all right I'd like to uh call to get order the uh select board meeting for uh February 11th and our plan is to go into executive session and then return at 7 p.m. um do you have a motion to that
effect yes um I move that um pursuant to Mass General law 30A paragraph 21 reason three that is to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or
litigating position of the public body Massachusetts Coalition of police local 2011 and 201a uh I move that we enter executive session and return uh to open session uh
beginning at 7 p.m. second all right all in favor I oh a roll call vote okay roll call vote Arnold I who's Reed I Snell I triola I and Mr Modell is not present at the moment there he I he voted I all right do you
have to do roll call for executive session yes all right we're going into our microphones on okay good all right so the select board is reconvening from having just been an executive s session um we typically begin with Community input and then we hold we're
holding the joint meeting with the school committee and we have other items including SE Cemetery task force cultural Council and conquered 250th discussion on our agenda tonight um the school committee is here so we'd like to do that but I do have an open session
for public comment the way we do public comment is I would ask that you uh ask me uh for uh recognition state your name and address in carile or wherever and uh I'll give you between one to two minutes
at my discretion are there any public comments at this point in time we also have public comment at the end of our meeting as well all right seeing n oh oh all right well that's a comment
so we like those kind of commity comments is there is there anyone else U online who would like to make a public comment okay seeing none I would ask is the school committee uh have you opened your session yet we have not you have
not well if you'd like to welcome we thank you for coming to our meeting thank you thank you so um Sharon Wht school committee chair I call a meeting to order um at what's the time here 709 709 thank
you and just for the the record all present members are present great um so we were going to begin this executive sorry this uh joint meeting to discuss the vacant school committee position appointment and we
had uh two candidates who were interested in this appointment and one has uh withdrawn her application effectively today so we only have one candidate um who is applying for this
position and Sharon Whit and I have spoken and decided we would go through a process and we will kind of continue that process which is just that we are going to ask the um the candidate to answer three questions which were
provided to the candidates prior to this um this meeting and if there are any additional questions because this is a joint meeting you can feel free to you know chime in or ask us as chairs if you you know have a particular question
you'd like to ask of the candidate so um i' I see the candidate is here um James steel um James if you wouldn't mind coming forward just because we need a microphone maybe you can sit with the school committee there or somewhere because then they can hear you on the
microphone um Sharon do you happen to have the questions handy I do oh perfect perfect well James does I I have them but I just don't have them oh you have right there all
right Sharon you mind if I go and read them sure that's fine okay so we'll start um so again thank you for your willingness to volunteer we'd like to use this opportunity to learn more about you as a candidate um specifically the three questions we want would like you
to address first we'll just take them in order and you can answer them after um why do you feel now is the right time for you to serve on the school committee what do you hope to achieve or be involved in during your tenure that's the first question so I've thought about
this in the past about participating at at this level a broader level and now seems the right time I have two children in the elementary school in third and fourth grade they've sort of reached an age where uh they're a little more self-reliant I work part-time we've
structured it that way in our fam such that I'm able to manage kids and a bit of work and a house so as sort of the right time my kids are still in and it will be Carlile for another five years six years uh was the right
time and the second part of that question so I don't come here with an agenda of joining the board I I don't have any pet projects or an agenda other than I'd like to have more Community involvement more service to my community and help Shepherd it through carefully and
thoughtfully the school committee I'm pretty passionate about our school I love the education my kids are getting and being part of it and I'd like to help Shepherd it along for a little while and offer what I can great are there any other related questions to that or should we move on
to the next and follow okay um question number two if you were speaking to a family interested in moving to carile with young children how would you describe the school system to them I thought about that one a lot and I always come back to when we first moved
here before we got pregnant right before moved here and I did a farm share at Clark Farm my first summer year we didn't know anybody and it's not super easy to meet people when you uh we found out and for picking green beans and
strawberries I remember no less than three people starting an introduction was saying do you have kids in school we said no not yet I said well that's going to change when you have kids in school it will change it'll meet people they sort of understood my plate that we were kind of alone so they were right turns
out they were right I um really appreciate our school system I think it is I don't have a lot to compare it to this is the first time I've been through this but I have met such a caring thoughtful bunch of teachers and staff
and administrators I've had an opportunity to be involved in some of the Committees and I've really been pleasantly surprised get getting to peek behind the curtain a little bit to see how they really operate and personally I my son has had a little bit
of trouble with reading and a couple of things and to have Educators step forward and and identify that and help Shepherd us through that process compared to what I hear from parents and other school districts that have to fight and Claw to sort of get
help it it just speaks a lot to I think the commitment that this town has to the school Co you know that was my my daughter started kindergarten in the fall of 20 and the way that we handled that seems unprecedented for what
happened around town and that's something to be proud of and so I I think it's a pretty easy sell to uh to sell our school to people who I moved here because we were going to have a family that's why we were here we knew about the school and so that's why we're here it's a pretty easy sell I think
that's kind of how I'd frame it great you follow up on that okay um so the last question question uh Massachusetts schools are facing a variety of fiscal challenges as they seek to manage Rising costs while
maintaining sustainable budget increases how would you work with the school committee Administration and town to develop a school budget that meets both the needs of the school community and carile taxpayers as a whole a very
expensive question um so I've not worked with any of those groups before but I'm a 20 plus year years as a business lawyer my business lawyer I've been an in-house counsel so I am largely a business person who wears a lawyer's hat through my
negotiations I'm a trained mediator and I've uh mediated through the wuber court for years so I like negotiating so that part of the question I enjoy that that's my that's what I've been trained to do to parse out to listen to move forward
to problem solve so that's what I've been trained to do and that's what I do every day in my job job um as for the fact that it's around finances I really believe that financial literacy and uh thoughtful budgeting is belongs
in the home and through all levels of government and I think the best answers come when everybody's involved and what I've seen from successful negotiations and deals that last the longest is when everybody's there and everybody listens
and everybody gets an opportunity to speak I think that it's sounds really really difficult I I this is a I think it's always been difficult I don't think it's going to go away no matter where you live or how much money your community has but being careful with
that and thoughtful and listen and problem solve through that is what I like to do which is what I'm excited about for this opportunity to continue to do that but for my community so I think I would approach it with my negotiation skills and my business
skills and my lawyer skills and listen a lot and understand that it's going to be painful it's I think it's probably the way it's supposed to be a little bit that's how you keep it honest and move forward through it so I think that's my approach to how I do most things and I
would like to work through budget issues the same way great Barney yeah hi I'm Barney Arnold um do you go by James or Jim go by James yes so this is won't be in confusion then that would be good oh
between him and Mr O um so as I'm sure you're aware you know the um the school budget the Carlos the elementary school budget is a huge portion of our operating budget I mean by far that in the high school or the
what I forgotten what percentage it is but it's way over and above you know anything else and um you know so right now we have we have um the the finance committee has asked all the Departments to look at how they
could as sort of an exercise how could you reduce um your your department budget by what was the percent 2% 2% to a 2% increase and so you know for a a two person
Department that could be a huge have a huge impact and certainly it could have an impact on the on the school department Department too I'm curious how and this is there's not a right or wrong and you know but I'm curious just
at first glance do you do you think that the that because the school has such a big impact on the operating budget that there is more um they have more of a responsibility
to uh control costs and um you know is because from our perspective as the select board you know we kind of set out a goal for what what percent tax impact we're trying to you know hold the line at a certain level of
increase but obviously from the school side you're trying to make sure you still have you know you have the best possible educational program and those as you say those are in they can be in Conflict so I'm just interested in your your you know personal view about U
whether the whether the school budget since it has so much of an impact that there's more of a uh you know responsibility or more of a um need for the school committee uh
with the administration to be um trying to hold the line or or keep those increases to to what our guidance request is every year so you're you're wonder you're asking because of the the sheer size of the
school if it has uh more of a responsibility to pay attention to its budget is that sort of okay yeah the size of the how much the town spends on the school which is you know I don't know what it would be but you know it's
vastly more than any other part of town Services uh I'd like to think more about that but I will say the cuff uh a little bit I think maybe it does I everyone has their stories right I grew up in the 70s in the White Mountains of New Hampshire our soccer jerseys had the local bars on
the back that's how we paid for them right it was educational programs came and went I didn't go to a normal fifth or fourth or fifth grade because there was some new modality for Education that was costly that has burned out and long since gone now so I think I think we all
need to be mindful I'm not an educator I'm not an expert in that but I certainly understand the community also while it's a caring Community we want to see bang for the buck um so that's a
really tough thing without I like to get into it and I am not into it so I'm reluctant to really draw a line in the sand frankly without knowing but I I think being careful financially is really important it always is and I think you're always going to make people
people angry and I don't know that we've necessarily fully proven that money means a better education um I don't know certainly there are Basics right there there are all those theories around that that need to be covered so yeah with a big budget you have to
pay attention things that the creep can happen a two I think percentage wise the ratio of creep with a larger budget I think it's easier to identif easier to see ultimately when there's a lot of moving parts versus smaller moving parts so I think it's a tough job for the
school and those who help uh facilitate it I think it's tough but on its face I think perhaps there's there's a strong responsibility to uh pay attention to
that thanks okay anything else you've scared me a little with that I don't Barney's not scary I can promise you that she worked in schools I was a teacher school for quite a long time so
kindergarten no less so yeah I think that's a good point we're we're certainly conscious of that for the whole town and the school is a big part of that so we just done that's and a number of the elected um members of the board uh have already had a conversation
with me in the past where I always try to remind them they're elected by the entire town not only by the parents and that they do have a fiduciary responsibility to the town um and that we like to encourage the school
committee to keep that firmly in mind when you are looking at the budget and um and if you're asked to do u a cutting exercise to do a good faith effort to let us know where you could possibly squeeze some money out because otherwise
it is taken out of the hides of other departments that can maybe afford it less um SM yeah so okay school committee have anything you want to add questions
otherwise I would ask that maybe James if there are no more questions you can go back to seat get off the hot seat and um Sharon I I just I have to hand it to Sharon she was great in helping to put this all together for a joint session so
thank you for doing this um and also thank you again to Nancy uh pman Weiss who um had also volunteered but um has graciously um decided to step aside on her own accord so um with that we had to
uh Sharon and I discussed a process here and we basically said we would have a discussion um among the two boards and committees here and then um we would vote the school committee will start individually and you'll vote individually on the the the candidate and then we'll vote individually there's
no really there's only one candidate so we we're going to but is there any comment or anything anyone wants to add I was just going to add um one thing because I've had the privilege of um knowing James pretty much since we we moved here our kids know each other really well we know I
know James really well um and I just think K the thing that the same advice you just gave James you gave me and I I take that with me not only here but also to the region um and James may not say this but I've had a pretty much a front seat view into some of the work that
he's done at the school um and personally and I think we all have been it we're all public servants and you go no matter where you go like I see your wife at the hospital and Barney's helping move at the Highland and you see the same people and that's been James
for the since I've known him who's he's on the uh school start time he's helped with interviewing teachers um there's something going on and he's volunteering and a lot of these things do have a a a fiscal lens so I think it just comes naturally to him um and so I just wanted
to say that before we had a a vote that I have full confidence in his ability want to hold your vote Sharon you can do that however you do you need a motion or how do you want to do this can we do she's her committee she can do right oh yeah here do you want vote okay
let's callif the vote motion I was going to say you want me to um okay uh so make a motion to um approve accept approve appoint appoint thank you that's the a word I was looking for um back to appoint James
steel as a member of the school committee second any discussion okay call by the vote did all in favor all in favor all in favor I I any opposed no okay motion
carries okay so now we'll go to the select board um do I have a motion I move to appoint James steel as a member of the Carlile school committee term to end at the next annual Town election spring 2025 to complete the term vacated
by Sarah Wilson second okay um I know we're going to have a discussion right after this about Sarah or you were going to say something so 2025 yes it's just a few months oh lot of lot of work to okay any further discussion seeing
none we'll just do a Voice vote all in favor I okay it's unanimous so congratulations [Applause] J but I I know that Sarah Wilson um had served very faithfully and and served
very well for a long time and um I think David had wanted to say something and maybe M as well can I call time for a second you can so I thought Sarah was going to be here all right we just texted and called and she had it on her calendar to be at school committee meeting tomorrow night so you guys
everybody's welcome if you want I apologize it's recorded too we should do it when she's there I think it probably makes more sense yeah I was wondering that myself that's why I asked Mary about that Mary I asked you about that yeah all the things here but Sarah's not
here so yeah we should do when she's there so 6 6 okay I'll be there David if you want I'll be there if you want we won't have a quorum but we'll you can attend IND is that okay we had some people I
invited is that okay with you guys evely all right well okay we'll we'll do a preo though and say thank you to her all right um so moving right along and we did talk a little bit about uh fiscal
sustainability and so let's move on to the Highland building that was one of our goals as a select board it really stems from the fact that over the last three years we've tried to work on getting a better capital budget for the town because these projects T typically have come up just uh in town meetings
and we don't really have a a way to gauge what types of projects and so now we're trying to get on a capital plan as you probably know we've started with the police station we're looking at the the fire station we're potentially going to look at DPW but there are other Town assets that are out there including the
bog house and the Highland building so as a goal for our year we wanted to focus on the Highland building and also the bog house to try and figure out they they're sort of unproductive assets of the town right now and what can we do
how can we uh move them forward or do something with them whatever that may be we task that obviously you're in control of that building though I think do we own it the ground I forgot they own the ground they own the ground we own the building okay so so I'd love to hear
what where you are in that process yeah you mind Shing slides I think Travis mentioned you might be able to do that if not I can join the zoom sorry to put you on the spot um so I think while they're getting um getting
we're getting the slides going um maybe just a quick recap so we came think in the summertime uh to the select board uh as a group we designated myself and Scott Jameson to be the um Highland working group um and
just from a historic standpoint uh we knew we really wanted to have somebody that's already done a lot of the work because there's been no shortage of that in the community and we don't want to waste time or re re uh reinvent the wheel so um I asked chrisy OA to come
and work with us from CPC um and then I just said to her from your experience who else should we be bringing in and she quickly brought up Jack tro John Valentine Barney um so we have a um a really nice working group we've had a chance to meet a few times we gave Ryan
an update in December um and this is kind of where we are now so we only have two slides to to show um and then we wanted to make sure there was time for some questions um but if you go to the next page please the really the way that it is um
divided up in into really four different areas so we looked at this from a tasks and initiatives um standpoint so the first thing is the group that we we gathered together and the information that we started to collect was um do we want to
have the building it's been secured the envelope has been secured um do do we even want to use the building or is this should be turned into a different space because we had heard that been brought up and I think for our group um our feeling is that it the building stands
it's beautiful we don't have a ton of like things like this um and the work was done on the outside if we'd like to exhaust really understanding um what it's going to take I think the the other piece though is kind of what you started
to mention we know how big the school budget is and we don't want this to just be for us so we really want to look at this as part of the Strategic plan for the town um as as much multigenerational use as possible um but still have it be education based and so that's just kind
of I'll just say like the at the macro level what we have going on so again the first thing to do is information gathering doing almost an audit of what we have in place and so uh especially between I see John's online we're really thankful for him and I think jacks on too um between the two of them we've
collected I mean hundreds thousands of pages of information um and we're starting to go through a lot of that information and really seeing what is just good knowledge and then what is actionable in terms of for example some plans were just done recently to look at the apartment can we just make some
small tweaks what what should we be doing the next part is going into um you know grants funding and then revenue and that's that's a word I'm going to come back to in a second but starting with the grants and funding is we need to do some studies um some of them we can use
existing and just make small tweaks for a pretty low amount other things need a little bit more um information so we have put forth um some CPA Grant applications Scott's been working closely with Barney and the rest of the
CPC um we also are leaning on Chrissy and the rest of the folks that have the more historical lens on what is the value from a grant standpoint um if we do like State historic status versus Federal um so she's looking into that
and really modeling out what those opportunities are from a grant and trying to lower the taxpayer burden as much as possible and then the last piece is is revenue and so um you know Brian and I ran it this the same year um the I think the most common question at least
that I got was how are we going to fix this vocational path um there's a lot of kids in town that really would like to do it but we know the numbers will never justify re-entering into a minute man or shashin Tech so how do we find that opportunity and so um we've done a bit
of research I wouldn't say it's exhausted on what could a path look like where we could have some kind of a vocational offering and could it be a revenue generator we're never going to have enough kids in car to like make the building a vocational school but could
we build something out that um kids from conquer are tuition here kids from Bera chelsford wherever those things might be at the high school level um we've just started to play with that idea and so some of the things that we're starting to do is are there any mini vocational
certificates so and I've talked about what if there's project management I mean HRI high school student that that would be great James has you been talking about financial literacy like could those be classes that we offer starting in the middle school that we could use K through 8 um but we've started to to research for example
Shrewsberry wallam high they all have these mini vocational offerings they called vocational pads um and there might even be certificate offerings and um that's the like the true School lens but but the other path that we've talked
about is if you think about um vocation there's a million of them if you take you I think everyone would be so surprised between their own high school experience and what's available now at a vocational school it's night and day um and there's just so much there's so much
that that's out there um but if you think about from a community standpoint in Carlile um if there was a I'll say a food service or a cooking offering there just imagine if we could work with the COA on doing meals and wheels out of that kitchen and we work with the farm
and we have something that's almost like a a minicircular economy that we could have in town um I think we're trying to think really really big um that was some of the advice that Dave gave over the summer let's start really big and then we can chip away from that instead of
limiting ourselves out of the gates um I think the other piece is um you know again just going back to that multigenerational use so Scott and I have talked about we'd love to just kind of work with John and uh Jack and some Suzanne spinny and some other folks that
have started to join us and hearing the feedback that has been collected in the town eventually get out and talk to more people so we can understand like what is Blue Sky for each part of the community um and what would we might not
be able to get to Utopia but are there some things that if each group in town was like this is something that we would really love to see come to fruition that's great um as a parent I I am a little bit more um selfish around that 8 to2 period from um I'll say a safety
standpoint of people that are just going to be on the school ground so we'll work with some of that um but then if you go to the next slide and then I want to make sure Scott has a chance to add anything I may miss or any questions but what we started to do is really look at this as a timeline for what we can do
between now in town meeting where our CPA funds will come to come out but also we would like to do a second review um with the school committee because we're going to do one tomorrow night going to do a second one and then maybe even come back here but we wanted to map out really what we're starting to do so one
of them is we're going to broaden our working group to be an official subcommittee tomorrow um we're going to go out and visit some of these technical programs so we're already working to try to get to walam High um in early March and then we would like to get some of these like smaller listening sessions
going um so that when we come back to you with a final recommendation in the I'll say late April May time frame that we feel like we really have a community view on this um and I think just the the last piece that I'll add is there's been
the the building is beautiful like if I just take away any hat I have on just the building is beautiful it's such a um a great piece of history and what the town did to just kind of secure it we looked at that as phase one and so right
now we will look at this project is the start of a phase two um and really again exhausting all the use cases because if we don't do this now you're going to lose it or we're going to lose it and so um I think time is of the essence we
want to make sure that we're being diligent we' broadened our scope um and that hopefully we can move on to either the second half of phase two or a phase three where we're actually saying okay here is like the plans and this is what we're going to move forward with so with
that I will stop any anything I missed no that was really comprehensive and I think just to stress the you know the the entire Community uh we want a building that is used all the time right so during the day for middle and high school students on the weekends with
adult education and public use for uh Recreation can have additional services in there so the idea is we want to get the building not only used for you know all ages and all sort of groups within the town but just have it used all the time so it's not
just hey you know once a week we have a thing in there that's not enough right right and so really that's what we're looking at and you know driving toward that cost neutral right if we could provide recreational offerings that you know are cash flow positive for the building effectively and adult education
and to Julie's Point other towns that could come in and provide things you know and if you look at industrial work in in just in the world you know for every five electricians that retire there's one coming in you know so could we Foster some of that have that come
back to the community uh people who go into those lines of work stay in the community right it doesn't mean we don't want people to go to college great but you know they move away typically we want folks that so if we could complement the type of education we already provide with the types of folks that can serve the community and stay
here and add another type of value then that's even better right so that's really that comprehensive look at what we want to do so well said okay are there any other questions we do have a couple of other agenda items with the joint meeting here while they here but
that's helpful to have the update and that's what we're looking for appreciate it and think you're doing good work to that's what we're hoping is that I was hoping in particular you move this forward and and we as a town you know start to make some decisions as to what is going to happen
with the building okay um our next item that we were talking about jointly uh was the use of the land uh or actually it's the school for the Great Brook Farm touring Center and this came to us and I think it has come to you and maybe may make a comment you want some public
comment on this uh not at this time not at this time John we have a couple of other items but we will take public comment at the end of our meeting here and potentially okay not on the high okay fine fair enough y y um so um we we
had talked to uh Stuart Johnstone who I believe came and approached you as well for the ski touring Center and this was just because um we have an opportunity to talk jointly about this and and maybe we had um a different thought on it um
but when we heard from Stuart he had asked um if he could use the the school parking lot and um we obviously it's not under our perview to do that but we were certainly supportive of his business in Great Brook and you know it's attracts
literally a thousand people on snowy days and he said on occasion on a weekend he may want to use the school parking lot and um as a board I think we were very sympathetic to that and just kind of wanted to understand from the school committee if that would be
something that you would consider because um he approached us and said that they really weren't receptive to that he wasn't negative on it he just said that maybe I don't have the right information so I thought maybe you could just talk about that just just to clarify we G we gave approval for
parking on both Church Street and Town Hall at our meeting correct for this for this purpose and I I did speak with Jim briefly about it just to get it and I I understand there were concerns on your end appropriately about liability snow removal and some of those practical
matters that when we had our meeting those questions were raised but were we were satisfied that those weren't concerns we thought that if you had a conflict yes the school would take precedence but if you're not using the parking lot is there a problem in the letting to use it I I think our issue
was it was a for-profit company asking to use um school property and our issues our concerns were liability also uh scheduling with activities that are um occurring in the school we didn't want
any conflict with that um I think those were our two major um concerns were there anything else we that I'm missing I think and then I mean snow removal I would say is a minor concern compared to those but um you
know when we received the request and we um there was never dialogue at a with him at a school committee meeting it was just a an email that was submitted and we discussed it in um in our correspondents you know our feeling was this is not excuse me this is not the
library needing parking this is not FRS so the Congregational Church this is a business on essenti the other side of town and we were just concerned you're going to have a shuttle in there what if there's rehearsal for say the seventh grade play or kids running to go
to the playground at the weekend it just it just didn't feel they felt like there was risk and um it just didn't feel like the right did he offer to pay for this is he
going to pay I don't believe so cuz I don't I mean I don't expect him to pay for use on street parking but for a for the parking lot would he would he pay us for it I don't remember any type of compensation he wasun paying for the
shuttles for the something I should point out if I could that I wouldn't call him a profit making business I'd call him trying to reduce his lost business I mean it's a great for those of you who CrossCountry ski
there's so few places in the Commonwealth anymore or anywhere that you can do that and uh it's been a terrible stretch of time for him and his practice and the Confluence of actually a decent snow Year and that
we paved a lot and we took away a bunch of spaces that he had before the state but so yes he's an independent business but I wouldn't I would like to correct the misimpression that you know
he's making a bunch of money not making any money he's trying to at least allow people who want to ski the way to place the park which he has none and where can we go and so at least for me personally I'm not speaking on behalf of the select
board but you know we have resources in town we should try to I feel like we should try to help him and we should try to meet him halfway I mean your concerns are legitimate I think we can talk about them but I don't want people to come away with this like we're giving up something because some guy guys trying
to make a bunch of money in the town no no and I don't think that was our impression it was just he is a for-profit company we were just simply stating that he a commercial one the other thing I I was just going to say the other problem is that whether there is an issue on certain days where they
will park on curve Street people will park and and um there's a problem we have to deal with regardless if if people if they he doesn't have enough parking I've seen it before where and today I actually got out there for a little bit and they had plenty of parking spots today but it was I was
surprised how full the lot was might drive by at night I think they have nights now they night but so our our part of our calculus was uh if if we don't give him an option people are just going to park in in places we really don't want them namely curve Street or
um along great Brook um and that was part of our thinking in terms of allowing him a place to to do this if if he even decides he wanted to do it so hypothetic if the school were to allow that one of the concerns that I would have is even if it's a weekend where in
theory the school's not using that parking lot it is actually heavily used from time to time so there are es and flows in uses for like the auditorium and other things so how would we mitigate you know hey wait a minute we let him use it now the school can't park
there because the parents came to park and see their kids rehearse or whatever and we've just displaced our core constituency that would be my biggest concern and we don't have someone there directing traffic and saying okay sorry we're full now you know that would be a concern that I would have so that's why
we're talking about this exactly so we just disc even though it's a low probability I think it's a nonzero probability but we just have discussed with him if it would a would only be on weekends and be it would the dates where it was allowable would be clearly identified so you wouldn't have a if you
knew you were having seven we might have to identify those conflicts in advance for sure oh yeah you would have to you would have to if you couldn't do that that would be a problem I mean I I think and he would control whether or not there's a shuttle service right so if if he knew you know the
following can't predict when there's going to be snow but no no no but I'm saying if he knew ahead of time that and there was snow but he knew ahead of time that that particular Saturday the school parking lot was going to be used and he just right he says to folks you know you can only can park in my usual parking
space I think just to build on what everyone else is saying I I I may have a little bit of a different in in opinion on this like I have I actually would be open to him doing it but I would not give it to him for free I think there should be some kind of a a rental fee
I'm an independent business owner I I understand the trials and tribulations of that but I don't want to set a precedent because somebody could have something else across town at the bog like Hey we're going to do this or I look at even some of the things that have happened at clarf Market which is I
love walk there all the time if they want to have a big party are we going to set the precedent that the school is always going to be this place I think there should be some kind of a fee um I'm not looking to price gouge anyone but I do think that there should be a fee I think Scott's point on like giving
a schedule in advance um but I do think like I also balance what Sharon always reminds me of it's the carile way I do want to find a a way to to have people be able to get out there and I think Scott's bringing up a good point on safety but I do think there should be some expectation on you know a rental
fee of of using the space I I I just think that that's the right okay yeah I have just one quick comment if it's all right just and and maybe everybody knows the history but I just want to uh remind folks that this family goes back a
couple of generations and they started the bill Coke League here in town oh gosh before we got here so at least 45 50 years ago and um they've given a tremendous amount to to car kids carile
families um and so just it's good to remember that it's not yes he's trying to run a business but he's also made a his family have made a huge contribution to the town we do need to W this up I know it is not our decision I think we just wanted to use this as an
opportunity to understand the rationale and also to if he he's probably and he is exploring other Alternatives as well um but if if he was to come back um I just I guess as a board or we would ask that you you know consider some of these
things and if you have objections it's your ultimately your decision but we just thought we would raise those those thoughts just want does the state have any further plans to pave more I mean this Winter's done like at this point realistically I mean what's the state's
plan at we didn't know this was coming they notify anybody in town that they were planning to pay right so he I mean to your point I think wasn't a situation of his making right the reason for they ask had nothing to do with him exp
listen I get it I'm not trying to be the the evil one here I'm just saying I keep on hearing about this like I've heard I've heard all the wonderful stories about this family I I do understand that I think what I'm just trying to understand from a process standpoint is as more businesses and as new people
come in it's really hard for somebody like myself who's been here who has family members that have been here for a long time but if you don't know every detail this keeps happening where somebody's like well you don't and I It's tricky because there's going to be somebody else that's going to come in it says well I have a long history here too
all I'm saying is I just want to set up some kind of a process a nominal fee just to have something where we can point to it I think that's reasonable that's all this is reasonable it's your decision we just wanted to bring this up as a and just a reminder we didn't take it lightly we really did um consider all
the options sure so um sure I think we could take it back and just or even just inv talk to you I'll I'll mention to him um that we've had this conversation if he wants to further that he can approach you about that um the last thing we wanted to do just briefly is talk about
the Town Administrator bylaw um you all had received a copy of that that's something that the select board's been working on it actually follows in with the capital discussion we were having about putting everything on a capital plan we're trying our best to make
Carlile continue to make it more financially and fiscally sustainable and one of the ways that we think um we can promote that is Through This Town Administrator bylaw and you say well why is how is that well um the task force
that came out we had a in 200 what 21 we had the town governance task force and one of the their top recommendation was to have a Town Administrator bylaw and this would effectively um give more operational control to the Town
Administrator rather than um right now we have policies where individual so we're all volunteers and and our boards many of them um have staff members and the staff members report directly to the
board and that's true for HR issues and everything else and we're evening volunteers we're not in at least I don't think most of us are in the business of you know day-to-day managing when people come go adhere to um employee policies
and so we think um based on the task force recommendations based on our own research based on the master plan which also supported this idea that this type of bylaw would make uh a lot of sense for Carla and although if you've read it it excludes the school committee so you
are independent also excludes the fire department but it would put the other uh towns and Boards under this um you know kind of set of policies that would be directed at the select board's direction to the to the Town Administrator um
policy decisions would still be retained at the committee levels um but this is about getting committees to set policy rather than to manage employees so I just wanted to put that out there if there are any questions or comments on it um but this again is our Outreach to
boards thank you yeah I mean just like to and this is probably more on a you know less of a school question than you know just as a citizen looking at it is I was curious fire versus police why
I guess really when I look at 3.3.2 what I'm is it doesn't feel black and white as far as what's included and what's excluded and I wonder as well like over time if like are there going to be decisions about does this new who like
new group whatever that might be due to department where it falls in and so um you know that's my biggest thing is just where does this go with time as we continue to add departments um my second piece of this is I was
surprised that the library would be included in this bylaw because in my mind the library is very similar to the school um in the way that it needs to needs to operate um and it it feels
like it's a bit of a a different function so those were just sort of my thoughts going through it but again I'm not speaking so much in a school committee capacity there as a as a resident again I think we're trying to
get everyone in the town under the same umbrella the school committee is a separate you know the school is its own entity and we're not trying to do that though I will give credit to Jim OA and to Our Town Administrator who are working together to you know share facilities and trying to do this because
this is going to help us fiscally um for our town going forward and we think that the same is true for these various departments because this will allow having more professional management in place so that we can you know do things like job share or other things that have
the potential to to you know help in the efficient running of our town so um if we start excluding all these different uh boards then we're going to be right where where we are now and so we've included them all and we'd ask that you
support that if there's nothing else I think we need to move on and and maybe we'd ask you thank you for being here make a motion to adjourn the car school committee meeting second second okay I also plan on attending your meeting
tomorrow if you want to have followup questions in your session sounds good thank are you at Community Center tomorrow the community room yes even look thank you so much iate
you than [Music] app thank you James congratulations James all right moving right along we're a little late but we'll uh we'll survive Cemetery task force we're
looking for the cemetery hey Gordon there he is Dana and Dana Dana yeah come on and all yeah up here Jim you're the one actually moral
support and exhibit a I've been wanting to look at that actually oh this is the this is the Bible right here this is going to the Historical Society once we get everything online at theer as a task
force are you you're a public entity right so you need to have a vote to open a meeting you're having a meeting at this point we are okay so I vote to open the meeting as chair at 758 okay second okay great are you going to do
the slides y great um slid oh yeah so let me know when they're up and I'll go through it do you want to do that I'll just I think the way it was set up before is I'll just run through the slides and you ask questions or do you want to do it interactive as we go run through it it's pretty long yeah yeah
but I'm please keep in mind that we do have um well I guess until 8:15 or so so we really don't have go through it quickly okay you've all read the report that I'm giving you I'm sure it just reflects a lot of that great so for
those uh watching this home you'll um you get all the highlights in this so the very first slide here is our Green Cemetery uh with the beautiful Wilson chapel and the green Monument itself so can you go to the next slide please
Ryan so we're going to run right into this the and excuse me if I just rattle on you can start I have a had um our understanding is that our ask or your ask to us is to fulfill fill these
points which are primarily safeguarding what we have in terms of our historical information data and um and burial records in the cemetery and along with that when I say workflows and continuity of operations
it sounds really fancy but really how do we get all this done how do we physically and with data do the work secure the work and ensure that it's kept for posterity the state of space utilization and
potential expansion is always a big question and utilization is something kind of interesting that we we picked into and I'll talk a little bit about that more and capital investment Where We Know It uh and how it can be applied to some of these things can we go on to the next one so I
popped this one up here because I've done a lot of project work and sometimes I think you know you get lost in the inputs and outputs and I just want to stop for a second and and remark on what we have what we're talking about here this is our Cemetery this is our
cemeteries this is part of our you know fabric of our town and we take great pride in it and you'll note there are a lot of children in these pictures we instill in them the civic pride that we hold in the cemeteries and in our
history can you go to the next slide please so moving right to the key findings Central bar burial ground round is the obvious one that people think of when they drive into carile and it's it's wonderful it's as I say it's it's a
treasure and it is fortunate to have the historical commission looking into ways to preserve it and we give them a lot of credit for bringing to the town's Consciousness the need to do that and the preservation work that's underway now is
fantastic that brings us to Green Cemetery which is in operational mode day in and day out and it's probably not a day that Jim Hall is not in there many times a day in the fall blowing leaves with his crew but every day doing something to maintain Green Cemetery the
proverbial duck paddling on the pond like crazy underneath when I say in the next bullet the end and workflow it's heavy heavily manual so that workflow thing I I always use that word and I probably shouldn't the process which I put in the
Fuller report that that is used to enter a burial from beginning when you entertain the notion of a burial to getting it into the town offices is almost all
manual the books that Jim relies on are physical a series of them this is the Bible here but they are what records our our burials a stack was given to him from the prior
supervisor and said go to it and when Jim records a burial he goes into the books and he goes to the town offices works with the executive assistant to Town Administrator or the Town Clerk and they fill it out and it goes into the
system when I say a flat file it's flat like paper because there are file cabinets full of our Cemetery records there is an Excel backup but that's not a system that could be maintained it's not a robust system it can't be added to
you can't embellish it with any kind of uh file or picture or citation which you could with a cemetery management software package which is where we're headed in my conversation anyway the transition to the Next
Generation the next director will be very difficult without something in place which would captures this historical information day-to-day information and also is able to convey all those quirks that went along the way the prior supervisor had to make his
decisions because that's just how it goes in Cemetery management Jim has to make his decisions within the boundaries of the regulations this is like playing 3D chess when it gets to the next person you got to figure out what happened and where and what that notation means and
how these things got switched here and does that lot number really convey to that lot number because they're on different pages and all that could could be maintained in a relational database and coordinated the subsurface information that we have is
is almost nil actually you you saw in the greater uh report the diagrams of the cemetery in section c which is the one that's underway right now is full of ledge at one point a b of the size of a
Volkswagen was taken out of a possible grave you can't continue to know you can't estimate what your longevity is in the cemetery if you can't tell what's underneath the surface with ground penetrating radar you can determine
subsurface materials and if you get a deeper uh deeper GPR as they call it uh look you can determine objects as well and lastly to expand on that point there are several numerous Graves
available in section c which been talking with Gary um he just did not attack him just for um just from previous burials that we've done you know it's obvious to see that there's a giant ledge here which extends into this
grave so you know those aren't sold um due to that fact sometimes we could even put a cremation in there which is only 20 in deep so to know what's under there is imperative to be able to you know expand in the C-section
I'm sorry no love it um just a little bit about what you're talking about in terms of of how we manage the land that's there so lots are sold a lot would be four Graves or six
Graves if you sell a lot to a couple and they use two let's say a lot of four and two use you're utilizing 50% and you're not utilizing 50% burials are done differently now than they were 30 years ago 30 years ago everyone got a grave in the family
that's not happening anymore the whole family doesn't get buried there anymore kids don't want to be buried with their parents I'm sorry to say cremations are much more popular than they used to be so you're increasingly selling lots that aren't being fully
utilized there's a easy flexible way to go around that and Jim with a heart of gold is has managed to satisfy everybody's needs but we need policy to reflect today's wishes of people that want to be
buried today's families the policies we can work with is my understanding select Board needs to Stamp Those as policies but we think all the policies should be looked at and brought into today's today's
needs Green Cemetery We Believe based on 2024 run rate rate will be exhausted in about 8 years so to put that in perspective we you saw this in the in the bigger report we looked at a smaller
piece of the vanted Davis Corridor that the graves are on and that little piece would buy us at Great expense maybe a couple of years and actually that' be a pretty big piece expense give us a rough idea don't
have that yet okay sorry um so let's move on because I don't want to keep you on uh on that topic too long so I just put a couple of these things up here so we're talking about the cemetery management software I'm just going to
race through a couple of visuals what you saw in the bigger report was we don't have a cemetery software we have paper and there's an Excel spreadsheet and some work was done to make it interactive you can use Google to find the grave when you're entering a record in Cemetery management software we've
been working with this company called uh r actually they call their's Cemetery information management software but you get a graphical user interface where go is we used to call it and you see the graves there's a legend there some were free some are not free some were obstructed and can you go to the next
slide please Ryan uh up in the upper right you have little icons so you can put you can you can populate the graves with what's appropriate you can actually tilt see got little coffin in the middle it's been tilted because as Jim will tell you you come across some weird
things vessel May shift if you know the the uh contents may move from one grave to the next so if you have a lot of four and number three has shifted four may be compromised you need to know that so these graphical user interface these
maps are built out of four layers there's a a drone run there a GIS the town uh provides and there's information from the ground penetrating radar and the fourth one would be any additional information inform that Jim could
provide so this is a very accurate fully informed interface of what could be used as a burial um reference so yes we know that grave is available for example so this um bual record is also available
did I put it in here um can you go to the next slide please so now what we have with our walk to grave as they call it capability is a Google map and the next one so I'm running out of time uh what you would get with Cemetery management software is
the office version on your phone so it's you have that nice uh attractive and and helpful information loaded uh image on your phone and it gives you breadcrumbs right to the grave and if you can imagine Memorial Day you're actually getting getting you can bring down the
information of the person in front of you and everything can be mased or screened so you don't need to you know you don't release anything you don't want to release chood public cemeteries has that they have a uh QR code you can scan with your phone you type in the name of the deceased you want to go see
walk to gra capability piure right there right on the grave right QR code at the entrance um so they have on this you can upload pictures of the deed and all that but just going back a little bit I know I don't want to extend everything but
here's an example of an old DE grve Vis are go back from uh early 18 1900s all the way up until 1950 was still buried in the here wow so the this is a 16 by6 lot with a large family headstone in the
middle and uh back in the day you know Elijah would say I want to be buried here and this person would say I want to be buried here so now current day if one of these family members passes away okay and they say well I want to be buried here there's no way of telling where
this person is without physically prodding around with a bar oh jeez hit the coffin or the or the Vault that it's in so this image software would tell me I can't go there I can there's a space available right here I can walk right on
and get it done without disrupting any but that that presumes there's a analysis subsurface analysis right that would go with that would be the and that's part of the software package they provide a service of doing a scan
essentially y they use ground penetrating software yes and that's a one time like a baseline thing or yes I'm to the C I'm assuming it's um I'm sorry Gordon just workflow just just trying to illustrate this for the board because um Gary passed it off to gym
they know the graves that were tilted the way they are so they would know not to dig in a certain area you would lose that Knowledge from person to person so being able to put it in the software would allow us to train a new director even if Jim just vanished to not do that because it would be pretty horrific
right so um just an example of how you when you have a 40-year director it makes sense they know where everyone's buried literally um that's not going to be in the future I I've been director for two years and often times I am for about an hour till I can figure
out who's who and where they are so and if something happened to that book this kept in fire proof safe in my office that's why it this needs to be uh hopefully it's copy guarded with your life just um Excel spreadsheet and it's
not Julie did Julie when she got here she was horrified and she scanned those immedately yeah okay this is the this is the oldest of four log books I have four log books covering each section of the cemetery Gordon I don't want to cut you short but I also want to get to if you have an ask is there something with the
CPC that you're talking going to talk about we'd love to hear that um yes well the historical part of this is is woven throughout it um so let's move to recommendations all run right through
we talked about the Cemetary software ground penetrating radar coordination of activities we need some way to everyone's doing something in Green Cemetery we need some kind of Clearing House or Central group that coordinates these activities is able to um maintain
them on a current basis from Port Town Administration and registration of the and the national register of historic places is actually something that's been teed up and uh is being looked at now I'm sorry when you say activities what what are give me some
examples some the activities that go on in let's just say someone uh wants to or is it is involved in um refurbishing gravestones or um Wilson Chapel okay or
one of the Arches putting the Revolutionary War mark markers okay markers on they're different groups that have different interests Y and we don't always know about them okay I don't know who the Wii is probably Town Administration needs to know because there are people that well
plus the different groups right if you you're have an event you're doing in Wilson Chapel like the Historical Society did right and then at the same time there's a burial going on or something right yeah yeah the town used to have um a cemetery commission and I
don't know why you don't anymore but you need something like that you need a a body to handle coordinate everything right now we have you good yeah that's not their charge though just just one
thing on the um National register of historic places um I don't know if you've had a chance to check in with Chrissy OA from our historic commission yes I have been emailing with her yeah that would be really good to do cuz I think um there's both the national
register and there's a state registry and it would be good to really look closely at the benefits and the cons of of having the cemetery registered I I have yeah worked with um a consultant
who did National register nominations I worked with him for 10 years he did them for uh our local town which was in Connecticut and I was the archist at the Historical Society so he did his work in my Arch I saw I saw that in the um the
CPA application but it's more thinking about um this particularly Green Cemetery or the central burying ground I mean we only have two um residences that are actually on the historic and so just
making sure we have thought that through before we go ahead and try to it does not prevent you from from doing anything at all with your property it's your property it's listed on the national register it automatically gets listed on the state Register if it's on the
national you can do anything if it's a house or a school or a church you can knock it down and the national register of historic places will not say to you why did you do that they won't say anything uh because they just don't concern themselves with that it's it's
an interesting factoid I think that middle sex County in Massachusetts has more properties on the National register of historic places than any county in the United States and of all of those things in Middle sex County that are
listed how many does carile have it has two and they were put on the national register in 1990 two old houses yeah so I don't know why that is when I read that I was amazed I'm glad you're so knowledgeable
yeah yeah um okay so the ask is the next slide actually summarizes the the software component of this and the small print is in the bigger uh report that I circulated to
you folks but it's essentially $441,000 covers everything to set up the relational database the um handheld version of it as well the Drone scan the ground penetrating radar um the burial search portal
Etc and then there's a 2100 annual fee for maintenance so that's this is with uh the rer as they pronounce it rer um software which we would use as a proxy for this type of software and service
I'm not saying this is what do you mean by a proxy um there're a lot out there but it sounds like you like Sim we do because we went to a lot we visited a lot of cemeter we talked to a lot of supervisors there are three that are
using Sims in the nearby uh vicinity little a which is about comparable to us in size is using Sims and they aren't even an active Cemetery they got it because they went from a privately operated Cemetery to a town operator cemetery and they got Sims on board because they like the support they're
getting handheld and moving the records and they are doing this solely to preserve their historical records and they take great pride in their cemetery and I went out there it's a beautiful Cemetery is cut in half by a road so it's south and north but uh they just love it and uh they did this great
effort to maintain it um is there any possibility do you have a re does the cemetery have a revolving account or I mean uh Perpetual careal care would that uh cover the annual I mean 2100
2100 no um but in our we could fit this into our software budget and and given the the impact it would have on the DPW would strongly recommended okay I just wanted and this has been uh submitted as a CPA request the the up front the
41,000 41 yeah yeah is there any liability by not keeping proper records um yeah probably just for the simple fact of U these some of these pages are so delicate that you know it's
like a and if there were to be lost in the fire these the there's no um way to tell who's buried where within that specific lot and uh so for example just a quick example this is from the middle
section of the cemetery uh Wilson Chapel is um located right here so this this is how it is laid out way back in the day I know it's in very small print but it goes from like one to whatever and then the names
are written under there so uh some of these places don't have headstones so when I try to find them I'll look for the closest person that has a headstone and then have to measure back uh going by uh the current
measurements are 3 and2 for one grave lot 3 and 1 half by 10 so if it's a two grave obviously it' be 7 ft wide three grave you and my point is it just seems to me we've we've sold these plots and there's an expectation that we maintain these plots accurately and if we don't
do that that I could see there would be a a Legal Financial liability by not maintaining I don't know for sure but I agree with that's a great question I'm not up on Cemetery a l I think in the regulations it says that um mistakes are
um frowned upon but not sorry held liable for so actually you get to this next tier of recommendations a little bit longer term because uh archival digitization of all records is something we believe is very important
um website evaluation I always put that in uh grave Rehabilitation we have some tilting headstones just like the central burial ground uh I'm running through this CU I know we're running out of time policy review we've talked about a little bit um pathway signs is something that's
actually really nice and every cemeter we've been to the has them we go oh this is great you know it's nice to know that Mom's on Elm Street or you know it it gives you a sense of place you Cemetery I I big on those anyway um the last one is expansion
recommendation and I didn't spend a lot of time on this on purpose because it's huge and there two areas have come up to our attention for expansion that have been talked about before there Banta Davis land and there's something called levit land now Banta Davis we've heard
about before it 72 73 it's in the town records Banta Davis was given to the land to the town with uh the cemetery in school as uh primary uses hasn't seen Cemetery yet so it's just something to think about levit land was given to the
town in 19 38 was it by the Le leev family expressly to be used for C Cemetery because it abuts the cemetery it's right there Gary Davis walked in and said it's too wet done may not be anymore it's right there worth a look so
the point is it's out there and I don't know what the steps are to consider expansion but it's going to be you know does a town want to expand between Spalding field and the cemetery all right so it's adjacent to yes to it it's on the the town the uh Trails committee
map of bant Davis has it right on it you can see it so does a town want to expand Cemetery capacity I think would be question one and then how do you how do you get to that there be money for looking into everything so I'll let you
guys figure that out surveying land TW I mean I asked earlier and Gordon didn't have an answer but I mean any we own the land right so it's not acquisition it's getting it ready any idea what like kind of rough it all came to light from
Susan's research so uh it's very very there must be stuff out there people are doing that right they're converting land to cemeteries how much you C oh sure yeah like what is it six figures seven figures I have I don't know we've been we've had eight or nine meetings we've
been in we've been done a lot of work I'm just asking like in your discussions like that hasn't come up like the size of that so I think so eight years is based off the current run rate we're calling I used to call it burn rate which is
terrible um so the that's that's to sell them right it would still be operational after everything was sold the question is with the existing space now do you want to try to extend that life by doing something like making the cemetery information only or changing the way
that that plots are sold and short of that do you want to continue to provide Cemetery services in the town of Carl so it's not just expansion it's do you want to expand first and then if you do so let me ask again Gordon so you talked about like the old historical four to
six plot yes so a family back in Antiquity bought this plot and two of the six are occupied and the family's long gone like they still own those six M and is there any way cuz you mentioned like we could maybe use some of those spaces I think be difficult to claw back
those four spaces I mean is there anybody to contact even let's take the easy case that there is somebody to contact like do you want to sell back your space could be approached yeah there are other areas too David that um
for example there because of the way it was laid out and then populated there are certain sections of the cemetery that can't accept a headstone and can't right can't be used those would be great cremation spots no I agree with that but so the but the per repurposing of
underutilized plots yes what's your thinking on that the thinking is the only way to to get them back would be to contact the family um and and see if they want to sell them back because once they buy it that's that's their deed to that piece of land they have in these
archal records do we have the I would just just I think we should as a select board with your uh recommendation you know at a future meeting figure out if we want to then create a a per permanent entity right um
and we certainly have three good candidates to help uh help with that I think that's a good idea we will we'll we'll revisit this and appreciate all your efforts this is to be clear in the short term there's there's action
on CPA funding so that that's proceeding that process well there's some policy decisions that we could make that's sort of low hanging fruit right well The Cremation well not selling six plot things for a start right yeah exactly
yeah be more flexible to today's needs and lastly the last bullet is our um the request was for the the task force to go to the report so we've done that so we need some instruction going
forward if so desired on what you want to do about that okay I think we will we'll have to discuss this in another meeting and and uh you know this is really valuable I appreciate all your yeah and and I don't know if you want to do a little bit more work as the task
force but I think it'd be helpful to us to because you all are very knowledgeable at this point just what would the scope if we had some kind of a permanent Cemetery entity whether it's a commission right what would they be what would that scope look like M I think
some policy y some policy recommendations I think would be a logical Next Step too sure MH y well that's what we're looking for I we we'd be the ones or the group of the whatever would be the ones to advise on the policy and then present it to you does this make sense yeah sure that'd be
great so okay I don't yeah if you wouldn't mind if you'd kind of pursue that and then we'll reconvene with you at a later date we have been meeting set up in two weeks we're going to do that oh my gosh well we may not get to it that quickly thank you so much for coming thank you
thank for your time appreciate your meeting yes I knew that we adour our meeting yes 828 yes I say I right sta thank you guys thank you thank you all go all right up
next we have the cultural Council or the chairs co-chairs two chairs sitting on two chairs two chairs I just want to say though that regarding the cemetery as far as I know I'm not there yet I saved myself a spot yourself a I
was going to say something about the cemetery as well depending on how this meeting goes I'm in a good neighborhood I just checked and there are eight um items in the Massachusetts cultural resource information system in the Green Cemetery there there eight what eight
items are listed in the Massachusetts cultural resource information system which everybody calls mat because it's but uh it's already there're already items listed on the state is it like soldiers from the Revolutionary or
is it actual physical actually like headstones like very decorative headstones probably the I didn't go through every single one but I imagine in there um Larry sorley was the person that actually put most of our information into into M so I imagine
it's more architectural s of well thank you for coming the two things that are at least on our agenda and we defer to you was the fiscal year 26 budget request along with the programming update for what you're doing yes I guess that's what we're doing um I
hope that you read with baited breath every word we presented to you um we have a lot going on we've been you know growing this Council pretty steadily over the last several years uh and its impact on the town
um so we wanted we have like really high level slides just to sort of talk through where we're at who you know what is this group um for oops I'm going to make noise in the microphone there um so we
are in sort of an interesting spot in terms of the cultural environment in town where every uh cultural provider practitioner producer sort of relates to us but you
know we don't control everything there we're just a catalyst um and you know we've looked at uh so we're part of the if we go to the next slide uh that just puts in the environment that we're in so
we're a creature of the state's ma Mass cultural Council set up by the legislature I included some Choice uh selections from the guidelines and state laws at the end of the uh packet um but we're appointed by the select board and
sometime in the murky pass probably in the 90s the board agreed to have a cultural Council in Carlile every single City and town in the Commonwealth has one or is part of a regional one um and the minimum requirements to have a
cultural Council are to have five members and to participate in the annual Mass cultural Council funded uh Grant round that occurs between September 1st and October 15th every single year and there's plenty of cultural councils
right surrounding us that that's all they do and they're pretty dormant the rest of the year and they're pretty passive well we have always had people on this Council and there's always turnover it's 100% volunteer that want to do more and wish
we could do more and have always said if we only had money we could do more blah blah blah so we've you know set out to do those things that more money will help us do which is to create a more vibrant more active and
more cohesive cultural environment in town and if you've read a little bit the definition of culture is quite broad it's more than art and music um it's it's Humanities it's Sciences things
like that um and we were fortunate to have your support uh during the OPA period when you know many of these organizations especially the nonprofits were just getting creamed with lower donations inability to sell tickets all
those things and so we were given responsibility to manage money that would help them recover to a certain degree a small degree uh from the effect of the pandemic we had Financial grants
that we gave to four nonprofits in carile uh to help bridge the gap and then we uh got money for funding the music festival partially for the first couple of years and also money to run uh
additional Grant rounds and that's really what I want to focus on with this meeting is that we you know have started to uh get the Music Festival on a financial footing uh through the
generosity of a key uh person who's been involved with the festival from the beginning who is um funding $10,000 a year this year and next year and who knows how much further um and the money that the council is starting to raise
through our partnership with the Community Foundation of Metro West um is really going to start to make a difference in our ability to continue major program like that but also to continue to supplement the grants uh allocation that we get from the state
because it never goes far enough and then we really want to talk about the ability to have this second Grant cycle that is only open to Carlile organizations and individuals so that we
can continue to have more people step forward like they have in order to create more programs and events for the town and this is one of those areas where you get into things like you know well what's
the return on investment etc etc which is I know a big challenge for the select board these days and we're not the people who can come up with any kind of formula whatsoever to tell you what the the answer to that is uh what we can
tell you and what is really true is that what we do directly affects mental health in the community and there's there's not a single age group that doesn't benefit from the stuff that we enable to happen and again we are
sometimes a small contributor to a particular program like the Savard light opera has a budget of 33,000 we maybe grant them $500 but they value that let me tell you but the programs that we really that
really count on us are the ones where they cost $600 and we give them5 or $600 the program doesn't really take place unless we step up so we're you know we we're not like towns like conquer that have museums and lots of
historic sites and hotels and restaurants where you can do what most uh people in the cultural Community do which is talk about the economic impact our economic impact is there you have to
look for it's the lecturers that we bring in that that our partners bring in it's you know all of the educational elements that people get from going to events and there's also occasions that we can when we see something like like
what happened this fall was that the um Harvest Fair was canceled by F FRS and that is a community a big Community event that was suddenly cancelled and it was like what can we do as a community as a as a cultural Council to uh create
something else but also help the vendors the local Craftsman who had lost a a place to sell um their their products so that's when we actually went out and we and within 3 weeks we put together the Open Studios which was a phenomenal
success they loved it and nobody could believe we we did it in 3 weeks but we just decided this is it we're going to so what we we go to the next one you know just trying to paint the picture you know where we sit and you know the value that we bring to the town and that
we've uh increased and that we have potential to uh continue to go further um there are about 20 organizations in town producing cultural events uh we do support some outof town events that involve uh people who actually are
members of the conquered Orchestra or the conquered Women's Chorus um and the the act the theater group and act the yes the open door Theater which is you know for disadvantaged folks so you know
there's a little money that we we do uh provide to outside organizations but they have to prove to us that they have a direct benefit to the town of course the music festival again there's hundreds of people that have been coming to that now three years in a row and uh
we have some uh if I keep my fingers crossed and don't say anything further we we hope to have some uh excited things happen there this uh this old home day um and the relationships we have we put in if we can go to the next
um we have in here sort of towards the end some testimonials that we've collected from some of our best Partners um but there's there there's just the reality in in fiscal terms is we get uh
so little money from the state that you know we have a process that determines which of the applications that come to the state's computer system are qualified based on our requirements and priorities that we set every year so
this is a this is a system we don't just take money and say oh well I'd love to Barney but you know Kate's got a better you know track record no we the folks value these grants to the point where they spend hours filling out these
applications online and talking to us about you know what is the value of this program what does it bring to the community what is the budget how we going to promote it and they don't necessarily have to but they do because it's sort of a you know promotional uh
back and forth we promote each other's good work and the visibility really matters to people so we really can only fund about 40% of the legitimate applications that come in every year and mass culture very low
what we you know our maximum Grant is maybe 600 yeah so and we tell people up front you know that where our grants are you know up to about five or 600 and the state actually Cuts us off at 250 we can't give anything less than 250 right
so so you know we what we've done because we've had you know extra money that we've raised and also through uh the ear Market arpa money is that we've supplemented the state grants so instead of having about 40% of what people are asking for we're
getting up to 60 70% and that's with our money the council's money and if you were really diligent you read all of the nice stuff highlighted at the at the end here you see that we have a unique place in town
government and that you know we can raise money we can spend money but only things that support culture and so that's that's our mission that's and and I think we've proven to be very good stewards of that uh with you know the
amount of money that has been uh trusted to us and so what we're trying to do is just build on that you know I I know Kate if I can say you know that and Scott the arpa money was given to us
without any F future promises and we understand and at the time we were really one of those very sleepy passive cultural councils in in many respects and now we're not because we've
seen what we can do and we see how the community responds and that's really what this is all about is you know how can we fuel that now there's never going to be a year when you don't think that you know this is the right year for funding such an organization um it's all always been
something that members have talked about wishing that we could do and we've asked in the past and we've said how do we do that when we can't do this well it's of course it's an understandable challenge that you have but I can tell you that this investment if you you know do take
the broad view of what the return on the investment is it should be uh you know punish me later it should be a relatively uh easy at least defensible thing to be able to say that this is our community this is what you know the
folks at the library the Council on Aging the Comm the the chamber orchestra the Savard light opera uh the race Amity day the the pride festival I thought this is the next one this anyway so this
is yeah well this is this is what we plan to do with the money so and and what I've done here has highlighted the budget request this budget request equals the state allocation we got in FIS 25 right so we' be talking about fiscal
26 having the fiscal 25 equivalent what the state gave us this is you know I put in what we've received in previous years there's small incremental changes in this um every year but that's roughly
been um a one toone relationship with our population it's a little bit getting ahead of the population but it's about one to one close enough and so that's you know we're not going to expect that that doubles from the nass cultural Council
next year but but that's that if you look at the uh fourth line up from the top is what we want to devote to this second Grant round and that's really what the ask is here is that we will earmark that money and you as if you
really read this carefully you can hear you can say we'd really like you to spend the money on this and this is what we want the money for and this is what we would respectfully ask you to allow us to to do with that money have another Grant round that produces more programs
and more involvement from groups that haven't been active prior to our doing that going back to uh 2023 when we ran our first additional Grant round so that's that's pretty much it I mean I don't want I could talk I brought every
final slide very yeah and you know we've taken the initiative to come up with a fundraising uh partner um we uh started this on December 13th and uh we've raised a little bit more than
$4,400 but our donor population doubled from 2023 when we were doing a onetoone members sending emails to people we know in town you know and we did um you know
have a pretty good response to that overall and some fairly large Anonymous donors have come through in both years but we we're we're trying to take that initiative and and be able to you know you can tell by our budget that we want
to spend 25,000 a year and $5,700 isn't going to do it so we you know we're trying to get Partnerships we're trying to network but we also want the town to say this this is important to us we understand this 100% And that you know
we're looking at somewhere in the vicinity of a$1 per capita investment and that's really the explanation now we do have you know I think some Choice uh testimonials I brought the full letters that I'll give you a copy of you can
read these you know the one the gleon letterhead Etc um because they say more than what we put on there but that's pretty much our pitch you know the the programs that we want to do uh we just want to do what we do well is
really what we want to do and uh and build community build the community further uh and I think again just as Debbie was pointing out the ability to jump on an opening like the Open Studios which was 100% warmly received by the
participating Artisan Crafts People and as we drove around to every site on these two days it was like a a cocktail party at every at pretty much every location they were well attended there was it was jubilant really that there
was a place in town and these are at people's residences and barns so it really was kind of cool so I I should shut up and ask for any questions I brought every lick of information that I could put my fingers on um except for the questions you're going
to ask me any questions from the board I I just had question about about the fundraising obviously you know an obvious question is um do you think and I know I know you've set up the ability to get online donations now which is a great help but
do you not think that fundraising activities could Bridge the budget Gap versus a town budget I mean these are all great events and we know we have generous Community um with that the success and the growth of these events combined with your ability to take online donations
now well you think that that funding request is achievable privately or or what are your goals well I I think we stated the goals in the in the sort of budget snapshot of how much we you know would like to do in an optimal situation
but in terms of Revenue in terms of fundraising five grand in a in a month and a half right we this was you know last at the optimum time of year I would say that all but all about all but about $400 of
that was in the final quarter of 2024 right right I also you know we've put uh additional pitches out since then and they've uh not been met with that sort of exuberance and I think that this is a very difficult fundraising environment
of course I think we also hit right around the time of the California wildfires which I think just you know took people's attention away with who they're thinking about donating to whatever and you know I'm included I I'm skeptical that we could
close that Gap in the this is the first year that we've done a townwide mailer uh in and amongst all the other groups in town that are doing the same thing and also have their you know their hopes and aspirations um so I'm skeptical at this
point that we could that we could do that um certainly without a lot of effort yeah I think now this gets back to we've got nine people on the council other than me all have you know uh jobs and and and commitments where we have no
you know professional support uh not not that we're asking for it but you know it's a it's a heavy lift to just keep on you know doing things without becoming annoying we have had ideas but it takes a lot of effort I think that's the answer and so it it and there's and
we're also trying to do all these other things so you it's one of those I guess my my my naive view is if you can sponsor these events and simply just have like the QR code now at the events you'd like to think that clearly yeah
that that that alone would I again I don't know anything about that but yeah I'm just right now it's an un completely unproven that we that we can you know have that I know for a fact um in this trying to speak
out of school but um you know take an organization like old H day which is completely independent private nonprofit and is just not hitting the benchmarks that they want to hit for you know beyond the pandemic so um you know I
think it's a challenging environment I haven't talked to every um every one of the organizations that we sort of compete with now in town like the Historical Society friends of GLE and Friends of COA they're all trying to do
the same thing and if anybody has any insight into their success but they all get a little you know they're working for Town departments those friends groups they're working to support Town departments that have budgets and you
know they have the ability to fund some stuff that sort of overlaps with us but they also have the needs that go well beyond the cultural programs that they produce and we're trying to supplement that this is definitely because you know
we have a competitive Grant environment it you can't really look at this as a zero sum game in terms of that you can't give to us and take from them because they may not get from us you know but it's just to me it's early to say you
know how successful and sustainable we're going to be uh doing doing the fundraising I I expect we're going to do okay because we're going to keep working at it you know and we can plug it at I I don't
think I mean I think it's a a pretty nice ask in a certain respect the fact that it's tied to the to a match um that it is a dollar per capita how is it tied to the town match well because it's tied to the state match it's tied to the state oh it is well that's what that's
we're asking that that's a that's what we're not trying to make it a policy decision but it's not like it's not like CPA where we put money in okay no no we're asking you to the state allocation and I guess I do have a question for CPA is there any
capacity in CPA to for this does it qualify yeah it doesn't qualify so it's not coming out of operation yes out of the other budget does it qualify only I if you're doing something
I mean I think it would be you'd have to be so specific like historical you know we don't do housing um we would ask for $500 for a historical program I mean that that would be yeah right you know does the state give any credit for towns that
contribute to the cultural counselors like does they they throw their love to you but I mean do they give you any extra grants they don't okay they don't there are potentially other grants that we can go after but know me it can be it can be seen as a matching Grant which
means you know we don't know what's going to happen in the future I don't think anyone does right but it may be a case of we can give you this for instance we had we got money for from the state for um Festival Grant but we're now not eligible anymore because they only give them out once every so
many years it's every it's every three years so we you know we but again it's a competitive Grant and comp but if you you seen to have matching Grant you might you know if the state changes its rules that would benefit yeah I'm not
going to um we don't know I mean Festival Grant people are different no no no I'm just saying I'm just giving an example of where where we do don't know what the state is going to do the state doesn't have this I will say there there's other organizations that support
culture um in the state and the country that we haven't ever looked at but again that's a bandwidth issue and also um you know at this point in time I'm not sure how sanguin we should be about you know the health of uh the cultural
community and the nation going forward but that's you know a personal opinion did you mark did have you guys come in front of the fincom for the request too no and you know honestly that work so I can answer that so the the fincom discussed any additions to
the budget this was an addition to the budget because they're a child of the select board they wanted the select board to say we're first we decide and then they the out of it so if you say it's in then it's in you say it's out it's yeah and again I'll get back to the you cannot talk about return
on investment much here no I mean except I wasn't going in that direction I just was whatever the process is I mean there is a return we all know it right you know but it's not something I'm going to you put on my calculator chair what's
your process what you want to do well I I think we have to decide as a select board if this is something we want to support or not support I mean tonight we've listened to everyone who's come before us has had a funding request starting with the Highland building and
then the cemetery you know and after you is the 250th celebration we gave them some money we've already supported them but not to the extent they need it's it's up to us you know this is why we're elected is to you know try and sort this out for
the town and we look at you know using kind of the master plan and sorts as a guiding thing where there's different components in town that are important you know we we do have fiscal sustainability is important and and we have a lot of people who you know want to live in the community and and U but
we also have a community and so you have these types of things that are you know part build a community so it's a we have a caring community and I do know that we did have you know this person here here who worked with the cheer program you know during you know Pro cheer project
was that what it's called any anyway and it that it's it is important to the to mental health and Community Building um this kind of and we really so it does fit into our Master it does it does definitely in several places actually
but we're um also we're a permanent entity and you know we have a continuous role uh to play in in the health of the community
yeah well does anyone want to make a motion on supporting this I don't know if there's other way to do it other than you know either unless you want to you wait of cycling that's the question I yeah I think we wait queue up all these
requests and we didn't do that with the other guys right yeah we haven't even heard anything from fincom yet about the budget yeah so are you keeping I presume a list of the asks that are outside the you got the regular budget and other asks right
and when when were we going to go over all that so the fincom is currently looking at uh as you heard reference tonight 2% cuts to all the major departments and what that would look like and how it attacks the so-called deficit okay so
then that list would be given to you when they have a recommendation on it and is that include the the big deficit on the capital plan is that part of it you you made separate recommendation but yeah okay and all of that comes together like when uh probably two meetings from now
okay so I mean should go on the list right it's definitely on the list yeah um so is that so may I it's you know if if it's okay with you I mean I approached you last year for the FY 25
uh budget and you know I think we're always going to be able to make a good argument right because you know it's a good argument to be made um and I think I'm not sure what the situation was last year but as it
turns out it was in draft number one and it was taken when it got compressed and this is the same thing that appears to be happening um with and and I just as I said at the beginning I don't know which year that's never going to be the case
and that this will make sense for the select board because I don't know back in you know in the uh Early times it was it wasn't put in it was put in we'd be asked for a 2% cut in our plan but it
wasn't there so but last year and we had arpa right we had some other sources so taking it out isn't quite the same when there was arpa right now it's like it's got to get squeezed in but it seems like
last year I wasn't part of that but it would have been an easier thing to remove because we knew we could fund it a different way and in fact you did get funded in a different way yeah we' already we'd already been funded it's true well I I just want to say the reason I haven't said anything and I've
had to bite my lip a couple of times is that um because I part I am a member of the carile Community Chorus and we've received a small Grant but regularly from the cultural Council you know I feel like I have to recuse myself from the conversation so it's not that I'm
not interested okay can I just a for my own benefit when you give a grant to say the Carlile uh Women's Chorus or the chamber orchestra they have an event MH people attend the event I'm sure there's fundraising to support
that event and how how does this all like you support them that reduces their cost they do some fundraising um is that are those events an opportunity for your fundraising or for their fundraising or like where do
you where do you live in that when you sponsor an event like that where is the Carlile cultural Council in terms of people's visibility they have to use our logos on all the uh any events that if they're in the mosquito you'll see the logo is there who's the Cal Council any
any program that we fund has to loc here has to include reference you know specific language and reference to our logo etc etc when they produce a program booklet or something we're mentioned in
it right but for us to try to get fundraising and their event is a little bit it's not your it's not it's not your event we don't run the events We Run The the money two we talk about that they provide to say your that money offsets some expenses
that allows you to do something else presumably or do more in the case of the free they're free to the community in the case of the Community Chorus we fund Almost 100% of what they're ask what their budget is um they couldn't plan an event if they didn't have some Revenue
right right couldn't plan it and hope to raise the money to pay for membership at the event these individ these separate groups do you do fundraising for the for the chorus or no well not generally you know there's a donation box out at the concert right
but that's about it now it's your donation box it's not your donation back to the that's right and I you know again I think it would be a bit of a line to do that well that's what the what I'm processing is I say oh you sponsor all these events should be easy to fundraise
but if you're behind if you're not the primary fundraiser you're kind of second in line so we're just giving them seed money really and you know and um you know I think it's a mutual promotion element to it you know that has definitely raised the visibility of not
just the council but our partners and you know there letters just look at last Friday it was a beautiful letter about the Bollywood dance party back in November um and you know they count on it again they value it enough that they go through this you know hash making
cycle to apply and you know they wait patiently to hear and we try not to disappoint so again the the role we're asking you to play is help us to you know keep the thing thriving and growing and understand that
it's you know it's it's hard to for for you folks I understand to you know tow this line and say you're being consistent but the community wants and needs it at the same time and you know just pretend we're like a fire hydrant
even though we don't have that you need to have the the spigot you got to have the spigot so we exhausted you yet thank you thank you very much well appreciate the opportunity thank you for
all the work you guys do and I don't you know it's just for your our deliberation on this is not a reflection of the the the value we know it provides to the community I think it's we understanding um
yeah all right thank you um we are just about on time here for well we've got a few extra minutes this is we can bring them up we can bring them up early yeah supposed to be n so
oh it's it supposed to be n okay supposed to be n it says 910 on my it doesn't matter let's bring them up yeah all right move on to the 250th 250th uh conquered 250th discussion hello Scott good evening um so if you want to
introduce yourself and what and tell us a little bit about go ahead and present Scott Evans 299 heeled road but before I get going wear the hat just so you would why I'm here
yes so this is to keep on your desk in your poet is this poola what is going on I bought one of these and I haven't gotten it yet so I hope the value of this isn't more than $50 to accept it if it is you order
today extra H are we allowed to accept these I made note of he was the only member of the board that ordered a coin on law yeah get he gets the brownie point so far so
far okay EXC so why am I here so I'm here representing the uh Carlo 250 uh Public Safety uh Group which is made up of uh uh your uh chair of the
board Travis Snell um we have Chief amandola uh Sergeant Booth uh we have Brian Soros uh Jim Hall Ryan mlan um so we've represented most of the
Departments that are involved with the logistics for the um the 250 events are upcoming um I'm also uh chair of the celebrations committee and the subcommittee which is 250 events so we're planning a lot of these events
we've done so far in town as well as I sit on the 250 board in conquer for uh militia and minute company Communications and coordination and I'm captain of the Carlo minan so as you can tell my life is pretty much all about the
250 um what's the best way is this a PowerPoint slide so just tell me when to go I just tell you when to go great all right so I've prepared a few slides here to provide some context um around um what this um Public Safety group has
been working on which is how do we uh allow the carel citizens to celebrate the this uh basically once in A- lifetime event right every 50 years essentially in conquered and be able to do it safely and
effectively um okay next slide all right so a little a little background here um so we working on cost estimations of logistics for this and we're really talking about Patriots weekend it's the
the evening of the 18th and it's all day uh the 19th in conquer the uh it also involves of course several other towns right there's Leon conquer uh the naal Park and Lincoln uh with
other events that are outside of the uh ones directly ENC conquered um on Sat on Saturday and Saturday night um conquered when they looked at the uh number of visitors that they're
expecting they had 120,000 they estimated at the bicentennial uh they looked at projections and they're estimating somewhere between 150 and 200,000 visitors uh on Saturday um in downtown conquer
obviously at the da salute and the uh the parade and they're having a block party now Saturday afternoon and then an evening laser show um in conquered Center as they did in the bicentennial uh conquer is going to
close access to the town of conquer for motorized vehicles um it's all along two in Access towards conquer Center and it is along the Carlile border um and uh partway in from the
Bedford border so essentially you can't access the town of conquer without going through some checkpoint barrier they have what they call soft closings on the outside where you cannot go through if you're not a town resident and then closer in towards the center of town where it's a hard closure with no
AB no vehicles that can get by uh you obviously can walk bike horseback other modes of transportation um next slide yeah so our objective here is to a
inform the town citizens about what events are going on as well as provide them some uh means of being able to access these events in the town of conquer uh the one specifically that
would be on the Saturday that would be of interest the dawn salute starts at 6:00 a.m at the North Bridge uh the Patriot state parade is 8:30 to 1:00 uh the block party 2: to 6 and 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. is that laser light drone show that they're doing the center of
town this really provides the the framework of when they're keeping the town of conquer close essentially we met early uh last fall with the conquered Public Safety uh group uh and found out what were their plans at that point so they're going to close
the town at 6:00 Friday evening and they think they'll open it back up again around 11 P p.m. Saturday night um in Carlow specifically we have two events on that Saturday morning so 6:00
a.m. to 7:00 a.m. we have a uh reenactment of the alarm um and the response of the Minutemen and we do a ceremony flag raising and uh uh narrate the historical events of that morning
before we begin a March to the North Bridge known as the EST Trail walk so that usually is about 7:00 a.m. that we step off on that and walk the EST Trail down to uh essentially The Visitor Center above the North Bridge where we
join in the uh Patriot state parade now as I said in the bicentennial year 1975 um same scenario um conquer closed its borders and the carile
organizations um designated two parking areas the Indian Hill area and the N Farm area as places where the town citizens could park along either side of the road and then they provided shuttle buses from those
locations to a point near the North Bridge and Conquer so on River Road it went down to uh almost Fen School Red Coat Lane but Ford was land landing at Fen so they only went down to Red Coat Lane and then on um conquered Road or low road and
conquered it went down to Farmer Cliff so every 30 minutes or as soon as the bus was full they shuttled uh Town citizens down to those two points um and they did it between 6:00 a.m. and
2:00 p.m. um if they didn't uh ran up front a bus for the dawn salute um that was uh at at 6:00 a.m. so that was what was done in 75 um go to the next
slide so we looked at it and said okay so there's there's a model that uh that works I researched through the Cara mosquito and I saw all the prep leading up to it I read all the reports afterwards looking for okay so here's
what they planned and how did it turn out uh where were the problems um that they had and uh by and large other than maybe some uh people celebrating that maybe had a little too much were lying in the middle
of the road and things like that that required some medical help as far as the parking is concerned the shuttle bus service that was concerned um it all ran uh quite smoothly they had uh close to a thousand Trail Walkers that that walk
the userb trail I know that because I have the minute man records that they recorded every coin they handed out as well as the uh the other ones that shuttled down and then they estimated about how many uh other Town citizens uh went to conquered
and if I just looked at the they ended up having eight buses and if I just did a quick calculation it looked like it was somewhere around another 2,000 that a little over 3,000 of the um citizens in town that went to
that uh so it looked like uh we should maybe look at that same model um it worked then and doesn't look like it applies today it looks um like a good solution try to separate uh people
walking from um from car traffic and try to control um the number of visitors that are all be in a very short period of time so most people are going to want to get to conquer between let's say 6:00 a.m. and 8 a.m. if the uh parade stop
steps off at 8:30 so it's about two 2 and a half hours of the majority of people that uh either can't ride their bike or can't walk would be taking a shuttle bus to get to conquered
um so we put together a number of uh well before I go to that I go to the next slide because I have have a couple pictures just in case um just so you can kind of Envision what's uh I can point to you but I can't point
to the people on the TV but I'll follow you okay so from uh 5: to 6:00 a.m. we have reenactors coming to the center of town as well as Town citizens that want
to uh participate in that ceremony and either walk as a trail walk or potentially take a shuttle bus to conquer so that they can see the parade um so Scott let me just so the color coding is it missing from the left
is that why we can't the color coding is if it's blue it's the early people coming into and then starting at 6:00 a.m. uh is ceremony on so if you want to get to the center of town you can or
cannot drive to the center of town you can um so we'll have we're planning to have some designated parking so we did a calculation how many parking spaces are there in the center of town and it turns out that there's about 390 parking
spaces we use the Congo church we used all along Church Street we use the school parking lot we use uh Town Hall if we had all up we have got close to 400 parking spaces um the reenactors themselves will
and the visitors that are with them or the families that are with them will comprise at about um50 or so uh uh presenters on this on the uh on
the green right so it was about something about uh 70 cars or 60 cars just just them um we said they had somewhere close to 6 or 700 were on the Green in 75 so I said okay um let's
assume a similar kind of number so and you're checking with the churches and stuff too what's that you're checking with the churches and the school to make sure it's all exactly um so take about a thousand if you roughly say two to three people in a
car encourage people to car pool it absorbs about uh 300 spaces so there's a little extra room so the idea would be if you want to see the reenactment or you're part of the reenactment you could park in the center of town if people don't want to walk the trail there'll be a shuttle bus from the sun and it would
be badge parking so this is something we still have to work out the logistics but it would be you could park there as long as you had permission and you got a badge ahead of time you could put on your dash it says you can park in those uh parking
spaces um so at the same time you're going to have people that would go to these two parking areas Indian Hill and over here on N farm so there are the ones that that they don't want to go to the town to the ceremony the center of town they don't want to walk so they're
going to go ahead and uh take a shuttle to concete and those are residents those are resents res car residents only so I'm only talking about Carlo residents here yeah I should clarify that they get badges as well or how do you
separate them out so we're talking about badging even for these two areas here and if you wanted to say you want to park in the Indian Hill you get an Indian Hill one if you wanted to park over off of River Road you would get one for over there and it would be first
come first serve right so if we sold all of these out which are about 600 or so parking spaces well then if you want to go you got to park over on the farm so we're still just talking town citizens they all have credentials
essentially to be able to park um in these locations that are here and of course take the sh buses so they get those permitting things online something um I think we're we're talking about doing it in person um and
using you know uh maybe uh some voluntary labor with um a town registration or something like that we like when you come in to vote you know you give you address you get you mark down your location you want to park at and they would we record it and give you
the badge right something like that um there's also we're also having a the event 250 committee has planned a colonial Fair on the green uh March 15th and in F FRS oh up here okay yeah so
that'll give the that'll be a you know 10 to three all things Colonial F and drum and uh mus firing Etc and my and our thought was why not have a table in there where people coming would then uh
get their parking credentials y of course you can always have some people that aren't necessarily going to have responded or that last minute that oh I didn't think to bring it or whatever and I think then at these access points you know there be people go there to check
before they go in they would say okay just show me your license you know you got a car address okay go ahead won't be perfect like Rich would know this cuz he put it on City in the woods yeah the uh the you know dump sticker thing right I used your little link boom
you go in b boom credit card done like what's wrong with that I I mean I'll leave that up to the committee I'm not a member of the committee the reason I'm here is because I have figured out how to put 860 cars at the high school which has 254 parking
spots for the uh for the kicks for cancer so I'm um I'm going to I think I'm going to be actively involved in those yellow areas up there okay um great so we can double our parking spaces how what you're saying I do like I do like the badging and the event on
the 15th and these sorts of things because I agree with that saying pick up the online the online tools are there right we did talk about it the problem is um people outside of car being able to access print wouldn't you have to submit something would have a CR we
don't have a system where we can okay so you don't have that you would download something but it could be so a non carlean can buy a dump sticker no but we don't have a way to add fake dump sticker to no no no what I'm saying is I went online I bought my
dump sticker it must know I'm a car resident right yeah how does it know that it doesn't all right it's a good question got your uni ID so we we get the the um the registration
the ticket or we mail dump sticker so we verify the you verify through the mail so we could do something like that where you sign up online and we send we need to look at it's not going to be perfect keep it keep it as simple as possible right not over but the worry
is that um if it if it's known that Carlos's providing parking that we get flooded by people who want to go to conquer because we're so close right sure okay keep going so the so the last thing is starting at 7 o' all this uh sit Town citizens and the
reenactors March down uh School Street basically and up bis Hill and then you into EST woods so in the past this road was blocked off so that we wouldn't mix traffic obviously with that big group that's coming um and once they're in the
woods then it's just a matter of shuttling the rest of these people from the party and then if some people want to walk one way and right of BU back they corre yeah and uh in the past and we would do the same here once the buses are done bringing people to conquer they would sit at the pickup points and
Conquer two of them and wait for people that need to come back and when the bus is full then they would shuttle back right it's a massive logistical undertaking for one day or one and a half days I see the fire chief is here
and and we have Staffing plan for not only the fire but police through this you want to talk about that um well I think this the Staffing that the uh fire department is doing is primarily driven by their coverage of
conquered right yeah so two things um come on up yeah we're so we're um we're providing a lot of help for conquer um uh we have equipment that will help them a lot um and Staffing that but then the other
thing is for us we're going to be Staffing because all our um approaches when in town are going to be strange but then getting to the hospitals is going to be even stranger so you know we're not going through conquer to get to Emerson and even to go through Bedford
to get to Ley is could be problematic so we're going to be staffed so that we can get quickly and get rolling and you know our ability to get ALS is going to be challenged Etc so um we're going to we don't usually have staff sitting at the station we will
have on that day um and that's regardless of any of this yeah exactly and how is Carlile the entrances to Carlile how are they going to be are are they going to be closed
yes yeah and how's that going to be done is that the police the police so it'll be blocked off using police and DPW vehicle signage and um you won't be able to get into town unless unless you're a resident for that short period period of time right
right yeah you'll see the first one up there is about electronic signs so we'll be able to communicate starting a few weeks before uh right up and through the event so people will know that are coming into town what roads are blocked um so they can pick a alternate route
before they get uh lost in town trying to find their way through the back roads additional patrolling due to people being likely to abandon their cars and try to walk to Carlile at the last minute so we need to make sure that all
the the roads and access points for our emergency vehicles are open and accessible are the so the towns of Bedford Westford chumford like that what are they doing are
they so Westford doesn't border uh a major roadway uh I mean doesn't border conquered right right so uh they have to go through those other those other towns I mean they're aware that we're blocking off at their border
too right I have not communicated to Westford but I don't think that they would the only ones that are coming through carile are the Westford men men uh who who March down West Street uh every year um but I don't we have not
contacted Westford to let him know at the state level they're talking about the concentric rings that this is going to cause yeah yeah I mean Lexington has its own set of rings probably right Lexington and Conquer have their own conquer is blocking the roads really on the route two perimeter there on that
side so if you're from Westford you're going to go down 27 and go down Route two to go in anyway right so you can get to those parking areas satellite parking that conquered has and then use their shuttle buses yeah I mean I mean you
know car is the only one that's really is completely blocked along our borders to conquer Bedford is partially closed and then they allow them to go down old badford road to Virginia Road so they can get partway in but uh once you get over towards the base there you're you're blocked anyway because of the
battle Road stuff going to go this is a massive undertaking with federal law enforcement as well involved through you know the Park Service as well as other agencies and um you know in 1975 the president came and spoke at the North
Bridge um they have not released who the dignitaries are going to be to my knowledge but we are expecting we expecting of course a lot of Massachusetts dignitaries um I assume that there'll be some
um they some politicians from Washington will definitely be there um they the secret Services already uh checked out the bridge a month ago you know they obviously have to plan in advance and of course I don't think anybody will know
until probably 24 hours or less before I think they would only form this so there's an overarching uh Safety Committee for this uh for this event that is working with the you know Homeland Security in the feds it's called a super secure event right if
you've seen anything on this I mean they have to plan for all disasters um um and they have a pretty good communication scheme where they got a retired um commander of the baa for Safety and Security has helped them with the with
the model uh that they're following um but yeah it's a massive undertaking um ours fortunately is a lot simpler right uh get our town citizens give them an opportunity to get into conquer to enjoy the festivities and
give them a way to get back um including um we're going to handle obviously people that are handicapped we can use we're thinking the COA van would be their shuttle I don't hopefully we don't have too many of them um but we can still shuttle uh two or three trips and
they would have to reserve similarly Advance know I presume they would have to reserve in advance so you know about that I think we're going to do a lot of publicity up front and get some notice well in advance through multiple media Outlets yeah um getting people to
respond online in person Etc especially if they handicap to put in essentially a reservation get your parking credentials and we'll get an idea of how big we think what what happens at Old North Bridge when there's 150,000 people all like filtering it like are they all
standing around support they are but uh I I believe the area only will handle about 25 to 30,000 people that can actually see the bridge yeah um the rest of them I think would find that they couldn't view it and probably would um
fill the town center and primarily watch the parade in both directions okay yeah do not expecting anybody to be able to get through which is one of the reasons why they have to position assets all the way around so they had an emergency yeah you know not
going from one side of town to the other there's somebody in each quadrant who's going to take care of that yeah that's the emergency stuff I'm talking about people that all walk down I'm just saying they're just expecting the whole Center to be full of people just full and so people who are walking I guess we get some reservation but do I'll I'll
follow up with that on exactly what our responsibilities or you know our access is on this we have been invited by conquer we have the select board but we need to tell the town's people going to ask give them a realistic expectation that they're really not
going to be at the bridge right they're well it depends how early they're certainly going to have an advantage when you're on the North side as we are most people will come through conquered Center matter of fact the majority of people they're counting on are going to
come via the train so the the train they're going to put uh double up the train service [Laughter] well they're need to derail the first train and they have dedicated yeah they have dedicated trains that are wrapped
with a 250 logo on them and they'll pull extra cars on them and that train is going to go from Boston to South Acton South Acton back to Boston they thinking people would get in those two ways and they drop them off in conquer Center and then they could walk through so the majority they they're hoping are going
to need to come that way so they're going to be how long a walk that is if they're going to be on the wrong side of the bridge so we'll have somewhat of an advantage um you know for a while um we have the yeah we do just like just
like the uh the minute man did we do need to kind of wrap this up so the the monary impact to Carlile is I think what we had wanted to talk about or members of the select board wanted
to and I just put that from the mosquito from 75 just just as a reference of what was done where they blocked the roads off Etc if you want if you were interested in that yeah and the last slide was just how we C calculated the number of parking spaces etc for these different areas
which was Scott on his own time driving around and Counting spots so pre Sibly or post Sibly prei if I had Sibly with me I would have been done half the time objective yeah it was interesting because how did it change since in 50
years you know how many uh you know because I was I subtract for uh driveways mailboxes utility poles any place that was too narrow um you know where if you had cars parked on both sides you couldn't get emergency vehicles through Etc um and it was
pretty close to what they estimated in uh in 75 800 in the Indian Hill area and 600 over a n n Farm to help fund this the the safety um group had uh reached out to Simon catalo to um implore him to
support our efforts here and to get some funding we've sent a letter as well but um there is kind of a a cost expectation we don't know at this point what the funding from the state will be were we smart enough to reserve for that last year in budget
cycle no so the state did has approved funding on the house side not the Senate side so we did reach out to our delegation and say there's an anticipation that they are going to release this funding we said that we should claim a a small amount if you add
police and fire the overtime costs any DPW workers we use for managing traffic um and then buses porta potties um just basic basic Services somewhere between 20 and 30,000 is probably the
cost yeah wow how much are we asking from the state 20 or 30,000 um the impact being you know the town is bearing the brunt of of the closures for this so how is conquered funding it they're going to hundreds of they got
business a lot of fundraising and a significant chunk of that the number I heard and it's late so please don't hold me to it but it's it's 750,000 was reserved in the state budget and then they're give us a little bit yeah yeah and they needed they needed 1.2
million um and they're town of conquer they estimated they need 1.2 million for all of the security and all of the infrastructure um the Army's also chosen to celebrate their birthday during this event and um
which is adding to the complexity tanks and Etc and um high level dignitary is expected so yeah I mean they invited the royal family also so I mean but T conquer that be so the parade is going to include military is that what you're
saying and and maybe soldiers marching in formation or something yeah in the events so the event stretch from the being the parade it's not just the parade it's that's an all day to include a drone light show at 700 p.m. in oh that's I see so we're not planning on
supporting that with this plan but you should know that there will be impacts on Carlile as yeah people travel through got it thank you well somebody will give us our marching orders right y I'll work I'm working
okay making me anxious yeah 7 in 75se yeah I'll ride a horse I'd be happy to WR yeah I'd be happy to 75 every Department turned out for 36 to 40 hours
straight to support that event it's uh it was all hands on deck every Department meaning the staff the all the town staff yeah yeah you know DPW fire police select board Etc who were invited to the p at ball and Conquer but just
declined to go because there was too much going on in town I mean they had 100 National Guard stationed here Barbara culin at 4:00 a.m. is feeding them all breakfast at the spaling building I mean everybody turned out to do you know whatever needed to be done
yeah yeah yeah I guess I'm not going to Rockport that weekend War don't drink too much coffee expect I've certainly told people that you know this is not this is not the year to go enjoy the the events at the
bridge and the parade and the battle reenact because you it would be very difficult to see with all those people but if there's one thing that people have in common that went to the bicentennial is that they all had that experience of that and the little bits and pieces and they were all glad that
they went in the end no matter how little they saw or how much they participated yeah yeah I was on Lexington greens 3:45 a.m. we were about um 60 ft from the from the front line you walked with your head
lamp yeah we camped in someone's front yard boys I was in college but I came out for it and walked through I I grew up in the end of B the road so I just parked there and then walked two Rod road down to the bridge but right so did you go to the bridge were you at the
bridge oh yes yeah absolutely and what did they do then that year well I mean it's just the protesters were all there on a soggy rainy morning uh but they were pretty much in the background so the rest was you know the the parade and then uh the
March over the bridge April 19 soy rainy or sley or my kids were in the 4 this year I had VIP tickets so I will be marching in the parade so I don't have to worry about does the parade go over the bridge yes it does y yeah and there
is a surprise shot around the world yes and despite what Le says the shot her around the world was in conquered and uh there is one surprise that most people don't know yet but uh my regimen is organized to fly over at
10:15 it be K 136 and uh fighter jets coming over low over the bridge at 10:15 W so that that'll make a nice impression now you've just gone public I want you to know yeah yeah it'll be in a mosquito yeah there's a lot that'll be in the
mosquito aircraft Scott is the the food the food provisioning for conquered must be also just um they're finding that almost in every aspect they are falling short I
mean I mean 100,000 people going to be pretty hungry at after the well and you assume that you're going to have something like 10,000 to 20,000 probably for the dawn salute cuz people will say well why not go early for Dawn salute Loot and then you're already there for the parade so you're going to have an hour and a half of idle time two hours
of idle time what are you going to be doing well you're going to be looking for coffee and other things and uh I know it's quite limited um the the food vendors who they've been working with that will come in and help support them but you know they still have to worry
about all the security aspects and uh they're putting you know large vehicles at all of the security points so right so no traffic can get in um and so they've got Logistics that just aren't going to allow them to a lot of infrastructure issues for them so even
like try using your cell phone and Conquer can you imagine 150,000 people and all that so sell on Wheels setups and there's there's a lot of infrastructure and it's still not going to they're going to put I heard they were going to put temporary s cows yeah
the cows yeah yeah I think they have four or five of them that are going in there you have a question yes I did actually SC do you do you know there like when you go to outdoor concerts like they say you have to only take transparent bags through because of security and they they actually are
checking your bags now are they going to be up to that level of security think the parade ET well just to even get into no no there won't be that kind of security I just I was just wondering because that's that's what it is now
they're very very tight depends on who shows up yeah well I think even show up there's so I'm a minute man right and we talked with the head of the national park there with the security Etc and I said any restrictions on firearms and
that kind of stuff he say not that I know of so I I think there's only so much that you can do because it's just it's just too open there's too many access points so it's not really feasible to do it especially given how many people are going to try to come
through in a short period of time so but I'm just worried about 100,000 people who are tired irritable hungry have to pee you know 9:00 close it's not going to be funny that
part no that's not that's going to be difficult so the dispersal is also a big thing right yeah and they in the past it was over after the parade right people went to um lexon for that parade there was no battle road back then Etc so now
they've create really created a problem they have a block party in the center of conquer to essentially keep people there from 2: to 6: until the Drone show goes off so okay we do need we have other items thank you for coming and
giving us an update anyway I'm sure there be more questions I'll be happy to come back uh at a later date to uh to answer those questions or thank you for thank you for all your work and I mean maybe I'm a Pana but I think if the
call went out here in town for people to help you get a good response help yeah I know I've been in this town long enough I know I can rally 30 people if I need to yeah right there's enough good people this town and they really do respond um
to that kind of thing yeah thanks thank you thank you and one other item don't forget to mention to come to the flag C that's right on Saturday yes yes yes while I'm here yes so one of the events that we is the ceremony for the replica
flag which is finally done after four or five years and see Alan Lewis is on there and he's coming to that uh presentation on Saturday representing Barbara who started that replica flag right um so it's two to three right
here um I've got Minutemen from 1975 who's going to carry the original flag that I have as well as our other Bunker Hill flag and then I've got people from the modern day uh Minute Man that'll also be there and then the uh the woman
who swed the original flag uh Beverly Heath and her son Eric will be here so that's the old and the new and uh it'll be nice ceremony with little F and Dr music Etc great thanks Scott thank you to
everyone who came bye all right moving along we wanted to uh close the town warrant if we so decide but you want to go through anything on that uh we can go over the the current warrant if you want but the main action tonight is to close
it okay no more submissions as of right now what how many submissions do you have are you up to uh might be helpful yeah take a I think do we have a list you could put up or I do that'd be great thank you there will be a temptation to have a
lot of questions about each no no I just want to see the volume up sorry just give one second okay okay so the first items here in the violet color on the left are the consent agenda items that you're familiar with Y
then we move into operating budget Capital plan the additional firetruck borrow anything in yellow is something that might be removed cuz it's not needed the MFC to include two of their projects that would require borrowing as of now the elevator project and the
library coils project the amenities building is being proposed as both a CPA request and a non-cpa request or maybe no request which is why it's in yellow the TA bylaw everything here the
next nine are CPC articles so the regular Appropriations the cemetery improvements you heard about tonight and the regist application the amenities building the Highland building rental assistance dimit Park Banta Davis Rehabilitation Spalding baseball field
Rehabilitation and heeled house and barn Rehabilitation and then um two operational articles this the hcom demo delay bylaw and historical delay bylaw which they're considering kcoms placeholder for the Wetland bylaw the stuff the treasurer talked to
about so tailings and demand fees are candidates for the consent agenda I'm hearing y the Davis land CR which we talked about the two planning bylaws related to adus and accessory Apartments the request for planning assistance for MBTA
communities the um fire station design which you've discussed before we're definitely not going to need more money for the police station but it's there just in case the Board of Health mosquito monitoring the uh name change for the celebrations committee which is
just a housekeeping item the uh veteran director has asked the town to consider the hero Act tax abatement which you'll get more information from the the assessor on it's basically an increase to existing abatements for veterans um did the housing Advocate
make the list that didn't right no okay so that'll come out come off yeah the solicitor bylaw from the police I I talked about demand fees but also The Prudent investment law change and this is um Cemetery improvements in in case the CPC does not
approve it it would be asked as a a free cast request assuming the select board wanted to support it so approximately 41 to 45 articles there's that new one that came in and there is a Citizens petition for the planning board to consider more
than one option with the mvta bylaw discussion in the fall right so speaking of that I saw something from you at some point and I don't remember where I saw it suggesting that perhaps the fall town meeting would be the bylaw meeting and
just shove all those bylaws down the road um it's in order to facilitate the meeting I was saying if if bylaws weren't ready or it's not likely that they'll be for the spring to to tell those boards and committees that the fall would be a good place to discuss big bylaw changes it's clear that there
you the MBTA the not the extra funing for the consultant but the actual bylaw will be a fall thing that's what they were aiming for but the accessory Apartments think will'll be ready well they may be ready I'm just saying I mean it's not
for me to say but I just feel and I've made this point to our committee that we're going to go to this afternoon thing right so at you know noonish we're going to have um hopefully a food truck and open
house and maybe poster session start at 1:00 Sunday right four o'clock like people are GNA leave they're just gonna go I mean there's not much we can do I'm just this is not a three-hour meeting what I'm seeing right there so I I don't know it has really not we should close the
warrant definitely but we have to start thinking about like nobody wants a two-day meeting I certainly don't want a two-day meeting have the luxury of time might be like 18 people in the yeah in the room and we do it that's all that's just the reality right so you're supportive of a fall town meeting and moov oh I'm definitely supportive of a
fall town meeting I'm supportive of being more aggressive in telling some yeah yeah bills even if they're ready it's too complicated yeah you you know we need to move it that's all we are as mentioned I just sorry one more thing is the the purple the consent
we our opinion is we want to dramatic when I say hour the you know task force interested in expanding the use of the consent agenda and let people raise their hand and say I want to pull it out yeah yeah so the the planning board
through the town planner has also asked the select board to set a fall town meeting date as soon as possible if not right so that they know meeting your next meeting I think that's facilitate that conversation saying there is one and here's the date do we do we have any states that have
been she sent a memo today that I'll circulate to everyone I haven't read it yet I didn't didn't get to it today but I do know that that recommendation is in there your window isn't very large right because we've had this conversation before if you go to you know September people come back from school they're getting set you're not going to do
September you got some part of October most of the second half of October and then you don't really want to bump into it's like the first week maybe of November like you really only have day did a four we window when we thought we were going to do one last fall it was like October 18th or something and David
is the Task Force thinking that the the Sunday is only the Springtown meeting you know we haven't gotten that far in our thought and maybe so it's a good question I guess we should ask that yeah that would obviously it becomes more problematical in the fall of sports I
know so I don't know I haven't honestly in October you also have to worry about you know Columbus Day which is on a Monday oh I know right yeah you bump into a whole bunch of things so right you're right Columbus Day is the third well we don't call it that anymore do we no it's indigenous people although my
little Google Calendar thinks got two Columbus and one indigenous ipd I think you're looking at October 20 October 27 November what's election day the 4th yeah Bri did you the planning board in
the in this memo it suggested November 9th 10th 16th or 17th as aligning with their November 9th is a Sunday oh okay they added Sundays in case that was a continuation so 9
10 what are the other two 1 16 17 yeah and 11 is 11th is Veterans Day 10 might not be bad CU maybe some people are not are off on Veterans Day which would make a late night more palatable well I'll send this memo I
don't want to just reference it but so we have to determine Avail you're suggesting the planning board is suggesting a Sunday and on those dates they offer the Monday because it's your choice obviously yeah but this is to
accommodate their um their scheduling of hearings and the public is going to be required for both MB so they need more time rather than less time is what they're saying yeah yeah and the set date helps them modify their plan want a special special town meeting like a very
special town meeting no well that's what it always gets called right it's is it a special still yeah well anyway that part doesn't matter I I guess I unfortunately I won't be around this week for my usual bi-weekly meeting but I'll I'll ask the people to start thinking about it I'm
you know again just brainstorming I mean I would say if we're going to start the routine of Sunday then maybe we should stick with Sunday with Sunday it's also that time of year is also Sports playoffs and all that stuff we say so
usually I think Sunday is a clear day in terms of Sundays are generally clearer than Saturdays unless they're and and during the week because that's when you get into the Mia playoff brackets so like at the high school level you don't know what your schedule looks like or what days it's not usually Sunday not
usually Sundays yeah but then you also we could November you can't count on the weather so if you you really I don't know how you do the kid babysitting piece but we you couldn't you probably would the cafeteria gym the cafeteria get the Friday Night Live people involved yeah I me you could do you
could do it's just yeah I mean but good to know okay all right so should we move to close the warrant yes I need a motion please I move to close the warant second scheduled for May 18th for the May 18 Spring Town me
2025 annual town meeting car oh move to closer War for the annual town meeting scheduled for Sunday May 18th 2025 second second all right Barne got beat you to it all right any further discussion seeing none we'll take a Voice vote all in favor I all right it
passes we are closed no more all right that's it noas it's a lot it's going to be fun all right Mr Town Administrator this this is my town administrators report to the select board there is an all chairs meeting that is scheduled for March 7th the
agenda includes talking about employee reviews budget updates preparation for the town meeting and committee reports which is my favorite part learning from all the Committees scheduled another coffee hour at ferns on March 11th I had a couple great guests at my last one it seems I'm getting regular attendance at
these so it's definitely worth the time so come talk to me about the town meeting or anything else of interest to the town you heard Scott Evans tonight talk about the town Flag Ceremony that's can I interrupt you of course administrator so is the all church meeting an open meeting it is my meeting
of all the chairs in town to discuss town if someone like me for example who's not a chair or a vice chair you're chair chair of the study committee well then I'm there okay if it's if somebody else wanted to sit in they can or not yes or is only invitation people can
people can okay no it's not a okay just need to consider quorums okay all right no no it wouldn't be that I would be listening okay well wait a minute so if you consider quorums you're no only if you're deliberating you can sit and listen because she's a chair well that's what happened remember the last time but
we I was ousted there were three of the five select board but if I come as the chair of the CPC he comes as the chair but if you only talk about CPC stuff and I only talk about town meeting stuff well our TA is shaking his head but you can just
post your meeting that's fine okay we post a selectboard meeting post your meeting during mine okay let's do that let's do that can you could you take care of yes so I got to not that what time is the meeting it's at 10: a.m. on March 11th March I showed up I showed up
February 7th thinking I saw I see the S mon March March 7th everybody the coffee hour is on the 11th March 7 7th March 7th got it oh my gosh all right I'm putting it down
right now where is everyone I texed theast was it all on Saturday I I got on zo I will be here with some of you I believe to dedicate the town flag the followup to that dedication we'll be bringing it down to the state house for flying there so Carl I will join the
towns that have flags flying in the Hall of flags but that's not happening in the same day no it's not yeah you said 10: a.m. right yes you 10 a.m. the conquered museum has requested permission to host their Paul Rivers's bike ride for the conquered Museum timing on the 250th
which we talked about a lot tonight up to 500 cyclists will be going through our town and many of those around us it's a it's a big loop seems like fun the um group is looking for your approval both Chiefs have recommended this event as long as there's no road closures they have no issues then there
are no road closures it's a month what was the date of it May 17th okay May 17th so you move that now you if you want to move that you can move that now um I got to go back up to the motion now right the
beginning it says uh sorry move to approve the use of town roads as described in the town administrator's report for the conquered Museum charity bike ride on May 17th 2025 second all oh sorry yeah all in
favor okay G oppos for your Human Resources update from our assistant Town Administrator we have uh extended offers for our last DPW driver labor position and the public safety administrative role and the only open role or position
now is the DBW mechanic as you know Carol gik has resigned as the CHS director Aubrey serving as the interim CHS director and we are putting together a committee to discuss the job description and duties
of the next CS director for your budget update the finance committee has asked police fire DPW Library town hall and both schools to conduct a 2% budget cut exercise and they'll be discussing that on Thursday I'll be at the meeting with them they're also going to be reviewing
uh Revenue side of the budget to make recommendations on the um the so-called deficit Governor Healey's house one budget and health insurance cost projections have not significantly changed the budget Outlook after an analysis and we are $800,000 over the 3%
tax increase Mark at this point yeah I'm continuing to recommend prioritizing capital in the budget we going over this with the finance committee and sending you their discussion points for that so you can prepare and let me know if there's any Department that you want to come in to
talk about capital for your eventual can I interrupt you again um so the 800k deficit and the 3% in assumes zero use of free cash or some use of free cash assume zero zero so there is some free
cash available for one purpose or the other and revenue some Revenue adjustments as well but the 800k is the operating budget deficit no Capital yeah no Capital use tonight you had a presentation from the cultural
Council that won't close the gap I'm just hoping the schools kind of got our message that get they need to look at their budget I don't know Barney tossed them a softball and they whiffed on the softball as far as I'm concerned not acceptable not
to do the exercise I sent you information from the town clerk regarding the 2025 annual Town election which is scheduled for June 3rd in the town caucus is scheduled for March 31st you can see the memo for information from Ashley about that we talked about
the fall town meeting date and setting those dates as recommended by the planning board and other boards our report also includes some final information about the Wilkins HVAC replacement to include our acceptance of 117,000 from National Grid for a rebate
thanks to the facility staff mostly and although Sarah says she doesn't deserve any credit I do think she works hard on these rebates also uh the energy use in the Wilkins building will decrease by the equivalent of three households each year based on this this uh new equipment which is which is pretty interesting for
Capital project updates we're going to talk about this comprehensive Culvert analysis as soon as we get through this this budget this budget cycle so probably in April but you will be getting this report and it'll inform our long-term capital plan the elev elevator
maintenance project is almost ready for biding so that is timing to have a correct number for town meeting which is going to be one of the warrant articles we discussed tonight the Benfield project is complete the only thing left is to the exterior door project is complete the only thing left is to issue
out the fobs for uh for the residents and we're working with Noah to complete that action also you should follow the brick building HVAC discussion so there's a discussion about the costs here and the benefits of sustainability and not and whether or not we can use green communities Grant the MC's done a great job working through this this
project and trying to find funding for it so I'll have a final report for you soon on what's decided there for building construction project updates I did finalize negotiation over the contract with silver Schwartz who's the designer for the library Ren Ovation project they will now work with the OPM
CMS in order to move this project forward the first step will be schematic design and then construction documents and then bidding as you're now becoming very familiar with the police station renovation will go out on the street for bid tomorrow we've already sent it to many interested applicants and
construction firms the dates are St Patrick's Day for um those final numbers so we'll know that number as well and then fire station renovation the designer you selected tekon and your OPM have agreed to keep their funds for the
up to toown meeting part of the study within your arpa allocation so we have the funding to complete that initial stage of the design project to bring to town meeting so there's a little bit of a concession from them they're they're taking a hit in the beginning the understanding that if the Project's approved you've signed you've negotiated
an agreement with te we have to sign it but we have agreement from both that they're moving forward and they're having their first meeting about it this week so they're in and then the analysis of the DPW building is ongoing with the MFC a little delayed in their presentation to
you not that you don't have enough to do but in the next month or so they'll be coming to talk to you about that project some discussion points that you should keep on your radar appointing a new community garden manager or at least assisting the kcom with that the board of assessor vacancy which would be very
similar to the school committee vacancy just a couple month appointment but there are multiple candidates I believe three at this point for you to consider the tsac wants to come in and talk about the transfer station to include raising sticker fees and potentially expanding the transfer station in the next few
years and then the bog house the town planner wants to come in and update you on the affordable housing feasibility investigation at the bog house only one notification that I did on your behalf that I'm informing you about the car 250th Colonial fair is going to have a
sign in the rotary in the town common and that is the event that Scott Evans was talking to about tonight um for staff recognitions I went on a tour a meal and wheels shift with our with our new transportation coordinator Jennifer
G um it's just incredible to see the staff how they interact with with our senior population U Jennifer doesn't always go it's usually a volunteer but the volunteers were able to relay to me that they knew I was coming that they knew the um the volunteer schedule who is going to be there so it's not just
delivering meals it's also interacting with the public our Coos does that in every event that they have um in in every program they run it's very evident to me that they they know a lot about the Carlile seniors and residents not just in a professional way but also in a personal
way so I was able to witness that I was grilled on a few things uh at each one of the stops and um can't wait to do it again I thought delivering delivering the meals was fun and getting out into the community and seeing them and I'm encouraging other staff members to do it
as well what were you grilled on uh Senior Center came up in one of them also taxes taxes and other buildings and um just what our plans were for continuing programs like this and then a few people gave me their their
Recollections of the town and um I admired the The View that some people have of the wildlife and the trees here in K I was just reminded that you know it's a very very beautiful Community it's important to know uh CU I did this one year as well um that meals you don't just you know fling
the food it's also a a visit and a social thing yeah because I know in some towns I I have a neighbor in Rockport they hang the a bag on the door on her door you know um what does that mean
means they just they don't it's just a Meals on Wheels it's not necessarily a well you know gagging whatever they live in town visit they don't yeah okay they both work here nice
okay all right the report includes some dates of Interest coming up for you and then on the board here or on the the screen is the tentative agenda upcoming which includes a joint meeting with tsac a lot of annual meeting talk the
discussion about the bog house with the town planner and continued discussion of the 250th as you can see um as I met with the town manager in con con today the 250th is taking up a lot of oxygen as we move into April in the area not as much for us but it's definitely a
significant event that we're going to have to plan for as you know um and I would be helpful as the chair of the CPC to know of those nine CPC um applications that are now on the warrant which of those the select board would
like to have a more detailed conversation about I mean not and maybe you don't feel the need to have that for of them but um we're certainly prepared to make that happen if if
desired it's getting to the point where if there isn't an additional meeting one of these meetings should be to for a lack of better phrase is speed dating about these particular issues that you can work through with the petitioners so that you can feel comfortable so we're we're going to meet tomorrow morning
right uh about town meeting yeah so I think that's what you're talking about right is evaluating the articles like getting more information about the specific articles yeah but but if if as a select board I can't remember who said this a meeting or so ago that they
hadn't heard about you know much about the amenities building or the Highland so what I mean we're a little late we're we're going around to all the boards and committees yeah and I'll Circ I can circulate but we're going to meet tomorrow on it so I want to get a little more guidance from Ryan's team but we've
got a one-page thing which like you would get as a c PPC and basically it's going to say you know you need like an elevator like two to four sentences elevator speech and we recommend you'd have like a pro and con and be honest right these
are the reasons to like the M like the mass ballot style these are the reasons that it's a good thing and these are arguments against it and and we add we are proposing that if you can get that in front of the select board by the March meeting like that's a good thing for us to have it's a PRP sign need
anyway but if they can get some pce of that to us a month from now like that's the kind of thing I think would help us yeah like evaluate that so that's we're kind of going through that right now okay Mr
chair that's my report thank you you we have the next warrants and minutes I don't know if anyone had a chance to go through them yeah everyone F to me if you want to make a motion then or if there are any edits I have
I got to get the dates here I move to approve the minutes of the select board meetings of January 21st and 28th 2025 do I hear a second second yeah sorry was it one the one on the 28th that was she said was AI generated
primarily might did it hallucinate one at a time you want to take one at a time in case there's well did anybody have any comments on that second one they looked okay to me there was no proof reading of the
AI oh no experimenting with the AI Gretchen said in her note proofing it serves as the base probably does 40 to 60% of the work and then you have to do the rest okay all right it's getting better it's getting close yeah it's
awesome I want I want to compliment whether it was AI or Gretchen I think she said a tepid one of the right a tepid uh recommend U tepidly favorable yeah tepidly favorable I like that that's uh
that's great all right so IE of a second any uh for both any adjustments any comments seeing none I'll take a Voice vote all in favor I all right none opposed I'm sorry I add one more update uh I I
believe I'd sent it to and if I didn't I will um the so Bethany resigned and moved on she was the conservation assistant and as we know syia is out right now so John is covering as the interim in order to support the kcom
temporarily after conversations with the chair of both the kcom the planning board um having Noel serve as the assistant for the kcom and continue her planning assistant role also supporting her with uh some minutes support and other and other
things that that could be more permanent so this would be combining the planning and the kcom assistant under the town planner and the conservation director or agent um it it does cut down and half an FTE but it also expands that position and makes it makes it stronger and more
attractive allows us to retain someone like Noel for longer by adding some responsibility and if you supplemented that with some um Consulting funds and or minutes funds right money to do the administrative work then then we do believe it would work even though we're
taking three employees and making them two so I've communicated this to the planning board and I've communicated to the Conservation Commission I will be going to each board and presenting this as a final solution or as a more permanent solution seeking their approval and if they both approve it then this would become part of the part
of the budget so this is more combining of positions on the land use side and trying to turn those assistance into coordinators hopefully eventually working with something like AI in order to help with minutes production and allow us to to be more efficient with staff just wanted to let the board and
public know that that's going on and I communicated it with the boards that are involved in the approvals and we have a tentative agreement to discuss it further after and I assume Noel is interested we did ask her yeah yeah okay she is very
she has a conservation background she's more than qualified and uh the way we're structuring the job I I think it would be um a benefit to her and yeah we'll lose her fast cuz she's very talented but while she's here we'll take advantage of her skills yeah okay thank you
okay um so we've approved the minutes appointments um is it the board of assessors do we take there's two candidates right there's three three candidates um do we not do a joint me meeting yeah that's what I thought can
we do this on our own uh that's a typo so you you will be doing that at your next meeting with next meeting okay so that wasn't supposed to be in this package it wasn't okay that's why it says Z and oh so the candidates are in there so you can have a preview that's why they're in there not to vote okay so
we didn't have any well it's not for us right now not for now we just wanted to get you ahead because all right yep my bad on that um liaison reports I met with the uh Library trustees last
night um they reviewed the TA bylaw they voted to ex to support it but they would like to be excised from it we heard that tonight yeah they support it if they're not included is what you're saying yeah if they're not included um they did though they they
wrote a little statement before you know they'll send it they'll be sending it later but um uh and in that statement it said it they said that they really do appreciate the HR Support from the town hall they've called called on them on on
that for their um evaluation of the librarian uh and that they plan in fact and then they they gave some suggested edits for the right draft bylaw and one of it was that they would
uh would they shall um perform or comply to the town um personnel uh um policy handbook right which I thought was actually a very positive statement because although
there's they're affirming that although they it they don't want they want to still keep control of their hiring and firing um that they will conform with all Personnel policy in the town so that they're not they're not saying they wouldn't that's
that's right okay so I met yesterday I think it was what's that Tuesday yeah yesterday with the planning board I would say similar reaction what a long meeting well that the r of it was a long meeting but I was up front the TA bylaw part was up front
um were you listening in on that meeting yeah so you heard it so I would say they were sort of in the middle between Board of Health and uh library in terms of the reaction about half of them support the
article and the other half have that Board of Health view that this is a slippery slope that's a bad thing however uh I think um they also gave editorial suggestions some of which I think are pretty good and so my ask
chairman um Snell is I would like I don't know whether we want to do it like an open meeting or not an open meeting maybe not an open meeting but meet with Council I think the language is Clumsy I have to say it's not helping us there are certain things I don't want to get
into it at 10:15 but you know I could see from what they were saying suggestions they made suggestions I see that better wordsmithing would help our work product and I think we have time to do it so my ask is that we sit with councel I'd like to be part of that process but it's up to you but you know
great you want to we're trying to get this because we think I mean at least I think but I think the board thinks this is a worthwhile Endeavor so we want to get it right so let's right I I think in the broad sense if we can be more prescriptive it's a little Broad in the
way it's written and maybe that's delivered by Council but if if we can be more prescriptive especially around this thing that we've met all said which is you boards have policy and you need to work on policy and we the select board
are not we have to be more definitive declarative we are not trying to take your policy role now policy is yours it flows to these people in some fashion and the administration the support the HR the word that the word that Addie
used is operational instead of day-to-day right the operational side you know I mean there are things like that that I think would go to we're never going to convince Board of Health it doesn't matter but the the the boards that are reasonable but are saying wait
wait a minute I think that's the Avenue we need to explore and I think we should explore yeah I think I think that was partly what the library you know they said well it's you know wasn't clear to us it's not clear it's not written clearly I have to say I said well seemed clear to us but I I'm you know okay I've
been through it I've been through it three times now and the very mild criticism that Brian offered he was very mild right Brian's a smart guy he wat wat he's just like I'm only talking for me it's not schools but it's a slippery
slope and I'm not seeing that it's not a slippery slope I mean that's kind of and so again if we're really clear you know you know we're a little bit too inside like they they're reading it and saying like huh police why is police you know they don't know strong Chief weak Chief I mean that's a lot inside baseball right we should be like very clear on
what we're trying to do so that's my recommendation I will call you absolutely all right if if you could get any kind of feedback though from you know you said the library or whatever in writing or
just it's in writing it's already in writing thought they were going to send it to Ryan I thought it would uh they haven't sent it to you it's really the chair you should really send it to me Ryan he's trying to he's trying to not I will just forward it to you immediately
okay super I mean the other thing that comes up is people think this means that we're going to have a town manager right they don't understand the difference if they even know that much I think they just say is there a land grab by the select board like you're taking
they're not saying him they're saying you guys are taking over a piece that is supposed to be separately El I mean I think we can navigate that there's some again there's a board that says over by dead body but other ones aren't saying that they're saying you know um I have
one more um just very brief uh leas report so I was uh pleased to sit in the with the as part of the audit I don't know you can't call it a committee right but it's our working the audit working group to listen to the audit of the 2020
for audit review and I won't go into the details because they will be presenting but very clean bill of health good good no management concerns we're very strong financially at the moment so uh you know it was informative I thought they did a nice job at explaining things and we've
done well now comes the challenge yeah all right if there's nothing else I will open it up to community input at the end of our meeting is there anyone online who would like to make a comment from the
public all right well thanks Mark for staying to The Bitter End Mark you're very [Music] tough regulars all right well seeing no comments um I'll take an motion to adjourn so moved all right all in favor
all right we're done right awesome