good evening Welcome to the select board for Tuesday April 15 2025 We are um having a meeting tonight I'm going to quickly run through the agenda and then we'll have a we'll see if we have a quorum Hopefully we get actually David's will
come in a second Um we have a quorum actually Um so we're going to start with community input Then we uh will move to the use of the town property policies discussion This relates to requests from uh a church in Carile and and really
relates to all the churches in Carlile Um 7:25 we're going to work on the approval of the grant of a conservation restriction and then at 7:30 we're going to have a joint meeting with the safety committee to discuss the complete streets grant recommendation 8:30 we're
going to go over the annual town meeting and annual town warrant election warrant approval We have to get that done tonight Um and that'll have an in-depth discussion on a number of issues Uh then we're going to uh 9:30 discuss the town
administrator employment agreement I think we're resolved on that Uh and then 9:40 approved spending in the green cemetery Uh we're going to review that and then town administer to report and then we have some uh confirmations of
the land stewardship committee's false garden manager then warrant approval leaison reports and committee community input at the end So the way we start these meetings is we do offer community uh anyone in the community the opportunity to comment on anything um
pertaining generally to the community um Carlile but uh and I generally allow one to two minutes um per comment I will plan to offer u opportunities for public comment in the later section of the um
joint meeting with the safety committee um when we discuss the complete streets Um so is there are there anyone in the audience who has a comment that they may want to make at this point should I do this this thing now hold on Okay let's
wait till uh is there anyone online who would like to make a comment all right seeing none um I'm going to move on I think Scott has a proclamation here You want to tell us about that Scott thank you Travis Um I was uh I
wanted to present to the select board um as we approach the 250th the following proclamation that was uh given to the town of Carile from the town of Madison Connecticut Both myself and David Modell have ties to Madison We have family in Madison And the historical society is
also in Madison is celebrating the 250th as well They've asked residents to hang two lights in their windows on Friday night in honor of the one if by land two if by sea um famous you know directive I don't know what it saying but um I won't
read the whole thing but this is the proclamation and it's recognized in the town of Carile Massachusetts in its 250th anniversary celebration of the American Revolution Whereas the people of Carile have worked together over the centuries to create a community that values its rich history strong sense of
civic pride and commitment to preserving the character of its town And whereas this 250th anniversary provides an opportunity for the residents of Carlile to reflect on the enduring spirit of their community honor its heritage and look forward to a future filled with promise and continued growth And whereas
the 250th year celebration of America to commemorate the period from 1775 to 2025 which was a time of colonial history and the birth of a new nation dedicated to the ideals of liberty equality natural and civil rights and responsible citizenship Now therefore the Historic
Society of Madison Connecticut does hereby proclaim 2025 as the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution and urge all residents organizations and visitors to join in recognizing and celebrating the significant milestone in the town's
history And that's from the Madison Historical Society So we thank them for this generous That's nice Send him a Yeah we'll have to send him a little note of thanks Absolutely Then my mom will be pleased Okay Is she on the historic is she on the
Yeah she's on his There you go There you go Oh mom But they've been they've been feeding um the plans and it's it's a reminder that not just conquered and Carile and Lexington in the battleground uh or the the battle road towns but all across New England
you know people are looking to this celebration hopefully attending the celebration and celebrating the 250th Great Thank you Um one thing I neglected was to uh make sure we had a quorum I think I said it but we do have a quorum There four members present David Modell
is absent but he will be joining I think remotely around 7:30 um is his plan All right Um but all others are in attendance in person All right So now we'll move on to uh the uh use of town
property policies discussion Um this originated really with and and I'll just walk the public through it but um we have a town policy for how the the Rotary is used We implemented that several it's probably six months ago um
that we reviewed it and implemented it and it it codifies kind of what uh the select board thought how it should be used that is published in our packet And we have a process in place whereby
people who want to use the town uh Rotary to put something on it a sign or or um I I think this is primarily signage fill out a form that's in the on the website and that goes and is reviewed Um it was reviewed by the town
administrator and it's my understanding that the town administrator um denied the uh permit request from the cong the Carile Congregational Church for a sign um that the text of the sign was join us
for Easter Good Friday and then it has the date and then um congregational egg Easter egg hunt and it gives the date and Great Brick Farm Easter Sunday providing the date Carell Congregational Church So um and and I you know I think
it's the town administrator had the judgment to review it but as part of that policy he typically um runs it by me the chair or whoever the chair is and says you know that okay And I reviewed it and said you know I'm not sure I
agree with you know my judgment was I didn't necessarily agree with the town administrator's decision on that And so as a result it gets thrown to the select board So um tonight I'd like to and we have the congregational church here if we have particular questions but I think
as a board we should um just review that because I think it's helpful for the town administrator and for our town to understand the policy going forward Um I'd start by actually just kind of reading the quick the policy the the on
private signs This is the placement of private signs on town property And this um we have uh in section 3.1 it says private signs are defined as signs representing events or announcements of individual residents or organizations of
Carile or affiliated with residents of Carile Signs will generally be limited to 2 feet by 3 feet in size properly mounted so as not to blow away and not containing inappropriate images obscene language or personal attacks on another individual or organization campaign
signs for individuals running for any lo any office local state or federal And signs representing commercial interests are not permitted to be posted on town property That's um pretty much it And then it goes through the process for approval which is just that you submit
uh the request and the request is then reviewed and then um one week in advance to the select board or town minister specifying the desired time and display and all that was submitted appropriately So given that and I think that was all in your packet Does the do you have any
questions on this or um thoughts thought Okay Okay I think our churches in town are organizations of Carile and are affiliated with residents of Carile and as such should be able to put private signs out
on town property On town property Mr just a chance to the um first of all I'm not anti-Ester I want that for my my professional and my mom as well Make sure she knows that So the um the the reason why we flagged this
was um so if you use the political signs for example if the Republican party had a spaghetti dinner they could advertise that But if they said vote Republican we would bring it to the board We wouldn't necessarily deny it We would just say it doesn't fit within the parameters of your your policy So in this particular instance if the Easter egg hunt was
advertised we feel like that would definitely have met your policy But since it advertised a onland a um a service a religious service that we thought you had to at least discuss it And I thought that was wholly appropriate actually because it's harder if you approve everything It's I think
harder for us to to then change that undo it And and so your judgment at the time and that's your judgment you made a call and I'm not second guessing Well I am I am second guessing your call but I think you're you're at the time you were acting reasonably and said you know that
was your thing but I said "No this is something that the board should review." So that's where we are from Unfortunately from what I hear and I I see the pastor Joel Joel's here Um I and I don't know if you want to add anything but I did hear from um one of the one of
your staff members or something that unfortunately now because of the timing of this you couldn't print it anyway but the the thing that has come up that was requested is that you'll also be having a Bible study camp I think it's called
it's a yeah BBS Bible camp Yeah Right So that's what Yeah That's what that would be Right and and she had said "Well could we advertise that?" And um again I don't know I viewed that as more of a community announcement I mean sure there is a you know it's affiliated with a
religious organization but it is an organization in the community It's a nonprofit And you know you don't have to it's not saying you will you know this is the way or anything like that It's just saying this is an announcement for something that community members may want to be interested in attending And
it's just advertising that Um do I am I remembering correctly that we have actually allowed a sign about the camp in the past right previous years Yeah that's what I thought Yeah of course we didn't have a policy at that point We're trying to understand what our own policy
is but Right No but I'm just saying there there is some history here Um right Yeah we um we do have different policies for different things for the public We do have a flag policy that I think is a little more stringent and that was based on some of the flag
policy that that happened on the the common in Boston frankly um where they were allowing lots of different flags and then one group one organization was not allowed to fly and they went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and they said if if you're going to allow some you got to allow all and
we are allowed you know we've in our policy limited it to community organizations within the town of Carile So this isn't allowing any church anywhere to come in or any organization but it's it's this is our community and we're trying to support people in our
community So um so I would look for Oh if there's any other person in Yeah Come on up and introduce yourself This is the way we have to do it Sorry Yeah Come on up
Immediate regret I was just stay your street Just right there It covers everything It's just awful So I was just thinking because I just had to get two signs for or a sign for the
Carile Historical Society and they're only putting two signs up now So people are you know vying for their time Oh you mean for the Rotary for the Rotary Yes So I was just thinking if we had we have
three churches in town Um what if they all made the request and how do you choose that was the only thing That's a good question We may have to I can tell you how we do choose So the reason the reason for the the two signs is safety
so that we don't clutter the rotary Uh two was decided to be safer than than three I don't I don't know if that's scientific but that's what we feel No I understand So it's first come first serve So the first two people to apply would reserve it But if there is conflicting time and we had approved a really long time for someone we do
negotiate with people and say "Hey can we do two days here or three days here?" You'd be surprised how many sign negotiations uh Gretchen does in a year Yeah I've worked with her Can you just tell us your name i'd like to know Okay Thank you Thank you Great Is there
anyone else in the public that has any comment on this thoughts i want to add anything You all set very just want to say thank you for even being willing to discuss this Oh it's important This is the policy stuff that we really are trying
to spend more time doing and less time doing some of the things work All right But we need a uh I guess the question is um are we going to split it so fine that you know if it's a service no But if
it's a you know to me well that's what I think if it were a church from another town and they're advertising their services I don't think I would be happy about it But if it's our town's churches
um and serving our residents I think they fit under this And it's not um it doesn't contain in inappropriate images It does not obtain you know it doesn't have obscene language It has no personal attacks on another individual
organization I don't see why we don't allow it It seems to me it's pretty easy Yeah Yeah And I'm comfortable with what we've got here It seems to me that that uh we leave it as is and that and the other aspect is these signs have
been posted in the past So at some level I I also do give some extra consideration to grandfathering signs that have been used in the past and haven't haven't created any issue And so I think even just from that standpoint I think it's fair to to keep allowing it
Um because we may get we may get future requests that um you know we do have to make a different decision on I don't know I can't predict But I think in this case it's a sign that's been used in the past I I'm not aware of any issues of it It's a the congregational church is a
community space and a community organization So I support everything we're saying Great Well let's have a motion to do that just so it's formalized that we're allowing that we're overturning that decision or whatever however we should phrase it I'm
not going to make the motion Do we have a motion in the packet no you don't Okay Well um perhaps should we um what if we what if I move to um allow the congregational church located at
uh 147 School Street Thank you 147 School Street to um use uh the Rotary or other town property to um uh put up signs as they have in the past for some of their activities Sure I
would could I amend that you can say the all all three or you can name the churches but you know the churches within the town of Carile just so it's clear and that way going forward I think the town administrator has a sense of what our policy is or how we interpret that policy that we wrote Okay I would
not name the churches I would say church religious organizations Religious religious organizations Let me try again Good idea I move that um we allow the religious uh institutions in Carlile to
um use town property for uh posting uh signs about their services and activities Yeah Not to be not to nitpick should we just say something about for special events and and holidays versus Yeah every We
don't want to sign every week I don't think that's perfect I mean I think the intent is like Easter Yeah Okay The intent is if you have Okay for special events Geez I don't I don't think I get it I'm putting a billboard out They're allowed
to post um on town property Uh signs for special events and special events and service or services for special events Yeah Okay Which just special events Special events
Okay I think that's good All right Great Yeah Is there a second second All right I mean any further discussion Okay Don the dawn you know service is that's a special event you know So I think that's totally I think until it
becomes a problem we have to revisit it Fine That'll be your problem So mine Right Okay All um if we're done discussing all in favor i None opposed All right Thank you very much Appreciate it And it's helpful for us to clarify our own policies here Policies are not
perfect Sometimes they need interpreting I'm a big Easter fan Joel Big Easter All right Um so we have approval of a grant for the conferation restriction
Can we move on to that at this point it's not the other Okay It's page 16 right yep Um you all had a chance to look at it or read it I think there was a change in our latest packet with an additional
and Steve are you here to talk about it a little okay Why don't you come forward please and introduce yourself and hi I'm Steve Tobin Live in Partridge Lane and a member of the board of CCF So this is a project we've had in
the works for a number of years takes a long time to get CRS approved through the state these days So it actually went in in January last year Yeah And finally made it through the approval process recently Um it's a
about 4 acre parcel It's on West Street um north of Actton Street kind of between Actton Street and 225 It's on the west side of the road It's a big open field um kind of preserves the rural nature of Carlile and it's got a
beautiful stone mall running through the middle of it and along the street Excuse me Mr Town Administrator Do you think we might be able to post the map sure It's in the packet page 45 at least of mine Okay
Sorry Steve Didn't mean to interrupt That's fine It's good to have the map While we're waiting for that Steve Um Oh perfect Yep So that yellow outlined lot is the lot It has a number of features that
make it worth conserving The u the open field in the front is prime farmland according to the state's rating system It's also habitat for an endangered species Um in the back of the property it overlaps some of the
um well protection areas for public water supply wells in Actton And as part of the CR we also made a provision that if the town of Carile ever needed a public water supply well it could be allowed on this
property So kind of thinking ahead for that Um it's just a beautiful piece of property and we'd like to keep it open as a you know remnant of Carlile's rural past and kind of a nice vista coming into town on West Street
Is there any any further correspondence Ryan on this or nothing else this is a form I mean this is really a formality that the select board has to sign off on this because it's gone from the owners through CCF and then gone to the state
and well the state is the last signature So after us endorse it then it goes to the state Great The state will not do it unless you endorse it So you must or not right and I did talk with Dave Modell individually who was not here and he was supportive of it for what that's worth
Do I have a couple questions yeah First of all CCF is going to be the one that maintains it We'll hold it right we'll hold it and maintain it So right now um Chris Harter lives across the street has been mowing that field for years and years and he plans to continue doing
that Um so the CR does not require the owner to do that but CCF can come in and maintain the field if the owner is not maintaining it I guess what I I'm looking for is an assurance that the town will never have to spend money to
maintain this property It's not town land it's private land Okay And is 25 uh-4 buildable is there possibility um the next the next lot That's a nice the one that's closer to Aken Street Yeah it is buildable It is Okay So that might
just end up being just a little parcel We would like to get that one in conservation as Uh-huh Okay All right Those are my questions All right Um seems pretty straightforward
Okay Any public comment on it seeing none Okay I've got a motion Yep Move to approve the grant of conservation restriction of lot 5 West Street Carile Mass 01741 and approximately 4.2 2 acre parcel more or
less described in a deed recorded at Middle Sex County Northern District Registry of Deeds at book 30620 page 118 from granters Wyatt Garfield Jr and Rachel B Garfield to
Grant Carla Conservation Foundation Inc Pursuant to Mass General Laws chapter 184 section 31 through33 for the purpose of ensuring the premises will be maintained in perpetuity for conservation purposes as
described in the grant of conservation restriction Second Any further discussion from the board okay seeing none I'll take a voice vote All in favor i I And none opposed So thank you very much All right We'll sign off on that and get it to you All
right ASAP Thanks for the good work Thanks I did forget to put this out This is a public signin sheet I saw it in the packet there I just noticed it There's a public You want to just pass it down
There's a public cake No put it next to the cake And then there's a public cake back there So when you're signing in please take a piece of cake before you leave tonight Or if you want you would just sign so we know Uh I'm getting challenged on it
Um is that yours Ryan is there anything we I really want to start at 7:30 because people may roll in for this important hearing we're having so is there anything in the TA report or does the board have any Well you want to jump ahead and do the
um we could do one of the motions that's um coming late like we could if we wanted we could uh approve the land stewardship committee which is the confirm land yeah false garden manager 10 Yeah Yeah Okay that'd be good Maybe
uh want me to do that managers Okay Have you got that up or shall I do it i got it You got it Okay Move to appoint Jonathan Deac 130 Oaknull as manager of the Foss Farm Community Garden and George Romanes Romansky at 14 Ember Lane
as assistant manager of the Foss Farm Community Garden and Thomas Heden 98 East Riding Drive as an assistant manager of the Foss Farm Community Garden and Dennis Leeb at 288 Maple Street as assistant manager of the Foss
Farm Community Garden Second Okay Um Ryan is there any other things that we should know about this background on the on the floss farm manager i know you've talked Yeah So on the unfortunate news of of Jack passing meant that this
this position was left open So Jonathan is was comfortable serving as the interim He did not really want to serve as as the manager but he also doesn't want the community gardens to to fall apart and he has the most institutional memory So he's asking that these assistant managers help him this year
hoping that he can get a permanent manager next year but he did say he would stay on We're going to hold him to it until uh there's a permanent appointment Are these lifetime appointments you you go out feet first because there's no Yes we'll enforce it All lifetime appointments
Okay Well we have a motion and a second Um any further discussion by the board seeing none we'll take a voice vote All in favor i I Okay great Um we have
you could well might discussion or maybe Ryan has it So you can take the you could you could take up the zeroturn standup mower if you wanted Oh sure That's uh item number seven Yep
Page 174 Uh I got that I move to approve spending up to $8,500 from the Green Cemetery Lichfield Cemetery and Thomas Green public grounds trust funds to purchase a zeroturn
standup mower for maintenance of Carile Cemeteries Second Okay this was kind of interesting to realize we had these funds Yes So this is the great work of Sandy and Kelly who've taken directive from you and the finance committee to hunt down funds
that are not of tax impact So these three funds the Lichfield Cemetery Green Cemetery and Green public grounds funds are available for cemetery maintenance As you can see the expendable portion as vetted by our finance team is
11,081 So if you approved 8,500 we we estimate or we know that more will be a little over 8,000 We'll only use what's necessary and then the rest will continue to acrue for future use So this was on the capital plan and taken off to preserve some of that free cash for
future years We think it's a good solution but it does require your approval And this is different than the other screen cemetery fund the perpetual fund Yes So that's going to be a a good discussion in the the next select board meeting
Spoiler alert there's no money in that fund to use currently Aware of that All right And did I did the motion say yeah it does say 8500 8500 Yep Good You've got it ready to go
The purchase purchase Oh Jim will buy Yeah he'll he'll go get it as soon as you approve it Has the cemetery task force look at this at all or is this outside of their purview currently outside of their purview And this is recommended from Kelly and Sandy My my only reason I'm asking this
question is to make sure that there's not a need that would outweigh this around the corner that that we could use these same funds for I'm not saying there is I'm just asking the question There's no need that would outweigh it No Okay Okay
Okay Well we have a motion and a second Um any further discussion okay Seeing none all in favor i I none opposed All right 500 Okay Well we're getting close
That was at 7:30 729 I think I think we're close enough Do you want to come forward Laura and open your meeting and we can get the ball rolling i'm going to come up here We'll get set up Great Looks like we have four of the six of us I don't think we're going to get Valerie
but I do think we're going to get Sasha Yeah because if you have a quorum then you should Yeah Well we only have six So we have four Yeah we already have a So everyone knows what we're doing We're having the joint meeting with the safety
committee and we're going to be discussing the complete streets grant recommendation Um and we'll be going through a presentation and then after the presentation I will open it up to public comment um regarding this So just
so you know All right great So let's call to order the meeting of the safety committee Yep We've got Glenn and Brian and Kate And I'm Laura Harrison of North Road I'm Brian King of Common Creek Street Glenn Reed of Robin Street
Perfect Okay We put some presentation materials together so we can just start walking through this Um I'll start by saying the safety committee is here to help the select board by making recommendations about traffic and pedestrian safety issues We are extremely grateful for the opportunity
to work on the complete streets program um and help with the proposal process I think if there are two takeaways from all of this is that we have a list of fantastic projects here All of which would be just fantastic for Carile like really beneficial for Carile And what we
also have is extremely strong signal that we should be finding other ways to pay for projects like this to fund sidewalking projects because the push for better walkability is extremely significant It's really
um click forward So a little bit of background information Complete streets This is a mass grant program that provides up to $500,000 every four years Um in their view a complete street is one that provides safe and accessible options for
all travel modes That's walking biking transit and vehicles for people of all ages and abilities We Carile as a town did all the pre-work prior to this effort to go through tiers one and two So we are a tier three town now with a prioritization plan Um the estimates in
our plan are from 2019 In 2019 we received it looks like $250,000 worth of funding We took an additional $50,000 in chapter 90 funds and we applied those towards three projects that were on the list Um as of now four projects the top four projects
are complete So the safety committee took up the effort to look at the remaining 21 projects um to see like what what is what makes sense for this year because we are eligible again for the full $500,000 And the application deadline that we've been working towards is May
1st Anything on missing questions so far this is a little bit of an eye chart and I apologize for the size of the font here but we wanted to just talk about the selection criteria a little bit I have highlighted a few points Some of these are you know working for us and
some of them are working against us The the safety committee our goal was to maximize the likelihood of receiving the full award amount Um so some of the things we're looking at fulfilling a network gap a project that's located in a high crash area one that provides
safety or accessibility to school and is within a mile of the school one that improves conditions for people with disabilities and then of course things like project readiness and funding eligibility Those are the types of things we considered when we were looking at these projects
So we as a committee spent several months familiarizing ourselves with the projects on the list We felt like our main role here is to provide the select board with an updated prioritization plan Um there's a bunch of reasons for that Actually Brian's going to talk through that in a minute
Um it's a little confusing So as we go through the projects we kind of maintained the original ranking numbers because there's some semantic value to them We started referring to projects like oh project 18 because it was number 18 on the original list So we held on to those numbers We're now using them sort of like IDs and we've just reordered
them for you Our recommendation is to work on projects in this new order Obviously that's totally the select board's perview and that's why we're here We did not have updated cost estimates for these until the end of last week Now that those have started coming in the big open question is
whether there is additional funding available because I think that's going to play a big role in determining which projects we actually pick um for the proposal And so there's tons more detail coming up about the specific projects Um I just this is just some background information about like what we're
delivering today Does that make sense Okay So Brian's going to talk through the rubric a little bit Yeah So the so I'm a my background I'm a pediatrician and a health services researcher and I use econom sort of quantitative econometrics
in in my uh academic work So I use that lens to inform how we approach this So we essentially created a a benefit rubric or a benefit score where we went through each project um had time amongst our group to discuss the project with
the focus on we decided on two major areas of focus One is on the impact which um spoke to some of the aspects of the grant that she laid out Um things like um sort of how much how how many people use that space um already Um whether it's space that's used by
multiple um groups of people like pedestrians and bicycles Um how it would connect between two spaces that aren't currently connected Sort of all of that fit into impact And then because we felt like we were the safety committee and that and our main role was to focus on safety not just for this grant but for
the town as a whole we also um had a separate score for whether that whether the site um constituted an existing safety concern that we felt like a project there would help ameliate that Um we took those two we essentially scored each project based on um both of
those um measures and took the average of our scores amongst our group for each project and that created a um essentially like a benefit score for each project Um the goal and you'll see um later on on some of the slides is
then to combine that with cost estimate um to create sort of a a either a cost per benefit if you imagine it or if you flip it around a benefit per cost to kind of get the most bang for our buck How can we maximize the benefit based on our scoring system while staying within
the $500,000 budget um and um picking projects um that benefit that maximize that score um we we discussed other aspects of prioritization that I don't think fit nicely into that rubric and
and some of these are are listed here Um things like u a lot of the projects are intertwined somewhat So there are projects that you can find that are regional within one area where whereby one project might benefit it from another project or in the flip side some projects might create problems in other
areas that aren't already present Right if you make a sidewalk to a street that doesn't have a crosswalk you're actually bringing more people to the street which would then create a safety problem unless you invest in the crosswalk as well Um and those things are hard to incorporate in the rubric Um uh and then
we've also sort of in um we we considered impact ourselves but then also we've had a series of opportunities for the public to also incorporate their feedback and and sort of um uh insight
Um any other comments who has to say we um obviously our safety committee includes you know representatives from the fire police department DPW Um so we also had you know sort of insight into both the safety aspects about you know um from from fire and police about where
accidents occur and and what kind of issues um are at each site And then DPW also sort of provided comments on feasibility and what you know the project would would look like Um which we also had information based on the last prioritization plan for that as well
I think that's the only other thing I might say is that ADA compliance is built into all of these tier three projects So that means in an example like where you're constructing a sidewalk you're constructing a five foot wide sidewalk And so we tried to be really intentional about where that kind of kind kind of accessibility is most
urgent and most important Yeah So just to ask so those are sidewalks definitely not the kind of paths that we have throughout town Yeah I think like this gets confusing because sometimes we just call things pathways But I think you should be picturing like an asphalt 5
foot wide smooth like you couldn't put the sort of crackle gravel on top of it and still be compliant as far as we understand with a curve Correct And so this is a very expensive way It's not just sort of laying down a new a new you know way to travel which also speaks to
the fact that some of these projects might be very important but this funding might not be the best use for those projects to your because if some projects might be better served by a path that is gravel then this just isn't the right grant for those projects Yeah
I would that makes sense that makes sense Yeah there's so much compromise I think a lot of us would the safety committee would say that ADA compliance and these measures would b be beneficial everywhere but if you have to compromise we looked for spots where this type of accessibility and I think that's why you'll find a lot of the projects that we're picking they're around the town
common they're in the center of town they're near the school and the the curb is is part of the ADA compliance as well Yes we can look at some So I took the exact when we go through these in detail I have the exact language that the engineers put together for each of these projects and none of that has changed
just the ordering Yeah And it doesn't though also and it sounds like in some cases it requires ramps Correct Yes You would need any any place the sidewalk ends You'd have to be able to access it in in a compliant way It starts Okay And
just because you're at the end of the slide um you have who had a say So can you just talk about your process for for a minute just so we understand how you I think we've been looking at these projects for almost 5 months Yeah about five months Um we first just wanted to
get familiar with them because so I've been in town about five years It sort it varies across the committee We wanted to just go through give a go through a pass on each project to understand where it is what is what is being constructed what's being suggested and then we started talking about the rubric in
December um and and we worked with so we have chief chief Emanola chief chilaro's Jim Hall on our and Kate so we put together the rubric that Brian just identified and then it took us several months to go through and we scored maybe a half dozen projects per meeting um as
a group with everyone scoring So that includes all of our support staff um because we really appreciated the opinion of the folks who know like where the crash data is Um and then and then we open that up to
um I mean any of our safety meetings are open um and we did have some folks come sit with us right at the table and help us talk through some of these things And then we held a public forum on March 27th We've since met between the public forum and this meeting We've also met again
Yeah Twice I think So um as as the committee um to also I think redis feedback Some of that's reflected in in some of our recommendations Um I think you know we we certainly scored all the projects amongst our committee prior to
the public feedback Um so the score and and we did not we discussed changing scores but we did not change our our scores We just considered public feedback as a separate entity that in part we felt would potentially be more important for your group in sort of
considering what projects to to fund as opposed to our role which is really to make a recommendation based on our major priority which is safety um for the town Okay Does that help yeah that is exactly what I was looking to understand Okay So
we know that costs have gone way up since 2019 we factored that in um through our whole discussion So it um and the variance is really significant So we have one project that only increased by 2% and we have another project that increased by almost 600% I think in that latter case it's not so
much just inflation it's like um environmental concerns but we we knew going into it that looking at those 2019 numbers was going to be difficult to for that sort of um benefit per $10,000 spent metric We did not mix 2019 and 2015 2025 So when we're looking at
marginal return in the spreadsheet it's all $ 2019 If we had mixed them up then you'd be sort of penalizing projects where you have an updated cost estimate So we didn't want to do that Obviously the bottom line is that $500,000 is not going to go very far not nearly as far as it did in 2019 Um and these projects
compete with each other for what is very very limited resources And so that is just the fact of the process here um the cost estimates that we have the updated ones do not include any drainage improvements or utility relocations and I think that is something that is a concern So when we think about project
readiness we have to be like make sure we will get better estimates um the further along we go into this But those types of things are not included in the estimates that we have that are in the packet from from the engineering firm But they do include if you have a wetlands area you would have the permitting required And so that so that
we believe is why number nine in particular um is the one that's increased by 500% I I don't think that in 2019 that's that particular area which I think we do have a map of it was close enough to wetlands to be a concern and and now it is Um and that we we we
assume um is the major driver of why that changed so significantly Yeah So yes but the the expense of that the permitting expense and and mitigation in a wetlands is factored into the price I believe so I think he used the word nominal I think he's and we can look at
I have the language from the engineers here and we can pull that up It's included in the packet as well but I think he included sort of a nominal amount for sloping Um but he acknowledges that permitting is going to be difficult in both of these projects Um sorry I did want to say that uh I
think David Modell who's also a member is on the line and I wanted to make sure David you're acknowledged in case you had questions Please you know you can jump in No questions No questions right now Okay Oh well thank you My title keeps getting better all the time Um I
have a quick one for you Um so you said May one deadline uh for for this year Um so do you have to pin down those costs between now and May one that you're describing you're not quite sure you really have them all Yeah I think Ryan's
going to help us with this process Is it is that doable depends what you pick Y Yeah Okay So if you were to pick something tonight we could meet that May one deadline If you're not ready to pick one we there's no way we can meet it Okay and we'd be looking at the fall assuming
the state continues to fund this program and there's money available and it's not federally funded Defunding with the positive side All right But it sounds like they're all things being equal it would
be good to get it in this time around rather than waiting until the fall I think that's our perspective too Okay Thanks Yep So this is the full updated list here If a project isn't here so there's not 21 projects on that list it
it means it didn't have a non-zero score There were some that we talked about and just said "This doesn't feel like a priority anymore." So it'll still be included There's an attachment that has all 21 of those but I didn't pull it into the spreadsheet here um because there wasn't anyone sort of advocating for moving that project forward Where we
have updated cost information it's shown but in separated over to the right um there are two projects that are highlighted in yellow here Those I I'll talk about There's more info coming about that in a minute They were submitted for a separate grant that we're waiting to hear and so that adds another level of complexity to figuring
out which projects to Oh that's the one you describe that you may find out about this month Yes Exactly Exactly These are I I should say these are now ranked as since the numbers are now out of order They're ranked by that scoring metric that we described So if you see
the the columns don't have letters on them but the score not to the right of total score that's our that's the average um sort of combined safety impact score So basically the total score is us all voting both for safety and impact and then averaging over the number of members who were present Um we
could come up with um a total score right the marginal return then is essentially a a ratio of of cost to the score benefit We it's per $10,000 to make the number meaningful but or to make the number not really small but so
you can so 9.8 divided by 70,000 is is right um divided by 10,000 is 1.4 That's a really important point the um higher the marginal return the better the better value just making sure I
understand but we didn't deliver it sorted in that order so it's sorted by the score so a project could be awarded up to 10 points and the marginal right and so that is just extra information about what we think the return on that investment is and the higher the number the better yes so you can prioritize
purely from the benefit if you say all I care about is the benefit regardless of cost um but this is Right The conceptual framework that I put together based on the work that I do in health economics is is a marginal return lets you maximize your benefit for the cost to reflect the fact that some of these
projects are very expensive Yes Um and and and way we felt like they while they're very important some of the other projects are equally important and also you know smaller projects that are more doable in a smaller budget Right
Okay I don't want to burn tons of tons Yeah Let's unless there's questions on this we can keep going We're going to sort of zoom in on each of these We're going to focus on the discussion on the top seven Once you get to seven projects you're way over the budget like totally extremely over the budget of this grant
Um so this looks like a trail map for Ski Mountain Three of these projects are seemingly like pretty simple we think and very the green circles Exactly The blue square projects are sort of like mediumsized Um and we talked about one already that was flagged for having some
like environmental complexity And then the two black diamonds are sort of very complex and expensive likely outside of the grant budget And so the thought is maybe to segment those Okay So we're going to just brief Go
ahead No I'm just doing quick math The three greens total Y $330,000 I think one thing to keep in mind is we're finding projects tend to cost about 30 to 100% more than what we
think Um and so I think a a lot of this for me is going to come down to a your recommendations and b practically speaking for this first deadline what can fit under that amount with enough cushion because I don't know what happens and you can explain this but if
we get multiple projects approved for say 500,000 and then the costs come in at 750 what happens actually that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have more projects than money because you can then if you don't put the project in the
thing you can't do it Okay So even if it comes over you're not committed to doing all the projects that were approved in their entirety Okay Good And by and and what if you Oh I see So uh you can't go back and get more money right no no I
was just thinking right So you don't really it's not like you need to put a contingency figure into one two and five in order to get up to 500,000 You just put in more projects and then you can always pull one out Yeah Gotcha And we're playing with 500 grand over four
year Like you have we wouldn't be eligible again for four years At least that's how I read the grant Yeah Okay But with the environment economic environment we're in the faster we spend the money the more bang we're going to get for I wouldn't assume anything's going to be there in year two Yeah
Okay let's So top scores The first project to look at this is on East Street the sorry the east side of School Street in front of FRS um along the town common This is formerly project 14 Now it's number one It got a score of 9.8 Um School Street is one of the main spokes
out of the center and doesn't have sidewalk on it This was seen by the committee as very high impact tons of pedestrian traffic It's where we host events The Town Common feels like a no-brainer There are two projects on the list that could provide sidewalking along the length of the Town Common and this is the one that the safety committee thought was just more
tractable And this is one where we might have a different source of funding for um sorry project five is but this one came in the updated cost estimate is 77,000 It would have been helpful if I had put the number on these blowup slides and I did not do that Um the the
second project that she references there are two projects in the list that basically create a sidewalk from the south side of the town common to the north side because there currently is no sidewalk to get across People can obviously walk across the common but that speaks to ADA accessibility that not everyone can walk across the common
The other one is Conquered Street and we felt that Conquered Street is the there is that like area where people park but it gets quite narrow along the the old stone wall and so in terms of feasibility both with with in our group and then with DPW we felt that school street allowed for there's more
opportunity to to build a a sidewalk The road also is arched as a hill and so visibility is a concern So getting you know kids and adults off the road um can be a safety um thing as well And are you thinking it's on the F FRS side of the
road yes Not the town common side So there we there isn't a project as far as I remember there isn't a project on the list that would be the west side of school street It's potentially complicated by like stone walls there Whatever the reason the east side actually like looks 77,000 This is an updated estimate that looked just sort
of like the project that was easier to tackle When you look at this and all the projects do you ha is this by right in this sense that it's done within the roadway and the town can do it or do you have to consult owners in and get
approval to do this at easements you'll be surprised to know that it depends Yeah Yes Uh also most most of the time when you do a project I've done a couple of these you ask for waiverss for people along the street and if you do have to take land you you have to assess and pay
fair value but there's not a lot of homeowners along that road So most of it's FRS right so you wouldn't have that big problem with this project but other projects that problem I would assume Have they Have you talked to them about supporting this we have not Okay So until the
select board till till we we're happy to do some of those work with historical work with school but yeah until we're sort of moving forward with this we felt like we we've got to get the limit the set of projects to the number that we're serious about So you're seeing the language here also about the ADA
compliant sidewalks So the five foot wide sidewalk with roadway curving Um and this one specifically says fulfill an existing sidewalk network gap I don't think that's that's any kind of surprise That's because that's the selection criteria right fulfilling a network app Yep
All right Number two scoring a 9.3 Um this is on the south side of Church Street from Spalding Fields down to Bedford Road So um this was previously number five So this would have been up next If we just left things in the order that we found it this would have been
the next project to be done Um Turk Street is one way It's pretty narrow This stretch does not have any shoulders so it's actually pretty hard to get off the road there if you were walking from the fields down to Bedford Road And the updated cost estimate for this one is 126,000
And again it's uh it's on the um whatever direction that is It's not on the residential side of the street It's on the field side of the street Correct Yeah I think um we had talked about that there And it does
kind of come up against the cemetery at the very end Yeah And there's also that um what's that body of water the reservoir that the fire department that he has access to i forget And they're okay with that Um we don't know yet We
have not gotten there yet Yeah Although although he's been meeting in our meeting has not had any issue with this Mhm This one I will say is a good example when I mentioned how projects can interact with each other This is actually the one I
had in mind when I said that some projects might create an issue where there may not already be one in terms of you know getting accessibility to 225 for pedestrians There is then and it is it is another project coming up but there is then no way for them to cross
the road safely without walking along the road along the cemetery to the crosswalk which is you know further down further down So you are potentially this project alone without funding another project might funnel people particularly children to a road like 225 that they
don't have a safe we have some more notes about this too because we've talked about this and it's not a place the church street intersection here is not a place where we'd want to put a crosswalk the visibility is really bad So um we've a mitigation strategy if we end up funding one of these So this is one of the projects that was submitted for shared streets and so we'll talk
about that more a little bit later Um have you had any conversation with the trails committee a little bit but mostly in the context of the Westward Street project number 18 It'd be interesting just to think about whether is that is that a a
street in terms of the ADA accessibility because that it's such a a steep hill So even even I mean to build a for somebody to get onto the sidewalk how do they get on it if they don't happen to live right there at the low end right and that what
my thinking is maybe in instead it's really for kids that you make it through the woods instead of uh pay for a you know this full sidewalk you do the less expensive pathway or connect to the you know it um on Spalding there's that um
foot bridge that goes over to Bant Davis anyway just yeah well there is you can actually you can kind of see the little you can see the very beginning of it at the bottom of the map there is the trail it's like just butting out of the forest there so So there is currently an off you know off-road trail pathway for
people to use It's not necessarily the most well marked right like I didn't know about it for a long time Yeah But but it um uh but this does Yeah The the part so to get from this does connect Spaldingfield to 225 But you're right like between Spaldingfield and the
school that's a steep hill That is another project actually on the list of of uh providing better access down the hill to Spalding Field as well ADA accessible Um we would if to do this to be funded here it would have to be which would be a challenge because of how
steep it is And just another thing I'm thinking is you know I don't know if you've had any conversation with the Diamond Park people that are you know put in a project that we're going to be discussing at town meeting and that includes figuring out that little that access to Diamond Park which is right on
the slope how to make that ADA accessible So so yeah just there might be some way to help each other That may also create more traffic I will say around this area right if if that gets redone Yeah And I can imagine with young children myself like going from
there to wanting to cross 225 to get to Kimbles Yeah Um so there might be a lot more young families Right Okay All right So the next two projects we're going to talk about are tied with a score of 9.1
The first one um this would construct a new sidewalk on the north side of Westford Street from Rockland Road to Monroe Hill Road That's a threequarter of a mile stretch This has been the subject of extensive discussion within the committee because there is a ton of community support behind it Um Westford
Street doesn't have sidewalk beyond the 2/10en or whatever of a mile out to the um fire station like where Rockland Road comes in The estimate in 2019 was 535,000 Um we did look into options like a trail
for this instead or possibly shortening the segment So one one thought was to extend only as far as the toll the entrance to the toll land which is still about a half mile out Um unfortunately we do not have an updated cost estimate for this and I
included the engineering response in the packet there seemingly significant environmental concerns with this project because of the culvert and so unfortunately that means that even with a shortened segment that we're talking about sort of the area that's bright green there so even if we shortened it and only went as far as the entrance to
the toll end I don't think you'd be able to avoid that so we were expecting the project to be more expensive than 535,000 because five years has passed but now we don't really even have an updated ROM because there are these additional concerns we requested it and they specifically said because of the
complexities they didn't feel like they could give us right an accurate estimate and it's and it is yeah predominantly there's no good way to shorten it without dealing with that um area where the road is at at its lowest point so the engineer does not recommend
tackling this project with a grant of this size that is their language I there's so much momentum and support behind it that I this is not what anybody wants to hear on the committee or otherwise well again given the on Westford Street Can you even make an ADA
compliant sidewalk like how would you I don't know if uh involve I don't know if there's a percent grade requirement for ADA compliance Is that speaks to both of those though i'm sure there is School that ramp at the school they had to rebuild it because it wasn't All
right I I see a community member who wants to weigh in If you want to introduce yourself if you want to respond to just that question One question Jeff Freeman 245 Rockland Road and also 93 Rockland Road which is the field Um I did look into that slope as an architect and the gradient of the
seat of the road going up is over 5% The sidewalk maximum is 5% From an engineering point of view you can do anything with which simply means if you accommodating that uh the gradient of the of the accessible pathway would have to be lower than the roadway and you're
going to go at a greater distance So you got one slope you have to go to slow slope So now you've got to go down and up and down and up So it's very it can be done extraordinary cost but it won't be parallel road Yeah So I talked to an engineer about what what the slope was
and it's 6 and a half 7% so it's a extraordinary engineering So that I mean in our view then invalidated for this grant in general because we can't we could not meet the grant You find a different solution with
pathways but not with the ADA sidewalk is the bottom line of that All right No that would be So the other project that scored a 9.1 is the driveway up to the Bans of Davis playing fields So this was project 24 It's now you know our number three This area we
just saw is very high impact This is where the baseball softball soccer fields are There's a volleyball volleyball court And of course the the big deal difference is that now there's a dog park up there too Um this the driveway to Bant Davis is not currently very walkable It's a dirt driveway Cars
go pretty fast on it Um and there's a crosswalk So the crosswalk with flashers is on Bedford Road at the entrance to the Bant Davis playing fields So this would just improve walkability all the way up to the fields Um the updated cost estimate was 194,000 So this is a blue
square Definitely not one of the simpler ones but um it does fit in the budget depending on where it lands in priority Anything I missed okay next And is this on the cemetery side of the cemetery side yeah
And that was actually something that Jim raised that like there's a cemetery expansion project that we should be aware of but it doesn't seem like this is a we did we have an update estimate It doesn't seem like it would be intractable It's just something to consider And then The next project formerly number six
this one scored a an 8.9 So this is the follow-on project that Brian was talking about before This would install a new sidewalk on a short stretch of the south side of Bedford Road between Church Street and the entrance to the Bans Davis playing field So that's the sort of follow on If you wanted to get down
Church Street you could now take a right and continue along sidewalks all the way down to Vance Davis or um then there's a crosswalk Exactly So if we didn't tackle this project we would just want to be mindful of unintended consequences And we might
recommend this was Chief Suro's idea some signage or something to get on the cemetery paths if you got to the bottom of Church Street there and you there weren't there wasn't a sidewalk We don't want you to cross Bedford Road So we would try to point you to the cemetery paths if we didn't take take on this project Um she had mentioned earlier
that we had discussed the crosswalk at Church Street but because of the bends in 225 because we recognize that there already is a nice trail sidewalk whatever you want to call path on the other side But getting there you'd have to get over the hump and because 225 makes that curve um visibility uh of
people going south on 225 it gets hard and there's already one flashing crosswalk not too far away you felt that having two crosswalks that cars are stopping at also might be frustrating to also motorists um for the question that
uh Scott asked earlier that there's a big rideway there and it's already more or less flat there's not I don't think it would be a huge engineering a rideway along the cemetery along the yeah and and there's pl I think there's plenty of road you know space between the wall and
the road to put 35 foot And so maybe there's one there's one telephone pole potentially Was it yeah Okay Is it a pole and not a tree but I think that could be possibly you know looked around I don't know if I said this before This one the updated estimate is 127,000 Yeah
All right we're almost through the top seven Number six um formerly number nine scored an 8.3 This project would construct a new sidewalk on a short stretch of the north side of Westward Street from Actton Street to Curve Street This is just 675 feet of sidewalk
and it's a very big deal because it connects existing pathways So it has a ton of community support behind it Um and this was ranked really high before It's still ranked really high It's a struggle because it seemed like this was a very easy one to tackle and it was one the original estimate was something like $40,000 and the marginal we thought the
benefit here would like way oversized compared to the spend and this is the one that the the cost of this has increased by 575% So it is now $270,000 Um and that just includes a sort of nominal charge for like what he sees as wetlands concerns and additional
slope work I mean to the on the east side of Westward Street sort of just to the right of Curve Street is now Wetlands Um and it goes fairly close to the road Um which may not have been they may not have considered it in 2019 but when when he looked at it now that was
the major issue Well from a I don't know from a review standpoint for approval from the state this is going into a nonADA compliant pathway Yes So how I mean how does that work we talked about that and like Chief Surro spoke about this a little bit like he doesn't think
there'd be anything disqualing disqualifying about it in terms of our ability to get a grant here when you're sort of ADA compliant sidewalk then dumps you onto something that isn't But it is I think it's a fair point in terms of thinking about connectedness and where like accessibility is most valuable
It would not be in the spirit I think like we agree that it's not in the spirit if you're if you're connecting something in an ADA compliant way that is then not ADA compliant though it is not technically not allowed by the grant because the grant is only controlling what you're doing for with the money that they're giving you Okay So they're
not really looking at the the network so to speak No Okay And the final project that we wanted to talk through formerly number 17 now number seven It scored a 7.9 This would construct a sidewalk on the west side of Conquered Street from Bingham
Road to the Conquered Town line That is a stretch that is over a mile and a half long The cost estimate in 2019 was over a million dollars So like with Western Street there is a ton of community support for this project It's an amazing project Um Conquered Street does already have sidewalk out from the center to
Bingham Road So that is one thing to consider And then and we don't have an updated cost estimate for it yet We know obviously it will be high It's we expect it to be higher than a million So we we the the thought would be to try to segment it here um and tackle just a
bite-sized piece of it The most likely and impactful segment would be from Bingham out to Russell Street That is still like 6/10 of a mile long and likely to be still over the budget but we we don't have an estimate for we could try to get an estimate turned
around for it there um these estimates don't factor in moving utilities and I think that's one thing that like we talked about utility wetlands between Bingham and Russell Street as well So those would play a role and it's she said it's almost 3/4 of a mile
and you got some steep drop offs there before So I wonder if you have to be on the other if you have to do some as she said this one and wester street obviously like big picture for the town have have huge benefits for the town as a whole but also may not be appropriate for this grant as opposed to some other
discussion about how the town can pay for you know ways to connect to other communities I know questions All right we can blast through the rest of this So we talked about this a bit Um that was all the top seven projects that was ordered by their
raw score so not their cost weighted score Um we think these are the most impactful projects on the list and where there's sort of the largest solvable safety concerns One additional factor question sorry just um so what you were calling the the
Westford link from Rockland to Monroe Hill you took off That's not counted now in your top seven It is still there We think the impact is there and we not in place Yes But I'm refcting probably if you asked us like what is our recommendation we would not include that
in what we should apply for this grant If the budget is $500,000 and if that's the goal we also weren't sure if you guys had access to an extra $500,000 that would be very because that wasn't privy to us So pocket we could
bring a satchel to that Yeah So we we we recognize some of these roles are more for you guys because you're you have more knowledge about the town in general So we kept it because of the score You'll have to come back and hear the culvert analysis presentation Oh it's even bigger than that I know just
culverts but Yeah No I know the streets Yeah Okay Okie do So there's a second mass program shared streets and spaces Very similar mission It awards up to $250,000 for projects that would improve plazas sidewalks curbs streets in support of safe mobility The selection criteria for this one is much more
specific It has to be a single project It has to be municipally owned property and ADA compliance is part of it as well So the deadline for this one passed in January before we had even really gotten moving on complete streets We were just sort of like getting familiarizing ourselves with the projects But given the number of projects on our tier three
priorization list and the overlap between the selection criteria we picked off two of the tier three projects to just take a swing at this grant So Ryan was able to put a proposal for this together Um it was projects five and 16 Both of those are on Church Street So we made a case for that being sort of one
project to get kids safely to the ball fields and then safely down to Bedford Road Um the total was 226 So we went like almost right up to the 250 But you weren't too late I thought we were not too late We we got the we weren't too
late Right Um we're supposed to hear about this in midappril which I think all of us on the committee thought was going to be by now and we would be able to sort of knock those projects off the list but we have not heard anything back And I don't think we're super optimistic What is your sort of gut check on shared
streets it's a coin Coinflip And that's meaning because there's a lot more people wanting that money than there's money available I I don't even have that information I think zero or one or they give you partial funding It's very competitive So we're we're attractive because we're trying to increase
mobility in town but also um competing against communities that are filling in actual network gaps with with uh school concerns If you put in for 250 you get zero or 250 or could you get like 125 it's unlikely that they would fund partially because they funded it or they
won't fund it right they know that if you don't fund it you won't How many projects did you submit for we we sort of took two projects from this year because these were so well teed up and we interpreted it So they could pick one of the two No she said she combined them into one project You submitted as one
project We just It's now the Church Street project Previously they don't need to know that it was Was that a good move you think sure We get the funding Yeah it was a great move Go bigger couple Okay Thank you
Okay We wanted to just reiterate how much Sorry just Yeah I think we're done this Um how much community interest there is here and generally and on four specific projects Three of the projects we already talked about Um so that's Westford Street Both stretches of Wester
Street independently have just tons of support The Conquer Street project has tons of support I I know if we leave any time here you're going to hear a lot about that And then Project 7 didn't really come up This is a stretch of Bedford Road between Kimble Farm and um Stern Street that just now is number 12
on our list That is a great project because it connects existing trail system And a couple of folks pointed out to me um I'm getting a ton of email about these projects but they pointed out that it creates this like beautiful nice one-hour walking loop if they had just this short stretch done Um so I
that just didn't elevate all the way to the top of our list but it is it's an honorable mention because there's a lot of support behind it I think what we would say about sort of Westward Street and Conquer Street and I don't want to speak for the whole group is that like we should find a way they're sort of impractical and could
potentially even jeopardize the chances of getting this funding but we should find a way to sort of separate these massive um transformational projects out and and look at them separately try to fund them in other ways and that's really it got to the the end of
the main discussion that was amazing work yeah it Really that's all Can I I can I ask a few questions i'm sorry because I was listening while driving so I didn't have the benefit of reading your slides In the map part with the ski map you show project 18 is unknown but
in that slide you pegged it at 5 something 535,000 is the 2019 estimate Okay So you really don't know what we don't know So I can read the engineer language if it helps No it's okay You answer that question He just wasn't comfortable putting a rough order of magnitude estimate on it because there's significant information And which of
these projects did you combine and apply to the other fund five there the two ones in yellow Five and 16 Oh five and 16 So in your like is what's in front of us today to spend a roughly 500k not
including those is that basically what you Well I think we would want to wait Number five is certainly is our number two project So if we didn't get shared streets funding I think we would say So how does Okay great So Laura how does that timing i mean I heard the dialogue I kind of
agree with it You know we may be in a use it or lose it environment with this Commonwealth So what is the de if we're in a use it or lose it environment when do we have to apply for the regular may 500 May So it's pretty tight We would
have to hear we have to recommend tonight We have to start writing and then be ready to sort of So I guess I that doesn't quite answer my question Do we recommend with five off the list and hope it gets the other way or five on
the list you'd include it and then you don't have to fund you can get it approved but you don't have to spend funds on it So you could approve an extra one that you would Okay Okay Right Okay I do want to open it up eventually to public comment because I want to hear but I I wanted to finalize with you said
well your recommendations tell and and I think I would kind of backs stop this with you know there is no pot of money out there z really zero dollars yeah so we are faced right now and and the public probably knows this
too with you know we're we're going to be looking at the warrants tonight and a potential 4.89% budget increase on just the operating budget alone Now some of that will be paired down with free cash but you know that's again spending money that we've saved to smooth out our
operating budget over time But then we also have capital projects that we're looking at and and you'll see all those in the town warrant for a firet truck a police station We also have things coming forward like a new fire station or an annex to the fire station We are
looking at potential DPW facility and then we have a thing called the Bog House and we have Highland the Highland building and so there's a lot of capital projects and you know we're a community and we're trying to figure out what's the best thing but from what I hear and
and I think the whole select board has had a lot of input from the community on this one I mean I've gotten personally a lot of emails from you know people in town and and it's great I mean but it shows me that wow this is something that has galvanized a lot of people and
there's letters of support and and certainly letters with 148 signatures or whatever And I mean there's there's a lot of opinions here So it's it's clearly important to the community So given that though I just wanted to start
and say I think we're limited to 500,000 Oh c can I have May I ask one more question just I'm sorry because I didn't catch it Brian the score is like the raw score and then the marginal return Can you explain the rubric again yeah So so
basically we created a the the average score is a is a benefit score which it's like how good is the project yeah And that's half impact and half safety Okay Um and so if that's on a point system the return is basically for every $10,000 we're spending on projects how
much how much of an increase in that point system like how many points are you getting yeah um based on that scoring system right um so I have an it's an it's an outcome and a cost right which is what I taken from but the marginal return of course um I don't I I don't know if marginal is the right term
for that We it's like incremental return but you you basically rack stack your projects based on the score and that's how we delivered it as we you recommend that's what we should use So exactly like the naive max score algorithm would
have you choosing 14 5 24 and six So that would actually take you like you go till you spend all the money Exactly There we provided an alternate If you asked us so what's the best what's the way to get the most like the most bang for the buck that's the second So you'd maximize incremental return You would not do the driveway to B to Davis You
would instead pick up projects 25 and 16 So I did include those as like an so can you just I guess I'm not quite let's compare nine which has a marginal of 21 and only costs 40k and banter which is 190k at half a point of the margin So
nine is the one that that's the outlier that is now 270,000 because it's just so expensive because it has a lot of benefit but it's benefit per marginal dollar is lower than because it's gone up so much Yeah And so to to explain the the second bullet point the MAC the
maximized income return that's what so that is taking right that's taking the other metric yeah and that's and that is doing a quantitative solve to that where I asked I created it to to say spend only up to $500,000 but get the maximum number of points and I solved that
because if you think there's 20 projects there's thousands of combinations but I I solved it right so a couple of them score well three of them score well on both lists right So you can set those aside and then look
at the remaining pot of money I guess and if the strategy is to pick additional projects so that if one sort of falls off the list that we we can carry the algorithm out and you know scoop up more but that's sort of the order that you process them in Yeah Okay that's helpful Thank you Great Um I'd like to actually now open it up to
public comment So to get out of here you guys can stay but I see there are a lot of people in the room and maybe people online And you know we we value input I mean this is a community so we want to hear from whoever wants to speak But I would ask that you limit your your time
to one to maybe two minutes But and you know help us um if if you have questions you can address everything to to me or to the board but if you have questions we can certainly ask ask the uh safety committee as well and they can answer So
is there any if anyone would like to you please um I think you can be heard here pick them up What the mic can pick up We can pick you up So you can remain seated but just state your name and your street address or street You don't have to give your actual address So yeah Go ahead Hey
I'm Jared Connell of 45 Palmer Way Um I came tonight for just a couple of reasons that I want to say thank you to for all you all the thought that the board has put into this and all the thought that the safety committee has put into this It's like it's very clear
that a lot of thought went into this and very grateful for for that Um the two reasons why I wanted to come tonight is I've been um uh part of advocating for a number of years for a small segment of
the project formerly known as 17 which I think is is number six now um from Bingham to um Palmer Way Actually one of the sections that we created a petition around was from actually Bingham to to Russell Um we've advocated for that for
a number of years myself my wife and um the residents of Palmerway Um I think um select person Arnold and town administrator Mlan were out a couple of years ago to do a sitewalk and looked at the area It's an area where there's um
12 children just on our street and another one next door It would pick up a lot of access to um town center and the segment I think would would come at a cost that I think would would fit well with within the budget So I wanted to
advocate for that Um and also for you know for you know for my um perspective you know I I want to encourage everybody as they think about all these projects all of them are great It's hard to say to rank these and I it's commendable that they that they took that on Um but
in my opinion I think we should think big both within the context of the grant and outside of the grant paths segments whatever But in my opinion what that means is the truly transformative thing here is you know we we have a very small number of arteries that extend from the
rotary We absolutely should have sidewalks that provide access to out you know Westford Street to the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail out this way to Great Brook out this way to the Conquered Town Line Providing access to all those things uh you in in in my opinion is the
great achievement that we can get through using this money and other money that the town can make available one year at a time one grand opportunity at a time and we shouldn't stop until we achieve that that objective Um great So thanks for your consideration Um again I
really want to advocate strongly for the segment of section 17 that would go from Bingham to to Russell Street Great Thank you Anyone else see a lot of people My name is Sarah Kylie Shock and I live
on Evergreen Lane Um and similar to what Jared just said I want to thank the the select board and the safety committee for their hard work on this project And um we we also started a petition for the Westford branch of the Rotary um and
have found that um you know there a significant interest as Jerry mentioned in expanding the network and giving people access to this wonderful conservation land and 55 miles of trails if you can't walk from your house it's really you know challenging sometimes to
access some of these places that don't have you know that have limited parking and we'd rather walk or bike um to access So anyway I just wanted to give you an update on the on the um petitions project one which is the curve to act in
area is um reached a 10% of Carile household supporting that particular project which is a very the smaller of the two Westford branches but would connect all of Monroe from Virginia Farms all the way through Monroe Hill
and Hover Hill um to safe access to the Bruce Gman trail long curve to Fisk to Elm Um so a number of people who are in that area have mentioned their desire to want to access um that area and among the you know closest to others I know we
have one um objective to that particular project mostly interested in the the visual outcome of what that would look like because there is a wetland area so one of the houses looks directly into that area so there was concern raised about that and I think there is
resources in this grant that will allow for um some of that to be uh to be mitigated Um and then there was also a number of um supporters in the uh area I think there was eight of that project
that are in support in the petition as well Um and then I just would follow up with the um the complete the streets guidelines um and and suggest that you know these would fulfill network gaps as as Jerry mentioned access to school
which is also a really important element of the criteria Um the area at Actton Street is also a high crash zone as defined by MASDOT And so I was able to pull data and find that there are 32 crashes at that location between Actton and Curve where
pedestrians from Actton are trying to cross to the pre-existing privately funded sidewalk that already exists there Um and there was some resistance of not wanting to encourage pedestrians to cross there but I think they're doing it anyway And I would like us to be proactive in that endeavor and avoid
something like what happened in front of reps in Actton where the town didn't take measures to install uh a side or a safe pedestrian walkway when there was a clear issue with um parking at Rob Scallion which resulted in a fatality
there Um so I would just wanted to bring that to your attention because I I don't think that should deter us from making these decisions and prioritizing safety But also like to say that you know Conquered Street and Westward Street are are really um you know people travel at
high rates of speed And the two projects that are one and two on this proposal one of them is a dirt road as Laura mentioned that has speed bumps where people travel slowly and the other one's in a school zone um where people are already traveling quite slowly Um so I
wanted to mention those two And then in regard to the larger section of Westford it's been a I've learned from some of the residents here there's there's been a lot of support for 30 years but no funding for that And so I would just also like to encourage us to be
transformative and potentially to um you know re-examine whether or not we could use these funds for feasibility for example for either conquer street or westward street some of these challenging and costly areas um that have wetlands and to note they're also
wetlands related in the project at the end of church streets that I'm not sure are being accounted for in the current um cost or the updated cost estimate as well as the cemetery Um and I would just wonder if the cemetery committee
has um any input related to the ground penetrating radar because typically burials go beyond the limits of the actual cemetery It's just part of the GPR project that they're considering It should certainly be something that Sele considers when they're ranking these
projects Thanks Thanks Sarah Are there other comments yes please introduce yourself Dan Loma Palmer way as well Um you know just just wanted to say that aside from my own sort of selfserving interests in in expanding the the
pathways um towards Palmer Way uh which we've been pursuing for a number of years You know I think I think it's important not to overlook the value as has already been stated in expanding these uh sidewalks to new residents um and and outwards in higher speed zones
um where I think a lot of that value can really be won Um I think it you know I don't know what went into sort of establishing all of Westford and all of Conquered Street as these sort of huge um insurmountable uh uh projects that
that really um you know I I don't see as they stand a path for Carlile to to get those done without breaking them up into much smaller segments So uh you know Laura sort of alluded earlier to the possibility of breaking these up Uh I think there would be a lot of value in
that and you know if possible you know breaking them up as small as possible bite-sized pieces every bit is a win Um and and with further grants and further small amounts of money that may free up you know we can continue to tackle those So great thank you Anyone else
no Go ahead No go ahead first Jeff Freeman uh 245 Rockland Road and also the 93 Rockland Road which is the meadow on 225 Um I try to understand all the metrics here given and I have to say
that I don't totally understand them I'm more of a practical speaker Um and so I spent a lot of time uh in the last few years in the meadow there and because we're reconstructing that and and uh what happened to the drainage ditches and the new color cover coming in and it
does require an elevated uh walkway that would have to go along that entire length It would have can lever over 45 degree slope over you know a drainage ditch And so all of that can be done Um I did talk to some engineers and I talked to Jim Hall and you know the
estimate from what I hear is certainly going to go to a million dollars or one contractor said a million five It's not based on anything It's just based on practical experience of working in the area So it's very extensive and you know all of that can be done My greatest concern is public safety You know I
spent a lot of time down there You work up on the edge of that road The traffic on that road is excessive and people have to go out But I urge you to go out and be out there If you go out there and you stand past Brockham Road there's an elevation As people leave the town they accelerate
When they accelerate they see it as a non-residential area because there are no driveways So they increase their speed It's a narrow road They now put uh barriers on the side of the road where they put a temporary cover Those barriers are two feet off the side of the road Another foot is is level And
then it's a 45 degree slope So It's very complex I would have to do it's the only um example I can think of is over in the conquered turnpike uh in conquered and you can see how that is protected on two sides and it's that type of construction
uh that would have to go through how it integrates from a handicap point of view how it integrates with rock and road rock and road coming out and oblique angle is a whole another very serious problem Uh as you come out there uh you now have the EMTs coming down screaming
around streaming in Personally you know always spoken to the fire chief and I apologize when I sit there and they jump in front of me and they have to get to the firehouse So it's it's complex and but my biggest concern is I think it's unsafe and I don't think you can can
construct anything five feet you know against a roadway and ask people to walk I would never do that I clean up along there I clean the bottles the beer cans everything is thrown out So I just from a public safety point of view I just don't think it makes any sense And as an
autist you know you've got you've got a narrow road You can't control the traffic They're accelerating up the hill So it's 40 miles an hour You're going 50 miles an hour You can major As they're coming down the hill things are going off the dump They're flying off
the side for some unknown unknown reason I don't know as they leave town everything gets thrown out into the field So I pick up full bottles glass bottles beer cans I'll pack them up I'll bring them in you know glass I don't understand why that's done Mainly I
think people just see it as a vacant area It's kids dumping beverages before they go home I think so I don't it's a funny strange phenomenon but I but I think the point being is if it is seriously considered you need to
go down there and look at it and go through the engineering go through the feasibility and look at the full implications of it and I think for the for the benefit of it um I serious question it's just going to get prohibited it's beyond unbelief what you'd have to do to cross that okay
that's just my thanks thanks Jeff there's someone online Yeah Meredith is someone has a hand Thank you Uh yeah Meredith Hi Sorry Could you please introduce yourself in your stream i'm 45 Ember
Lane Great Um I was going to call in and um I'm relatively new to this uh discussion of the sidewalks I don't actually live you know anywhere where we would probably get sidewalks way far down off roll Um but I just wanted to
weigh in thank the safety committee for all the work that they've done and just share a perspective of somebody who is at what I think is the most hightraiced area in Carile every day and that's the school I have two elementary school students Um I pick them up from school
every day and so when I'm picking them up especially during nice weather all of the middle schoolers are out and they are often walking down Church Street to head to Kimbles Um and it you know they travel in packs You know there's not a lot of room cars
trying to turn left and right off of that street So I think in terms of safety it would be wonderful if they had a safe space to walk And I do just want to share that recently one of those middle schoolers did break an ankle walking down that area Um just because
you know the the dip in the sidewalk and you know all the sand that has been cleared off it just wasn't a very safe path So wanted to throw my support in um for that as someone who drives that uh very frequently Great Thank you for your
comment Um is there anyone else in the Tracy tracy Tracy we actually live at 43 Road and to echo what Jeff said about the traffic and I know thank you for the safety committee for everything but all we hear are the cars accelerating coming
out of town and down the hill breaks you name it And again I mean they are throwing things out We had a full you know a full box of beer bottles the other day Um so the sidewalks are great but I don't think it
mitigates the safety concern with the traffic on the road Agree Um we agree Yeah Yeah And then also just again the engineering of it on our side of the road we have all the utility poles too So the sidewalk would have to come in I
don't know how you would do that but would have to cut way in Um so I don't even I don't know why it wasn't even looked on the other side of the road Not that it's feasible anyway but it certainly wasn't even looked at on the other side of the road It doesn't have
utility pools and the town owns the land beyond the Hamilton's house all the way up as I told you Well I'm sure there's a lot to investigate it Yes I um thank you all for your Introduce
yourself please Oh I'm sorry Donna Deno again Um I would like to thank Brian um for providing information about other safety measures um in town He put it he posted some things on the city in the
wood wood website and um there were a lot of things I think that can be done aside from just connecting sidewalks that would um in in some people's opinions be preferred over just long
lengths of um asphalt in town Um as a member of this committee for 35 years we started to a lot of changes in the community and you could probably see sort of a distinct group here um of a
certain age and um how can the safety committee um promise us that it would not turn into a situation like the neon signs in the town center
for those of us who are all right thank you for your comment are there anyone else we we are running over for a lotment of an hour But yes uh John 65 L Street Yep If you want to solve the problem on Western Road you should uh add a police detail and that would
significantly improve the traffic flow It won't improve the crap on the side of the road But the speed is is ridiculous As somebody who walks all of these roads extensively that is definitely the most dangerous Great Thank you All right um
as a select board we and in the tra safety committee we you know your work has been I think really excellent um as far as the analytics and thinking about it and trying to get um here what yeah they're here and Glenn these guys are
awesome and thank you all thank you it's good um I think you're looking to us I think for a decision as to how to prioritize and then um I and unless the board has other thoughts I mean we really are limited to this 500,000 It
sounds like as well it it requires these you know defined sidewalks We're not talking about the trails that that you know and that's potentially a separate discussion and how to um but I think we have to limit our discussion to these sidewalk um to fulfill the conditions of
the grant Um is there anyone who wants to take a stab at how to approach this or Sure go for it Why not i love the quan approach you know we should put up the slide uh who's driving slides right
i would say the one with the scoring the I would start with the one with the two yellow bars on it While while we're doing that um you just made me uh have a question Is this limited to sidewalks or could it also be used for pathways oh I
don't believe it could be used for pathways but they're not all sidewalk projects There's project 12 would realign the intersection of school street and church street No no I know I just meant would it allow for we don't spending some of the money on an area that would more suitable as a pathway We
should think about how to do that Yeah Because that might have more that's that would bring in other community supporters Yes In addition to the spreadsheet you do have the possible ways to group which and there are projects five five
14 and six are on both lists So naive max score and maximum incremental score Yep Well that's where I was starting So if you add those two together those three together that's 330K
So if you say they made both lists no matter which metric you use yes that's 330 out of 45 that leaves you 155 If you then go to the next tier you're looking at uh uh
9 25 10 and 12 Those four projects they're all they're various pieces I don't want to get into it but they all score reasonably high on both metrics If you again just go purely quantitatively and say I want the ones that score
highest in both you would pick nine the westward street at 40k Remember the so unfortunately the cost we couldn't mix 2019 and 2025 So the cost metric is based on $ 2019 and that particular project is now $270 So it's a little bit
but if you wanted to maximize incremental return you pick up 25 and 16 So yeah you'd have to jump down to the slide that has the two different ways to group Yeah because not all the 25 costs are there That's Yeah And when we didn't want it to just like analyze and full disclosure some of the ones we have not gotten an update for if in the next two
weeks we get that update then and another one increases 500% That page 66 is their proposed How many people scored that if you look on the packet page 66 of their report it um and staff So DPW director Chief Suros
Chief Amanola Okay All right I I yield then because I wasn't using the right stuff Um Yeah Yeah So on this one I mean what is your recommendation do you have a
recommendation i do Right I mean I think we should first of all I think we should aim to use all the funds this year Yep Second I think we should approve above 500,000 um especially if we include the projects that were already submitted for the other grant so that if those are
approved we have we can we can utilize other things And I also think we should allow for even more cost increases Um because I think even if you just did five six and whatever 14 that's that 370,000 may easily become 500,000 Yeah
Um so just working you know working from that standpoint um I think it's you know from a if we included five six and 14 you mentioned some of the benefits and drawbacks of Bant Davis
um then there's the other projects that are have been discussed what what would be the 450 after those what would be the and I'm trying to remember what the network is like I don't like the idea of subjectively bringing a sidewalk down to to 225 and
then you don't have a crosswalk Yeah You should do the stretch along the cemetery so you can get people I think we agree So you five and six linked Yeah I think five and six and six are the linked ones and and so even though the maximum incremental return is naive to that
concern they still link up together in that I mean they're still included I think Um uh and then the school street is the town center spoke right So I to me those three are I I definitely so in the
context of this opportunity I think there's a lot there's clearly a lot of interest on Westford and conquered those projects are going to be for this grant I don't think are good fits right now These I think work in the timing and in
the constraints Yep Um I would just say what's another one or two that we would throw in there knowing that these are the priority and may consume the entire 500,000 Right so if you the the bottom five I mean the maximized incremental
return group has five and uh what's the other one 14 and 14 So those are the driveway because that one is just bigger right and so you're getting more bang for your buck if you pick up the two Church Street projects in basically Yeah Because because that one's almost 200,000 it right and as somebody pointed
out that road is so rudded you can't go fast but in theory no I I just drove it the other but still yeah um and then you're saying we we ought to uh because if those two did get funded with the other grant then we ought to add
something else to this So I think you know even the maximized 1425 5616 that one if the um project which are the other grants it's project shears or something Yeah Which ones are those that's project five and 14 Five and 14 No sorry five and 16
Yeah So two of those in the maximized Yep But could not be That one also does not um account for inflation for all the projects So that's project 25 We don't have an updated estimate for to go up double whatever it's going to be
Although you could also just decide to put the project 24 down in the lower group if we're if we're going to go with the go well over but then we can request more than the 500,000 Yeah If you were looking for another highv value project
that sort of fits in that goes over the grant budget but not by like a silly amount That's sort of tough I did do a quantity approach maximizing to 700,000 like if we would have proposed 700 and I think I know I can tell you
later 24 I believe I think you two were made for each other Why why were some requ we just had the engineers were rushed to look at the top seven projects and even then only a handful of them came back Some have no in the top seven some have
no number with them The one that did not they did not give in the top seven a number was the Westford Street which they commented to say they didn't feel comfortable giving us an estimate because of how complicated it was which I think but I mean these I guess the question is these modest more modest projects like
25 10 and I don't know maybe 10 yeah 25 and 10 anyway they aren't updated so yes do you have any sense 10 is the Congress Street Church Street intersection so that one we talked a lot about and could be a potentially could a good one to fit
because that it's not building a lot of sidewalk It's mostly about sort of the crosswalk I don't see the steep escalation of that No And we also so some we before we got some of the update estimates we were working under the assumption of 100% inflation in the last 5 years because the shared streets grant
when we updated those they were roughly about 100% increase So doubling and so you could the grant didn't go up by 100% but the cost did Um unfortunately uh so really we're at how to spend 155k right
seems we all agree on 145 and six and they have updated numbers So that leaves you 155k and maybe you go over because if if Oh I if Yeah that's that's why I would say you just take 24 project 24 in the top group unless
you just really don't think the Ben Davis project to the bottom group It's the road right it's the driveway after this Are people speeding along i mean is that really an issue there's different experiences We've people have And who walks it anyway you have a parking lot Well there's a dog park up
there now I know But also the kids that are walking from school to get to Bana Davis for something There's a There's a crosswalk there and they could go trail on the back of Yeah but they get the backside They go the back way right oh they have to walk down that thing to
get to Kimbell's We're We're breaking it This is what it's for right we're giving you stated all this when we did the school right davis back Go ahead We do have to kind of move forward here I think we've given guidance I don't know
if we can just can we delegate to them the I mean we've given them a clear priority Yes Can they then take that and figure out what their remaining project is i mean I don't we say that we we support applying for um a we support
trying to get it in by May one and that we should apply we should put in projects that are would be more than end up being more than 500,000 and that um we should go with their
priority This is the the grouped page 60 page 60 Thanks The maximize incremental return group Yeah Do is that is that your I'm I'm assuming that's your those the committee's top picks Yes Yes And so
480 without the updated 25 number 25 right which is 50 now So if it's another 50 that'll make give you the 500 I mean if that doubled then you're over 500k and and throw a couple gimmies in there just in case like a couple standalone
small projects in case pricing comes in in such a way and we have $470,000 worth of projects We don't want to leave the 30 on the table Okay Do you know what I mean chris do we believe this open-ended i mean we've had a lot of community input different things and
I'd kind of like to just narrow this down and be at this point Well we're giving them the direction though We don't need to vote on it You need you actually want about 615,000 right because you might get 130
from the shared streets right if you think of it that way Yes Yeah So I would fill the bucket Easiest thing is to do just put project 24 in there Yeah But the question is is that a high priority data and I think that what would the
objective maybe opinion here and maybe not but is that it's not a really that's a high priority certainly yeah not on the if you looking at with this feedback I I I could point out in somewhat similar of a price Davis didn't increase
all that much from the 2025 cost estimate we don't have one for project 7 which was Bedford Bedford from Kimbles to Sterns it started out similar to Davis that does have some public support and it does conceptually fit with some of these other projects
because if you if you get people from Spalding to 225 across the street to Kimbles and then they can connect to the walk all the way from school to Stern Street in one continuous stretch and you'd put a crosswalk then at Sterns to get across to Sterns um I I believe I
don't remember if that was the north or the south side of or I guess east or the west side of road Hang on Well the existing one that goes to Kimbles is on Kimbles is on the east side but then it breaks up at Kimell and you could reach it again at the end of Kimbles where the farmers market happens But that might be
a Oh I see You'd either put a crosswalk there to go down to Sterns or you go up past the Ruters and then put the crosswalk Yeah Yeah that's about seven But that could be an alternate that is similar in cost about twice the distance
I think that makes sense I like that Why don't you put that in this makes a lot of sense too It originally didn't score as high because it's like trail connectedness versus other sidewalk but I This makes a lot of sense Yeah Okay Yeah And it brings in a large area of
town that all the Meadows you know 564 What are the Just so we I just want to make sure we have it correct 5614 And then hang on Um go to the back the last slide and then out of order now
Yep 24 We want to do 25 But that is 24 and along the athletic fields 45 16 and seven 16 and seven Yeah 16 Tell me again 14 under the maximizing
25 That's our lowest priority one So seven is was how much cost is 75 and that's the lowest priority I'm just thinking as we this is go forward you know and and we have to if we get the whole grant and it you know we have
to make decisions well and I think if we get the whole grant we we're going to have to you know do more work on the pinning down the cost right because we haven't fall out and that's why I'm saying is I'd rather establish that now so we're not like is
that 25 just another I I think y the thing for for me to take away on this is we're going to be looking at a lot of road and covert stuff using chapter 90 CPA town funds Um but I think
as we do that we should keep in mind this topic of because a lot of this is being done for infrastructure but safety and so I think we need to we need to consider sidewalks and that well that's a good point If you're redoing a culver road you do this last right after that
You wouldn't do it ahead of time but you might include it and say we're going to do this cover the timing of the spend once it's approved Do we know um I might be able to pull that up Shared streets was really specific about finishing it within two years and I can't remember two years
Complete streets is the same complete streets if I remember correctly So we should have some time on the last one Yeah Like a fiscal 25 All right I I I do we have to get through a war we're going to have a late meeting tonight I just know we've spent
over an hour almost an hour and a half on this which is great It's important to do and it's part of our community This is it Um just so we make sure we've got it clear in the minutes So the what you're walking away with is what's the what's the list you're walking away with
14,56 256 and 7 which would get around 700,000 recognizing that we might get shared streets and we'd also be able to pull something out Okay great And we've heard the community and the transformational nature of potentially
you know a larger considering larger projects So yeah we'll just and I think we I think we need to keep thinking about right this as an important element in town right along with all the others that we have but but I mean you know continuing to figure it out and also
looking at other options for making stick around You can talk about the warrant and the be ready for town meeting You have to uh you have to if you're if you're Oh we have fine You have to uh close your meeting I second
Did you move great All in favor i Great I All right Congratulations at David spreadsheet test Oh my god Our crew loves spreadsheets I'll tell you the first one I didn't uh we didn't have to open up
That's great All right Moving right along to um remember other things done ahead of time So well we still have a lot I know I know Warrant article discussion Let's get warmed up
Ryan you want to lead us through this we can tackle it Captain Uh yes Cuz maybe we could just do these motions that are the specific ones that we've already agreed on after you do your little So I would suggest going
through the budget motions and then um next approving the election warrant because Ash is here Just a lot of lot of motions Uh we didn't do the votes They got a a formal vote on the cola and the uh retirey Yeah Etc So this is just for
the minutes and notes the cola and then the health insurance allocations which you've already approved funding in the budget And then the next one would be to approve the the election warrant And that should clear the deck for just discussion at that point All right Well
I move to set the fisc year 26 cost of living adjustment cola to 2.5% Can I do all three of them sure All right And I move to approve the town active employee health insurance share allocation for
58% over 42% effective fiscal year 2026 And note this is an increase of 1% over last year in the town share and move to approve the town retiree employee health insurance share
allocation for 56% over 44% effective fiscal year 2026 and there is no change second previous year okay we have a second any further discussion we've talked about these in
the past okay voice vote all in favor I I none opposed and do we let's see This is to approve the approve the warrant language So you're going to um if you're willing approve the town election warrant Your town clerk Ashley is on is
on the line as they say Hi Ashley I'm calling up the election So this has been reviewed by town council and the town clerk who I said is here again for any questions that you have on it The one question which we will now call question
one Shall the town of Carile be allowed to exempt from provisions of Prop 2 and one half so-called the amounts required to pay for the bonds issued in order to pay costs of designing engineering renovating and equipping the town's police station located at 41 L Street including site prep remediation all of the costs So this would allow you to
exempt the the debt and borrowing for the additional police station request that's on the town meeting warrant We have taken the fire station off per your last for your last discussion So this warrant is now ready for your questions and or approval This is the election
warrant So I move to approve the annual town election warrant with ballot question for the annual town election scheduled for June 3rd 2025 in the Clark room of town hall 66 Westford Street Carlile Mass 01741
Do I hear a second second Excuse me Actually I'm just looking at this No I I thought Right I was just gonna ask So the first one is the language and then the second one is to actually put it on the town election Is that so we have to do both of these we recommend that Yes Okay Sorry Let me
do that again I move to approve the language of one ballot question as presented in the town clerk's memo in the packet and to place the questions on and to place the question on the 2025 annual town election ballot And I move to approve the annual town election
warrant with ballot question for the annual town election scheduled for June 3rd 2025 in the Clark room of town hall 66 Westford Street Carlile Mass01741 Second Okay any further discussion on it seeing
none voice vote All in favor i none opposed We got to do go through the warrant first Ashley anything else that you need for the election warrant i think that just about covers it Thank you very much everybody Thank you Ashley
Thank you And now she knows all about complete streets as well Yes Okay I wanted to um answer any questions you have about the town meeting warrant and I will go over um briefly the changes since the packet was given to
you on Friday M um all of the changes are administrative in nature or about the summary which is non-required legal language So this is just language that describes the various articles It's supposed to answer the question of if I'm approving this what what am I
approving right so um not statutoily required but but definitely worth paying attention to and putting in So the changes um since your warrant are highlighted in yellow Um my team that reviews the
warrant includes Barney So um I like to have a teacher involved in some of the editing Town council the town clerk and the town accountant all reviewed this including myself So Barney just changed some of the language here to include the tax impact for the police station or
what we estimate the tax impact to be You have a different version Yeah we don't have it We don't It's not We don't have What page are you on there which article so I'm highlighting the changes here for you What article are you on i am on article 18 1718 Okay So let 1718
Okay In the summary Okay The total project impact conservatively estimated Okay This description includes a $4.3 millionish request a difference of about $750,000 and includes a 15%
contingency Again this is not statutoily required This is just a description Right Yeah Well just because I feel snake bit I would remove the word conservatively Okay In the first sentence under the in
the summary Well the wrong time for us to say Yeah Yeah Pretty crappy I agree That is Let's acknowledge that we're crappy at budgeting Um
that's all that's my only Yeah that's Yep Okay The next change is um you have to talk about the fire station design tonight and uh that discussion will allow us to finish the summary for the
article 19 which is fire station renovation design costs So I'll pause on that for now Excuse me Um I won't pause on but on article 18 the actual language are we going to ask for a specific
amount we are but it's not in here currently Correct Okay Just checking Okay Sorry Article 19 And just for anyone who who cares to know especially the public um a lot of towns just write generic warrants that say a sum of money
will be decided at town meeting come to hear about it Carile likes to include the money if you know what it is but you haven't finished your discussion about your final number So we're just keeping it a sum of money but the summary does describe about where it is Yeah Okay Okay great Thanks And all of that will
be clarified in the motions handout Hand out Okay Okay So we talked about article 19 which is the fire station just finalizing what you plan to do there with the costs Okay And then the article article 25 which is the citizens petition which you you do not have any control over I'm
just letting you know They wrote a summary They went back Is that one in yellow or you so the whole thing is their summary that they rewrote Why is the top in yellow just to remind me to tell you Oh because this is different from what so are we in the habit of letting those
in citizen petition they can write their own summary usually Okay So well we should Oh so there's a teeny little summary here Uh oh my god that's way bigger Okay so they've got a great
big All right so we haven't actually seen this one Okay All right Uh so this was submitted to me today Yeah Does it say anything sort of
uh calling out the MBTA commit working group for something you know I don't want to have that come up Give them a Can we give them a word limit and plus there's some there's some things that are not correct in there So
and it's not really I mean it sounds like it's not so much a summary as a making all their campaign making their case Yeah No I I So who gets Yeah I mean I don't Why would the petitioner get the right to They can have input but So typically the
person who is the proponent of the article writes the summary right but All right So we What's our deadline for actually finalizing that today for you to approve it tonight What if we send it back with red line then what what
happens actually if we say we we just got it You guys just put it in today It's due today That's not fair Here's some red lines and we go back and forth Say we go back and forth for two weeks or a week Then what happens we have to post the warrant So we don't
have that time So it will be at the meeting I guess right why didn't they have a deadline like a week before why did they have a deadline that's the same as our deadline because it's a it's a citizens petition I don't have any direction to say
otherwise Yeah they're not really in guidance They could write like a treatise like a 50page treatise and we'd have to put it in No it's not so much that but the issue about um No but it's the No it's the timing of it To me it's the timing of course last week then we
could say to them timing is a byproduct of what Ryan said which is we basically our position prior to tonight we have no control They have the same deadline as us They can put in whatever they want They can put in you know a 30-page thing and we would say "Okay I'm sorry You're
allowed to do that." I mean maybe we have to do it tonight but we should change the rules Okay Well but I we do have a summary in our packet When was that submitted to us who and who wrote that this this fourline summary that we
have uh that was that was Meline and that was submitted a while ago We also have with that So we're going with that Hold on Brian Hang on And but you also have summary that was submitted with the article which is
Have you looked at this ahead of time summary no I have not seen it Okay Which is right here So this was received earlier Yes Can't read that Can you make it a little larger you can Sorry
And what is this document this is just the um this is what they submit when they submit the citizens petition But that's Oh the completed citizens petition Okay But this doesn't necessarily always just carry over to the warrant article Correct These
summaries I'm not sure Actually I I really am uncomfortable with all these arguments put in a summary with no pros and cons It's just not a
It's not a balanced summary Right Exactly This the one that's we have in here is fine I'm going to address Well the other thing we could do is take the top paragraph I don't think we should do any I think we should either take what's in
there or take that I don't want to start messing around with let's take this and that No no I thought we have one that was submitted a long time ago Let's take that one and then that's the one that's in here Provide their literature right i agree They but I encourage us then to figure out I don't know what the legal
rules are but in the future for citizens petitions we have to have editorial space we cannot allow open loop on whatever they want to put in right and they have so we have to fix that forines well and we need I guess just a deadline because we had well we have to check
with council what the rules are but assuming we had a summary we didn't know that there was going to be a new summary right you know what I mean know right what the rules are but assuming we have editorial control then yes we need to put a deadline so for the fall town meeting we'll absolutely whoever
whoever's running this for now we go with what they sent us ahead of time like the paragraph I like but I I think my opinion would be yeah take what was in our packet I agree right sorry Ryan and who's gonna hope that puts doesn't put Ryan on the spot we'll
make say it was Ryan first of all that's my job and second of all no one's putting me on the spot it's fine all right Okay Okay Good All right Great Anything else all right Is there anything else or should we go back to discussing the fire question
xx where are you uh oh that's the ballot We just did that Oh we did that Okay Sorry That's at the very bottom All right Okay So we did Moving on to the next change here So the um planning board did
last night uh adjust their ADU bylaw So the summary was also adjusted Okay So hang on And it struck the last sentence of what's in your packet which is the the planning board is no longer allowing a or the bylaw is suggesting that the
planning board is no longer allowing a 1,200 square foot maximum It's now 900 Yes So the last sentence starts with the text of the proposed that whole last sentence is gone Yes Okay So what they're going to present is just a
single accessory apartment option from what I understand But the difference in the summary is is that because that's no longer being proposed request Okay Wait Let me don't don't scroll I'm still reading insert a new
accessory joint Is the yellow what's coming out or what's going to be left or what yeah I'm What is the yellow oh that is different The text that's deleted is not present It's not present Yep So that was Why are you yellowing
that sentence because he's yellow He's highlighting it so he doesn't skip it and tells us that he deleted the What we're reading is Okay So you are deleting that sentence the article at the end of do amendment in so I didn't know how to color something I didn't stay in so I marked it in yellow two do
amendment period the do amendment stays in okay and then the sentence after it they're taking out which is he could he couldn't show he should have left the sentence in after do amendment and highlighted it but okay I got that but you got the idea what they want to do
David well you know I got it we get it seems disorganized but okay I got It's it's I would strongly suggest that you guys pass a budget and town meeting bylaw I've been recommending that for a couple years Clarify a lot of this stuff So you
don't really have a process right we don't have a process Best practices and historic We need to do that It's on the list We're going to we're going to get to we struggled on a lot of these Okay Okay Are we comfortable though with rem That's fine what they did Yeah I think
it is Okay And summary written Oh Oh yeah No that's the one we've just we said no Anything else uh the rest were um small
administrative edits Okay Changes in language but nothing substantive All right So I move to approve the warrant for the annual town meeting scheduled for May 18th We're not We're not ready yet No
we're going to talk about the fire station We may want to finalize by the fire station I see that the chief is here and what the lieutenant as well And um you
know I see there's people online too um who have often commented on this So um why don't we start with that and I do see a finance committee member here Um that's the letter that I was interested Are you here in that role or as a
interested resident here uh to discuss what we discussed informally at the thing finances Great So let's start with the fire station We had
a interesting discussion last time a presentation and I think it would be wise to get the chief to to uh talk and if the lieutenant wants to talk as well and give us some input on what we because you were presumably I know you
were there you know but we didn't have an opportunity to hear from you So we I'd like to to do that So if you want to come forward and apparently not reluctant happy to
Yeah So um I don't have a big presentation And I will say um you know everybody who's looked at our problem says you need something and the complete set of what you need is
you know 28,000 ft and if you really pare it down you end up with 14,000 ft and that's what has happened every time in this process Um and one of my concerns is that
um you know we're not guaranteed to have a call fire department So right now our department is is such that we have um really good staffing and really skilled staffing Um and a lot of them
are between 60 and 65 and that's our world Um we five years ago were in a world where the um people in town the number of people we recruit from home became very
very very small um just demographically uh with co that has changed rather dramatically We have a lot of younger people in town um young families They are very
supportive of fire department They are very supportive of having call staffing in the fire department and they're very supportive of having somebody else staff it Um it has been very difficult You know you know we've got children we've got whatever Well you know so do we all
but that's that's their world Um our staffing within four minutes is rough And the ability to enlarge that you know is a thing And the problem we have is we are more highly skilled
Well we are very highly skilled in some of what we do especially water supply pump operation those kinds of things That doesn't happen immediately And when you lose your
pipeline you lose your pipeline Um when you start hiring full-time people what you can do it's called a combination department you know some some full-time some part-time that tends to go in one direction and you you're working your way toward a great
apartment Um you can see this in Lincoln you can see in Boxboro you can see it in many towns our size Most towns our size even outside of 495 have some career staffing and they're working toward care Um my concern is I just hope we
understand the financial impacts We look at the financial impacts of an increment and and capital Um and I can't guarantee you even at this point I mean we're already we've already lost a
lot of our time we need it Um but there also financial impacts for going career and you know and it'll happen somewhat incrementally So kind of my back of the envelope is you know ex add
$300,000 a year for several years um for maybe three years and that will get you two people on staff for um you know eight hours for each of those years So by the end of
of three years you would have two people on staff 24 hours a day five days a week Okay so you start there right and you're heading in a direction million dollars Yeah So that's million dollar a year A year right and and so you're heading in a direction
that now think about now it's sort of a pay me now or pay me later Well yes and no I mean if you're plumping down 20 million for a building that's 20 years of that and there's other costs So it's actually I never thought I'd say that
but it might not be It may be a better option finance Well you still have to build a building You can't do it without building right if you have overnight people you're going to have to build a You have to build a building to to the house them right you have to build a building Yeah You have to build a
building And your services then are very different than what you have now I think what it is is that's what gives it the the 10 year the very inexpensive option the only 10-year lifespan because if you're going to have to
start moving in that direction then that building won't be adequate anymore I don't know Um I mean so you hired outside people to give you the answer Um it was same
answer we've gotten other times I don't know what else we can come up with You know we're trying our best You know we got ourselves in a good position but our pipeline is such that you know I have people all the time who live 15 minutes away who would love to be trained by us
Um that doesn't help us right now because 15 is too much time They have to come to the station They can't meet you at the player No we cannot Not really And um there chief so one of my questions after the presentation last
week and then our discussion was that you know the lead was not about um providing the housing you know that the lead was about um base safety and and space and the bay
space So if you if do you think the housing aspect of being able to um recruit what you need for an on call fire department do you think that's the highest priority
i think that and office spaces for people to work there all of those kind of things when I say housing all of that kind of thing I think another piece of it and it's and it's what we're we're trying to we've cut back to the absolute bare minimum is the PE reason people
want to do this is to be part of community right if you're part of Carlile you need some base spaces and things to be if you're coming from outside of our community and you want to be part of the community you need to have community space that they're a part of community there and so your community is the Carl Fire Department and that's
what you're becoming a part of community of and right now there Isn't that space Right Because what I'm getting at is um and again well what I'm is
um if if we changed or put the emphasis on the space for um sleeping over working having some kind of community space and uh for instance left off one
of the extra bays Um I mean is there a way to reconfigure what if if if the most important priority is the housing and workspace is there a way to I guess
that's the question to this this team right the designers but right could they could they come up with an option that is closer to the 10 million Uh and we know whatever they come up whatever we we settle on we know it's going to be higher by the time the thing gets built
But um I think we you know my my takeaway from last week was they didn't provide us with an option that I felt like we could support I think what they came up with was we you know we're not we have a bunch of
different levers that can be pulled here and we can get to 10 million that's not a problem but we can't accomplish all the goals that were set out Yes And we can kind of keep on going back to the well and saying "But but you need to you know you just you have to get there." And I think eventually
they're they'll probably just say "Look we we we just you know come up with some creative approaches and we can't figure out how to do that." David do you feel that Tech Time what's her name tech Time Did they really adequately explore it seemed cursory their level of options
You gave them two weeks to do this No three weeks Yeah When did we do this it wasn't It was When did we put them on because remember we Yeah Wasn't We did rush them to try and get something because we thought we could kind of hit the budgetary target that we So let's
take more time and that's where we are We don't need the philosophical argument We need some plans So we get the philosophical argument So go find plans that meet your view You guys have done it the longest Your vision of your balance of the on call and maybe
there's going to be some professionals Okay fine But your view of the 20 or 30 year need of the department is the best one We're not going to add to that So come up with better plans Just come up with more nuanced approach That's all It just seemed very cookie cutter to me I
don't think we we ask the chief to do that You mean tech time well I'm saying the tech time but with their guidance and with Right I mean I don't know I don't really understand tech So I think there are a lot of things they got very nuanced about right okay What things require this level right how what things
can we move to a an accessory building that doesn't require that so they did a lot of things to try to try to do that We did a lot of cutting back to get to a minimum right you know so you could have done this for $10 million
four years ago right by the time we get to do it it may be 20 million But I think every time you go back to the well it's going to be something in the order of 14,000 ft Okay So go with that But I mean so that's right But maybe Well what
would happen if you didn't have that extra bay if you cut back one of the bays how much footage is that roughly um so 20 by 70 is
1400 Maybe I'm just saying if we right because if you come up with the same footage every time then it's not going to change much Right But but can we and and we've already cut the base face quite a bit Sure Yeah Right So this is
what we kind of said was our minimum Now if you want to do less than the minimum you know Well I guess Right It's going to be a tradeoff right and I think something's got to give And so if we if we um you know I hear what you're saying
exactly about having to provide the work and sleep space and community space what happens if we if that's where we put the bulk of the and the hazardous decontamination i mean
that you know in terms of safety I again I don't feel like we're the ones that should be prioritizing right but I'm hearing you saying the lodging and work space and and community space is the most important thing for keeping a call an on call fire department in
Carlilele Um and we we say to teon come back with options that take some other elements off or reduce them in some way
Again I'm not the right So you're hitting a moving target and um that can happen and you'll get less for the same amount of money because by the time you add another six months and another year and another two years onto
this process that's where we are right now Brian we can't we're not going to we don't have something we can put before a town meeting in May We just don't It's going to be the none of those I don't at least I'm not prepared to recommend one of those options And
so right what we talked about last week was then okay we'll ask for enough money to keep Tecton continuing to work on the design so we have something for the fall town meeting But I I'm concerned and I'm not arguing that we because I don't
think we were ready to to to put this forward but we keep kicking this can and and I think as a board we have to you know get this done for the fall town meeting Get it get it to a point where
Sure So the question is exactly to decide what we want What do we need to do so we're ready for and we agree with that like late time's not our friend You know Nathan was long saying we should have gotten the police station done and probably if we' listened to him we would
have probably saved a million bucks if we' done it when we should have done it But you know the process is lengthy That's just town government and we're at a point where it's ridic it's silly to talk about Maytown meeting because we're not going to do it So we should be totally focused on fall town meeting and
what do we need to tell them what to do so we're ready with a credible plan fall town meeting That's what we got to do We're back to the thing that is the disconnect is they're saying we need these we need all of these things to to
make sure we have an on call department And we've said but we really want to limit this price to a certain price point and our consultants who we've hired and who represent us are saying "Guys you're not being realistic It's not that we have to adjust." So well
that's the question Are you I mean in in our we we have to have a political commitment to do that And and right now I mean it was like our jaws dropped and we said "Oh my gosh we're never going to get support." The police station's going to add 175k to everybody's tax A $20
million fire station would add how much five times that What five times that Five times 175 Just under,000 Just under uh $1,000 like 800 900 bucks to the tax bill starting in FY whenever it whenever
assuming yeah variable not paying for DBW sheds and everything else Right now their proposal they had was 15ish There were a there was that middle line I know but to your point cost escalating and actually and this is not our fault
there's a guy somewhere down in Washington who wants to raise lumber and do this and do that So we don't really know right and what we do know what we do know is what we thought was a $3 million police station is now 4 million
So we know we're at least 25% off point three So year 15 is 20 in I'm talking to you That's why I'm asking So it's a thousand bucks between all the projects or whatever and we haven't got to DPW and some other things I guess that's the
political So what what is what's in between us and the the fall town meeting it sounds like we're just not ready to make this decision right now We you know we we came up with a program We came up with the we hired this consultant You know we we vetted several This is the best one you know presumably they're
they're very um alert and and and able um and they came up with the cost and we don't like that So what like what do you see happening between now and let me just interrupt there I don't think my impression was they have not finished what we hired them to do They've they've
taken right and so we're sitting here today I we had a work what I now consider a working meeting where they presented their first cut and they still have to get additional input into it The question is one question I have is what do we
need for article 19 it's not it's not a full fire station So it it's back to the question of last week of what can do they have enough funds to finish what we've we're paying them to do um because community outreach getting
other stakeholder input they have not done that yet Um the recommendations may change one way or the other I don't know Um but those three options it seemed like there's still some iteration on that that should happen in this first phase I
mean right as a result of the working session and this conversation we're having right now We may decide We could decide tonight or whenever Hey you're you're super cheap option That's not going to meet the next decade any of the
like forget it Just take that one off the table The super duper everything in that's not great Let's go back to this middle range This 12 to 16 million and give us you know I mean let's talk about these
priorities The chief chief and the two and the assistant chief have the assistant deputy lieutenant that chief and lieutenant Okay There's no captain There are he's not here Above or below deputy and a captain There's deputy and a captain also above or below the
lieutenant Above in the in the in the chart Okay Anyway um I mean the experts the EMS coordinator which is saying they have certain needs That's good We have not by our own admission we haven't I think fully gotten the town certain town
people in with it which they should do right that's part of their scope Um and I mean Mr Lever's listening I'll just call him out but he's been saying repeatedly I'd like an inventory of all the vehicles and which are the priority vehicles that have to be in the barn and
which could be down the street Like that's a fair comment right so I think there's work to be done and I think we could scope it If we have to take a more aggressive role then let's take a more aggressive role and let's let's tighten up the you know statement of work and say "All right I mean if we math it out
we'd have to have this by September." I don't know Some of I think longer term we want to ideally we would we're not going to I don't see us approving a full fire station project at fall town meeting No no but you want but we want but we want to be the bogey would be next town meeting be be in a position to
get a uh the fire station project funded which when you work backwards you said you need all this all this documentation and work done which means we we do need to approve something to get us the fall town meeting to get us to so what are those things what's the next the thing is to take say if you took the middle
ground and made three options out of it that with enough time so we could seriously evaluate those and say we like this one and you've got enough credibility to say the ask at fall town meeting is to fund that
project right but does that get you had said no you don't have enough time at fall town meeting to get this construction documents or the next the materials you would need to get to springtown meeting you were commenting fall town meeting isn't is too late you need to approve it at this town
meeting depend so yeah walk us through do that again All right So it depends on that final ask This is how much it's going to cost for you to fund your fire station with contingency and all the stuff that we've been doing with the police station Do you want to go in with a with
a high fidelity guess or do you want to go in with this with the number like you're doing with the elevators right You've got all the construction documents and you put it out to bid and you're you're going with that number There's not time for that No No Next
Next have spring by spring to do that Yeah by spring So it would be a sprint from November to March It if you had high fidelity on when you went to fall town meeting this is the option that we're going to do and we're asking you we're going to design it now
I think it's possible but it's going to be tight If there's any wiggle and and what it's going to look like then you don't have time We'll try to take the wiggle out between now and the fall right so right now you have a napkin right you
want a fancy napkin for the fall and then you want the real design documents for the spring You want 26 You want the money for the real documents get it out to bid and bring a real number in the spring right 26 right and that's like a million8 probably or a million the fall
total design fall Yeah It's 10% of whatever the building costs Million No no the now ask from now till the fancy two different I was I was talking about the fall time the fall last fall right so if you approve this right coming up is much smaller this would be just to do
what we're supposed to talk with them on Friday about what they could do um right now if you did nothing you would get a better version of what you've already got and it doesn't sound like that's enough so you probably should consider doubling the cost of what you've spent
so far which would you've spent 150 to get to this point with OPM and design So you need something in the 100 to 200 range So but they they're they're according to
Tecton last week they're I guess it was only like 24,000 or something but they had some money budgeted to do some of the community outreach that's that in the current contract And so we would need something
So the so is it mainly it's the reworking of things and getting better drilling down further to get more um understanding of the costs is what we would be asking them to do in the summer
So when I say you I mean the whole board The way you came off last time is you wanted community input about potential options So but what it sounds like tonight is you want to kind of give here's what the option should be or a
range of options and then get community input on that So it depends on which way you want to go So if you want community input about what's already been presented which it doesn't sound like you want to do then that's already been scoped Unless we're confident that these three
options offered something because the lieutenant makes a point here you know about what what else are we going to get in this process i'm not advocating that we're going to do something this springtown meeting yet
but but what else are we going to learn or where else are we going to go with this what what more do you need David or anyone on this posed a question for example the vehicle inventory question prioritizing which ones need to be where which vehicles we absolutely need which
vehicles we could bar you know I mean there's a vehicle analysis that goes with that which I know Brian has but we haven't seen it that's a simple thing because the biggest single piece of real estate are the bays right so let's address the bays I mean Brian saying we'll trade the bay for this and that I don't know how to make that trade let's
start with how many bays we need let's add the we know what we need right we need the bays we need the training space we need the quarters the sleeping quarters we need the decon I mean there's a bunch of elements right so I just didn't feel I I understand and we maybe gave him a weird target but maybe now being smarter we can say you know
what okay let's forget about 10 million We understand I think we've That was one answer So fine So goodbye Goodbye 10 million And by the way 20 is too much So goodbye 20 million Go in that middle space may end up at 20 and give it well we may be but but you to get to 20 you
need to start at 12 to 16 because you will be at 20 right but start you can't start at 20 so you know they're architects I mean that's what they do for a living do some trades talk to some people and come back with some schemes like in the middle of the summer and
let's analyze and then we can give them marching orders to get their thing ready for town meeting it's not that complicated we're making it more complicated I think there needs to be I'm just not clear what we need to just get to that Do we need more money at town meeting to do that we need some
amounts the budget that they have what the contract says now Do we need to include the OPM in that because I don't it's not clear to me like is it approve him already no but are they are they value added this in this stage are we just do they have any work to do i mean we shouldn't be charging Not not a lot
No So let the architects just Yeah the I think we agreed to hire the OPM because the OPM was going to be our advocate saying we understand your scope what you're looking to do and the budget and we're going to be the ones arbitrating this and figuring it out We saw the
experts for the first time you know at that meeting and you know then we had the designer the designer came in and oftentimes as you say well architects figure this out I do think architects want to design everything and so you need to have someone who reigns them in
Okay And so that's but Scott raises an interesting question What are we getting from that OPM is that what you're Well I I just want to go back and and remind everyone we're at this point now because
we we were able to tap the ARPA funding to do this right like we're kind of we tried to get ahead of it and tried to get enough work done to get to town meeting I don't want to rush I I do not want to go to town meeting without being fully prepared because I do think with all the stuff that's on the table right
if you mean this town meeting this town meeting like I don't want to preempt or or oversell where this project is we determined so we determined we have a little extra free cash still above the 12% So if there's some reasonable amount of funds that we need to get approved at
town meeting I riddle me this Dr Trio 20 million What's 1% of a $20 million project 200 grand No kidding Do you think it's worth 1% to like No I get a design Okay So my question is what's Let's just ask for the money and let's
make that argument But the the conversation at the last meeting was it was it was a much bigger ask for that at this town Is the Ryan has to say we were talking about 175 We're talking about the fancy napkin Yeah Right Yes And you first said 2 * 150 and then
you said 100 200 So I don't know where we're having a So you're going to have a meeting to make this more helpful I think you should keep the Warren article generic Y and then we bring you what what do you get for X dollars and then you you have to have a last minute
call and bring that to town meeting which is not your preferred process but we're at that spot If you want fidelity on the numbers Yeah Yeah let's do that But the the argument I made last time was the more time you spend this summer
getting closer to your target the the less rushed that November to we need to help future you We need to back into a date Yeah By which they will present I'll just say three options in that range and we'll work out like who they
interview and how they come up with it So we can home in on one and then give them enough time to get everything organized for the ask if you got to be able to do that in my opinion And they keep asking me for this meeting on
Friday You said you would like community input and their question is about what well that's a good question because I think that that target just moved It's certainly not the presentation they gave uh us to see what appetite people have
for the budget I think it I think they needs three what I think I heard David say three uh alternatives within this new budget that we level that we've
established Right The mid-range The mid-range and that should reflect the department's priorities and some I don't know yet but we should think about which citizens but some group of focus group some of which
is affordability There should be some weighing in besides us in the echo chamber on whether $1,000 in the tax bill is okay thing We have some outspoken people who are listening on it I'm sure they'll raise their hand Um
well I would almost I was getting late but I was going to say I ask Sure Go ahead You know if if there's someone online I mean I value our our chief and lieutenant that's a bigger ask what
their opinions are on this too But I think that we should ask Tom are do you have any thoughts on this or John Lavy do you have some thoughts in a succinct manner because we have uh very little time
I have some thoughts I don't want to repeat what I put in the packet and because that reflects all of my thoughts I would say two things Um if it were me I would not give a dime to that consultant It's not a matter of they came in with higher numbers They didn't
come in with a good option If they came in with a good option and said it was 15 million I'd be happy about that They came in three from my perspective very ill-advised option So I wouldn't use them for that That's what I would do Next point is if you do go that way
please have a backup plan because you're not going to get there Reinstate the designer selection committee for free and get some really good plans from BlendPap and some of those other contractors focused on the right thing If you do this I really fear you're going to get the fall time meeting and
not do it again which means it won't happen next next spring So that that's all I really have to say The second point Tom is what were you saying the second point is you are we ought we ought to have a committee Yeah I think the probability this is going to get you
a good plan in the fall of 26 is somewhere between zero and 1% I really believe that So I would if you do that fine but reinstate the what the process you had last year Put in an RFQ a properly written RFQ which will get uh
good proposals from contractors like Glenn App who proposed a 6 to8 million solution unfinished albeit but more creative than what we got from Tecton I just don't see this they they produced a poor work result for a lot of money I just
that's my opinion That's one opinion I don't know Um okay Thank you Tom Don't sugarcoat it Tom Next time tell us what you really think John Lavy your moment in the sun if you're on
going twice going love to hear from you All right What's your assessment of the middle what's your assessment of I mean we heard we heard his opinion What's your assessment of Techtown what's your assessment um so my assessment is they know what they're doing in terms of fire stations Um the other company that he
talked about has never built a fire station Had no idea what they were doing and that was pretty clear Um so that part is good Um I think they were given a pretty steep ask in a short amount of time Yeah And I think what they did for you was
set the world And I I don't I don't think that was a bad thing I mean I know you guys for you guys it was a shock for us you know they came in and said "What you need is $20 million building." And we said "Yeah we know we're not doing that." So let's you know and we we've That wasn't a shock to us what they
brought to you guys Um I have given them a list of some people in town they need to reach out to but obviously that wasn't going to happen before that meeting Right now we have a previous fire chief who lives in town We have people who live near the fire station You have people who have opinions They
have that list and yes they need to do that Um I the thing you're getting from them is $800 to $900 a square foot building and what you'll get from other
people is a $1,200 square foot building And that's that's kind of what your what your value ad from them is as opposed to some of the other people you talk to Tecton Yes is that they are going to look for any way they can to
economize and streamline I don't think any other architect would have said "Oh let's move you know a third of your stuff out to a building that costs less right they're they're doing whatever they can to do that." Um so I think that part of it was positive Again you know
obviously if they had four months or five months or six months to come up with something I'm sure they would have a little bit different but that's was just my working with them I I don't Yeah I don't know if it would have been a lot different I mean I think we
they came up with the ideal solution that we asked them to Um I mean anything less than that of course is not ideal but we have to make some compromises here And is it exactly what we wanted i mean no of course it's not but we can't get what exactly we want It's just it's
simply too expensive And I think we all agree that that's not going to happen But I think I mean back to where the chief started this was that to the extent possible I think we should move expeditiously towards a solution Um and you know the longer we
wait I mean of course there are some there are cost implications but there are also just staffing and safety implications And so I would just encourage you to to try to move forward with that Um I mean we can come up with with three options you know in between
like the the 50 and 55% level I mean I think we can do that They're going to be they're going to be close I mean you're look at three options that are going to be very close It's okay to each other close It just highlights the trades at the margins right i mean David I the point is that like you know this three
bay four bay discussion you know I the marginal the marginal cases are what define the we all know we need x more space right we know so I think they could start with the basic that they've done in the middle option
but I would just like to see a more I guess analytical or a more nuanced analysis of the the the the the last bay maybe versus the training space I don't know the trade-offs but
because they did the two outliers that we've decided are not are non-starters we're left by default with a single middle option you expand that and you say "Okay if you're biased more towards living spaces or training spaces or are
you biased more towards storage spaces and bay spaces like you know those are the kind of discussions having a citizen committee that's made up of people who aren't firefighters is not really that helpful other than their appetite for cost But I
think if you explain to people these are the kind of trades I'm wrestling with you're wrestling with that's a richer dialogue At least we'll just do a little refinement on the thing And there were things that we were pretty strong about So we do not want an elevator right well
you guys may have a different opinion right and that that can agree We agree No I I'm serious that they were We're serious too A lot of what they did was to try to make it so that you didn't do that Well you know there were concerns about this concerns about other And we can you know look at that We can look at building a twotory building without an
elevator which gets by enforced by not by law not by code by lawsuit Is that an appetite this the town wants to think about I mean you guys have some things to think about around the around the borders of how we do I would say I thought they did a good job at least
from my view of it that limiting the ge geograph geologically maybe the boundary conditions of the space like you can only build out this far Can you Brian in the concept of the outbuilding that's down the street is it as big as it can
be in their design package it changes depending on which option you were choosing Right But that's the cheapest of all the construction Right Right So build it as big as you can and put as much stuff you don't actually need in it That's the kind of thing that I think would make a lot of sense It's a great
concept I like it Yeah it was a really creative approach Yeah Right Okay We we do kind of need to wrap up but do you have enough i do I don't So we're going to um talk about the warrant So yeah
we've concluded though we're just going to leave that summary and no dollar amount and then on FR and and that'll be what's in the warrant and then on Friday we'll get um a number from your conversation with Tecton and the OPM right about what they need to do what we
want them to do between but town meeting in the fall The TA have enough information on what we want to do So this summary works for you The select board seeks town meeting approval for additional funds to continue the design phase of the town's proposed fire station renovation Y and then what you did and you've already seen that works
for you as a summary I'm okay with it Yeah Great The rest of it is generic and then the motions will fill it in So from a motion standpoint that's fine From a Friday meeting standpoint do you have enough of our input to kind of get Oh about what we would want them to do And
then I think assuming this passes we immediately like that's got to be like Yeah June or late one of the first things we do is get them back in and let's work out a statement of work and get them to work right yep Great Okay
All right Okay Um I've been texting with Tom Harrington as we've been talking So Tom he's he's at a different town meeting which I find interesting He works for other towns That's crazy Um the citizens petition So you are allowed
they are allowed to submit their language and you can't touch it citizens petition but they are not you do not have to allow a summary Okay So what I suggest is the summary that that you have already seen right the paragraph that just explains it and
Tom did say you know he's particularly concerned about what may or may not be true etc in a summary not saying that they're not submitting stuff that's true but just that hasn't been vetted So with minor minor adjustments allowed to that
paragraph and I can work with them to put a summary in or you could put no summary or you could say this is we can't just put the stripped down summary We summary you can they might want to make you know a tweak or two I'm saying if you allow that we have to do it tonight but you say there's a day or two to do it Well if I have clear guidance
then we can make administrators I'm fine with that personally What is a tweak or two though yeah See no I I Let's read this summary one more time Let's decide whether moving on from the fire station Sorry
Thank you Yeah And um I know Nathan did you want to comment on this part something else Something else I think Okay Thank you Thank you Thank you both Bye And Nathan thank you for coming and staying so late here Advise them to
present Is that a water bottle from one of you the turquoise one I don't know Somehow it doesn't go with your outfit though The one under the chair That's nobody's Okay I'll come back All right Thank you Thanks Good night So this is
what what has been submitted It's it's a basic summary of what they're proposing Yeah I That's fine Okay You're So we have to tweak it You're saying what you were saying is the one
that's in our packet not Yes not the one they sent today the article 25 where it has the little four sentence summary You were saying well you we we as a select board could say tonight Well they're we would allow them to add
a sentence or two Is that what you're saying no I'm not I'm not saying I'm for that I'm just trying to clarify Or if they wanted to change a number or something like that Uhhuh or a we to a to a name Oh okay I'm not talking substantive changes right no substantive
changes I think So a number or a pronoun or something a correction administrative correct right All right That's fine Yeah Are we We're all in favor of that Meaning it's perf So it's okay Professor so the legal standing for this just Who
made it you made it They're in the closet Nathan what so the legal standing for this just so you're aware is um there's no way of knowing whether or not the entire body that signed the petition is in agreement with the summary So
um I'll add this to our file of things that we should be communicating citizens petition take and I'll take the hit on this one Um going forward we should when we meet in the groups talk about summaries and things like that Not that we have time but if we did that would be
a good thing Yeah Just so I'm clear you're okay though taking the hit as you say because we could just put nothing and that's what town council said I'd like to work with them in some way if it's possible But if they don't agree then then nothing is what's going to be
happening Yeah Right Okay That's exactly I'm I would think that I'm comfortable with that summary there with minor administrative numer numeric or you know minor clerical changes but not adding a
sentence or two or something like that and if they don't if they're not satisfied you know you have the authority to take it out Yeah is kind of how I would feel about that Okay And then just a reminder to anyone who's listening to this process or reporting on this process that this is just the
warrant It's the advertisement So they have been able to create a podcast and a video They are adding stuff to the website and they have the ability to present at town meeting So this plenty of time information This is just the warrant language Right Okay Not the motion Right Great Well not the motion
and not the podcast and not the whole other publicity publicity avenues you Ryan You want me to put that up yeah Yes please Um so the last thing we have to discuss is the TA bylaw We do not have a final of that The town administrator is
going to actually put up the current draft we have which is from April 3rd This is the one that we had most recently discussed Um and I had the opportunity to attend the or I the I attended the uh fincom meeting last
Thursday And I see that Nathan is here uh from FinCom and it I asked him to to come because Fincom actually had an opinion that I think is slightly different than what we have heard and I thought it was important that that was
voiced here So Nathan if you wouldn't mind um sharing Fincom's discussion about this as a summary Come up Yeah Welcome back Did you did you miss us
um so would you mind just quickly summarizing the difference though between this one and the previous one that just just to kind of give the context I just want to make sure that I'm speaking to the the same because I don't you just said April 3rd I'm not sure Right
We had shared prior to that another draft and I know I shared with James and I think it probably went to your committee and had discussed it as well But we originally our thought process with the select board was we came up with a draft that was gave the town
administrator um I I think reasonable authority to hire and fire all the town employees except we did exclude the fire chief and the um the Jim Moshe the um
school committee Um so from that we said other than that we're really giving authority Now we had community input that that suggested that we should exclude a few people that the select
board did retain its own authority over and above the town administrator thing people like the and I chief fire chief police chief town council town clerk
treasurer collector Great Um and so from that we um put that forward and we then heard a lot of community input from different boards and committees Um Conscom actually voted in favor of that
original one that I just told you about but others had said we're concerned Um and most notably the uh board of health also the the library trustees came and spoke and were concerned about that as a um the authority of the town
administrator to not include them because it was really an advisory that the the town administrator will you know consult with them but will not um necessarily give them the authority to uh hire and fire So we worked um with
town council to revise the language which is the one that came out on 43 which is the one that was discussed at the last town at the last bincom meeting Okay you know which is the one that says um that um it must get the approval must
have a um for the board has to have a majority of the board vote to support the TA's uh decision to hire or fire somebody Mhm So let me just be very specific because the the key the key sentence that was added was in the case
of the health agent town planner principal assessor and library director the town administrator shall consult with and receive the majority consent of the applicable supervising board or committee prior to making an appointment or removal under this section So that was the key Some of the words were moved
around in other places but that was the key uh change in the most recent version And the parting line Nathan is that those are independently elected boards All the other boards effectively report
up to us right but now people are coming out of the woodwork raising their hand for more So we may have opened a can of Well I was curious what FINCOM Y had to say Let's hear Yeah Okay So um so we did talk about it and um I'm not here
representing any vote of the fincom but um I am representing I think what I believe was the the the general consensus of everybody um in the room Um and uh so there were there were a couple of things that I think jumped out at us
and I will say also at me because I was the one that spoke up about it Um and uh so there there are two things Um one is that um as I understand it um the TA would have uh the role of managing the
day-to-day of the person um and doing anything you know um doing reviews did doing any disciplinary action um you know any performance improvement plan that might be needed or something like that And I think the point was
um that's kind of meaningless if the board then needs to get involved And so somebody who knows that they have the backing of their of the board um doesn't necessarily have to do a whole lot of what Brian is saying So it's
really making him um uh it's putting him in an incredibly difficult position to say manage this person but you don't really get the final say And so that that's so that's um that was you know one thing that really jumped
out I think you know you know and I'll say personally I it was the the consensus I think of the board Um but I I you know I personally feel that really really puts Ryan in a difficult position Um and so I would leave that wording the
other way The other thing and this I think would be more Ryan could correct me if I'm wrong but what it also does is it takes what something it takes what could be a personnel issue between staff and it makes it have to be public Um and
I you know I think that that's going to make it very uncomfortable and less likely to happen Um and you know I think uh it's again putting Ryan in a very difficult position that he's gone through this whole thing and then in
public he needs to sit down with the board and talk it through and he may not you know you know all kinds of things could be going on where he's making a recommendation that is turned down and that's putting him also in a very difficult position Um and so those those
are the points that um that you're saying were raised not just by you but by the I think we we we discussed it briefly but I think that the general consensus and you know uh I talked to James the chair and he confirmed um that
yes this was the general consensus of well I didn't want to come here and and say good um so I I think you know not a general consensus But my personal feeling is I think the previous draft was really pretty good I understand the
politics of it and you know maybe you know I mean maybe there's you know maybe the library doesn't have to be invol included Um but uh you know that that that's my recommendation and um and the consensus of the board was only about those two
issues Um I think we did talk about whether or not the library would needed to be involved but not this other part where I just said we should go back to it That's me Well basically what you're saying is we didn't fix the problem we started out to fix because we we put it
back to where it it currently is You put it back where it currently is and made it very difficult for Ryan And I haven't talked to Ryan He could be he could be wanting to kick me under the table I don't know But yeah No other reason He's really been Yeah He stayed out of we
should be saying the TA TA would be difficult for the any TA Yeah Right Yeah But the the thing is that we really our goal is to give authority He has already the responsibility in many respects but he has no authority and we want to make
sure ensure that everybody understands he has the authority to do disciplinary action making sure people right are and he in this new version as I understand it I haven't read it but as it was described to me they haven't given him the authority
you've given them a lot of the work but not the authority at least with those boards yeah yeah Yeah Well Nathan the public process you always talk about for for the the problem between two employees is is
always on the side of the employee who's being protected from being the firing But the real concern in my opinion is the employee that that may be accusing of the person who who may be fired not wanting that process to be public And if you truly are a bad employee you're
going to use that process to your advantage because very few people are willing to to take these grievances publicly So that's the employee that I'm concerned about And I know it's always about authority and power but it's really about protecting town employees and making and making this a place where
people want to work I completely agree and I alluded to that saying it's it will be difficult for somebody to bring it to the board publicly and it would be difficult to be brought to the board publicly Yeah Yeah Is that's what you're saying right i'm just HR is difficult to do publicly Yes It's also an inherent
problem It needs to be done publicly if under the current system too That's one of the challenges Exactly Yeah Thank you Yeah Thanks I I you know thought this was important because you know we
haven't voted on a a final draft of what we want to put forward to the town I think we've con our consensus is we we are moving forward with this article We are putting something forward The question is what is the appropriate bylaw that we want to do yeah
So just as another update I checked in with the uh school committee I gave the most recent draft Essentially they discussed it but they're not going to take a position on this bylaw given it from their perspective doesn't impact them directly So um just wanted to put
that out there I I agree with with Nathan Um I understand the reasons we we we did the revision trying to address legitimate concerns that are raised about preserving the uh autonomy of of
other boards But I do think the the additional language does create the problems you highlight Um I don't think it solves some of the issues we have today And I think it you know I said a couple of meetings ago I think I think
we I think bylaw should be clear I think they should be clean I think they should be simple And I think we should present that a very clear option for the voters and and and the residents and let them decide if they agree with um our
recommendation that the TA should have that authority for all the reasons we've talked about and for all the reasons highlighted um for years in fin in the governance report that that recommends uh strengthening of the town administrator
role It doesn't necessarily specifically recommend broadening his um his reach per this special bylaw But you know I think I think we can make a a strong argument I think the other the people who oppose it can make an argument And I think we should give the voters a clear
choice and let them make the final decision Presenting What's that who will be presenting i will And I think this the new language and we've heard back from from one board that doesn't like the new language you know for for valid reasons So I prefer a simple clear
approach and and put it before the people and and see what they say And to that extent I also um as as much as I want to keep things clean and simple the the comment about excluding um the library I think is one we should
we should consider because I do think it's qualitatively different um and there's the issue of span of control and workload and I don't know that broadening this to include the library is necessarily and a lot of towns do exclude the library in these in similar
bylaws So I I would be amendable to that So do we just take out the the whole paragraph that starts in the case of the health agent town planner principal assessor and library blah blah blah And we just accept except as provided herein
the town administrator shall have authority to appoint and may discipline or remove all employees of the town subject Where's the consent thing though we we had a consent I would I would proposing to leave it out Well
there isn't anything in the in the in the article Oh you're looking at that I would article 20 to do this What's in the warrant book doesn't say anything about that the summary has a line in there and we could just delete the line that's in the summary and then we could
fiddle with the I would recommend I because I looked at both of these like I spent some time making sure I understood the edits I think if you went back to the previous draft it's all the same text It's in a slightly different order in the new
version and it's the addition of you you would if you went I think you could just go back to the previous draft which says shall consult It says shall consult um and it does include the language except as specifically provided herein the provisions of you know this the thing
about the delegating authority I think the real only substantive ad in the new draft was what we would be taking requiring the majority vote requiring the majority vote identifying three I'm a little wary about creating a yet another draft on the like here as we sit
tonight because we do have to okay finalize well I I is if I'm going to be presenting this I have to start marketing it I have going to do a podcast and everything I need to know kind of which where we are as a board So we need to decide on something I support
what Scott Scott is saying I would not remove shell I would if we're going to go back to shell consult I guess I'm not I'm not a fan of adding the library only
because now you start again Why them and not us that's the thing we're hearing back on right yeah And I think there's a bright line um among the others the superintendent of schools and the uh strong
fire chief and the TA are at all at the same level and everybody else is at a different level and I think that kind of creates a bright line that's why those others are exempt Well the chief is by statute
right superintendent at the same level as the chief Well he's actually higher than the chief but I mean superintendent the TAP by state statute I can pull that up from you that I wouldn't say level I would say by statute right those statute is
pretty clear on that And I'll get the actual statute So I'll be able to cite that I think if you're clean on the statute that's the parting line right but we've just chosen to add the other positions here Town clerk town treasurer slt tax collector town council We we did
receive some feedback like for example on the treasurer and tax collector that it's a fiduciary duty I mean we we think that that that person actually that has not been what I've heard any
negative uh feedback about Nobody's you know it was it's more from the the boards boards It's the boards and and what I think it's more from the staff than even than from No the boards themselves I would say the boards
themselves have you know again board of health would say well why is the independence of the health agent less important than the independence of the town clerk like do you want clean water or you want clean elections why do we have to choose that you know I mean that's what they would say But you're
not going to convince everybody So we have to make some Well we have a couple of drafts before us Do you want to What do you think is the best way as far as taking the most recent draft and taking the language go back to the T-minus one draft T-minus
one We did add some language though on on use of of or how uh day-to-day management We changed a word right there's something about policy in there right is that we is not setting policy
for any of the boards Yeah Right So right Should probably keep that But that was already Yeah that's been in there a while As long as that's not personnel policy right they can't set their own personnel Do you have it up there i have I I don't
know if there's a way for me to um What's up there is that the most recent nope up there on the screen says uh I'm not sure which draft to put up Uh three town administrator bylaw 3-2 If
you have a markup put the most current markup It will have the whole history on it It doesn't have the markup I don't think David you might have it faster than I do The one you receive Let me look All right It's the 4325 IC review
31825 I believe was the previous version Yeah he has the 35 version Yep That's the one you're referring to that has the edits in it That was the um previous You want me to email that to
you Ryan is that the one with the That's the majority vote That's the majority vote 143 But it's got the markup I think No it I have the markup He has the markup That's what he's saying Yeah the markup's a little bit confusing Let me
share I mean I think if you the one you have did you try looking at the review panel and Yeah No I mean there's Yeah So there's some assertions Something that appears as deletion is an assert It's a little hard to understand Let me send I'm sending this to you
Ryan Why don't you uh Well it it sounds like we're in that there's consensus among us that we should go back to the
um no you know delete the part about um requiring the majority vote of the those relevant boards Am I right about that yes we're in agreement Yeah What Yeah So in terms of your question Travis I think
it's it's kind of we're back to where we started you know in terms of what we were proposing And the only open question is the library because some are saying "Yeah we could take it out." And some don't want to take it out I'm sort of ambivalent
It's just It looks like there was also some text around filling a vacancy Um right So why don't we just go through that's the one I just sent right so that's the most recent So let's go through from the top and just accept and delete certain changes So there looks like there's nothing changed So go back
down to the Christmas tree part Okay So I think the red is what most re So if you were to delete the if you were to reject the insert in in that paragraph the first paragraph if you were to reject the red
you would you would say simply the town administrator shall consult with the applicable supervising board or committ prior to making a shall consult with and I guess he's missed some text but shall consult
with the applicable I don't something it's the applicable supervising board committee prior to making appointment or removal under this section need to enable editing Yeah there you go Why wouldn't we why wouldn't we just make that a generic shall consult consult
with whom with what I mean instead of instead of us um No that we're saying that shall consult with but we're not going to single out the um No no we remove the first you you would remove the first clause boarding board or committee town administrator shall
consult with Can I let me read the text from the previous draft which is immediately above 3.3.3 It's in here but it's been broken up And it it read in the previous draft where any employee is responsible for assisting the operations
of an elected or appointed town official or multiple member body comma the town administrator shall consult with such official or multiple member body prior to making an appointment or removal under this section That's right And then it goes right into the in the event of a vacancy Okay That was the final
paragraph in the previous draft Okay All right I'm like that I like that And then above that was except as provided herein the town administrator shall have authority to appoint and may discipline or remove all other employees of the town subject to the provisions of the town's duly adopted personnel policies
So the only that was the previous draft but but we did add language about the clarify that the town the day-to-day or the no policy was or is is that was that is that also in the draft you're reading from that's in this draft here Let me move Oop sorry I thought it was right Uh
and manage employees operations resources I thought it was Yeah right there It's in the 3 I3 333 Oh town shall ensure efficient operation of all town departments and facilities by implementing the policy directives of
the select board or other town official or multiple member body is applicable I'm fine with that Uh so what changed sorry 33 I don't Nothing changed in that Yeah that's what's here I'm looking at the
previous draft It's the same Okay I believe I thought there was a word Ethan got down there though Right Just below dayto day was day Wait hold on Efficient operation somewhere Dayto day got this is you just took out data You literally just took out day which I think is fine
right yes And leave it out Okay And that's the that's the Ethan the last comment at the bottom last delete that's just out of view It's kind of cut off pull down like a couple ticks There it is Deleted dayto day Okay All right So do you want me to I think let's just
wrap this up Do you want going to the Christmas tree section you want to just leave it the town administrator read what what Scott wrote You have to go through unfortunately the way it's marked up It's you have to go through the ETH and comments It's literally the previous draft with day-to-day deleted That's all you have to do right
okay Well then that's a different file I have and yeah I you have it well I can't but but it's it's everything I just read to you So starting with accept is provided herein the whole thing about consult the
what I just read and then the previous paragraph is pursuant to this bylaw So why don't you do you want to just um share a share of your screen but you've got I don't know I was going to put this on Screen is paused I argued
for it Yes You want to uh No just let's do it right here He's got it right on the screen I just need to get this on the screen Are you walking somewhere maybe you're not walking Need help
Yeah I think what time where we need Well we supposed to be We want to get one Did you get a parking it's that one You're driving right well I'm grabbing Okay Well I'll pick I thought you were going through That's
43 That I think Okay And Alice maybe Mark will come too And that's the edited one Don't we have So you have a parking pass right there Yeah And that's a five I have one as well that I'm not going to use If you need one share cuz I'm going
to walk unless it's unless it's incredible Supposed to be a nice day No it's supposed to rain Oh is it that was the latest as of which one yesterday afternoon supposed to rain Saturday Anyway that's it So you have a you have
a pass that gets you to alpha Yeah you do I I don't know where I parked I think it um but we have to go around 3.3 go a different rotary and come on the route route So that was what we're
not supposed to go into conquered on conquered road to 3.3 dayto day operations attention to that So you have to go like around through act into actton and then get on route two Yes we're planning I thought I would get you
can't get to Barrett Okay So I just want to put it one one last plug for excluding the library Okay You think we should explain i think it's I think it's different It's different enough like the police chief and the I mean fire chief
for the certainly done that your opinion was that discussed at fin no Well yes it was mostly we could see how that library did Okay Most of them do exempt the library but just more of a more qualitative standpoint there wasn't a
little from Yeah I think maybe decided to discuss this because there is financial impact because of potential savings and that's why we discussed it at all Right All right So shall we make um Well let's
see make a determination about that about the library All right Yeah Because you know they have supported this bylaw However you know they Well they supported the version where they had a majority vote Yeah Yeah
That's not why I would include them No no I understand but I I don't want you need to do the need to do the right thing But I think it's different enough and the down there and and also course you never know you know
late I think other towns think you you could get a board that wants to hire uh or fire the librarian because the librarian either will or will not ban books right and then the librarian has no recourse We're going to add the
librarian Okay Well no I'm I'm just I'm just because right now we're thinking about who's currently it in the future if you need to If something like that comes up you can say "Oh we didn't expect that." And you could Yeah
that's just Yeah Okay Any further thoughts from the board on that yeah this is it We're we've I have just accepted the changes we we took out daytoday This would be the final draft Okay Of the if you wanted to read
okay um let's let's exempt the library They also have their own set of policies which other boards don't have You know I think that's another it's a board decision here I don't know Every got different I'm okay with it I'm
okay with library What excluding No putting it in Leaving them in Leaving them in or putting them on the list with the fire chief and list You could have gone either way right
yeah Okay Okay See Travis is you haven't been in the Travis Was he chair when you no he wasn't Because the Travis regime is you you stretch this out till 10:30 and then everybody's like "Okay whatever." No Come on I try to keep it in pretty good steady here I am the one that
brought us to midnight so I can't All right So where would you like me to add that in here in the Scott are you okay with that um yeah Exempting the library Okay I'm okay with that In the case of the health agent town planner principal
assessor and library director Oh so uh Oh I'm sorry So then take that out Take and library director out No no no I think you're looking at the Yeah look at this screen here So
3.3.2 You see the bottom section of the top page Let's do it to the Can you make that a little larger yes Sorry Travis zoom Bottom right You slide here See the bottom right you can go up to 100%
Is this micros there right here That little bar that goes that slides Got it I'm working Okay I like this There we go There we go Good to be
[Music] provided that the select board shall appoint and may remove police chief fire chief a town clerk town council and uh library director Is that No because No we we're not removing the library No
it's the second further that employees of the Carlile public schools and the fire um public schools compa comma police and library we are saying and the fire department Oh we're not talking about the whole department We were just
talking about the director right uh provide for the employees of the car public schools moved and managed by the schools committee Well so doesn't say anything about hiring or
firing th the directors of those departments does it well in the in what we're those positions we're describing very specifically right so we'd have to say but right now you don't have the
authority to fire the director of the library in any case Right Employees of the Car Public Schools So what is it 3.3.1 This whole thing is silent on the directors of those departments Correct It's all employees
We're giving them all employee the TA all all employees I guess what you'd have to add is um where you where it has the thing about the fire the fire department and the school uh you'd have to say and uh below
that Travis if you go down to the next uh where it says is that employees of the Carile public school you'd say something like uh the uh director of the Gleon Library shall be appointed removed and
managed by the trustees right that's how you'd have to say it Well you we didn't say that for the school um Yeah we do School committee for the superintendent and the fire chief Well no it for the school you're exempting the fire
department you're you're exempting the entire the rest of their staff right are we suggesting you Ryan wouldn't have authority over the director but would have authority over the employees that report to the director wouldn't we just accept the library like
we do the schools and just say as a whole like yes I don't know that we want right do we want all the part time and and the employees of the library as well i mean that's employees So I think it's just in it's just in the bottom of
3.3.2 employees of the Carile public schools library and the fire department shall be appointed removed and managed by the school committee trustees of the library whatever the right or superintendent and the fire chief respectively Yeah So you would just add
them into this last sentence Yeah And make it clear that it's Gleon Library Yeah So be that employees of the Carlo Public Schools the fire department comma and and Gleon Library Gleon public
library could be appointed removed and managed by the school committee comma superend or two superintendent comma or uh and the fire chief
and the trustees of Gleason Library respectively library it gets kind of long superintendent school committee or super fire chief and
and but we wanted to specify rather than the entire library staff it's just the we're saying the staff that's what I was pointing out that this is it's a it's problematic Yeah Problematic That's why that's why the library was because you
have provided further that employees of and that's what you want with the library employees of the library would be exempt the library they exempt the I mean they don't just exempt the director they exempt the whole we want the department all the employees reporting
to Ryan in in the last goound it was I thought the library just the the it's not the entire department of the library it's just the director of the library So we'd be saying that and we would be saying a would be uh supervising the
other staff of the library No you don't want that Managing see treat it like the schools honestly treat it like treat So leave it like this It's a lot of part-time employee the Carile public schools and fire You don't and you just have to change that next line the
perspective respectively line thing too I fire department in Gleon public library to be appointed removed and managed by the and then you have to get this respectively the school committee or superintendent comma the fire chief
comma and the uh trustes and trustees of the Gleon Library respectively director Director and trustees of this Oh there you go for the school right the trustees of Gleon Library or the director or director
Sorry we're spending all this time drafting but this is just have it done Yeah we have to get committee or Okay School committee or superintendent fire chief comma uh and then you have school uh trustes
or or Library director Trustees Are they just called trustees or is it board of trustees of the recent library all you have to do is put trustees Okay Trustees of the recent library director Uh Travis
right just like school committee or superintendent public library director or the director Library director whatever you want to say No you had it right Trustees Put trustees back in there Library trustes Police and public library trustees or
police and public library trustees Yes Okay Thank you Or library director Well yeah that's right You don't have to I don't think you have to repeat library director or director
Trust li the library trustees or director right or director Okay after trustees What does it say for schools run fairly committee or superintendent or director right board director or
director respectively Okay Do we want to specify the type of director library No we know it's the library director Okay great Fewer words Everyone
put it to the people Yeah Is this the final one do we have a we have a motion to make this the final one just so that I can say this is we don't meet again till what may Uh I move that the um TA
bylaw as amended this e at this meeting be adopted A draft for the town No it's not a draft as a final as the final Okay Product for the town warrant For the town warrant For the for the town warrant For the
springtime Legal review We need legal review In the warrant book Pending legal review Pending legal review Pending legal Yeah Thank you Second Okay Any further it can be put in the warrant book We want to have it that text printed in the warrant book No Okay
Is there text though that we No I don't think this goes in the warrant book Why not because it's if it's our final our product Well what we had in here is it's just a summary of I know but don't we want to put as if if it's a final thing don't we want to put
as much information out in the warrant book as Well this says bylaw language will be included in the town meeting motions booklet and will be made available for review at the um on the website Yeah but if you're reading the warrant and you could just have it in
there since we've decided on it Yep Proposes the adoption of blah blah blah Yeah you're right You'd have to go down then where it says um if you put it in the warrant book and there's a legal edit You all are fine with this I'm going to agree to all these We still
have to set it to council So we don't have time to It mattered a lot more when you mailed the warrant to everyone's house Yeah Since you don't do that anymore Okay But we Yeah Okay You're saying though we should take this entire summary out and put the whole bylaw in
instead He's saying it doesn't matter But we do need to change the summary in the warrant book Okay Do we need to do that language right now yes So but we need to take our vote on this first All right So we made the motion It's moved
and second Okay All in favor i Okay And then this one Yeah thank you all Thanks That was quite important Um can you see somewhere this one is pretty simple to change though You guys uh pull up your
warrant thing This one the summary says um this article proposes adoption of a town administer bylaw administrator bylaw which details the duties and responsibilities of the town
administrator position and provides greater HR I would spell that out by the way as human resources responsibilities to the town administrator including hiring and management authority over most town employees And then here come
the exceptions except the police chief the fire chief town clerk town treasurer tax collector town council and employees of the Carlile public schools and the fire department And then you'd say sorry employees of the Carlile public schools
the fire department comma and Gleon public library comma period Actually period Yeah because you delete the part that says "Provided however that the hiring and removal of a health agent town
planner principal assessor and library director by the town administrator requires the consent of a majority of their supervising board or committee." Why would you say all that stuff no we're taking you leave it out We take it out is what I'm saying Out of the summary in the warrant book
Um is that clear enough or do you want me to send you No I could mark up this and just send it to you Yeah just mark it up and send it to Ryan I trust in
employees of the Carile public school the fire department comma just like we have it fire department and Gleon's public library public library and then it's period period and you delete the rest of
that sentence Okay simplify Did you spell out human resources i don't spell out human resources Okay Not everybody knows what HR Actually we have to vote that or we just assume we're going to vote it when we vote the
uh whole So are we going to ready the whole I missed it did you delete all the rest of that for the TA by are we ready to vote the whole Are we Are we Yeah why don't you show us Yeah just show us what it says now for the summary on the TA bylaw Let's just do one last look
Uh okay So okay But what you got there in yellow what you got there in yellow in the citizens petition you're not going to do You're going to revert to that Is that the wrong one no that's the right one I guess my question is is it does that bylaw detail the duties and
responsibilities of the town administrator i think it just provides greater human uh resourcees responsibilities to the town That's okay Okay And provides greater human resources responsibilities detail duty
It does including hiring and management authority over most town employees Looks okay to me But my question Ryan is chief town clerk town treasur farther down The citizens petition still has the big text in it You're going to get rid of all that right yes He's going to chat with them and allow them a small Okay So are
we ready to vote it clarification need to do something with anything else in the warrant that we um need to Are you ready for the motion it was a dollar underscore I took it out of generic Great So pending any
administrative changes you can approve it pending any administrative and legal changes you said All right I move legal and changes identified at your meeting I move to approve the warrant for the annual town meeting scheduled for May 18th 2025 in the corateed auditorium of
the Carile public school 83 School Street Carile Mass 01741 Um as amended as amended and pending legal review editorial changes Second Okay Any further
discussion all in favor i I All right We have an important item next if he still wants to do it Oh my god Um so I think we reached consensus and have a Yes we do All right
Very very And we'd like to extend our town administrator another three-year contract Do we have a formal motion in here on that one i was looking there is um I do need you to all sign this person
Yeah there is a motion page 164 Okay here it is Shall I do it oh sure I move to approve and execute the employment agreement between the town of Carile and Ryan Mlan for the position of town administrator to commence on July 1
2025 and expire as of the end of the day on June 30th 2028 Second Okay we have a motion a second Any further discussion seeing none we're
very happy to have him Well let's vote Let's vote All in favor i None opposed Congratulations Thank you All right So sorry I think we're done I'm done You want to sign first uh no I want to make sure you all sign
Just Travis It's just one signature And I'm assuming that I didn't read this You The salary went to a million dollars I bankrupted the town Okay All right you guys So it all right Um only we have a
TA report You can We're doing that by consent Okay At least anything else wait the TA report Not with me President we got to We have one motion in there though Hang on Hang on for a second David pack up Make the motion A redlin
page 180 Barney It's a redlinined copy of the We don't have to pass the policy tonight but I I would Well I think we're Well I was ready to Tomorrow's another day Well that's true
Move to approve the amended preventing fraud waste and abuse policy Not ready yet I am Okay Second We got Well actually are we ready did you everyone have a chance to look at it i did I looked at it It looks
fine Okay All right So any any further discussion seeing none all in favor i I Okay [Music] Okay Is there any other I can pick up Maybe I'll go with separate if she has
did the mower Okay Any other motions it looks like we have community input Any anyone in the community um and Ryan there wasn't anything else in your report that required Is there any question from the community it's been a long one Thank you for
sticking around Yeah Okay John Lavy Nope All right Um can I just a quick question So do we um what did we decide about our select board dates yes we have to talk about that
quickly Select We're going to go with um So today's the 15th Are we need that draft tonight are we not doing Are we doing Yeah that please Well because of the way the calendar worked you see we've had our two meetings this month
1st and the 15th but we scheduled what did we say we're going to do on the 6th right we were going to do a community community meeting on the 6th if if you're all available But the question is do we have any other business relative
to this warrant or anything else and we talked about you know I don't know we also talked about another meeting And we I mean we should probably Well why don't you I mean let's take a week off next week Yeah And I'll
let you know if you need me If you feel you need it schedule it I mean but we're we're going with the 6th as a community meeting Are we all good on that because that's the first Tuesday of May So that's out So we get on the 6th and Well why have it why not have it on 29th then
and just stay on path and it would be the what the 13th and the 27th Yep So well we wouldn't normally be meeting on the 29th because we've already done the first and third Is there any reason i mean you're putting at Well we've had
like 16 meetings I don't think that precedent is relevant I'm just saying every other week Just I would I would say do the 29th do your community thing and then we'll pick right back up with the 13th 27th which is our normal
pattern right yeah Any reason not to do that i I don't have 29th I'm trying to think why did we Oh I can't do the April 29th I've The six was another board meeting on that night The room wasn't available or something No it was because
you wanted to give time to let people know after vacation and time Oh that's right People are gone all next week or some people are Yeah That's why we're going to wait till the 6th Okay Then wait till the six So we we don't Are we not having one next week right Correct
I'm going to remove that now Nor the 29th unless something we've gotten everything done We've got the warrant now We're just going to You just need final numbers for police and fire Okay So the sixth we're having a meeting Yep We need final numbers for police and fire Six Okay Right All right I do have
one last thing is regarding the 250th because that's important That's coming up on Saturday Um you all got that correspondence It sounds like if you have a parking pass you have to go pick up your pass for the parade at Carla at
conquered the armory Yes the armor Alcott or the armory you can park at Alcott and then you can pick up your pick at the armory I don't even know where that is but it's right where the armory It's right by the ball It's right across from Emerson Field It's a brick building Where's Alcott
is that over there somewhere i should maybe I should go with you guys I I was going to say maybe you should go with me Yeah maybe I'll go with you If you all do that you're not going to be able to to you know you can meet here You can do the celebr thinking of doing that You mean
you won't have time to get your get to conquer your pass and then get to the parade and then No you you'll easily get to the parade because you'll be there at 7 You have to pick it up by 7:15 What time is the parade the parade is so th
this is kind of the latest and I'll just all the things conquer's going to close at 6 pm on sat on Friday night and they're going to have a hard closure around the center of town So you won't even be able to get in Okay On Saturday you can drive in to the armory before
7:15 and pick up your parking pass I mean sorry pick up you have your p your your pass already I think they sent it to you They sent it to us But you can pick up your your lanyard I actually for the parade because I am not having a parking I did not have a parking pass So
this is what you get and you can then march in the parade They want you to queue up and and I think I sent you information but if not about where to to assemble for that I think it's a map there's a map Where is all that stuff
it's in it's in also the 250th celebration but I will I will make a point of sending it out to you So were you still going to try to walk from here i am going to be a little differently Yes I'm going to meet here at 6:00 a.m and walk with the Minutemen through the
woods all the way to um conquered to the north bridge The north bridge the plan is that the parade's going to go up around to the north bridge and the front part of the parade which will have the Minutemen and so forth in it will um
wait while there's a presentation or a ceremony And the ceremony will have the governor is speaking and is there are there other streaming service that's going to be right So if you're in the from our meeting or is all of the public
of who's around right i mean significant dignitaries but I'm not sure it's even decided yet who's finally coming What um what time's the parade start like at 8 Yeah And then 9:30 the the parade in theory gets up to the north bridge
because it cycles all the way from Liberty Street you know L Road to Liberty and then around I don't know because there's going to be a lot of people and you know in the whole hillside there and everything I just don't know how the parade is going to how close you're going to actually be to
the ceremony at that point I don't know So when the parade ends what do we do so the alternative is if you don't want to march in the entire parade or if you want to skip the parade you have these passes allow you viewing in the in front of town hall in conquered There's some
viewing stands that are set up and this pass will allow you to um sit in those viewing stands at town hall in conquered but it doesn't get you over to doesn't get you north They're going to do the ceremony Yeah No it's really Yeah Doesn't And then the parade continues on
from the north bridge Correct It goes from the north bridge back into town by the reviewing stand that I was telling you about and then ends over by uh Lexington Road and Walden Street where they you kind of turn Yeah Yeah
So if if I went early Well yeah If I went like tomorrow could I because I tried I asked Tish who is the organizer and you have her email i think I had forwarded that You can email her directly Can we get an email in all this or is this Yeah there's a several emails
and who who I I forwarded the emails There's a woman who's kind of running the passes Her name is Tish And she and I asked her specifically saying gosh you know we there's some people who might like to
walk from Carlile to conquered And she said no you have to come pick up your pass And I I don't think that was But you that what you picked up gets you into the parade Correct Or the viewing stand One of the things So
couldn't I pick that up early i would think so But she said "No I I How did you get it?" Because I I reached out to her and I said "And I think some of the other select board members in Carl might want she said she said because I'm not parking." She said "They all have
parking passes so they need to come to conquer." And I said "Well they not be driving themselves." The parking is a CCHS but you think it's different Well my parking pass says school I don't need
the car Need the parking pass Yeah but you need to get that So you got I was reach out to Can we pick up for I mean I haven't This is just administrative and has nothing to do with deliberation So we may want to end our meeting I don't think we're I don't
think we're doing anything I move uh adjourn that we adjourn Second All right All in favor i Okay we're done for the night Thank you