7 o'clock. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting for May 13, 2025. Um, we'll start with a quorum. It looks like we have a quorum except David Modell is absent. Is he in call?
Hopefully on his way here. All right. Wonderful. All right. So, we typically start with community input. We're going to go through appointments and resignations. Um then a community choice aggregation contract extension, cemetery, uh perpetual care discussion,
then the we'll discuss the Carolyn Hill scholarship, uh the annual town meeting. We'll discuss the remaining warrant articles. Um then we're going to have a fire station renovation design committee discussion, town administrator report, warrants and minutes for approval,
liaison reports, and then do cemetery deeds and again have community input though I will be asking for community input during various sections of the meeting as well. Um do you want to should we start with something a little different? I'm going
to throw things off a little bit. Kate, yes. You thought you were gonna escape. Sorry. Sorry. So, I I actually will uh I I think I should turn this over to our state representative um if he wouldn't mind coming forward. Of course. And uh
members of the board, thank you so much for accommodating me. I did not think that I was going to be able to make it and I was sad about that because Kate's, you know, very special obviously to our community. to me as a friend. Uh Kate, I think what stands out
to me about you is the breadth and depth of your service to Carlile, to conquer before you moved to Carlile. Um not just for the town of Carile, which has been fantastic, to our schools, to the arts in our area and the and you know, the
greater Metro West in LOL. Uh and beyond that, you're just a tremendous person. Um so proud to call you a friend. You've been so supportive to me. You've been a mentor in public service. And you know, as you pass the torch to the next generation, I I I know I don't just
hope. I know that many people will look to uh your service the way that you've carried yourself, the how diligent and thoughtful and meticulous you always have been um as an advocate and as a public servant. So, thank you so much for for everything. I'm going to miss
you. I was really really sad uh to hear. Happy for you and Mark. uh but but sad um as well that you won't be our neighbor uh pretty soon. Uh so as you know and you've been at a number of uh a number of occasions when I've had the
honor to present one of these uh to a special resident of our community and today that person is you. I'm so proud and honored to to be your state rep and get to uh present this citation to you. I'll just briefly read it. um the House of Representatives for the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts be it hereby known to all uh that the Massachusetts House of Representatives offers its sincerest congratulations to Kate Reed in in recognition of over a decade of dedicated service to the town of Carile and we are in Carlile. So I'm not mentioning conquered but I think those
who who know you know that you did quite a bit uh for for conquered and other communities characterized by your unwavering commitment, leadership and lasting contributions to our community. The entire membership extends its very best wishes and expresses expresses the
hope for future good fortune even if it has happens to be in France and continued success in all endeavors given today this 13th day of May 2025 at the state house signed by me your your state rep and speaker Mariana. Thank you so
much Kate. [Applause] There you go. Move it that way. So it's not the kitchen. Yeah, there you go. Photo. Excellent. Great. All right. You want to do everybody? Sure. Sure. Great. Yeah. I
just had to ask more. Balance it out. Short [Applause] Oh, you do have to stick around. I'll be back. Go ahead. Good to see you, Simon. Thank you for
coming. Send me that photo, Mr. Select. I will. Thanks, Simon. Thank you. Really appreciate you letting me do this. I know you have a good night. Beautiful. Excellent. Very nice.
And very welld deserved. Yep. Somebody uh counted up if you counted all the different volunteer roles you've played in Carlile and the different boards and committees and task forces and and the select board. I think
it's 27 years. What are you talking calling? Well, I've been Yes, actually. Um it has been 27 years. And of course, there was 18 years in before that. Yes. Yes. I was planning board there and school committee. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, we um we have a a parting gift, but it's not ready yet. So, this this envelope is I hope it's not too big to pat. It's huge and it's made out of granite, right? That's right. Anyway, we have a card for you that's uh you know um
IU the address of the shot. Yes. Thank you guys. You're welcome. Thank you. I wish you hadn't, but we did. Ryan, you were Did you have something? Oh, it was just um Simon was here. He had a he had a child this week. His his
fourth. Oh, that's why he was um surprised to be here and rushing out. So, hey. Oh my god. Yeah. The fourth boy. That boy. I feel sorry for his wife. Five men in the house. Oh my god.
Chesse can do it though. I think anybody can. I think she can. Um, one one other item before we move on to community input. Um, we individually I think and and as a community have received some feedback relative and and information
relative to recent arrests that have been taking place by ICE around the communities and Actton was the most notable one recently. And um I know there are residents that are concerned about this. And um I just wanted to follow up and publicly
um just put put hopefully put people at ease but also to so that we educate uh everyone in Carlile as to what our policy is in Carlile. Um I had the opportunity to talk to the chief um which I do occasionally but I talked to
him about this in particular and um he reminded me of his statement that he had issued previously which I think was published in the mosquito and I would um you know read it here or I can certainly paraphrase it but the Carile Police Department will neither participate in
nor obstruct noncriminal ICE federal immigration enforcement as prescribed in the following sections of the US code. And he goes on to write that the Carlile Police Department may assist ICE in criminal matters. Criminal matters when the following conditions are met. When
they present a judicially issued federal arrest warrant, which means a judge issues it. Um non-compliance with that would be against the law. If an individual is suspected of federal immigration related crime, that's in addition to a warrant. And if
information sharing with ICE is allowed, it must comply with the public records law. So, they're not going to do anything that is outside the bounds of the law, and they're certainly not um um you know, assisting when um not not
called for um by a by a judge here. So, I just uh wanted to to go on record and I did ask him today and and uh he confirmed that there have been zero inquiries to date from ICE um to the police department. So, um, just as an
update and I think that that's important to share with the community. Is there anything else that anyone wants to say? Well, yeah, thank you for saying that. I think, um, we have a lot to do when we're it's not on our agenda and we have to get ready for town meeting, but I would like it if in one of the next few
meetings we take up a real deliberation on whether we ought to be a little more proactive, if only as a statement. Okay. And we we could have the police chief present too for a discussion of that if you thought that was more appropriate. Okay. So, with that being said, I I
wanted to open it up if there are any um comments, questions on any um really on anything. We we will be opening up uh at various times during the discussion for comments and questions on specific items. But if there's anyone who has in
the public here who wants to make a comment or has a question for the select board. Is there anyone online? Okay, seeing none, we're going to move on to our appointments and resignations. Um the first item is uh
the resignation of Alan Lewis from the Environmental Sustainability Committee. Did Did you see that? Notified. Yeah, I guess we have to accept his resignation, but with gratitude um for his service. Great. Do we have to I don't think we
have to No, it's just just a notification. And thank you for your service, Alan. Alan, as I'm sure served easily as long Yeah. Well, he's been on the select board previously and number of things. Thank you for your service, Alan. I see him up on the screen there. So, and we still have his contact info,
correct? Yeah. Um, okay. So, employees, we have some appointments. Um, okay. I move to promote Joe Ptoriino to the position of heavy equipment operator for the
Department of Public Works effective April 14th, 2025. Second. Um, Mr. Town Administrator. Yes. In order to be a heavy equipment operator in the town of Carile, you need a hoisting license and a CDL license. We
have been uh accepting people with the potential to get those licenses. Of course, preferring to get people who already have them. Uh Joe's a great example of someone who did the extra work to obtain these licenses and is now being promoted to heavy equipment operator. Why this is important to to you and the town is if someone was to
respond during an an ice emergency, they would have to wait for someone to load their their uh it's a different ICE, just to be clear. Different ice would have to load their their truck. They would have to wait for someone with a license to load their truck. This this way you can self-load
and go. So it gives us more flexibility. So congratulations to Joe. Yes. We're hoping you accept his promotion. This was a planned promotion, not not a budgeted promotion. Great. Any further discussion from the board? Seeing none, I'll ask for a voice vote. All in favor?
I. None opposed. Okay. And I'd like to move uh to appoint Jeffrey Katowski to the position of director of the Council on Aging and Human Services with an anticipated start date of May 19th, 2025. Wow, that's town meeting day. Hi,
Jeff. I see you there on the screen. Um hi. Good evening. Hi there. Good evening board and thank you all for having me. We It's a little hard to hear you, but maybe um maybe it's on our side. Maybe it's on our end. Um let me uh just say
that um I was part of the um interview group that uh met with the various candidates and um had the opportunity to to talk with Jeff twice. Um so uh I I am very um confident that he will do an
excellent job for us. He's I think we all saw his resume in the packet, but he brings a wealth of experience and and a and a very broad um uh experience both from both within the Council on Aging world but also prior to
that as a lawyer. So Jeff, we are very excited to have you uh joining us and would you like to say a few words? Yeah, thank you very much. You know, I'd like to thank everybody um for the warm welcome that I've already received. Uh it's really been a pleasure throughout
uh this whole application process to get to know the town and the um the uh uh staff as well as the Council on Aging Board. Uh what really drew me to Carile is the strong sense of community and the opportunity to be part of this town that
values community involvement and its commitment to residents, especially older adults and um those vulnerable and those in need. Um I grew up in a small town, so I saw firstound the importance of um a small municipal government that
effectively works for its residents. I worked in municipal services for about two decades almost and eventually became the director of the North Cambridge Senior Center. During my time on the Council on Aging, I've had the opportunity to grow programs from the ground up, rebuild services postcoid,
and work across departments to better serve older adults and vulnerable residents in areas of housing, transportation, and food security. And part of what also drew me to Carlile is that I'm looking forward to uh to new challenges, where I can bring both my
experience and my passion for community building to a setting where relationships are personal and the impact is felt deeply. Um I've always valued working with people. Uh I've always valued work that is also people centered and collaborative. And I
believe that this position really represents an opportunity to be part of uh a community on a closer level. Um, so I really look forward to stepping into this role. My priority will be to listen to staff, volunteers, board members, and residents. Um, I really want to
understand what's working well and how um and how this department can better address the needs of the community and really um, you know, I'd like to review partnerships and explore ways to extend services uh, to residents that um, you
know, may have barriers uh, to entry in terms of transportation. Um, and lastly, I'm really looking forward to building on the great work that's already been done. Um, I've had an opportunity to speak with staff and council on aging staff
um, council on aging members and um, it's it's really amazing to see the work that's been done and um, I really really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of that and uh, reinforce a department's role as a valued collaborative part of
town government. Um, so I'm very excited to serve Carl and deeply appreciative for the warm welcome that I've already received. Uh, I I hope you can all hear me. I apologize. No, you can. Volume is a little difficult. No, just fine.
Great. Thank you very much. And we're gonna see you as of Monday, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm looking forward to it. Assuming you vote for him tonight. Yes. Yeah. Assuming you Right. Monday. The way Oh, Monday. 19th 19th is
Monday. Monday. Oh, he starts Monday. Okay. Great. Yeah. Monday. Monday. Great. Hey, just in time for old home day. You know, the um the new guy has to go in the dunk tank. Just saying. That'll be exciting. Maybe we better take the vote first and then we can
explain that. Right. All right. Um so there's been a motion. It's been seconded. Any further discussion? I'll just add that uh I had the honor of uh going with the COHS today to the Edward Munchch exhibit in the Harvard
Museum and u the staff is pretty excited to have Jeffrey join. So that's good uh endorsement. Yeah. Fantastic. All right. Um voice vote. All in favor? I. None opposed. Welcome aboard. Go now.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to this. Bonnie, thank you, sir. We've run out of orange pens. Welcome to stay, but we'll see you Monday. I don't know where mine went. You can looking forward to it. Thank
you, Ryan. All right. All right. So, we're going to move on now. Thank you, Jeff. Um, we're going to go to the community choice aggregation contract extension. And for this, I believe we have a presentation from our very own Sarah. Awesome.
Yes. And in conjunction with Colonial Power Group, who's here to back me up and also provide those more technical energy market details. Um, but uh yeah, I did put some slides together um based on some slides that were made a couple
of years ago because we're already talking about another contract. So um looks like Ryan's bringing those up. All right. So, we will start with a slide of what we're looking for out of this
conversation. Um, which is primarily to authorize Brian to either accept or reject a pricing for the next contract. Um, the time frame we've been given in our discussions with with Colonial has been within the next 5 to 6 months. And
then also the goal of this is to decide on what price range that that is. Um so that's just an overview and as a quick background catch up on you know what is the CCA. Um the community choice
aggregation program uh allows residents in Carile to choose their electric supplier. So they still get it through Eversource, but they have choices in terms of the uh composition of that energy. Um so they can choose from three
options. There's a a standard default option, there's a more basic option, and then there's the optional green 100. And they're all on this scale of how much uh green uh clean energy is being used to create that electricity. So, as you can
imagine, the optional green 100 is 100% renewable energy, uh, optional basic is doing kind of the the bare minimum in Massachusetts, which is still like fairly good compared to other states, but you know, the minimum and then that standard is in the middle.
Um, so as it says, Colonial Power Group is our broker that helps us get these contracts. Um and in the last year, uh 84.1% of households in Carlilele were participating in the program. All right. And where we are
right now, so our contract that we're in with Dynag uh ends in January 2026. Um and because the market is very much in flux, um it's we're already trying to be proactive and looking ahead to this next contract cycle. Um, and uh, there will
be a slide where I'll kind of pass the mic over to Colonial to talk a little bit more about that, where they see the pricing uh, will be and um, yeah, what the what they're looking at and what they would advise for us to do. But I can talk a little bit more about the the
program in Carlile. So this graph uh, just shows the composition. So of those 84% of households uh, most of them are in the the standard which is the default. So um that's what people are automatically given and then they could
either opt down to the basic uh which about 20% have done or opt up to the optional green 100 which only 3% have done. Um and then there is also a small amount of commercial uh commercial customers who make up the total user
group uh or total participant group in the the CCA and um oh sorry can we just go back real quick just reviewing my notes um there hasn't been a huge amount of change in the number of enrollments um standard and green uh standard and basic went
down a slightly you know between like 50 in 100 households over the course of the whole year. Green 100 pretty much stayed flat. It went from like 41 to 40 and then back up to 41. So very very small margin of change there. Um and I was
looking at the numbers earlier and it seems to indicate that people aren't shifting from one option to the other. If they drop out, they're just not participating in the program uh at all anymore. Okay, now we're ready uh for the new contract. You can see
there's a large change uh in savings going from the old contract to the new contract. And that's because the old one was locked in before early 2022 when things changed very drastically in the energy market. Um so because they were locked in before that, the savings were
really just really remarkable. So this is representing residential uh meters as a whole um versus breaking it out by by household just because each household has a different uh de you know energetic demand that they're using. So looking at
the town savings all residents compiled um you can see here that when that new contract started because it was uh negotiated in the new energy market obviously the the savings did go down a a a great amount. Um, can you explain
Sarah what we're I don't quite understand what the two lines are telling you. Yes. So those three lines are the three different options. So standard, basic, green, 100. Um, and the x-axis is what the No, I get I got that. So then let me ask you a different
question. Sorry. Sure. This the this I forgot already. This the one that's 25. The one that most people pick is the the top the black uh the black. And so that's the cumulative savings compared with staying with Eversource and their standard pricing.
Correct. At that time. Yes. Okay. And I see it pops to slightly negative. I mean I did see in your first slide and for whatever reason Eversource right now is at like 14 cents. Yeah. It is more competitive. Like what happened there? Do you know? Um well that's that has to
do with the timing of the contract because you know Eversource if we actually go to the next slide I zoomed in on that section. So this is just the past year. I see. Um so when you're not enrolled in the CCA, your rates can really just change. Um so that's like
the benefit and the challenge with the CCA is its consistency. Um you know, obviously in the last contract, it was so helpful because it was locked in before everything kind of went wild. And so it was a little bit of a different story this time. So you're comparing the Eversource 14 cents is like a spot
price. It's like a now price. It's not a lock in price, right? Yeah. It's for six months at a time. Oh, it's for six months. Six months at a time every source. Okay, that's correct. And that price also is already five months old, right? Six months old because it's change on August 1st. Ah, okay. Thank
you. Actually went out to bid today for the next price. Okay. And that's actually good timing because the next slide is I just said turned it over to you for the next slide. So, it's a good transition point uh for what you have to to share. Sure. So Mark Capone
of Colonial Power at Five Mount Royal at Malboro. Hi Sally. Nice to see you. Hi. So tonight we just wanted to talk about kind of the the next leg of the journey if you will. So so far I think it's been very positive. Um the program has been up and running and overall there's been
savings. Right now there's compared to basic service we're slightly over but I think people are enjoying the stability of this and not worrying about the shock that could or could not come. uh which you've been the benefit of it at least in the past. So moving forward what
we're trying to find out is what the town wants to do from a an energy perspective. We were able to get some um indicative pricing from uh the current supplier and today uh we went through a long process with David back and forth whether we should go three years or two
years. I feel very confident in his choice was two years which I think is fantastic because rates have come down and right now rates are you know um looking at you know if I'm going to go to the the the product that um is your
default product pricing is going to come down probably around you know just just over a penny or so. So, it's a beneficial time for you in the marketplace to be looking depending on on what everyone's view of the market
is. And I normally have a pretty good grasp of what I'm going to say ISO New England Energy Futures. Um, this is what I do every day all day. But I'm going to tell you um the current um what I'm going to call the Federal um administration has things a little bit mixed up. I don't know if you've been
watching the equity markets at all. Um, and I'm not certain exactly where everyone else is, but we could have war, we could have peace, uh, we could have tariffs, we could not have tariffs. So, right now in the marketplace, I'm seeing some beneficial um, pricing that I think
you could act upon. I'd like to hear what you're thinking from a a market perspective. I'm saying to you, you could probably drop pricing into the what I'm looking at here from, you know, the 15 cents that we're at down to the 14 cents if if
you were so inclined. So, from from at least our perspective, we wanted to make sure that we're here in front of you early so we could see what what's going to transpire. I apologize for not having a a finger on whether or not we're going to see peace
come across Russia and Ukraine or Gaza and Israel so forth and so on because that will that will change things dramatically. It's just when we are here in the marketplace. So from my perspective, I'm here to give you any of our insights. But the big thing is is
allow Ryan to start seeing some active pricing that we could um act on just so that if you find something that we say looks good, I'm saying to you the market has sold off from where we were two years ago. This is a good thing. From a historic standpoint, we're still not at
lows. You know, we're not going to see 9 or 10 cent power just given RPS continues to step up the renewable portfolio standard. But this pricing for today is pretty good. It's pretty good. So, from our perspective, if you had any
questions, what we're really looking for tonight is you to give Ryan the ability to look at some final pricing that he could act upon if he felt like that pricing was advantageous. The last time around, I I'm not offering you up, David. just you you work very well. I
don't know if you you want to be the adviser on this again or not. I'm just sure from our perspective the process worked very well the last time around. So if you are to delegate this to me then then I would assemble he'll do it and not be directed to assemble a team.
Yep. Whoever you guys choose of course. Yeah. Whoever Ryan Ryan chooses. Right. Terms of open meeting law works for us. Yeah. Yes. But I really don't want to re present to David. So I would choose David and some members of the finance team and then our
sustainability team, but it's not my decision. It would be a working sustainability was on last time. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So hey Mark, so let I want to ask three exculpatory questions. Um one is we are locked in whatever we're in
until August like you're doing do your exercise. You don't change early, right? Yeah. No, we we we wouldn't change the price early unless you wanted to see some blend and extend. Someone could lower the price right now. The you can break the contract. In other words, not not break, but with the current supplier, you could add on that could
bring down prices right now. You mean if you extended with the That is that is correct. All right. So, that's question one. Question two, and I did this and I forget because it's not that often, but when you opt in, I thought there was this is like as an individual, you know, utility payer.
Isn't it for a finite period and then if you don't renew it actively yourself, it folds back to Eversource? Wasn't there something like that or no? It automatically goes to the if if you So if once we opt in, it's for the period. Exact. But you can get out at any time. No, I know. But it seemed like I had to
pick a supplier. No, you had to. So if you were going into the program, if you were part of the original, you'd be moved to what I'll call the 25% more mass ones. That's the default product, right? So if any of the sweeps or the original, but once you're in the program, you have the choice of opting
up to the 100%. Or down to the Okay, but not I thought there was a choice of suppliers at some point. Maybe that predates this. Yeah, it may predate. Okay, so ignore that question. Then the last question is when I ask him, I always forget. But like if we're in this blended thing and and there's a wind farm in Texas. Yes. And they produce
renewables and I opt in I'm using natural gas or something here. I'm just trading a credit. Right. That's all I'm doing. Right. All you're doing is buying that credit. Yes. Only the 100% really says my juice is from renewable sources. It's
all my direct juice. My electrons. No, your electrons are the exact same. And you're just buying the renewable certificates. Okay. These happen to be local mass ones. The the other ones may be uh you know from a Texas national wind product. Okay. That's in the 100%
green category. the 100% and the default is a 25% more mass percentage all local mass additional yes no matter what it's how many certificates not how many electronics that's exactly correct yes and I just
want to say um at a certain point our contract got to be higher than other contracts and I've been in and out of several other things and back in to here say every two I mean and I was signing up for like three months right And that's what I'm thinking of. So you can
do that also. That's all. And there's no charge and you can change as many times as you want. Retired. You can do that. Well, what do I say? Two teenagers in a job. You sign and forget about it. Yeah. Okay. But you know, so I'm just saying that nobody's locked in to anything at
any time on this. And you can you can if you're very, you know, really penny pinching, you can follow the market yourself, right? Um and you know, do that. The one thing I would add to that is many communities in Massachusetts are doing just that. They use this as an
energy hedge for the community. Meaning everyone can do what they please, but you've now set a hedge. And I'm just going to use the numbers that are there if you use the same one. So if we did a a a 22-month be 147, it would come down, but nobody in Carile would need to pay more than 147. Everyone would have that
ability to do that. Is this on that spreadsheet? Is that what you're looking at? Yes. Okay. I'm going to project that on the switch right now. Did we have that's in here? Mark, when you bid these, can you do them individually? It's or you get a package of the three options and that's how it
works. How does it So, we these three that we're showing, believe it or not, it's going to it's Ryan. So, on this sheet, we showing you all the options, but the ones we are talking about tonight were the products that you chosen the last time around. I just want
you to know, you do not have to choose those same products. You could make the default the 100%. You could make it uh the meats the market has changed. So depending on on on on what you're looking to do, we'll bring that here. So
all the options are open. But if you can scroll down a little bit, you be able to see, you know, the the ones in blue are the current with the extra with the extra column at the end showing the potential savings on the next contract. And the other ones in the middle are just other options should you So in purple right there. So this is perfect
in purple. The is this is the default product that you'd be automatically enrolled in. This is 25% more local renewables. Current price is let's call it 16 cents 159 in the marketplace starting in on January 1, 2026. A
similar term 22 months is 14788. That's if you went to market today that's the today that well uh yesterday that is correct. Right. So, so back what you're saying, Mark, is if we decide, for example, let's say right now we had to decide and we could decide simply to extend our term, we would go to that
price now. Uh, not now. That would be on on uh January. That is correct. On in January, the way this pricing is working. Yeah. Okay. And the term length is months or year? Yes. The term length is like 10 months or 10 months, 22 months. Okay. Yes. when we what Mark's
saying is like when we looked at this last time like 10 months is too short like then you're doing it right away again right we debated the 30some month and the 20some month and just felt as it turns out you know but
um what is it the volatility volatility thank you the volatility of the market was such that we didn't feel as comfortable with the going out three years but and we face that same VIX Yeah, at least before I was saying, you
know, from a historic standpoint, I felt very comfortable not going out as far because, okay, we're at historic highs. Today, it's a different dynamic in the market. And it's I I am saying to you, I just don't know if uh tomorrow we have a tariff, we don't have a tariff, or if we
have a war, we don't have a war. I apologize for the lack of direction, but that's the current marketplace. Same thing with the euro. Yeah. Poor cake. Stuck with the euro now. Maybe a good thing. I don't know. Sarah, do
you have the same uh uh do you show the same thing with the other two um that we had? If goes down, you'll see it's on the 100 and the meets is at the top. Right. So, right now the the default
product uh Eversource I think is like 134 135 13.54 4 cent. So, we're slightly over that um at the almost 16. So, a penny and a half over over that price that people could uh be experiencing on basic
service just so they know. But again, I just want to mention they can opt out of this program, fear of penalty, and come back, you know, in January if they'd wanted to, right? And this this has additional renewable. That's true. So, it's not an apples to apples to ever source because they only
have 63% renewable. Th this this product is is far more locally renewable. Which product? The bottom one. The bottom one's 100%. The next one up is 25% more than is required. Was before. And that's a new thing or did we look at
that first? That's the one you chose. That's the one that you put in. Right. Okay. Good. That's good. And um when the new contract begins or before that, is there another round of um uh mailings to
everybody in town explaining what their options are? There would be a postcard that will go out and say there's a new contract, whoever the winning supplier is, the term, and what the rates are. So, and I should explain if you're in the default product, you'd be moved to whichever default product the town
chose. And if they were in the opt up, if it was the same, we would we would discuss we could move them directly across the same thing on a meets. Okay. And this is only the energy generation piece. The
transmission piece is still ever sourced. Yes. Right there. All all the top charges that you see on your bill, this is just the supply charge. The numerous that that's the Department of Public Utilities. They kept the high margin part for them. So, all right. Is there any uh further
discussion? Do we need to vote on giving Don't we have to vote for the arrange too? I thought I heard a motion in there. Uh move to authorize the town administrator to accept or reject at his discretion
executable pricing for the community choice aggregation contract with a range of and that's what we have to supply now. Yep. We have to fight now. Well, yes. Well, to give him some guidance to give him the Yeah. Although I don't know what we're basing it on. Range mange. We don't know what
it's going to be. Zero cents to zero to you could say with in a I mean a penny sounds like a lot, but you could say a penny on either side of what's here. Um normally we would say half a penny, but just given the market volatility, even if you go a penny up from what's here, you're still below where you are now. So
why why wouldn't we just empower them to do the best deal? Like I think that's right. We're not going to change the world's energy prices. When you talk about a penny on each side, what what time frame are you looking at your volatility? So you have the if the um the utility requires a 60-day setup if
you're going to switch suppliers. So this contract is up in in January. So we'd have to sign something by the end of October. We're just trying to give you leeway all the way out um depending on what happens with the market if you want to sign something sooner. So we would say by by the end of October and then this is indicative pricing from
your current supplier. We would just say maybe a a penny up or down from what you're seeing here just to give them some leeway depending on what the market does. And I believe we we have a time I think it's May we are getting that's a good point. Um this is just from the current supplier we did put out to the
full supply community to get full indicative pricing back on May 30th. So we will have all four suppliers pricing for all these products. That's another that's more information for for Ryan to look at and then we would move to executables after that. So we not only will we have more information from the supply community, but we'll also know
the national um the Eversource rate. They went out today. We should know that next week. You will have that information. So that's a good gauge as well on May 30th. Then decide to go to executable from there. But it set the range in June. Like why would we set the range now? Right. Yeah. Seems set the
range to be determined. Can we do that? Range to be determined because I I think it's silly. It's they're going to do a good job. They always do getting us a menu of choices and we'll pick from the best choices. Right. Or you could and you could just end the motion. I mean, if there's a war and it goes up two cents what he can't sign. I think we
should live the range off honestly in the motion. Yeah. I Are you comfortable with that, Mr. Town Administrator? No. So, I'm I'm not allowed to execute this contract without without you. The problem is it has to be executed in a day. So, it can't be tied to a meeting.
But we don't have to set the range today. You're not going to execute it tomorrow. You don't even know prices for a month. There was an opportunity to to The reason why they're here tonight is we could execute it on June 1st, right? After that round of indicative pricing all the way up to October. So assuming
you're okay taking a risk on a month, what you're saying is okay. But if you want the first shot at the apple has to be tonight and then revise it. If you don't have another meeting, you guys are not going to have another meeting before. So, well, it's on our agenda to have that that important dates. We have
the one. All right. So, we do the plus or minus a penny now and then we get new information. We just change the range. We just have a new motion. Or if you set a max, I could work with that as well. Just we don't want to pay more or we definitely want to pay less. There just
needs to be some direction. But you wouldn't I'm I'm struggling with this because you wouldn't let's say you see C CCA they they present us with a well the the today what you know
the whatever it is today the 15 point something 15 1599 okay I mean that okay I guess you could decide to do that now and do what Mark said and put it append it to the end of the thing Well, why would you? We're in like we
got we got time. I I I don't know why you would need direction between now and when the pricing comes out because I wouldn't advocate that you make that change at this point. Unless your crystal ball was such that you knew what but nobody seems to know.
I mean I I I did want to do something. I Is there anyone in the public I know there's a member of the FinCom here or anyone who wants to make has a question or any comment? You just introduce yourself please. Yeah. Mark Bernstein. Uh Peter Hans Road
also the Murf Cop. I think they you can hear. Can you hear? Um I was just wondering why we would I understand giving the town administrator an upper limit. But why would why would we want to give a
lower as low as possible? I don't disagree. So, I don't know about the plus or minus.1. Thank you. Is there Is there anyone online who has a question or comment? All right. Seeing none online. I just thought I'd open that up. Um, okay. Um
well so I'm going to revise this then say to move to authorize town administrator to accept or reject at his discretion executable pricing for the community choice aggregation contract with a maximum of 1 cent above u what
was presented um on this uh indication in indic indicative pricing list that work absolutely yeah second work for Yeah. So, if the working
group saw numbers drop dramatically on June 1, we'd like to act immediately direction now to do that. But you're right. If the pricing is still up in the air, then we bring it back. It it's it is, you know, it's still a crapshoot. You know, you can you see it dropping, grab it because, you know, and then it
can drop some more later. But you just have to, you know, there's a point where you just have to kind of, you know, that's what I'm talking generally. Just so I want people to understand is about to expire. Yes. Okay. Right. Putting
that out. Yeah. And um and we come up with a strike price now and just say execute at that level. Um and do we have to decide the term or is that something the working group would figure out? So based on the discussions we had in the past and the
discussion we had tonight, I would be inclined to be around the 22 months, the two years unless there was some reason or some advice otherwise that thought was acceptable. But 22 is the target there. There again, you never know. I mean, uh, if if the price bottom drops
out, you want it to be shorter, right? But if it keeps on if it's Yeah. Right. So, this is this is just sort of a the nice, you know, mid-range. Mid-range. Yeah. Yes. It sounds political. It's that's a part, you know, part of the
It's a It sounds political, but 22 months puts us between the midterms and the next election. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't really want to venture farther than that. Yeah. And I would add like the the options that you get when you look at changing range from 6 months to 24 months. So individuals
can within the 22 months can exactly what I was doing. I was going in and out as I said because at one point we we missed our target you know and and start a little business where you just send us all the optimal that's the way to do it.
So, I keep my eye out on it. That's good, Pete. All right, we've had a motion and a second. Um, any further discussion? All right. All in favor of the motion? I. None opposed. All right. Do you have anything else? Maybe there could be a little, uh, group in town
that keeps, you know, uh, pushes out, um, you know, the latest news on the electric rates. in the woods from this meeting. I got to get out of here. Sign up for a six month. Got to
arbitrage your energy. Oh, thank you very much. And thank you for everything we're done for our our electric bills. I can beat 11 and a half cents for the next six months. Like down from Why wouldn't I do that, right? All right. We're a little ahead of schedule, but I think that's fine. Cemetery
Perpetual Care Fund discussion. Oh yeah. Barn burner. It's an exciting night. Yeah. That's important care. Everybody's leaving. Ryan, why is that so exciting? You're going to think I'm obsessed with
the cemetery. Maybe I am. It's way more complicated than one would think. Okay, so the perpetual care fund. This came from Kelly and the finance team discussing and and Kelly's online if you have any questions. We're discussing the perpetual care fund. Perpetual care fund
is paid for when people purchase uh grave grave sites. They pay into the perpetual care fund because the town has committed to this trust that ensures that the grounds will be taken care of. So that that can be misleading. The operating budget does take care of most
of the cemetery maintenance, but this perpetual care is there to supplement it andor replace it if it was necessary in a budget crisis. So, in looking at the perpetual care fund to find ways to pay for capital that was proposed, we found the opposite problem. So, I'm going to
explain that to you now and then um see what you think. So in 2022, the town purchased, this is the the entirety of the perpetual care fund
since the year 2000, a um backo for 114,000. And you'll see other expenses that that came out here. So as you know with trusts, you can only spend the interest and not the capital. So this purchase dipped heavily into the um into
the what are they? It's not capital principal. the principal principle. It did not. You said it did. It did. Oh, so we broke the rule. We broke the rule. So, um, and we broke it by a lot. So, we did some math on that. No. Or what? How
did we manage to do that? We We haven't uncovered a smoking gun as to why that was done, but it was a backo that was purchased using the perpetual care fund, and it put us into the the deep negative on this account. So the um
we looked at it and we tried to decide what to do. So first of all um if this came in an audit, they would just say they would point it out and they'd say you'd have to do something about it. U there's no no crimes that have committed. We're just trying to follow best financial practice. So the three options that we came up with the finance
team are to um to fix it and by fixing it you would need to transfer free cash into this account and make it whole. So instead of buying a backhoe with free cash, you use the perpetual care funds. You need to back back that free cash in.
Back fill it. Back fill with tobacco. With the back like a mountain of cash like funny bringing it. We'll just like push it over to Sandy. Sorry. I I just couldn't let that go. It was my circuit. The second option was to leave it alone and allow interest to acrue and for it
to u you reduced the the principle so far that the it's not going to earn any interest 20 years. So this would sit there for 20 years. I don't think that's a very good solution. It doesn't cost free cash, but it would probably get lost in 10 years. Someone would forget
that that decision was made, right? That that was what we talked about as the downside. The other is to say that we messed up and that this is now the new principal level and allow it to acrue interest and just do it correctly from here on in. So draw a line in the sand
saying we won't do that again and we will um move forward. So the finance committee Mark's here he can tell you how that discussion went but they they did discuss this to make a recommendation for you and they they picked option one which was to fix this.
Okay. So, uh, fixing it would mean using some type of funds to fill it, which most likely would be free cash given the way our finances are structured. And that would require an appropriation at at town meeting. Um, so if you were to pick options two or three, you could do
that as a select board in conjunction with the finance committee. If you were to pick that free cash option that was recommended by the finance committee, you would have to go to a town meeting. It's too late for this one. So, this would be a fall town meeting item. How much? Question. So,
or you want it 40 something. Kelly did the math. Kelly and S did the math in the gap right now without further acrude interest which would happen between now and another time meeting is $41,900. Okay. And the rationale from the fin though Mark could give it as well that
was that you know this was an obligation that people when they buy their cemetery plots think they're going to get this perpetual care. They paid for it and now we've taken it away from them. No, that's not true. We haven't taken anything away from anybody. We just unfunded.
We use the principle when we shouldn't have used the principle of the fund. That's not quite the same, Mr. Chair. In other words, if I buy a plot and you use the money for something else, as long as I get perpetual care, okay, I it didn't take away my perpetual care. You took
away it took away the money. So, how are we going to get the perpetual care unless someone else funds it? Have we done an actuarial on actually how much perpetual care we need? No. Right. Well, we have a we have an amount that we pay for that perpetual care. We've set that at the $150. Let me let me ask it a
different way. Kelly's on the line. Kelly, if you're there, have we done an actuarial alla oped to say we have xplots and it's going to cost Y over the years and we have I mean, have we done that kind of analysis to determine? Not that I'm
aware of. What's that? No, not that I'm aware of. What you say is not true. We could do that exercise. I I'm not debating we should make it whole, but I don't want the misconception that we took away that we're not doing the maintenance. We should do some kind of analysis of what we should have in the
fund. Well, we are doing the maintenance. We're paying for it out of town funds. Nobody lost any I I just out of town funds. So, we're not paying for it out of perpetual care funds, you know. We're paying for it out of the town funds. Yeah. So, the town is taking care of this, you know, whereas the
perpetual care fund was set up to take care of that. No, it doesn't. We're going to have to analyze this at another meeting for a different topic, but whether we're selling these grave sites for enough money to actually Okay, but you just brought up yet a third point. So point one was we took money that's
supposed to be for perpetual care. We bought a piece of equipment. Now, one could argue the piece of equipment for perpetual care. So maybe that was okay. So that's another thing. Then you're saying, if I understand correctly, that we are not actually using this syncing
fund to pay for perpetual care on a regular basis. We simply put it in the operating budget. You're not saying that. I'm not saying that. That's what I think. I'm just saying that that we over maybe the TA can correct us or Kelly, but we we we weren't supposed to draw down on the principle of this fund.
We're supposed to use the interest to pay for the perpetual care and instead the balance instead well if he pulls up the table it used to be like 156,000 or whatever and we said oh there's money there. We didn't. Someone said that. I get that. But and said, "Okay, we're
gonna buy this piece of equipment, but then we drew down our whole capital fund that was saved up." But what was that there? Is it like an endowment where we I mean, it's not clear to me. I I agree that we shouldn't have done it, but and maybe Mark, you can help, but shouldn't we do like a regular analysis to
determine there's two different things. There's like what you need to take care of the secretary. Yeah. The perpetual care fund may be completely underfunded to handle it. So that's a different thing. It must be because we're taking money out of the operating budget. But I believe the contract that's made with
the person that buys the grave site is you pay this amount of money. It will be put into this fund as principle. Okay? And interest from that fund will be used. I don't know what the words are, but this is my interpretation. Interest from that
protectal care fund will be used to help take care of the cemetery. doesn't say we're it's just like any other fund. The principal is supposed to not be touched. That's the agreement that's made when you put money into it. Does it say that? Well, that's that's the way it was
presented to us. Whether it does or not, I say that. Yeah. We won't touch the principal. We should not have touched the principal then. Yeah. So, when let's just say that we get hundreds of thousands of dollars in principal and way more interest than we need for professional care. Like HS forever. No,
because we spend the interest on it for those pieces of equipment and we're just not spending the principle on it. But if you never spend the principal, it's a diode. Then it just grows and grows for no purpose, right? Well, we can do
better care with the interest that comes off of it. Like we can't principle just keeps growing. The analysis thing that we're Did we vote that already? The the X-ray thing for the plots and all that. Is that coming up at 10 if you in theory for that? Yeah, in theory you could do
that as part of the perpetual care, but you just can't spend down that principle. You could use the interest and say, "Oh, we're going to use the I'm okay fixing it, but I would like us to explore maybe with council how we can do like a real analysis and get the principle at the right level and spend
the rest of it on stuff." I thought, you know, Ryan's a couch cushion guy. He's always looking for like extra money and these there's all these little funds, right? Are we going to talk to There's like 50 funds that Kelly just listed. Oh, I know. Like, right. It's stupid. It's stupid. We should We should have a
like we should be analytical and I don't think we're being so It's okay to fix it, but I want us to revisit it like we're like finance people. I think that's good. I think we need to revisit it based on how much it costs to, you know, perpetual care because we'll find out that maybe we need more. Yeah, maybe
we don't charge enough. Yeah, that's good thought. Can we backcharge dead people? All right. But what do we want to do as a select board? We have to vote this. I I think this question we want to restore
the principle that uh as it should be as if it had never been used have to be at a future time. Not as if it No, only to the extent we over spent the 40k. I'd like to understand 14K. I'd like to go back and look at I'm
not sure why this was done because I was on fin and I have a spreadsheet with a note on it that says backhoe purchased out of cemetery funds if not confirm like so there was a discussion about this and there was there was were you on it also all I have is the note that the
backho was purchased using cemetery funds and that if not if cemetery funds weren't used put it into the LTC plan the long-term capital plan so whether that was done incorrectly I think um probably. But I want to just clarify something because Kate and I were you're
suggesting we essentially should spend all the interest that of the money we spent. We're only clawing back the piece that exceeded the interest, right? The 40k. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I but I'm a little
confused about how where you got the 40k from because the principal should be 126 350, right? Where do you see that number? Oh, up here up top bottom at the total it says principal started at 532 for some reason
at two nobody died in 2001 and 2002 I don't know and then I assume those are nobody bought plots doesn't bought well you know whatever some people actually buy plots ahead of time yeah okay so I'm assuming that that
principal column is how much gets put in when and the total of The principal should be 126 350 at this point. Is that correct, Kelly? Yeah, Kelly, is that Sorry. Yes, that I wanted to make sure she was
finished her thought. Um, yes, that is correct. And to speak to your points about the earlier years, um, there was a former treasurer from, you know, that was in this in the chair in 2000 that had done a pretty detailed analysis back at that time. So, we were able to pull
all her historical data to come up to the 53,200. That wasn't the deposits in that year. That was the balance that she identified. Okay. And then the other years, we went back, Sandy and I went back through um you know, previous cashbook transactions, what we could
gather from old general ledger transactions to fill in those other holes. 2001 2002 we could make an estimate but we didn't have any hard data um to to fill those figures. Um but yes based on all of that combined the
126 350 was the total. Okay. Um but Ryan if you scroll down a little bit I don't know what you can see on your side but the whole bottom's cut off for me. Can you enlarge? So, of the 126,000, the amount that's actually in
the bank was 84. That $84,000. Oh, that's where you got the 41K. Okay. So, we have we have funding in the account. It was just not classified correctly. So, once that correction is
made, the principal that the hole that would need to be filled is the 419. Okay. as of now. Well, March 31st was we get quarterly statements. So, that's when that figure was available for uh and does that add up to the same as you
know 126 350 minus 14713. This gives you the 126 here. I understand that, but I'm just wondering it looks like we're I don't know. I I don't know what that mind. Kelly, but in your note in your memo of March 28th,
there seems to be some disagreement of actually how much money is in there. Didn't you list a bunch of different? You cited a whole bunch of numbers that don't they're not all the same number. Bartholomew bank account blah blah blah. So Bartholomew is that's the bank that's
the trust account where the funding is held. Yeah. So the way when that account was set up the full balance was deposited into the interest the expendable. So in total it was all viewed as
interest expendable funds instead of being separated between a principal deposit and an interest deposit. So that account just carried that way from when it was when it was originally started. So, one of the things that we did was we
took the interest that was showing as expendable funds and moved it over into that principal column on the Bartholomew, the bank statement. So, that way it it is now tucked away in any deposits that have started in FY24 and FY25. We've been moving that monthly,
quarterly, um so that way it's properly reflected in the bank account as well. Fixed it. So um then below in your note you have another you have a excerpt of some some law talks about bequest. Is is
a is the $150 considered in section 25 a gift or bequest? Is that part of it? So the I'm sorry the $150 the deposit that goes into the perpetual care. Well the reason
I asked the question so the the money that people pay when they purchase a plot. Is that considered section 25 money? So, they pay $300. Um, so the way it's set up with the town is that half goes to the perpetual care and half goes
to a um cemetery sale of lots account um which is restricted more restrictive than the general fund but less restrictive than the perpetual care account. So you're just talking about overdrawing the perpetual care side, correct? Yeah.
Because if I read the text here, the proceeds shall be paid and be appropriated to reimburse for the cost of the land, its care, improvement embellishment. So I mean again, one could construe that the piece of equipment was purchased for its care and improvement.
Yeah. Well, that's true, but you can only spend from the interest or even the enlarge. Sorry, Kelly. Can you say again? That's interesting. You can only spend from the interest. So the income there from is where it's only the income earned on the principal balance,
not the full balance in the fund. Okay. But that's not shown in the thing on the screen, the section 25 text, right? That doesn't speak to interest at all and it doesn't speak. It says proceeds of sales shall be paid into town treasury and be
appropriated to reimburse for and then it lists some things. It neither distinguishes capital to operating expenses nor interest and principal. Well, I don't think that's what that I can look at it again. Um, it looks like there might be a few words cut off on the corner the way the screenshot
printed, but um I'd have to pull that up again to to get the the language. Okay. I mean, it seems unclear to me. That's all I want to say. And this section 25 is a state from a state statute or is this a local coordinance? This is a
state Oh, okay. Yeah, it is mass general law. So, when somebody um purchases a cemetery plot, are they signing something maybe has the language people are talking about? Does it I don't know.
Does it does what they sign that paperwork? I haven't seen um Jim Hall or Gretchen could probably weigh in a little heavier on that on that aspect. Yeah, get that answer. So, do we need council to help us with that section 25
U interpretation? Yeah. I mean, is it I mean, because it it frankly it says both that you uh talking about just using the interest, but then it also says the proceeds of you can pray. So, I think we need to
get some um we need to get some I think we should table this. We don't need to. We're not deciding for this town meeting anyway. Right. No. Right. Okay. But these are good things and the TA or whoever he delegates can track it down and figure them out. Yeah. Is it a good
catch and we need to just make sure but I think we're of the opinion if it is required we would want to then clarification whether it's required. Right. First we'll find out if it's required but generally then we'll fix it and we should if it is we should write.
So as we investigate more of these funds, I anticipate these things. So that that note from Kelly that in 2000 that treasurer will I think every 20 years you need to go through these things and document and make sure the the other part is this started because
and Travis will probably remember the conversation. I'm like, "Oh, I found some money for the capital plan." Yes. So I brought it to Kelly. I was like, "Thanks for giving me this list. We can spend this money." And she's like, "Hold on." Yeah. Right. And looked into it. So, um, I don't know exactly how it happened, Scott, but I bet it was a
conversation like that. No, I'm sure you need to clarify. No, it sounds like it was mclassified in the bar or or it was at the time um that was under Tim and different finance director and and it was probably, oh, no, the backho is acceptable use under perpetual care,
whatever. I mean, that's right, by the way. Well, I yeah, I have no, but it wasn't um it was discussed and the understanding at the time from a fincom standpoint was it was being appropriate. You were not on fin 20. I was it 2020.
This is 2021. I mean, no, I have a note on this particular item in the long-term caps thing. Okay. But it's it was discussed and it was Oh, we can use CE I don't think we we went and read the legal language around the cemetery fund, but we should just confirm. Well,
generally, I mean, I'd say to take it up one level, Ryan, I'm all in favor of wire brushing all those little pots of money and and anything we can legally redeploy and simplify, we should definitely Well, and I'd like to just
commend Kelly and Ryan and the the whole finance team because we're Yeah, Miss Andy because we're finding a lot of these things that have been neglected or misplaced or misinterpreted and there's going to be more cleanup work that has to happen. So, thank you for doing all
the due diligence on this. Yeah. Okay. As long as it's clear that I have nothing to do with it, of course. Just the cleanup. I just spend it. I try to spend it. All right. Well, let's move on then to the next item, which is the Carolyn Hill scholarship discussion,
which is Okay. So, um just this is another one that may or may not want to decide it tonight, but it's good for you to understand, and here's why. So the the scholarship is a known is a known thing in town and the main reason why we came at the scholarship question was
because your your scholarship committee has essentially disbanded. There's there's no one left that wants that has volunteered to do the scholarship and all of that institutional knowledge went went with them. So we've been trying to draw it out but um sometimes when a volunteer leaves they they no longer
want to volunteer. So if you were to continue that scholarship, the select board either needs to work um and the staff needs to work hard to recruit new people or you become the scholarship committee which led us to the question of what what is the scholarship and where does it come from? Right? So if
you're looking I I'll just show you so you're not under the scholarship advisory committee which I was looking through old documents today and has been around for a long time. It says the Carolyn E. Hills scholarships were established in member in memory of um a
longtime resident who died in 1967 at the age of 93. So it doesn't say that it would be a scholarship to Carile students. It says that it would be given to residents in need. Yeah. Which is interesting. So it's called specifically says in the in our on our website. And
we're not saying this is right or wrong. We're just saying we're looking at the language to try and make sure. So if you look at the documents that we sent you, there are many scholarship accounts um with many levels of principle and the the finance team has said we think it
was named this and the the Carolyn Hill account was used primarily because of its balance. It was just the biggest one. Yeah. So were all of these being aggregated into or if some of these just not been utilized?
So that's what we wanted to know. Yeah. And we wanted to make sure that if that was being done that that we rechecked in and made sure that that was the the intention because y like um we think with the perpetual care fund you can't touch the principal on these you can only spend the interest only only some
right some are silent right like the leam laam one's pretty clear you can only use the interest but the Titus Alvin Titus doesn't say that right so there's a few things to unpack one of them in pounds. Yeah. So
the the Simon blood one is in pounds. Only pounds can Some of these have existed for a while as you can tell by the language. So the pieces of eight. So our questions besides what questions do you have are um do you want to
continue a scholarship and if so who's going to do it and then how to properly allocate the funds. And not to complicate it further, but you also have um a budget issue with the rental assistance program that you provide through the council on aging that that's
come up a couple times in the budget process. So it was ARPA funded and now it's being requested of CPA funds. Eventually that's going to either come into the operating budget or you might consider funds like something like this. Mhm. And then also
um we had a request from a student who's in grad school who asked if these if these scholarships are still available and everything is silent on whether or not that that is allowed. And of course in all this we assume that you by that you mean grad school, correct? We assume
that you would be in favor of at least discussing it or talking about it, but we don't know. We don't have directions. So, and there are no documents that we've been able to find beyond what this says that sort of established the fund in the first place. I think this is a summary of besides the
summaries and the source documents we have. It looks like the scholarship program was created. Um, and we we're going to we're going to dig deeper into the the select board votes on that, but there is no source document says this will be done this way. At some point, a select board said here's how we're going to do it. So
the so the fact that some are named school fund, some scholarship fund, some trust fund is just the way whoever made the donation described it. It's just for loans. But you're do I I wasn't sure of your answer to the question I think that
David asked. Have all these been put in one pot even though we can separate them out? And that's what when we did have a scholarship committee, they were drawing on any of the funds that were allowed to be drawn on for the purposes of offering
scholarships, you know, education scholarships. I can answer that, Barney. Um, no, it would have been the select board would have had to have voted specific to which trust fund it would come out of. Okay. Um, they are not pulled. They are held separately. They
are in separate accounts in Bartholomew. Well, they're all in Bartholomew, but they're itemized. Okay. Um and in the general ledger are the same. They're all individual individually tracked. Yeah. Which is good. So, yeah. Um but I would I mean I think we have to constitute
some kind of committee, but I would prefer that the man the charge of that committee not be limited to scholarship funds because a fair number of them Carolyn Hill and others talk about the needy and we certainly have that. So, if we're going to do this, let's look at
the whole mishmash and let's figure out and I don't know whether again it's going to require some parsing of legal documents, but for example, the guy with $200 in the fund. I mean, if the documents allow, maybe you want to spend that down and close that, you know, not have 18,
right? Or not spend it, but aggregate it with another one. Yeah, exactly. But something like that. Yeah. How how do we administratively move this forward? I mean, is this something for someday we have an intern at the town and they go through all these documents. Is it an administrative thing or is it a
committee? You know, there's two parts, right, that that would do it. You got to first establish, as you say, what what's legally permissible like we just talked about with cemetery, right? That may not be an intern's job. And then then, yeah,
I think we should have some process, right? Well, I was just talking about calling all this data like you gota you got to have someone go through it saying this maybe maybe a law student. Yeah, somebody's in law school, right? Well, I'm I'm also curious when you do a scholarship thing, if you have a
committee and it's all open meeting law, is that awkward when you're reviewing potential scholarships and voting for scholarships to an I mean, it's is there a is do most towns do this in in a That's a good point. So the
CEF Carl Education Fund I think is private, right? It's private. Like Sarah Wilson was like extremely tight lipped about that until they announced. So I presume they operate differently, right? They have the right to vet whatever they vet and then they announce. Well, we
can't do that with these p these fun. I mean, you could have a student and you're rejecting. They're saying, "Well, their grades aren't good enough for this or something." And it's it becomes a little so these are public funds I guess by the fact that they were donated to the town and then the fact that we have them makes them public and then therefore the deliberation about their
use is a public thing. And what we used to do, I remember this early on, we used to um you know publicize that we had this money available and and invite students um you know from the high school or students from Carlile going to
college to submit their letter of interest and I think there was even an application form because at one point way back I I was part of a group that I'm not quite sure how we were pulled together. It wasn't an ongoing permanent group, but we were asked to
review the applications and recommend we had it may not have been public. Pardon? Did it follow open meeting law? So, I mean, that's the No. Would could a could the a town could a daytime government group vet the applications
and make recommendations to us or somebody? Or could you do it kind of the way the that Aubrey does the hiring which is she pulls together a screening committee and that's not
open doesn't follow. You have a standing screening committee. Pardon? You cannot I I think we first need to get the information then we can revisit this and figure out what's the best way to but I was asking what's the best way to get the information together. probably need
an estate lawyer or somebody with experience with these types of things to just go through each one and just list out the requirements and the amounts and what's permissible someone that knows like you said an intern but or someone
with knowledge of well do we Kelly you you I didn't quite follow your answer is is there is there some kind of document with each funds uh fund to your knowledge yes so Sandy has put She has pulled together files upon files from
all of these trust documents. We've started digitizing them and consolidating them. So, she started putting together a working document of um you know who the trust was from, how much was given, what um what portion can
be spent, um who has the legal authority to spend it. whether it's select board, school committee, library trustees, what have you, because it the trust funds go beyond what you're seeing tonight. Um, so she's already done a lot of that leg work. Uh, but we do have all we're at a
point where we do have consolidated all of the the actual paperwork behind them. Is the one in pounds on parchment? There's a there's a lot of um handwritten paperwork, you know, old old paperwork. That's Is there any provision? It's hanging in hanging in um
hanging in. Is is there any provision in the town for like paid internships? Like do we have any money that we could pay interns over the summer to do stuff? No. No. Okay. I mean, yes, but no. I mean, if we were to Now's the time where kids
are looking for things to get somebody who wants to maybe help out and do that. Pay them a little. Yeah. college student or someone who's, you know, interested in this type of thing. Yeah. Because it sounds like a lot of work's been done. So maybe they could do it as a project and then report out at the end of the
summer. Why don't we just turn it over to the town administrator to I'm good with that. So the short-term problem that doesn't have to be decided tonight is I just want to make sure there isn't a community or select board expectation that scholarships would be given out this year. Yeah.
Um, and if so, we need to the select board needs to focus on it this summer and then the long-term thing will be for the following year. How many? And this one should be this Freddy and Ruth Robbins one is supposed to be administered by the Carile School Committee. So, we're going to have to
get them involved as well, I would say. Sure. I mean, it might be that they could might want to delegate that authority, but but they need to be aware of it. And it's the one of the ones with the biggest thing because it obviously has been you know accumulating accumulating and you know well and
there's a lot to this too. The other third component someone said maybe it was Ryan about you know and that's the one that's loans excuse me right that's the one that loan our loans how do we how do we as a town decide to invest this because it looks like a lot of this has been uninvested or marginally well I
know Bartholomew I think it's being invested and Caroline Hill must well the one that's in pounds is worth $4,300 and if it was in old enough to be in pounds it should be worth a little bit more than that well But it only Yeah.
Yes. Okay. Travis, some of the history that may not be shown in the summary, too, is that some of these funds may have been spent at some point in time. Okay. So, that's just the balance as of a point in time. So, I guess take some of it with a grain of salt that there may be more history than what's shown.
It's just like the backho people have spent kept forever. All right. Well, Brian, do you have enough direction from this conversation to, you know, get more information? I think we would like to talk about it again and figure out then the next step
as to how we administer it and if we delegate that to a committee or however it is. We do have this one letter from Isabelle Parker who had received the scholarship before, right? and now she's going to get a graduate degree and
wondering about whether um she it could be considered. Um I don't know whether we just have to hold has to wait on that. I don't have a process. We don't have process. Yeah. I
mean I think unfortunately RFP you know you you can't just give it to the first person that Right. Yeah. Yep. She's already gotten some anyway, it sounds like. Okay, I think we've exhausted that. So, let's move on to the next
topic, which is annual town meeting. The discussion of the annual town meeting warrant articles to include potential votes. Are there any that we have not voted on, Mr. Town Administrator? I think we're in pretty good shape. Did we um We are We haven't
discussed the the elevators. because we didn't know we didn't have a number. The amenities building. You want to start? Sure. I'll start with the amenities building. So, um what we have been talking about um up till now
which you all probably followed is that the out of the Carile CPA accounts uh we would um designate $450,000 for Carile share of this. I um I heard we heard just today from Brian
Wat who's on the regional school committee and is the kind of lead for Carile on the building project that um Gail Associates which is the firm that's doing the you know design. So they've finalized the design as of well
they've they've provided the final designs to the committee and the estimate is going to is continuing to be revised but um Brian is saying that it's not going
to go up. It's it it's already uh been reduced and it may be and it may change and be a little bit lower but the number that Brian is is saying he has put into his slideshow which he's showing on uh
Sunday is um sorry let me go find that part of this. It was rather than $450,000 it is where was that number? [Music] Um, it's not in this.
Uh, let me see if I can find anything. The suspense is killing me, though. I know. Well, it's not hugely. It's not. Yeah, it's not a lot less. Hold on a second. Let me 432 325. Yeah. So, it's down by 18,000. We'll take every dollar. That's good.
Yeah. And so, um, that's the number that we're going to Is the handbook already printed, Ryan? The motion? No, the motions handbook. So, that's the number then that'll go into the motions handbook and that's what Brian will use on Sunday. Okay. And that's what we will
the CPA part of the motions handbook will reflect the new number as well. Um and uh they and we're using the formula from this year to determine Carla I'll share
you know the based on the school formula and they vote the conquered doesn't vote until uh June and are they using CPA funds as well? Yeah, they CPA would not allow them to their CPA be considered. Yeah, their CPA wouldn't
allow them to be considered because they didn't get their information in on time, their application. Yes, I heard it was a day late. I I have a question for you. It's a process question. If at town meeting the the town meeting votes in
favor of the amenities building and it passes and then the town of con conquered decides it does not pass that. What happens to those funds? Are they perpetually allocated or is that just goes right back because that project? So
it's not like if they came back next year and said oh we really are going to use our C conquered says we'll use our CPA funds. They don't automatically. We have to they'd have to reapply. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a three-year grant and they they have three years to spend
it. That's what I'm asking. Well, because this is a a two- town project. Um I've forgotten what we called that agreement we signed with them, but intermunicipal intermunicipal agreement. The and we've checked this out with our
town council. the the CPA funds in Carlile can only do not are not um are not designated for this project, you know, over the next three years if Carlile
votes it down or if Conquer votes it down, right? So, both towns have to approve it. I understand, but I guess I'm I'm I I guess um since it's a reimbursement thing, you know, it's not it's not a grant where you actually give
them that money that money ahead of time. Yes. Um it seems to me that they should have the and normally they are given a a span of time in which to get the project done. Um, even if Conquered were to only do it, you
know, agree to it the next year and then they started the project, I don't see why those funds couldn't be held for them until they spend it and and you know, but then they have to spend it by the end of that whatever the end of the thing is. So, I guessed
Yeah. Well, I I think that um So, Barney, I think that's right. So if the CPA funds could only be used if the scope of the project was the way the town voted it. So if conquered voted it down in this town meeting but then had a
special town meeting to fund their side of it, I think our vote would still be binding as long as the project didn't change. So they could take many attempts at funding it. Um but that means that we've encumbered $432,000.
Um for help and we're using and we're taking it out of the undesated fund because we don't have enough in the recreation fund. A lot of that's coming out of undesated. But so that means we let's say it took him three years to finally get the appro vote of approval.
So you don't have to give it three years. You could resend it at the fall. I I thought because most of our agreements actually say two years. I thought the regional school committee agreement gives each town a blocking right on capital project.
So if one town blocks, I think it dies. Well, that's like that's a separate issue from how CPA grants and agreements are written. You could write I guess you could write that you might want to do it. Would you write a contention on
conquered approving? David, you're right. So if conquered said no and we're never doing it, then it does die in. No, when they say no in a town meeting, they don't have to say never. They just it dies that day. That bill died that day. They said no. Right. But if they called the special town meeting 45 days later
and said we want to vote it again, then it would but they it's unlikely, but they also the way their CPA works, they don't have another funding cycle within 45 days. Well, I'm saying a special tax. I mean, could we write our motion such
that the funding is approved contingent on conquered passing theirs and just leave it at that and let them do it? So, you mean conquered passing it that day? No, no, no. On their town meeting exclus belly up and vote it. They got to do a debt exclusion too. If it votes to
pass, we don't care how they pay for it. Well, I mean, it could pass a town meeting and then fail at the ballot then write it. So, it has to pass at the ballot. I mean, I think it's in it's this is a weird situation for us because we usually know the landscape the day we go to town meeting. So, they've already
had their vote, but I would write it contingent on it passing, you know, approval by approval by June by the end of the June 30th. So, I guess we and that should probably be part of the motion. The language of the agreement
has to be included in the motion, I believe, right? Or no? Um the language of the motion has no the grant agreement it says and Kelly you can chime in if you're still on the call but
um they say uh you know the the the the list the town meeting and the date when it was approved when it was and then the grant agreement says it's kind of a boilerplate language um that includes some of the information
from the application but I don't believe Kelly, are you still there? Yeah, I see your name up there. Yeah, I'm here. I know it references, like you say, the article um in the town meeting when it was voted. I don't know that it has the detailed language from the motion. Right. Right. In the grand agree, it
elaborates on the project in some, you know, section of it, you know, the parameters of the project, but I don't know if it's a a word for word. Yeah. What's in the motions uh handbook right now is
Um, right. Brian's moving the motion uh to appropriate it out of the CPA funds and then uh and it would be appropriate and it would be expended by the CC the Carlile
Regional High School um and any portion of the sums not expended by June 30, 2027. So, it's a two-year grant agreement. Shall be returned to the Carile Open Space and Recreation Reserve Fund. So, um
would we put a clause in? Why would we why would we put a clause in there depending on whether it passes? So, you don't have to hold the money for the next three years like to your point. Yeah. Yeah. Just, you know, it's a now thing. Right. Right. I think it's going to pass. So, I don't
I think it'll be a non-issue, but it's probably prudent to do that so you don't have to just keep it. It's the couch cushion problem, right? Couch cushions. Um, yeah. I mean, maybe a contingency in the grant agreement
because the motion references the grant agreement, you know, that it's it's, you know, contingent on the terms in the grant agreement. Maybe that would be the Yeah, the place to put it. Maybe we'll have to explore this a little bit in the
next 10 hours. 10 minutes. 10 minutes, right? We're gonna write this for uh Sunday. So the um there's two there's two issues here. So normally you extend the use of the funds because the project's going to take two years. So just a a clarifying question.
So if if a we passed if Carlile passed it and said we're willing to spend up to 432,000 and conquered fails but someone from Conquer says I'll pay the rest would Carile not agree to like does it have to be that specific
vote or is there a certain time frame you're trying to restrict it to? I like the June 30. Yeah, I think the time frame is what is appropriate? because we don't care how they fund it, right? And if someone and but if if this thing delays 12 months or whatever, we're into
the next cycle of CPC money and we say, "Oh, well, we have other uses that we may deem at that point in time more appropriate or better for Carl for the committee deciding that we may want that flexibility." So, how long do you want
to keep it available for Conquer to figure themselves out? June 30 right away. Well, if it Oh, you mean as soon once their ballot election or or the time frame that would work with the next cycle? Well, the next cycle could
be as early as this fall. That's what I I was trying to We're a little different. It maybe August 30. trying not to confuse you, but hypothetical could be it it fails at the ballot box and then their CPC does decide to open around
fund the rest of it in you know by the fall. I don't right or by their next spring which is typically when they put forward things they're recommending it in content. just I was in asked this question only because of the discussion we're having
and I just didn't think it was appropriate to have it go in perpetuity or fisher cut bait this summer and but I'm willing to give them some leeway with you know is Brian's scenario if someone came out of the woodwork and said I really want to see this project
being done and they were able to cobble together the money I don't doesn't matter to me but because our voters in town here decided they wanted this at this particular time but at some point in time we are going to have other needs and say we want to do something else.
Yeah. I will just say for you know being transparent um about our CPA funds we have several grant agreements on the books uh for projects here in Carile that have not been spent and some of
them haven't even been initiated and they've had with and the whoever the applicant is has come to us to extend the term and we have we have been making those extensions but I'm just saying we have already money set aside for a number of
grants for that are you know Carlile specific. So, which which date? Time period. What date? We've heard different things. Scott, I think said August. August 30th. August 30th. Yeah, I think that's fine because we we wouldn't start a new cycle
for the fall meeting until So, August 30th, the board has concluded August 30th. So, you so declare. I will I will say though, you actually have to make that recommendation to the CPC. So, I
will follow through on that and we might have to have time between now. We may have to uh Right. We'll have to call a quick You know what you need to do is post the meeting uh for Sunday and do that. You can do that tomorrow and that that'll be give you enough. Right. Well,
we can't count Saturday, Sunday, but posting. Yeah, that's a good question. Post Friday. Yeah. Friday. Are there any other questions on that topic that you need? Think we're good. Okay. You sure? I Is there anything else
relative to You said elevators. We haven't gotten to that and we're running behind schedule here. So, we're good. Oh, no. We're not good. We're good. You're right. You're right. This is what we had to do. So, the Okay. the screen is showing the fancy electronic bids we received for the for
the um the elevator. So, the this was estimated at 1 million originally, then 1.1, and you'll see that three of the four bids came in under a million. Are we allowed to use any of those or do we have to go with the high forget the procurement process? We have to go with
the low. We have to spend two million. So the um so now we need a number for the article at town meeting. The finance committee agreed to add a 12% contingency to the second lowest number just in case
there's some shenanigans with the first. So that would be1,39,68. That's that's the 928 times 1.12. Y and do are you in the I should know this but is there any companion vetting of
the like the lowest like the lowest firm you have to pick the lowest right but do you also have to do a vetting job of the reputation of that? So right now, Lero Hill, who's our architect, is doing the reference checks. So if they see something in the lowest that they don't like, a material defect in that company,
they have the authority to go to the next kind. Yeah. Responsive and responsible. So if a if a firm is deemed not responsible to our standard, then we can throw out that bid. Okay. Got it. Got it. Good. Meaning they don't know how to do elevators or something. But
all of the all of the uh people who submitted bids are DAM certified by the state for elevator installation. And this this wasn't one you could just wing, right? Yeah. Right. Okay. Sounds good. So the amount is 1,39,69. Sounds good to me. Okay. Great. Is that
okay? Do we need a vote? Do we support or not? I I support it, but I'm not We didn't already. So, you didn't support this specific number. So, as long as your recommendation remains, it's cleaner to vote it, but Well, let's vote
it. Yeah. So, the amount is $1,39,69. That's You can check my math though. That's 12%. Oh, you got it. Okay. So, move that's article whatever. Article four. Okay. Okay. So, it's moved by Kate. Is
there a second? Second. Second. Uh, Scott got that one. Good. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor? I. And none opposed. Okay. Uh, review of the motions book.
So, we're putting out a motions book. I thought it was fantastic. Well, it got a little slow toward the end. slow motion. It certainly does. I also have all of I have 80% of the presentations, but we're getting there. Um there's a
lot You mean the the screen presentations or what? Yes. Yep. And the dry run is on Friday. So there's there's a lot of town meeting prep going on, but we feel like the town meeting is in good shape. The dry run is for whom? Any presenters. Presenters. I thought they
were Thursday. It might be Thursday. Thursday. What time is it? I don't think I got that. Well, you see a car or Oh, the candidates night. That's why I told Wayne I couldn't do that. After that, you could stop by if you wanted to.
Yeah. And um stop by the auditorium. Right. Um are you presenting Barney? Just a little piece of the CPA, but Mark is um and no, Adam Cotton, the vice chair of ReCom, is the one that's actually and he couldn't make it Thursday night either. So he did his run
through actually he's doing it right now with Wayne. Okay, good. So Wayne's pretty buttoned down on that. I'll try I mean I can try to come by but Okay. So just that's why I'm just reminding the board and looking for any feedback on the process but uh the the poster
session we have at least eight committed article folks to come do posters. Um the food truck and all that stuff is being handled by the town meeting study committee which which is great. That's helpful the staff. Nice. The child care has has gone out. We've
seen that's also being handled by the TMSC. Um I will be there for the poster session to to alleviate any issues. We talked with a new town clerk. It's her first town meeting. She's going to be um handling the the reception and and the
checking folks in and then the presentations etc that are starting. And then the motions book is going to include the finance committee letter, some introductory information from Wayne, all of the motions, and then um a
memoriam and a town retirey of staff and a thank you for volunteers. So it'll be a comprehensive book. We're printing 250. Does that sound like the right number to you? That'd be great. Hopefully probably much bigger turnout. Come on.
We are okay. We are. What time is the poster session? I have to say happy I think 12, right? Poster session. A couple of the articles, particularly the ones bring them out. High opposer. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to bring them out. It's a skewed It's a skewed data set. Yes. Yeah. But we are going to do
another We're going to do another snap poll at the end. People have a QR code. So, we're going to try to gather some data. We're also Nancy Pierce who's been really driving this is uh is going to uh do a poll of boards and committees. said, "Did this work better? Did you get
more information out?" I want to say I think Aubre's been doing a fantastic job on the as well getting article of the day out, getting all those little snippets out. So, I mean, people who are interested have ample ways of getting information. So, you know, let's hope I
even hand delivered a warrant to someone today. So, you did. I was yelled at. I didn't even make it to the door before I started getting yelled at in a nice way. They wanted more services.
Um, okay. So, I just want to go through each article quickly, not like summarized, but just to say. So, the the elevator number is now final. Library cos was final. The whole consent agenda is going to be one vote.
So, that should be pretty quick. Um the only questions that we've gotten on any of the consent agenda items was the prudent investor rule and um I think it's a coin flip that gets pulled because people here know how to invest so they're they're interested in that. So then we're doing the um police
station renovation project. This number was finalized by you and also recommended by the fincom. So that number is final. I am going to change this 750 to make it I'm going to change that language, but that's not a you problem. Fire station renovation. Remind
me, Travis, the presentation is being done by me and the chief. The fire chief is going to lead it, but you have the presentation. Yes, fire chief actually has it right now. So, you'll change where it says David Modell. I mean, all these people that No, that's just who's
making the motion and and and Dave is not going to do anything either because Wayne will say moved by Yeah. Okay. Okay. We're cutting down on some of the reading. So, why would we even have the name in there, but whatever. It's just for the minutes. Oh, well. So, a
physical person has to move these. They do. But they don't have to say it. They don't have to say it. Put me on the early articles, by the way, in case they leave. You leaving on Sunday? What? She's already in case in case it's a twoight thing. I won't be there on the
19th. It's not whenever the second one I think. Okay. Well, no. Yeah. All right. So, the the CR is going to be presented by Maline Blake, I believe. I'm going to confirm that. And that is complete. Green
Cemetery is going to be presented by Gordon. He's going to do a good job with that. CPC recommendations. Um, we've had the most chatter about this in a good way because all the numbers and everything. The presentation, the actual physical
presentation is one with all of it or are we coming in peacemail? It's one except for the amenities building. They have their own separate thing. But no, the one on all the other projects and the funding is all one continuous slideshow. And you're quarterbacking
that. And what does that mean? That means you're not quarterbacking it. You're going to get you're going to get sacked by laptop and moving it from slide to slide or whatever. Are you gathering it and sending it to me? Yes. Yeah, it's all together. They're just a few little things that have to be all I
need. Correct. Okay. So, those are good. Uh there's this is being edited by council, so ignore any of the it'll be it's been seen by 30 people. I think it's be pretty good. Okay. TA Can I just
ask a question on the TA bylaw? Um, I never I didn't see it in any of the back and forth emails that the section three at the end of it that says this will become effective upon passage. And I kept asking Tom
Harrington, did that mean doesn't mean passage of our at our town meeting. It means has to go to the legislature first, right? And come back. My understanding of it, and we'll make sure he answers you, is that it becomes town bylaw, and anything that doesn't supersede Mass General law would go into
effect immediately. But you would need the legislature to change the law in order for anything, right? Because this would be superseding the current law. Well, some parts of it don't though, right? Right. So that would probably go into effect, it sounds like. Yes. So components that are outside,
right, would have to wouldn't be in effect because I just I somebody may ask that question. So maybe but Tom is going to be there. We're going to have legal counsel at the meeting, right? Okay. Yes. Thank you. And I've been asked how this would be
implemented in my end. And I would say the way that I've approached anything here is to discuss with everybody involved how to implement it in a in a reasonable way and time frame so that you're respecting the traditional history of the town while also transitioning to um to best
practice. So this isn't like day if this was past day one. This is how it is. It's going to be right. It's going to be rogue ta. So my my role here would be to turn to transition the town to this not to
immediately implement it. That's how I take it unless the select board directs me otherwise. Community consultant. Uh the planning board will be presenting this and we did change that name. The MBTA communities. This is petition folks have they have a
whole presentation and everything ready to go. ADU uh final final from the planning board yesterday. So this is ready to go. No change to the actual bylaws. I do we're into 26 to Kate's point. Do we really if she's not there for some
reason? Is that okay? So the actual motion is the one that's red. So it doesn't matter that we just change the name. All right. All right. This is just so that people can follow along. And the reason why I think the town has printed motions because they change from the warrant and people have a question when
that happens. So it's just easier to follow along. Then the last one is um so there was a lot of questions about this and I just want you to understand them. So the the board of health is actually entering us into a regional
agreement with East Middle Sex Mosquito Control Program. So this the motion language is going to look different than this. that's going to say that we're entering into that agreement with this funding, etc. There's a lot of back and forth about it that that happened with council. It accomplishes the same thing
they presented and I don't think that it's changed. It's just the motion language has changed. So, I just wanted you to know that and the summary which explains that, but it's the same thing. And then we have staff, retirees, and the
inmemoriam. Okay, great. Any remaining questions from the board on any of that? Or town meeting? One o'clock start. Yeah. Okay. Poster session is supposed to start at noon, right? Um I think so. Got to get
with Gretchen and I think we went over all that with Ashley and Gretchen. I I I think food trucks are setting up at 11. People can arrive then. And I think yeah, noon. It might be 11:30 for poster
session. Yeah. Um will somebody send out a confirmation on that? We should. Yeah. Okay. And then um what time is the select board? Um we have a meeting posted. Yeah. Yeah. Because we usually do just
for the for whatever comes up in case there's something less. Are we all going to be there for the posters milling about or not? I I'm sure we would. I thought we'd be there anyway. I mean, I think 11:30. We're saying we should probably meet at 11. I mean, I want to get there early
enough to make sure things No, 11:30. 11:30 should be fine. Okay. For the our meeting, for our meeting, I'm I may get there early just to make sure things are do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to get a sandwich, you can start at
11, I think. All right. What time is the food truck there? I think it sets up at 11. All right. Good. All right. That's a wrap on that. Unless you have anything else. Oh, we're in It's a lot, but we're in good shape. No,
thank you. It has been a lot and I've really impressed what the not only the social media, but the town website having all the stuff there. It's really good. It's very handy, you know. Yeah. No, I think we've learned a lot about things we can do regardless of days and
food trucks and things. I think Yeah, that's the fun part. But I think the I'm anticipating that the meeting itself running it more efficiently and the fact that people have had access to a lot more information I I'm optimistic
that that will make a richer experience. Good. All right. Then we will move on to the fire station renovation design committee. We're all set. We're all set. We're done. We're ready to go. Good. Um, all right. So, I'll remind the board this is
on here because at the end of your last meeting, you wanted you wanted to hustle with this process. So, um, if you are to get a jump start in June or whatever the next meeting is, which we also need to discuss, then um, we would need to start
advertising for for a committee that would likely need some type of description of what the committee is. And then um I think it would be helpful to send comments from tonight to the OPM and the designer about what it is that
you're looking for in terms of project management and outreach so that they can come back with a proposal and a plan that then you can vet. So my worry would be if you said what would be your outreach proposal without some goals and some outline for them that they might bring you something that that doesn't
match your expectations. So just a little bit of feeding them information would I think would help speed this up. That was what I was suggesting this time be used for a lot of silence around here. I have I have thoughts. Yeah. I mean just in in
reviewing I think our last discussion and a lot of the the prior discussions and feedback from the community. I mean it seems like we're there's agreement around the objectives of certainly health and safety maintaining a call fire department and dealing with some of the
challenges around recruiting call fire people space needs whatever the the question that hasn't been answered for us and I know has also been raised that we thought would be answered was really around this issue of equipment right and we're talking ladder trucks tanker
trucks um the things that are may not be mandatory but may be appropriate for Carlile or not. Um to me the the the big unanswered
questions lie in the space of validating um and finalizing the equipment that we want the fire and I'm oversimplifying but the equipment we want the fire department to have today and be able to have in the future. And so what I had
expected when we talked to the OPM and the um designers was that we would see a list of like well here's here's the equipment required to maintain your your current insurance rating or whatever. Um here's what's required just for health
and safety regulatory. Here's what we think. here's what's appropriate for carile but is not technically mandatory and some costbenefit analysis around why it might make sense to have for example a ladder truck if it's not technically
required this is why in carile we need it here's some costbenefit qualitative quantitative around that um and here's nice to have andor unnecessary and then you could look at it and say okay let's really get to the heart of um what does
this fire station renovation need to accommodate and I we we had the discussion with the fire department but we haven't had this broader discussion around absolutely around the the and I say cost benefit I don't mean just quantitative around some of this
additional equipment that we've brought in that we maintain so to me if we're going to set up I don't want to start from ground zero with a new design committee a lot of work a lot of good work's been done I would focus it on the question of finalizing that equip equipment list, making recommendations
andor uh providing the rationale and cost benefits around that. So we can we the select board, we as a town can see here are the requirements, here's what's mandatory, here's what's not mandatory, but you know, we believe is is the town
would support. We can have a discussion as a community around some of those things, understand what the costs are. Um, when we have that, then we can turn to um, and I don't know if the OPM or the designers play a role in that. Frankly, I'm not sure they do. Um, when
once we finalize that equipment list, we give that we work with the designer to refine the concepts based on that feedback. And that should dictate how many bays do we need? Let's let's blow out the the lower-end thing and really get to a a a suite of concepts that
really fit the bill based on that. And then we, you know, I'm generally I'm thinking um over the summer and then by September we have concepts that we can go out and socialize uh concept or concepts that we can go out and socialize and make the case for in the
community leading up to the next town meeting. But I think that I think this design group should be really focused on answering that question around vetting that equipment list and answering because that's the heart of to do that they really need engagement by the
uh senior leadership at the fire department. Yeah. Because it's very technical. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I Yeah. Yes. But they also need an outside consultant, right? Because we have no You have to cross it. you have to cross check it because we don't have the
expertise to and I you know don't want to cast asparagus but um one of our problems is that we don't we have to trust only one person over there and we can't differentiate between wants and needs
and we have to trust them that it's only needs but we I guess we at the bottom line is we're not trusting about that And there are certain I think there's some residents who are also not trusting about that. I don't know. We have no way of judging that without some help which is
where we why we can't make decisions about this stuff. I wouldn't characterize it as a trust issue. I think it's the the fire department is advocating what they believe is in the best interest of the community from the view of a fire department versus I think some of the feedback we've heard and
some of the questions we asked have been yeah I understand all that but is it worth X Y and Z does is as as David would say is the juice worth the squeeze right on that one so um I think that's part of what we need to even if it's not
answered illuminate so we can all just see what the what the what the thought process is and the rationale like again we've talked about the lad I'm not an expert on ladder trucks I'm not an expert on firefighting but um there's certainly points to be made on both sides of the ledger so this group to
your point do we need an expert on the committee ideally I don't I don't know how we do that we have to fund I'm sure we can committee could locate somebody or the Ryan's group can but we would have to authorize some funing for that,
right? Well, I think that's what we're going to town meeting for is to get this say hund we last time we said 150,000 and that would be used for this outreach. So, not all of it has to go to the OPM and the the OPM and the
architect, right? We could peel away 5K or 10K and Right. is my Can we do that or not? It's worded. Do we have to specify that in the ask? You could do that. We could do what? Ask specify it or just
peel it away. Or just peel it away. You're asking for money in order to conduct this design study. It's not specific to any okay but then and then the committee itself they have that person senior fire love
someone uh select board fincom community member and then you know spend some time getting into the details and then we go from there and I think that's all very achievable certainly by fall town meeting to get to the con to get to revised
concepts with a I I think you need a a good leader of that to to make sure you're on target with the timing. I think you're going to need a couple of you guys at least at minimum use guys. You guys to
because that's that's where the strong leadership is going to be coming because you don't want we don't want another committee going off. No, can't. And then you you have and then you say, "Well, gee, I don't you thanks for all that hard work, but we don't agree with the thing you did." You know it is that's
demoralizing. So we need to be directing or you need to be directing from the get-go. That's why I think the scope has to be you need more help but you guys are still going to have to do the most of the work. one one kind of question in that to you
Scott is so when you look at this how what what are you uh building to and what is your I mean they on those schematics and we talked about the time horizons of this I mean one of the questions that a consultant would ask
you if you said oh well is this necessary and he'd say necessary for what you know is it necessary for your current fire department to fight fires is it necessary for a on call fire department. Is it necessary for a full like I mean there's and I'm asking now
rather than getting down the road with this and then say oh well we didn't really think about this relative to what the fire department may become and so I think we have to make sure we deal with that. Yeah. I think there's to me there
I don't know I think about again the conversations we've had to date is first I want to know what do we absolutely like mandatory need. Yeah, like there's a list of a lot of stuff that has to be has to be in place. And
then I want to know the stuff that's not on the list, but we still need quote unquote. Let's dig into that. Let's understand and some of that will be won't move the needle too much and some of it will move the needle a lot. Right. I think yeah I think to circle back to Travis's question I think you start with
some fairly basic stuff which is which again a consult the fire the Brian and David and those guys and a consultant can probably shed light the question that um John always asks slavery like is there anything
that's significantly going to move the needle on your fire rating and I think the answer to that is going to be no like it would require enormous investment to move that needle. So okay, so given that we all know and you can cite NFPA sources that you know a fire
doubles every five minutes or you know there's some metric right. So given our sistns and our non-sistns and our woods and our houses made of wood like what makes sense to have for equipment so that you can respond as quickly as possible with the water you need right
and I think that will identify the tankers and the ladders and do that I mean I think we can build out a model that to um Scott's point focuses on what's the best way to serve forget the building what's the best way to serve the fire needs it doesn't need on call
it doesn't matter. You have to have this kind of equipment for these kind of fighters. And I think if they first do that, it'll go a long way to address, okay, this is the stuff like you I liked your categories like we absolutely need this stuff and it doesn't matter that it's required or not. This is what a
town that has no, you know, public water supply and all these roads, that's what it needs, right? And I think then you build out from there. But but to my question building on that so my question again is you could say right now at this point in time we have everything we need
because we have a fire force that can fight fires in the town. What the chief is saying is I yeah this may be at this moment in time but five years from now and 10 years from now it's going to look a lot different. So we're not Yeah, that but I agree with what you're saying. But
well, if you do if you do, then you have to start to say, okay, then what do we need to have in place so that we're prepared for that? Yes. But first, separate the two things. I don't think you're going to need I mean technology changes so equipment
gets better but if we need you know two tankers in a ladder or whatever the mix is for we're not growing so dramatically that the actual big stuff we need is going to change like you know maybe we decide we need one more bay in case but basically I think the stuff is the stuff
so the biggest piece is the building that stores the equipment then you can go to all the other stuff like the decon on rooms and the training rooms and the laptop rooms and all the things that they're talking about and and have a more maybe qualitative analysis of that,
but first address the big thing. Okay. I again I like Scott's approach because I think the issue is really with the bays and the the equipment for the bays because I think there's consensus around decontamination and and the safety and everything. I think everybody's on board
with that or we can get the town on board, but but then you're into the the the timing of that. So you say, well, I could build an extra bay or if I but I don't need that right now. But the question is where are you going to be and what makes the most sense to to
build going forward because you know what's going to change? We grow at a rate of okay nothing percent a year. So the the the on call versus the full how would that change the number of trucks you need? Well, it could change the
amount of spacing because remember they need but they need spacing around around the size of these bays to get move around. How is that different if you're a volunteer or a prof or a paid professional? Because of staffing. I'm not an expert, but I am thinking that
this level of staffing. I think that's a big criteria to say, look, we don't want to build a fire station that omits some element that you might need if you're regionalized. Right. But it wouldn't be No. No. Right. So, what would we if if we had to flip the switch in 10 years? Is there anything that is not in this
concept that needs to be in this concept? And then we can I mean, it's it's not black and white. There's but I think you can at least have the have some cost benefit. I mean, how much is it going to cost to buy this extra truck
in over 20 years? How much extra space square footage is required for this truck over 20 years? Okay, it's $8 million and we don't really need it, but you know, is that worth? And maybe the decision is yes, it's worth it because we believe in 10 years xyz. I don't
know. But at least we've had that debate discussion and we can we can answer the question of why this fire station crosses. So this is the so let's go up a level. Now what we wanted to do the reason we're having this discussion now is because at the last meeting we decided time is kind of the essence. So
we wanted to get our brains around what can we write as a charge to accept volunteers and if we could get that done in a reasonably short time frame we could convene that. we could interview the people and accept them and then we
could start that committee soon like June y and then you know June, July, August, September, October five months essentially to get us to a point of schematic whatever right well not not even schematic just no just concept
concepts that we saw at the level we saw that we actually now have additional justification behind and iteration right so again I just Barney and I just did this like verbally a couple weeks ago, but broadly speaking, something like two
months of that, like gather that stuff, organize it, two months to work with Tecton to make that into soup, like two options or something. I don't know. And then a month to socialize it. You know, they could probably, my guess is they
could probably do it faster because they're pretty far along in terms of they know this. You know what I mean? They Right. They could probably iterate those but yeah 222 like 221 221 then
you right 221. Yeah something like that. So yeah. So are we but writing a charge takes a little bit of time. So I would like to delegate that to this guy right here. She wants to take on this. I don't
even know what a charge is like. Or you can look on the website at some of the other committees. I I think you Yeah, you could do it. But it would be focused on police station. It would be it would be focused on the Yes. really on the equipment side of things. We
don't want to look at I don't think we want to look at like what you know I think we have to just keep it really I I think if you do a draft if you can if you have the time between now and town meeting we're meeting on Sunday then we can review a draft we can review a draft
offer public comment at that meeting and then go back and then the following meeting offer public comment so sorry not public com well yeah well I mean people I don't know it's it's going to be a posted meeting but but I'm saying I meant comment among ourselves because we
have to deliberate we have to all have a posted meeting. So we could deliberate um if there was comments that we wanted to give to that we could do that and then go back do one more iteration and then at another next meeting have something it's workable. I just think
that gives us time. Maybe in the interim we can like get the I mean I'd love to see the long we never even saw like the laundry list of like equipment that's you know I just envision this step that never happened. Um where you know here show me what the analysis they've
already done with all of the elements that they did put into those concepts. I mean just let's start getting organized and probably it's probably 8020, right? Like 80% of the stuff is like clear one way or the other. like the antique firet truck. No, it's not
required. But no, I I the reason I'm Scott, I'm not I'm suggesting you is because I do think it needs someone who is energized, takes the ball and runs, but also is on the select board so that it gets the buy in from our board. It's
not an independent person who kind of does that. Great. Let's do it. All right. Yeah. Well, and and maybe this select board will determine that they want two people on the committee or whatever and something like that. I think to Kate's point, we're a few of us have to Yeah. Because jump in to help
out. Bigger committee is okay. Not everybody has to go to every meeting, right? We need a lot of people to do a lot of things, but that way we get buyin from the select board in the process. So, we're all This is going to be I think at the end of the day, an advisory committee. So, the committee is not making is ultimately just right doing the homework and making a
recommendation. It's not voting, but but the the select board member on that or members will make sure you're getting the advice you really want and not not um or that you really need is what I not that right, right? Like not not the
specific recommendation that you want, but I want you need the information that you need. Yep. But as part of this, we're going to town meeting for this 150,000 to do other things like a site plan review, a wetlands flagging, the stuff that we think is going to be
needed. So those get done ahead of time so that they So I'm just thinking because I'm going to be speaking to that and I'll get and and that'll be included in the No, this that wouldn't be included in the charter. It would not be. I don't think so. So Okay. So this I want to keep the
committee on the design. what's the design of the building and what it needs to include. Not even the I don't mean the design, but I mean the the discussion about all the I all the factors, all the Yeah. considerations
and it's not evaluating how likely an on call thing is going to be in six years. It's like no, it's just Yeah. Although I the one thing I do think somehow has to get in there is would you change anything to your point
for in 10 years we realized you know we're going to have to go we're but that's not a separate study looking at yeah no I I'm I liked how you thought about this. I'm gonna go run with it. Staying great. Good. Not to this point though because we are a public meeting.
I see there are people who are interested in this topic online and I would actually want any kind of feedback but please be concise. Um Mr. Lavy or Mr. Bada do you have or anyone else? Mr.
Bales or Yes. Mr. Lavy. I'm actually I'm good. I think that uh obviously we'll I will want to o provide overwatch or can we see into what Scott's doing um as this
goes forward? Come to the Sunday meeting. Yeah, these will all be public and yeah, this will be an open process as a committee. So, it would be a public Yeah, it would all be public and the committee is made up of Scott and the fire chief. That's the part I didn't
understand. Well, the I So, I'd write a uh committee charge. We'd we'd form a committee and we'd post meetings with minutes and agendas. Um I Yeah, as long as I as long as there's public insight into that, I'm I'm fine with what you guys are taking
on here, trying on here. Yep. That's my comment. Yep. Okay. Is there anyone else online who wants to comment or question? Tom. All right. I would agree with John. I think you're going down the
right path. It's critical though as to who you put on the committee. You need I think you need some community input on that. However you arrange that, that's all. Yep. What is who should be on it? Community input. Community public committee to do this. And that's a good idea. Okay. Yep. All right. Is there
anyone else? If not, I'm going to move on to our next topic here. All right. Oh, it's the town administrator report. Are we done with that topic? Unless there's something else you'd like, unless you want to ask about it. Um, the amount. We're good
with the amount, right? Yeah. Did did you increase it? I meant that. Um, so two things just if you have the willingness to talk about it is is what you mean by outreach. M
the part of this was um I went back to the designer and said you would like some revamped outreach. They they didn't suggest it but but I'm suggesting to it what what would be compelling. I think to me and I was thinking about outreach at this stage. I think the outreach
comes once we get through this process and have um I mean though we can we can outreach in terms of having these public meetings and soliciting public input on the discussions but I think until we actually have um we go through I wouldn't advise any
outreach at this moment in terms of where we are. I I also think the question is going to come up as to do we have Tecton or uh CMS involved in this committee discussion at a point where we
were talking about having conversations and I and I'm not prepared to answer that but I think if Ryan's got to procure that if we're going to do that right procure procure the services of those or not. So we do need a phase two
contract with both both the OPM and the designer. So um which leads into the third thing I want to talk to you about which is project timeline. Before we do that um I thought the 150,000 additional that
we're voting on Sunday was to cover the extension of Tecton and O and CMS. uh through the fall meeting. And that one reason was that we wanted to have
more um you know detailed discussions. Yeah. with not just what we what you were just describing but including those two entities at least in some form so that rather than us go back and figure
out what they already discussed and why they rejected it or right I mean that there should be some grounding in what has already been done that they are best set up to provide the way I would envision it is is that this committee gets established it does the research it
comes up with its list we then have CMS and Tecton at the end of that process perhaps or it would be great if they're at least involved monitoring the process then you could beginning though to to um I don't mean they're not leading the process I could certainly I' it would be
great if they would like sit in or attend or watch or hear or occasionally chime in if they had something to chime in but I don't I don't see them managing this process and then and then once those equipment list is kind of that then Tecton goes and
develops a plan based on all the stuff that you provided version 20 of what we saw version 20 this is what and then we do the community outreach with that plan see if there are any minor modifications and then go to town meeting and then
also have a estimator estimate that and so at town meeting we say we have a preliminary number and we need to raise x amount for the soft cost to do all of the work that is needed to get the construction drawings and everything so
that at the following town meeting they can have a hard bid hopefully in time. So I think if you did outreach it's less people giving their feedback on how it's more educating people about what the fire department does, what equipment they
need, why this or that or why not this or that versus what do you want out of a fire department, right? I mean they don't won't have the and you know we we do have people in the community that certainly do have insights into that and we and we want to solicit that but I don't think that's some blanket like I
think most people are just want to make sure that we have a good functional fire department so and that we've vetted this and we've well that's what I mean the education of why how this all adds up why if we are presenting a we're going down the path to a fire station of some
millions of dollars where why is it some millions of dollars and not less or not more like how did you arrive at this and that's the outreach it's the education when when the committee first gets together I hope you invite Tecton and the first question to be asked to them
is well because maybe they've done all this work and we don't know about it I hate for you to launch in all this and to find ahead of this because I need to get I need to understand the work that they've done I I think before you even write your your charge honestly because
if It's already been done. This this might all be moot. Um well, I mean because they did I guess the question is when you went and got, you know, interviewed everybody at the fire department, did you use any of your
judgment or did you you know about whether you thought some of these requests were frivolous or needy need needful or not? Because we don't have we don't know that. They said they got out that information. They gave us the thing but there we didn't get any analysis
right of that the question is did you do any analysis and where are we with that because before you do a lot of work I I'd like to see what work have they already done right and they're the ones that are supposed to be the fire fire station experts right so why not draw on
their no I don't y experience about what they looked at not trying to reject redo any work you don't want to redo the work exactly I think it's just yeah digging into some of these yeah things that have been answer your question and then the
timeline right you've answered his question what was your question did that answer the outreach what was the question again well there were two of them the outreach my job is to help you with time management so one of my jobs um how long do you see this committee work
we said five months right to the fall town meeting two and one the committee to decide the equipment Uh, no, but I would I could see that committee being available to support the outreach or answer questions. So there there's a finite time it takes
to develop a conceptual design, right? The estimator definitely takes a month. So if we need So tell us the timeline. Well, no. I mean, you're asking the question of tell us for timeline, but you have you're you have information. So tell us to make the fall town meeting
with what we want. What's the timeline? Back it out. So you'd a month to do the committee should take it down to talk here. Why would you cut it short? Let let him talk. He's So in order to establish a committee,
you'll need to approve a charge and then get people. So you're looking at conceivably mid June to start. Yep. Yeah. So, if it's if that's if that's going to meet twice a week for a month in a in a concerted way, I think we can make the fall town meeting timeline. If
that extends out through August to have that's why I'm asking what type of outreach you want because if you want to have meaningful outreach like kitchen counter, kitchen table conversations and surveys, etc., that's going to take approximately a month to gather any meaningful data that that you
would absorb. And then it has to be presented and digested by the board and it has to be revamped. That's outreach to get a vote of town meeting. It's not outreach to refine. I mean I think you're just I think the questions are I agree with Scott. The questions are going to be very technical. They are best addressed by people have expertise
in the field. If the broad if we had a if we feel we have under researched the broad mandate of do we need an an upgrade to the fire department building. We should have done
that like a year ago. I think we've come out and said based on our best knowledge and we were elected to make certain calls that we needed. So I don't think we want to go back to kitchen table all that. Right. Let's go narrowly. That's why I said earlier I think we go I I I
think I you know I agree with you the committee has to hit the ground running and they have to really focus on specific technical issues and get those at least get some consensus around them. And as was said here it's a little bit about we kind of already know what Brian
says of why he wants what he wants. We need somebody else who's not invested in the town just who has an expertise to kind of qualify as that makes sense and okay then let's move on and let you know let's establish those things and understand the co the cost of it too
right everything's right the cost right so but to to I mean going back to for fall town meeting I think we want to be in a position to go to the next step in the process which would I guess would be schematics
Correct. You mean prepared you a cost to get to schematics? Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what we're talking about, right? Yeah. So, the cost to get a a conceptual design with a the rough cost estimate, a strong cost estimate in front of the
town, the select board is going to have to invest or really is going to have to delegate a lot of this decision-m to make that time frame. If what I'm hearing all these pieces need to be done is true, just want to have a conversation
about that to make sure that expectations are clear or that we can schedule with the next chair what these meetings are going to look like. I think the the committee is I don't I mean the I think the select board will be kept up to speed with what's going on, but I
think the next act for the select board would be to see the revised concepts. And I think at that point it would be pre-sold so you'd know what you're going to see before you saw it, right? Um and there'd be buy in and so it becomes, you
know, it's it's not like what happened the first go around and then from that point it would go to Tecton to then develop the the design. But we'd have to go to town meeting to get funds for them to go. No, but the schemat at least a
more deep similar to what they were proposing in their option 123. Something like that and an est and somebody giving us a a better estimate of the potential cost. That's what we want going into fall town meeting. Is that right? Yeah.
I think the hope was that we were going to do that in a very compressed time frame and be in that position for this town meeting. Yeah. No, I know. And that wasn't realistic, right? Um, but I'm just trying to go back to Ryan's point. So that we would want we would want
Tecton to start their revised version for that done by August and then the estimator is working on it in September. Estimator will need four to six weeks
typically. Did they do the estimation on estimator to do what? To do the schematics. So they take the conceptual design and then assign a cost takes four to six. So the concepts that they presented to us had that all gone through estimators. Okay.
Right. So, so maybe we are the deadline for this for the committee, the select board, you know, whatever the is to have an agreement about what the elements are for
Tecton's new. So, it has to go to an estimator by midseptember and then the estimator, right? And so, Tecton needs midocctober. Well, so by by if you I think you should be shooting more for
midepptember for the estimator. So you have it in midocctober because then you want to do that the kind of outreach we're doing now around it going into the fall town meeting, right? Which is November something or other. So I'm not trying to trick anyone. I'm just trying to dig. But when you say outreach, do
you mean a design and a number or just a design? I I if I can speak on this, I would say that you keep saying multiple schemes. I think the goal would be that you first get the equipment list and get all that. It gets kind of comes to the
select board for just saying, "Yep, we're on board. We we like what you've done." You then have it done to do the schematic, you know, with the concept plan. Yeah. Well, the concept it comes out and they then then everyone checks off on it and says, "Okay, it looks good." Then we get the estimator or
whatever involved or maybe it's in in process. And then unlike this last one where we said, "Oh, there are three concepts and we have to pick one this night because we're going to go." We only going to have one concept. We're gonna have the one that we've worked on and that gets then you know I don't know
what it is sold or whatever marketed to the town to the town outreached and but in this instance it's a little different because I think we've done a lot of the work right to this point we've said well what do we need how big I think we've narrowed our scope as a board and I
would be feel comfortable taking a stronger leadership stance as a board saying we've done this we've already narrowed this down. This is health and safety. This is the gender equality equity, but this is also now the right bay sizing and the right plan going
forward. And so I think we could get there. All right. So let me describe take a straw poll. So we charge a committee this month. Get the committee going in June. Yep. Hopefully by end of July.
July. end of July there's a a second look by or first look by the select board like here's the concept based off the information that we received concept the committee recommends the equipment so the you would said the committee
would do the equipment list and inform that first design right or did I go too far no I don't think Tecton's doing any designing at this point okay so the equipment list goes to the select board then once the equipment list is agreed upon then the design happens. The design happens. Tecton goes back to its
concepts and takes the input and hopefully I would think they've done a lot of the foundational work and they can they're familiar with the site so they can iterate and then hit something fairly close to the mark, right? So that concept comes back to the select board. We say we all
agree looks great. Then it's estimated. Yep. And then it goes for outreach for a vote at town meeting after you all come back uh to consciousness. passing out finding out how much this is going to cost. But never mind. But but you know what? I think that we've
experienced that already and it was a shock. And so it's like, okay, now we know this is where what are we taking days of of million? Are we still just asking for money to get us to the Springtown meeting? All right. So the question that was just
asked of me for everyone is what are we taking to fall town meeting? So what's realistic? It's up to you. The the idea in the past was that you would take this really good strong project that's estimated and get all the design funds that's needed to
send that through bidding, right? Which is expensive. It's it's going to be 10% of whatever the total project is back out this initial design cost, right? So let's say a million. And that's also the six to whatever month time frame you typically need to do that stage because
we were talking about the spring town. It would be a strong push. I think they said it would be a horse race to get it from November to May or whatever. That's going to be a hard charge to get to the we need to bid it by March number in
April for a town meeting in April May. That that's what you'd be asking. Yeah. So that will be both assuming you do the same financial plan that will be both a timing vote and a special election debt exclusion vote. Again if it's the big who knows what
next year is but if it's the biggest spend thing we can push the town meeting as late as we can. I mean we have that ability as late in the spring as we can. Yeah. But there's not a lot of room for equipment list approve it. design,
approve it, estimate, outreach. That's right. Ask. And I think by the time you get to outreach, you guys will all understand things so much better and be able to advocate, right, and explain so much
better because you will have learned that well. And part of part of the process of this work has to be creating the the materials that you're doing the outreach. I mean, it has to all be pushed out in a way that's digestible and right. So, I think the designers
I think the key is the committee being fast and efficient. If that doesn't happen, you're not going to make the timeline. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Don't know anything about fire equipment. That's Well, the I mean, and I'm going to guess it's going to
come down to a few key things, right? Yeah. But um so then but your your point your point Ryan is um who else is serving? Scott the the question is though who else who else is going to be on that committee just I would say
fairly small and people that are ready to put the time in and are not going to bring in all kinds of brand new ideas and going out to you know bring in a new designer and that kind of stuff. Right. We're we're on this path. Yeah. We're on that. Um,
so are we um are we going to uh reach out to people that how do we determine who would be good volunteers on this committee? We have to put it out to the general process that we have, right? Yeah. But I think we should we should be
appointing like the fire chief should be on there, right? Board. I don't think it should be more than a fivep person committee. Correct. or otherwise you'll get quorum problems. Probably a member from the community, right? Um maybe someone from from Fincom or Finance or
something. I don't know. Um good idea. That's probably not What about MFC? Maybe someone from MFC. You I don't mean I'm not adding more people. I'm just saying um whatever your select board member is. Who is the MFC representative?
Might be one and the same. Well, could be. as many twofers as you can get. But yeah, this is not time to like we're not blue skying. Yeah. No, painting on canvas. We're like digging in. What's in what's like and which items really move the needle on a design? Like I don't
want to debate about where we're going to put the rubber tubing, you know? It's like no the big ticket items. Where where is the real meat here? Yeah. Correct. Yep. Yep. Yep. And you're going to just have to like scope it and and and just be lean and mean about it.
But I think all the I mean there's so much information already out there that's been the past reports and and and all the emails and everything there's so much research that's been done by the community by the different chiefs. Uh if we have the experts coming in I I don't
think it's going to take a lot of like research. I think it's going to be a lot of discussion and debate and judgment and and putting together the the explanation and rationale and I think in a digestible way. Yeah. So just
um on the sort of timing front, you know, if we want to we want to get something in the mosquito that says we're putting together this committee, here's its purpose. We're looking for, you know, a, you know, an atlarge member, a somebody represent,
somebody representing this. Normally, we say that has to be two weeks notice. That's what we've said in our, you know, creating a volunteer committee. So, it should be go into the mosquito the Monday. Correct. Yeah. And then we tell people that are interested, I'm sorry.
Can I try to help? Sure. So, this committee, you're going to have to believe their recommendation to meet this timeline. Yep. So if they say you need 30,000 justify it. Well, yeah. No, actually, so do you will you be convinced by a membership composition
that includes an ATL large member? Do you need that at large member? If there isn't an atlarge member, are you not going to believe that the community would be behind the equipment list? That's a really good question. Yeah, it's a really The
process would allow for ample public input. And this isn't a voting committee. So whether you're on the committee or not on the committee, you can still have input. You're going to show up at an open and share information. Yeah. Yeah. So then if that's not true, then you
don't need a twoe advertising. What you need is what committees or expertise are going to convince you that just ask and ask them to represent to nominate somebody or recommend somebody. Yes. But yeah, I I don't want this to be misconstrued as a non-public process,
but this really is your group to advise. It shortcuts the wait having to advertise the waiting period. That's a good point. But if you need a community member to feel better about it, then you should do that is what I'm saying. They're all from the community, right? You mean if a board member is a we
mentioned FINCOM or whatever, they're not a community member. they are like usually you have an atlarge member to represent the non right in the group right volunteer types so that you can get more ideas but if this isn't one of those boards then I don't think that's I
think it's just paper addressing I think question is you know do we have um you know for instance we had a a retired uh police chief uh in town who came in and fire chief no he was a police chief yeah
for the fire We have we happen to have a return fire. So the question is if they were let's say one from a different community which would for me would be even more ideal than one from our community. uh if they were one that had worked in a different
community but lives in our community and could come be one of your atlarge that would be ideal but just any old atlarge I don't think is you know right and you know you the question is not the charge is not what does the
fire what does the fire department mean to the community this is again a very specific no that's why I'm thinking which is why I'm like the equipment I think is this damn equipment question which is so cru crucial that we need some help on because we can't
answer it and we need to have I think some independent somebody who doesn't maybe have the same kind of skin in the game as somebody who already who is in the department um to help us with Do you have someone I don't I wish I you know
I'm just so I I don't know I mean I I think I'm going to take a shot here. I don't think that person exists. Okay. It may not. Well, you know, and why couldn't why couldn't this committee if reach out to say a town that that is an Hold on a
sec. That's an on call if it has an on call and ask whoever the fire chief is. Would you be willing to come to our next meeting? We'd like to, you know, talk with you about XYZ. There's no reason to report has an on call. Back to the the
narrow focus of this committee. And I think that, you know, having a, you know, committee that's going to be decisive and, you know, effective is going to be better is going to be better in this instance for what this task is.
Um, this is, you know, I just think that's going to be better. Yep. Yep. Okay. Sure. So, so that means it probably wouldn't be the Yeah, it'll be a public committee. they'll be have and I would encourage the public, anyone who's interested to attend and offer
input and whoever's chairing that committee would, you know, seek that because you've got to get all the, you know, information out. No, and there's there's a lot of great information. But as far as then coming back with the recommendation, having the people, you know, who are in that committee, you
know, as voting members, I think it would be I think as a smaller group is going to be more effective. Okay. What does that mean? So your charge is going to also indicate the categories. Fire. We could just identify
fire chief. Select board. Select board. Probably two members of the select board. I would suggest. But this is my fire chief exe official, right? Or yeah, I think fire should be he can be on the committee. Exeicio. Yes. But typically we they have not had
a vote. That right. I I'm just saying we typically write it as a non voting member and when you well see when you make it exeicio I think also then you don't have that quorum problem right well no it creates a different room but
yes well like from you to select board phantom which is MFC is environmental ESC should probably have what about are there any key stakeholders from the fire station project that might have relevant mean police station from police station
that might have relevant perspective on municipal construction at least from a broad perspective like Sarah Spinny is she I'd like I'd like uh someone finance because I think we want
to look at some of these long-term costs and think about the right way of framing that. Yeah, definitely want. But you're trying to do just five, right? Yeah. Yeah. Two selective income MFC and ES. So if they're two select board, you being one
of one and then one. Yeah, maybe not two though. Finom or MFC or one of each. You're at four. Uh and ESC, you got to be Oh, the sustainability committee for the equipment. No, I don't think you need
ESC for that. No. Okay. I don't think we need it for this particular focus. Okay. The building committee maybe. Building committee. Is there any staff that should be on this? Like is you like is it what building? What is the building committee? What do you mean when you say building committee? You'll eventually
have a building committee. Oh, for the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Is there anyone in within town hall staff? Of course. That would be would weigh in early and there's no Okay. We defin should definitely invite them to come on. And
then what about this idea of finding an independent expert? Do those exist, do we think? Oh, we've got an expert. We've got Tecton and we've got the our OPM. They're the ones that can they have expertise in this area, I
think. And if they don't, they may, you know, to John Lavy's point, they duck, but if they, you know, but we're going to want one of them on this working group. Well, but they're not going to vote, but they can. Yeah. show up and and participate. You ask them questions.
They gather information. You need them. Yeah. They definitely need to be involved. Yeah. I'm just talking about who like votes, who who who makes the decision to put the recommendation to this. I care less about who votes than who's doing the actual like work. I agree. Do you know what I mean? Okay.
Like in the in the actual discussions when someone's saying, "No, we need this and it's critical that we d" and then someone say, "Well, I hear what you're saying, but you know what I mean?" Like there needs to be the back and forth. The back and forth. When you get down though to
this group being ready to say, "All right, well, here's here's what we're going to ask." Yeah. We're going to give to Tecton equipment list. Yeah. Right. Or whatever. If there's some, you know, choices still, right? You may have to take a vote. Yes. Absolutely. Question.
Is there a state office that you could ask? Isn't there an office of fire safety or something? Yeah, maybe. Sure. State. Um I don't know. I just Well, I think But you don't put them on the committee, but you can invite them in. Five voting members. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're and then we'll
bring in all the people. Yeah. You can have as many non- voting people that participate. Select board. So, maybe the fire chief isn't a voting member, but he's there for the discussions on he's an adviser, a technical adviser to the process, right? Obviously. Yeah. And maybe the other expert, if we have a
someone from Tecton, they're not a voting member because Okay. So, two select board fincom ESC and MFC. That's five. I don't know if I need ESC. It's probably good to keep at the table. We made a commitment to include them,
right? Okay. Okay. That that gives you I just don't want the scope. I'm just Yeah. I don't want this isn't about like this is more about the the equipment and that Tecton's gonna because Tecton's going to design
with the ESC in mind, right? These are like the ingredient I don't know there might be overlap in terms of the technical equipment and ESC. All right. Well, we'll discuss on I'll prepare something we'll discuss on Sunday and I'll include like Yeah. And
if you if you're able to get it out to us, you know, the day before Saturday, people could think about it. Okay. Yeah. I'll get something else. Okay. Exactly what we needed. So, this is good. Okay. Get us on track. I I'm into the
manager TA report here. Unless you have something else. Capital useful life vote. Yes. Right. 20 years. It's got to be 20 years when we get to that point. Just prompting you. I
move 20 years. Second. Second. All those in favor? All right. It was made a motion by Scott and seconded by Kate. Any further discussion? We know the issue. It was incorrect. It can't be 25. Minimum is 20 or maximum is 20. We
debate. All in favor? I. Okay. All right. Um, back on track. Here is my town administrator report for for May 13th. The town meeting town meeting videos and podcasts. With one week to go to town meeting, our collection, as you talked
about tonight, is is vast. A lot of town officials are using the videos to get up to date on some of the information. Um, I've used them myself. So, so please use them. The more informed voters are, the more the discussion will be rich at town meeting and the town as usual will make
good decisions. Sylvia Willard's retirement party has been set. So, town officials, staff, and residents are welcome to join us May 29th at 4 p.m. for an informal gathering at uh Great Brook Farm, which is where she wanted to have this done. So, we reserve the
picnic table area and the barn area in case it rains. So, we're inviting you to celebrate more than 25 years of conservation efforts at one of the largest conservation areas in the region and perhaps have some ice cream. We hear it's
good. For our human resources update from our HR director, soon to be returned, Aubrey Thomas, we're pleased to present tonight Jeffrey Katowski, the recommended candidate for the COS director. So Jeffrey brings nearly two decades of experience at the C and most
recently at the Cambridge Council on Aging where he rose from a part-time pantry assistant to director of that senior center. Uh as you saw tonight, he is is very well spoken and thoughtful. He is going to bring a great energy to our team and to help the COS with the
with the next phase of their service delivery. Also, you'll be glad to know that Sylvia is joining us again right after I announce her retirement party. She's going to be working part-time as a conservation consultant. So, this will just be for a couple months, but it'll
be very important. So, she's going to provide guidance to the commission in the interim and then eventually the new conservation administrator. What we've asked her to do is put together a comprehensive document that will orient the new um the new conservation administrator and also help the the
consom with long-term decision-m and um this is something that the conservation commission really wanted was that that transition of knowledge. So we're happy to bring Sylvia in. Um everybody knows how much she knows about the town and history. So we're looking
forward to that document. Also, 17 of our staff members from across town participated in a um five-part super supervisory training series with the UMass. Uh we did a couple sessions here in town hall several hours long. The um the staff is
focusing on both succession planning planning and management and we had a lot of our our midlevel and mid-career employees go to this management training to help bolster their skills. This was grant-f funded and um we're happy to offer this opportunity and we will be doing more of this in the
future. Terms of the FY26 budget, the the most interesting item since your last meeting was the Senate Ways and Means Committee published their budget recommendations. This included $150 per student for minimum aid communities like Carlile. So this brings up our state to aid total more than
$45,000 which would lower the projected FY26 budget impact from 3.46 46 to 3.31. The reason why we're not including this in the budget presentation material is this is not a final budget. It is just a recommendation from one of the legislative branches. We will not see a state budget until well past town
meeting. So, we're using the conservative number which is the governor's budget. Something important uh that I presented to the finance committee and now presenting to you. The CCRSD school committee voted on April 10th to use $400,000 from their END fund to make a $200,000 OPED contribution and
then add $200,000 to their capital stabilization fund. So END funds operate like the town's free cash with the exception that the school committee can directly appropriate, meaning they can vote on their own to do this. If the town disagrees with their decision, you need to schedule a town meeting vote and
reject the appropriation. That has to be done within 45 days, which is pretty quick. Um, I didn't have any issue with this. I'm just bringing it to your attention as something that happens. But I did speak to Bob, who is the assistant superintendent of finance and operations, and talked to him about how
um if there's going to be transfers to stabilization funds, we we need to make sure that we understand the high school's capital planning and have that embedded in our capital planning because this will be another source of funding or reserves that we can use to help pay for capital. So, I'm calling that to your attention and the finance
committee's attention because we talk a lot about reserves. This is another pot of money that exists. So can I have to ask you for a clarification? The the by statute they can only carry an END of 5%. There's some percentage, right? It's fine. They go over they have
to do something with it. Yeah. And you're saying the school committee can do it on its own cognissance and not have to consult the towns about that. Is that true? They have to tell you and then you can act on it if you want through town meeting. Okay. So,
um I don't have the energy to challenge it at this late date, but that's not really great, right? I mean, they took 400,000, which is a huge amount of money, and they salted it away, and that's kind of like, you know, right, not giving the
towns who actually paid that money the chance to decide whether So, I don't know what to do with that. And I'm surprised in my years of being on school in region, I didn't wake up to that fact that they could just do it. But I don't like it. So I I don't we
can't break the agreement. But we got to talk to I mean I don't like it the way Conry sent you like a twoline email and he said in at least what you attached or Gretchen did, I attached my capital plan and there was nothing attached that I saw. So like this is
like not very courteous at the least. I I I would register stronger language to them to say, "Okay, you got it." But next time, we really would appreciate that you give us more
context of why you need what you need, right? Because that's just a lot of money. I mean, I understand way overfunded OPED and the OPE. Well, I know, but they but uh the 200k to the capital stabilization. Do they have a project that's on the horizon that we
should know about? Right. Because that how do we plan as you pointed out um it may be something we have to consult with our school committee to I mean we I don't want I don't want this to be misconstrued but the
representatives on our school committee that go to the region are a little light on that regional experience and I can tell you from personal experience region is a tough assignment and and there's five of the concordians and two of the
carillians and it's a very hard thing to challenge in that context as a carillian. You have to be tough and you have to have been there a while which has been a few people you can guess who they are but a lot of times not. So we may want to meet with
our own school committee and just get for the next time. I don't think this cart is, you know, horses out of the barn here, but it's not right. Like, it's not really right. And I think it should be, they should know that we don't that we would prefer a more
collaborative at least a little bit of outreach on that before they make that decision. The school committee's meeting tomorrow night if you want to talk to them. No, I don't. Well, and then in the next year's budget, I can see 200k in OPED they won't need to contribute and another Yeah. Yeah, you know, they have that extra money in their capitaliz
capital stabilization fund. So, I wouldn't mind because they were putting like 750k in their oped fund every year. The problem is we don't have Yeah, we mean we have no leverage in the budget, but we have a lot of leverage in the cap budget. So, anyway, I think it's enough for this late hour, but
I've talked to Bob a lot. I think he's extremely smart and and the people there are extremely smart. He he does see he's newer, right? He's able to look at things. He does see a lot of capital on the horizon. I just think we need to download his thoughts into a capital plan. That may be fair. So maybe we should invite them this summer to
present that plan equipment. They need soft tobacco. Maybe they can buy some back. The soft levers here are talking to conquer about OPED savings and how that impacts operating costs and and enforcing capital planning and then also understanding how we're we are also
backing up the regional district's budget with our with our reserve fund and they are as well. So they're maxing out their reserves. They now the towns or the schools. We calculate our 12% including their funds and they have 5% in reserve END. So right just talking
about that in in future finance. Fair I think fair. Okay thank you. Let's keep going. So moving on natural transition to climate leader recognition. Uh Sarah myself and Eric attended the Commonwealth announcement of the first communities to achieve this. So it was
pretty inspiring. There was 19 other communities. We went to Watertown and the lieutenant uh lieutenant governor praised the towns that were willing to make this commitment and they're showering us with a million dollars to help with our sustainability goals. So,
um what this says is the hard work that the select board put into this and it was a difficult process to get here working with Eric and Sarah really paid off. Uh the town has made many commitments and only 19 communities have made that. So, I think the town should be proud of that effort. Yeah, you heard a lot tonight about your community
choice aggregation report. I won't go over it again in detail, but I do encourage residents to understand this process. We also provide um a report to you and that's to keep you informed about the CCA. So, it's not a new discussion every time it comes up. If it does come up every two years, there'd be
changes in board leadership and everything. So, this is part of your report for that reason. You'll see from Sarah's report that overall enrollment experienced a slight decline, but it's pretty much right where we expect it to be. Um and that as you heard tonight, fluctuations in the energy market continue to make um projections
difficult. It's it seems like three months ago, but the uh the Carile 250th just want to thank Scott Evans, Rich Sibly, and their army of volunteers for their efforts. Great great absolutely. Also, the town
staff was heavily involved. Police, fire, DVW, and the COS for their efforts, which allowed Carlile residents to attend the historic event for free. the um I was there with my children sitting on the buses. Um more than 500 people and I think that's a low estimate
including as many of you uh marched to the north bridge and then um there was many thousands of people at the north bridge to include what we think is 1500 Carillians that attended the event and used the buses. 1500 really? No, we saw
a lot of them. bus walking up the buses were full and that's what Rich estimated. We didn't all walk. No, but they took the bus. It was good. So, I can tell the event we're not went well because I heard some people saying that, you know, maybe we didn't need what we needed, right? And it was two and that
usually means that's a good that's a good day. Um, they had so many portaotties in conquered it was unbelievable. I know. And we had one at the uh the trail head and there was like 600 people lined up for us. Like I was panicking because of my son. So um
anyway, you guys camped out here the night before, right? We did. Yeah, we camped out. We watched 30 um kid versions of the Battle of Lexit and Conquer. So my kids knew everything about it. I would also like to say that the um our senator, Michael Barrett, did put in an amendment for us to receive
funding. Um we do have a $30,000 earmark in one of the um supplemental budget requests, and it looks like we might actually get that. So really if you want to email your state senator then uh maybe we can push that through and that would help our budget for FY25 and our
free cash for FY26. The 2024 annual report is now out. There are some diehard people who are waiting for this report and this year's includes some color pictures from our students. Uh we printed less but had more quality and the goal is to try and make this an award-winning report rather than just
something that sits on my shelf. We're not there yet, but we're getting there thanks to the hard work of Gretch and Galammore who put this together. If anyone has ever done the gather things from many people, that's like this on steroids to get this from all the committees and boards. So, um, Gretchen
did a great job with that. Yeah. Some quick capital project updates. Our covert analysis has been pushed off a lot because of um town meeting focus, but you'll be receiving that report in June. And some of our efforts to address that $3 million price tag that's going to come with these uh covert requests.
You heard tonight about the elevator maintenance project. It came in under bid, which is something we don't get to say a lot, so I'm going to say it again that it came in under bid. And um we now have a number for town meeting for this important project. The brick building HVAC project continues. the MFC is
working through that. We have all the funding we need and now we're just going to go out to bid and then uh the town hall bathroom renovation. We've had a lot of project uh problems getting this contracted. It may need to go back out to bid and we'll have more out uh updates for this.
Luckily, it's not an urgent item. It's an item that we want to get done so there's no operational impact. building construction projects. The I encourage you to check in on your library building committee and your library trustees as they're moving forward pretty quickly
with CMS and Swords Silver through their design process. Uh the MFC is also collaborating with them to talk about the mechanical room expansion and coordinating the the elevator repair. So, it's a very complex um issue that's going to come at you very fast. So, whatever you need for information about
the library renovation, please ask. And the heating coils too, no? Yes, the coils too will eventually be incorporated. So, it's a multifaceted problem in a good way. The police station renovation. Um, we're just looking for the town to support this project and we can hopefully get some
shovels in the ground uh in June. Yeah. Wow. And for this one, I do think we should get one of those ceremonial like shiny shovels. Yeah. And have a ribbon. Yeah. Like we need to do it right. I don't normally recommend that, but this one deserves there'll be a lot of use for it in the future years if we sadly
encourage sadly residents to follow along in the fire station renovation project and I know the board doesn't want to talk about that more tonight. Uh the DPW building is coming to you again in June with that covert analysis. Some important things for you to focus on post town meeting are going to be
personnel policy um changes. This is going to be a lot and there's it's going to be uh many adjustments that require a lot of conversation. So, the more invested you are in this, the easier it'll be. Also, we've invited the MCS, which is Middle Sex County Retirement System to come talk to you about why
your costs are going to be bananas for the next 10 years. Um, I think you should talk to them and understand their perspective to help inform those budget conversations because that 26% increase we're facing is is going to come up every couple years. And so I think you should talk to them about it even if it's
briefly. And then um we will be coming to you with a supplemental road maintenance plan. This comes from the additional investment we hope is approved at town meeting and then some of your conversations last year about parody roads, culvert repairs, and other important topics. I have a slew of um
approvals that are within your your policies, but we'd like to let you know that they're happening for town signs and town common usages. And I would like to end with some good staff recognition. So, um, I attended the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protections drinking water program, which is one of
those ones that's not well named, but it is well attended. There was more than 100 people celebrating the um public water delivery in Massachusetts, and Carile Public Schools was one of them. We had one of the highest scores for non-trans, non- community system category, which is fancy for students
are there sometimes and they're not. And we have very good water that's maintained by our um our facilities department. So Steven accepted the award and we put a picture up of him. That's a big improvement. Yeah. Yeah. The Actton Fire Department recognized your fire department for providing personnel and
apparatus in response to a large mulch and brush fire in North Actton on Easter Sunday, April 20th, 2025. So our volunteers responded on Easter day to help a neighboring town, which is great. The fire chief in Actton described the incident as particularly challenging because of the terrain, the gusty winds, if you remember that on Easter day, and
significant um the significant distance to reliable water source, which is where Carile made its money because we are good at that. Uh I would also like to recognize Gretchen not only for the annual report, but for her professional development uh
focus. So despite her workload and all the things you know she does, she completed a rigorous course on performance management as part of the 2025 virtual municipal leadership academy. She's also um working on a HR certificate for um as part of the state
program so she can expand that skill set. So she is definitely helping us and we are definitely not going to be able to keep her for very long. So just want to make sure everybody knows how great she is and that we want her to stay. And lastly, uh Sarah Washman, also for her dedication, you saw her present tonight.
She recently completed a storm water certificate program through the University of New Hampshire. This is a multi-workshop program that provides an in-depth understanding of how infrastructure design and maintenance impact watershed health. So, we'll be putting her to work here as we discuss things like covert and water management,
especially with our hydraology, with our uh MVP planning process. And then there's a couple draft agendas in there for you. in addition to the CCA report and other items as referenced in the report. Unless there's any questions, that's all
I have for you tonight. Um, are we meeting on the 27th? I don't believe we are because I'm not going to be available and I think you're not I'm out of I mean I joined via Zoom but I'm not Yeah, I'm going to be my
grandson's graduation but I'm free that evening but um oh 10 elections and you're not available Kate and we don't have a new member at that point until after the election till after the election. So we won't have a
quorum. So we will not be meeting on the 27th. Now I say that in thinking about our fire station committee and do we need to keep the momentum? Is there a reason to have some interim? Let's talk about it on Sunday. Okay. See
where we're at. Okay. Right. Because a charter. You have to have a public meeting to approve the charter and Right. So your next available regular meeting would be the 10th of June. Yeah. Which is a long time. Normally you would have a meeting on Yeah. That's the
problem with the getting the committee. Well, do we need a meeting to get with the committee or if you vote the charge? You just tap them or I guess if we approve the charter on Sunday. Sunday. But how do we get the committee? If you approve it and there's no two week,
well, you would just appoint the committee on the 10th. That's still late, isn't it? Well, they could meet on the 11th. And should we look for an alternative date sooner? You can't do the 3rd because the
election. How about the 20th? And and just a special and just a special meeting for this purpose. Or we could have a morning meeting. We just do a hard just like a hybrid morning type. Yeah. Thing. If you meet in the morning, I can It's also Yeah. Yeah. The week of
the next week. You're talking about late at night. Let's just Let's just bang this out. If you start it at 7:00, it's 1:00 in the morning for me. So, but if you start at 7 in the morning, it's one in the afternoon. But we're talking about it next week, aren't you? You're next week. But then you've officially
resigned though as of Sunday, right? Yeah. I really I guess I am because I did say it was as of the That's right. to the meeting. That's okay. Could we Yeah. So, what's a You're thinking a morning, Travis? Yeah, I was thinking even Wednesday the 21st or
Tuesday the 20th or um and just a a brief period. David, does 8:30 work for you or you prefer nine or morning? Which when Wednesday? Tuesday or Wednesday? Next week. Next week. Yeah. And what are we going to do in the
meeting? Brief meeting. Brief meeting to just appoint your uh fire department. Yeah. Potentially finalize the charter if we haven't done that at the prior meeting and then appoint the fire committee. I anticipate less than a half hour. I'd like to actually have it 15
minutes. This is on the 20th or 21st. Yep. And does our TA have any conflicts? I'm okay with any 20th. Whatever time or 21st either is fine. Do you have a preference? Anyone have a preference? No, I'm fine.
I mean, I guess preference is Wednesday over Tuesday, but I don't care. Then we'll do Wednesday. Is it at night? No, in the morning. Anyway, morning. 8:30. I'm here. 8:30 a.m. 8:30 Wednesday morning, the 21st. We need to post it.
Yeah. Ryan, and it'll be it'll be a Zoom meeting and we don't have to do it in person. Okay. Since we're not Can I ask a question about uh I know the the Carile Pride Festival is coming up. Yeah. Um last year we had that unfortunate incident
where there was the theft of uh the flags. Is there is there anything um are they planning anything similar in terms of flags or anything that as a town we can proactively um take precautions against in terms of
something like that happening again? Not something I thought of, but but we can do that. We are It is not pride flags, but there are no longer flags allowed inside the Rotary. So, that will alleviate some of the Okay. angst. But if there Yeah, if there is anything,
obviously we can do as a community proactively to prevent something like that happening again, that would be great. Normally, if there's protest, they let us know ahead of time. So, um, and they communicate it to They stole the flags. let you know.
Jeez. Right. Okay. That's a good question, Scott. All right. Um, to follow up on I I had to Google that because I'm like, that was a year ago. All right. We have to sign some cemetery deeds here. So, could I jump
ahead and then we have to approve some warrants and minutes? Yeah. Anybody want to make cemetery deeds, right? Cemetery deeds. That's fine. You can do that first and we'll do some minutes. Oh, here. I got them. You got them.
Okay. Yeah. It's just downloading. Okay. Move to transfer land in the public burial ground at the Green Cemetery described. Deed 840, lot D 333, graves one and two to Paul Killian,
formerly of 436 Westford Street. Deed 841, dot lot D 151. Grave one to Hamilton and Carol Bailey at 420 School Street. Deed 842, lot D 410. Graves three and four to Gail Bernardan at 336
Bingham Road. Bernardan, sorry, Bernardan. Sorry. Um, deed 843, lot D410, Graves 1 and two to Kathleen Flli at 662 West Street. Deed 844, lot D 391,
graves two and three to Frank and Zahava Seavoi at 6 Fern Lane. Deed 845, lot D 392, grave 4 to Gail Constable at 75 L Road. And deed 846, lot D 391, grave 1
to Mary Win Davis at 469 East Street. And may they all live long and prosper. Second. I got that. All right. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor? I. None opposed. I do need
you guys to sign these. They're be passed down here. Okay. Going. You have a pen. All right. Next, we have We need the minutes, right? We need the minutes, please. Someone needs I want to I want to make sure we don't
was I'll give them all these. I move approval of the select board minutes. Do you want them all at on of uh April 1st, 2025 and April 8th, 2025 and April 15, 2025.
Second subject to an amendment. I want to add in the Flanneries letters into the this um of the minutes. Is it actually might have been subsequent? They weren't the past minutes, but they weren't into this one. They weren't in this comment. Oh,
is that right? I don't think so. Cuz there's another meeting. It was the last meeting, right? Not this, not one of the ones. You're right. All right. But I I want to make sure that that gets fix that perpetual care fun get some get the article passed. Okay. Any uh further
business? I make a comment. We haven't passed them yet. I want to compliment uh Gretchen. It was a lot of work, very long, detailed minutes. And I also want to say that I appreciated particularly Ryan uh TA Mlan quipped
that. You know, didn't you like that? I thought that must No, I thought that was I read that. Sure. Um Okay. Um, I see there's this is the last segment of public comment. I think
Eric, you had wanted to make a comment but didn't before. So, please go ahead. Is that it? Just three now. Oh, his hand is up. Yeah. No. Oh, yes. Uh, thank you. Um, what I wanted to stress and I wrote a a quick chat message, but I thought it was important to stress that um the
requirements document is all important from my experience in capital projects. And you know, from the sound of the discussion, I couldn't actually even tell if one really existed in the con in the form that I normally would think of it. Um, but that's where something like your equipment list that's discussed a
lot comes comes in. Uh, but that's only really part of it. And I would really really stress the importance of it where, you know, the select board understands what's in it. The fire chief, you know, obviously has an important component to it. going out into um you know other experts
to add to what the fire chief thinks and and how you go about it I think is is an important idea but it's got to it's all got to be in that requirements document and that's what the OPM and the designers work towards. Uh that is the what the town says it absolutely needs and lots of different ways you can get
it to it but I want to stress that's got to be that's foundational. That's really all I want to say. Okay. Thank you Eric. Thank you. All right. Any further comments from the public? Questions? I want to thank everyone for
staying so late. Just do a quick shout out. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out. I just wanted to um do a quick shout out to the CC theater who presented Shrek the Musical last week. I don't know if anybody went. We were there on opening night, which is always exciting. Um, and
I think at a time where there's a lot of sorrow in the community, having a show like that that filled the theater with laughter, dancing, cheering, all that was was very much well needed. And I also wanted to just compliment. Um, not
to brag, but Carile's uh over representation in the production. Shrek, Donkey, Lord Farquad, Gingi, Dragon, and other roles were our Carile students. and they all did a fantastic job. Is
what really gets them going. Yeah. And so I think, you know, as a community, we should be proud of of these students for all their hard work, talents, cooperation, all the things you want to see in in in young folks. Um, and just congratulations to them and to all the
folks at Carile Public with the with the plays and the production. So, great job all around and uh we should all be proud. Yes. Thank you. All right. With that, I'll take a motion to adjurnn. So move. Move. All right. All in favor? I. All right.
We're done. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Wow. K.