##VIDEO ID:bOwfos-V_fE## there it is all right I'd like to uh call to order the select board meeting for November 12th 2024 um I'm going to quickly go through the agenda just so everyone knows um our timing um we'll start with Community input if there's anything that uh people in the community or online want to discuss um we limit that to 2 minutes per individual um then we'll have appointments and then we're going to move on at 7: tend to uh the uh announcement about the conservation restriction or Recreation acquisition of land um and then 7:15 the Council on Aging and Human Services uh we're going to discuss the future planning um and at then moving on to 8:15 so that's an hour for that discussion um incidentally during that discussion anyone from the cohs however you wanted to participate you can mult you know have it's not just one person but anyone who wants to way in we'll look for comments um I don't know but we'll open our meeting and then you guys can open yours um if you wanted to post your meeting um and then we move on to uh the road maintenance uh no I'm sorry then the the town meeting study committee presentation the road maintenance draft plan then administrator report warrants and minutes Cemetery deed transfer requests liaison reports and finally Community input um so I'll start by uh calling the meeting to order and showing and noting that there is a quorum and all members are in attendance in person um and we will start then with Community input is there anyone who'd like to speak um on an issue either related preferably related to something tonight but it's open to any issue all right seeing none in the room is there anyone online who wanted to make a comment or speak to something all right seeing none um we'll move on to appointments um it looks like in our packet we had uh a new appointment here I can make the motion if you want sure okay I move to appoint Steven Monro to the position of facilities technician for the facilities Department effective November 13th second okay Ryan is there some background you want to provide us we saw the in the packet is me yeah there is so you'll see Steven Monroe who were putting before you for appointment is well qualified not only in U building and Facilities maintenance but also what we would consider DPW skills so truck driving and you might might recognize his name he he was once a candidate for a DPW um driver and labor or heavy heavy equipment operator but in looking at the resume and talking with Steve we found he'd be a better fit for our open facilities technician position so you'll recognize this position as Steve Bast old position he served in that role and served in that role well for a long time this position would assist stepen and Al and the custodian team on the town side have some overlap and work on the school side as well and we will in conversation with Steve be taking advantage of the DPW skills in terms of plowing so a very very versatile um employee who is very interested in coming to work with us it was a good Recruitment and we're excited to have him start pending this appointment next week and besides his name is Steve I mean we needed Steves Jims are there any comments questions from the board looks great okay seeing none um I'll just take a Voice vote all in favor I None opposed all right moving on um it is before 710 is this a public announcement do we need to wait till 710 to we can just start okay so moving on to the uh next item agenda which was the announcement and 120 waiver pursuant to section 301 CMR 517 who all right um actually it' be helpful to get a little to remind us give us a little background and maybe for the public as well so this position uh this comes to us from the state I talked to Town Council about this this is a procedural matter we we really don't have the ability to deny it we can we can make it wait the 120 days and it just needs to be announced publicly so this is the public announcement for for this action from the state and you can decide to keep that 120 days or wave it uh Town Council said there's no consequence either way so normally people wave it but not taking away that right from the board and this is regarding the 23 Acres that's off of East Street right connects to the current Great Brook I actually thought it was already theirs um but um who who owns it if it if they're that that I don't know we don't know it's all wet anyway so it's no use Town land is it ENT M what is it no I thought it was private ownership and someone is is donating it oh they're donating it probably is the Davis then okay I got you okay is that off Ice Pond is that the little off ice before that's it's right contiguous to this is Davis house yeah okay you know Wendy Davis me all right great okay so this would be I think a certainly a benefit for the town as far as the state taking this and then and um is that just a crudely drawn map it is it will be all contiguous with the great yes and it is fabulous yes and it's part of the whole toet swamp and and there's the possibility that because of it enlarges the state park does isn't there possible more revenue from the state yeah minor but yes it all counts just every little dollar counts right 50 all right in L A pilot right yes pilot but we get a pretty low pilot for the entire all right does anyone want to make a motion we don't have to motion Ann to well we make the move to wave the 120 that one's a motion yeah you want me to that go ahead I move pursuant or do we have to read the announcement first I don't know do we have to read the announcement sure want me to sure the Commonwealth of Massachusetts acting through his Department of Conservation and Recreation DCR has under consideration the acquisition of an interest in approximately 23 acres of land or other property interest therein in the town of Carlile the property is currently open space used for Passive Recreation the proposed use for the property will be adding open space acreage to the adjacent Great Brook Farm State Park a locust map marked exhibit a which shows the property in which DCR is interested appears in the meeting packet great I move pursuant to 301 C Mr R 51.7 1B to wave the 120-day notice period as required by said section as to a parcel of land of approximately 23 acres in the town of carile shown on exhibit a attached here to in which the department of conservation and Recreation is considering acquiring an interest second great thank you is there any further discussion or questions by the board okay okay seeing none um a Voice vote all in favor I and none opposed okay and then it looks like there's something but at at the me after the meeting do we have something to sign I have to fill the okay all right um it is before 7:15 I really should wait for this one in case people want to come on if in case people want to come online all right well if there's something we can do CER Deeds we could do the cemetery Deeds that's a good idea all right page 117 if anybody does it I move to transfer land in the public burial ground at the Green Cemetery described as follows lot D 331 Graves 1 and two to George paradisis uh 24 mil Co Road M Mel C Co Cove Road Lot D 395 grae 2 to Roger Burgess at 423 Autumn Lane and I move also to to correct an administrative error of deed 710 issue 1215 2017 owned by chin Lee of carile mass correct the lot number to lot d236 erroneously recorded as lot d239 upside down six second okay uh any questions on these the one question Ryan is are they they're always checked for residency requirements correct okay all right um all in favor I I and none opposed okay we do the minutes too let's do the minutes I saw that Kate had made some I did Spelling well Carle Carle wasn't correctly [Laughter] spelled good it was spelled Carlile yes it was and so I move approval of the minutes of October 22nd and uh those of October 24th as presented with the amended packet in the amended packet yep second okay any other comments on them yeah I have a comment on the second one um I got to find it now um so there was in the budget section M uh it said it said something about excluded so-called prop two and a half but isn't two and a half is not excluded that right I'm sorry refence I know what you mean um do you have a page on that we'll find it a sec it's it's in the second meeting on the subject of directions for the finance committee yeah that one right uh here it is uh 1 two 3 4 sixth paragraph the board discussed the limited leverage they have considering the fixed cost increases the the board concurred they do not want to lower the town's Bond rating or greatly reduce Levy capacity they further concurred that they want to avoid an operational override this is not debt exclusion otherwise known as prop 2 and a half prop two and a half is the isn't that the two and a half% that's not anything to do with debt exclusion is it it is so there's three ways to override prop two and a half you can do an operational override which is permanent Levy increase you can do an increase or an override to increase for debt purposes only or for an outlay of a single purchase so excluded debt is an operational override is not an operation that is not otherwise known as I I think there'd be a more elegant way to say that or I would strike that reference just strike just say this is not a debt exclusion just not a debt exclusion I mean it's nothing really we didn't really say anything it's just I would I would remove the entire thing in paren we just want to avoid an operational override we don't want an override right that was what we were saying I wouldn't get tangled up in the Weeds about props and you want to just move to amend that sure I move to strike the second half of the sentence in the sixth paragraph under directions for the finance committee in the minutes of fifth paragraph fifth paragraph of 1024 1024 to read to end with the phrase they further concurred they want to avoid an operational override period period second okay any other discussion on that you find it everyone fine okay all in favor I I None opposed and uh that was the amendment of that but we'll vote to accept the minutes as amended as amended yes all right all in favor I okay none opposed all right so we have three minutes three minutes we'll get started you get started sorry key member came in um so why don't we get started um with the Council on Aging Human Services um we're going to discuss the future planning and I think we have the board here if they want to open their meeting if you have a quorum or if you don't have a quorum and don't need to that's fine but whatever is I didn't post meeting then don't deliberate you can't deliberate don't deliberate okay okay well if you want to you know it's helpful to come forward but you can also just to somewhat hear I think for the people on zoom and potentially see a little bit better if a couple of you want to come forward but as I said if you wanted to all participate you're welcome to do it any way you want to do it so next John's next John's next I look at the um PowerPoint up so I'd to ask you to each you know please introduce yourself before you speak just so that we know who we're talking with and your address is helpful too okay so my name is Tony McBride and I live at 76 Fant Hill Lane perfect I'm John Valentine I live 268 Fisk Street Carol's gonna talk soon also okay Carol do I me to introduce myself now sure sure oh sure and Carol and director the car Cil and agent perfect just yeah there we go all right welcome okay well thank you thank you for having us here um we're really glad to be here and to have this conversation it's an important one for us um there's a little Echo yeah a ding ding a ding yeah talking too loud no so I I thought I mean I know that we're here for a conversation about cohs and about maybe Community Center but I thought what how we would probably start is by talking a little bit about cahs its services what we offer now um then how we anticipate that those Services might change as the senior population changes and um then we go into what our thoughts are for a community center and start that conversation super okay so if we go to the next slide sequence that's do you have one that says Co has Services currently provided so this is what Jerry gave me for updated one you can go to the one in the packet okay maybe that maybe the second one with the services provided the last one didn't get in there but that's okay so I can just read it from mine um and also you all got this pretty much in the packet we all have it that I sent out yesterday we can pull up the one that's in the packet it's okay so gu okay so that's it so these are just the general headings of the services that we offer and underneath each heading there is of course a plethora of services and um as I said you had the detailed one in the in the packet so I won't go over the details there but then if we go back to the population um Thea backwards go yep yep yep no oh there you go thank you um so the seniors in carine are the fastest growing um demographic and Nationwide people over 85 are the fastest growing demographic so we have this group of seniors and we've got the Baby Boomers who are flowing into this senior demographic and because the lifespan is increasing we've got those people who are flu in we've got them there for longer so our group is just getting bigger so as a consequence of that we figure we're going to need to accommodate more users and we're also going to have to start planning for a different set of needs because the needs of the 60 to 70 year old is very different from the need of the 80 to 90 year old so this brings into question a lot of well a lot of forward planning how do we plan for this um so Carol so from there I think we'll go to demographic to to John to talk a little bit more about the demographic so um Vernard Gilbert and I have been collecting this data for over 25 years and I've been using it also in a basic helping in the schools plan for what's happening but I think it's important to stick step back and look at where we were in 1980 where there are under 300 seniors over 60 and uh most of this was a the a younger families this is relatively inexpensive um place to come and live and raise your family and that's when you saw the huge increase in the school population which went over CPS went over 800 and so you see that big jump in the line into 2000 and then what happened is guess what the younger families got older and so you have a huge drop and the reason I use the the um the uh 25 to 40 year old group is that is largely the CH their first childbearing group and so that and obviously they're older um parents here too but you look at what's happening in ter of the childbearing group and so what happened is that Carell became a sec the not the first home that you moved into but your second home so that basically as you know it became more expensive and it was no longer the bargain that it was in the 1980s and so we had a real change in the demographics and over that time and as you look at it the senior population grew so that now we're 1,800 so that's what's kind of you know so suddenly becoming being a semi- rural Town to what I would call a rural suburban town or whatever we want to call it and an expensive one which we didn't used to be and so that's sort a pretty dramatic and as you see if you had contested elections suddenly the senior popular potion is 33% and not 7% so this is a very different sort of makeup and then projecting out and these projections are based on the the work that UMass does off of census and sort of the breakdown in census Pro projecting out 10 15 years you're going to see a town going from 5,500 approximately to 6,500 and the school population just going up a little bit and as you know I've sort of sort of talked about how that could be going up over 700 and the car schools have to look at that and the senior basically staying at a you know at its 30% gradually as a baby boomers age and leave it's going to decline but that's kind of we we've have a changing mix and that's really kind of fascinating is that how do we serve all the people in town and I think that's the challenge you have there and of course as you see our median income has jumped enormously over this time now this means now we used to be at a town where it was dominated by you know um to no long we now have families where we're two family incomes basically to support the sort of high housing cost so there's a whole changing demographic than what it is now and we've done really good job as you all know managing our taxes and it's been really hard and even with the two School building projects after the school building projects which we knew was going to be a big jump in taxes we've held Ste basically steady in terms of real income and in and and and whatever so so this is the town that we're looking at now and and so the question is how do we plan for the future over these next 10 or 15 years because any Capital project is a at least a 20-year project and I know you guys are all sort of looking at today's budget and what do we do that and and and Ryan's been trying to move us along to thing out five years and how do we do the the police and fire I do remind the police when I came here were in a trailer so this is this is a very changed town and so it's kind of that stepping back is how do we meet all these needs and and in terms of income and in terms of taxes yeah we could afford it but there are obviously pressures and I think we're all very aware of those pressures and try to keep manage that and that's really the sort of issue I think we've got but to me as a numbers person I just look at these demographics say wow that's pretty amazing change and then how do we think out going forward I think the the challenge we have is that you know when and how is this increase in population going to happen and you know we know we have the npta we have other sort of zoning things and so there will be some increase but we don't know how and when because it's pretty expensive so it may be not until 2035 240 that we hit this 6500 number but that's kind of at least what we're thinking about and I think that's a very good backdrop to think about you know our whole population how do we meet all of their needs and obviously the 33% are 18800 people that are over 60 so would you mind if we ask questions oh absolutely please do anyone have any any questions so far on this or anything else I I guess one question John thank you for all this is your theory that we will grow to 6500 is based on based on the number of buildable lots that we identified in the master plan which is about 300 300 350 and the MBTA which is of course going to be a change in zoning so essentially you've got possibility of you know three to 500 units coming on in over a period of time 95 no total exist the existing lots and the NBT oh exist okay so you're looking at the total you know sort of the buildout with our current zoning now then the question becomes what's the size of the family and who moves in and so what we've been seeing at least looking at the demographics is generally people move into town and and will be you know average size three maybe four they have one child you know and again that's the big thing we don't know if it's going to be a one child or two child family but that's the that's the sort of big uncertainty I wondered on that if you have any you have over 60 and you started by saying that the needs are going to change because they're 60 and 70 but as you get to 80 90 your needs change and here they're lumped in as everybody over 60 but do you have any kind of data about if does it drop off if you hit 80 do did people leave town or are they starting yeah I do have that I didn't bring that whole full chart but yes they have partly we use overse 60 because that is what CS identifies as its Target group obviously from a need standpoint it's uh the you know over 65 or which used to be the retirement age which obviously we know is not um is is uh is a smaller group it's still 12 1300 so there's a large group in the 60 to 65 and then it's about a total of 1,200 in the over 65 if you look at it and and if I can recall you know then it just tails off and I've got those those breakdowns but I didn't but relative to the needs of that if you parse that out over a Time phase like you have here would that mix the big spike up in the 20 2020 is guys like us who flipped from the 40 somethings to Now 60 something a lot of that happened right right so they got a few more years before they get to that high KN correct correct but do you have a sense of like that mix like right now you said what it's about onethird sort of the younger seniors and two3 the older seniors do I get correct yes and in 10 15 20 years it's well I mean yeah you know it's a normal sign wave right yeah right so basically and Carlile is unusual is actually people stay here everybody thinks a lot of people move up to this point over the past 30 years people actually like carile they stay here and so there's this whole Aging in place part that we have you know which is a big issue and I don't think anybody's figured out how the Aging in place is going to work I think that's a that's a really critical issue that the cohs right now is looking at which is this Aging in place what exactly does that mean and people really want to stay in their houses and they can stay in their houses if the tax rate stays lower if it goes up they're going to have a real problem and have to leave so it's this balance and then we're developing programs to help people with services like fall cleanup and shoveling snow and doing the kind of Home Maintenance that you do up to a certain point and then you just can't and then you either have to move someplace else that's has less work and you know it's less taxing or there are services that kick in so that's part of what we're kind of playing with in this in this picture is what does happen to that really older demographic so maybe we could move to the service part of this then too I mean this is really helpful to understand the demographic and I have I have a worksheet with all the breakdown yeah I just saying part of this is also tied up with housing and housing types and um so what they do going forward when we talk about this we should not forget about the housing portion because I think it's critical to the yeah and you might have a CO a center with housing around it you know so you can have a very different sort of compound rather than you know if you so there are lots of things to think about through it could be exciting angeling me on that so yes this part here this chart with all these numbers kind of tells the story of the console on Aging where we are and where we're headed um 17 33 was what we measured at the beginning of the year for um the number of people over 60 in the community which is a third as was pointed out the state average I think is about 25% so we are certainly above average in Carlile and I think it's important to kind of just um think about for a minute um you know there's often a lot of um perjorative statements made about the old you know the graying of America and all that type of thing and um but there are a lot of ways that people over 60 are contributing to the community um first as was mentioned a lot of people grew up here or didn't grow up here but raised their families here their kids grew up here they've been here for a long time those people really know the community well they know the history well and they are really in woven into the community and support the community we do have a lot of people who have moved here recently many of them have children who are living you know raising their own families in carile so they are a big source of support for those people uh in addition it's very clear that people who are often in retirement or semi-retirement are volunteers in town and I'm sure you can see that on many of the boards committees Bo y all of the boards committees and volunteer things there's people over 60 are involved in the community they care about the community so that's a really important source and also there are an awful lot of people over 60 who work partime and they're often working in positions that are very valuable for the community so I'm thinking of a man who retired and now works as a substitute teacher at the school another work who works in the juvenile justice system in the area um and of course the senior tax workers who are doing admin who are doing the crossing guards working at the transfer station minimum wage competent people it's a really good deal for the town so um so there's a lot of you know strength in having a lot of seniors but of course it is also a very vulnerable time of life when people as they get older you know their help fails there's a lot of loss involved a lot of sort of mental health challenges because of that a lot of problems then with affordability with a stagnant income and trying to sort of make doe um clearly seniors need support and um that's what the council and aging is here for and and I do believe actually that Carl does a fantastic job supporting the um the seniors because they are paying for our salaries the town for the majority and we also have the friends of the Council on Aging and we have the conquer carel Community well was the community chess now it's the conquer carel Foundation um and they covered 19% of our programming cost this year so it's a really big number the two of them combined comb combined 19% um we couldn't do it without them so we we have a lot of support and you can see this when you're looking at the chart because look at how many people were serving 920 people now some of those are frequent flyer types who come every week to some of our events and who are there again and again but a lot of people do just check in with us maybe one or two times a year you know because they need shine counseling they need a piece of medical equipment their flu shot whatever it might be you know there's different things you can also see the total in events per month is 80 which is a really high number um we have a lot of different um services and events that people can come to there's a lot of interest there's a lot of different needs that people have and we try to cover them all and the last figure this year is the 5724 that's the um sort of the uses the number of times people have encountered us and if anything this number is under reported because sometimes when you're in the middle of helping somebody can't be in doing it in the computer you know we do our best to get everything in but um but we're really there for people because we're able to we have that support from the community and as the population increases as John was talking about um we intend to keep on doing that and um as you'll see on the next page we want to do that but we have a big big challenge fing here and that is we do not have dedicated space as everybody knows we have nine different locations that we're using which keeps us running and keeps us you know um Miriam especially who does a lot of the programming is always sort of checking out the schedule and thinking what will work here and what will work there but more importantly it's a challenge for the different older adults who are coming to our programming because they have to check where is this program going to be and figure out do they know where that location is and then exercise always meets here in the clock room except for Winner's elections sorry you came to the wrong location today you're going to have to go over to fs and that type of thing it's a challenge for people um we all do our best and we do a pretty good job but it's definitely a challenge and um one of the challenges is that we are having um it's really gets increasingly difficult to find a place to um hold a new class there are different things when people bring up ideas they would like to see this or that we try to find space for it and sometimes it's it's a big challenge to find the right size space at the right time and also it's a challenge for us to oversee them because if there if you have one location and there's a room here and a room here and you have two different activities going on you can pop your head in how are things going you know can we help you out um but when one is over in Village Court and we're here or down at Benfield or something it just it makes it really very difficult um finally not having the dedicated space um is a Lo in that it's much harder to create the sense of community we certainly do our best and a lot of our programming helps a lot you know people coming to a lunch they get to know each other it's fantastic but when you have a community center you have a space where somebody can just come by they don't need a reason to come first of all and even if they do have a reason they may be coming for coffee or meeting up with a friend they might bump into their neighbor who's doing the exercise program and it just helped build this connection with other people helps combat loneliness and just makes it so much easier for people who are older and who have experienced loss and and trying to do their best to deal with it so I think we can go to the next one next we have do I have question maybe it comes up later I I looked through this but I wasn't sure that I saw it um of of all the people that attend different programs do you have a sense of how many many drive themselves versus or or car pool with somebody in their own car and how much you the COA is providing transportation for the ones that are here in carile I would say certainly at least 90% come by themselves we we do provide transportation to people to events but really the main reason people want transportation is because they need to have a medical appointment or sometimes shopping we have a shopping trip but often people who people want to drive as long as they can that's what it comes down to and so if they can't drive often they really they're not able to go out so easily so we do we do transport some people but the vast majority of people are driving themselves okay um so this is our calendar for November um and it's colorcoded to show the different locations of things and you can see that there's many colors it's very bright we're all over the place and um I'd just like to emphasize again how important it is sometimes to have a dedicated space a place where people can know they can come because we have for example an excellent um what is it chair yoga class at Benfield and it's wonderful we tried to make you know advertise it and everything and many people do go however it is at Benfield apartment so some people don't know where Benfield Apartments is and they might ask us but they might not and if they do know where Benfield Apartments is they kind of Wonder is that class really really for everybody or is it kind of mostly for Benfield um people and I'll feel kind of out of place and if they do go they might also think you know it's kind of cold out today or it's raining and that door's locked and is it going to really be open you know is there going to be someone to let me in or not it Just creates barriers you know and that's one type of barrier there's also barriers or having one location can enable things in that if you have just one location people are familiar with it they feel at home there they can pop their head in and look though that's Cher yoga that looks like it could be something for me or I'm not sure I'm going to check it out again it just familiarity um makes it possible for people to be a little bit more adventurous in what they might try out and our aim is to get our services to the most people the people that really need them and we think that there are some people who are not accessing the services because of these barriers so um so yes we think the community center would be a really helpful thing for us I think it occurs to me that what you're saying when feeling that getting rid of barriers is creating a safe space and you do it for very young children and you do it you do it all the way along but it becs critical at certain stages um time a really big transition and creating a safe space for people where they feel like they have a community does allow them to access things like we tried to do a a Memory Care kind of um support group was it Cafe Cafe but it wasn't very well attended and and you kind of Wonder would it be better attended in a different space where there is more of this safe space there's a a space that they go to Every time that's within a sheltered space I think it just um it makes a difference um so I think we can go do more questions on that no so this my documentation review which was very meaningful to me because I'm a newbie in carile only been here 10 years and um so missed out on a lot of these conversations but when our board started we're looking at planning for the future and we know that we're going to need we know that we'd like more space right now and we know that we're going to need more space in the future and so we started this conversation again about a year ago and I learned this is you know not a new conversation it's gone around a number of times and there were people who referred to all these documents well that happened in the you know 2009 survey and this was in the 2019 proposal and so I so I got the so I accessed these documents and I read them and and it was very striking to me how much people wanted a community center that either had Recreation or education so as it says at least 50% of participants in all studies felt the need for a community center and and reading the health study it was one of things that said is that people really value they love living in car because they love their large two or more acre lots they love the feeling that their neighbor is you know it's there but kind of far away and the good part is that you get to feel like you have all the space around you but the negative that was identified is that unless you have children and you can connect with the school or unless you're really into volunteer work where you can connect in places like this there weren't a lot of opportunities to connect there wasn't a place to go so the things that they identified as things that they would want would be some would could be either a um some kind of a pub or a little restaurant or a cafe or a community center so those were all the things that you know kind of to me reasonably people want like they want just like we have a wonderful Center but we don't have a commercial center where there are places to go um I started using Clark farm and there was a great picture in the mosquito of a young mom with her toddler she'd been hanging out with some other people at Clark Farm it's gorgeous fall day and people use that a lot but once the weather gets cold there isn't a similar place to go you can go to the library but you can't eat you can't drink you can't give your kids snacks so it's a it's a different library is a great I spent a lot of time in that children's room um I love it the librarian great but it's not the same as being able to have a place where you can go hang out and drink a cup of coffee and talk to your friends and let your kids play so um so the end result of this was I thought this really is an old conversation and uh and the jury wasn't really out they had come you know to a conclusion that they really wanted a that we really wanted a community center so then I have a question so then it was written into the master plan so all throughout the master plan um and all the plans within the master plan Community Center has written into that so what is the responsibility I know that we got to the you know huge project creating the master plan and you've got these goals identified what then is the responsibility after that for doing those things like it talks about creating a community center over and over and over again but what is the consequence of being in the master plan is there some where people beholden to follow through and try to make these things happen well I I'll kind of answer that just if you're addressing it the um the master plan is a wonderful document and it it was provided to us by the town's people so it's you know and we look at it as the select board and maybe I can have everyone else weigh in it but it's an important document to let us know kind of what people want to see in the future and kind of a a pathway a road map to what is is possible in the future and to get there you know there were five different criteria in there and I thought that to me was one of the most important thing showing you know just because you may focus on financial or fiscal sustainability there are other components to our town caring Community being one of them which would fall under this and so you know it really I think is a more holistic view of you know our town and what's important to the residents now there were different you know things that people wanted and there were suggestions along the way what we've tried to do is have our goals work with that type of framework and we're going to evaluate that and I think most boards and other committees in town use that as some but what of a of a guide guide road map or a guidepost to kind of say that's where we're headed there's nothing though that can enforce there's nothing binding and and I think over time what happens is our our things change and not not necessarily I mean it's not essentially a constitution where you know we but it is in the sense that we can amend it and we kind of we we're trying to say these are things we'd like to see we're working towards that but other things come along the way that that change maybe what what is you know a priority at that point in time and I think it becomes more challenging the further you go out because more people move into carile who didn't participate in that and they may have different different viewpoints about what they want to see so that's if there's anyone else that wants to chime in on that yeah I mean I think like what Travis said right it it g it gave what I like about it is first of all it was a fairly broad survey a lot of participation so we got a good snapshot um it was preceded or was accompanied by these kitchen table conversations so there was a a lot of in-depth small group discussion and a lot of thought was put into the construct of it and themes and all that um it was not a priority list it was not a budget road map it was not prescriptive in you shall do this right it it was a broad-based thing so we have and we've encouraged other boards to adopt those M you know those guidelines in setting priorities and this is one of them but when we get to fire station versus Community Center or or you know things like that there's not guidance it wasn't designed for that guidance so it's not like it's law like you have to follow it because it wasn't prescriptive enough it's for us and collectively the community to you know establish the priorities this process that we're going right now is part of this prioritization and then we have to try to see you know how we can manage to but I want to get back to you and because we have limited time here so make sure we get through what you want to get through on okay um well so anyway we're looking for new space and we started focusing our attention on a community center rather than a senior center after reading this that that a lot of the population really wanted it and if there's going to be a big expenditure of money it probably is more likely that we can get that if we are meeting the needs of more people than just the cahs and with the stated goal of Des siloing people and departments and Boards it also seemed like a reasonable thing to create a building that could house different departments and and you know different people um from different boards and different programs Under One Roof and meet some of the some of the community's needs it's pretty clear how we would use it we would we would from our opinion we would like it um as to give us a dedicated space and have our offices and have a space that would be ours within this building um but I should even kind of back up and say first that if it's going to be a community center we're very cognizant of the fact that we're one component in the community who has a set of needs and that it would have to be a conversation among different stakeholders to Define how this would how this this would work but from our perspective a dedicated Co um office and program space um this is mixed up with other community use but the other big one was emergency shelter with a generator um because I know that that's a a goal um with our Hazard mitigation plan that we need someplace where people can go to stay cool and stay safe um and then this safe space we were talking about um living room for all residents but we could meet a lot of needs and I put it in the packet I sent out there could be um for the cultural committee there could be exhibit space Art Space performance space um we would like to eventually create a program kind of a day program probably with an outside vendor for people with memory problems I mean that's a huge huge help as people age and if there are couples who are aging and one of them has I've worked with one couple and one of them has memory issues and he does all the shopping and sometimes I go and I stay with her but if he could drop her off at a place she's social and very pleasant and then he could have his day I mean it's like you know alimer day out is is something that is just enormous for for people for caregivers um having an out an accessible outside space is very important I know it's come up with um Ada accessible space for children but also for adults if you if Carlile citizens have identified that they really love to live out here because of nature but as you get older it becomes more difficult to access the nature and to be able to have some kind of a special program outside where things are constructed where people can interact with nature and look at the bird feeders and walk on safe or assisted paths um um voting we might need more voting space and so they have larger space for voting but I could go on and on I think um as one of our board members said the the use has kind of Never End like you get creative about it and there's really really fun things that we could do with the community center I mean it would be a blast and you've got little cafe as part of it and people can come there and then they can go outside and it would be really fun and then the big obstacle is the money is where is this going to come from it it kind of runs smack into the police and fire and the um DPW and all the other things that you guys have on your list so we recognize that it's not something that you can just hand out many and say okay we're going to it sounds wonderful and a great plan let's make it happen um so I think we have to think really creatively of as a community about about how to get this done and we would like it to be a broader conversation than just the COA Jess we would like to find a way to bring it to the broader Community um there are some good things about a community center financially is that it really lends itself to self financing there are there could be grants available um fundraising definitely um Community preservation act funds maybe you know so um and then there's there's the Mosley land the 338 Bedford Road land that is deeded to be a community center or Recreation so already the land is there so that's a big chunk of money that's off the front um but we think it probably would have to be a longterm plan you know maybe it's a 10e plan in the making but rather than not not planning for it because the money isn't right here maybe it would be good to start planning for it now so that in 10 years we're able to have it um does anybody else have anything to say about Angela Angela and I had a a email conversation that was not a deliberation uh but essentially she was talking about it and it goes back to the old proposal that you have some housing up on Banta Davis and then you have a community center and that you start looking stepping back and looking out 10 years and saying oh gee you've got the the Kimble Farm across the way you've got the bant Davis you've got a community center suddenly you could start creating a whole other community that has other housing and I know at one point 30 years ago uh you know I I talked to the kimbles about creating a a more concentrated development with pita and so so I think thinking out and saying what is it going to look like in 10 years and you say oh wow we had more housing there maybe have the worker housing they have a community center and suddenly you say okay there 30 or 40 housing units in that area that start meeting a lot of people's needs and then start meeting the senior needs and things like that so I think you know it's very easy to get caught in here now and say okay let's kind of and and you know uh this is what the master plan was trying to do at one point is create other senses of what's GNA what things could look like um and if you go back uh to Benfield 70 years ago we decided not to run the pipeline through the center of town and have a bypass and so that therefore that we have a we have a community center so I think that's the ways to start thinking we've got to say okay what could be done with with our existing partial land and with other things and sort of and again what Angela was suggesting to me is how do we have more housing and a community center together so I think there are lots of creative things to do but that takes money and real thought and charettes and not just kind of us talking but that's so we can have the focus conversation for ourselves around Senior Center space how can we just do our space and it's complicated because there's not a lot of space out there that could fit our needs longterm um Can can you just go into that a little bit because I know that's later in your presentation maybe we're going to talk about but there's a whole section on the COA HS services so are your and it was a number of bullet points talking about financial support Food Service Transportation tell us about those services and the the growth that you see in that or not or what what you're offering because I think it's helpful because we're not as familiar with it not um just to understand are you more interested in the current what current or that would be to to know a little bit more so a lot of what I've talked about so far was like the um the sort of the programming the you know educational Wellness all that type of thing I didn't really talk so much about sort of the um Social Services I guess you could say more the supports um we have a lot of financial supports this year we had rental we have rental system ongoing we have property tax assistance this year we had used arpa funds before for heating assistance um we also help out with a lot of um coordinating assistance with other providers so be it the um the food pantry we have ties with them we you know help them organize their efforts to serve carile we coordinate with Community Teamwork and L for fuel assistance and also um help in general with um heating like the infrastructure of heating um which is huge I think one one of the surprises that came to me is I think I'm almost the newest member of the cahs is is the need that is out there I mean car is a very affluent town but there are these pockets of need um I've been working with a woman who doesn't turn her heat on all winter she lives in a DE house and part of it is underground she lives she uses the bottom floor of her deck house because it's warmer and she can heat it with a space heater but you can't afford the fuel I mean so yeah yeah it's true there's a lot of need like that and then a lot of other smaller needs with like the um Community closet or there's a lot of different places that we direct people to there's also Minuteman Senior Services they have the Area Agency on Aging and so we refer a lot of people who need even more supports they can get involved um we have several um nutrition programs from H delivered meals we have Meals on Wheels that anybody can get if they're Homebound and they want to get meals delivered we have a frozen meal program which is a little bit more catered and helps people who are on special diets we have then we coordinate with the gaining ground in the summer to deliver organic produce and then again the um the food pantry we we have the trans ation program which we have I don't have the statistics here I'm sorry let's say no I'm sorry this my I'm trying to remember because I just did the transportation report we do about say 80 rides or so a month you know a few 160 160 every month yeah it okay thanks that I think I'm probably thinking of the individual users um very important for a lot of people the people that can't drive and that happens to just about every everybody at some point um the social services we provide that would be um from small things to you know a lot of people are calling because they want to find out more about um what is Assisted Living where is it you know what's the difference between assisted living in a nursing home what's hospice all those kind of things a lot of people call us up for information about that type of thing um but we also have people that we visit on a regular basis because some people are at a point where they're just struggling and with a little bit of support and guidance they can manage on their own and they can stay connected with others and that's really big because otherwise some people would fall right through and they would end up in a nursing home and they would die pretty quickly you know and instead they have several years where they can stay at home and enjoy themselves um we have the arment group we have a caregiver group um I think it was interesting one of the things that we came as we were preparing for this meeting and looking at the number of users per year in 2019 I don't know what the numbers were it was here in 2020 it jumped for the entire that it was it was Co and that the cahs was the Human Services element of Carlile That was there for Citizens s of information yeah absolutely S one of the biggest challenges is the people that we don't reach for the isolation and anxiety and all that other stuff and loneliness is there as you know' been these articles so it's we're serving the people that are coming there but there's a whole group you know to David's Point how do we reach that group and that's a really important thing to find ways to you know do that and that's not simple that's a very complicated set of issues because want to stay isol so one thing that we've increased um I think like in the last year or so is health and wellness we have a lot more lectures on that we had somebody recently who was talking about um vascular Health we had someone who was talking about women's pelvic Health you know different things that that um people's CH have challenges with as they get older even when they're younger they do sometimes we had some younger seniors there so for sure um we have different um health and wellness services so we have haircuts here I don't know if you've ever seen those every six weeks or so we have Podiatry services that we coordinate with and we pay a certain percent um we would like to expand some of those type of services you know but that is tricky to have that without the dedicated space um another area where that we're expanding into this year is we're coordinating with the AARP to have um tax preparation free tax preparation and I think that's really important because I know several seniors who don't get it done because um they it's just too much of a challenge for them you know they could go to Bedford and get it done for free but that's too far and a lot of people are not aware of the circuit breaker tax credit and have not been getting it and that's like $25,000 that they could be getting in a refund and they're told by their H&R Block or so that um well you don't need to file taxes because you don't owe anything but it doesn't matter you can still get that credit so we're really looking for ways to serve people and um we keep in touch you know we go we were just at the mcaa conference the Massachusetts Council in aging um we keep up there's a lot of information out there there's a lot of ways services that could be expanded um and we fully intend you know as as the the population grows and and even now we're just always looking for ways that we can serve people better and it's it's an incremental thing I mean it takes quite a lot of energy just like to add on this tax program for example um but over time you know you build on things and um and and you can just provide things that people really need thank you are the questions from the board or Mark yeah before I go to Mark I just want to see if the board there anyone or well I have one um so thinking about the early part of the presentation and how you see the um older age population sort of splitting into two groups right those that are the 80 and up uh where their needs may be different and I think I heard you say that for that population in particular there's some things you would like to offer but you don't feel you don't feel you have the space um so what can you say a little more about what those are and how how they might um you know be incorporated I guess into your current programming you're talking about the older group yeah yeah because I mean my see if I'm let me ask if I'm correct about this as I read the current programs that you and services that you offer it appears from what you're saying that they're you're mostly targeted to people sort of between 60 and 80 and you're saying that as that pop depending on that demographic yeah but as that demographic expands because people are living longer that I thought I heard you say so there's going to be a need for some some different kinds of services for that older group there will be and it very much depends on the individual I know some people who are in 9 are coming to our programming you know so it isn't blanket but it's true as you get older that you need more one is definitely this um idea of having a DAT prr a social Day program that could be run by us that could be run by an outside agency um that is I don't know um you're familiar with that I used to work in Cher and I worked in that program for a while so they had room for about say 25 people who could come they had different activities they had a social worker that led people through it they had lunch together it's fantastic the people really enjoyed it it helped keep people functional longer you know when they're stimulated if they're at home and they have some sort of memory loss often sometimes they're all alone but even if they're with their spouse they just don't have that continual stimulation it keeps people functional and then gives the caregiver relief so that that is a big one that we could do um but I think also just having um dedicated space where we could have like a little cafe a lounge area where people can sit and meet up that already because a lot of people who are older they have had a lot of loss they live alone I I can think of several people in town you know they're living alone they're doing all right you know they're in their like 80s well into their 80s um and they're managing quite well but they're alone and they're alone a lot and that's not healthy for anybody and you know you can participate in our activities but you have to join in and it's nice sometimes if you can just come and just be there and say or call up somebody and say hey that's a place where they can meet you know that is also a big service think it sounds kind of simple just a dedic space you think why can't you have a space here and then they have a space over Benfield we have a space but if you look at loneliness and you look at what they now call the epidemic of loneliness it's a really serious issue it is um it is the single cause of un the single largest cause of unhealthy aging it's worse than um what the Surgeon General put out an entire document about it it's worse being being isolated and alone is worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day for your health and I mean the the physical and psychological results are really big it's a it's a significant worry not only for for older people but for everybody and this certainly came to light during Co for all sorts of for all ages but having a place where people can come where seniors know that they have a dedicated space that is their home away from home and so you've got somebody over here whose husband has died and she needs to get out she knows that she can come here and you've got somebody over here who's also living alone and they always know that they can come here and there can be there's coffee maybe there's pastries but they can have a nice place to hang out and it's a simple thing but it's a really profound thing it gives them connection to community well and the Aging in place is a really complicated set of issues which we're just getting our arms around and if you read alliver SS these other people obviously one area is going to have the 60s music playing because that Mak you happy if you're in if you're in that age cohort or you know me seriously there are all these things that how do you have to sort of figure out how to meet and and keep certain groups of people together and that becomes a much we're all I think we're just beginning to wrestle with those issues and and those of us have older parents know that not everybody can spend $150,000 for at home care and so there's a whole set of set of issues that are gonna be hitting us and those going to be the some of the Articles we be reading I would say one more thing is um we went recently to visit the um conquered Council on Aging they have a new director who's fantastic and um who's eager to coordinate with us so um that can be a real big help for us right now we're talking more about like coordinating for um day trips because we would love to be able to offer a trip that's like a little bit further away on a bus but in carile it's too small so if we coordinate with another town we can do that but um in the future once we can build this relationship I'm also thinking of for example people with low vision or people with diabetes or different we don't have a lot of people so sometimes it's hard to create a meaningful group so we could identify people and then we can coordinate sometimes they can come to our Center sometimes we can send you know transport like people over to that and do things so that because it's people who are really in that older cohort who are more effective these issues and it's just another way of supporting people and getting people together with common things you know I think there has to be a lot of creative ideas for that Jerry had something to say need to identif please do Jerry lurman 218 St without regard to the admittedly serious questions of where when and how if you believe as I do and I think the board does that a community center would be a POS thing for the town of carile the only way that we're going to make it happen is to make a serious commitment to making it happen um and we should do it now so that when the time is right we doing it we're ready yeah please identify yourself though please AB SLE 265 Kim Road Carine um I just read the Lincoln U plan Lincoln town of Lincoln they just had a Senor and um basically it wasn't it took them 10 years too Council and aging there needed the space and I was looking at their documents and basically the select board had to take over and they had to kind of initiate all the different departments to check with them what the other needs are that the community center can fulfill for the other departments so this is something we as a department cannot do it has to come from you so if you feel you will have to do that uh means more investigation as to what other needs are for other departments we can just State what our needs are and which are really plenty so if we can even get moving thinking about it so we at least feel very hopeful maybe in the near future this can happen that will be I think very helpful to all the seniors here or the council and aging at least with our with our group with the board working on it we got to the point where we felt like we' made a lot of progress and we could see like with modular housing if we put a modular building over on the on um Mosley land it would be and if we started small with like just a senior center but we planned intelligently so that we could then over the next 10 years add onto it then that would be a way of you know being fiscally responsible but also planning for the future but then we got into the community center which is a bigger thing and then our next job really was to talk to stakeholders and we had done so much work getting to that point and the need is so clear to us and the creative uses of a community by so many aspects of Carlile is so obvious to us that having that conversation with other stakeholders feels really important but it's also really hard for us as the Cs just spearhead and organize that and I think that what we were hoping is that the that the select board could form a committee um to look to look into it to help facilitate it so that we've so it's not just the cohs driving this but we get other people from sustainability and cultural Council and other people who would be interested who can work on this together it it shouldn't just be a cohs driven thing but it should be the it should be members of the community in a structured way looking into the need and it's and it's kind of all open-ended right you you get everybody in there and then it gets way more complicated and there are a lot of people who have a lot of needs but that's I think the way that it has to happen but we we've got our the cahs has our own board stuff that we have to do and we've just putting an inordinate amount of time into this piece because we think it's really important but it would be really nice to hand it over and get some structural help to bring other stakeholders into a conversation I know we're going to be tight on time here and you're yeah I wanted to hit make sure I talk to let Mark Mark Le 10 if you'd like to speak I see your your hand up thank you appreciate it um and thanks to the council and aging and Human Services for Mark we can't really hear you very well I don't know how to fix that my I'm right in my microphone okay um I'm the uh I'm at 105 wolf Ark Road um the co-chair of the carile cultural Council uh we are extremely interested and uh and very happy that this conversation has been revived uh turns out we weren't involved at all in the uh feasibility uh study that was done before but we can bring a lot to the table there's um a lot of uh creative people in this town as we know and we have a lot of uh needs for space that are bigger and more available than those that are uh here in town uh we're talking talking about the library has a great art committee and they do uh great exhibits but even with their planned expansion uh there's severe limits on the number the size the accessibility of uh artworks and things like that so we're really you know interested in trying to have a space that does all the things that have been enumerated by uh the the council uh on Aging Human Service but also to support uh larger activities performances exhibit space of a bigger size workshops lectures a maker space uh cooking space play place for movies without having to be at the mercy of the competing interests uh and the scheduling conflicts usage limits that are inherent using the religious uh spaces and the public school space uh in the library and I know speaking with Folks at the library and uh that even they run programs that are uh more well attended than their facilities can support so they're out looking for space on occasion as well but I just want to uh encourage that uh with a a long-term project like this that there's no time like the president to actually put a team together and start to figure out you know how groups would use a space and interact with each other and also obviously the heavy uh fundraising lift that would have to be accomplished but what by bringing a group like ours for instance together there's probably some grant money out there I'm not promising but you know based on uh specific kinds of use um you know those you can have those conversations uh and there are channels out there so I just want to encourage that we move this and uh even though we are all occasionally beat down by you know the tax picture the facilities picture all that stuff uh this is you know fundamental Community need that's been pretty well articulated thank you um what well was a Verna Gilbert 17 fing uh it was also talking once this gets more formal Iz and blessed by the select board and the committee we can also start doing some fundraising just to get the we can't do it now because things are way too Amorous nobody's going to give us money so that's just another impetus to get get a movement y yep just that um study that was that was sponsored by the CO as in the health department in 2017 Carlile caring for carile was in 20 2017 and that was done by UMass but the big overwhelming me message of that document is that carians want want some Focus to be paid to like the social emotional aspect of our lives and so we have we have facilities we have people that keep us safe we have the police and the fire and the DP do these are critical infrastructure pieces but this other softer piece of social emotional health is also really critical so it's a huge Challenge and we recognize that but it shouldn't be sidelined just because it's softer than the than the building infrastructure piece of it but um I think we should really value it and value that's what people have said that they really need and figure out a way to get people together like Mark said and start to figure out how it's going to take a long time but how can we get it started make it happen great well thank you all for coming this has been I think very helpful for us and the board and um you know as we wrestle with this as well because you know we talked about the pastor plan and you know there are five components to that with Carlile character and the fiscal sustainability and U the connectivity and access environmental stewardship and then caring community so it's we're trying to weave all those together and keep everyone happy which times the master plan can I ask one thing the board mention just for yeah direction of staff and for the clarity of uh planning the board's agenda that that type of thing there's kind of three things discussed here so first is programming needs for the community and I if you're going to call it a community center which it sounds like that that's what is being discussed then programming also includes Recreation school it has to be meshed with Library programming and bringing that in because of um operational budget costs concerns and Staffing Etc so I I think the board should I never tell you what to do you're in charge of me but um should be discussing what type of services the town wants to provide from a staff level based on the conversation that you had tonight plus plus other conversations with other um other Recreation or Community Center folks and then next it would be I think the select board should have a conversation about taking some of the pressure off the priori so if it is I'm not I'm just using the numbers that we're thrown here but if it is a 10-year plan then there isn't as much fighting about who's next in line or where it needs to be and it it's less likely that there'd be a mistake made because of trying to to force something into a certain time frame so if you were able to identify a time frame for this programming expansion or need or combining or regionalization I think that would be extremely helpful in calming people down and I I mean that in a nice way but if if you're trying to get this done in a year versus is trying to get it done in 10 years it's a very different conversation and then the last thing is who who makes the call so this this has happened been here a couple years now so I'm trying to identify Trends in decision making um who is the person or board or the people responsible for making the decision so a lot of this has happened amazing work like really good volunteer work but it was done in a way that it's then brought to the board and then you're like should you or should you not make this specific decision I think it would be better for the board to repackage that and say this is what we think the community needs now this committee should explore that and bring us bring us an option back that matches what we talked about beforehand rather than say go talk about a senior center or Community Center bring it back to us it should be here's what we think a senior center community center would fit based off our programming discussions now go research and find out how we could fund that or bring that back um I think you'd be this type of would be more back in and it would be a more productive conversation in terms of priorization of timeline can I I think that that's you know that's kind of what we're task with doing but we just need the first step this is the first step but I want to unpack a little bit what Ryan said and push back on some of it so I think on the last point I totally agree and they gave us kind of guidance I mean I think a a group that's charged with studying the needs and you know putting some more that would be clearly a good step however however I have two concerns one is I don't like we call it in my trade Christmas tree right like when you make two many things out of a what it's supposed to be then nothing will get done there's a clearly defined need for the growing senior population sure we'd love to have Art Space and sure we'd love to have more Recreation space but we have school gym and we have parents of school AG children who are mobile and we have more occasion spaces like performance spaces where we can utilize you know your concept of the virtual T there's lots of spaces around if we're creative I I definitely hear the need of the regular and I I think one caution I would say is let's not try to do too much right the the other thing and I know I'm cutting my own time is separating this is on you guys okay separate um the kind of service oriented model that you're talking about where you have to grow more things you offer people from the facility specific you know kind of things right they're they're kind of they're all in one bucket but they really are different things we are clearly going to have to keep uh operationally funding the coah HS because of the growing demographic and and needs the piece that's facility oriented has to be kind of clearly identified from you know driving people in the van the things that really have nothing to do with whether the facilities and the last thing I'll say is it's always about priority ities it could be 10 years 50 years it's got to be about priorities otherwise it's going to get bumped off by something else so it's never not priority that's why I think this was helpful tonight to have to listen to the cohs and to understand this better to ask questions I think we need to have another session a time in a meeting to discuss this to to digest what we've heard and then come up with those you know discuss about priorities or about those things so we will put that I'll put that on an agenda in the future in the near future all right um but we do need to move on just say one thing on this just to reiterate what David said because I'm very familiar with what Lincoln went through and it was very difficult because the charge was not specific enough and it got a very split and so I think it's one and it's also what Ryan says we need you guys when you if there's a setting up a committee setting up a specific charge with parameters not go build another fire station that's $30 million $20 million but we lay it out carefully and things like that so there's sense of that I guess otherwise right we just spin our Wheels we go around and we don't need to do that well we'll we'll continue this and there's a conversation among ourselves but we do need to move on thank you very much for coming you're all welcome to stay obviously appk get all right so we need to move on to our town meeting study committee um that is also um scheduled for this evening and I think David you may be leading this so yeah I'm going to invite Mark Bernstein can you come up to the T great and I want to recognize we are uh I actually have to open meeting okay and and I would ask that if you are going to hang around please go out in the hall and chat rather than our meeting all right or or you can stay and listen but what take over you need your social space like going out to not talk about them all right I'd like to call to order uh the meeting of the town meeting study committee uh I don't know if we have a quorum actually one two three maybe we don't have a quorum but maybe we can't if we only have three can you guys go um you have four d four no because Wayne is ex official so I don't think we have enough so never mind we're not at court um can you uh Ryan can you put up the presentation please or whoever's doing driving he have the the one where I address I don't know maybe maybe not but you can speak to it anyway I had a few sent to me today so hopefully this is the there go t you roll man sugar picking up here take one of these all right Halloween last years they do feel a little hard anyone else I'll leave them here all right so I think we'll we'll start with just presenting very briefly um some of the stuff we've done mostly we want to open up for discussion Mark's been leading the Mark okay so this is basically a interim report but we're Lo quite a ways into this uh you can go to the next turn okay so you know why we're here the the the the impetus really was first to look at improving intend the the main imp impetus was to what can we do to improve improve attendance at 8 annual town meeting 800 p.m and then also along the way uh we want look at uh is there anything we can do working with the town committees and boards to improve the processes and that are used to create the budget in whatever to warrants and so we took a a three-prong Appo approach did a survey of Voters uh about uh with a lot of questions about uh ATM uh We've interviewed 14 um similar siiz towns about how they they're doing are they getting better attendance what they do to get attendance maybe they're doing worse uh and then we're meeting with all the V all the most uh all the boards and committees that typically present and have a lot of activity at ATM and you can see our are where we are we're we're we're pretty much at the end of that three-pronged approach and ready to start making some recommendations okay next chart so just as a just a frame of reference this was some data from the town of you know going back quite ways but you can see in the last four or five years you know we're struggling uh we're we're we're not getting above 200 so 175 there's 4,000 voters we're kind of stuck at about 4% a little bit better it's not much you know so for a legislative body that's deliberating and making decisions for 4,000 people to only have 4% of them at the town meeting is not good we'd like more okay looks like we're cely making Quorum well we're getting Quorum I know but what isn't the line Quorum yeah yeah yeah I mean we're making well yeah we're making it just barely yeah but a quorum is like the bare minimum it is yeah the of minimum Qui question on this Mark I'm just wondering 2002 2003 there these spikes 29 2014 pardon hot button issues yeah that's what I was wondering what what were those issues do you remember was it building we go back well I know the pandemic when we were going to do some bad things to the schools and stuff but yeah okay if we want to cut the school budget in half I guarantee you we will exceed her let's go on we got L cover yeah okay um you want me just to do the survey you want Nancy to do it uh Nancy you want to chime in she sort of ran the survey sorry uh okay um yes okay so that we did this Sur we did the survey around the time of town meeting we encouraged everybody in every way that we could to fill it out and we got we ended up with 2011 responses um it's not a random sample so we really can't say that this is what the town feels but at least I guess we can say that this is what people who cared enough to fill out the survey uh think about town meeting and we asked a pretty broad range of questions not only about whether people attend and what bothers them and what changes they would like to make but also some underlying um personal characteristics um and motivations uh just so in case we needed to be able to explain some of the um some of the results and they were all very interesting but the main thing that we think is relevant to what the select board wants to know is about the next slide which slides which are about what bothers people about town meeting and what keeps them from going and as you can see from this Slide the most frequent obstacle that was cited by people who either have never gone to town meeting or have gone only occasionally is a lack of child care and second is conflict with sports and recreation programs and then there are there are a bunch of people who don't want to listen to others who are bored by town meeting but that's a much smaller proportion of um of the people of the obstacles that were cited so obviously Child Care the lack of child care it is a has to be a major Target um we think for trying to increase attendance the next slide is about the one thing that I um we asked I the one thing I found kind of discouraging was that there were 20 people who thought it was not needed um so that that means we need to do a lot more education about what town meeting even is we coming to because yeah well I just as I say it's discouraging because that that was a big percentage really if you have 200 people and 20 of them think it's not needed um the actual item was phrased I didn't I I didn't don't see the need that's what it means it's not exactly not needed it's just that I don't see it understand the difference okay next it's really still hard to hear her so people who actually had gone to town meeting were asked what are the big things that bother you about town uh town meeting and I think they were allowed to I think we allowed them to choose four out of a list of about 12 and you can see that the the the top ones were really about the process being tedious and slow and too long and then as I said earlier there were some people who just don't want to listen to other people they don't want to listen to presentations they want to eliminate the presentations um they don't want to listen to questions from the floor they want to either eliminate them or make them shorter um but that was a minority of the of the complaints the big complaints were really just about it being tedious andow SL and long which in some ways you know you could see as uh encouraging because you can do something about that um and then the next slide uh we also ask people if you if you could what would you change about town meeting and um that's consistent with the things that bother people and one of the big ones was making changes about the presentations um making them available before town meeting um and and um making them shorter and then also shortening the questions and answers uh from the floor um and then other there are other changes about scheduling that were less frequent and that was the basically these are the issues that we took to the boards and committees to discuss how how the process could be changed to to deal with with um desires for change next slide there's a lot more about the survey that'll someday show up in a in a report but this is the main thing about changing okay thanks Nancy we're gonna move on so uh after we did that survey we realized we really didn't get a lot of responses from uh uh younger family families with young kids in the school system for whatever reason we wanted we wanted more I would say you know we identified some low hanging fruit because like a lot of towns I've been reading a lot of these towns they're all saying Child Care late at night not good for you know there's a huge cohort it's just they can't do it because the kids are little so that's why we took advantage of deas and a PTO and we could get a very targeted survey for that so Deepa chungi created a targeted survey for the parent teachers organization you got 51 responses from the parents the teachers so that was good so basically first of all so out of those 51 parents how often did they attend and the number it's a little fuzzy but it's about 60 yeah 60% that never attend 33% 9% 33% of 10 maybe once every couple years so basically we've got 90% of them that basically never come right so this is like this is a problem uh and they said although we don't come out of those 90% that don't come 89% said hey we we would like to attend if there was some way you could help us figure out how to get here and then okay so on the right hand side it says what's what what would help them is basically the basic problem is you know no surprise child care and the kids go to bed early so even if we offer child care in the evening it doesn't help them they've got to go they got to be home anyway the kids the kids go to bed at 7 o'cl at night so Child Care at that at the schools of no value I'm simplif find a bit so it seemed like uh when we asked them uh when she asked them what what would be a better time and uh what a better day in time that Sunday afternoon popped up quite a bit as a as a time where people could make uh time in their life available we could have child care kids are still awake they're not in bed yet they don't need to go home yet for dinner they might need to go home eventually for dinner but you know you could do sort of a a noon to 6 o'clock sort of thing for five o'clock food trucks food trucks food trucks and do food TR you can be outside I think the nice thing in the springtime is yeah under supervision you could use you know the castle anyway okay all right so uh lack of appropriate child care and having it in the evening are the major obstacles so okay those are actually two things we can solve with a little work right next chart uh keep you want to do this oh yeah you did the T you yeah yeah so then then we we we tried to interview I think about 25 or more but you not everybody was not everybody picked up the phone so we got 14 so far you can read what the towns are you know mostly similar size most like Carlile Mo everybody does it on either a Monday or Tuesday uh four out of the 14th through out of the Saturday uh uh most are having similar problems as Carlile they get attendance somewhere between 3 and 5% there were a couple exceptions I couldn't quite figure out why but Westford is having more problems than us but then you've got a bunch of towns that oh this is the old ones that the conquered number is actually 6% oh that makes me feel better I guess I was wondering get that they had one they had one uh a recent meeting uh oh about the middle school yeah where like everybody in town showed up basically all right yeah so we've got a few that are doing kind of you know going from 4% to 6 7 8% that would be great for carlot if we could double basically or 50% more uh there's not quite a a common theme you know winam and Lincoln beat on a Saturday conquer a Monday but those all three of those have child care so we get like three out of the one two three four four biggest ones are doing child care that seems again to be a common theme and then we asked we asked all the towns like what other things are you doing to to try to increase attendance it's similar to us in many cases but they do some other things electronic voting everybody's trying to do more of that some towns offer rides I don't think we do that so you go pick up the seniors and bring them to town meting uh use of consent motion Wayne's trying to do more and more of that I think we'll encourage him to do even more limiting pre presentations and The Upfront intro we're we're kind of doing that already we don't do a lot of pre- meetings where you have you know people presenting uh the material that's going to be at ATM in a community Forum ahead of time so that people are already coming educated and prepared so that the thing runs faster and smoother because they're not asking like the MBTA open house yeah yeah yeah and uh early availability of Warrant articles you know you know having having things available months a month rather than the theory is to back up the dead make the Dead line for closing the warrant earlier yeah so there's more time now the warrant sort of Frozen to do this to do the discussion so we'll talk the next next all right so that came out clearly we also as Mark mentioned we went to talk to you know a bunch of other committees U and um Travis was in on our sort of debrief the other night uh pretty consistently uh support for trying it Sunday for the pre meetings for having more advertising Etc um possibly more of the Benfield style you know where you have these little venues where people can comfortably meet in a smaller group uh there's some IT issues with that but I mean there's nothing illegal about it we can have as many of those as we can manage um and then the stuff that Mark mentioned you know streamlining and so forth um uh more education so I think we started that last time with the videos both the ones that Ryan and Aubrey did and also Deepa did some but um we really there's a a two or three-fold benefit to this early engagement on the issues it will those who care to go through it will be more educated some may decide yeah this is an interesting issue I really should go to the town meeting where before they might be oblivious and then as Wayne likes to point out if we engage the boards and committees on these and get their support then we kind of Leverage that whole thing to get more you know just more of that let's go to the next slide um okay Wayne you want to wrap it up for uh this pre the beginning of this um actually why don't you do it Dave I'm I'm in the car so I'm listing it up but I'll answer any questions so I mean so this is you know this is the the data Gathering phase which we've done pretty consistent I've also spent some time reading other Town's reports and they're all having the same problem and they're all saying what are we going to do um so I think uh we're still continuing to talk to the boards and get other data but really where we are is we want to as we've done with each of the boards we want to hear what you think of what we're presenting and then to I guess ny's point or maybe Mark's like maybe there's some lwh hanging fruit that you know we should be embracing and trying to get on so can I start by saying I think this is excellent this is exactly what I think the select board was looking for is for this type of analysis and understanding of you know and and I think that you know I guess speaking on behalf of the board but as a member the um you know we're looking for changes that are going to draw more people to town meeting so these are great there are a lot of little I'd call them tactical things that you've put forward you know we could shorten the warrant we can do those little things I think those all sound really attractive as my reaction to that I think one of the bigger ones is if you're going to change the date of the town meeting or the the day of the week you know to a Sunday that is a a pretty big change but frankly if we're trying to come up with creative ideas I think it's a great idea and you know people have build it as oh we're going to get some food trucks and you know have a have an event I think it's a wonderful I would say two yeah I would say two things one is if we're trying to avoid a multi-day town meeting and we're at a point now where we possibly have a very full agenda and you do run in on any week night you really can't start before 7 maybe 6:30 and if you're going to beond 10: I mean that's pretty late so you're constrained in a week night whereas an afternoon to the point you know you could get six hours out of it not the people ain't stay for that long but you would you could accomplish everything at once if that's a goal the other thing I want to say is just a shout out to uh Julie in the planning board I mean I think the the way that the NBTA open house was constructed and tackling a difficult issue in a bite-size you know it's a lot of work but that's a way to really get people educated about that issue and if we have big issues that we want to really have substantive conversation and avoid sort of the idea that people are just reading it for the first time and then they trundle up to the mic I mean that is to meeting but still it's not as productive so those the two are there any other reactions among the board yeah I had a I had I second everything that Travis said about the work of this committee I think it's great um I was so a couple of things I was thinking about as I read through this and one is um is there a way to use other events or other uh places where people gather where there could be a a a certain amount of time set aside for somebody who's got a you know significant warrant article to to talk about it so for instance you know at the COA luncheon or you know during the you know what I don't know a school meeting you know a back to school night or something or again I don't know how this works exactly but like Ed you know the people that go to church in town um is because I think the the hardest thing about organizing our own event you know similar to what the NBTA folks did is it's again you're trying to attract people to come out and attend something and you know the clear one of the obvious reasons that the NBTA Drew people was because specific neighborhoods were you know listed in the mosquito and the overlay may go there well cuz who attended the people that came from those streets right right uh so how we you know so trying to be creative on that side of things is there a way to use when people are already gathered for something else to maybe piggy back on so that's one thought the other is um the idea of podcasts I think is really interesting because when you think about the uh the the F the parent audience that you that you've described here right um a they're a demographic you know significantly younger than I am and they're much more used to getting their information from uh social media as opposed to reading the mosquito or you know going even going to the town website and looking up town meeting and what the warrant articles are so right so you hear the ta's report okay um the other is I think the video that um uh Aubrey did uh you know as a as a starting effort was great and I and I got feedback from it from a number of people but somehow to you know make that a bigger thing and figure out a way to get that out there earlier or maybe it's you know maybe you have a I I don't know somehow you you you gear people in town in the way that the people that do look at the mosquito they know okay it's going to be available online you know Thursday night sometimes even earlier and so that's one of the things people do on Thursday night well if we had a you know a video that was going to come out every Thursday night or something like I don't know could you get people to just regularly so right so I think I agree with all those and I want to just say that you know what we and your committee was one the challenge is that the Committees and it would be this select work would be one of those committees the Committees that have an issue that they really want to explore as the planning board did have to make the F number one yes that's come from them it can't be us okay the second thing is absolutely you know we hear this from the younger generation and you saw it and why tell me important it's Antiquated so I don't get what's going on all this procedural crap that's going on that night I don't get this big Tome that sometimes I see like what's that about so definitely Mo a lot of the groups like the parents group have Facebook they have social media links that they use yes so I take your points very good that it'll be easier to leverage through that channel that they already are accessing information than try to you know create an event that will be just one more thing on the calendar so again it does come down to boards and committees taking the initiative to develop a Communications plan and one of the things that you know maybe more radical suggestion is that we the select board when people come with a warrant we say come with your warrant and your Communications plan I don't want to hear about your warant unless you come prepared for your Communications plan if we do it early enough you know then you have more time to actually prepare that yep yeah I think we're going to have a lively town meeting this year and I think we're going to have if we do nothing I still think we're going to have a large turnout relative to the last couple of years which have been sorry which have been fairly uneventful in terms of what was on the docket and in the attendance so I would just encourage us all to pick a few of this loow hanging fruit and implement it for this town meeting because I do think we're going to get people that don't normally come to town meeting to come to this town meeting given some of the issues that we're talking about and I think some of these things such as trying it on a Sunday trying to tighten up the presentations trying to time box the Q&A sessions um can be very beneficial for the long term because if people can come and they come for the first time the first time in years and they have a better experience this time I think it'll it'll keep from coming back and I do think we're going to get good turnout this year given some of the some of the items on the docket I I I agree I think definitely to me uh it's like a no-brainer that we should be setting our town meeting on a Sunday did did we check we did ask to see if we were going to check the school May the 4th and the 18th the 4th or the 18th were possible I don't know if we got the information about that yet but um emotional preference for Star Wars day you agree two lightsabers but uh and and also I you know I'm echoing a little bit what Barney said we started with those films last year um and we had promised that we were going to amplify that and you know build on that and I think that was a good idea because those basically were the pre-presentation you know those were the presentations done beforehand so I think think I think a some of these things we we've sort of already done and that we could continue to build on and go forward on that sounds like you have tremendous support here from the board on what you're doing so the question is from a procedure standpoint maybe the TA can you know illuminate is there you know things that we need to decide from a legal standpoint because we direct town meeting or how how does this go from here what do we if we wanted to make those Chang changes is it can do I don't see anything here that that you can't do as chief executive body in the in the town right structural changes would require more significant investigation such as representative town meeting or some of these other options but these are these are things within your purview there be a fair amount of logistical if we decided for example that we wanted to try a Sunday we got to put in motion a fair amount of stuff organizing you know make an event I mean it's not enough yeah because you have a you're gonna have to have a Planning Group for the event ex yeah food trucks whatever else we need from a from a timing standpoint when does do I mean should we be making that decision now as a board or should we wait for you to do a little more research or you know or do you have specific things these are all recommendations do you want to have a list of things that let me say that that's a great question so Wayne's not I know his mic's not working or he doesn't but Wayne is Wayne go ahead what let me set you up here Wayne is doing some things on his own as the moderator with our guidance to just streamline the meeting just okay he started that last time and we want to continue and then there are things we have to plan so Wayne go ahead please sure uh thank you can everyone hear me all right barely I think it's on our end that we don't have a go ahead okay okay I will try to shout um great so uh two two things um uh Travis uh mentioned it the beginning that a lot of these things were tactical what's really strategic there are really two things that are strategic one is the actual day and this option of Sunday um and I think you're right we're we're not quite there yet on making a recommendation you don't need to decide that um now but you know you probably want to decide it um I would think by December because there will be a lot of logistical things the decision that is actually more strategic even than that is the one to close the warrant earlier um which I think we're well we the committee hasn't formally made a recommendation I think it's pretty clear that we're we're headed in that direction closing the warrant earlier which by the way the fincom um when we discussed with them they were supportive of that does a couple of things one it forces all the boards and committees to focus a lot more and earlier on their communication plan second there's a lot more opportunity for all of this uh preting discussion communication social media everything has more opportunity to get out and inform the public and with that we get greater engagement further to the extent that there's better information out earlier I as moderator will feel a lot more comfortable in doing things like cutting the standard presentation time from eight minutes to six minutes or even five minutes cutting the floor debate Standard Time from 3 minutes to two minutes because people ought to have the ability to come in with really focused comments so I view the decision to close the warrant of right now we typically close it three or four weeks before um before town meeting if you moved it out to say six or eight weeks I think that would make a huge difference and again that's not one that needs to be decided right tonight but I think um you know given the entire apparatus around the budget and everything else um that one everyone needs to have a lot of Runway to understand that it's happening sooner than it typically would in based on prior years thanks Wayne that's helpful and I think based on what you're saying I mean and based on maybe what you heard from the board we're very supportive it seems like across our Board of what you're doing so if you want to um you know either you don't have to come back to us but if you want to let us know if you want specific vote or something um that would be helpful but other than that I think you know you have a seems like a good good process and a good plan going forward anything else well I have a just to follow up because I thought I heard Wayne that you said the committee is not quite there and recommending a Sunday afternoon yet and so um it would be very no I think we're okay well let me just say we we've completed our data Gathering we were as Travis knows we were not yet on the select board's calendar until like last Thursday so we had a meeting we happened to have a meeting that night anyway and and I presented the challenge to the board the committee are you ready to talk and they're like well yeah we're ready to talk but we're not ready to actually recommend recommend we're still at digesting however you know I think it's pretty clear what's clear clear is there's a cohort of parents of school School AG children that seem interested in attending but don't attend and it's obvious why they don't attend right so we can approach that you know we can fix that right and this is one way and and so that's the first thing and then there's a group that's either apathetic or think it's Antiquated or don't understand it and we can fix that and that's a separate kind of thing but that's about being more prepared you know encouraging people to learn about it and come with better questions and that's a longer term fix it's not clear that that'll happen overnight but as you get people more engaged maybe that happens so I think those twin those twin things are the basic themes are we ready for a specific recommendation it doesn't have to be that complicated I mean if you guys know you're quick on data and if we can to March point if we could get that 4% up to six or seven like that's a win right now maybe you know Scott to say well it's buy a sample because it was going to go to Six anyway this year but but really in the long term you know it's it's self fulfilling if you can engage yes a larger group all right that's good good conversation I see wayne you still have your hand up but we do need to move on unless there's something critical maybe it's just no it just didn't it just didn't get put down thanks everyone thank you all right thank you all right so we're gonna move on but thanks thank you mark question for Wayne while he's still here Wayne when you say close the warrant do you mean sign and post the warrant oh I think it means close out the issue like these are the issues well I mean well I mean it's it's actually that's a great question it's both things one is um one requires the other if you want to sign and post the warrant earlier you need to have closed the warrant earlier MH um uh uh and and as everyone will recall there's a gap where there's a deadline for people to um uh submit to the select board that they want to do a warrant article and then there's the actual language of the warrant which typically follows um you know a couple of weeks later so both of those would be would be moved up and those obviously that's a the that and the the actual date those are all set by vote of the select board just in 30 seconds or less the the select board thank you Wayne the the select board closes the warrant in order to force people to get their issues in front of you but the language and the finalizing of the warrant is is different and it it's not always this case but the the select board can be the primary offender of the time to finalize a language because of the big decisions that you're making so reason why I'm asking is the planning process would have to be moved up as well for the select board in January and February in order to meet your own deadline that's why I'm asking but does a language does not have to be final final for this to if we've Frozen the list of issues these are the issues right it gives these sponsors of it you know the committees or whatever like the budget I mean okay we don't know exact words but we got you know they can start to work the issue right yes it's just for things like the reason why the video production was so late last year is we're waiting for things like the final police station number so we can do a presentation but without the number it's not that meaning no right so it would have to be meaningful it does put some forward pressure on everybody but you know it it it it enables the whole phase that we we underplay the need for commun it's I mean the the overarching theme is most people like things are working I'm happy I don't know what's going on town government but I'm happy like if we want them more engaged we have to make a push we have to make them unhappy no all right all right speak moving forward we are we are going to move forward sorry for finishing your sentence all right so we're going to move on now to the road maintenance plan draft um there was in capital planning that's in your packet and this is a requested by the Town Administrator so I will let him kind of lead off with the presentation of this right so this is not this is not a final plan this is a solid draft to bring to the board and get some feedbacks so just some uh just a quick refresher on why we're here at this particular stage so I am looking now at the town of Carlile website and if you go to departments under either select board or Town Administrator there is a link uh called road maintenance if you click that link it takes you to a lot of the road maintenance planning and this is part of um sending out information so it's not just here hidden on the website when Aubrey does her communication planning she links to this site when she does things um on social media Etc so it it's advertise and it's not just the static form you're seeing here but what's on this page right now is the current two-year plan that the select board did approve and that we have procured and that was underway this year half of it's already done and then the road study which guided a lot of the conversation about Capital planning that was completed by Niche then data collected during the select board summer road maintenance hearing which hope hopefully becomes an an annual event so that resulted in direction from this board to jimini and others as we saw fit to work on a A Five-Year Plan and to incorporate that into the capital planning process and eventually the budget process as well so that's why this is coming before you we wanted to show you the results of that and get a check in with you on on whether or not we're headed in the right direction so uh next I would like to show you briefly the compiled Community concerns from last year this is partially for the board but mostly for the public so we did compile through social media outreach and others concerns from each Street we went over them with you we compare them to the niche plan using something called uh the pavement condition index which is a which is a score of a road which allows the select board to compare roads across across uh function so each complaint came in we went over each complaint we looked at it on the map and then we looked at the scores and the select board had conversations about what may or may not be prioritized and what we may or may not be able to do for funding so Jim and I then took that information I compared it to his prioritization or what what the DPW which hasn't very intimate knowledge of the road uh what they believe to be additional concerns above and beyond what Niche identified as the quote unquote 5-year Road plan so finally we get to uh what's in your packet that I'll walk you through and then uh take your questions comments concerns and directions so the item in your packet here sorry I'm trying to play both director and talk okay so skipping to the bottom of this this would obviously be cleaned up for public presentation but I know the select board just likes data so the bottom of it here shows a priority list so that the top chunk is DPW and Jim's priorities and the bottom chunk comes from the community input what we did was we added dollar values as identified by niche in their plan and the PCI numbers in order to incorporate this into the plan that already exists so going back to the top of the document okay what you're seeing at the top is 2024 this is the work that was done this year 459,000 in maintenance completed this was all procured through Newport construction which is our current Paving uh company they also bid on 2025 so everything in white Under 2025 is already bid and decided as part of the the select board's 2-year plan so those are real numbers those are real numbers and they're already paid for or quote unquote through chapter 90 what's new is the yellow which we're using to identify DPW priorities and then what's in Orange which we are we have placed with no no discernment except for where it is in the town and what its scores are and what we thought was feedback from your from your maintenance here squeaky Wheels is another good way to is another variable in that in that mix and we assigned numbers to that so 375,000 of this is already paid for uh that can be taken out of the 750,000 that this this plan would cost so the difference between 750 and 375 is what would be needed in addition so that number is not picked out of nowhere if you remember during the capital planning we said about 400,000 a year in order to keep our PCI number on average across the town where it was plus address some of the par roads or including some of these non priority roads that the slick board talked about addressing so of course this plan can be adjusted up or down year-to year based off of funding availability and prioritization of capital then I think more interesting to the board well we would want feedback on uh what's here in terms of new things so pheasant engineering this is 2027 um this is the road Pheasant Hill Road which um needs a top coat it was identified during the road maintenance hearing as needing a top coat however we we know there are several major drainage issues towards the end of the road so we have worked with Niche they have identified a a plan they're working on right now they're going to bring it to and we're estimating that the fixes could be anywhere from 50 to 100,000 and then we would do the top coat on the road for Pheasant Hill um because of its proximity Acton Street would also have that same top coat done and that would complete the road plan from from a few years ago that Gary started but never completed and then the board had a lot of discussions about Barry Corner Road and Bar corner Lane and you see the cost there to complete both of those functions uh both with pcis under 50 55 which is a a significantly poor Road given the the road maintenance report so moving into 2026 the white part of the the presentation here the white cells are what Niche identified as um reasonable road maintenance in in terms of uh keeping that PCI index where it was and addressing some of the backlog the yellow is um Jim's number one priority post the current plan Indian Hill Road or Indian Hill Indian Hill Road and a major section of pavement that is the need of repair full reclaiming and Paving and then as part of that again because of its proximity East Street would be included for what's called a surface treatment or a double lift and that would be that Year's parody road so same formula 2027 the white roads are the ones identified by Niche and our engineering firm and then we added another DPW priority North Road and two par roads pagebrook Road and cross street you'll also see included in each of these years is a the sum of money typically 50,000 for crack cealing which is part of that maintenance program we talked about which is important for the long-term stability of these roads then in 2028 this is the last year we added DPW priorities and parody roads before we got any more input from the board and understood funding levels you see U Martin Street Rockland Road and Nathan Lane as DPW priorities uh interestingly those are also Community concern priorities so those matched and then conquer Street being uh a pretty significant chunk of road that that would be included in in the parody the parody Road section or something that's being coming from Community complaints and then uh some pretty significant roadways in 2029 and 2030 namely uh Bedford Road which would be its own project in a few years so you in this analysis to date you've accounted for some of the feedback that we heard these squeaky wheel feedback but what happens you know next year if we were to hold another hearing and someone says well wait a second I want this do we reorganize at that point or do we say I guess it's up to us to determine but um I guess there's nothing we we've spent it all at this point on this budget it's not as though there's extra go to the top go to the top of the charts here that thing yeah that's good question so that's really what we're here to hear um what would be what would be a fair process and what does the board want to invest in terms of in terms of finances so if you look at this plan by year here from um this current year to 2029 you'll see what what is required for the plan itself as identified including the DPW priorities the parody roads and the niche study you'll see that ranges in cost from 750,000 which remember some of it's already paid for all the way up to um the Bedford Road Project which would be about half a million dollars the second line is the expected our expected allotment of chapter 90 there's a lot of assumptions there that the state will continue to provide funding up to that $300 million level currently they're only guaranteed 200 million so there's 150,000 baked in but we think it's it's a pretty strong uh possibility that we'll continue to get 400,000 the last assumption in here is that you will run out of um Surplus chapter 90 as we address some of these problems and that'll end in 2025 meaning that you'll have to fund more of this from the capital plan moving forward so that deficit number is the 400,000 you'll recognize from the capital plan um I told you that number had some basis in its own presentation and here we are at that presentation so um that does assume that the board wants to continue to pave and repair at this level historically you have not you have paved at a lesser level which is why the roads continue to decline um I also wouldn't recommend going much higher than this because you'll never catch up in and it takes away from other Town priorities like buildings vehicles and and other needs in the operating budget I have to say in previous years we were never asked so say it again I said the way oh the right we were never asked band Gary bandaid that was and this this does account for a different approach as well so these Road fixes are not Band-Aids they are real full fixes which are more expensive they last longer but it gets us it keeps us at a decent PCI is the objective right yes yes you're not readdressing roads because you just did an overlay you're actually reclaiming the pavement in I know this will come up in a few minutes in your in your ta report but this does not include then an anticipated cover repair right and can you ballpark what we think that is a year I I honestly can't ballpark it okay and they're going to get that data pretty soon right yes so I mean so some good news as they're out they're doing it now and they're finishing this week they're not finding that's the good news well they're not finding major problems so major problems being like Westford Street level problems that are several hundred, so will it be a balance between the crack ceiling number and the Culvert number I think it'll be closer to that then but I do know there are two major covers that that do need to be I guess so you're presenting a multi-year plan which I think is great but we really only have to solve in the short term we only have to solve for the 2026 budget right is that what we're doing next year is actually Well yeah if you want to add to next year and and then we'll have this other data I mean it's hard to because really in that whole bucket of road maintenance you got to include both sides you can't really just look at this and say that I mean it's kind of like when when the pensions are or the opb's underwater you know you have to bite the bullet and start chipping away at the deficit I think it's a great approach a great plan and we have to go year by year and adjust accordingly you know I I would the only thing I would say is that you know once we get the Culvert um plan we should definitely go back I don't want to pave a road and then have to undo it to do the C so just so let's not pave anything that needs a CT we make sure the soft identify well and I just had more of an in depth technical I don't want to go too deep but you have the Pheasant Lane engineering I think at 100,000 that was just to figure out what how to solve that but I don't think you it's both it's both oh it is yeah it's mislabeled it's the fix and the engineering okay oh because it was there was another 25k in there for phant Lane that's what confused me okay so what's the other Pheasant Hill 25k for then that would be the uh top coat so the peasant engineering is 100 and the saying it's mislabeled it's not just the engineering it's also it's fixing and preparing also the fixing sorry okay now I get it not but not the top coat got it all right yeah so the drainage if you and we did go see it we spent some time and brought my daughter there so she understands this problem very well the um the drainage is is below the road so there's also no place to put it and surprise surpris there's Wetlands all around it so the fix might be to bring it back into the covert Circle require some some Nifty engineering but it it does require some cost I think without that you're going to have problems on this road forever so you should fix it before you do the top coat yeah yeah that makes sense um also you should make sure that when roads are accepted and designed that they they don't come with some of these some of these flaws so that or there's some type of bond on the road so that right and I know that we would now yeah that peasant Hill was has been there J will make sure but the know these many years um that's why the subdivision PL there it's for for this reason yeah I don't know what conquer was doing by the way U but they were pumping a lot of water down our new pavement so I just we should check and I noticed it was ponding in a lot of spots a fire hydrant testing or no no no they were really they were they're doing some construction and they had this big box and it look like they were just pumping gallons of water where this is on conquered Road on um River Road River Road oh yeah they're at um Silver Hill y pumping it right down the and when I came up and I saw all the water I thought gee really rained here and then I realized no this is the whole Street's just full of water because any other questions or so process wise um would like feedback from the board so how did this year go in terms of of you were presented a two-year picture we we procured it that way um prior to that this year we would do your road maintenance hearing and discuss the plan publicly you would get feedback is that Overkill too much did you like the way that it went it was great I think our residents like the way it went too yeah because they they really feel like they got hurt and and we're going to start making progress on it I think at first there was a little despair but I think this has fixed that yeah when you see that eventually your road is on there yeah um but your I think your idea of an annual Road Hearing or whatever you want to call it is is important very important we got to just build that in it doesn't I mean there there is one question is does that have to be done by us or could it be done by the DPW down the lot down the road I mean I think that this is inherently political like the squeaky wheel is it's great because we have to ultimately decide you know what are the priorities and I don't think the staff should be have to do that I mean they have to some degree they put together the plan and I think it's a reasonable plan and we've had experts do it but you know when it comes to changing little things and you know that's paring your government we've clearly given more priority to their priority as well okay so uh one more thing I'd like to introduce here so talking a lot about participatory government and engagement in capital planning and there's a little bit of a squeaky wheel to this too so I do think that it would be worth discussing or interesting for the board to consider um voting or engaging on some of these these projects especially if you had two or trying to move them into the year and I also think that's true of the capital plan so this isn't unique to Carlo this isn't a new idea but to in order to engage the citizenry more in the budget process you would you would give choice and I think that type of thing would also bring people to town meeting meeting or to pre-own meetings or or to public hearings if they knew that they participated that it ended up in in an actual result the downsides of that are you will get squeaky Wheels some of the roads that have more people on it will likely get more votes people with more friends might get their stuff done but I think it's worth the board considering given the community engagement issues that carel has you leveraging this um choice in order to get engagement and understanding youest more than once a year or do it somewhere else what are you at town meeting what what are you suggesting and you more the road than Road you're saying capital and I didn't follow the whole Trend there it's because I would really want to flush it out with you but I would say we're considering these two roads this year only one of them would fit into the budget whatever Road gets the most input means I see like the two like two parody roads for example or M or is that what you're thinking those primarily and even you know we have $50,000 to solve this this problem which piece of capital does the town think is most important and allowing them to vote on it rather than trying to decide is it a 26th priority or 27 priority let let the residents engage in some way it could be dangerous it's also a way to get people into the the local government process so I think roads is a is a no-brainer but capital is also another way to do it well I was thinking you know earlier with that discussion about a community center it would be interesting to figure out a way to get uh the the town to somehow get people to take a non-binding vote or some way indicate how how high a priority it is for people in town have Community Center and how you have to put in a context obviously but you know is if we are GNA you know imagine a timeline of 10 years uh would you support you know uh but I don't maybe that doesn't make sense but it seems to me that if if we're going to set up if we're think I mean we haven't had the conversation but let's say we were think seriously considering putting together some kind of a you know preliminary study group or something thing before you even did that you know would it make sense to well we've kind of already done that right we we decided Public Safety was the priority we did that several years ago and we pursued that and now we're I guess now would be the time if you take bgh house and DPW and you know now we would have to frame it limited you can't ask open people don't have enough knowledge of like $800,000 a Paving needs are coming up like no you can't get to all this complexity I think you have to distill it down to a few trades and say you know simple I mean if that's a if that's a poll I mean it's a double-edged sword because and we ran I remember when I was on school committee and we ran this poll was like a great idea right do you want to have school before U um Labor Day or after and it was overwhelmingly after and the teacher said no we really like before so now you know cuz the people voted the parents voted they like after the teachers said no we got to have it before because blah blah blah blah and like you lose either way so you have to be careful how you frame it because if you don't follow it then it looks like you're ignoring the thing so I think we need to just discuss more we should talk more and I I don't even understand if if if would these be on a warrant anything above chapter 90 it would have to be on a warrant and we'd have to specify the specific roads on a warrant or when you were creating the 5-year plan that's people get to vote so it could be a town meeting could be prior to town meeting but I assume they're going to have to vote on these at town meeting anything above the chapter 90 in aggregate not by a specific road though well you could do it by road that would get people out actually I mean if you're going to have them discussion oh my gosh all right that might lengthen the meeting substantially though if you go road by road I would assume you'd identify the roads that would be maintained you don't have to specify a line item with each one but you find the scope of it if you had a consent Agenda One interim step might be just even better Outreach of from our board to the community saying here is what we're going to be discussing and there are choices between several roads and then have people come to our meeting and see if we get more engagement and if if they if there's you know receptivity or then over time maybe it moves to town me but rather than just jumping right to town me but it's a good idea to have more engagement I like so I don't know that's kind of is yeah I see heads nodding put that on an agenda for I think we don't really understand what the process would be so I think if um I think we have to discuss this at another time when I'm less tired and Brian would say this is how it would work because I don't I don't really quite see how we do it I think this is kind of what the questions I'm hearing being asked as well there like how do we do this is this on the warrant or is it just straw pole you know on the floor or you know but yeah but it's really what convinces you so if you give it to Jim and I we're going to identify the road's biggest bang for the buck what what the the best investment of your dollars is going to be in the most efficient way assuming that you don't want to pay a ton of taxes right that's that's our job right but you heard during the the resident input that that's not always the way people want to approach it and the board has so this is just a tool you could use MH in order to be more responsive rather than just efficient all the time CU some people do get left out of that equation yeah right but that's why we had that so they could petition we learned from that I thought it was perfect because it gave them the opportunity to talk to the people making that decision to influence that decision so but you're saying you want more people well you're saying you asked like well how how would we decide these parody RADS well that's really up to you like how you want to incorporate par roads into this because if you asked me I would tell you how many people live on the road how bad is the condition of the road and where those intersect is how you should do it but that's not a political answer that's a I'm not convinced we'll have the funds to do the parody roads but that's we don't want to have a vote on which road and then say we're not doing I would say again I mentioned earlier you kind of almost have to treat like opep okay explaining opep and getting other people to say gee that's something I want to spend my tax on is like we made a decision like we got to fund that thing we can't have this big overhang right so the paving is an overhang at least not the parody but the regular stuff I think we need to decide what the appropriate level of medicine is I agree I agree and it keeps control so it doesn't spiral out of control so okay okay thank you all right well that was we're doing great on timing I think yeah cuz we covered some other things already but we have a TA report to go unless there's in liaison reports um so unless there's further tea report would be the next thing Ryan go for it all right so uh speaking of podcasting tonight will be the first time that the town administrator's report is put into a podcast and then distributed to the people so we're hoping that people can sign up for our podcast subscribe the point behind this is to create content that's less than 5 minutes that people can subscribe to while they're exercising or while they're driving in order to get Town information so it won't just be the town missort that'll be every time we have one but also other segments other departments that want to put out information and we do Envision it being very similar to the town meeting video where Warren articles will come out every day or in chunks in order for people to digest that information and to receive it that way so not everyone podcasts but the people who do are are are pretty good about it and maybe there is a good segment of the population that wants to receive their information this way and we're hoping to reach them so they're going to clip this out it's no additional work for the staff it's just another way to try and reach people if it doesn't work we'll stop it if it does we'll expand it but it's worth trying to engage with the community so this is the first one so if anyone wants to chime in and have their voice be on a podcast now would be the time understanding our Personnel policies making sure that we're trained on harassment prevention and also cyber security which is a select board uh selectboard goal and a town goal so the employees will will tell you when everybody is fully trained and this will become an annual requirement uh it's been happening spotty in the years in the past but we want to make this as concrete as the evaluations process so we can continue to expand the robustness of our HR department I talked a little bit about our fall Outreach efforts myself and Travis we also scheduled an in quarterly all board meeting for November 15th this will describe the budget and the warrant process to all board chairs and allow the uh boards to speak to each other about what they've been working on that'll be this Friday attached to this report is a guidance letter that went out from the finance committee to all departments I sent that to you uh today or yesterday I believe and that was added to the packet so this is the guidance letter that comes from from your priorities through the finance committee to the Departments for submission by December 3rd so welcome to the FY 26 budget process included in your packet is a really good report by Sarah we wanted to connect you to the CCA the Community Choice aggregation program a little bit more so she's going to provide the semiannual report to you it shows that most car households are engaged in the CCA almost 85% and 92% of those folks are saving money the ones who aren't are opting into the green program which when you communicate that to people you're not you're not trying to make them spend more money but they know that because they're investing in renewals that it'll cost more on average households are saving about $10 a month which which isn't nothing so that's good included in your packet and I will ask for a motion at at the end of the report on this is a do contract to provide weight and measure Services we only have one place that has this so it's not a significant lift in Carlile the state always provided this service for us but now we have to contract with them and it is by far the most cost efficient way to do this capital projects you talked a little bit tonight about assessing our coverts there's 150 to be assessed in Carlile each one will come with significant amount of information in pictures they're doing about 50 in a day and should be done by the end of this week this will result in a program similar to the road maintenance plan that scores each covert and allows the select board and the staff to assess them and create a 10-year maintenance plan that will be incorporated into the larger Capital plan this is all being integrated into the town GIS system as well just like road maintenance the Cory Auditorium lighting project if you look later in the packet you can see a picture of the beautiful lights and you'll definitely see at a town meeting the lighting project is now complete we've talked about Jeremy a lot but the project wouldn't have happened without him and uh it's a really big win for the town elevator maintenance has also begun a significant part of this year's investigation of the elevators and what will be a major item in next year's budget which is the fixing of all three elevators we're trying to group them together because in aggregate it would be much cheaper but it's still over 300,000 per elevator or million doll project we've talked a lot about the Greeno Barn that's done I went and visited the dog park and the contractors last week the fence is up the grass is growing it is not quite complete yet but should be done in two to three weeks and uh we'll get to see our our dog residents enjoying that dog park hopefully by by uh the holiday season and then the fire department has installed the bay heers that they included in their Capital plan a lot of credit goes to Lieutenant David Newman for coordinating that project okay quick update on building construction projects the library building committee has agreed to a a proposal with CMS and we agreed on contract language and we'll be signing that this week the same thing with the police station renovation so that proposal that you saw we agreed on uh adding language to the scope to protect the town and that will begin with a coordination meeting coming in the next week or so with our OPM connecting with our designer and then finishing the permitting process also then starting the bidding M police station also do they have all three yes TMS has all three all three so we talked about the fire station the fire station will planning will begin at your next meeting Neil is going to come in and talk to you about how he can meet your goals and understanding your goals and helping you to select a designer that matches your goals he was going to go over his whole initial program plus his proposal for you to approve at your next meeting so that'll get started as well some upcoming disc discussion points uh Town Hall hours and the town clerk appointment continue to be items climate resilient policies presentation from the town planner and the sustainability coordinator Brian will be here next meeting for your tax classification hearing to close out the tax rate and there is a meeting scheduled with representative catalo newly reelected on December 10th to discuss Town priorities so we're asking you to prepare questions in advance U maybe we can discuss that at our next meeting so that we're ready for that meeting with the representative we have four sign approvals and Banners that all match your policies in this report and then I have a little bit of Staff recognition I want to get through here so we'll move on to that I especially want to thank Rosemary Harville and Alana Lynch for their hard work during the 2024 State elections one of the most difficult elections not just because of national politics or whatever it's also because of the intricacies of the early voting and the mailin voting and making sure under significant scrutiny that it was all done correctly it was also small army of volunteers who dedicated a tremendous amount of time during uh their free time in order to run these elections and make sure it went smoothly we did have a couple comments about how how it moved through here for the new town clerk how we can make it more comfortable and more expansive but overall people were happy with the flow we certified the election pretty quickly and had the results out to the community that same night so very impressed with that uh smooth and successful day which which which could have been a very difficult one Carol and I from the CHS would like to recognize Mariam and Kathleen who were able to coordinate the annual health fair for the CHS was well attended over 100 attendees with several new vendors and uh community members sent us input saying what a great job Kathleen and miam did we always get that feedback on them so I wanted you to hear it and then three recognition of three super volunteers here in Carlile so Mary Z dedicated her free time to taking items from the swap Shack and trying to sell them and repurpose them in order to help the DPW in her words it wasn't as successful as as she thought it would be she only earned $45 but I think it was great that she tried she wanted to help alleviate some budget problems and solve some sustainability problems in the swap Shack great and I think that's great uh great example of volunteerism Warren Lyman who you all know collaborated with me dozens of hours on the cranberry bog hydrologic study and the Greeno hydrologic study that's going before the kcom remember that was a big issue in the summer in the spring uh we put a working group together to create consensus on these uh rfps but Warren was really spending a lot of time he always does he's very thoughtful I only stand understand about half what he's saying but I make sure it's incorporated into the uh into the document and protecting the town and then Scott Evans for those of you who went to the Revolutionary Ward marketer's rededication I mean he was like ready to march on Lexington and Conquer in his uniform he coordinated a tremendous event event honoring 20 Revolutionary War veterans I learned a ton including that the uh dentists that I go to the Carlile dentist Associates used to be home to a very famous caran the ceremonies were very well done and we're going to make sure that all the the data they collected gets onto the website for historical reference good um and then lastly Debbie Bentley put together a team to place poppies on the town common this year as she always does this year's dedication is in tribute of the pending to 2 50th celebration at the Battle of Lexington and conquered and the annual poppy display is a reminder of the sacrifices made in World War I and it's a great local tradition that Debbie spearheads every year she promotes and I I just think it's a great thing both as a veteran and as a staff member lastly I'd like to recognize um eight carile employees for their military service so James Hall Matthew herwick who is a firefighter not the deputy fire chief that's a mistake I made that we fixed publicly Steven Frey who's a firefighter Andre molo who's our police chief Dean Barbara who's a police officer Bill Burgess police officer Tom whan is a traffic officer and Karen Tyler who is a veteran services director uh all served so happy Veterans Day to them because Ryan mlan yeah yeah we don't we don't put our own names in things um the Royal Wei we use though there's a few there's a few dates of interest it's collect myself there's a few dates of Interest here in the report and then future agenda for you to review uh just again highlight the the CCA data that that Sarah aggregated for you give us feedback on that U make sure that's what you want it to be and um if you would be willing to vote on the weights and measures contract that would be very helpful yeah I have a motion page 62 what is this you want me to do the motion you have it up already I've got it move to ratify the contract agreement for weights and measure Services between the town of Carlile and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts division of standards and further to authorize the Town Administrator to sign the contract and make minor administrative changes in consultation with Town Council second and Ryan what was just at first yeah so you know the stickers you see at gas stations where it says this was okay this was this is an honest assessment of how much this costs well that's required of any scale or anything that dispenses so this I think make sure your your meat is weighed correctly at first so we used to have a cabinet here that had the weights used they went um so but we we used to do this in town I mean how much is the training to do this because we have the weights and if it's just one I'm just wondering no I'm just well in comparison to what we're spending for this I'm just wondering we spend $109 for this yeah and so what is the training cost for for getting a staff member to be able to do it and then that's $109 you know times 10 years it doesn't get spent you trying to send me to training do you want me to do the I think it would be a conflict if I did it actually well anyway I'm just I can get that data for you if you I'm just it's just a question yeah does it make sense to do that that's a question is a question just does it make sense to do that we need to vote on this don't we yes we do I'm sorry thank you all right so uh and the discussion all in favor hi n opposed all right Mr chair pending any questions that is my report uh thank you lot you good so I just wanted understand so the that report which is recorded is now going to be turned into a podcast that somebody can listen to Y but you just it's your voice it's from the recording got it is it edited how does somebody can we put a filter a Tik Tok filter on it like chipmunk or something just here run it two times a holiday version yeah and our um and how is one going to know that they could listen to this podcast it's available so if you go to a a podcast subscriber on on Apple or Spotify and you click subscribe it'll just pop up in your feed but you have to say subscribe to what what do we call Car Town of carile uh or some catch your name that people will help me create mosquito land yeah huh okay city of the woods pardon well the house in the woods I mean the the city in the wood city city in the woods well that's the the website but actually the C discussion said it was city of the woods yeah right so the CMS discussion next week are we looking are they they're going to have a number for that agreement so they are going to price what it would cost to get the town meeting and then they're going to cost also after town meeting with a couple contingencies so and you're working with them on that number now and so for do we want to commit arpa funds next week to do that corre because we'll just the goal at the next meeting will just be to close out the ARP St it's two you say next it's two weeks two weeks sorry next meeting next meeting okay okay and I would suggest that well this is for next week but that we commit the arpa funds to uh Town building opms yeah and the two contracts identifi would be police and fire so Fire doesn't pass a town meeting you can transfer the rest to police we'll just touch Spas offline and get that all up okay other questions or on reports and I'd love to hear from everyone because we have some extra time I have one from MBTA communities yeah uh first of all I want to remind everybody that there's going to be a second open house it's going to be largely a redo of the first open house we wanted to be sure that people had an opportunity to come so that if they couldn't make one of the dates and times they could make the other ones this one's going to be on Saturday this coming Saturday at 9:00 to noon um and I also wanted to alert the you know this board that we're a co-parent so to speak of this project it's not just the planning board's baby um we're a co-parent and I mean the select board is the select board yes um she looking for attendance from well yes um but also um down the road and you know Julie is here luckily um we're going to have to do a little minuette uh with the planning board about they're going to come and ask us to put it on the warrant and we're going to have to ask them to open a hearing um in order to to it going on the warrant prior to is it prior to getting it on the warrant or is it after it's on the warrant it's votes to tell you about it so that you know about it for the warrant right and then the select word votes refer it back to the planning court go ahead have a public hearing so it's like an like an agreement that you're going to put another warrant yeah okay so so I just wanted to look deep to that so that there's no confusion and if you have question questions about it let us know in advance so we can get those answers so that then we can explain that better to the public as well and I think I saw something in the mosquito but I don't remember for sure What's the timing on the working group submitting a recommendation to the planning board I'm um having them Target December 9th to submit actually working on it right now their recommendations to the planning board and then planning board would have a couple meetings like December one in January to kind of talk about things and decide to vote to send it to select board and then planning board and SEL board to have back toback meetings so I'm going to work with with Ryan it on the agenda um so um then the select board would on maybe under January 14th meeting like review what's submitted to you or or not you can really it doesn't you don't have to really review anything it's you could just be like okay great we received it and turn it around and tell the plan where it just keep going um but a vote is re and then planning board will take it from there and work with the subcommittee and have a few meetings where they're discussing language and kind of really getting the zoning uh um jelling around the zoning language um and then open a hearing at some point I'm thinking March um so we'll have a few meetings to figure it out and then the hearing will be March and April um we may have to be careful though because of the if we closing the warrant early uh that and because and needing to do this Outreach hope that doesn't put more pressure hearing part of Outreach or the hearing is part of before you well see that's what I don't know where that was will fit in now with this new thing that we talked about a placeholder and then the warrant report and the Motions are where the language gets finalized is that not correct that's correct okay um and I I guess I would also then this is just me talking not even as a member of the um MBTA Community but as a member of the planning board and where I think our responsibility might delaying as well and why why I say we're sort of a co-parent we have heard you know the the community has heard input that say you know well well so what if happens you know what would happen if we just decided you know to tell the yes um the state to go punt um and I guess what I'm a little con concerned about is and I think we we need to have that discussion first before any recommendations come or um I think we we we have to also kind of know where our position what our position is um well it's also colored by the SJC decision which one know one that would be right that you you gave me an idea you think it's that I heard in early October was maybe you might know by February so in that time frame yeah well I guess you know for all I know the planning board could just say you know get get a recommendation from the MBTA committee and say we don't like any of these and let's just not comply and I I guess the question is where does that decision really lay does it lay with them or does it lay with us and when when do we um I think connect would be for one board on its own to say that to endanger the town which has to then you know Marshal up legal resources I don't think they would my guess is they don't have that Authority well I think that discussion should be had with them right we should before it happens yes and it's possible that we should be there on December 9th when the MBTA committee makes our presentation so that we get it concurrently it's also possible that that comes out at town meeting anyway stands up and just says you don't get there without having played this I agree I okay so that's good so we should put that we should note that okay so that's what I wanted to December very okay are there any Scott uh Travis and I attended a joint meeting of the conquered and Carlile Finance committees and school committees just after our last meeting on On th Thursday of that week um you can give your two cents I mean the the goal was for the the two Finance committees um to essentially get together and and work in cooperation and better Communications um with regard to the the region budget um with the added wrinkle that this year our town meeting will be first given their their later process so uh they just talked at a high level about what that's going to look like and what's required um so hopefully will'll see more communication and coordination um including a single presentation probably to both committees rather than having Lori Hunter go between two meetings and and and talk to them and then talk to us um so we'll we'll we'll see where that leads um I am meeting with the uh Carlile public school committee tomorrow just to give a brief overview of the discussion we had as a select board around our budget goals and the and the budget letter and the and the budget process um just to set some high level expectations as they go into their budget discussions for next year and I'm not sure if Jim is presenting an initial budget tomorrow or not um but I'll be there uh to just give our perspective on it prior to his presentation so good more to come on that great I wanted to thank everyone on the board for going on our second offsite to uh see the DPW facility I thought that was helpful for everyone want to see um you've seen through email we're scheduling another one to go to the school on December 5th um unfortunately I don't think Barney's going to be available to make that but um that looks like it's going to be a lengthy one because it's early in the morning till up to 11:30 or something yeah it it is so it's yep yeah yeah we don't have to go to it all if we can't if you can't no but um I I thought that there two components to it Jim had wanted to us to see kind of the services and in the school um and I I would also like and I mentioned him to have us review the facility because some of that is kind of Falls to us um as now we've tried to combine our facility management into one department so and it all come Falls to our budget for the town um but back to the DPW um right after we had our tour there was an MFC meeting um where we had a presentation from lero Hill which is the consultant that is hired to kind of evaluate that and I I I don't know I I if I'm going too far but I wanted to at least tell you that that those you know on a preliminary basis that information has now come out and it's a lot more expensive than I think we had thought um going into it and so we're going to have to you know kind of factor that into how we think about about budgeting going forward yeah I read that I skimmed the report and it was expensive both ways that was the no matter which way you went it was it was expensive right right um so I think there'll be more to follow on that but uh just to be aware that it seems like everything that we're looking at is going up in price and and um we just are going to have to make some difficult decisions going forward so on that happy note is there anybody else that has anything okay I'm take a motion to adjourn oh communion input sorry forgot about that is there anyone else night Mark Mark's leaving and thank you for working the um yeah the um election all right any anyone online community input all right seeing none go Motion to adjourn all right so moved all in favor hi I all right thank you very good