended our term an additional six months or something be we were supposed to end like next week but because of this town meeting coming up and because we had the the prior town
meeting so late we we felt that we want the time to do look at the survey we did and sort of capture those things in a report and then more or less button it up at the end of the year but we don't want to we were effectively the logistics
arm of the town meeting for this town meeting and that's not really the job that we signed for. So there is probably going to be a recommendation at the end that we might want some kind of standing town meeting committee that organizes all that kind of stuff and whether that's volunteers or a combination of
daytime and nighttime I don't know but I mean there's a lot of work as you say to a smoothly running um town meeting. Yeah. Fall is going to be wetland demo delay, MBTA, and maybe fire station. So, that's a perfect storm of people.
Okay. All right. We're a bit over our uh budgeted time. Um so, work to do. Thank you for the work that's been done. And yeah, do you want to adjourn? Yeah, I will take a motion to adjourn meeting. Second. Okay. Roll call vote. Davis. I
water I drink water. Are you still there? I thank you guys. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. You're a great committee. They're fun to work with, I have to say. All right. 8:45. The wetland biolin amendment presentation joint meeting with the cons. Are you
guys opening a meeting? Um I'm not a member of the conservation commission. Where is I volunteered to assist the commission in drafting this. But you do have two members on Melissa Melissa Webster and Dan Wells Dan Wells there.
You do not have a Yeah, he's there. So you do not have a quorum. So there is the quorum. Okay. And so who will be you'll be who will be presenting? Sia Dan. Dan. Okay. And who's Verinda? Do we know? Consum.
That's Is that somebody from KCOM? Oh, mosquito. Sorry, mosquito. Mosquito. Mosquito. So, just for the folks watching at home, can you just state your name and address please in terms of the presentation? Yes. This is
uh Ravi Part 20 Redpine Drive and I'm covering this session for the mosquito. Okay. Thank you. And then whomever's Dan, can you just state your name and address? Yes. My name is Dan Wells. I'm the vice
chair of the conservation commission 172 Woodridge Road. Okay. Um do uh I'm Melissa Webster, 358 Curve Street. Um I'm a Conscom Commissioner. Okay. Okay.
You guys want to begin? Sure. Thank you for having us tonight. I'll share my screen. So, we're here tonight. The Conservation Commission presently has a nonzoning
wetlands bylaw. It was enacted prior uh in the 1990s, I believe. It was updated with minor um language in 2015 and now being 2025, we have determined
that our bylaw does not meet up with our surrounding towns and in fact the majority of the towns in Massachusetts. Our bylaw does not provide protections beyond what is granted in the Mass Wetman's Protection
Act. And so the purpose of local bylaws is to have more stringent protection and and provide resource area protection for things that are not protected under the the state wetlands protection act. So
I'd like to thank Alex Pah who's before you. He he really took the lead and did the bulk of this work on preparing this draft bylaw. But what I'm going to do is give you kind of a a quick summary of of what's different about this bylaw and why it's important. And so this we
provided you with a summary document that just kind of explains what what are the the key and critical points of of what we're trying to add to the bylaw or include in this new bylaw.
And so the main the real main things are highlighted in yellow. So the buffer zone I'll get into an explanation of what that means. We're the current state act does not provide any protection for buffer zone as a resource area. It's
they allow work almost up to the edge of wetlands. And so we're providing like most of the majority of other bylaws in in the Commonwealth, we're actually going to treat the buffer zone as an actual resource area and there there'll
be performance standards for what work can and can't be done in the buffer zone. Um the other important additions to our new bylaw are protecting vernal pools which um again is lacking in the current state regulations and isolated
wetlands. Our so just to give you for those of you who aren't familiar with some of this terminology. So this is kind of just in carile a generic look at what um the GIS shows for some wetlands. And so as you
see these areas highlighted in green, these are considered wetlands and these blue areas are streams that are connecting the wetlands. And so under the the state regulations, which are current biologist mirrors, essentially a
wetland is protected if it borders on a stream, pond, or lake. So you can see this wetland I'm highlighting borders. It's connected to a stream. And so anything that's bordering on this stream is considered bordering vegetated
wetland. It's protected as a resource area and then accordingly it has a 100 foot buffer. So extending out 100 ft from the edge of this bordering wet wetland. Um there's a 100 foot buffer zone. That that buffer zone doesn't mean you can't
do anything in it, but it's just kind of sets the limit of the jurisdiction of the wetlands protection act and our our local bylaw. Um, in cases where it's just a stream, there's a the bank of the stream is considered a resource area and the 100 foot buffer extends from the
bank of the stream. So, using this example, there would be a 100 foot buffer that kind of wraps all the way around here. And so, anything that borders on that wetland system. So, for example, if a property owner wanted to build a house
and it fell within that 100 ft, they would have to apply for a permit under the Wetlands Protection Act and and our conservation commission, we are the ones who issued those permits and review and you know provide um feedback as to how they can meet the
standards for that permit. So, if you look over here and there's a few examples, these are wetlands. They're mapped as wetlands, but they don't border on any streams or ponds. So, it's an isolated wetland. And under the state
regs and our current bylaw, these these don't have any buffer zone. They're not protected. So, technically, someone could not only build right up next to it, but they could actually just fill it in. So, that that's kind of a a really key
feature. But the part about creating a resource area for the buffer zone so that area within a 100 feet, our new bylaw is passed would have clear performance standards for what how far from the wetland you could alter any of
the lands. And um I'll get into that the more specifics of that. So, right, as of right now, our bylaw does not prohibit you can clear essentially up to within a few feet of the wetland and as long as you comply
with the state wetlands protection act regulations, the um there's there's nothing um we can't necessarily prohibit that. Um part of why we're doing this is there's a lot of new modern science behind it that has
demonstrated the importance of buffer zones. So, um, many studies have shown, you know, there's trees that provide filtering of, you know, nutrients, um, when there's heavy storm events. They provide wildlife habitat. There's
numerous other, you know, benefits for keeping an intact buffer surrounding wetlands. And so that's that's kind of the aim of our our new bylaw is to, you know, come up to the current science
knowing that um allowing buffer zones next to wetlands to get just eliminated um can adversely affect the wetlands themselves. This is the other terminology is a vernal pool. So this is this is from one
of the the package um the items that was sent to you. But this is just an example. You may wonder what what is the vernal pool and what's so important about it. So this is just an example. There's a you can see it's got standing water. It's there all shapes and sizes,
but this is kind of a kind of a classic confined basin depression vernal pool. So this is this photo was probably taken in, you know, March or April when it's full of water. And if you can see surrounding this, there's undisturbed forest.
So what's what's important about vernal pools is there's a lot of amphibians and invertebrates that depend on these. Um the vernal pools tend to almost the majority of them dry up completely every summer. So because of that there's no
fish populations and so there's the t kind of most common amphibians that use these are spotted salamanders and woodf frogs and those are considered obligate breeding amphibians. So they depend on these fishless temporary wetlands. They come
in in late March, early April, lay their eggs in the vernal pool while it's holding water, and then the the eggs hatch, and the larve develop over the next couple months as the pool dries up. And then there's many woodf frogs and
mini salamanders that head up into the woods. So, it's very important, you know, to protect these vernal pools from being filled. the state regulations protect only the the water essentially itself. They don't um they don't protect
anything beyond the edges of the vernal pool. So again back to the current science what we know is that those species live in forested habitats and sometimes as far as over a thousand feet
from these vernal pools. So if we were to protect this vernal pool but allow alteration or removal of tree canopy close to the vernal pool then many of those animals who live in this leaf
litter you know they would be you know they would lose their habitat and the population would be reduced. So, back to our kind of summary, we're we're proposing in addition to creating a resource area
for buffer zones, we're going to create protect vernal pools as a resource area and isolated wetlands. This table here shows what our neighboring towns are doing in comparison. So we have conquered deck in
Westford, Chelford, Bilerick, Bedford. So many of the towns ex all the towns except us have a no disturb limit in the buffer zone. So conquered it's 25, many of them are 50 and you see Carlile
there's no no disturbance zone. So clearly if you just that's just looking at our immediate neighbors. This this is typical in you know the majority of towns by far in Massachusetts there's some sort of no disturbance zone and so
our bylaw is proposing a 25 foot no disturb zone from wetlands um which is those not just ordering vegetated wetlands but isolated wetlands and banks of streams and ponds. Um the there's a no structure or a no build
setback. Conquered is 50 feet 75 back in Westford again. So Carlile has none. We are proposing a 50-foot no build. So what we're proposing is not by no means radical and and in fact it's less
restrictive than many of the towns and certainly some of our immediate neighbors. It's less restrictive. So, um, Carla, we're proposing to have in our bylaw strict no disturb setback and a no build or no structure setback.
As we move on to vernal pools, as I talked about how critical they are for um, you know, breeding amphibians that depend on those, not just the the water in the pool itself, but the the forest surrounding those pools. We're proposing
a 100 ft no disturb or no touch surrounding Vernal pools. Um so this is just a quick shot of our current bylaw and you can see this section seven which is general provision presumptions and performance
standards. So it's essentially one sentence that's it 7.1. There's very it essentially says whatever the wetlands protection act says that's the rule. And so our new bylaw
has extremely detailed performance standards. We talk about the 25 foot no disturb zone, the 50 foot set uh no structure zone. So that's just for the buffer zone performance standards. We have
more detailed performance standards. Here's the vernal pool 100 foot no disturb. There's we have additional performance standards for the riverfront area. So just this section alone just adding in detailed performance standards
is a is a huge improvement over over our current bylaw. And just going up to the beginning kind of what is the purpose of our this is the current bylaw. the purpose is just like a brief paragraph. Whereas
the new bylaw, we have a very detailed purpose why we're doing this. What are the areas that we consider in our jurisdiction? So that's um it's a much more modern based on a lot of current science and
based on neighboring communities. So that's an overview of of what we're we're intending to, you know, to go all to all the different boards in the town over the the next few months to kind of give them summary of what we're doing,
why we're doing it. And um that's that's essentially it. And I can turn it over to to the board for questions. I I have a question. So about half my house is in a buffer zone right now and
a good portion of my yard. What does it mean for someone like me who has an existing structure, existing yard, existing landscaping? Um how how does this bylaw impact or not impact my current house and yard and and
how I maintain it? Live on one side of the house. Um sure. That's that's a good question. It's it's I guess I'm not sure all the the legality of you know, but certainly when if it this goes into effect at the time,
you know, anything that's already built prior to the bylaw, any changes being made are certainly not subject, you know, you wouldn't have to go back and rip out a shed or something. Um, I think this is meant to apply to new any new construction or new
alterations moving forward. Um the the bylaw also has a waiver procedure. So it there's you know there's so many different scenarios that come up and so um if for some reason our rules are too
stringent you can't you know you just can't make it work. We have a waiver procedure where you could, you know, we could allow you to work within that 25 foot zone if, you know, maybe you provide some mitigation elsewhere on
your property at planting, you know, some additional trees. Um, so it's not a we we won't consider, you know, it's 50 foot, no structure, 25 foot, no build, no no disturbed, and that's it. No, we're we're always open to,
you know, exceptions provided that, you know, you're there's there built into this bylaw, there's kind of steps and procedures as to how you would go about applying for a waiver. That hopefully that answers it. But certainly, yeah, the intent is not to go
punish people for existing conditions. You know, if you happen to have a pool within 50 ft of a wetland, you know, that's that it is what it is. I I can add a little bit to that. Um the Wetlands Protection Act and its regulations
is actually very non-specific about grandfathering. Um in this uh bylaw we've provided for specific exemptions and one of them is the
continuation and normal maintenance okay of structures and uses lawfully in existence or lawfully begun before the effective date. So if you have an existing house and it was lawful when you did it, it's going to be lawful uh
under the bylaw. Okay. Um and so this is really everything about this bylaw is perspective um for you know new applications or new work. Um, so in your
case, if we take your you have an existing house, existing landscaping, existing uses, they're all lawful, but you decide that you would like to u build a garage in the wetlands or in
the buffer zone, then that garage, I proposal, would be subject to the new bylaw. Gotcha. Um and I one of the other things as we mentioned in the in the purposes and as Dan sort
of pointed out um the bylaw has been drafted to contain as much specificity as possible in terms of you know the content of the regulations. So that one
of the purposes and as a former commissioner I can attest to the fact that you know we saw application after application after application for projects that were permittable under the act. But nobody had taken the
time and the design to look to the commission to find out how the commission applied the b the act and try to conform to that. So with the specificity of
this bylaw, the intent is that a design professional, you know, wetland scientist or engineer representing an applicant before the board can look at the bylaw and know how to comply and hopefully will come in with a compliant
project rather than putting the commission through, you know, multiple um fearing. So, some of the language that you see in the bylaw uh may sound a little wishy-washy um
but actually the terms that are used in the bylaw um are defined terms in the act and are well understood by design professionals. So it's our hope that it'll make the application
process easier for So do you in in kind of that same vein do you have so if I was thinking of a septic system for example because I think you have a 50-foot setback for the the bleaching field and so if my septic
system were to fail and I had no other location to put it I'd want to you know and there was a buffer zone area that I would have been able to put it and I wouldn't no longer be able to do it. And you're suggesting you could apply for a waiver for something like that because then I couldn't live in my house if I
didn't have a septic system. What are your standards for the waiver? And have you codified those? Yes. So, um u section 12. See, yeah, there's language um
of the draft bylaw on page six sets forth a the standards for applying for a waiver. The essence is um that um when applying for a waiver,
you're going to design it as best as possible to comply so that the waiver is minimized and then you're going to mitigate whatever adverse impacts um your inability to meet the regulations
in their entirety may have as best you can. Um, so it is at that point somewhat discretionary, but the intent is obviously you have an existing house. We don't want to throw
you out, but we want you to do the best that you can uh to comply. So earlier this evening, we took a briefing on the um MFC's plans for the DPW facility and it's surrounded by ledge and it's
expanding a facility. I mean, so very real question. I we kind of said it jokingly during the briefing, but um does the town apply for a waiver? And I we're not going to find another site for the DPW, so this kind of needs to be it.
Um that probably I'm looking at your your setback requirements and I I mean I don't I don't know that we're going to clear them all. I have no I'm sorry. I have no familiarity with apply for a waiver. Yeah. First start before this passes,
right? And how does I'm scared to ask the question. How does this apply to the uh MBTA options that are being assessed? I mean, you're trying to designate areas where you can put things, but some of
those areas may be greatly impacted by the passage of this wetlands bylaw if that were to occur. So, I don't even know. That's a rhetorical question. Let's just that cuz I don't think there's a clear answer. Well, the broader question is let's say we I want to ask about the process of passing or
putting it to the town but let's say it passes. Do we do have some level of GIS now do we publish new maps and we identify all these buffers like um you know the the image that was shown with all the I mean that's everywhere
right there's thousands probably of little wetland pockets around town. So, do we have the technology presently as in the GIS mapping to uh come up with a townwide map where the new buffers would be identified by each parcel? Maybe it's
a Sylvia question. I don't know. Well, the um what was presented, you know, the GIS is just an estimate, you know, based on it was done many years ago. And in practice, in most cases, the wetlands are more
expansive than what you know what's mapped on the GIS. So it's not a firm boundary. You know, you we could create a buffer based on the GIS, right? Um so it would be an approximate buffer zone townwide but in practice you
know we require all wetlands to be delineated by a wetland scientist and surveyed you know so it's the actual boundary is precise you know to the foot right so so you know like you know your wetlands like you know where your
wetlands are. Yeah. Well and yeah I know my buffer zone because you do know it. Yeah, because I have the property map with the buff with the existing buffer zone and it goes through my That was when you bought it, you were provided with that or how did that actually happen? Yeah. Okay. I had a
map. Okay. And it's highly likely that buffer zone and wetlands have changed the time that you've been there. Fair enough. Anytime anyone submits a filing before the commission for permitting that has to be newly every time
delineated well yeah whatever Alex you mentioned that when the people come before the commission or committee the you um have multiple meetings because you're working with them and you know you're kind of trying
to apply the wetland protection act and then you know they want something and you're you're working um is that kind of how you're describing and this would effectively give more um clarity into so you would have less impact if I'm
understanding that correctly. So in that that same vein how do you um I guess I don't know I I lost my train of thought. Sorry, I was I was
um Anyway, I'm sorry. I was there's a I mean, just Yeah. follow up. So, in my in my experience for as a former commissioner, the commission has always attempted to
work with the applicants to make their project approvable. Um and so there's that element, but there's also the element of um you know applicants coming before the
commission and the commission has a long history of not approving this or that. Um, and there's other than the experience of the engineer or design
professional previously appearing before the commission, there was no ability for them to know that. And so we've tried in this bylaw to to make it as specific as possible so
that somebody can read this and say, "Oh, okay. when I do this, I should be including in my design X, Y, and Z. Yeah. Well, I thought I what I was headed towards was what is the harm that's being inflicted at this point on
the wet? I mean, I mean, if there are people coming before you, you're working with them and how many people are being how how much harm is being done? Are is the you know these wetlands being impacted because they can come in and
you know you've had 50 applications and 49 of them have pushed the limit beyond these particular standards you're setting or have you pushed back and you know all of them and there's only one that that went through that you said oh gez that one was too close to the wetlands. I mean how how how much harm
is there currently being inflicted? Well, um, so Dan is better at the science of this, but just let me say from from the legal perspective, the commission because it does not have these standards
written into the bylaw or the regulations has felt constrained to approve projects that it would not otherwise wish to approve. Um so by way
of example um we've had um most recent example I guess was a couple of years ago tree tree cutting case very extensive tree cutting uh in the wetlands
um that the commission did not approve but we were overturned by D um because we didn't have uh independent regul regulatory authority. So that would be uh one example. Um number of cases we felt
constrained by the absence of a bylaw to improve projects that encroached very very close to the wetlands. Um and you know Dan can speak to the science of that um better than I can. Does that happen
most of the time or some of the time or none of the very little time because I'm trying to understand if if there how big the problem is that you're trying to solve. I I don't think it it's certainly not the majority. I'd say well the majority
of the projects before us are there's one one engineering firm that does a lot of the work and they know they've worked with us. they know kind of how we vote and what our our kind of uh preferences are. So, in in most cases, there's been
kind of a friendly they understand what we're likely to approve. Um, as Alex mentioned, we did, you know, it's very rare that the commission denies a project. Um but there are many instances where we know
we we if we had a firm no no build setback or no disturb setback, we would certainly it would have changed how the commission reviewed and and um probably would would not have approved. I'd say
you know not certainly less than a majority but numerous projects where as Alex said we felt constrained um per just so those of you who don't know me well I I as a profession I'm a consultant wetland scientist and
consultant so I I'm on the other side of the table presenting proposed projects to commissioner conservation commissions all over the state and so I have, you know, I firsthand I I've I prepared
these applications. I know what the other towns have for setbacks. I know what the design constraints are in these other towns. And so that's that's one main reason why I feel this is critical. Just um Carlile lags far behind the
other towns. And as Alex mentioned, it's it's helpful to the design teams to have known constraints going into project designs and not having to go back and forth and you know
risk getting projects denied. Um but have have I witnessed any well the problem with with your question well with to answer that question is we approve a project and that's the end of it. We don't we usually don't see what
happens, you know, unless it's right on a public road. We can watch the construction. We can see the wetland how it may or may not impact things. So, um, we do get a snapshot when projects get a they get a permit, they have to come
back for a certificate of compliance. So the commission or our administrator, you know, usually inspects to make sure they built the project properly as as to what we approved in our permit. But again, as part of that, there's no extensive
assessment of did any harm take place to the wetland. Um it, you know, I think it's rare in practice, but um so if somebody builds something 20 feet from the wetland that we approve, you know, is is it going to destroy the
wetland? Like, you know, it's case by case basis. But the the critical part is is the vernal pool setback where it's not just a matter of protecting the water quality or of the wetland itself. It's you're you're also protecting a
critical you know unique environment that these animals depend on and if if it gets removed then the population of these animals is going to be reduced dramatically. So um in the case I I can certainly say in
my time on the commission there's been numerous projects where work has you know we've had no no choice but to allow clearing within you know well less than 100 ft of vernal pool. Can we move to like what's the path
forward? Yeah. So this is so the um my understanding is this is basically a first look slashawareness meeting just to get it on our radar, get it on the community's radar. This will be a you're going to continue to refine the bylaw. This is not final, correct?
Um or is it? Well, I would characterize the draft as sort of the 90% mark. Um, but this will be a this will be a fall town meeting article and I'm I'm assuming there there'll be a plan to outreach, communicate, get the public
educated, all that stuff. Correct. Correct. Um, there is one step which I don't know if we need select board approval for, but it should should go to town council and I think that for sure. Sure. You don't need our
approval for that. I think so. Is there somebody in um Tom's shop that is expert on this stuff? It must be right. Yeah. So, let's get that taken care of when it's to the point where it's ready for that and then
this will just be an ongoing topic and at some point we'll take a position. Um but not tonight. There's not tons of but I mean going back to the prior meeting you know planning board's been going like you know aggressively now to try to get
it's obviously a big hot button issue but there's not tons of time here guys like to get this thing in shape and get it out and start socializing we have some big issues in fall town meeting I mean by this will bring this will bring I mean we're going to get a lot of
it may diffuse some of the other opposition but it's going to be a content. They'll be contentious. Yeah, we better wear comfortable shoes cuz he's going to be standing for another. All right. Well, you know, the comments come will be taking this to multiple boards. Yeah. To dispose people to and
we certainly will solicit comments from the public. Yeah. I think you should look at the model that Julie's doing with MBTA openhouse presentation. You It's not just the boards, it's the people have to start knowing about it. No, understood. And we took this to the,
you know, sustainability um event, right? And we manned a table and we had slides and so on and people came by and asked questions and so on. So we we started the process upward and onward Sylvia very briefly. Uh yes, it is
brief. Uh to to further answer Travis's question about what damage is done, when you have work that's really close to wetlands, you don't see the damage because if you work it with a pristine site, you sort of see what's there then.
And it if you're protecting the habitat and you um have cleared lawn up to a certain number of feet, you don't see what kind of impact that is on animals you don't even know were there before. So that's, you know, one of the
protections that we trying to have is protection for the habitat. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's going to be an exciting uh how many months to town meeting? Five. No, four and a half.
Two two months or two. You have really July. Oh, yeah. I'm just I'm just dates. Yeah. You guys Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to move on to
it. We're going to move on to response to land use licensing. Um and I'm going to open up the this section with with a statement um on my behalf uh and then I'll open it up to the select board. So, let me say
at the outset that this is my statement and not a statement that's been previously deliberated or approved by the select board. Uh the select board is very much appreciates the feedback provided by the community on conservation land use and we are committed to ensuring fair, open and transparent processes across all public
boards, commissions and committees. Since the last select board meeting, I've met with both the conservation commission chair and incoming land stewardship committee chair to discuss the concerns and complaints that have been raised and begin to identify and implement actionable steps that will be taken going forward to ensure fair and
transparent land use processes and comprehensive outreach to all stakeholders including licences, abutters, other boards and committees and more. The KNSCOM and LSC chairs are fully supportive of this effort and the select board will remain engaged with their work and continue to provide
whatever assistance and and support we can offer. In response to the specific request for the select board to intervene in land use decisions and actions taken by the KNCOM and LSC since January 1st, 2025, I'd like to present three key points. First, the
conservation land parcels in question were acquired by town meeting and are permanently protected under article 97 of the constitution of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their management falls under the jurisdiction of Kanscom, as does conservation land use and management for all of the town's
conservation land. Second, last year, KNSCOM properly voted to transfer several responsibilities to the LSC and then also voted to approve the LSC's revised charter, which now includes these new responsibilities. This transfer of responsibilities and the
revised LSC charter includes management of Carile conservation land agricultural license licenses and issuing of land use permits. Third, it is my understanding that agricultural licenses and land use permits have been properly issued by the
LSC for the Woodward Conservation Property and other parcels. LSC works with town council on the licensing process, terms, and specific language and to confirm these licenses comply with any existing conservation restrictions or other conditions. For
these reasons, it is my position that the select board has neither the grounds nor the authority to revoke, void, suspend, or otherwise override, or supersede the actions or decisions taken by either KNSCOM or the LSC. And with that, I'll open it up to the select
board for additional comment on the discussion overall or on my statement. I mean, I I agree with all of it, Scott. I mean, I I we're a small town. We need all of the relevant committees consulted, everyone nodding in the same
direction on these decisions. You can't just be moving unilaterally on any decision, any committee. I mean, we learned this as part of the library. We thought that was benign enough, raising funds. It turns out, oh, nope. People like the stairwell. Who knew?
So yeah, I I think it's a it's well stated and and I tend to I I tend to agree with it. I do think that we had a discussion the last time about land use where we talked about how the um the process with
as far as meeting posting meeting minutes and other things needs and how to run a meeting needs to be better. Um I just I guess they have to focus on it and learn a little better process but I don't think you know from what you had
said that I don't I agree that I think that our process has been followed but maybe some of the aspects of meeting minutes and how they they you know report this could be improved over time and I think we asked them to do that or at least I did at the last meeting
suggested that that should be something that those committees the land stewardship ship in particular could work on because has those procedures down pretty, you know, well in their meetings. Yeah. And I I did talk to uh Brian, the incoming land stewardship
committee chair and and and George as well. And I think there's an acknowledgement of that. I think Brian has has has that focus. And I think one of the things as a select board um as we as we look to appoint liaison, I think the uh the consom and and LSC liaison is
an important one for us and that whomever fills that role participating in those meetings, attending those meetings and also providing guidance and feedback proactively to help with with that aspect of it is important. Yep. We take
the le not yet. Not yet. Since you're here, do you want to offer a comment? Yeah. I mean, as a courtesy, a public comment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Salmon Sue, Petrop Paulo, 110 Maple Street. Yep. So, first of all, I want to say thank you
for bringing or raising visibility to the issue of conservation land management. But obviously we heard last week that there are a number of defects and I appreciate that the chairpersons of both LSC and conservation commission
openly admitted that there were defects in their process. There were failures in their um ability to understand what they were undertaking. They were illprepared for that. So with all due respect, I think the comment that was made that the
agricultural licenses particularly for Woodward were properly issued. I don't see where that's demonstrated and I'm happy to have that conversation with conservation commission or LSC where they may be able to have more of that record available. Right. But there are
things that I think I would at least we would at least like the select board and the conservation commission to be aware of. And first and foremost, the idea of the agricultural license itself. Here we are, June 24th. It's been over a month since the agricultural license was
signed. Um, there's material up on the website finally. Y, it's incomplete. If you were to look at the agricultural license, it doesn't contain all of the reference sources that tie into the license. So, today I don't think anyone can answer or understand what is the
actual deal. what did we sign up for? And so I again I go back without trying to overtake time a lot of tonight but I think there's serious defects and that's kind of where we'd like to continue the conversation and I would ask you chairperson if you know we could we can
have that because I think a healthy conversation to look at that and figure out how can we move forward you know in a way that that's productive is what is what we we'd ask for and and one last thing I'd like to say is the idea of like how this moved you know there was a
secret society meeting back in January on a Saturday. On a Saturday. You can look through the records of the conservation commission. I'm not sure that there ever was a Saturday meeting. That meeting was posted just a couple of days before. But in the December meeting, it said our next meeting will
be February. So the public's anticipation was February. They have this Saturday meeting which limited the availability of the public to participate or even know about it. And then it's not until April until minutes are posted. And by that time, you can
count at least four to five meetings, decisions, activities were made. And so it's it's very disheartening to to get to this point where it feels like unless the conservation commission and the LSC are willing to come back to the table
and really truly work in in good faith spirit that you know we're again headed down to you know another little bit of a of a circus. It's my expectation that they are. It's my expectation that um things like posting of documents and
it's something we talked about specifically tactically how do we post documents like that needs to improve um proactive outreach when you post an agenda the description of the item reaching out to stakeholders say hey
this meeting's coming up that's important liaison are important the select board liaison to the cons common LSC and vice versa is important so that the visibility is going and people can flag things to the other committees, to the public, to ADCOM, all those things,
all that outreach, proactive communication, making sure the blocking and tackling of the meeting itself and the minutes and the the documents and everything is posted properly um are all important for all committees. And quite frankly, I authored a memo in was it
March about minutes and and things because I was on the town website and it it's not limited to LSC. you know, we have a lot of volunteers doing committees and there's a lot of minutes missing and so we the select board sent out a memo to people like
please post your minutes. So it's it's it's not specific to LSC particularly but it is important. We understand the importance of it. we will as a select board and through our liaison stay on top of it and and make sure the awareness is being raised and I've I've
uh my expectation for the for the LSC chair and and for George the KNCOM chair is that they're going to be focused on this and we're going to start getting things no I think that's a great step prospectively but I you know I understand retro there may be some things that we can improve on the
execution of whatever that ultimate decision was and so the July I know the next the next uh LSC meeting is July 22nd. Um I know invitations have gone out which is a good good first step. Uh we will have at least one representative there from the select board to listen
and and and understand what's going on. And I would bring those specific concerns to there and uh you know reach out to the chair or whomever um on the committee. It's a big committee. Um and yeah, just keep raising awareness and
again as as Christine was saying, we're not a big town. These should be things that we can work out. Um, and and uh we should all be doing our best as as residents and volunteers to make sure we're looking out for our neighbor and vice versa and we're doing what our charter is, but in a way that's that's
respectful, that's that's open to input that's uh, you know, and and working with the community. So, we hear that loud and clear. No, thank you. Can I just respectfully ask just one quick one quick question? Actually, maybe two. I might want to suggest you might want to
not necessarily say that I'm in completely agreement with the Woodward ad contract because it doesn't exist. There's a reference to an exhibit B to a whole document that is completely in contradiction to everything they agree. I'm just relaying I haven't reviewed it.
I'm relaying what my understanding is. Okay. And that's something that that's something that you know raise it and and can be looked at. My understanding is that um the process they are working with legal counsel, but I'm not that's
not my uh perview to review the contracts and and do the legal work. Are you able to strongly suggest to cons LLC that they should have final legal looking at a contract? Yeah, I believe because literally there's complete contributions. So it's it's kind of a
silly contract. My understanding is complete and I don't want to go too far down this path but I do know that town council is looks at that and though the final before they sign like before they sign it because it was there's a road document over here that is not on your
website and just to comment the contradiction we're talking about is meeting minutes are where something was voted on and agreed to what's in the contract and so those discrepancies differences on property not going to happen in the meeting minutes not going to happen in the discussions
That road document says they can do sales on site. Why is that a worry? You've got the scurve on Maple Street. You don't need people coming in and out and buying flowers. Right. So, I absolutely Well, and I would I don't know. I see that you had sent this on on
June 17th to the KCOM and the land stewardship committee. So, have you gotten a reply? Have you all met since June 17th, George? No, we're meeting on Thursday. Um I don't even remember if it's actually on the docket to the We haven't
talked you your group hasn't talked about Woodward Field since LSC was No, I agree. So our our Yeah, this agenda item was our response to that. I think these these specific concerns around specific licenses should be dealt with conscom
and LSC and town council is needed. Town council respectfully respectfully I can say Mr. Well, let's I don't want to hear this. I just want I just want to be fair because we're saying, "Hey, we would like it to be on the agenda." The last time that we had sent a letter to the conservation commission, it wasn't on
the agenda. And you brought that up and said we received something between the meetings and you were kind enough to open the agenda up to that. So, I do want to recognize, you know, that it you did welcome that that conversation several months ago. And again, these are important issues. And back to my
original statement, proactive outreach raise these issues. In this case, the jurisdiction is with Conscom and the LSC. If there's legal questions or concerns, those should be raised to them and and if needed, we can involve town council. Um, that's that's the way it
should work. And and and for our part, we're going to we're going to high visibility. I'm learning a lot about land use and land permitting. Um, and it's it's it's an area of focus for us and we'll make sure that that we stay in the loop with all parties on this. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Good. Thank you. Any other comments on this the land use topic? No, sir. Very good. Let's move right into the town administrator report. Great. Uh here is my town administrator
report. So I recently held town administrator coffee hour at Clark Farm Market. It was a very nice day as they have been a lot recently and we had more than a dozen residents come by. So it was a fun conversation. You can imagine uh what the conversations were about. So right now I think it's important for you
to know the conser the conversations are centered around uh this issue that was just discussed MBTA communities initiative and your ongoing building projects. So everything that was discussed tonight is being discussed around town in and I would say an amicable way but there's a lot of
interest in these items. Speaking of that, the staff just want to just let people know that we are interested in community outreach. Whether it's coming to a kitchen table to discuss items or to help um to meet you in the community at a place like the
market or here at town hall, we're happy to to go to things. We can't go to ferns. Uh we're happy to go to things and talk about this with people. I'm not sure that everybody knows that we're willing to do that, so I'm just trying to put that out there. Um we're happy to come talk about these issues. They're extremely important and the feedback
does help all the processes improve. We'd like to report our new town hall public hours will be effective July 1, which is next week, believe it or not. So, the new hours Monday through Thursday are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Friday 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. So, these
are the public hours now. So, expanded during the the the weekday with a shorter day on Friday. This is pretty consistent with our peer towns and um municipal practices in Massachusetts. Just for reference, our current public hours are 9:00 a.m. to 3
p.m. daily. So, these expanded hours will improve access to town hall services, greater consistency across departments, and a secondary goal is to standardize our employee schedules to support long-term recruitment and accountability. So, as these department hours currently vary, July will serve as
a soft launch. So, we're asking people to um to maybe have some grace on minor delays and closings during this transition as we adjust people. And the idea here is to to grandperson in um employees who have various schedules and
have adjusted their schedules, but every new employee that's coming in will be built into this model. So, eventually it'll be very consistent for the departments that that we can control. In terms of a human resource update, the conservation administrator screening
committee interviewed four highly qualified candidates. An offer was extended and accepted today. I don't have the name for you publicly yet as they notify their employers and their family, etc., but the conservation commission will be asked to appoint this at that meeting you heard referenced for
Thursday. Oh, great. In addition, we're accepting applications for a new police officer, ideally with someone with animal control experience and um two two retirements to note. Officer Paul Smith submitted his retirement this month, as did Anish Coats, who is a longtime
employee here, who I'll talk about in a minute. Falltown meeting, we talked about this tonight, too. So, at least three bylaw proposals are expected to come before the select board in the town in the coming months. This includes the MBTA communities, the demolition delay bylaw,
and the wetland bylaw, which you dis which you discussed here tonight. I would highly suggest, I've been working with the chair, that you have the planning board and the historical commission in soon to have the same type of conversation you had tonight because it's going to be just as interesting and there'll be just as tight a timeline for
those articles. But based off community conversations and all the feedback we've gotten, all three of these are going to be significant in terms of of public communication to you. And you'll you'll appreciate having scheduled these discussions ahead of time because uh it's going to be a big push at the end.
A lot of road maintenance just completed in town. We had paving projects complete on Baldwin, Pattern, Roger, Sterns, West, and Woodridge. It's all complete. Our director, Jim Hall, who's amazing, oversaw every phase of the project, and the vendor we're working with, Newport Construction, did a great job managing
the challenging and complex narrow paving work in some of these areas. I've personally driven all the roads and confirm a noticeable improvement in ride quality and walking quality, I guess. So, the next round of road maintenance will will
definitely include Pheasant Hill. This is part of your road maintenance hearing. Last year, you you heard that Feeasant Hill hadn't been completed, and the reason it hadn't been completed is for drainage issues towards the towards the top of the road. So, we have worked with our engineers to to put out a fix for that drainage issue. And then we'll
do a top coat if it can fit in. We'll also include the facilities parking lot, which we're pretty sure will fit in. And then some parody work on Berry Corner Road and Lane. And then we have bid out Actton Street as well, just in case pricing pricing goes our way. It never does, but it might. And if it does,
we'll be able to fit it in. So, so these bids will be open on July 15th with an anticipated start and completion this fall. Two other projects of importance to you for road maintenance are the complete streets and shared streets design. We did get the shared streets design. We're
hopeful on complete streets. And if we do, we need to design the projects. This will include addressing the culvert that's at the end of church street which a lot of you marched over on Memorial Day single file because of the water that was at the end of it. Yeah. And then the westward street culvert. So,
we've negotiated with NICH to only investigate the parts that we need to to assess whether or not the current fix can be more than temporary. If it isn't, then we'll also have to include um phasing options for again permanently repairing that Westford Street culvert.
Speaking of culverts, you will finally hear about culverts at your next meeting, so you can look forward to that. I've been waiting for this one. We've been waiting for a long time. Be excited. The elevator modernization project, the contract for this has been finalized. We've had an initial kickoff meeting, but as I referenced to at our
last meeting, we are in a current bid protest. We're working with town council and the council of the protester to work through this. We expect it to complete quickly. We put in our case that we need to get this project going. Um the contractors indicated they're willing to
wait and complete this project once the bid press protest is over. Worst case here, the the state would make us rebid the project, which I actually think is favorable to us because I do believe that since everybody knows the costs now, it's definitely not going to go up.
If people want this project, brick building, HVAC, we have finalized the construction documents. Um those we expect to receive those next week and once we receive that, we'll put that project out to bid. is a $70 thou $70,000 expected investment from MFC
funds and recreation funds. So, it does not have a direct budget impact. And then our town hall bathroom renovation. If you've been upstairs, you will notice that one of the bathrooms doesn't work because it was leaking pretty heavily one day. So, we identified a pinhole leak um and had to close down that
bathroom. So, we have a temporary fix that will allow it to stay open, but we now have to add plumbing scope to the town hall bathroom project. The reason for that is the hard water that comes in. And if you remember discussions with the MFC, there's not enough room in the
mechanical room to put in the filter that's needed to solve that problem. So, we're working through all of those problems there. All the pipes are going to piece. So, the blessing of not having this project um starting means that we can expand the scope efficiently.
For building construction projects, continuing to monitor the library renovation. We recently contracted with Schwarz and Silver to provide analysis of the mechanical room and just want to point out to the board there's many stakeholders involved here. So you have the elevator, you have the library coils project, you have the mechanical room
expansion and then the actual renovation. So coordinating all these efforts has been uh complicated but all all the volunteers especially the trustees and the building committee have been great with that. So we believe we have that all contracted and worked together. So, uh, the project scope is
being adjusted and there should be some final cost estimates in front of the in front of the library soon, so we can report on that. Police station renovation, we sent out the contract for signature today. We vetted everything with the contract and we have a kickoff meeting on Friday, so maybe there'll be
some dirt flying in July. fire station renovation. I think you'll talk about later, but the the apparatus committee is reviewing the fire department's equipment for a final recommendation to you. As this uh affects square footage and the primary cost driver, this will be probably the
last piece necessary to start a um serious design process as we push towards the fall. And I'll just remind you, 90 days, 90 days to fall town meeting. So, we got to we got to push on that. I won't go over the 90 days until the warrants due. It's actually 120 till
the town meeting. The DPW building you heard about a lot tonight, so I won't go over it again, but we do need to join with the finance committee to discuss affordability and goals for affordability in order to stack these projects in order if that's the select board's current wish. I don't have any
sign approvals. You'll be disappointed to hear, so I don't have to go over those. But I would like to do a little staff recognition. So I'd like to thank Hish Coats for her more than 20 years of service to the town of Carile. She's held key roles in both the finance and human resources department, most notably supporting multiple collectors and
treasurers in managing and securing the town's finances without any incident. She's often the first staff member that new employees meet, having onboarded nearly every employee hired since 2005, including myself, her kids, including your kids. Her peers and retirees alike
consistently praise her exceptional above and beyond approach to human resources, always ensuring employees receive the benefits they need and the answers to their questions. Throughout her tenure, Hish also played a vital role in boosting town hall morale by organizing holiday parties and staff outings that made the workplace more
welcoming and enjoyable. So, while we were saddened to receive her retirement paperwork, every member of the staff understands that Honest has truly earned her time off to enjoy this next chapter. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. So, we wish her the best and I can say with
confidence that she's made the town a better place than when she first arrived, which is the sign of a great municipal employee. I have a couple dates of interest to include being out of the office next week, but as you know, my cell phone's always on. We're considering closing early on Thursday, so I'll put information about that in
anticipation of the town hall um holiday, Independence Day. There's not a lot of staff here, so we're thinking for efficiency reasons it might make sense. And then just a reminder that next two weeks from now on July 9th, the select board has an additional goals retreat
meeting scheduled. So you have a meeting on the 8th and 9th. Just getting that on your radar. And my last personal update, I will be out of the state July 31st to August 16th fighting mosquitoes at Fort Drum with little cell phone access. So I'll be appointing Aubrey as your interim and she'll be handling one of
your meetings for you, which should be fun. That is my report. I have a quick question if I may. Sure. Thank you for the report. Um, and maybe I missed this, but the fire station renovation, um, it's really more for our esteemed,
what's your acronym? I don't know what it is. Any Oh, here. The FSAC. Fac Station Apparatus Committee. No, just F apparatus assessment. You're missing a missing assessment. That's what we do. the the line about um collaborating with
a committee to engage a consultant who will review the final recommendation. Can you pardon? You're teeing me up. Yeah, perfect. Okay, because I wanted to ask Yeah. What? Yeah, I was going to do it under liaison reports, but now's a good time to do it. Um one of the things
that um that committee uh is doing is is working with um MRI. We've we've had a conversations with them. Ryan has reached out um and they're willing to to support our work in some specific areas at a rate of $135 an hour. Services not
to exceed $5,000 total is is kind of the parameters that um we've defined. So, the committee uh voted to recommend this and uh I think Ryan asked the select board to essentially authorize this and
this would use the funds um that were approved at the recent town meeting for the the current work on the the site review and design is we're not using CMS for this portion. Um Tecton remains engaged. This this would be uh authorization to to do this piece with
MRI. And so, um, I have a motion written if if someone wants to make it or if you have any questions about it. Who is Am I right? Yeah, tell us about that. Municipal resources. Uh, they did the, um, fire station staffing study in 2016. They've done some various needs assessments. They they do a lot of work
in there limited scope. Yeah, there's I mean it's again it's it's an hourly thing uh specific areas of focus and um we're putting a bound of $5,000 total on it. Yeah. and and really what what they're going to do is is give us um
their kind of third party expert uh assessment on uh the topics we've been talking around because a lot of a lot of the apparatus comes down to service level and it's you know the there aren't too many clear like you are this so you
need this it's a lot of it ends up being kind of there's basic requirements for for insurance and ISO ratings but above that it becomes a lot of discretionary and obviously with carile we don't have municipal water. We have our So, they're going to put the lens on it from their standpoint and give us their assessment.
Okay. Okay. So, there's a motion if someone wants to make it or we can have further discussion. Um, and this the goal would be to have this happen in the next three weeks. So, we're targeting Yeah. July as we talked about. Committee's meeting weekly and actually we're meeting twice a week this week.
We're going to meet Thursday to review some of this with MRI. But we're we're we're moving. We understand the requirements. I have another thought that um I'll bring forward around potentially adding a meeting date at the end of July before Ryan goes on his break, but we can have that discussion
and and so that the goal will be that as of sometime in August we're able to give back to tecton tecton sort of a revised revised guidance or whatever so they can revise the the concepts and and the
scope so that we can um refine that to the point we go to town meeting and ask for design funding in the fall and they've been at every meeting that that we're uh attending. So, they're getting all the discussion points along the way as well. So, they're it's not like they're we're going to come at them with
some some new information. They're they're part which which has been which I think will be helpful. Yeah, I do too. And one other question about CMS. So, are we are they are have they have we suspended paying them their for for the
time being or are they still getting their monthly fee? They are still getting their monthly fee. And so, are we getting any uh value? Yeah. Are they producing anything
for us or how how is that supposed to how is that working? They're still helping us manage the product. I don't know how much involved they are in the current phase. They're not involved in any of the work we're doing on this committee. I don't know if they're involved at all in any of the
site review stuff. That's kind of the main goal. Um but they're not involved. I don't think there's any activity at the moment. Everybody's waiting for this. Right. Right. I mean, they are working on the police station, right? Yeah. That's different. That's a whole separate track, right? Yeah.
Well, so who does it make sense for you to talk with them or is that something where the select board needs to ask for some kind of a I don't know update on what they've actually been doing in exchange for the fee or
I will see them on Friday and I'll talk to them. Okay. I I would just say as a select board member, I think it'd be important that at our July 8th regular meeting, we are we receive something that says here's
what we've been doing since we kind of halted everything to start this new committee. And question I guess is if there's not very much on that list, is it appropriate for them to be charging us? You know what they're charging us? So if I just want to hear
something back on the ETH. Yeah. Okay. And and not only that, but between between the ETH and the um fall town meeting, right? What is the what is their role and contribution? I mean the Tecton is engaged and they're providing
support as we need it, attending the meetings and if I have questions or you know Matt Salad and and those guys are happy to meet whenever. So they've been from my standpoint adding what what I would expect from them but there's been no involvement nor have I asked for any
involvement or any of us from CMS. Our understanding is they are not involved in this because they're just it's not it's not their role. So well we the I guess one question is once we do have a new design what role do they see themselves playing in terms of outreach organizing
community meetings you know some of the stuff that going to be doing most of that. It'll be mostly techon. So yeah, I mean they have a whole they have a the person I've talked with about some of the things we pursued looking at. Um they have a whole kind of set of
materials and support for that. So my may CMS may be involved in some level but my expectation is Techtown's going to um heavily support that do the actual meetings too be there. So I think we need to understand that better. Thank you Barney. Yep. Yeah. Okay. I'm happy
to make this motion about the consultant. Okay. Thank you. Uh, I move that the select board authorize the town administrator to sign an agreement with MRI to support the work of the fire apparatus assessment committee at a rate
of $135 per hour with services not to exceed a total of $5,000. Is there a second? Second. Any more discussion? All in favor? I. All opposed? Motion passes. Great.
I had a question about back on the uh brick building. 70k to put in an air conditioner is expensive. That sounds a little building, right? Telling you, okay, prices are going up
everywhere and we've evaluated it from multiple ways doing it. That's what I wanted to know. And this is a I I I'd have to go back to my notes, but I think it's a the less green of the options. Um, so those are much more expensive
options. 220,000 that we were trying to the building isn't worth that much. You're trying to pay for with green communities funding. Yeah. So the requirements to meet the green communities were it was cheaper, but it was not worth it. So I hear you. You need to HVAC if you're uh looking
for Yeah. Okay. some money limitless. If you guys have looked at it, I'm I'm fine. I just was blown away by that number. The HVAC is a It requires new new electrical service and it's not just a system. It's
a complete rewiring. Yeah. Mostly because of the kiln. We've been talking about this for a year, so I can really go on. My kids have fired stuff in that kiln. And and you'll be happy to know Stephen Conerney who is our facilities director of at the school but is now kind of jointly we're
trying to meld them in to be over the umbrella which he is of you know handling both had really dove into this and came up with a couple of other options and those were then reviewed by the MFC as well. Great. Okay.
Okay. Move on. Moving on. So warrant and minute approvals May 13th and June 11th. We don't need to approve warrants. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, no warrants. I guess it's warrants. Warrants and minutes approved. I'm just reading what I mean. The warrants are in there, but we don't we just you just
review them and if somebody has a question, we could Yeah, but it's the minutes. I move to approve the minutes May 13th. My computer's just about to die. Mine just shut off. Yeah. May 13th,
2025 and June 11th, 2025. accept those minutes. Uh is there a second for the motion? Second. Okay. Any discussion or no? Seeing none, uh let's do a voice vote. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh leaison reports. So listed
under here was assignments, but we're not doing assignments, correct? Tonight. That's what I wanted. So there wasn't any liaison assignment list, right? I have the list. We can do it on the eth. Yeah, we should do it on do it soon. Yeah. Can and you if you can send me that list and um have has everybody sort
of put in uh preferences or it's the cheer's job he gives. Yeah. So, okay, David, that's what you're going to get. I already got the crappiest one. You can't you already giving me the
good play, dude. Yeah, I know. I was wonder which one's the crappier. I said I'm not. They know. Um, we talked about the any any other liaison reports? I'll say just briefly that I was part of the uh
kickoff meeting for the hydraology study which the planning board No, it's very exciting. Is actually doing the MBTA. Oh, you know the zones and actually doing a hydrarology study with Worley and whatever. Yeah, I think it's pretty
good. I mean, it's going to be a good good project. if you give us there's no way to get like complete data but you're at least narrowing to some specific areas that could support and what taking available I mean we really need to learn how to leverage the
hodgepodge of legacy data that there is a lot of it has been digitized but it's spotty it the way you did you know a well test in 1980 is not how you do it now so it's not it's not all clean but we got to learn to do that because it's there you know so it's actually I think
it's going to be and when will that done like what's the time general time that's pretty quick I think just in time for all these other it would not be in time for that that was asked okay I don't know how that would impact it but I'm sure it would um any other leazison
reports if not um any final brief community comment John is on great all right seeing none um can I get a motion to adjurnn so moved all in favor A second. Someone needs a second.
Second. All in favor? I. All right. Thank you everyone. Thank you.