board hearing would you please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all thank you the board will discuss and vote on the town manager contract we have a contract that Jill Khill signed uh D and I negotiated uh most of the terms of the contract she's
going to start a 5-year contract uh salary is 220,000 um five four weeks vacation she wanted five but it's only four um no extras there's no automobile allowance we'll pay up to $2,000 for her to move
to town um comments from Moren well I I want to thank um the screening committee and I want to thank D and and Dan for doing those negotiations because that's a you know that's very hard to do i think that Davis is
um um I think we're it's going to be she's going to be a great fit for us i really do um like I had mentioned before I took it upon myself a few times with all with the finalist anyways and I called for references so I wanted to
hear it myself and every person I spoke to had wonderful things to say with say about her so um I'm looking forward to working with her and I think she's going to she's I think she's very approachable she's going to work good with the residents the boards and I think it's
going to be a good fit thank you you want to sign that de uh yes thank you Mr chairman i just want to reassure uh everyone that we carefully consider a number of factors when negotiating the contract
uh including the market rate for the town uh manager in similar size communities uh our budget constraints and the needs for the town and ultimately our goal was to strike a balance that
ensures we have been responsible with taxpayer money while also bringing the kind of leadership that we need for our town so thank you thank you Mike um I just want to say that it's been quite the education going through this process
um and I think that we picked the right person i'm excited and uh I can't wait for her to get started thank you David thank you Dan uh I only want to just acknowledge that the negotiation of any contract whether it's for one person uh
or or for a town group is always hard and difficult and I thank you Dan and I thank you D for doing it and also for doing what I think was a very tasteful graceful and excellent job thank you can I have an approval of the minutes
for March 18th 2025 approval of the minutes Mr chairman wait that's a good idea thank you just we commented we're signing all those in favor of the contract as presented say I i opposed
all right Madam Clerk thank you thank you i'll give you that and you can pass it on as it needs to go now can we have approval of the minutes March 18th 2025 i'll make a motion for approval of the minutes March 18 2025
is there a second second discussion hearing none all in favor i oppose none thank you new public business anyone interested new public business Mr bradreet thank you
no no go ahead bill Brad Street uh town meeting member precinct one if I may I have a couple of comments or questions one is with what's happening in Washington with the educational
department how is or will that affect our school department a question i don't expect an answer tonight but I would like an answer to my questions at some point in the near future probably at Fencom when Dan Blau is up there he'll
get that same question and he'll probably be better prepared to respond okay than we are okay thank you uh what has come up in the conversation meetings or a meeting that I attended
was the word covenant how many does covenants does the town have how often are they reviewed this relates to the expired covenant on the trash lane behind the King's Grant a question I don't expect an answer right now how
many tax trusts does the town control if these trusts have money that they control who or how is the money spent or allocated how often are they reviewed and again I don't expect answers tonight i I'm asking the questions i would like
an answer right we'll send those over to the interim town manager perhaps they come back um next meeting or the meeting after with some response we trust that might be a good one for FinCom but the covenants when
when you can get that I would be very happy with some information we want to make you happy thank you i appreciate that thank you Mark thank you Mr chairman mark Zubreck uh resident of
Danvers and all I want to do is bring up first of all is when you start considering the Warren articles I would propose that the citizens petitions be considered they are going to be considered first in the beginning in the
first they're going to be first that No that's not what it shows here i don't set the order that's the town lottery that sets the order of the warrant this board will hear the citizens petition first got it thank you very much you're welcome i appreciate it and I will not
uh belabor belabor my point about the Beverly airport you promised that is going to be discussed thank you anyone else thank you new public Okay a public hearing will be held in accordance with
chapter 82 to lay out Wildwood Road in anticipation of a vote for acceptance as a public way at the May 2025 annual town meeting and I assume Mr king is going to speak to that yes Mr chairman uh good evening members of the board i'm here
tonight to discuss uh the acceptance layout of Wildwood Road um as you may know there is a small portion of Wildwood Road that is unaccepted it's still considered a part of a private way um so it's going to fully encapsulate the Wildwood layout um we're here we're
before the board tonight um to present the public hearing process to lay a Wwood for town meeting approval and to ultimately let allow the suck board to take it um as a full public way questions member of the board d uh no
questions thank you Moren no questions mike no questions david thank you no yeah no and I have no need this is a public hearing anyone in the public with a question what exactly go to the microphone please
i'm a resident of Wildwood Road and I'd like to know what exactly this means and what it entails and how it is affects me go ahead sorry no problem um this section of Wildwood Road is actually one that bus up to Tumi Street i mean I'm sorry Tumi Road um Tumi Street tumi
Street and Wildwood overlap each other and what we're do is basically pulling them apart so one section is Wildwood and then the full section is Tumi if your address is Wildwood it stays Wildwood if your address is TUMI it stays Tumi Street okay have the proper signage too a lot of people get confused yes which which once it's fully once it
is laid out and approved as a public way we'll have the signage up correctly so everyone knows perfect thank you and that'll be the item the second item on the agenda a little too small take a moment appreciative thank you again Bill Brad Street Tom precinct one i've asked before and I'll ask again how
many roads streets or ways are there left in town to be accepted and I understand we only I understand we only do so many a year because of the cost involved and are doing the work that the
developers probably should have paid for when they did the their job or and didn't pay for it uh Stephen you have a number yes uh through you Mr chairman uh we have 82 uh streets that are on a list
for potential future acceptances so I'm curious how many streets do we have total streets total uh streets laid out since 2001 have been 132 um so I would almost double that to say that's what we have as far as full streets that are accepted
okay any other questions motion to close the public hearing please make a motion to close public hearing is there a second second all in favor i I what's the will of the board um move as presented no you got to read this i have to read that okay I'm
sorry you want to make the motion take that okay I'll make the motion let's see i move that select board lay out the following roadway as a public way in the town of Danvas and recommend to town meeting that the following roadway be accepted as a public way in the town of
Danvas why would road said lay layout be more particularly described in the respective layout described to be ac executed by the select board is there a second second and then this okay all in favor i post none thank you
next uh Stephen a public hearing will be held in accordance with chapter 82 to discontinue a portion of the layout of Tumi Street as a public way in anticipation of a vote at the May 25 annual town meeting stephen thank you Mr
chairman yes now that we've laid out Wildwood Road our proposed layout for Whitewood Road that extends to where it needs to end based on the previous subdivision approvals now we're going to discontinue a section of Tumi Street um that is it used to be a culde-sac but the culac is no longer there because
Wildwood was extended so this would actually discontinue a section of Tumi Street that extends over the Wildwood layout confusing but okay questions of the audience hearing none motion to close public hearing please motion to close
public hearing is there a second second all in favor i what's the will of the board move as presented motion will be sorry proposed motion for partial discontinuence of a public way i move that select board discontinue a
portion of the layout of the following roadway as a public way in the town of Damas and recommend to town meeting that a portion of the following roadway be discontinued as a public way in the town of Damas Tumi Street is there a second
second second discussion hearing none all in favor i oppose none thank you Moren the board will review the warrant for the May 19th 2025 annual town meeting mr
connley thank you Mr chairman uh we have a full warrant to work through between tonight and Thursday um so we'll jump right in uh second meeting in a row that Mark has stolen my thunder but yes we are starting with the citizens
petitions um before that just a brief look at where we are in the process this is select board warrant review finance committee will review the budget the week of the 14th the finance committee warrant review will happen later on the month at the end of the month of April the budget the full complete
budget document is at the printer town meeting members will be getting it in the next week or so we'll also put an electronic copy uh online this week as well so we start with three citizens petitions the first one is article 36 repeal of
zoning submitted by Mr zuber just hold on one moment if everybody would please so I can page 19 nope okay i just want to get the card up okay is everybody on page nine
19 19 19 Kathy [Applause] page 19 okay which one is first Rodney uh article 36 repeal of zoning thank you and who's here to speak to that thank you introduce yourself
thank you Mr chairman uh Joanne Reaguchi town meeting member precinct 2 um this article uh is asking the town to uh for a town meeting to directly vote
to prepare the necessary articles and meet all requirements to repeal zoning changes adopted to comply with the MBTA mandate or take any other action thereon um we are requesting that the town of
Danvers resend the MBTA warrant article that were in the first citizen petition um which will probably be a different one that you'll read out they're out of a little bit of order but um that was voted as take no action because of the required legal notices public meetings
that must um be held to make zoning bylaw changes furthermore the effects of the MBTA zoning was brought to light by the construction of the Maple Hobart Streets um MBTA special permit mega building uh
a majority of residents uh in town are appalled at the size and the scope of this uh type of e excess zoning um residents i know that I speak to in my precinct as in I know a lot of other town meeting members one of the issues
that rises pretty quickly to the top um is the overbuilding in town the increased density the increased traffic the worry of the increased building that's going to have on our public schools that are
already at capacity i believe all the elementary schools are i think the middle school is um and also the uh stress on our first responders um with this increased density uh coupled with the decrease uh
in parking requirements is a recipe for a big disaster in town uh you can look as an example to Beverly um which was voted uh this past year the worst um top top 20 worst towns in
Massachusetts and the three reasons why uh US News voted on this was because of the overbuilding density the traffic and the lack of infrastructure um I know with Beverly if you look in
the Rantul Street area especially where they have a lot of mixeduse buildings there's no parking so all those businesses cannot survive because people are just circling and they give up and they'll go somewhere else or they don't want to bother with the traffic going into Beverly it's a big
consideration for this town um so with the increased density coupled with the decreased parking requirements um even at a 50% build any projects
um will will be allowed but we cannot you know maintain these buildouts and keep the character of the town of Danvers um if the state financially pushes local cities and towns for non-compliance Danvers can join the
communities to push back um we have our neighboring community of Middleton who just joined um is suing the state we have Marble Head um you know they are sort of have the same mindset as a lot of people in this town they don't want to lose the character they don't want
the increase in density um you know we understand that you know development and progress is needed but it should be to preserve the character of Danvers it should be measured in all individual communities and not some size
onefits-all mandate um that the state is um pushing um furthermore um one question that I do have I'm not sure if Rodney can answer but one of the um sort of uh carrots that the state
held out to all the towns in order to comply with this with this law was that they could apply for state grants if they did not they weren't allowed to and my question is since this um MBTA
mandate has been implemented how many state grants has the town applied for and how many has it been awarded is that something the finance um department can answer a round number yes i mean I don't have a round number because we get
grants week monthly uh between schools public safety specifically for this grant so we received our letter a couple weeks ago now I think from the Secretary of Housing and the agency changed names three times over now but the Secretary of Housing um saying that we are in compliance with uh 3A and as a result
we're now eligible to apply for the Catal Catalyst grants thank you Aaron Henry our director of planning um we're able to uh apply for that one as well uh Salem was just awarded a million dollar grants as part of that program so again that's gone for this year no it's a rolling grant it's a rolling grant okay
that's the only one the town has applied for or is going to apply for since that or like I said we apply for grants consistently if specifically to the 3A that's the only specific one that I know of that's tied specifically to 3A but various other grants we apply for that we otherwise would not have been
eligible for uh public safety E911 um how many have we been awarded um several we talked a lot about at the budget hearing but we can provide a full list to the board okay sure okay great that's all I have questions from the board david nothing
thank you yes Mark are you part of the petition i'm always part of the petition thank you the reason I rise is basically that
this is a request from the neighborhoods and the residents of Danvers for relief on the imposition of the MBTA law
that has been passed and it has not really been accepted or um I I think there is a term that they use is you accept the law that the legisl E passes and this didn't go
through that the one reason the main reason for this law is to encourage and uh improve the
housing stock that we may produce in Danvers however the law is so ambivalent and so unenforcable which the
uh legislature or the secretary of uh housing I guess who is the auditor auditor I'm sorry the auditor uh is uninforcable and unfunded it's an unfunded liability to the town
now I know that we've gone through a lot of meetings in the past through the planning department and we've accepted some of it but we have basically destroyed the character and quality of
the Denver's neighborhoods the Denver's downtown it's not the same anymore and I understand that the neighborhoods need improvement that's fine but don't congest it to
resemble Rantul Street in Beverly and that's been said to the planning department over and over again but we as town meeting have accepted the fact that we needed to comply with this
law this law is illegitimate because it has not really been accepted by the town at least that's what I feel and the thing is that we need to revisit this because our
town's people are no longer in Danvers it's changed and look at what the example is right there on Maple Square and that's congestion and we're moving
that congestion all the way downtown so this petition is basically a remedy to the previous uh petitions that have been identified and one of them has been
disqualified from our standpoint because there's too many uh strings attached to it and the legal uh appeals that have to be made but this is a request from the
residents that the planning department and the board of selectmen request that we revisit this law and accept something that's re less imposing on the
congestion and the density and the traffic that is going to generate we'll see what the results are of 147 units that are being opened up right now maybe that's an indicator that we should
consider thank you thank you anyone else questions uh D or comments yes um I will totally agree with uh Mr zuber that we want to revisit this law i I
think a lot of people are clearly unhappy with the density that the law provides but that doesn't seem to be what the petition is asking for cuz the petition is asking
to repeal the law which will put us out of compliance and I'm concerned i mean we're talking about a grant of a million dollar if you were to get that then we will be losing that um a lot of cities in town
that are fighting the states over this law are not in compliance yet they don't want to comply but we are in compliance and what the petition will be doing will be asking our
staff to work to violate the law and I'm a little uncomfortable with that uh I can understand finding ways to revisit the law and go back to the legislature to to advocate so that the changes
because it's definitely not working for us but to to repeal it will be of concern legal cost loss of grants so I I think we can find middle ground there maybe where we revisit the law instead
of repeal it all out um I would also like to note that I did a little bit of digging on this and there seems to be it and maybe it's for the petitioner or the or the town manager it's my understanding that the Denver Square the
Maple Street project happened before the MBTA zoning law is that correct or did it happen after i believe that was zoned back in 2017 and the MBTA didn't happen until
like four years later that's correct so before before the MBTA law was ever in effect the Maples the Maple Street project was already approved i believe from what I've heard from other town meeting members that worked
on the zoning laws it was about a 10-year process to they were anticipating these zoning changes to come down from the state um I believe I'm not sure so it could have been part of that process
as well i'm not really sure that's maybe someone from else from the town can speak to that i think that building is too big i think it's too big in the middle of town it is and and and D that's why we're standing here tonight is because we're hearing this from the residents i and I think the point that I
want to make on behalf of of a lot of the residents that I've spoken to is that the it's what we're it's what as being elected to help you know move this town forward is we're given that task
we're given that sort of that promise from or to complete that or to keep that promise to the residents that we're going to do the right thing by them and do the right thing by the town and they a lot of
people don't feel that way and it's stuck in their face every day as soon as they see that building there's a a huge lack of confidence that you know people have busy lives in town and when they vote they entrust you folks as a select board us
as town meeting members and the volunteers that are on the planning board the zoning boards that they'll do the right thing and this is why we're standing here before you is because it got out of control and now
you know people are now seeing what can happen and they do not like it um so I think it's a big challenge for Danvers but I I think people really have to um we have to work together and we have
to solve this because it's going to be it's it's it's going to ruin the downtown um I I don't know how much more traffic High Street could take i I really I really don't um you know you have Route 62 that's now going to be
overrun because the Traslane Covenant was allowed to expire and now that neighborhood is is possibly going to be you know have entrances and exits to I forget how many apartments that are going to be built by Beverly that we
don't get any money for we don't get any credit for that we're going to be liable for those roads and the residents are going to have to deal with that traffic this has got to stop from the state and everything else and I think you know
I I totally agree with you i feel like I might be speaking from both side of my mouth here well it's a complicated issue it's you can see both sides and I think it's a very complicated issue and I think it's you know no one's against anybody but I think it's it's a huge complicated issue for the state for the
excuse me for the town and the state has put the towns in this position and the cities they have unfairly unfairly and you know I think you know we really have to maybe you know talk to our two representatives in the state house but I don't know if you know to really say hey
we need some relief from this I I do think not to inter cylinders my only thing is I would never not want to comply with the law and that's my concern I understand that
um Because I I do think that the we have to be smart about it too we're angry we don't want it but we don't want to make matters worse and a petition like this might take us down that lane i think having conversation with the planning
board zoning how are we issuing variances um or special variances how do we work on decreasing the density and bringing that as a package instead of just saying we are not going to comply end up in
lawsuits and and then losing grants i mean I don't know where we're going to get an extra million dollars next year if we don't get this grant uh are we going to fire police officers or teachers or so there's just a lot of other implications of
non-compliance but we definitely cannot just do nothing uh I think conversation into I mean there's other war articles there that I definitely be willing to support where we can start to have those
discussions in a compliant way thank you Mr chairman thank you Moren joanne I think uh you and Mark and the group have done a great job um I do agree with you that this has to stop i think also I read that Raleigh too is fighting it too
okay yeah so you can add that to your notes yep raleigh the list is growing it's growing and growing there are issues about overcrowding the density the traffic the parking the strain on our uh schools and our services
um I I'm in I'm here to help you so I'm here to support you Michael uh thank you Dan um I think it's been a lot of great points tonight thank you for coming up and speaking um D made some excellent points thank you for that
i I understand we want to comply i think this is a good starting point though because we do need to push back um we're going to lose what Davis is all about um I think we our planning has to be much better than what's happening if you know
they want to take High Street and fill it with buildings um we should at least they should look like they belong here not these flat top buildings um I don't think I don't think the average person is against having
some more housing we just should have more control over it i don't think the state should be coming in and telling us what to do we live here so I mean I'm in support of it and I understand the dance we have to uh try to figure that out as
well and if I could I'm sorry i forgot to say you know we talk about them dangling that carrot with the grants well remember we're getting a good town manager coming that and she and she knows a lot of people and you know she's done a lot of grants so I don't like
like you said them telling us what to do um we have to go through the proper procedures but I think the grants we can look elsewhere for too david I have no comment except to say it's beautifully presented i'm very sympathetic
um when I first noticed what had happened along Cherry Street um which used to be a residential street and all of a sudden it became like Grand Tul Street i was astounded and so that careful attention to the rules is really important and
um this is my last month sitting here um but maybe I can become more active with you in uh when I'm when I'm done work here you do we'll have coffee David you do a beautiful presentation and that's very important thank you
thank you Joanne for the presentation the board is discussing hold on um your presentation a lot good points um it really was done in stages maple Square um 40R was part of that piece we got
money for that then we looked at the live work area and the downtown area and then High Street when the MBTA law took effect about two years ago we were already somewhat in compliance
we had to tweak it a little bit town meeting has been supportive over the years but I think really what we need to do is sit down the planning board planning staff zoning board select board and develop some type of master
plan long range plan where we can plan out economic development and building of houses especially on the Endicott corridor and the Route One corridor and not necessarily in our neighborhoods mhm we really need to have a plan that we
can adopt and react to over the next few years um unfortunately these petitions well-meaning but you're taking shots at things that have already happened without any long range planning and I think that's more important that we have
something that we can say this is what Danvas looks wants to look like and that's the goal reasonable and attainable goals but set goals nevertheless so that's how I will continue to work in the next couple
years is working with all parties to get a plan that we all can accept now what will happen with these citizens petitions um from this stage to FinCom to town meeting because basically we're asking town meeting to resend the votes they've
already taken at some point in time so I don't know how easy that's going to be um but I appreciate the petitions coming before us speaking your thoughts your concerns they're all valid but sitting here it's just hard to say "Let's wipe
the slate clean." We really can't we really need to develop a plan and I hope that you'll be a part of that process mark you had something to offer yes please and I think we're on the path of recovery because what this article says
is to prepare the necessary articles and meet all other requirements to repeal zoning now they don't necessarily have to be repealed but they have to be considered and that's exactly what we're talking about here the one thing that I
wanted to bring up and D brought up the very uh uh good point about the grants the grants are promises in the future we haven't got any grants as far
as I'm concerned because applied i've been w I know that's the and what we're talking about is Salem salem as a city applied for a grant and they got a million dollars but they they approved it before we did they were approved by
the state before we won well we're not in the same sequence that's true that's true the thing is that what we are asking about is the character of Danvers we want to keep it and we want to
consider have the planning department consider the facts of this discussion instead of sitting back and saying hey we accomplished we complied with the law sometimes laws have to be contested so there are a lot of
communities in the Northshore and the Southshore that are contesting this law and they're getting punished but we need to consider what Danvers is supposed to be thank you thank you
so uh choices here are to move this forwards favorably unfavorably or neutral u Bill could I make another comment uh and another thing to consider uh Mr
and join um is when I also look at the law it said repeal zoning changes and I was look I mean obviously I'm not a lawyer or a legislature we also want to be specific as to what is it that we want to repeal
within that law because I'm sure there are things in that law like um uh something like open space that we want to keep all right we don't want to we don't want to we don't want to say that we don't care about open space in
Denver so if we were to repeal that law then we'll be saying everything goes so I I think we can refine this in a way where we are more targeted as to the density uh parking has been an issue instead of
just saying we are not going to comply with this law and fight it out in court um another point that I would like to make is the the the reason why I'm reluctant in supporting it in its state if if this were to pass town
meeting it's my understanding that the AG has to approve it so it would be like we we saying to the state we are not going to be in compliance we'll be fighting it out and losing
grants and and and funds and and and lawyer fees but even if they don't approve it we still going to be in compliance because the AG hasn't signed off on it so so we'll be like in that middle place where we are not in compliance but we are not not in
compliance so I I I do think it's something that needs to be addressed we want to be targeted and focused and play the long game where we sure don't change the character of our town thank you Bill tell me precinct one i've said it
before and I'll say it again harris and ice in a salad when they dangled in front of the different communities a carrot is a grand grants might be good but everyone
should realize they come with strength nothing's free and we might not know what the future will hold instead of before I say again thank you thank you Jim
medium precinct three but you know I mean what's the cost to keep damas okay yeah we got our grants and everything else but we've already taken a bite of the poison apple and now other towns are waking up and not doing
it so if we pass this which I think we should and we're sending a message to Beacon Hill and to the AG that you know we already did this because we had good in good faith and trust but now it's it's causing a lot of problems here it's
increased density there's decreased parking requirements and everything else so we can pass it and the AG will deny it and there will be it's going to be a wash but it's a statement that Davis needs to make because this is not the only one we got the ADUs coming what are
we going to do just say "Okay yeah people are living in zoning areas that they have you know million-dollar homes and single family homes all of a sudden someone's going to build a house between their house and then there going to be houses popping up all over the place where does this end one size fits
all." No we need to make a statement and nothing's going to happen we just got to make the statement that's all I'm saying thank you what's the will of the board you send this through favorably unfavorably or I'll make a motion to send it through wait a minute is there a third option
Rodney i don't think you Yeah I don't need to you don't necessarily need to specifically state favorably unfavorable you could just pass it as is without Thank you yep thank you one one more thing for I'm sorry i don't
want to I feel like I'm talking too much um Mr jim Rose made a point and that's that is exactly my point just passing it for the sake of passing it to make a point i I think we want to be more
practical and we also want to you talk about the ADUs we are not in compliance like if if that comes down it'll be it'll be contrary to our local zoning law so they
will be telling us to do things that is not allow that we don't allow ourself to do so that's a different situation and again most of these cities and town are not in compliance yet so that's why they fighting it we are
already in compliance and to ask our staff to work on something to violate the law is just I think morally problematic for me and and it's not that I don't support it it's just that we can
refine it and be more specific into what exactly we're trying to repeal thank you i think I've had enough okay did you want to make a motion D uh where I'm what are the options i do we
pass it as is vote favorably vote unfavorably uh in its state form I I'll move that we pass it unfavorably is there a second second
discussion all in favor i I opposed no no three to two thank you number 37 37 is the citizens petition MBTA zoning make a motion if you move it favorably now we just It passed the motion was
made okay thank you just want to clear mark it yep joan are you speaking to 37 yes Mr chairman thank you okay i'll read out the petition um this is article 37 uh citizens
petition MBTA zoning to see if the town will vote to have the planning department discuss and incorporate zoning bylaws updates to specifically address the overdevelopment created by the MBTA zoning requirements of increased unit density and decreased
parking requirements during their 2025 2026 non um excuse be normal zoning review and update public meetings or to take other action
thereon um the MB let me see the MBTA um zoning updates allows um 14 16 and 24 units per acre with less parking requirements this zoning is exemplified by the fourstory complex as we've
discussed on the corner of Hobart and Maple Streets they also allow up to 36 units per acre on High Street from downtown Dambridge it says 35 oh excuse me 35 is that correct [Music]
um is it 36 i have 36 but you guys have So they'll have to be corrected if it's a typo thank you okay um from downtown Danvers to Route 128 um there are numerous initiatives um by
Beacon Hill legislators and as we discussed of cities and towns to remove the mandate requirement of this MBTA zoning law um so that each city and town can maintain their local community character demographics and personality
um basically we want our home rule back uh Damvers needs this also to decrease the density and increase the parking requirements to meet the Dammers community character um as of I think we've discussed too um on March 19th the town
of Middleton announced that they have filed suit to challenge the MBTA zoning mandate that's our direct neighbor joanne do you know how many communities have adopted the MBTA or 3A uh
I'm not sure of the number but I was told 60 60 out of 30 out of 351 no that's not true it's 175 they have to comply with the MBTA don't throw 351 around
175 so not even okay thank you yeah I'm just trying to you know figure out the whole picture i mean like I said and the list is growing with I think Rockport's on it milton's on it um Oh Milton's been on it for quite a while they they really
fought it yes middle just decided not to fight it okay they withdrew southshore one that's right marblehead I believe middleton middleton just got on y listing okay
anything else you want to offer no just one point that I wanted to make um was that a few months ago we had a presentation um by a consultant that the town hired on sort of housing standards
housing production plan yes exactly and one of the things that struck me um in this gentleman's presentation was that they kind of said that divers want single family homes
and this sort of MBTA law with you know big apartments and excuse is sort of you know kind of two sides of the coin is do we do single family homes or do we get inundated with all these high-rise apartment buildings
so I think it's a little bit in contrast to what we have on the books and what his consultant was saying or what they got you know for dam okay thank you anyone else
okay jim preaching to the town meeting and and this one just kind of ties into what D was talking about it's a kinder gentler you know let's just build this in and if anything happens with all these lawsuits with the other towns and the laws change we just want to be aware
of that as we go through our normal zoning updates for the next year and just and make sure that the citizens are are aware that they can come to the uh zoning meetings or the planning board meetings and have direct input as to what's going on with the zoning and what
there's going to be new developments things are changing quickly i mean the law has already been changed two or three times to my knowledge and because it's very defective and and without everything happening we just want to be on top of this so if I may Joanne just to get a better understanding of the
petition to see if the town will vote to have the planning department discuss and incorporate zoning bylaw updates specifically addressing overdevelopment created by MBTA zoning requirements so you're limiting yourself
to just the MBTA zoning requirements there's so many other zoning areas and zoning things that we could ask the planning board to review and you just want us to limit it to what the MBTA law is doing on High Street you're not looking at the big picture in my
opinion excuse me Jim don't jump so fast i'll let him know when he can go again it's not directly I mean yes we we it does say that but it's during the normal review in the public you know of
of the public review of all the zoning bylaws they do this every year anyway so this specifically does say density and and and parking but it it it's still open to any any zoning changes that's
going to be discussed year round the way the language is it limits the planning to just addressing MBTA and I think we need to do a better job and more efficient throughout the community with a master plan and you just want to look at High Street i don't think this is
all-encompassing no this doesn't even say High Street it just says well MBTA that's where it is high street that's the area in question and well okay i'm just you know it's you're
only taking half a bite of the apple anyone else in the audience steve uh Tommy member precinct 3 um I just have comments on this um I understand what you're saying where they're only looking at the MBTA i think that's the strict focus right now anyway
because they're they're immediately trying to stop all of the potential other buildings that are set to go up uh pretty imminently and then I think just a point of clarification Middle did drop the lawsuit but it's because they came to a settlement within their town and
they also have a right to uh go back to town meeting if it the zoning doesn't come out to the way that they wanted so yes they dropped a lawsuit but because they came to a specific agreement which is I think what people in this town are looking for they're looking for our our
zoning to be updated and um I don't know if anybody in here is a land lawyer besides Judge Mills but I think everyone's just trying to do their best to do what they think is the best to keep the town looking the way that it is and to have the characteristics of the town that it has been for the years that
everybody has lived here so I think just a collaborative effort on on everyone's part um would be the appropriate way to go about all this thank you Mike uh thank you Dan i guess um my question
is um we're all here now discussing this and I do appreciate what you suggested about a much uh wider view um how come that didn't happen why are we here now well like we have all these
committees why are we failing we're about to build Danveris into a city and the states making us do it everything was fine till MBTA came along then all of a sudden we're looking backwards
so I guess we need to get a lot more people involved so that we can figure this out and push back correctly thank you David um it's too big for me now i could spend
three months um studying recommending and discussing and I don't feel as though I have anything sensible to say what I'm feeling tonight is that our zoning bylaw from whenever we started I know the first one I ever saw was in
1964 um zoning bylaw for damas and it seemed to me that it was working quite well as amended through the years um the all of a sudden in the last 10
years uh Cherry Street uh Ranchul Street in Beverly all of a sudden seeing these large things um I'm kind of caught between the law which says you know a citizen has a right to use her land in
accordance with law and if those land is zoned for apartments it can be used for apartments as long as all the details of that and at the same time um it is not up to the town meeting to tell
the planning department what to do um I think that it is the job of the select board to listen to the citizens and tell the town manager what the direction is to be for further development in Danvas
including any revisions that are necessary or even considered for the zoning bylaw i won't vote to have the town meeting tell the planning board what to do that's not what our town
uh the the statute establishing this form of town manager govern government for Danvers we are an advisory board the town manager is the executive
officer people on planning boards conservation commissions zoning boards swear to uphold the law and of course I've always been and I have been 56 years a lawyer um I believe in the law
um this particular petition to be have the have the town meeting uh vote to tell the planning department what to do is not appropriate in my view the interest is certainly appropriate and I
didn't like what I saw and felt on Cherry Street i don't like what I see and feel on Rentul Street this is not the way to go about it don't ask me because I'm not on the committee right now as to how to go about it um but it's hard and there is the tension between
the landowner's right to use her land the community's right to protect itself in all ways including wetland protection zoning bylaws um so it's bigger than me tonight but I don't think that this um is appropriate
so I won't vote for forwarding uh article 37 thank you for asking Moren um Joanne great you're a great uh presenter um you and Mark and Jim and the group I I agree with uh select board member Bean about
you know the MBTA it's very important just what I did with some research it says as of Mark to your point as of November 24 over 100 Massachusetts cities and towns have passed zoning districts to comply with the MBTA communities law which requires 177
communities to zone for multifamily housing um you know we're not lawyers like we said um but you know there's some some information where it says MBTA law communities act signed in 2021 mandates the
177 cities and towns excluding Boston that have or border communities with MBTA rapid transit or commuter or rail stops must reszone to allow for multif family housing by right within a half mile of the transit station
um I think this is great it would be nice to get a committee i think you're and I think with like I keep on saying with this new town manager this is going to be our opportunity so um I would be in favor of this petition to move forward well you
said you'd like to have a committee i'd like to have a committee but I still would like be after the fact yeah but I I think that they need to do more work like you said i think the master plan and that was brought up to us before yep you know I think that's very important too but um I would definitely start
somewhere with this thank you Pete thank you i hope the new town manager is not watching i mean that's too that's too much work like everything uh yeah thanks for the presentation and
um this uh petition in my opinion is more targeted it is addressing density and and and parking and uh to the chairman point is very limited to the MBTA zoning requirement but I think
that's okay i we we got to start somewhere and if the MBTA zoning is where we will start then that's what we should do and and also this is not exclusive this doesn't pro preclude us from discussing density in other areas
of town as a matter of fact I think this should even happen regardless of if this petition is passed or not so the way I see it is this discussion should happen with the planning board zoning board how we
issuing variances what are some of the things that we can do to curve down the the the the density and and the parking within the town uh this is this is um and this calls for collaboration like uh I think
Miss Steve mentioned earlier so I will I will support this thank you anyone else is there a motion make a motion to support article 37 is there a second second discussion i'm sorry i'm sorry Dan what is the
motion please to pass it as is favorably to forward it favorably yes and it's been a motion and a second all those in favor i opposed it passes wait a minute david david you're
you're no opposed thank you 41 41 thank you and lastly we have article 38 uh citizens petition MBTA zoning joanne did you volunteer for this duty i see Mr morose's name on this
petition continue i won't answer that one yet i should say Mr chair um okay article 38 citizens petition MBTA zoning to see if the town will vote to resend this is
article 38 correct yes okay um to resend the 3A MBTA zoning changes um made by prior approved warrant articles warrant articles 8 and nine of the uh February 5th uh 20 u 2024 special town meeting
warrant articles 6 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 of the uh November 15th 2001 special town meeting and warrant article 5 of the February 10th uh 2020 special town meeting or take any other action thereon
mr conley did the uh attorney weigh in on this the Duca did he have any comments yeah so I know the petitioner had talked about possibly withdrawing it because it's already been submitted it has to stay on um it would require for it to be
acted on a town meeting a legal ad um as well as an appearance before the planning board as well as some type of red line specifying what exact changes should be made because it would have to revert back to something but since then we've made other zoning changes that stack on that so again um that being said I think if the petitioner is
looking to just not um act on this or follow through then it would be a five it still has to go to the uh town meeting but it would be a 50 unfavorable just because it's not being supported by the petitioner okay yeah yeah Rodney is exactly correct
this was the first petition that we we filed and and and we got a two-page rejection letter of all the things we should have done before we pass this and so that's why we I'd call them helpful hints Jim but that's okay
we uh we quickly came up with the other two that that that we we already discussed so yeah we will just let this one uh go right through the front little bit of over little bit of overreach yeah we will not defend this any further okay waste anymore any c questions or
comments members of the board here and yes please call right town meeting member precinct 5 lifelong gamers resident as evidenced by today's my first day on Medicare so I [Music]
probably I don't know where all the time has gone but um as I listen to a lot of the comments here tonight um a lot of this discussion we're pointing at the MBTA uh I would also say that prior to the
MBTA what's going on as town is basically against what zoning regulations we have here currently so I'm getting the sense that this is the MBTA's fault but a lot of this is what we've done to ourselves and if I
think back of a long time ago I don't want to quote the tape but I think at one point in time we put a building moratorum in line and given what I'm hearing today and all the craziness I would ask you know for you Chair Dan or maybe the town
manager what would it take to put a building moratorum on until we got our act together i have a little background on that but I'm not an expert um I we can't just wake up one morning say no more building
i think there's a process and I don't know if Rodney has information on that or we'll have to do some research what it what's entailed in doing a moratorum i'm sure it would be probably a community vote not a town meeting vote
i'm just asking i think I think so be a bad idea it's worth checking out oh thank you yeah thank you okay what's the will of the board on this article 38 please move to forward with unfavorable thank
you is there a second motion is move it forward on favorable second discussion hearing none all in favor i opposed none thank you Joanne thank you for the
presentations very well done so we had a mixed votes there interesting mr town Manager where do we go next all right so we'll start uh go back on page three of the warrant book
uh DPW drew this short straw so you'll notice that we're skipping over some of the capital and DPW articles we'll get to those later if we can if not we'll come back on Thursday but just in case we move quick we made them come both days so thank you for your service article one is the election of
officers this is the standard article one six offices of the town that require election at the annual town meeting um a list will be provided at town meeting you'll show that to me prior to town meeting yes yes thank
you um folks so we go through all these and take a vote at the end like we've done in the past and you can always pull something out if you want further discussion at the end okay so we're going to hear the articles and then at the end we'll vote uh to move them on and not but pull out anything you want
discussion on next uh article two requires no action this was the budget for fiscal year 26 that was discussed and voted on on March 15th questions no next article three does require a vote this is the electric division budget uh voted town meetings
required each year to authorize the electric division to operate on a self-supporting basis questions okay good next article four again this one requires action although we received their budget presentation on March 15th this is
article 4 essex Northshore and agricult agricultural and technical school district assessment the assessment this year is 4,488,000222 it represents a 4.09% increase from fiscal year 2025 questions no
questions members of the audience speak up if you have something i'm not looking for hands just speak up next article five again is a standard annual article this authorizes the collector of taxes to act uh Mass General law
requires this vote each year questions uh yes I I do have a question about this article um he says to see if the town will vote to authorize the collector of tax to use
all means of collecting taxes which a town treasurer may what what do we mean by all means so these are all standard and all stipulated by Mass General law but for example to the right to send a demand notice tax lean foreclosure
etc to assist it basically allows the collector to use their M no the pillows aren't allowed anymore no when you put your the hands on No we don't do that no we used to okay um but yeah it just said they're all guided by master general law and what exactly the collector can do to
collect but so that all means is into the mass general law yes it's a chapter 60 and there's an order by which they have to go like they can't just decide we're going to foreclose on someone because it's been 6 months time periods um
notification periods um right down to the amount of interest and how it occurs that's all set by statute okay all set thank you thank you all set next artle goal six is another annual one this is committee reports let's to see
if the town will uh town meeting will vote to accept the committee reports they were distributed to all town meeting members from fiscal year 2024 questions none yes go ahead my only question on this item is that
last year at the annual town meeting we had warrant articles that were passed and debated and I was wondering whether there's going to be a report on those articles because I was sponsor for two
or four of them and two of them passed at town meeting and I'm just wondering what actually happened with them so is there going to be a report from the town to the town meeting about last year's articles that were presented as citizens
petitions what is uh there's mechanism for that we can provide an update on the status of them thank you any others okay next article 7 is the technology plan and I
believe somewhere in the building is Colobby Cousins our IT director you want to move on till you find them yep eight and nine are his as well so we'll skip those article 14 maintenance dredging
this is our annual uh contribution to the dredging project that will have to happen in the next few years um we recommend as we have in the past few years $20,000 from free cash be appropriated uh towards a future dredging project uh again it's a smaller
amount in terms of what the overall project will cost which will be upwards of $7 million however what we've started doing several years ago was putting money away towards at least starting the design and engineering of the potential project thank you questions nope go ahead
article six the town mar uh pier replacement and marina maintenance uh so this is this is 26 so I'll give you a minute this is on page 12 of your warm books [Applause] okay so we had talked uh a couple months
ago now that the town was awarded a competitive grant from the Seapport Economic Council uh to repair and replace the Marina Pier the total cost of the project would have been close to a half a million luckily we're uh successful in achieving a grant for
$350,000 we've also had some available funds to do some of the work to get us to that point and the request is for the $100,000 match to to finish the project but to start and finish the project when will the work be done i would defer to Chris Sandborn our natural resources
director who's here to answer any questions and was he responsible for getting the 350 he is he was thank you Chris good so we plan to start the work on the completion of the voting season in November and it should take no longer than a month or two
okay thank you thank you anyone else questions uh one question is there any change in size to the peers and whatnot uh the length of the pier will increase and the width will narrow so overall footprint will pretty much remain the
same but based on the new design uh with an aluminum pier versus a wood pier um the overall scope won't change thank you okay anything else okay next all [Music] right article 15 fire pumper replacement
so the Danvers Fire Department is requesting $1.1 million in free cash to purchase sorry this is page seven on your warrant book to purchase and equip a new fire pumper our current one engine two is 2012 model um it's roughly a three-year lead time um between ordering
and rolling off the lot here to Danver um there are also some options to get a slightly less costly version um that could be in the pipeline and we could get it a year or two earlier there's also potential for a grant opportunity that we're submitting as well an AFG grant which could cover as much as 90%
of the total cost i believe um acting chief Jamie Shaner is here to answer any questions but just I one finance question I would just say the reason we're doing for free cash is we have the available free cash and normally a vehicle this size we would bond which end up over the life of it cost us 1.6
$1.7 million so again trying to make strategic smart use of the cash we have on hand jamie what's the chances of getting the grant uh we're hopeful but honestly we don't know right now but we have explored some other options too so the grant is in um
we won't be hearing back for a little while but on top of that we have so part of the 1.1 is what's changed postco is manufacturing over firetruck now takes about 36 months so that 1.1 has three years of price increases built in but we've done some investigations uh
different vendors manufacturing processes we found a program that could be basically two years off of that through like a dealer allocated stock program so that would save us those two plus years of increases um and it would also allow us to by getting an engine
earlier um to save on some cost associated with emission standards with motors that are coming down so we have a motor that would save us probably 100 200,000 um we'd be saving those increases um and a quicker delivery obviously is better for the community as well um and on top of that I think we
talked at the budget meeting our capital purchases for the electric vehicles allowed us to take a generator off of that saving another $30,000 um so the cost while the grant is a variable we've done these research and um ability to get into these
programs that we know we can have savings if the grant doesn't come ronnie if we vote this free cash at town meeting and he gets the grants how do you take back the free cash what do you do with it yeah through you Mr so what would happen was if we were awarded the
grant there would still be a 10% match we would pay for out of that $1.1 million after that we could have uh again the fire chief to myself or accounting would say that the purpose of the warrant has now been completed and the rest would close out to the subsequent year is free cash so it would just be back to free cash not the
general fund so to speak okay thank you other questions members mike yes please um hi thank you for being here um so if we buy a stock truck what are we not getting i don't have a problem with it i'm just curious what is there we don't get power windows or something we fire
truck manufacturer you could you know there's the you can change every single thing you want on it and then there's like the middle ground and then there's just a straight stock so obviously the price change everything's going to be quite a bit more um this program is like a middle ground where there's options but it's not a full menu but for the
needs of our department and our community it suits us perfectly within that um and there's there's no there's no downside to it from our operational perspective okay good thank you thank you anyone else okay next yes u go ahead
is this a truck manufacturer in the US uh depending on the vendor we go with yes yes manufactured um the two main manufacturers we've used or three we've used historically have all been in the US okay so we don't run the risk of like
uh tariffs making the price as far as I know we haven't been told of any effect of that as of now okay thank you okay all set thank you next thank you Jamie you article 25 transportation service so
let's request $110,500 from free cash we uh executed a two-year agreement last year with some available funding we had to launch the Salem Skipper program here in Damverse it's an ondemand ride share service and I don't now I lost Aaron Henry i should
have had them all here present and locked up until I needed them so Aaron please okay I guess we'll skip that one too oh he's coming um so yeah it's an on demand service uh it's part of a $2.3 million grant the city we should close
the door but I know we can't we received uh the city of Salem received a $2.3 million grant which we've partnered on um which heavily subsidizes the cost again this is year two we did the first year with available funds uh this would be the second year uh and then we can make a decision moving forward beyond
that uh it also has provided data that has helped to make our case of the MBTA in terms of a reestablishment of local bus route and through downtown so it's been helpful in that area as well aaron I don't know if I there's anything else you wanted to hit but yeah did I just take a survey on this no no it wasn't on
this similar doing transportation survey okay that's what it was okay thank you questions board members like who who's answering is it Aaron are you stuck with this i'm sorry um what kind
of volume do we have with this Salem skipper do you know i was going to um we're seeing uh a little over a hundred trips a day oh wow wow to and from so those are trips into Danvers and from Danvers and just as a point of reference
when the MBTA cut service to town we were having an average of six so we are seeing better uh participation this service than we had in the past and we are still seeing gains on a monthly basis i think to Rob's point
We cannot commit to anything but it does look like we're having a productive conversation with the MBTA so at this point I would not I do not think we won't be probably seeing it from me uh year three of the Salem Skipper um because I think if we are successful and things stay on the trajectory we're on
we've proven to the MBTA that we have transit demand here in town and that they're they're understating that thank you okay anyone else and uh Erin quick question as of now it goes to the train
station right do we could we have it go to like a Logan Express as well is that part of the route the restoration of the bus service no the Salem Skipper the Salem Skipper service area does include delivery treatment okay thank you okay
anyone else all right next yes i'm sorry Mark hi uh I have been watching this skipper program for now third year I think no second year second year uh this was
supposed to be the substitute for the MBTA route that we are MBTA abandoned and no longer service the town of Dandis so I'm just concerned every single year
we go through a grant program and this skipper bus service or service is grant funded and that's through the state I
believe and no so okay maybe I'm wrong but I'm concerned about this is something that's going to be implemented or has been implemented but it's going to become a uh revenue uh outfall from
the town because we're going to be supporting this thing sooner or later i'm just concerned and I'm very u hesitant that you know this is a service but where the heck is
MBTA i thought we were an MBTA community well he he just mentioned what Aaron do you want to repeat yourself i'm sorry to ask you do that so this is a federal grant that we received through the city of Salem um this is we're requesting
funding for year two so it's been operating for about I think we started in May of of 24 um there's no again there's no future obligation we we're in a two-year program this is year
two and as I said I don't think at this point we've proven to the MBTA that we should as a community receive better service than we have since co and again those uh those conversations are progressing well we're not yet in a
position to say that we're going to have restored service to downtown Danvers but things are looking very good in that regard any future obligation thank you okay I I just every time we get into a grant situation ultimately the taxpayers
get to pay the bill at the end it's all I have to say anyone else yes Mr ch i'm itching to talk i've written so many grants in my life um we just have to be smart about it and know what we get and
what we getting it for grants are not a bad thing like I can assure you if if we have good grand writers and target grants we could save a lot of money and
provide more services for less so I just don't want us to disparage grant uh some of it is attached but there are also some grants that are very useful uh again maybe not
I haven't done one for the government do one for for research but grants can be very helpful we just want to make sure that we Yeah thank you okay anyone else okay next
next up we have two uh similar articles they're article 29 and 30 on pages 15 and 16 they both related to the recently enacted Hero Act and they provide us an opportunity to adjust the exemptions we're able to provide our veterans our chief assessor John Label is here to
answer any technical questions essentially the first one John you want to go sure for the first one establishes a CPI on the exemption annually and the second one allows us to provide an additional exemption up to 100% of the amount of the existing tax exemption
which we sort of always do under a separate chapter right now however this allows us to give the full exemption whereas now it's very convoluted right now we are limited to we can give them exemption down to whatever they paid last year for a tax bill this updated
HERO Act would allow us to provide the full exemption even if that meant that the veteran was paying less for a tax bill this year than they were the year before and town finance is fully in support of both of these so there's a lot of clauses 22 A B C E and F john can
you kind of just narrow in what those different clauses it do um they're all related to disabled veterans uh so a lot of them have to do with the percentage of disability that they're granted um some of them have to
do with uh specific awards you know if they had a silver star or or something like that medal of honor that sort of thing it's just different clauses have different amounts okay a majority of the ones we have in town are the 22A and the 22E
there's a handful of a couple other ones but most either get 400 up to 800 or a,000 up to 2,000 so how much are they going to get next year all of them are going to get right now the the statutory amount is 400 and
a,000 okay so the 400 under the uh what we have now they can get up to 800 um but it gradually goes up to that as the tax bill increases so they're tax so basically they're paying the same net amount until they reach that maximum 800
this allows us to bypass that and just give them the 800 okay all right thank you any other questions so that's that's 29 and 30 is different how that was 30
actually 29 oh that was 30 29 that's a a cola adjustment on the amount so if the state says it's a 5% cola adjustment we raise the 400 to 420 they're independent of each other so if you do both that 420
would then become 840 at the end so they're independent of one another okay all right anybody else that's good thank you good thank you John thanks John revolving fund accounts again this is an annual one in which we set the deterine
determine the limit on the total amount which may be expended in fiscal year 26 from each departmental revolving fund who's speaking to this um I can answer general questions we also have representatives from all of the funds
here as well all right number one Davis Counseling on Aging for all expenses associated with provision of programming service administrated through the Council on Aging somehow you're giving short shift
to the friends who pay for drive-thru dinners bingo cards Thanksgiving dinners Christmas parties furniture TVs other programs so how you can
say the town covers all expenses it is not it's specifically saying that this is a revolving fund that covers expenses it's not meant to be all-encompassing that that's all the funds we receive for the damage disperse funds for all expenses yes
associated so you know I I just have a trouble with that clause aaron you want to speak to that i think the confusion here is I think the and not just the Danver Council on Aging i think there's a few other you know uh
Endeott Park is in the same situation where we have friends of groups that also support our programs um through events donations etc um this is literally the law we have to appropriate the maximum spending limits of the revolving accounts town meeting has to
tell us that ceiling so this is just that this is not an all-encompassing number of what our programs may spend over the course of a year mr mr chair one of the things we did a couple years back which we haven't done recently that might be helpful is we did sort of a I think it might have been a form of a pie
chart but sort of a a breakdown of where all the funding that supports uh the senior centers derived from grants the friends of group the revolving fund the tax budget so maybe updating that and presenting to the board yeah I think the friends of And Park the friends of the library they all
like to be at least acknowledged and for the community gets to see where the funds come from i mean the friends it's membership membership from the community that goes into a fund to uh grant the director's request and I
just think yes I understand the revolving fund but um I think we should do a better job of letting the community know where the funds are coming from that's my comment anyone else no
okay we want to do each one that's one i'll go to six preservation revolving fund account it It looks like we're saying that we put $10,000 a year into this fund but we know that's not the case
there's $10,000 sitting there correct for under the control of land use and community for loans matching grants up to 50% of a project cost $10,000 is not going to go so far i
don't know why you continue to leave it there no I don't think you should we have no legal way to spend the money unless someone applies for the grant so I think we don't want to ever pull it off in the opportunity that uh a group is able to present a project that we can expend the last $10,000 in support of
shall I apply for one now verbally sure the uh Glenn Magna has a greenhouse 1925 something Burnham greenhouse that we're in the process of trying to rehab we've put water in there we want to put electricity in there but we need to do
the shell um and we could use We've raised $35,000 and grab a form for Exactly be happy to talk to the historical society about um and you remember a couple years ago we did fund some projects yes you
did and we did recommend pay for the handicap bathroom in a building we can't occupy we're working on that because you won't give us a business use we're working on that thank you yep to build the shelf yeah the glass it's all the the glass is all broken it's got to be
something better than plastic all right so we'll get a form thank you Aaron sorry anyone else okay thank you next we have our various stabilization funds um article 32 we can start with is the special education
stabiliz excuse me stabilization fund um we started this a couple years back with 600,000 we put another 150 I believe in last year um and we're recommending another 500,000 if you remember in recent years we've had to uh supplement the school department special education
budget uh with several hundred,000 at a time when they've had uh high uh either movein or other extenduating circumstances as we look to tighten um the estimates on revenue and potentially lower free cash in the future again this is one of those things that we can't
really predict um when a student may move in and need additional services and those can cost upwards of $300,000 if it's a residential so again I think we want to keep seating this funds that way if there ever is a need where we have to do that that we're not looking at you know reducing services um in any way to
provide what is a stately required uh payment we would have to make and the superintendent is here to answer any questions about the fund or uh sort of where special education is in general welcome Mr ba thank you for having me
here thank you um if okay chair just as Rodney stated there's three areas that are always of a concern unexpected moveins we did have four from the summer till till this period we did have one move out uh but also invariably throughout the year there could be a
safety issue or something that arises at a high level that requires uh an extended evaluation which then at that point may require an out of district placement so those things do happen um the other part too is the unanticipated highcost placements we have a watch list
that we have that we keep track of you know potential cases that may be working with their legal and um very complicated cases we have two that may arise to residential as as Rodney said and those are very expensive and costly so we're doing everything we can to keep building
our infrastructure to keep students in as best we can while we're going through that development we want to protect ourselves in case uh there's unexpected um placements that may you know put a real strain on us and uh for planning purposes
okay any other questions no thank you yes good quick question money so is it my understanding that um the distribution of these funds will require another vote from the school committee and the select vote yes it
requires a vote of both the select board and school committee to expend any funds from this fund okay thank you thank you number 33 yes i'm sorry Mark thank you stay right there i sure
yeah the Easter uh the question I have is basically we have all of these stabilization funds the one thing that I as a resident do not know what is the balance in those accounts and we're adding a
half a million dollars to it have we used up everything that's been uh put away because this is not the first year we're doing it three Mr chairman we have not spent a penny out of the fund since it was established I believe was 3 years ago so we have 750,000 with this 500
we'd have 1.25 million okay so that that is a balance that we're carrying now the same thing is going to go for the other stabilization funds and I'm just wondering why don't we publish that information because the town meeting and
the residents would love to hear that you Mr chairman we publish in the budget every year mark it's a reserves chart that shows the details yeah it's in the Warren article and what I'm interested in is we're adding half a million dollars we have $750 in there and that
total should be what we are carrying forward thank you number 33 General Stabilization Fund general Stabilization Fund uh we're recommending $1 million as we've talked about this is our ultimate rainy day or
catastrophe fund the goal we established several years ago was to build that uh to be 8% of our unassigned fund balance um it's not quite there yet i believe it's about half that right now um in your warrant book on page 18 uh including this transfer the 63026
balance is projected to be 6.15 million um and then expenditures from this account uh must be made at town meeting uh and it's also included in the town's unassigned fund balance thank you any questions 34
34 the debt stabilization fund u we're recommending $5 million $1.2 million is the routine replenishing as you saw on the budget we use a portion of this to offset some of our debt related to primarily school projects most recently
the Smith school project um in addition we're recommending as was the plan when we developed the landfill soil taking project the $3.8 million in excess revenue also to go into the debt stabilization for future capital or debt needs that would bring a projected balance for
63026 of $5.14 million happy to answer any questions on that one as well next article 35 the OPED trust fund uh we usually do a combination so we have uh $250,000 or $300,000 in the operating
budget and then a portion from free cash both go into the OPED trust fund to help plan for and reduce our long-term liability related to other post-employment benefits which is retirey health insurance um we had a strong year um from an investment
perspective last year and the 63026 balance in the trust is projected to be approximately 18.54 million that one does count on us hitting our investment return rate and so I can guarantee the other ones a little more safely than I can guarantee the 18.5
questions mark how did [Music] you and and I'll come back to my favorite subject every single year is when are we going to return some of this
investment because this is a lot of savings accounts and they're appropriate however the residents and the taxpayers of this town deserve to be considered in this So the problem is I've been preaching
this thing for years and the one thing is that we're our savings accounts are getting larger and larger and the residents are not getting any benefit out of it except when you pay the bills i understand that but they need to be
considered now before the budget is approved thank you thank you anyone on the board just just a quick and this might sound naive but um so talking about considering the resident what would it look like will it
be like the select bus sign a check of like $500 and send to everybody that would be nice is that what we talking go less on the whatever you call it the tax levy tax levy reduce the
amount of the tax levy and reduce the tax bill happened in DAS my mother-in-law told me it happened once upon a time okay Mr chairman the the solution to this thing is to reduce the 90ome million
dollar that we charge our residents every year by a certain amount to compensate for some of this we can't be saving in a savings account forever we need to consider the
residents that are paying the bill they're paying our your your bill right now thank you okay anyone else all right that's 30 okay what's next thank you that's it no we have all the
Obie and then we can go into if you want to take a break or just keep going keep going no we keep going okay the break's at 9ine all right we're all big boys girls all right Colby welcome good evening Colobby it guy
sorry I tough crowd sorry sorry I missed the first shot kobe you lost 20% of your tech warrant because you took too long unfortunately so sorry about that article 7 the technology plan this is a recurring warrant kobe can go into detail but this takes care of our general government um
public schools uh equipment replacement uh a small amount the library as well as this is where we do our regional IT uh contribution to pay the bill out of all that regional IT money we receive in assessments from the uh other communities uh happy to Kobe's happy to
answer any questions yeah sure set it well um total is total request is 544 um that breaks down into a sto a school request of 185 a library request of
15 a general government request of 197 uh Kobe can I stop you there yes additionally security cameras for the fire department where do those go that's an expansion of our um systemwide
security cameras um they're at the police station some of our electric facilities and all through the schools and the fire department so that's our buildings our buildings yeah okay thank you
for building safety and then um the final one here is an additional uh general government request of 147,000 that's retained revenue from the previous year's cyber security regional cyber security deployment the method we
have for reallocating that revenue towards um upcoming expenses is uh the tech warrant that's why that's here any questions nope no questions next number eight
article eight is dis disaster recovery this is $100,000 to maintain our cloud disaster recovery solution when did we start that i think this is the third year of that so what we're trying to do is head off
an eventual um $500,000 capital expense by migrating into cloud infrastructure we expect our infrastructure footprint to begin um reducing over time as we adopt more
uh different cloud solutions um so this particular type of deployment um we want to be able to turn it down over time turn our costs down over time as we um reduce the need for these
resources if we put the capital investment up front it wouldn't give us the ability to do that so we want to do this migration into a consumptionbased model where we can turn down resources as we don't need them anymore and there'll be
a cost savings associated with that over time okay questions board members nope okay next this is a phone article 9 is a phone service
consolidation so um currently we have about seven independent phone systems throughout the town and there's a lot of dedicated circuits in terms of telephone lines um those are uh reasonably
expensive there's a more modern approach uh that is less expensive and what we'd like to do is consolidate all these seven independent phone systems into one cloud phone system um an enterprisegrade system that
can handle the whole town and provide a a better user experience than what we're getting currently with these independent integrated phone systems this will uh ultimately there's there's an upfront
strategic investment here but ultimately we expect about a $50,000 operational savings ongoing operational savings once the project is complete
so what you're saying is one is better than seven correct one is better than seven yeah a lot easier to manage um less integrations to manage and we can consolidate all of our phone service
into that one phone system and cancel all the kind of oneoff independent lines we have all throughout town which are the unit cost of each of those lines is
higher than when we bulk purchase for one enterprise phone system so that's where um a substantial portion of the savings comes from okay questions board members nope next
all right i think that's it for Kobe is that for Kobe yep thank you Kobe thanks thank you we'll roll all the way back to page one uh for special town meeting article one of the special town meeting is unpaid bills this article is on the
warrant if a previous year's bills are identified we have none at this time however we'd ask that it still remain in case uh we get one between now and May but at this time we don't anticipate any thank you next article two is budget
transfers again this list will be could be adjusted as we head towards finance committee at the end of the month at the moment we have uh several transfers we've identified they're in page one of that warrant book uh first is a combined 350,200 from free cash and 150 from DPW
personnel into TPW operating uh this is solely for the snow and ice deficit uh to resolve that uh the snow and ice deficit is approximately 428,000 some of that is in salary and wages overtime which can be absorbed with surpluses there the remaining 350
is in the operating and requires a transfer second we have IT personnel into IT operating for 30,000 uh we had a vacancy uh for several months that's since been filled during that time we had to rely heavily on contracted services so we'll need to do a transfer
to shore up the operating budget to cover those costs and 25,000 for department heads personnel into HR personnel as we had talked about we had a vacancy in one of our senior management positions and while that remains vacant awaiting uh future discussions with the new town
manager we kept on an assistant uh for temporary staffing to help with the needs of the office so there's a surplus and department heads that were transferring recommending transfer into the HR personnel budget happy to answer any questions on those next and article three the state public
works grant this is our chapter 9D money uh they projected aortionment uh if passed by the legislature for this year will be $1.2 million how does that compare to last year um it's I think it's similar to last year but both of those are higher than it was
the year before robert De director acting director of DPW um we're getting back to where we were about 10 years ago which is nice i mean we're not gaining any ground but they are giving us back some money with the fair share um calculations they've
been doing thanks Robert any other questions nope okay yes Mark this has more to do in regard to the free cash that we're you know shuffling the deck here with is there a report
that identifies the budget underruns or overruns as of July 1 of 2024 what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the free cash and I believe the free cash that's been identified this year is
like $13.47 million so what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the division of where it's going and what I'm wondering and I'm just wondering where did it come from and
what line items in the budget did it come from because that's an indication of budgets being inflated for receipt of tax revenue that's the balancing of the books that's an a very fair question
mark and I personally handed you the financial statements that have that information in it so if you want I can walk you through what page it's on it's towards the back of the ACER it's the budget variance report you mean the caffer report yes yep oh I didn't see it there okay it's there i I will come and
see you thank you that's not nice mark [Music] article 10 school transportation vehicles uh this year uh we're requesting $150,000 of free cash that will fund the purchase of one 77
passenger school bus public works and schools are here to answer your questions on that one did we last year change it and got two smaller buses instead of one big one and what were we're juggling money for something
uh Stephen Mr chairman yes Steve King town engineer Department of Public Works last year we had in the in the warrant two uh passenger vans versus the school bus so this year the school bus is on based on our tenure rotation for school buses to be replaced what we did do a
little over a year ago at a special town meeting Mr chairman was we amended the use we were going to get I believe it was a bus two years ago the lead time on the bus and the needs of the schools uh necessitated two vans instead so we had town meeting amend the language what
we've done moving forward since then is leave it that school transportation vehicles as needed we give the intent so for example this one would be a school bus if for some reason the school bus is a three-year wait time or the school bus the needs of the school department change and they need vans instead again
we provide some flexibility and they've been working um the best I've seen in my time here with DPW in terms of uh really taking a look at what they exactly need and how they can better utilize their fleet but yeah this year the projection is a school bus thank you any other
questions uh just a quick one um so this bus is just for Damas students going to Damas schools correct and how many do we have we have five school buses okay for dampers for Damas okay thank you
thank you anyone else all right next article 11 is the pavement management and sidewalk improvements so again in addition to our chapter 90 funding we supplement this to do some parking lots some curbing uh sidewalks etc this year
we're recommending $225,000 of free cash to support these priorities questions nope more questions [Applause] article 12 and 13 i'm at this point I'm
going to turn the floor over to town engineer Stephen King thank you uh Ronnie uh article 12 Ro on acceptance of public ways as we previously had our public hearings uh this article specifically allows the town meeting to
give the subboard authority to adopt sorry adopt uh streets as public ways that would be Chadam Lane Colin Tony Road Crane Street Franklin Street Hunt Street and Wildwood Road questions
i Yes uh one question if I can um does is the developer supposed to be taking care of this when they put these streets in yes so the developer provides us all the street layout and articles for for presentation to the select board and town meeting so they basically done
all the work i'm just here presenting um on in behalf of them for the for the town picking of the streets okay and but it takes years to get this done i'm asking because I don't know uh no well by the time for I think these two specific subdivisions that are on here
which is Chattam Lane and Colin Tony Road they typically take two to three years to fully construct and for us to do the inspections of all the utilities and roadways to make sure they comply with our subdivision rules and regulations um once they've done that then we provide a recommendation to the
planning board to uh release the bond once we've received all the documents to take the roads at public ways in the town okay it just seems like some of these streets are been there for a long time so other streets as we was here earlier
in March there are some streets that have been adopted as public waste but not formally so we've been providing all the services trash pickup refuge recycling pickup snow plowing um they just were never formally accepted under Mass General law so we kind of just
backtracked to make sure we correctly uh accepted those streets so they can also be allotted into our chapter 90 funds as public ways is that just a paperwork situation so had nothing to do with the developer at the time was it at this point the developer some of these streets were prior to our subdivision
regulations in 1979 1978 um so they didn't go through that same formal process thank you so there's no Yeah the developers no longer available to go after okay thank you this is it to the microphone um just a clarify drive or
Colin Tony Road because I thought it was Colin Tony Drive just quick question i have Colin Antonio Road i'll Google it i'll go with the paperwork that the law the the lawyers gave us
well that's not always correct better just confirm it i will confirm that yep thank you any other questions no thank you next next is article 13 uh this is to allow us to continue um accepting roads as as public ways in the town of Danvers as I
previously mentioned we have roughly 82 streets that are still private ways that we actually maintain as public ways um so this this this article would allow us to continue that process um which bestly cost about $8,000 per street we do a
couple streets every year um which gives us the the funds to do the asbo plan the survey layout plan and also record the the documents at the registry of deeds questions
one question are we paying a fee to the state for this process there's no fee to the state we pay for the surveyors to do the layout okay thank you okay next next we have article 16 the drainage
liability uh we do this annually where we uh assume liability for potential damages resulting from drainage improvements in damis performed by masdot any questions nope and then articles 19 and 20 stephen if you want to walk them through some
modifications to utility easements yes these two are are simil article 19 and 20 are similar they're on two separate uh streets one's on Cemetery Road and one is on Forest Street um premise of these two articles is that we have town
easements that cut through um parcels in in the town and some of these residents are looking to develop on their parcels potentially ADUs um or additional dwelling units on their on their parcels
in order to serve those new units or dwellings on their lot they would have to cross existing town utility easements now some of them are strictly related to being only allowed for sewer water or storm water so this would basically allow town meeting to give the select
board approval um to make any modifications to those easements to allow these residents to connect their new dwellings to water or sewer through these easements now you mentioned ADUs but I was under the impression with
the state law that they could connect into the current utilities in the main house they didn't have to put in separate we have been running through for the ones that we have seen and we've talked about internally we're
considering those separate dwelling units so they need separate utilities but that's not what the state law says and that's how we're interpreting the building code for dwelling units the ADU law is confusing the state says one thing our building inspector
apparently is saying something else and he's not the only building inspector taking that tack yeah we've had I've had a couple conversations with other towns um building inspectors and they didn't give us a lot of guidance on this but
for what we have seen in the what we can forecast what we potentially could see as far as metering on the water side andor separate utilities if they were ever to let's say potentially condo the two units or sell one unit off um on properties we need to have separate billing mechanisms in place for the town
and that's how we would accomplish that is it possible that a homeowner putting up an ADU could fight it in source based upon the state law no one has fought it yet and there's only been a couple um well the AU by the
state just went into effect in February right it's still very new right i think for right now that's is that's the way we're trying to be consistent with it and what we're telling people who are applying in that manner um that for on the water and sewer utility side that
we're requesting separate utilities okay so for forest for cemetery road um those are three new lots that were just created which cemetery road cemetery road is off of route one andover street heading towards Middleton um there's an existing water easement that runs
through their entire properties they would like to connect to sewer so they have to run a sewer main or service over the water easement that we currently have so that would allow that would give the suck board the authority to approve them to run a new sewer service over our water easement similar to what we have
in the streets but this in the public ways for uh rightways where we have storm water sewer water we have a lot of cross not cross connections but crossing for particular with different utilities for easements a little bit different because those are specific to just that
utility so we allowing other people we will be allowing residents to be able to connect a water service over a sewer easement or a sewer service over a water easement okay questions member of the board um yes please
um so this is due to applications from current residents that are looking to do this yes now don't they still have to meet all setbacks to build this ADU correct they do but at some point they it sounds like they could beat the
system and create a two family on that same property at some point right they could which would then throws our zoning into Neverland okay thank you
anyone else so when when they say there to take any other actions I'm always like um the second to last sentence there to accomplish the purpose is it also yeah that would be again if you want to
if the board can take any action so if the board wanted to not reject it or you know and it's recommended by fincom fin can change how it recommends oh I see I see okay so that's relating to the you know on town council's advice um
they they said we should have two separate articles you know one allowing town meeting to give the select board approval to to to make those modifications okay I see okay okay anyone else all right was number
which one was that 19 that was 19 and 20 and it kind of covered two and one sorry about that that's okay thank you uh next we can go into the sewer enterprise warrant articles stephen if you want to walk us through them is that water that should be water it
is this is sewer even though it says water apologies for that articles 17 18 and 21 war book pages 8 and N first one is our annual drainage maintenance article yes so this is uh we typically have done
this annually um allotted a certain amount of funds for us to make emergency repairs and or repairs to our storm water infrastructure uh within the town so if you see a a catch basin that or sinko that's repaired because of storm water um we use these funds to replace
those catch basins or drain pipe uh in the streets questions no I've seen a lot of trucks out there um do you have like an average like do you have like a 10-year chart saying roughly how much we're going to spend per year on averages um we're
currently working on our next 10-year capital plan um through the stormwater asset management grant that we received last year so that by the I should be in front of select board again by the end of the fall with that report okay thank
you is that Yes okay next high-pressure flushing and vacuum truck replacement uh this is a replacement of our frontline operating um factor and flushing truck that we use for um vacuum excavation andor um factoring out
manholes sewer manholes um catch basins drain manholes and also helps with cleaning out a lot of our wastewater collection system within the town questions uh yes please um am I wrong uh when this came up before was was there
an issue with having somebody that could operate it did we have a problem with having an operator for this or or is that covered i say I believe the question was regarded to training of the machine which we do of the equipment which we do train our uh sewer and water techs on
how to operate the machine okay thank you okay yes please cocki town meeting member precinct 5 chairman of water and sewer um you've heard me talk about this truck before um
I've heard the staff talk about the importance of having this truck within our department um a comment was made at town meeting a couple years ago that the truck only has 11,000 miles on it you do
not commute in this truck trust me this this is a a big thing and we actually had a um a catch basin clog on where I live on Barber Road so I got to see this thing in action um this is like having a fire
truck for the sewer department you you do not want the sewage backing up into your house you don't want it floating in the street and this truck will take care of a lot of that so um I just encourage the town meeting and its wisdom to please get this truck for the department
thank you Coley anyone else okay Mark yep well I've used the vacuum trucks in my past life the vacuum truck is not intended to
be a um a rotor for the uh you know the uh drainage system in the streets it is more for removing dirt and functional facilities that are
buried and not interrupt them the one question that I have and this has been an issue going on a couple of years now have we done a cost analysis of what it would take to the
number of times we actually needed for the purpose that it was intended for and how much can we save this is a 2 mill what's it $1.5 million 683,000
683 $1 million okay so 600 600 million is no difference it's less than 3/4 that's with the escalation that's going to come with it the issue here is that do we actually
need it and I don't know we have justified that even for the water department because that is not the purpose of a vacuum truck to do uh
drainage the issue is have we done a cost analysis of whether how many times do we use it a year how many times would it cost us to rent it because they're
available by suppliers and can we save money on that because this is a large investment so that's that's my question and I I don't I haven't heard that answer yet mr chairman I'll defer to
Stephen King to answer the two qu how much how much do we spend to him too yeah how much do we spend on just even having one as you know that's in for repair how much have we spent this year on contracting out with having one that we own and then the second question would be um again can you talk about
some of the other uses beyond vacuuming yes um so the first part of what the equipment is used for we do talk about storm water we do talk about the wastewater collection system but also remember this is a vacuum and flushing truck so it has a high pressure nozzle hose that's also attached to it as well
that helps clean out the actual utility um pipes underneath the street so that's what we use that for if there's a clog if there's a backup if we have a overflow event like we've had recently um on some of the streets we need to have that truck there immediately to be able to keep up with the flow um of a
lot of our gravity and pump stations that are pumping into these these mains um or whether or not we have a high storm event if we have a clogged catch basin and we need to get it unclogged to let water or storm water drain out to the appropriate areas that's what we use the vacuum truck
for um on the part as far as what we've used as I mean this is a this is operating machine we use every every day um we do annual well we do daily checkups on all of our pump stations we have 13 in town um when we do those those inspections we have to pump down
the actual uh pump station at at these various sites we use the backup truck there to help keep up with the flow so we can do our inspections on our pumps that are that are offline that um so that's a that's a daily and weekly occurrence that we need the truck for um
not to mention a lot of emergency calls that we get on streets but just in the recent two years um in 24 we spent roughly just over $40,000 in rental for a rental packer truck and our truck was down and then just this past year alone
we spent just over $100,000 um in rental equipment for when the truck was up thank you anyone else Mike um is there
um the possibility to that the vehicle that we would have we would still need more on an occasion we'd more than you'd need to still rent another vehicle do we have a situation that comes up like that that would be a very e that would be an
emergency above what we would normally see on a daily basis that has the extreme conditions where we have a huge storm we have a lot of potential inflow and infiltration going to our storm water pipes and one truck cannot keep up with the flow so then we may need to rent one but those trucks these those
occurrences where I just listed are when our truck was up we had have occurrences we had to also rent trucks in addition to but it's good to have something there right away to try and manage the conditions that we're we're under and how long do these vehicles last uh
they're only supposed to last about 8 to 10 years and you're supposed to switch them over when we have this 13 years now and how much money are we spending on repairing it the repair costs just a rough guess
33,000 a year alone cost okay all right thank you all set yes okay thank you next the wastewater collection system comprehensive lining and spot repairs uh this is our annual program um a part of
our wire improvement plan to reduce our infiltration into our into our wage wire collection system um we have additionally have done probably about 8 to 10,000 women of sum in rehab every year um this is in lie of doing an
actual open cut expedation street so this is trans technology we line our our sewer meetings and sewer services and the roadways eliminate infiltration coming from groundwater sources that we don't necessarily need to do um so this
program uh aimed to tackle the next section which is a little bit of Locust Street and then the area provided build neighborhoods off and questions yes please um how much time
can you buy by line on the pipes versus having to change them out you get another you get another 70 plus years of useful life wow it's another structural liner um so it's the old pipe is the
host pipe and the new the new liner um is just as structurally sound as the PVC pipe okay thank you let's see anyone else okay that's 21 right rodney how many do we have left roughly um we have
some water buildings and grounds and I think that we have All right we'll take a 10-minute break back here at 5 to do the water yeah we only have three articles left so we need a 10-minute break thank you you
got it mr chairman um so again as you can see the transposition there now we have the water articles titled sewer um article 22 23 and 24 are all related to the water enterprise fund stephen if you
want to start with booster stations sure uh thank you Rody uh article 22 is for water facility improvements to our booster stations we have five booster stations in town um Green Street uh
Putnham Lane Overlook Drive uh Delaware Delaware and um Lake View and this article allows us to make any repairs or improvements beyond what we can typically do um with
our staff in house um so whenever we have a major pump failure and we need to get that replaced um we do have to call outside vendors to come help with those replacements some of our pumps are bait are now over 30 years old um so we're seeing some of those start to lose their
useful life um as far as when they were originally installed so this would help us be able to make those repairs um when they come up questions mike yes please uh on the boosters and the pumps and all
the equipment is we get we using all the same equipment all around um uniforming most of our all of our equipment yeah so but again a lot of this technology um a lot of the programming um that's embedded into these units is probably a two to five year lifespan before it
changes out again and we have to redo those um those components so it's ever evolving becoming more efficient um but the parts becoming more expensive and um they're hard to find when they also have they switched out vendors have switched out new components for our program of
these stations so is the 2 to 5 year window on computer parts of this correct so but the actual hardware as far as the pump itself we're getting more time than that right yeah pumps we still get over probably over 30 years on those and that's usually the lifespan we get
before we start having issues with them okay all right thank you thank you anyone else all right next sir i'm sorry Bill sir my goodness it's after 9 [Applause]
question is when we're talking about water are we dealing with the for the mic are we dealing with the forever chemicals that uh seem to be creeping up and making people very sick do we have any effort
or is it impossible to do anything no problem uh you Mr chair this article is directly related to just being able to increase the pressure so we meet the state regulations um at homes uh to answer the question related to the forever chemicals we have applied for a
grant that we're waiting um and awarding hopefully we get the award to tackle uh PAS and our raw water um that we draw out of our wells so hopefully we hear good news that we get that grant and that would help us um go to the next
step as far as doing a design for upgrades to our well facilities to uh remove those forever chemicals thank you thank you all right next we're still on emergency watering connections mhm okay this uh this
article is some of you may remember we had a couple years ago we reappropriated some funding to do start a study and possibly do a replacement of our emergency water interconnections with the city of Beverly and the city of Peodyy um at this point we've done we've
finalized our our study and consensus um we have seen we've now modeled how much we can actually pull withdraw from the city of Beverly which would come from the Salem Beverly water supply andor the city of pe at our interconnections um based on that study and evaluation there
are further upgrades that we need to do to those interconnections um to make sure that they're ready in case we need them um for purposes of a drought or emergency water um that we need to supply from other other communities so this this article would allow us to um
this would increase the amount that we've already appropriated um a couple years ago to finalize the construction bid documents and actually construct and replace the existing interconnections um on Water Street and Conan Street have we
ever bought water from either Beverly or through these connections we have bought water from this city of Beverly through Salem Beverly water supply we have purchased water from them before through these through these interconnections yes okay thank you any other questions yes
please um so if we uh get this funding and u do this work um we're not going to have this again we're going to be all set for 20 30 years yeah it's it's building resiliency into our water supply system okay thank you
yes David steve man asked "How often have have these interconnections been used like once a year 10 times or and never or uh No I would say maybe two maximum three years every 3 years we at some point we've had to purchase water
from um our neighbors during droughts uh nope during emergency situations so one year we had uh one of our two of our main pumps at our water treatment plant fa failed and we need we couldn't supply water only from our wells and we couldn't do our water treatment plant so
we had to buy additional water from um Salem Beverly Water Supply and we have probably a reciprocal agreement that if they have an emergency they buy some from us so we typically hydraulic grade line wise we couldn't supply them with water um because of the water elevations
of how they operate their system to how we operate our system um so it's it's not reciprocal okay just wondering thank you okay anyone else thank you Stephen [Music] um Kaiiki town meeting member precinct 5
water and sewer commission um at our water and sewer commission meetings as of late we've be discussing this topic because I raised the point of how do we get that water is it a handshake deal or do we have anything in writing with
those two entities to say hey if we need it how are we going to get it can you give it to us what's it going to cost us to get it etc etc so we're probably going to work on this a little bit more in our upcoming meetings about you know we need something in writing just in
case you know these days of handshake deals and all of a sudden oh we can't give it to you when we really need it i'd really like to see us formalize our agreements with those communities thank you thank you next uh article 24 state hospital reservoir
valve replacement and vault rehabilitation uh this article has come up before um as part of our water infrastructure improvements we have an existing altitude valve and vault that regulates our tank elevations at our state hospital reservoir it's a 5.4
million gallon tank uh underground um this also helps lead and controls our Folly Hill water storage tank um up by overlook off the uh route 128 um so this system is important for us to be able to operate our tank levels to give us water
pressure and in accurate firefighting capacity um when our plan is off um originally we were looking to rehab the vault in place um but based on our initial survey results it was the the actual vault and piping was constructed
outside of the easement that we had gotten with the Commonwealth um so this project the additional funds require would help us uh relocate the existing vault structure and valve into our easement that we have with the Commonwealth as well do the the
improvements to the project questions none thank you oh Bill I'm sorry speak up yes sir again Bill Brad Street me precinct one i heard reference made to
tanks water tanks it's like anything else that has a life uh how far through the life of these tanks and we'll they won't last forever how expensive would it be to replace
them not my lifetime hopefully but how how expensive would it be for the town to replace these tanks or is it even feasible thank you uh that's a great question uh and I can't give a exact figure to it um
although we do we do do annual maintenance um to these tanks so we're constantly doing inspections with them we have an original vendor who actually constructed our our our concrete stand tank on Folly Hill um they come out they do an assessment on it every year and
provide us any improvements or rehab work that we need to do on that tank um DP Department of Environmental Protection also comes out and does an inspection on the tank to make sure it's in full compliance and it's operating effectively there's no leaks no crack no structural deficiencies on the tank so
we're consistently watching that the state hospital tank uh is circa early 1900s it's an underground clay bottom underground tank with a clay bottom and built on uh grant basically granite walls um so it it does have a lifespan it's exceeded exceeded its lifespan
which has been great um but again we also do um inspections of that on an annual basis we do drain that tank down we do uh inspections in that tank to make sure everything's structurally sound as well um but I I know that state is not permitting those type of tanks anymore um so we're going do our best
effort to make sure that's that asset stays where where it is do we have a backup plan if we have to abandon it um it's a the backup plan would be running the treatment plant every every day uh 24/7 because we need to make up that
water supply to provide fire fire protection so it's we roughly have about just over 9 million gallons in storage uh every day when the plant shuts off so if those one of those tanks were to go down we would just need to run our plant additionally more hours to make up that
that loss of water storage thank you Mr chairman yeah and he says that uh we're going to abandon the existing infrastructure in place what what does that mean like with the existing vault that's there um we're
basically going to pull all the parts out of it and just fill it with stone there's no need to actually remove it off the site um it's just a a standard pre-cast vault um so we're just going to put one next to it relocate the water man um the 20-in water man that's connected to it and then just abandon
that vault in place so no need to over excavate more than we have to okay all right thank you thank you next can I ask Dan yep um I've been here a long time i've been looking at that hill
a long time now danas we sell our water to the residents on Hawthorne Hill right yep how do we get it up there i mean the people in the top bedroom in the top floor how do you get that water up there
um it's through our what we call our hydraulic grrey line and booster pump stations so there's no big tank that's higher than the buildings is there uh nope but then again they do have individual i'll come to your office
sometime Stephen you can you can explain it to me okay thank Thank you next next we have article 27 building improvements this is various improvements maintenance repairs to town buildings including schools um there's a more detailed
breakout in your warrant book on pages 12 and 13 um we don't need to go uh item by item but if there's any specific questions on any of those projects what yeah 12 13 mr king and Mr dra happy to answer any questions you may have the
total is uh total is $739,000 it's $529,000 in free cash 37,000 from WP and 173,000 from electric and electric efficiency upgrades everybody on the board understand what a
WM is water use mitigation program okay any questions David on article 27 um the big article I'm not I'm not allowed to ask because I live next to the senior center i was going to ask when is that bulkhead going to be uh
replaced the ugly one that I look out from my kitchen every morning and I'm drinking coffee i'm looking at a 37year-old bulkhead that's letting rats go in and out of the building however ethics won't allow me to bring the issue up so forget that I said
anything it's been documented mike any questions on article 27 uh no it seems pretty straightforward thank you Moren no d no thank you audience okay then article 28 grounds
improvements um get a total of $197,500 pages 14 and 15 you have a list in front of you again happy to answer any questions uh on the list of grounds improvements if I may irrigation improvements at
Intercort Park in the community gardens what are we doing at the park in the gardens specifically so the existing irrigation system there is
um has a a ton of faulty piping that's allowing leaks and loss of water that doesn't need to be um that we need to conserve so this would basically start replacing parts of that system so that we have a a tight system so that we're not leaking when we have our irrigation
system on at the uh gardens so given that we won't vote on this till May when will you start the work uh we wouldn't be able to start the work till after July 1st july 1st and what downtime will there
be for the guidance uh we'll have to I'll have to talk and schedule that with the um forestry department was organizing that is there a way we can phase the work so it doesn't impact the community growing season yes yeah absolutely yeah because I mean July and August if they can't
water their plants or vegetables we shouldn't be an impact anybody okay yep thank you anyone else okay anyone in the audience no 39 last one fiscal 26 budget amendments this article's on the warrant just to
make sure if anything changes during town meeting we can have a further amendment later that's normal yep all right so fellow board members we've already voted on 36 37 38 we're not voting on two um
I'd ask that we take 19 and 20 out of the mix and have a vote on the remaining articles to pass favorably or unfavorably i agree with 19 take 19 and 20 out okay but I'm asking for a vote on the others you're asking for a vote on
the Okay is there a motion take a motion to pass in favorable okay is there a second second all in favor i opposed none so 19 and 20 I'd like to pull out um for a separate vote moren you have comments
[Music] um for these 19 and 20 um I don't like the idea about with the ADUs and I you know how that can happen with those particular lots um I want to do a little
bit more research you know on 19 and 20 myself all right and my concern is that we have a state law that's in conflict with a building code and I'm not happy um until we can resolve that and have a
understanding what the state law really means and I do know there's talk amongst the real estate industry of um making some push back and counter suits against the ADU
law where that goes I don't know the last government affairs committee meeting I participated in at the mass level there was kind of a mixed feeling of ADUs and this is it works in other parts of the the country and there's
people here that think it's against our zoning and it's not good and we heard first thing tonight um we don't want to change Danvas and if we're going to accept these ADUs with the state laws in place it's
different than what we may want so I'm going to vote um unfavorably on 19 and 20 for that reason but if I can have a motion for 19 and 20 I'll make a motion to vote unfavorable
for 19 and 20 as presented i just want to just before we go down that road because the sentence petitions you have to pass on so theoretically the action I think madam cler correct me if I'm wrong would be if you want to remove these from the warrant you can remove them for the warrant I'm not sure how for
non-citizen petitions you'd pass them unfavorably I guess the citizen petitions you can rank them because they have to go forward anyways that would be my only question if it's a majority to unfavorable the select board has the authority to just remove them from the
warrant I believe and before we did that my question would be to Mr king would the impact be well I think the impact would be grave to the people on cemetery roads and others because they're looking for easement um relief right and so if I can
clarify because maybe I shouldn't have mixed these two together yeah so article 19 for Cemetery Road um that would be a three lot subdivision for single family housing that's going in and they would need to be able to connect to the
utilities to provide for those those single family houses um so they would have to cross over our water easement with a sewer service um so essentially you'd be allowing them to do that um and they run individual service to their houses just like any other any other
normal house in the town of Damevers this might be a question more for Aaron than you Stephen but by granting these easements or is the board in any way enhancing these people's general property rights that they have now um through you
um no no I mean in theory these lots were created on Cemetery Road through an approval not required process so they meet the pre- determined standards for buildable lot in town and the planning board was unable to say no to that
subdivision that's where it gets its name approval not required i don't know why they call it that but they do um they have to ask us for our not approval um so in this case I don't think that you'd be giving them extra property rights but and again I think we kind of grabbed on to the ex the the the clause
for the accessory dwelling units here but un not being able to develop the single family home on Cemetery Road um that might be an obstruction of property rights i understand we're not happy that that single family home may be able to add an ADU and what are the process for
that we should talk about as a community that's um but I I worry we'd be kind of clipping their base property rights to develop as they've already met the zoning requirements for th those parcels in question so in essence introducing
the comment on the ADU kind of took could you talk I wasn't going to say that Dan but that introducing the ADU and the conversation kind of misdirected us so that the cemetery road easement um really has nothing to do with ADUs
correct is that correct that was my Okay okay so that's took it that way too that is 13 Forest 13 Forest excuse me yes again they have if by what is zoned for that for that par that parcel um they're
allowed to put another dwelling unit on there now I'm not going to say the other acronym but regardless of whatever they want to call that if they do want to run a service for water whether or not they attach onto the existing house or they come off the main they're still going to
have to cross that easement to do so and you would be giving them the right to do that okay so it's an easement issue only yes we confused it yeah go ahead David i don't want to be a troublemaker but of course it has value
if I have a piece of land and I can't build a house on it because I don't have water and sewer I'd pay I'd pay $100,000 for the right to put water and sewer in so we would have a buildable house lot in Danvas i'm not saying we should do that because I also believe in the
principle of a good neighbor i remember a neighbor once asked if if he could hitch his hose to my house as he was doing something in his yard and I said "What a stupid question of course you can you're my next door neighbor and I'm going to live next to you for 20 years but it is it's a it's a real
property value um the what's a house lot worth with it doesn't doesn't have water and sewer so the answer is it has value do we want to impose value or ask value i'm
not saying we should because if somebody has a house lot um in Danas like I have a house lot across the street and I have water and sewer and but the answer is yes it has great value um and what anyone chooses to do
with that the board or the town meeting or anybody else I'm not saying that we should charge but it has great value and if it's three house lots a house lot in Danas has now got to be 2 3 4 500 $00,000 and in the event that it could
be a duplex why don't we talk about5 or $600,000 that doesn't mean that they should have to pay that but there is a definite value to that um and um so and I'm not saying what we should do for or
with the value but let's not I don't want to pretend that there isn't a value there's a big value thank you so I withdraw my objection because of the confusion but it's strictly for the easement rights to these properties i don't That's my fault
Mr chairman no that's okay me too it's late don't Don't blame yourself all right so um did we vote on the others yet not yet no so we we can throw 19 and 20 back in the mix and vote on everything as one with one vote if I can
have a motion i move that we uh forward all those designated items to the town meeting with a favorable recommendation is there a second second there is a second any discussion hearing none all in favor i I
opposed none all right thank you folks for your You still need to do consent calendar yeah no that was just a warrant all right that's just they they can stay that just wraps up this okay okay we're
not done yet you're welcome to stay as they get up to but you don't have to come back Thursday take the night off good night everyone good night all right number seven town manager
report on the board on various items of interest you Mr chairman do the late hour i'll keep it brief i would like to mention though that there is in your packets a draft resolution um the staff was directed to propose a draft resolution related to the Beverly airport you have
a draft in your packet if you want to take a look at that and then we can put that on um a future select board meeting for discussion and potential vote so oh will we post this on the website or wait till we vote on it or um we can do either or if you want when
we um put it on the next agenda on that agenda on the calendar we can put a link to the document all right so board members you have a resolution addressing concerns over the airport to review comment sent to uh the town manager um
within the next week so that we can put it on the agenda for a vote at our next meeting and if you decide you don't want to well we'll discuss it anyway but um anything you want to add change what have
you and Ronnie do you think this is the right way to do this resolution with the whereas whereas yeah I mean if there's again we're happy to take comment from the board i think if it's probably best for discussion in terms of edits because again I don't think the the staff again
will defer to your uh stance on these issues but that was their first attempt at a a draft to try something no it looks good just so board members um please do review this and make any comments so that uh when we reconvene at
the next meeting we can put it on the agenda okay thank you thank you what else Rodney that's all I have for tonight okay thank you so maybe we could have the town um the manager the airport manager come before us again soon too
right so yeah well that'll be part of um after we're going to address the letter next we're going to do the consent calendar next please which requires a motion i'll make a motion that we consider consent calendar for items as they
appear below thank you uh I'm going to move fairly rapidly now for couple of reasons um I had sent out an email asking the members what night you
will represent the board at the Fencom hearings uh there's a series of five dates they're in on your agenda in the back um I will do the 28th and the 30th which will be the warrant articles and
that leaves the 14th 16th and 17th for the other members to participate i did hear from select board member Bean that he was interested in the 14th didn't I tell email you too you did email me yep yep and I'm I'm taking the 28th and the
30th so that leaves the 15th and the Nope i'm sorry the 16th the 17th i'll take the 17th moren oh did you want that i It would be better for me 16 i have it all right um that's right d wants the 17th d okay so let me just check my 16th
check your 16th mike did have to do more if he had to i didn't say it like had well we don't know what the discussion thing each night right no we don't we'll have a schedule in the next
couple days to give you a sense of what we're talking about okay is the 15th you want no no the 15th that's us that's a select board all right the 16th i don't think I can do though do I have a seminar well you know something put me down for the 16th thank
you yeah so we've got Mike on the 14th Morin on the 16th be on the 17th 7:00 p.m right um 7:30 probably no it says 7 in here 7 yep what it says 7 okay and I'll do the
28th and the 30th if anybody gets a conflict let me know thank you [Music] uh we did get a letter from Duncan Putney about
uh the historic I don't have that paperwork in front of me does somebody else have it yeah it's right here yeah thank you uh Mr putney he sent um a hard copy to
the historic district commission as well as this email to the select board about the Salem Village proposal for consideration have we heard from historic district commission have they weighed in on this do we know nothing I'm aware at this point not okay
so we need to have historic commission if they'd weigh in on it before we can take a stand thank you airport We received a letter back in January addressed to the select board
um from Gabriel Hannifan airport manager answering questions on fueling which I believe was Mike's question air aircraft size which I believe was David's runway usage marine have you folks had a chance to read this and how
would you like yep i have not you have not no I will that's too bad we got it i'd like to give them a response of some type i'll have I'll have an answer for you tomorrow i'll call you tomorrow okay that's fine okay um other members have an idea of what they want to do as a
response did you get your questions answered um yeah basically I I I think um the he had I had asked about um having equipment uh or uh items on the property to assist if we
had a fuel leak or anything like that and he the answer was that the subcontractors carry that um which is fine except if the subcontractors are not there 2 in the morning and a tank breaks um I'm just looking to see if
they can have more physical items than our people would be running out there looking for to stop any potential leak not that there's going to be but um obviously better safe than sorry do you want to send that to Rodney i I
can do that so we can incorporate that into your letter i want to acknowledge we received it okay okay any comments and then reconfirm that we invited them to come back sometime in the fall i'm thinking August or September okay so
we'll put that in a letter as well but just acknowledge receipt thereof um the request that was made at their meeting by Bill Quazawan for two more uh members to sit on the
commission really was not the prop you don't ask that commission has to go through the Beverly city council has to go through the mayor's office um we'll address that probably with the resolution okay okay we'll put I'll wait for your call i'll
call you tomorrow yeah that's fine um and then we'll um at least give them a response acknowledge the receipt thank you because I want to read it yeah no that's fine so that's fine i mean I I did read it i didn't understand i mean this is a while back too i did it
yesterday uh I mean he was pretty responsive uh from what he said he was going to provide yep um I don't I don't understand type of airplanes and the path and the the chart in there i have no idea but
so just disclosure I had a a conversation with an environmental attorney that works for the FAA um in my office the other day and he did tell me that these airplanes the class may change but the
size of them don't so that might be different seats or something i'm not sure but he was very interesting in telling me about the issues they have in Seattle where they're banding together and in a fivem radius of an airport they're suing Alaska Airlines and Delta
Airlines for the discharge of the leaded fuel in the neighborhoods so it's something to stay tuned to interesting okay so we'll we'll we'll draft a letter with you folks we'll draft it and I'll
sign it yep okay thank you okay anyone else let's see here oh we didn't vote on the consent calendar we had a motion who made the second no one no one nobody somebody
want to make a motion on the consent calendar motion that will consider the consent calendar items if they appear below is there second from D thank you thank you Madam Cler all in favor i i thank you what else haven't we done i think
that's it tonight that's it for tonight all right closing comments d uh no comment thank you all right Moren um once again Davis Cares um will be uh meeting on April 7th at their um I think
it's at 2:30 at the high school room C213 I believe it's a great organization um also duck tickets right kuan's duck tickets you know don't forget um that it does help um uh the Kuanas Club so buy your duck tickets and I was looking at
my phone too because I wanted to congratulate um Damas Rec Dave Mountain and his group um at the U Massachusetts Recreation Park and Park Association uh that they
won um a 2025 regional community impact award so congratulations to uh Dave Mountain and his crew his team and uh that's wonderful thank you thank you Mike i was going to make a comment about
April Fool's Day but I think I'll just stop too late and then I That's it david thank you comments brad Street does not allow me to mention anything about old age i'm ranting about
the senior center tonight well of course I'm ranting about 12 Silven Street which was the senior center i could call Macy's Jordan Marsh and so forgive me for and I'll never say anything about my age i guess it's apparent nothing else
thank you Dan nice nice job running the meeting so to the public I thank you all for your emails in the last few months regarding the town manager search contract etc in order to have a fair and partial
process I chose not to respond to any and all emails comments comments praising people drawing our attention to newspaper articles telling us how we should do the process but I appreciate everybody's
email i read them all but I didn't respond to any and I'm not going to but thank you Danas for paying attention folks if you see a vet please say thank you and meeting is adjourned thank you
good night Danvas thank you thank you