Welcome to the June 16th, 2025 meeting of the Long Select Board. This is select board chair of Veneathy. I'll be confirming that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Dan Zwco here. Andrew Lamb here. Josh Lavine here. Staff, when I
call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Lynn Simmons here. Mike Barbieri here. Peggy Sheldon here. This open meeting of the Long Meadow Select Board is convened in person and via Zoom webinar as posted on the agenda and town's website identifying how the public may join. There's no chat or Q&A
function. All of the materials for this meeting are available on the agenda posted on long meadowmma.gov. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless I note otherwise. This meeting will feature resident comment. For residents attending the meeting in person, please raise your hand when we get to the comment section
of the meeting and I will call on you to approach the microphone. For residents participating in the meeting via Zoom webinar format, please use the raise hand icon at the bottom of the screen. The meeting moderator will promote you to panelist, unmute you, and give you permission to speak. If you join the webinar by phone, dial star9 to raise
your hand and star six to mute unmute. Residents who wish to speak will identify their names and addresses only. Each individual is afforded three minutes for comments. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are
not speaking. If anyone in attendance is recording this meeting, please announce yourself now. Sarah, please. Thank you, Sarah. Anyone online? Doesn't look like it. Okay, great. All right, we will now begin with the pledge of allegiance.
I aliance 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. All right, great. And today, uh, we're going to start our meeting, uh,
differently than we usually do. Um, and that is because we're going to take this opportunity to honor and to recognize Mark Gold, who has joined us here tonight. We reached out to him last week, uh, to make sure that he joined us because we thought this was important to
honor and recognize his 16 years of service to the select board. Um, I think all of us have a sense of what goes into this job and the amount of energy and time and dedication that it takes and to do this for 16 years shows
an incredible level of dedication and commitment to this town and a love for this town and um you know I think it's important that we do recognize Mark's service and everything that he's given back to the town and so we do have our state rep our senator here with us as well for citations. We have got
presentation, but before we get into all of that, I did want to just open it up in case members of the select board also wanted to add uh any comments. Dan, sure. Uh thanks, Vene. Uh Mark, uh you know, over the past few few years, it's been really truly an honor to work with
you and uh you know, I had we had I had a small gathering uh excuse me on election night and the the first words out of my mouth were uh recognizing you for uh several decades. I mean, we're talking like 30 years of service to the town of Long Meadow. And um you know,
not many people can say that that all the work and effort and and homework you put into each and every uh meeting. And although certainly times uh we disagreed, me or other folks uh with you and your stance on some issues, I always
knew that you've had the best interest uh in Long Meadow. And um I'll just close by saying thank you. Um, and also, um, you know, not only has it been an honor to serve with you, um, I know, uh, your wife has done so much as well for
the the town of Long Meadow, and, um, now you'll be able to spend more time with your your grandchildren and your wife and kids. Um, and I wish you nothing but the best and Long Meadow is certainly a better place because of everything that you you've done. So, thank you. Uh, Mark, I had the pleasure of serving
with you for four years, and as I said on election night, it was really it it was truly an honor. I've learned a lot from you. Uh, I know that in the in the future and as I have for the last four years, a lot of times I will we're looking at something, I'll say, "Huh, what would Markh say about this?" Or,
"How would Mark think about this?" because uh I think you brought a good perspective on a lot of things and I I certainly learned a hell of a lot from you and uh and now uh that I'm the elder statesman. It's uh I got really big shoes to fill. So um just wanted to
really say thank you and you reached out to me um couple days after about water rates uh and keep doing that because I I do appreciate your input. So um yeah, thank you for everything. We really appreciate it. Mark, I also want to personally thank you so much for
everything you've given to Long Meadow. I've I moved to town in 2008. I I think I started I've been on boards, various boards since 2000 2010. entire time you've been on the select board and you know I I can't it's a there's so many myriad things that you did to contribute
to this town that I got to see like you know third uh 16 challenging town budgets 30 interesting town meetings you know countless big projects small projects the high school the DPW building the adult center the little
swamp fields the the October snowstorm your leadership was integral to all those things and you know I think it was evident to everybody. Your hard work, your dedication, your detail or you were detail oriented. You, you know, always asked the tough questions. You dug into the details which was to the benefit of
us all. I think we all know that, you know, in this position, you can never hope to have everyone like you all the time or agree with you all the time. I think the most you can hope for is that people will respect you even if they disagree with you. And I don't know anyone in town who doesn't respect
everything you've done for all of us. So, thank you so much. And I'd like to invite our state representative and our state senator up if you all have where would you like you guys want to come up here maybe? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And uh next budget, we might need a little bit of a little um thank you, Mr. Chair of the Select Board. Um we've done this before, honoring or recognizing people that have served on the board, but for me, this is a little
bit more personal, a little more special for those who don't know. When I got elected to the House of Representatives in 2008, Mark got my seat in a special election after I resigned in 2009. So to have you on the board that long uh well
reminds me how long I've been in the house. But uh it it really watching you and I think Dan you said it best. We shouldn't all agree on boards. I mean if we do agree all the time there's something wrong with the makeup of the board. So it's good to have varying
opinions. And I always knew you did your homework. You you know you did you went the extra mile on everything and I think that was appreciated by anyone who was watching. anyone who's paying attention, but um just watching uh everything you've done, I I appreciate it so much.
And anybody who's been in politics, even though they're not our seats, we represent them, whether it's select board, school committee, uh you know, state representative, planning board, whatever it might be, we sometimes get attached to them and we want to know that when we leave, they're in good
hands. And I knew right away that the select board seat was in great hands because I knew everything you do is for the betterment and for the love of the community you've lived in for so long. Thank you. And I as well as I know the senator will read his uh in a second,
but I have a citation for you from the House of Representatives. And look at this twins. You're joking. This this is the official uniform of former select board members. So Mark, be it hereby known to all that the Massachusetts House of Representatives offers its sincerest
congratulations to Mark Gold in recognition of your commitment and dedication as you worked with passion and pride for the betterment of Long Meadow and its residents during your 16 plus years as a member of the select board. The entire membership extends its very best wishes, the hope for future
good fortune and continued success in all your endeavors signed by the speaker of the house and by me, your state representative Brian Ash. Congratul not to be outdone by um certainly Mark your years of service and the respect that you have gained
within the community and from each and every one of your colleagues here I really shows through in their comments today. I will say 16 years ago, the select board C definitely had a a serious improvement um and going uh you
joining this board, but having spent 16 years in elective office in the town of Lello, 16 years is long enough. Uh that is for sure. But honestly, whether it's an event that we have in in the community, whether it's going to a select board meeting, whether it's
tackling some of the thorny issues that uh communities face, whether it's at town meeting or boards like this, having somebody with your experience and understanding how this community operates, what the flavor of the community is, and a guiding voice to lead it for 16 years is pretty
incredible. Think of how this community has changed in those short 16 years. Building that we're in wasn't here. Um, improvements to this community have been tremendous over the last dec decade and a half and your fingerprints have been
on each and every one of those impacts. You will have a lasting impact in this community over your 16 years of service. I'm proud to say that I call you a friend, but also someone who has represented this community well. So on behalf of the Massachusetts Senate, we
hereby extend our congratulations to Mark Gold, Long Meadow Select Board from 2009 to 2025 in recognition of your dedicated and committed leadership, mentorship, collaboration, and your work with town administrators, uh, departments, and residents using research, thoughtfulness to move Long
Meadow forward. And be it further known that the Massachusetts Senate hereby extend its very best wishes for continued success that this citation be duly signed by the President of the Senate and a copy of transmitted to the clerk of the Senate and signed by me. Congratulations. Thank you.
And that's what cropping's for. Well, I not to be outdone, I'd say legislature. We the select board of town of Long Meadow, we actually have a plaque.
So to read the Wow. So to read the plaque, the town of Long Meadow gratefully recognizes Mark Gold for serving on the select board from 2009 through 2025. Thank you for your many years of exceptional service to the town and its residents.
the whole board and come on in too. We'll hold these. You hold that one with the knees. Grab it. There we go. Front page reminder. Watch out. Okay, great. Thank you all. And
now we will move into select board reorganization. So, um I I want to just begin by saying that it has been an honor to serve as chair of the select board for the last year. I am so proud of the work that we've done over the past year. We've made such significant
strides in terms of the work in making up for deficiencies in our infrastructure um and making significant investments in our infrastructure as well as planning and thinking ahead about the infrastructure changes um in the future and what we need to be doing
in terms of roads uh water manes and and everything else. Um, also I'm I'm proud of the work that we do we did in improving I think government efficiencies with some of our boards and our committees as well as some of our processes and also some of the goal
setting that we've done. And um that has really changed the focus of the select board in the short term and in the long term and also as chair of the select board it's impossible to do this job without the incredible support of the town manager and the assistant town
manager and our admin assistant. So, I want to thank all of you for, you know, all of the long phone calls and Zoom meetings and talking through every issue, big and small. Um, you know, it's it's made such a big difference and also it has given me such a better
appreciation for everything that our town staff has to deal with, uh, the amount of pressure that they're under and what they're asked to do every single day. And so I want to thank all of you for your all of your support and the rest of the staff. So um with that
um I'm going to make a motion to appoint Josh Lavine as the chair of the Long Select Board. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All right. All All those in favor? Great. Congratulations. Thank you very
much. Yeah. Uh I move that we appoint Benath Himabathy as vice chair. Second. Oh, sorry. Any further discussion? All right. All those in favor. And uh I'll move we appoint uh Shelley
Mater Dewolf as clerk. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Okay. You want to switch seats? Yeah. Okay. I'll do Yeah, why not? Got a better looking uh name plate.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for your service. We appreciate all you've done. It's been a a trying year, but uh a a productive year. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Um All right. Um, we will move on to
announcements. Uh, municipal aggregation. A public hearing will be held on Tuesday, July 8th at 6:30 at Greenwood Center and virtually. For additional information, please visit www.long meadow communityelelectric.com. Uh, community input survey, future use
of town buildings. The town of Long Meadow is seeking public input on the future use of town hall at 20 William Street. the community house at 7:35 William Long Meadow Street and Old Town Hall at 417 Long Meadow Street. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts by completing the survey linked
uh here in the announcements and on the town website. Town offices closed for Junth holiday. Town of Long Municipal offices will be closed on Thursday, June 19th, 2025 in observance of Junth. Select board summer schedule. Looking ahead to the summer, the next meetings
for the select board will be held on June July 21st and August 18th. And next up, we have uh resident comments. If anybody would like to speak, uh please approach and you can uh state your name and address. And you'll
have three minutes to speak. Mr. Godfrey, how are you? Thank you. My name is Godfrey, 156 Bington Road. Long Meadow, of course. Uh, first a couple of things. I'd want to thank very
much the town voters uh at the annual town meeting who overwhelmingly approved the uh enactment of the optional veterans benefits that was passed under the Hero Act and signed into law by uh
Governor Healey August of 2024. it is uh very much appreciated and we're gratified that the town supports us. I would also like to say that u as a representative of many veterans organization and an advocate for
veterans, we very much appreciate how the town, the select board and the town administrators uh support veterans in this community. and we very much appreciate the fact that you showed up on Memorial Day and
you stayed there for the entire event and it I had so many comments from people who were so moved and felt it was such a wonderful warm hometown event. They were very grateful and we thank our town manager and the director of veteran
services Lena Toro for putting that together for us. The only additional comment I have uh and I know you have a lot on your plate uh water and sewer rates. So, and and I've read everything on that particularly the work that Mark
Gold has done which is almost mind-blowing. Um, if there's anything you can do in consideration for veterans, most of whom are seniors or a great many anyway, uh, and the seniors in Long Meadow, when it
comes to how you set or structure the rates, it would be very much appreciated. Thank you so much. Thank you. Tom Shay, 81 Green Meadow Drive. Tonight or at your next meeting, you have the unique and overdue ability to improve
the setting of water rates, water and sewer rates. I am qualified to appine on both rate setting and accounting. Fixed rates absolutely in favor. Springfield and others have done it. The fixed costs I calculate 2.3 million
54% of the budget is fixed. 2 million or 46% are variable. Substantially all the cost to purchased water from Springfield per the town's memo. You have the opportunity to do this appropriately. The fixed rate should capture the fixed costs and are known in
various industries as capacity payments. At a 300% increase, you capture 836, or 36% of the fixed rates. You got quite a bit of ways to go there. Tiered rates, thank you for taking this off the table.
I emphasize the following. Since the full amount of fixed cost is not being absorbed by the fixed charges that is under absorption in cost accounting. Therefore the higher water users are already subsidizing the lower users
usage period. This proposal to start the new rate period on April 1st the fiscal third quarter is not appropriate. The select board has turned this down twice in the last 10 months on my recommendation. I'm getting tired and concerned. Water and sewer and the
acrual method of accounting. I sent you the financial statement footnotes. Ed and Paul preseric can both confirm this. Someone needs to ask the question, is the town on the acrruel method? And how does this make sense? Springfield notifies Long Meadow on January. The new
rates effective July 1st and they bill on the acrruel method. Salaries and wages in Long Meadow change on July 1st. That's the other major component. Both of these support July 1st for the new rates. That is the matching concept in accounting. Springfield has a $188
million annual operating budget and 450 of construction. Their rates start July 1st. Awam and East Long Meadow both set their new rates effective July 1st and are on the acrruel method. Why is Long Meadow different? My proposal, which Mr.
Lavine has been asking for and is somewhat supported by the town's proposal is establish a full operating debt service and capital expender budget in April. Place the approved budget and any debt bonding on the May warrant rate changes effective July 1st agrees to the
town budget and the Springfield increase and gives transparency to the rateayers. Not the 20% that'll be for fiscal 2026 and 11% is on the warrant. I don't understand the proposal before you
tonight. If you look at it, Q4 fiscal 2025 are is being used to calculate 2026. That's a violation of both the acrruel method of accounting and the matching principle. One last thing, you do not
have anything that I can see for engineering in the budget for 2026 and 2027. It should be in water and sewer, not general account. And there is nothing in here for stabilization. You got a $500,000 shortfall.
It's in your select board policies. You should have a stabilization fund on top of the $2 million. Thank you for the extra time, Josh. Anyone else? Just a reminder, if you're on Zoom, press the raise hand icon. And I don't
see anybody over there. Okay. has raised. Uh, we'll move on to select board comments. Andrew, uh, I should have said this before. I didn't really see the I didn't get a segue basically, but I want to thank Manife for being our chair last year. I think you did a great job. It's not easy. You were first point of
contact for so many not only messages, but also plenty of complaints, I'm sure, things that we didn't need to deal with because you were handling. So, thank you. And I'm sure as chair, you want to speak up, just sell your mind, but you've got to facilitate and let everyone have their say. You did a great job with that, too. So, thank you. I also want to congratulate Dan and
Shelley for winning the election and you guys both ran great campaigns. I'm looking forward to another great year working together. I want to also congratulate the LHS girls tennis team which won the state championship um in uh against Wayland I think in
Boston. So that was fantastic. Another feather in the cap of the town. Um, and the last thing on on the topic of tennis, you know, I I was very interested uh last fall in trying to help find a way to like better use the defunct clay tennis courts at Bliss Park. And I remember I went to Lynn and
I proposed like, well, what if we made them pickle ball courts? And I remember Lynn said, you know, maybe, but let's wait for the parks and recck people to kind of give some thoughts on that. And we got a letter from them last week, and I was thrilled to see that they were very supportive and encouraging of this idea of pickleball courts. For those who
don't know, you know, clay courts required a lot of maintenance. And with our very nice lit 12 lit tennis courts near the high school, there really wasn't much demand for them. You you not only have to kind of open them up with the DPW doing a lot of work, but even as a player, you should be, you know, proper etiquette would require you to
like sweep them afterwards. So, just a lot more work involved and they just weren't used. And I think that um this could be a really good idea. Um I think all of us are very wary I think of any new expensive projects in town especially with high school coming on
board and investments like fiber. So you know I I I think that it wouldn't be great to propose some sort of expensive new project but this is definitely something that CPC funds can be used for and I I hope that we can pursue that. I hope that the parks and recck uh
department will pursue an application. If they don't, I'd be happy to do it as a resident applicant. Uh because this is something that um we could definitely utilize better. CPZ funds could also be used to kind of revitalize the basketball court at Bliss Park as well.
Um you can change two tennis courts into six pickle ball courts. So you could if you wanted to retain two clay tennis courts, you could and have six pickle ball courts or you could have 12 pickle ball pickle ball courts. And the last thing I'd say is for those who are true afficionados and watch the French Open a lot and love clay, you can actually go
to Forest Park and there's still many wonderful clay course there as well. So, I'm hoping we can see something moving at Bliss Park this coming year. Thanks. Yeah. Um, so I want to uh begin by congratulating Dan, Zoro, and Shelley uh
on their election wins and also all the other candidates that won and everyone else that ran as well. Uh Shelley actually sent me a statement to read. As you can see, she's not here tonight. Um and so I just wanted to read that real quickly. Uh it says, uh Shelley, Mayor DeWolf, is honored and excited to have
been elected to the select board and is deeply grateful for the support and trust of the community. While she's unable to attend the first meeting due to a prior work commitment in California, she's looking forward to serving the town and will be present at the next meeting. And so that's uh just an update from Shelley. Um and then um
another comment I I last week we had a special select board meeting and talking about the situation with Mr. Gunn and one thing that I failed to mention during that meeting was the tremendous support that the Achoas have received from the veteran community in Long
Meadow. This is obviously such a difficult situation for them and the veterans group here. Um, you know, Earl who happens to be here tonight, Earl Godfrey, Lena Veluro and so many other
veterans have stood with them and supported them during this very difficult time. And I wanted to just acknowledge that and thank uh the veterans in our community for standing with them during this. Um and then my last uh comment was that we do have a
couple of updates on long metal fiber. Uh the design and engineering um is basically complete ahead of schedule. Fiber spring is uh going to be developing you know recommendations for construction and a financial model and that should be coming before the select
board in our August meeting. Um they have also submitted poll applications for all the polls in Long Meadow. all 2,000 plus polls. Um, and then something also to just preview is that the select board as the MLP board will have to
appoint an MLP manager and there are some details kind of being worked out on that end, but that is also something that will probably be coming before the select board in the next couple of months as well. Thank you. Um yeah, first I wanted to thank Beneath for um I thought you did a
great job as chair and obviously as of late we've had a lot of unfortunate issues and I think you've done a really good job representing uh not only select board but the the town of Long Meadow and um I think as Andrew alluded to, you know, you get thrown a lot of curve balls during during uh your time on the
board and and Vene I think you stepped right up and and did a great job. And um also with municipal fiber that you you mentioned as well. Um, I think we're going to see a lot of benefits to the town and and you just have been, you know, leading the town very well and I thought you've done a good job and
wanted to commend you on that. Um, and Andrew, thank you for your your uh congratulatory remarks. And I wanted to also congratulate um Shelley for for her win. I know running for the first time it can be very difficult and um sitting
on the board with not having a woman on the board since my three years being here. I think the last woman that we had who did a good job um was Maria Angeliz. She was on the board for I think two terms maybe or maybe three, I forget, but um so it's great to have a woman on
the board. Um I'm I'm looking forward to working with Shelley. She ran a great campaign and I'm excited to work with her uh moving forward. Um, Andrew mentioned the tennis team. I think they they won the states. I wanted to mention that. And um, also last week all of us
went to the graduation. I see Dr. O'Shea here. Um, that was a spectacular event. It's hard to believe that I was walking on that stage. Gez, like over 20 years ago. But, um, a fantastic event. And I think Long Meadows in good hands. We have a bright future with with all
the individuals that are moving on to to college or the next chapter in their life. So, um I think that was I think that was it. Andrew, the last thing I'll say is I was that kid that was not brushing the uh the tennis courts. Oh,
the kids. So, you wouldn't you weren't the only one, I'm sure. But, uh thank you. I let everyone else go first. So, everyone said mostly what I was going to say. Um the the select or the I'm sorry, the graduation had all five select board members there. Uh and Shelley was able
to give her son his diploma, which was really nice. Uh it was great to see everyone there. Uh it showed what a talented class we have musically and intellectually. Really uh it was a really stunning uh night. Um and uh and
we I think we can talk more about the when we get to the letter we get to uh correspondence about the recck department recommendation. Although I do pickle ball is very noisy and that's sure something to consider. That's something uh I I play on most Sundays,
but uh I can get if I lived by it, I would probably go crazy. So, but it's something definitely to talk about more. I know they're working on technology to get around it. Um but that's uh I think that's it for select more common. Anybody else have anything else to say? No. Okay, great. Lynn, we'll see the
town manager report. Thank you. So, I have two update or an update for both pools, Reynolds and Greenwood pools. We had planned to open them on uh June 14th, but unfortunately we were not able to meet that date. Reynolds Pool um last winter while they were making upgrades
to the electrical system, there was an unexpended code issue that was triggered uh by um by uh code issues that required the town uh to both move and replace electrical control components in the pump room. the lead time was six months,
but at that time the contractor and engineer had been really optimistic that we were going to get the parts. Uh unfortunately, that has not happened. And so, as a result, the current substantial completion of the electrical upgrades needed to make the pool operational is now at the end of June.
And Greenwood Pool, the company who won the low bid to do the pool opening, uh did not sign the contract. And as a result, um we awarded it to the second low bidder, which obviously delayed things a bit. Currently, they're scheduled to arrive on site. They they were there last Friday um to begin the
process of opening the pool. And Elm Electric is also there finishing installation of a new sump pump and other upgrades. Their work is going to be finished midweek uh next week prior to Connecticut Aquatics uh arriving. Um they were also going to be there's also going to be some additional excavation
work happening outside the pool area over the next few weeks to fix the drainage system, but that's not going to have an impact on pool operation. uh beyond the delays caused by parts not being readily available. The weather made progress associated with the excav exc excavation work for that drainage go
slower than anticipated. Um so I do anticipate Greenwood Pool to be open in the next um week or two. Uh but obviously Reynolds Pool is going to be a little bit behind that. Um but with uh with the preparation of getting the pools open, we were able to u paint the
locker rooms at Greenwood. Thank you to select board members work for liazing with the town and the sheriff's office to get the Greenwood locker rooms painted. The work um has been on the DPW's to-do list but was unable to be completed before opening day this year. Thank you to the sh Hampton County
Sheriff's Office for their help getting this done. There are some before and after photos in my report that really uh show you the the amount of work that was done. Um so we're really grateful for that. Road resurfacing updates. Uh Caracus construction continues with
their drainage work on Shaker Road. Structure work has begun on Kulie and Emerson to replace storm water drains in preparation for paving later this summer. All of the drainage work for the contract is anticipated to be complete by the end of July, early August. Milan overlay on pond side is going to begin
this week as there was an opening for the contractor and this section of the project does not require structural work. Milan overlay for the remainder of the project is ahead of schedule and is anticipated to begin in mid July or early August. Obviously, this schedule is subject to change uh based on weather
and all information and updates related to the road resurfacing work is available on the DPW's road resurfacing page. The L project water main work is uh starting again night works beginning tonight, June 16th at the intersection of Forest Glenn and Long Meadow Street.
The work is scheduled to take place from tonight, June 16th, to the morning of June 20th. Work hours are 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. During this work, Lelo construction will be at the intersection of Route 5 and Forest Glenn. You can follow along for this project at Route 5
and Converse Street reconstruction page on the DPW website. And we had a pump issue at the Emerson Road pump station. So, just as some background, the Emerson Road pump station has three pumps that operate on a rotating basis. This pumps all of our waste water through the cross
country sewer main under the Connecticut River to Springfield's treatment plant. In addition, we have a spare pump that's in storage. In the fall of 2024, one of the backup pumps started to make noise and was sent to Applied Dynamics to be rebuilt. At that time, the projected
completion date given to DPW was April of 25. Due to issues getting parts, the current estimated date is now August of 25. In May of 25, another pump lost a bearing and DPW began the process of seeking quotes to repair it. On Monday,
June 12th, there was a catastrophic failure on one of the two remaining pumps, likely caused by an object making its way into the pump station. The one remaining pump that is left is the oldest pump, which is unable to handle the flows. This pump is on the verge of overheating and failing itself. DPW has
set up additional diesel powered bypass pump system to prevent a systemic breakdown of the town's wastewater system. The pump with the broken bearing has been sent off for emergency repairs. The respect the projected repair time on that pump is four weeks. And that's what
concludes my report tonight. Thank you, Lynn. Um, I just was hoping you could pass on our comp or my compliments to, uh, Sean on the new DPW monthly report or maybe Lisa. Uh, it's been beefed up quite a bit and I think if, uh, residents are curious about
what's going on at DPW and the many projects that are being undertaken, I think that that is a good place to look. Uh, so thank you for that. Um, any anybody else for Lynn? Andrew, I just wanted to ask just so regarding the pump station and the
diesel powered bypass pump, do you feel that there's no reason to believe that that won't be adequate for the four weeks that we need? Um, is there any there's no reason to think that that's it's constantly being monitored? Okay. So, I wouldn't Yeah, we're this is the most alarming part of the report, but
good job keeping it for the end. Go ahead. And I I forgot to uh to add during select for comments on the um with the Hampton County Sheriff's Department. I just wanted to say, you know, publicly thank them. Uh they have a lot of different projects going around the whole county and um you know, over the past few years, they've really
helped Long Meadow significantly when it comes to cleanups down at the Meadows as well as um now painting well painting Blueberry School over the summer a couple years ago as well as now the Greenwood Pool. So, uh that helps save the town a lot of money. it helps um you
know freshen up the the pool house for uh for the youth uh and the summer camp program. So I just wanted to thank uh publicly thank uh Sheriff Coochi and Hammond County uh sheriff's department and their employees for all that they continue to do for Wong Meadow.
Anybody else? Okay. Uh great. We're moving on to uh presentation and we have uh first a middle school building project update. Good morning, Christian. Thank you for coming in. appreciate the uh we appreciate the opportunity to update the select board and wider community on uh
the progress we've made on the middle school building project and u where we are this summer the work that's happening over the summer as we prepare for uh votes on the project scope and budget in September. So introduce a familiar face to you Mr. Christian
Witet, I'm one of the principal architects at JWA, part of our design team. And Christian's prepared a slide deck to overview the status of the project and answer any questions you might have. So, we appreciate the chance to talk to you about this.
One second. Perfect. Great. Thank you. So, um, we didn't want to take a lot of your time tonight. You have a very packed agenda, so we'll go through this fairly quickly and I guess, um, certainly, you know, have us pause if you have any questions.
Um, we just wanted to provide an overview. We're um, at the end of schematic design, so kind of bring you up to speed on where where we are to date, the process thus far. Um the benefit of going through the MSBA process is at the end of schematic design, you have a very good idea of
construction costs and project costs. So we wanted to present those tonight. Um and then we have some exciting news with the MSBA board taking a look at it later this week um for approval and then hoping for um town votes in in September. Um so we'll start off with an
introduction to the school building committee. I think everyone's pretty familiar with it. um Armen with the um chair in the committee, um Julie with vice chair, and then of course Josh and and Marty and um Lynn and Ian have been at all of our meetings. Um so it's in a
partnership with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Um Collers is your owner's project manager. So that they're kind of the gobetween between the school building committee um who is the client for the project and the grant um organization with the MSBA. Um we
were hired later after Collier was brought on board um for the design team. Behind us there is a plethora of engineers and consultants. I think there's 25 or 28 on this project. Um all the from security consultants to lighting to acoustics to structural
engineers, etc. Um Josh. Yeah. Uh so Julie did not run for reelection, so her term has ended. And I I know Marty and I may have talked about this or maybe I talked to Armen. Uh, we need to reappoint the select board needs to reappoint somebody. Correct. Or does the school committee appoint somebody?
Um, Julie uh was the school committee rep. Uh, her term had ended, wasn't uh didn't run for re-election. So, tomorrow night the school committee is planning to reappoint uh a school committee rep to the school building committee. It's fairly formulaic from the MSBA on
who should comprise members of the school building committee. So, having a representative from the school committee is fantastic. Um, next slide. So, diving into the proposed site plan. Um, we're proposing a consolidated uh 6
through8 uh middle school at the Williams um site. Um, you can faintly see it there, but the existing Williams school is dashed in yellow. Um, north is to our right, so it's on the north end of the site near Wworth. Um the idea is
to uh construct the new school to the south of the existing school on the existing playing fields. Um once the students have moved into the new school, then we can demolish the existing school, finish up our site work, and put in a new uh synthetic turf field. Um so just going through some of the
highlights on the plan. Um most, you know, we focused more on traffic and sight circulation on this project than I think on most of our school projects. Um, understandably it's a concern off of William Street and also off of Wworth.
Um, right now it's kind of the worst of all worlds. You have a, you know, drop off lane that's the same as your bus lane that's the same as a through road that's the same as a parking lot. All kind of on top of each other with no separation between those. So, we have a
separate bus drop off on this plan um with number seven there on the left on the south side of the site. Um we have a a nice long uh queuing lane um both number six and number eight um for parent
pickup and drop off. Um and then the parking lots you'll see are isolated from both of those circulation um paths. Um so much safer for pedestrians, much safer for um pickup and drop off and also the ability to get all the cars and
buses off of Williams and onto the site. Um, we have a new turning lane that we're proposing on Williams Street. So, as you're going eastbound um towards the high school in Big Y, you'll have a left turn lane. So, that should help ease some of the traffic congestion on
Williams. Um, we are maintaining a a path or a throughway to Wworth. Um, that was actually uh recommended by basically everyone we talked to from DPW to residents of Woolworth. um which is a bit of was interesting as we went
through the process. Um as I mentioned on number one, a new multiport synthetic turf field um storm water management um is integrated into the um kind of outdoor classroom space uh to the west of the uh proposed school. Um we have a
a secure emergency access um for fire and ambulance around the entirety of the school. Um and then a shipping area with a loading dock uh which again the existing school does does not have. Want to go to the next slide. Thank you.
Um these are some again initial renders. We are uh at the end of schematic design. We still have quite a bit of um detailed design to go. Um really figuring out you know exactly the the uh you know roof to wall details um
insulation details. but we wanted to bring it to a pretty high level of schematic design so that we can get that very um accurate cost estimate at the end of this process. So down there at the bottom, some quick renderings um of the new front entry um on the south side
of the school off of Williams. Um one of the west outdoor areas between the classroom wings. Um and then the third one over from the left is a view from the north towards the gym. We have most of our communal spaces on the north side of the school. And then uh an east entry
um that would be accessed from that parent um drop off zone. You want to keep going to the next slide? Again, please interrupt if I'm going too fast or you want to ask questions on anything in particular. Some interior perspective shots and I'll
get to the floor plan next, but um the gymnasium up on the upper left. Um we are trying to incorporate some wood glue lamp beams bring some natural warmth into the um pallet of the school. very robust materials in that gym environment. Um it's actually kind of
fire isolated from the rest of the building. So it makes it easier to do a kind of a different type of construction for that um portion of the of the building. Um a new multi-purpose auditorium on the upper right. Um basically sized off of what's at
Glenbrook right now. Um but organized a little bit better and a little bit more flexible in its use. Um cafeteria on the bottom left. you're kind of looking towards the servery and then uh windows out to the outside uh due west and then
on the bottom right is kind of a communal breakout space academic neighborhood within one of the classroom wings. Um and we arrived at that with getting a lot of input from uh students and staff. Um having some great visioning sessions with the staff which
really um they were super helpful brought a lot of input to the project. Um, and so that was uh one of the main design takeaways from that from that process. Next slide. Uh, so this is a kind of just a axonometric uh view of the school
just to get a rough idea of how it's laid out. Um, first floor down below, second floor up above. Um, the main entry again is from the south with administration right there front and center so that they can have eyes on the street and parent drop off and bus drop
off. Um the classroom wings are divided by grades where sixth grade um is on the first floor and a little bit more um you know of feeling a little bit more of like an elementary school where it's a little bit more contained. The science classrooms are on the end of that wing.
Um as you get up into seventh and eighth grade then there's a bit you know more movement again transitioning towards the high school. Um and so there we have our science labs on the second floor in that bar of green classrooms there. um counseling up above administration. Um
purple is media and STEM, art, STEM. Um and then the auditorium just to the north of that. And then so our thought is that on the north side is really the communal entrance. We want to have this building be used not just for the students and staff but also be a community resource. So that um from the
parking from that uh synthetic turf field you can also have access to the gym, the cafeteria, the auditorium and a few uh music classrooms up there on the north side. Next slide. Marty, I don't know if you want to. Um,
we've appreciated from the get-go the way JWA has really sought to understand our existing program and and what we aspire to and obviously what we're we're excited about the um the building and the the furniture and the fixtures and
the equipment, but really the educational advantages stand out for me. And when I think about this building, I I I think about the sense of community that it will help us build. It will help us engage the wider community, but uh the way it's laid out, it will create a
sense of community for the students. The the the wings are designed as small neighborhoods. So current students are currently in teams of about 100 students per grade at each school. So we'll be able to maintain that team structure with the way the building's designed. So
really appreciate that. It's obviously a very safe building which is which is um incredibly important uh in 2025. Um the spaces themselves um the auditorium is reflective of our commitment to the fine and performing
arts and um both for for drama and music. It's going to be a really special space and for convening community events. We're we're really excited about that. Um, I think the the in the sort of bottom right on the first floor, there's an area of the building that when I
think about it, it it lends itself to kids creating the types of durable skills that are really critically important nowadays. It's spaces where in art rooms and in music rooms and in steam classrooms and science labs, kids can uh research a problem, design
solutions, create solutions, and present solutions. And that really is what um our vision of the graduate is is really trying to emphasize. So so we're really excited about that. Um and then I think just the the combining the two schools
under one roof will create all kinds of advantages. Um, we really believe it will put us in a position to expand elective offerings, expand extracurricular offerings, and really create schedules that match the staff and schedules that match student needs.
So, um, you know, the the educational advantages certainly stand out for us and and something we're really excited about and really appreciate how JWA has been responsive to who we want to be and what this opportunity will create for
our kids for decades to come. So, we can keep going. So, it we have been partnering with MSBA from the very beginning. Um it is a a grant process. It's very prescribed how the process works. Um it did start all the way back in 2022
um submitting to the MSBA for eligibility. Um so it has been a long road to get even to the point where we are and then you can see at the end of that timeline we have planned move in for fall of 2028. Again as I mentioned we wrapped up schematic design. We
submitted that to the state on May 1st and then um the state has been reviewing that. We've had some uh very productive meetings with them in the meantime and they have uh recommended the project to their board of directors on June 16th um
June 18th sorry um and then uh the step after that would be to get the local um approval and that's um of course scheduled for for September. Uh next slide down in terms of the project cost. So again,
this is the the product at the end of schematic design that of course, you know, we're interested in the plans and the renderings and and all the materiality that goes into the building, but um a lot of folks are of course very um you know, focused on the dollar. So on the
right is a a minuscule version of what uh really you spend a lot of time with the MSBA going over in great detail, and that's really figuring out what that MSBA maximum total grant is going to be. And you don't really know what that's going to you have a rough idea but you don't know until the end of schematic
design. And that's why it's very difficult to have the public presentations early on in the process where everyone wants to know what's it going to cost for Long Meadow. And we tried to give a range and you know um from our past experience and luckily we were you know right in the the ballpark
of where it came in but the construction budget is about 118 million. um soft costs are all included in the in the total project costs and included in what the MSBA funds. So that's everything from architecture and engineering fees, uh OPM fees for this project. We are
going with a construction manager at risk. Um so that means that it's we're bringing that contractor on earlier than we would otherwise. Um we can interview all the contractors and choose the one that you want to work with. Um which is a great process. Um and so some the
construction u manager fee is in there. FF& is furniture, fixtures and equipment. So um sometimes we get you know we'll get this empty building but then we have to pay for the furniture. Now that's included in this these project costs. Um and then everything from legal fees to utility fees.
Everything is included in in these project costs. Um contingencies uh you know on that spreadsheet on the right that's at the the bottom of it. So you'll get your um kind of total project costs and then want to put some money
aside for contingent sees for items that arise during construction either unforeseen conditions um or also uh as priorities change within the district um you know setting some aside some money aside um for that construction process.
So the estimated total project budget is just over $150 million. The MSBA maximum grant is about $54 million. So that brings the Long Meadow Share down to just over $96 million. Um I do want to
note that these also include um offsite improvements. So that turning lane on William Street. Um we're uh recommending to extend a sidewalk on the south side of William Street a little bit to the east. Um and that's all included within these costs as well.
And I if I could just note for everyone, we looked at this the sheet on the right pretty extensively at an MSBA meeting and it's it's really all-encompassing and it's really detailed. So if anyone wants to go back and look at it, this is this one we had the two
different cost estimators. Yeah. So that helped arrive at that construction budget. So we have a pretty good idea that this is what it will cost. We had two two independent companies look at it and they came they arrived very close to each other. So um
I think we can feel confident presenting this number to our town. It's a very robust process. Yeah. Um so just look focusing a little bit on um uh schedule coming up. So, uh, again,
uh, town special town meeting on September 9th, um, and then a vote on September 30th. Um, and, um, if th both of those are positive, then we'll immediately go into design development. Um, we that's from about October to
February. We do another submission to the MSBA, another cost estimate. That's a chance for us to check in, make sure that we're still tracking with the cost estimates that we had at schematic design. Um, all that goes to the state. it will also go to um you know to Long Meadow so you can review that as well.
Um then we go into construction documents. Uh again there's a check-in at 60% construction documents, another check-in at 90% construction documents and then we're done with the entire bid set um in September of 2026. Again, because we've elected to go with
a construction manager at risk, we're actually able to start some amounts of construction before that bid set is complete. um it's another huge advantage of going with that system. So, we are hoping, you know, we'll learn more as we're um interviewing the CM firms and see what they propose, but we do
anticipate that construction could start that summer of 2026, giving them kind of a head start, able to do some of the site work u when the site's not being used. Um so, a huge benefit while we're still wrapping up those final 100% bid set drawings.
And I think that's it. Thank you for the time. I hope that wasn't too fast. And uh any any questions? Yeah. Uh thank you so much for the presentation. So actually my dad uh was
an architect who actually designed schools in the Chicago area. So I'm very appreciative of this process. Um and in you know this in thinking about this process and obviously consolidating two middle schools into one something that's come up in our community was just kind of a loss of a who was on the school
committee uh for a long time and and I talked about cuz he when he was on the school committee llo kind of made similar um had similar plans with elementary schools and consolidating them was how you can actually create
community by the design of a school and Um, and it's really, I think, great for me to see the amount of thought and the amount of focus that went into that, um, in these designs. And, um, that is just something that I just wanted to kind of, you know, give kudos to you all for and
really recognizing that this was something that the community was worried about or thinking about and you guys took the steps to address that. So, um, I wanted to thank you all for that. Um and then you know there might not be an answer to this but um you know aside from the votes that the town has to take
in September, what do you foresee as you know the remaining large obstacle left? Uh maybe something that keeps you up at night or something that we should be aware of and kind of looking out for as you know as maybe the biggest hurdle left or the biggest obstacle left. Yeah.
I mean to be honest nothing comes to mind luckily that's the great news it's a it's a long process I mean I think showing that slide of you know when it started to when construction that's six years maybe um and so I think in some
ways that's the biggest hurdle is just that you know it's very prescribed um and so some people think that it should happen a lot faster but I think the benefit of that is that it forces you to do your homework um we've already had geotechnical goal explorations on the
site. You know, we've done a hazardous materials assessment of both existing schools. So, um none of that has raised any red flags for us. Um certainly items will come up, right? There'll be delays in construction or, you know, and I think that's why that contingency exists
and that's also been baked into the schedule a little bit. So, um Collier has done a good job of, you know, foreseeing those potential issues in the future. Um, I think for the most part having the community involved is always a fantastic thing. And we did have the
community meeting in April at Williams and that was super well attended and great to get feedback. We divided it, we did it a little differently with kind of individual tables and it seemed like folks felt very comfortable coming up and talking about specific issues which was great. So, um, yeah, so far it's
been going great. I think I'd add in the the plan for furniture, fixtures, and equipment in all the spaces. I think that that'll be um something that we'll continue to engage the staff on. Uh and then really just uh sort of implementing the education plan that we laid out to
the MSBA and bringing together two staffs um with a singular ed plan and a new program perhaps a new schedule. So, um, thankfully we have a long runway in front of us to to get that done before we we enter a new school hopefully in
the fall of 28. Great. Thank you. Yeah, as as someone who's seen this every step of the way, it is still kind of stunning to look up there and see everything. It's there's been a lot of work done. I I think that it's evolved a lot since the process started, and I uh it's been
a great team working on it. Uh, and so, thank you for coming in. We really appreciate you getting an update. I hope people are watching and uh if they have questions, middle school building committee um meets generally once a month, but uh I know Armen definitely
answers emails and so does Marty, so it can definitely bug them. Um but yeah, thank you very much. Anything else from the rest of the board? I'll just add that, you know, I appreciate all the work you're doing. Josh has been on this committee. I've been following it kind of peripherally and every step of the way I've always been very impressed by
how transparent and thought out this whole process is. I mean it's mindboggling to be honest. I mean it's a major project. We haven't put a shovel in the ground yet, but it the foundation so to speak is being laid for a very successful project, I think. And that's a commendation to you guys and the whole
town for it's been uh it's been a community effort and and you know the the select board, the school committee, the building committee, uh town officials, town manager office, everybody is pointed in the same direction on this project. So that that's really encouraging. that doesn't
happen by accident and many communities don't have that experience with the building project. So, we're we're really grateful. Yeah, I would just say also on the the traffic concerns because that's something that has come up a lot and I attended the event at Williams um with a lot of the folks that live in that area.
Um so, it's it sounds like uh you're pretty confident that there won't be traffic issues based on the the new design because I know that that's always something that that comes up. Yeah. I mean, so we had a meeting recently that included DPW, fire, police, town manager's office, our design team,
school administrators all in one room over at the over at the town offices. Uh, and there was a lot of great brainstorming, um, shared understandings. You know, I think the reality is we have schools that are in thickly settled neighborhoods and I I I
don't want to say that there won't be traffic because we have six schools where there currently is traffic at arrival and dismissal. So, I kind of want to manage expectations, but I think we've designed a campus that can take the traffic off the street and do it safely and efficiently. So, and then the
other the other thought is moving moving forward once we have a school built is obviously kids are coming from different parts of town traveling and we want to make sure that they have a safe commute to to school. So, I I don't want to speak for anybody, but I assume that we're working with uh folks to
understand new routes to school and and the impact that it might be from a public safety perspective. Yeah, I think as Christian pointed out, the uh the amount of design work that has gone into creating a safe campus and then looking at the surrounding area has been
significant. Uh and there's some even some consideration of some additional sidewalks that could be incorporated into the project just to again get kids to school uh and get them off campus safely. Yeah. The last one is uh the turf fields that that's really
interesting. Someone like myself, I'm you know, I'm a coach in town and and play a lot of sports growing up here. Um is that part of the reimbursement with Mass School building? It's it's not reimburseable, but you speak probably more. Sure. And I don't want to get in trouble now. People are probably going
to be upset. It gets very complicated, but the MSBA caps site costs at a certain percentage of your construction costs. Gotcha. And so every project goes over that cap. So the synthetic turf field is above that cap, but I think
even if you did a grass field, it would be over that cap. And that was not a decision that was arrived at lightly. But once again, we met with community members a lot and a lot of coaches and athletic groups. And once we realized the amount of use that was desired on
that field, uh we had a great presentation from our uh civil engineer and landscape architect team and they just said it it just won't work as a natural grass. You know, it will turn into mud almost immediately. Take a look at it right now. Exactly. So um not to
mention the important point that you have many more fields much a much greater field space now you're going to be shrinking it and so it's absolutely going to be used much more right so and so how can it be you know used by the most number of people possible and the most sports and there's been talk about
field hockey and football and lacrosse and so you know making sure that we can accommodate all of those which is more than what I think the existing fields do. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right.
Good night. All right. Next up, we have O'Neal on the MVP outreach and engagement presentation. It's been a while. Should I wait? No offense. No, he does. No, you can go ahead. Um, thank you very
much. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to come and give you all an update on the Brook um, MVP project that we've been working on over the past two years. My name is Andy Bone. I am a landscape architect um, and director of landscape architecture with Fusset
O'Neal. Um, this has been a really incredible project for us to work on uh, with the community um, as a whole. um it's very much based in the community design um practice of really um making sure that
this is something that is embedded into the community and the desires of the community moving forward. So um I'll give you a broad overview but a a quick snapshot is we're about 60% through the process um of eventually getting to some construction um ready design documents.
Um but generally the project is looking at the entirety of Kuliebrook and its watershed and what could be done to improve the water quality um that's going through Kiebrook and ultimately ending up in the uh Connecticut River. Um Becky you can probably just there's a
lot of slides but there's a lot of graphics. I promise I will be brief but I am happy to pause if there's any questions. We've done an immense amount of assessment work um looking at how the wershed performs and functions. Um we've looked at we've done erosion studies.
We've um assessed the sediment. Um we've looked at where the sediment's accumulating. We've understanded the hydraology um associated with this site uh comprehensive wetland delineation, the forested areas, really looking at the entirety of the watershed. Um, and
you can keep kind of scrolling through, but one of the things that's really fascinating about this project is that a majority of the watershed is underground. Um, and it doesn't actually daylight until it comes out in Bliss Park, goes underneath Laurel Street into Laurel Park. Um, and if you keep
scrolling through, there's some maps here. Um, we've done a deep dive into the site history, really understanding how the site has been used historically over time. um which has been fascinating and it's something that um we really are looking to integrate into any of the
restoration projects is really telling that story of how this site has been used historically. Um originally it had an Madian design. Um before that it was the waterwork site. Um this is where the town of Long Meadow got their public water um drinking supply from until it
moved to Springfield. Um, the Mstead design is a really interesting component to this, but it's actually not the most important history of it. So, some of the shaping was done from the long from the Mstead plan, um, but there was a good portion of it that was that was not
enacted. Um, but a really interesting idea and concept. So, we've kind of taken that and helped with some of the storytelling that came through with the community and their desire to explore how this site could be used for not only this generation, but the next generation to come.
So this is a good map to depict the uh the watershed. So all the red areas are impervious areas that all drain into Koolie Brook. Um and it's a pretty significant amount of um of impervious area. So all of that gets into our
traditional storm water system, curb, gutter, catch basin, pipes, and then straight into Kulie Brook. So it's not really functioning like a natural ecosystem. So everything that um we're looking to do and possible improvements are trying to use nature-based solutions
to help bring that back as much as possible. But as you can imagine during a big rain event, it is extremely flashy. So as soon as that water gets into the pipe system, there's no natural sponges to kind of hold that water back. Um it is literally coming out of the
pipe with all the stuff that's on the ground um and going in through the system. So that that causes problems. there it's not as not a healthy ecosystem for for a number of reasons and this is one of them. some of the directional arrows here in
the blue just show where these different inputs are coming from um is some subwaterheds and um so we've really started to kind of hone in and focus on not just the park and the restoration of the brook itself but also what opportunities are there in the upper whed to help slow that water down
capture the water infiltrate the water um long meadow has this really awesome resource um which is an immense amount of sand so infiltration opportunities are immense um it's just a matter of are there opportunities that we can help kind of capture that water and promote
that infiltration before it comes out of the pipe. So, this is a good diagram of just the the pipe network and how it all functions um and moves through the system. Um it ultimately daylighting equally. Brooke, you can keep scrolling
down. We understand there, you know, we we wanted to make sure we were building on the prior work that's been done at Kuliebrook. Um I know this has been talked about in the community for for a number of years. Uh there's a lot of work done by the Conway school that we're building off of, a lot of assessment work that we're building off
of. Um so really making sure that we're not starting we didn't start at zero. We really wanted to make sure we understood how that how that all played into the system. You can keep scrolling. So, some of the field observations, we've done a um a hydrographic and topographic survey. Um
and really the MVP project is looking at doing everything it can uh a community can do to help improve this water quality and this natural system. Um there's two empoundments in Laurel Park. Um, one is higher up in the site, um, that actually has a a pond above it. And
then there's a second one further downstream that's really degraded and is kind of the remnant of the old waterwork site um, and is kind of dilapitated, broken down, not really functioning um, other than causing more erosion and
being a hindrance to the system. Yeah, you can keep scrolling. Yeah. Okay. Um, one of the important things that we've done is really looking at water quality. Um, so we've we've been testing the water quality in the system. We do it during dry weather events and then we do it wet wet weather events so we can
understand like what that water quality looks like um in those different areas. We've also tested the sediment um in the system. Um, and that sediment testing has um has pinged a couple hot spots for contamination. So understanding what
those contaminants are and how they'll be handled, how they'll be removed from the site um is critical and kind of in our next steps of the project moving forward. Um they're in the areas where you would expect them to be, which is just above the impoundments. So this is where those really
good thing, I'm being sarcastic, where those heavy metals tend to kind of get stuck um and and fall out. So, you know, that's one of the things with dams, um, is that they they kind of inhibit the the ability of a stream to work the way it wants to work. So, they they let the
water move over the top, but they hold all the sediment back. So, you actually have a very sediment starved system downstream because none of that sediment's allowed to kind of get through the system anymore. Um it is a good thing to be able to at least isolate where these pockets of
contaminants are so we know um and we'll be able to hone in in exactly where they are um to make sure that they're handled and removed properly. The archaeological assessment that was completed was pretty pretty fascinating um to really dig into it to understand
um from pre-cont um um uh uses of the site to um colonial uses of the site to its its development over time. And that that information and that assessment will have to continue because it is a site that has a lot of
history to it. So understanding where any of these improvements are in the ground disturbances associated with some of these improvements, you really want to be careful about, you know, disturbing any of those um any of those um artifacts. As I mentioned, this is just a diagram
we used uh we did a workshop with the community over the course of three and a half days um to really work with them to give give the community access to designers. So this is I I have fallen in love with Long Meadow, but I don't live here. So this is a this is a a park.
This is an asset for your community. Um so we really like to kind of come in and you know Lynn will tell you like we literally lived here for for 3 and 1/2 days and just opened our doors at any moment. We we invited the public in for public walking tours um for just looking
over our shoulders as we're thinking through different ideas. um letting people give us feedback of like, hey, can you explore this? Let's look and see what that can do. Um and ultimately come up with a a design solutions that are really embedded in the community and what the community is looking for moving forward.
So, this goes through kind of that exploration. We did a a walking survey. So, um, we set up different spots along, um, along the trails in Laurel Park and and had QR codes so people could, um, scan a QR code and then look through their phone at like what some potential
improvements might look like at the point they're standing. So, they could use that as almost like a little bit of a virtual reality and then answer questions, you know, what do you like, what don't you like, what would you like to see more of? um because you know we're trying to use as many different ways to engage the community so that
they we can get really good meaningful feedback. Um we did get a decent amount of feedback. We got a lot of participants online. We got participants handing us um just paper copies back in from the survey. Um really good meaningful um
priorities were identified. Ultimately the the highest priority was we have to do something to improve the water quality in Koulie Brook. that was the number one hierarchy of of what came out. Um, accessible trails was another big component to that and and not just
an accessible trail that was getting you to one spot. It was really um clear that folks wanted a meaningful experience that kind of worked its way around uh the park um and could be explored in different ways. So, how does that work into the system? Um invasive species,
you have an arboritum of invasive species out there. So that was one thing that was something that that really came up as as being a high priority. The other piece of it was, you know, we we tend to to to really try to evoke a
little bit of emotion with how we do some of the renderings because we want people to give us feedback. Um and one of the things that came up and was very clear was you know that this was much a very um important asset but the the rustic nature of the park was very
important to people. So ensuring that that was something that was kept um and could be utilized moving forward was something that that was one of the priorities as well. So I mentioned this is our look listen conceptualize and then really uh create.
So using this process to really engage the community in the process was um really an awesome experience. You can just scroll through these. So some of the design recommendations that came up as as we're starting to think through this. It was interesting
to hear about the uh the potential for the clay courts um to be turned into pickleball courts. Um you know this is a park now that I've spent a lot of time in. So, I'm really starting to understand the programmatic events and how it functions, some of the problems with how it functions, too, um, and
where there might be some opportunities to help Koulie Brook's overall health um, in the system. So, um, we looked at an opportunity along Bliss Road to create kind of an open by daylighting the stream and creating like an open, um, wetland area so that we could
daylight that, um, Koolie Brook further or further um, further up towards Bliss Road, but create a series of boardwalks that move through that. So that would give the opportunity for that water to move through a natural ecosystem that would kind of weather the storm of the
the you know the hot sediment laden um um water coming out of the pipe and really looking at opportunities to cool that down and move it through the system but through through a um a created wetland system. and then also to the ball fields to the left there. Looking
at is there an opportunity to do subsurface um infiltration underneath the ball fields. The ball fields themselves are in need of renovation. Um they're well loved by the community, well used by the community. Um so they're they're kind of at the point
where they're ready for an upgrade, but what is you know what things can be integrated into that at the same time to help the overall water quality of Kiebrook? The restoration of Kulie Brook is significant with it. As I mentioned, some of the erosion that's happening as it moves underneath Laurel Street and
then down through Laurel Park. Um the two impoundments it came um we explored both rebuilding an impounded structure, rebuilding a dam. Um and also the removal of a dam and what would that look like and how would that function? Um you can go to the next ones. So this
is kind of a zoom in of that area of Bliss Park and and looking at an opportunity of creating kind of this public amenity space boardwalk system that works its way over the top of this created wetland. Um you know pulling the parking that's along that access road
out uh closer to the street um and utilizing some subsurface infiltration underneath a you know a resurface ball field. You can go to the next one. And then moving down through Laurel Park, you know, really looking at how
that park functions today. And um is there opportunities to pull the parking um away from the the system? Right now that that parking area, the culde-sac that's in there now is really close to that water body. So trying to get vehicular movements as far away from
that natural ecosystem as possible. Um and also allowing that space to be better utilized for the general public. So um right now you're kind of giving away a lot of that really great real estate to the car where that should be part of the public park. So that was something that came up in that process
as well. So we looked at it in the ponded system. But we also wanted to have a very meaningful conversation about, you know, if it go back to a ponded system and you go to a restored ponded system to make a really high functioning, high-v value pond, that's going to take maintenance.
Um, there's also a dam reconstruction that's going to take maintenance. Um, and the buildup of sediment over time, you will have to go through a dredging process based on how much sediment is in the system. That's probably between 7 and 10 years realistically where the entire pond would need to be drained and
dredged. Um, so wanting to have that conversation was a really important part of that. Um, looking at it in more of a riverine system and what would that look like? Um, understanding that there's also an opportunity to maybe have a little bit of both. So, we could
potentially keep the the ponded area that is the pond today perched and elevated. Um, and there's a couple graphics that I'll show you of how that works. during a high rain event, it would actually turn back into a pond, but then slowly re release over time um to really help manage that as we're
looking at, you know, much more increase um in our our rainfall events um and in intensity and in in volumes. So, looking at these in cross-sections as well. You can keep scrolling. So, really looking at, you know, how you know if you go to a stream system, how
do you still provide access to it? people still want to touch the water and get down to the water. Um, so, you know, looking at ways to utilize some of the stone that's used in the dam today, uh, and creating some stepping stone areas that get down to the edge of the water and still allowing that sense of
exploration and kind of being able to get down and touch the system, um, and play in the system is something that we really wanted to explore. So, here's some 3D modeling that we did um, to look at how some of these different ideas could could play out that we used through the workshop process. You can
keep scrolling through these. Go. You can keep going. So, these are some of the getdowns that we're talking about utilizing some of the stone that's in the existing dams today. um re reorganizing that stone in a way that that allows it to function,
but looking at these um these the universally accessible walkway and and we really kind of studied the contouring in the ground to understand that there is an opportunity um you could just pause right there for one second. Um there is an opportunity here to really
create almost like a figure eight through the entire park system that would allow for a really diverse user experience um for all levels for all users. Um and there's an opportunity there that you know depending on what time of day you go, what time of year you go, it will look different, it will
feel different how when it lasts rain, how you know every time there'll be something different and unique about it. Um, and that figure eight really kind of gives people access to spots that they may not necessarily have access to. Um, so this is showing in this top top image
shows how um a natural stream system during a high water event could function and pond up still. Um, but then I think it's the next one down. It might be to the top. Sorry, it might we might have passed it. It's Yeah, went
above this. There you go. So that was what it would look like in its natural stream system. And then as you scroll down after a large rain event, um, and how it could pond up and kind of help hold that water back some. So kind of reducing the flashiness of the system in
general, kind of moving through the different trails and how they work through the site. One of the things now is it's it's such a love site that just the tread of foot um through some of these pretty uh sensitive areas become very challenging
and overcompacted excessive erosion. So there are opportunities to do that. Um creating some overlooks in different areas where the the trail kind of meanders off the main um the main ch the main route now and opportunities for that that expansion.
You can keep scrolling through Um we've done extensive amount of soil testing. Um one of the things that has come up is we wanted to understand where the groundwater um is in the areas where we're looking at doing some of these
potential uh improvements um under the ball field. It's about 8 ft below the surface of the grass today. So that gives us plenty of volume to do some subsurface infiltration. Uh the problem is is all the infrastructure that's in the road is really low. It's about 7 feet deep. So, that actually only gives
us about a foot of area to do any infiltration, which isn't the volume we're looking for. But, um, in discussions with the town um, and some of the folks on our staff looking at some of the potential improvements to the storm water system along along the streets, there may be opportunities to
help elevate that that piping system. Um, allowing us for a little bit more of a horizon to u promote infiltration. As I mentioned, we're doing we're ju we we just finished up some of the um storm water reconnaissance in the upper wershed. Looking at any opportunity um
to help hold that water back instead of it going straight to the curb into a catch basin and out into the pipe. Um looking at opportunities um to really hold that water back, promote the infiltration, at least slow that down um before it comes out of the pipe. You can
scroll through these. So, we looked at a variety of areas in this upper water school around Blueberry Hill. Um, you can keep going. Um, and just some different ideas that can be thought of as different improvements are happening. You know, this is where you really every
every little nook and cranny counts. Um, all the tree lawns can be very helpful at promoting this and really um helping improve the water quality. Um, so some of them are right around the high school that we looked at. Um and then some over by uh Blueberry Hill School in some of
the intersections. So there's the co- benefits of helping narrow down some of the intersections um and opportunities to provide good infrastructure. Culde-sacs are always a really good example of an opportunity to depress the center of the culde-sac instead of elevating it, letting all the
water kind of come into the center of the culde-sac. And this is where we are today. So, we've just finished up the uh permit level design um for the restoration of um everything in Laurel Park. The upper portion of the park in
Bliss is um on hold for the time being um until we get a little bit more information and hopefully move forward in uh the next round of MVP grant funding. Um, we have the goal of the project was the water quality, but from
our side, you know, we wanted to make sure that the town had every opportunity. So, looking at the grant funding opportunities for this, it's not going to be a one bucket for every um potential improvement. So, we really wanted to kind of break down the costs um of the projects so that we could kind
of line it up for different grant funding opportunities. So, you'll see the bigger number at the bottom. Um, and I recognize that the school project is a different kind of number. Um, but it's still a big number. So really looking at, you know, what are the different components or buckets that we can choose
from and highlight different grant funding opportunities behind all of these numbers is an extensive deep dive cost estimate um in there. Um, but really looking at at ways that we can tee this up moving forward. So where we
are today is we have gone through and applied for the next round of MVP grant funding. Um that was done the application was submitted in I want to say yeah early May early May. It was an
intense time. Um but we got it in um and you know that's really looking to get the entirety of the project um from where it is today um through a construction bid ready project. Um so that then we can really identify and go after the different funding opportunities that are out there uh for
implementation. Um you know MVP is an awesome program. They do an incredible amount of of work letting everyone zoom out. Um when it comes to implementation they want to see their money go to something that's constructed. Um so they are the biggest cheerleaders for the
project which is fantastic. Um but wanting to make sure that if there's any ancillary projects, we can identify that there's additional funding, excuse me, and grant opportunities for those different projects. So in this next round, our ask from MVP
was from for additional historical landscape and cultural assessment to really hone in on the refined sediment sampling. So we, as I mentioned, we got those two hot spots, but we really want to now circle them in so we can understand the depth and the spread of exactly how far they are. Um,
permitting, construction documents, um, there's still an immense amount of public engagement um, that we've we've lined up with the schools and the scout troops. Um, and then public participation uh, in general moving forward. So, that was a little bit longwinded, but I think that gives a
good broad overview and I'm happy to answer any questions. Yes. Um, so I I live around the corner from here. I spent especially over co with my kids, I spent a lot of time in here. I I had no idea this was going on beneath my feet. So I I found this pretty fascinating. So thank you for
that. Awesome. Um, just uh, you know, if I could snap my fingers and do this. Absolutely. Sure. It's a lot of money. So for the grant opportunities, just looking best case scenario, are there um, do funding timelines need to match
up? up. I know with a lot of them they're time limited or you have to do it within X days or you going to apply and do do we need to have things fall into place like that? Can they fall into place where everything the the money can all come in at once? And and then the
second part of that is best case scenario, what kind of funding is there out there for us if if this is something we wanted to take on? Sure. Both great questions. Um ideally you want the funding to line up as much as you can. a lot of the funding mechanisms, they allow for some flexibility in the timing
of those. We'd really be looking for some federal opportunities for grant funding as well as um state because then they can take care of each other as far as match goes from the state level of using federal funds. So that would be an awesome opportunity. Um so really
looking at every every possible scenario that we can kind of pair these things together. um with the ecological enhancement, just the restoration of Koolie Brook itself, um there'll be significant amount of machine work associated with that. So, you know, improvements to the parking area, those
those could all be picked together. But um you know if it's if it's like the ADA trail, there's different park applications and grant opportunities for for work like that um that we certainly will would be looking at if if it doesn't fall under the bucket or if it's
not um enough under the MVP grant, for example. Um so yeah, I mean there's there's there's a little bit of like this the careful orchestration. Um but as we go through this next year, that's where we
really start to fine-tune that and and we're really teeing these projects up for um people are um granting agencies are much more likely to fund a project that's construction ready and has community involvement and approval to
move forward. Um so implementation funds are much more accessible in that capacity. So even if it's not funded all entirely by MVP, um there may be a different um a different grant opportunity that we can kind of pair them together. Um
the funding opportunities in general, MVP is a commitment from the state that will not go away. Um but we're in a tricky funding mechanism right now. So understanding where those dollars come from, how far they'll go, um will be
something that we'll all have to kind of keep our eye out. But what we're seeing right now is um that there's still plenty of opportunity for for grant funding out there. Thank you. Uh yeah, thank you so much for this presentation. Uh you mentioned that in creating these images, you try
to evoke emotion and you know, looking at these images and what this could look like, this would be transformational for our town. this would be uh you know just an incredible you know something new for for our town to enjoy and um that that is just already there and that we could
that we could utilize. So um in the next steps that you outlined, can you give us an idea of how long those next steps are and then kind of what the next steps are after those sure next steps. Yeah. So the the next if if we get approval and
we get chosen to move forward with MVP um that will we'll get a notification in probably end of August um and that will run through June 30th of 2026 to get all the way through permitting and get
construction bid ready. In that next fis in this fiscal year we'll be looking for opportunities for implementation funds. Um, so it could be as soon as 20 summer 2026, there's parts of the project that are ready to go. Um, but if we have to
pause to wait for additional grant funding opportunities based on their fiscal cycle, it may be a year later. Um, but we're we'll be teed up and ready. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Um just to this is we're roughly five years into
looking at Blissen Laurel Parks and it started with um actually a citizen group that submitted a CPA application. The entire history of all of this um all the phases is available on the town website. Uh it's broken out by um phase one,
phase two, and then where we are right now, which is finishing up phase two. So, um there's a lot that Andrew tried to capture tonight, but I did want to reflect on um this really started back in 2020 with a community group um
applying to CPA and getting funding uh to move forward with a kind of a vision of Bliss and Laurel Parks through a design from the Conway School. Just if you wanted to go back and look, it's pretty helpful to see where we are
um or where we were to where we are now. So, uh, a grant session closes out end of this month. When when would we expect to hear from you again? Um, we expect to hear from MVP in August. um you would expect to hear from us
probably starting in November, December about um we'd be applying for you know conservation commission NOI uh going through planning board coming back and presenting to you all about you know the project and and how it's looking and
shaping up moving forward um so that we can kind of get all those things kind of in place and be ready by the end of the fiscal year. So when would uh the money aspect start coming in? Um well we would be we would start looking at grant opportunities as soon as possible. It
depends on the deliverables in the grant. So we if we could apply for some if they have a multi- fiscal year um um reporting mechanism where we could show that we're making efforts to it. But um we'll we'll continue to look. We kind of have a good idea when a lot of these
state grants open up. Um but as Andrew was pointing out there's you know the ADA component of it. There's grants there. There's a park grant. Um there's uh MVP that we could we'll certainly try for. There's um some other federal ones that hopefully will still exist that
we'll be able to apply for. So um we're going to try to patchwork the whole thing together and and see what we can do. The whole thing as in funded all grants ideally. Yeah. I mean if we could. Okay. Yeah. And I asked like beneath said I it's absolutely gorgeous.
It would be amazing to have that in in our town and in such a prominent place. Um but you know that's that's a lot of money we got. We don't we have a tight budget. So um yeah that whatever we can do I think that I I
think it's great. Yeah. The other thing I'll mention too is there's the matches also can be in kind match too. if there's opportunities for certain parts of the projects to be implemented by the town. Um whether it be with DPW, I know that they have a full plate already. Um but there there's creative ways to think
through how that match can uh can come into play. Okay. Yeah. And I think um the aesthetics and the look and feel of it are phenomenal, but the component of dealing with the storm storm water and improving water quality as is equally
and as important. Um, and I think the fact that you can marry both in this is really a win-win for the town. Okay. Anybody else? Just going to say it's fair to say we're probably not going to have a fishing derby like we used to back in the the '9s. Oh, it's funny that you mentioned this. So, um,
one of my colleagues or um, husband grew up in town and he's a landscape architect as well. Um, and the first thing he's like, you're taking away my fishing derby. I was like, but it was a great event though. It really was. I mean, people turned out it
forward. It was great. So, the the the the not so great piece of that is actually the parks and recck department has tried to do it over the years and the water quality is so poor that we're not actually able to stock the pond. Oh, yeah. Definitely not eating fish from there. That's No. No. Definitely not
eating. And yeah, the the lifespan of a fish would be very short at this point. Oh, jeez. Okay. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Josh, we just lost internet. So, the zoom cut out. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Is
that No, not uh it's still working on mine. Oh, there we go. All right. Um let's if you want to continue, we'll we'll troubleshoot and get the Zoom back up. Okay, there we go. Moving on to old business. Uh approval
of meeting minutes. I will entertain a motion to approve the June 2nd, 2025 meeting minutes. So moved. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? There's a few um just minor minor edits. I grammatical things I had Peggy edit.
That's all. That's what I mention. Uh so incorporating those edits. Um all right. Uh any uh all those in favor? I'm out of practice. Uh, I entertain a motion to approve the
June 5th, 2025 remote select board special meeting. So moved. Second. Uh, anything further? And all those in favor? Okay. Uh, I'm moving on to the July 15, 2025
special town meeting warrant. Um, so Lyn, we've uh opened the warrant as of our last special meeting. So, are we uh now voting on just placing these articles on the warrant? Yes. And then
closing it. Okay. So, there's it's broken out into two articles. Um town council has made that recommendation. They have vetted this. Um it is exactly as you saw it uh last week. Um
first one is to change the charter and then the second are the accompanying bylaw changes. Okay. Do we have any motions? Um I I just had one question. So um it I'm not finding it right now, but I
believe it says that once the board is um you know converted to an appointed board that they that they have to remain in that position I guess for like 30 days until um an like the appointment could be
changed or or anything. It's uh so the the language that you're referring to, it says the term of any previously elected planning board member shall cease 30 days after the effective date of this section. Yeah. And planning board members shall then initially be appointed in staggered terms so that two
members are appointed for three years uh two members. Yeah. Two me two members for two years and one member for one year. Um that is so that um there's some continuity of business while the um appointment
mechanism happens. Um we can look at changing that amount of time if you would like. Um I can talk with town council about why they suggested 30 days. I think that makes sense. So they would have another meeting. But is Vene are you wondering
about terminating an appointment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's kind of where yeah where I'm getting to. So basically just just because I just want to make sure that folks are clear of what the timeline and how this would work and and also just for us as well. So um you know this goes to special town meeting AG's
office u says that the charter change um you know is approved it goes to the ballot question on September 30th. So according to the way that's written right now, the elected term of the planning board would continue on for
another 30 days past September 30th and then at that point they become appointed. Is that because we need there would be needed time needed to actually appoint the people before to come before the select board during that month. Do you think that was the thinking?
Uh um I'm not I I I don't know exactly what I mean I mean it does I think make some sense to me that that there is some time after the vote for the elected um for the elected positions to remain. Um but I just kind of want just want to
clarity on that so just we kind of knew um you know what this would mean in terms of rescending appointments and when that could take place. Yeah, and I can um I can have that timeline for you, but I do believe in reading this now um it it will allow you to accept
applications for appointment in in this it's not saying that all of those people would automatically be appointed. Um but I can I can get clarity on that. It uh I know when we first talked about it, it was oh they would just become
appointed, but it doesn't you have to have some action of appointing. Mhm. So yeah, I think that that's a fair question. If we want to, you know, obviously this came about because of uh the controversy over uh
Mr. Gun. Um if the goal is to one of the goals is to be able to remove him. Um we could insert language that says uh shall cease 30 days unless
sooner terminated by the plan select board if we want. The way I read this was, you know, you can't just have all of the people just be appointed because some of them have to be assigned to different years like terms, right? Once so that I thought that I thought that
after the vote, the ballot vote, then we at the next select board meeting, which would probably happen a couple weeks after that, whenever it is, then there would be time for people to apply and then we would be selecting. I mean, it might be the same people, it might not, but everyone would have to be assigned a
certain period of time. Oh, no. I Yeah, I agree with you on that. I I'm just talking about the 30 days. Yeah. I I think that that is how I envisioned it as well. And we if we want, we could or I guess if somebody doesn't want to get back on, they could not apply. But, uh
if somebody just got elected for their Well, actually, it wouldn't line up with anybody. Is it Why is it longer or shorter than Why isn't it shorter than 30 days or wasn't it longer than 30 days? Well, I I think it's 30 days to I I think Lynn is probably correct that it's to give some continuity so they can have another meeting, especially if they
have a public hearing scheduled already. They have to have that and if we don't have time um then there will be an issue. Um but so I I think 30 days makes sense. Although some public hearing
hearings are set even further out. I think they might be 45 days. No, Mike. No, they I can check uh they have a pretty detailed schedule on their um web page that lists out like when applications need to be in for site and design reviews and when I'm thinking of
other boards. Yeah, it is 14-day hearing notice posting requirements um in some cases, but I I can confirm that actually. Yeah. So I in a vacuum it makes sense and I I just wonder if does this give us enough flexibility if
we want to take immediate action to terminate an appointment but they're not appointed at that point. They're still elected for 30 days. Yeah. And and I think you know I think the 30 days for all the reasons we talked about makes sense. I just wanted to make sure that we understood um understood it and knew
when we could take action and what need to be done. Yeah. And I think you'd want to also do a full slate, not just one one appointment here and then you'll get to another one at one point like 30 days the elected planning board does not exist anymore. So you would need to have
a full slate so that they could actually meet and conduct business and this would give us two meetings in October basically to make sure that this is all in place. Right. So it's the hearing requirements are within 14 uh 14 days prior. I think you're referring to zoning board. I think yeah that's what
I'm thinking of. Okay. Yeah. And I think also just the fact that this has been vetted by our council already, I'm also just kind of hesitant to touch any of the wording right now. Um. Yeah. Okay. Especially since we don't have another
meeting and before the special town meeting. All right. Um, I'll entertain a motion to place article one onto the uh July 15th special town meeting ballot. So moved. Second.
And I have some further discussion. I I genuinely do not again speaking in vacuum. I don't know if this is the best thing for the town to have to change from elected to appointed. Um there's a lot of thinking
I I I have not done on it. We haven't had a lot of people. We haven't had discussions about it. Um and I Lynn pulled together um a spreadsheet showing that what's elected, what's appointed, and the towns are it's pretty mixed. That being said,
I I don't the people have spoken and I I think that it's really important to do this to take action because we are otherwise uh stuck. There's we've done every action we can. Um I think public
pressure is there, but um there is someone on the planning board that our residents do not want to be on there. And uh I so I think in a practical sense we have to do this. Um and if it's good in the long term I I
don't know. Um but in the circumstances you have sometimes you have to take action and I think that that's what we're doing. So um I I think that this is an important thing. It's a shame that we have to have a special town meeting in order to to do this. Um but we have
to. So, um, that's that's my piece on this. Um, anything further? I I I totally understand and share your, you know, uncertainty about what if we personally individually think it's a good move or a bad move or if it's too much of a
reaction to this incident or if it just is something we should only do if it's good for the town in general for the long term. But the point is when I think of it is it's not up to us to decide. We are giving the town an opportunity to decide and that's what's going to happen. There will be people there who are in favor of it, people who are
against it, and then the town will decide, and that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. Well put, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the maybe to Josh's point, I mean, Mr. Gun can he can just resign, too. I mean, he can actually come forward and resign. I mean, I watched
the last planning board meeting and he said, "I'm going to let this fizzle out." I don't know if that was his exact words, but he's not he said he's not going to run for reelection. um if there's even can be an election because of the changes that we're trying to make here. But ultimately this is on one
person and his name is Walter Gun and he refuses to resign. So we have to take this measure. It's unfortunate. Um there's no other measure that we could take uh currently. So it's ultimately it's up to Mr. Mr. Gun to
um resign. And I don't know how many people have have asked and suggested that he do so. Um he has friends in the town. I I'm not sure who's telling him uh what or to to not resign, but I mean it's extremely selfish of Mr. Gun to not
resign. And now it's forcing us to have special multiple special meetings, spend taxpayer dollars to remove Mr. Gun and he can simply resign on his own and avoid this. So whether or not we want to do an appointment or have an election
for uh planning board moving forward, it comes down to one person and it's Mr. Gun and he must resign. It's as simple as that. Thanks. All right. Um there's nothing further. All those in favor.
Okay. Um and moving on to article two. uh to entertain a motion to place article 2 onto the July 15th, 2025 special time meeting warrant. So moved. Second. All right. Um and any further discussion?
Uh I just had a question, Lynn. Um number 223. Mhm. E uh E. Yeah. Is that um that is not changed, is it? Um it is uh cleaning up the language in the bylaw. town council flagged this and because we were already amending this
section, he took the opportunity to fix an inconsistency um that should have been caught when we did the um e-code update and it was caught for the charter. So, it was updated in 2022 for the charter, but it was not updated that same language in the bylaw. Okay. I wasn't sure if it was
just the uh We had the same question e Yeah. Okay. Um and but we can't have one if there's three members. Oh well, three members shall be elected to terms of five years. So that arrange
that each as nearly as possible one term shall expire each year, which I I guess we can't do unless we line it up with the select board member in the Commonwealth, but I suppose that doesn't really matter. Um okay. Anything else on I could talk. So right now the
appointment for the person to the Commonwealth is alternating those other years and there is no select board appointed applicant right now because we didn't receive any applicants for it when we posted it. It's been a while since we've had one if I remember correctly. Yeah. Okay. Um All right.
Anything further on article 2? Okay. Uh all those in favor? All right. Um and I will entertain a motion to close the July 15th, 2025 special town meeting. So moved. Second.
Any further? And all those in favor? Okay. Thank you. And uh next up we have fiscal year 2026 water, sewer, and storm water rates. Uh Ian or Lynn.
Thanks. Um so we uh came back with a memo with um some recommendations based on our discussion that we had on June 2nd. You'll uh see in here we um have calculated out some different scenarios
based on what was asked by the board. Uh and I know Ian has a PowerPoint tonight to go through just some um just to show you where things end up landing. it's more um um graphics to to show you like just how
things lay out. But um in terms of what we're recommending tonight, um we we did go back and look at um our numbers again and looked at um the actually rewatch portions of the meeting just to see to make sure we captured everything. Um
there was not a clear directive on the different breakdowns of the fixed meter charge. So, we offered up um a 50% increase, 100% or 150%. This is to go in tandem with what we offered at the last meeting, which was a 200% and 300%. Um
but the biggest change in this memo is that we are recommending a um a v a nonvariable water rate. Um this so this would just be a standard uh per cubic foot charge, not tiered. Uh and that is
based on the discussion that we had at the last meeting and um felt like we've got a lot going on right now and that that uh tackling a systemic change like that may need um we all may need to sit with it longer. Um so what you see here
tonight um are is a is a uh menu full of options that we need you guys to make some decisions on. Um but ultimately we have a a budget and how we try to get there is what we need direction on tonight. So fixed charges and then
depending on what you decide for the fixed charge has an impact on what the rate actually what the actual user rate will be. All right. Thank you. Peggy, I believe I sent you the PowerPoint. If you could pull that up,
that would be super. And then just lastly, um, in the the very end of the memo, um, is the recommendation on discounts. Uh, we ran a bunch of those numbers, I believe. Um, that is included in
Ian had a lot of that num those numbers somewhere. Oh, further up in the uh memo. Um, and so we broke it out by 65 and older and 80 and older. Um ultimately after looking at all those numbers and the impact that it has, we felt like for this very first year,
mirroring what's in place for the storm water discount was the best approach um at least for this year and then we could obviously annually continue to take a look at that to figure out if there's a better um discount offer in future years. Can you remind us uh who receives
a discount under storm water currently? Uh, it's anyone who's eligible for the blind, elderly, um, or veteran exemptions through the assessor's office. Currently, it's about 129 residents. So, would you say you're suggesting that
number stays it'll stay the same for this year or is that We're suggesting that for the first year of implementing a discount for the water sewer, we match what storm water has. Mhm. Oh, gotcha. Okay. So, I mean ultimately we we can have other
uh we can increase the numbers at least from an age perspective. Yeah. Yeah. We're not recommending that this year, but certainly you guys can discuss and decide to do that. Um we just felt like for the very first year offering a discount, we should just mirror what's
already in place on the storm water side and then next year, you know, if you want to look at broadening it out, we would have a lot more information by then. Go ahead, please. Uh, for the so for the stormwater discount, what age is it for
that that discount? Is it 65? It's um anyone who's eligible for the blind, elderly, and veteran discount through the assessor's office. It's both a means and an age test. Okay. In terms of what if it's 65 or not, I'll have to double check. I can do
that while Ian's going through this. Okay. So in the grand scheme of things, one of the most important parts of the rate setting discussion is what is the impact to residents. So I put together a couple
of slides to show at various stages in terms of the different offerings that we present to you what the impact that will be to a given suite of residents. So the first slide shows at an annual level and I realize that the numbers are a little
small but it shows four different classes. A total low user, a time bond average user, a moderate user and a high irrigation user. Now the time bond average user uses the same
metric that time bond did for its water sewer study. So this is someone that would be using uh a certain amount of um cubic feet per year these units. So as you can see
on the given fixed rate changes it's significant for the first year but on the whole the impact is somewhat the same across each of the pieces. So I'll go into why. So if you
go to the next slide, you'll see each of the different fixed meter rate changes. So when looking at this, I think it's important to note that when you change the fixed meter rate, there's a certain metric of how this is calculated. Every
10% increase in the quarterly rate generates about $3 of increase to a resident during the year. So when you're looking at a 50% increase, when you're looking at 100% increase, each 10% increase is about the same. So 100%
increase is about $29 for a resident for the entire year. This is important to note because when we're looking at the lowest of income users and those who are on a fixed income, we want to make sure that these changes that the select board
is making is both not impactful to the lowest residents but also drives the direction forward that we need to be doing infrastructure changes and building upon our retained earnings. Going to the next slide. This shows the
200 and 300 fixed meter rate changes. As you can see, um, at the highest end, these are going to be some sticker shock values. But it's important to note that these numbers and we feel that given the
time bond study, the highest rate payers will continue to pay these regardless of if there's a tiered or a fixed rate. Now the important thing as well is how does law me shape up with its communities. On the next slide we have
the community breakout that tie and bond provided during its rate study process. This shows the average annual household water bill for the FY25 rates that were voted in last year. As you can see, Long
Meadow is near the bottom of the rates for the selected communities that Tai and Bond presented on. The next slide shows where we would be if the rates were presented today as Go back one,
Peggy. Back one. Back one, please. um given the time bond average um user which is 100 cubic feet um would be our new rate. So as you can see we are not
in the upper echelon but we are steadily moving into the mid-range of rates. This means that Long Meadow is more competitive when it comes to its rates, but yet we continue to make an effort on removing deferred maintenance and building up our retained earnings. Now,
unfortunately, Time Bond did not do the similar um schedule that they did for sewer. So, I can only show this for water. Moving on to our sewer rates, the same story applies. Now you'll notice that
for the um average user and the moderate user um we come into the issue of the 55 unit cap in the summer months. That was why the numbers look so similar because
if we assume a 55 meter cap for the first two quarters of the year the rates come out very similarly. Now the the next two slides show at a much narrower level the do the two different pieces
with 50 100 150 fixed meter rates and then the next slide shows the 200 and 300 with the last two slides showing in whole the annual water and sewer bill. Now, as a note, this does not
include the storm water rates because at the moment, it would be too difficult to include the storm water rates with the bevy of different options because the both the fixed meter rate and the single unit rate would change and I felt that
that would be too much in this presentation as we're only discussing the water and sewer in this instance. Now, on the topic of discounts, this these numbers here do not reflect the discounts built in. Lynn already
alluded to um our recommendation where we would like to see the 30% discount given to those initial residents. The we did some research onto two different demographics, residents 65 and older and
residents 80 and older. this after filtering out um households that had the same residents and taking out communities like Glenn Meadow uh JGS which not all residents are on the water
or sewer system. We had 254 accounts for 65 and older and 692 accounts residents 80 and older. Using this information that was provided by the town clerk, we were we were able to come up with the amount of estimated residents available
for this discount. Within the memo itself, um we saw that there were some very large increases if we were to offer this in the 50 or 100% discount, essentially giving a free fixed meter charge for those residents. It is
important to note that these discounts would have to be made up by accounts that are not receiving the discount and we would have to reflect the rates accordingly. So to end um the town is looking for the recommendation of the select board to
propose a fixed meter charge and we are looking for a recommendation on what discount the town will offer for its water and sewer rates. Um, and to answer your question, beneath it's age 70 and older.
All right, go ahead. Um, thanks for all the work you put into this. Obviously, it's very detailed. We put spent a lot of time on this and it's appropriately. So, um, I do feel though that a the good news is that we're all kind of talking about the same thing, right? We're all talking
about we all have a commitment to raise the rates to the necessary amount. It's just a matter of how we're doing it. The methodology, you know, and to be honest, it's almost for many of us when we're talking about the fixed me water rate or and the water usage rate is six of one
half a dozen of the other. We're going to basically benefit from a lower fixed rate or a higher fixed rate commensely with in the water rate and vice versa essentially. So I I am glad that the tiered waterway is kind of off the table. I I wasn't
necessarily like strongly opposed to it. I just felt that that is a riskier move for our town in general because I do think that economics being what they are, people do respond to incentives and it's possible that we would get less than we anticipated and that would make us raise rates even higher the following
year when we So really what we're deciding as you know is the fixed meter rate and you know I I was I I know that Mark had had mentioned the reason you gave us the 50 the 100 and the 150% uh raises was I think because of something Mark said to be honest
I was I when I looked at the whole thing that you had given us at the last meeting, I was like, well, you know, it seemed reasonable that the 200% increase was reasonable because, you know, it's it's a significant increase. We've all agreed that fixed meter rate should increase for this year. It'd be it'd be
substantially be 200%. And then I I I brought your sheet from the last meeting with the 200% increase, the fixed uh the the meter the water rate would be $6.34. Now whether it's 200% or 150%, obviously
if it's 150% then the uh water rate is going to have to go up etc. So I'm pretty agnostic on it. I would have been comfortable with 200% or 150 whatever we decide together. I definitely think your your thinking on the 30% discount is
good in the sense that especially people are going to already be just the town as a whole going to be kind of shocked I think when they get this and when we if we expand the discount at this time it's
going to be even higher right for the general public so I think it's a good suggestion to start with that and the last thing I'd suggest is that we definitely put in some sort of like um like uh insert for the for the for the
first quarter of next um next fiscal year just so people kind of understand why their rates are going up like it's well we all know but people aren't watching most people are not paying attention like we are right so like you know these are why the rates increase because of our century old aging infrastructure because Springfield's
charging us more water and by the way they need a new water plant because we need to consider establishing a backup supply from Enfield etc And by the way, we are actually quite low relative to other communities. These are things that I think people need to know and I think that we should consider just throwing
that into the bill that is going to be much higher for people if we can. Just to add another point to that, Andrew, thank you. Um for the discounts themselves, I want to just make the select board aware. Um Lisa was going to be at the meeting, but unfortunately due to technical difficulties, she wasn't
able to join. um she wanted to talk about um what kind of administrative task it would be to offer a 65 to 70 or 80 plus discount in terms of you know the 2,00 to 700 residents. There would also be the time commitment of
confirming that those residents still apply, seeing if residents leave, um confirming obituaries. I mean, it's a very, you know, we're talking hours and hours to do this task and, you know, I certainly don't want to suggest creating a new position for it, but it's
certainly something that would require a lot of time. And I I just want to make sure that the board is aware that if that is the projection that they want to go, that Lisa and I would have to figure out the best way in order for us to do that kind of work.
Um, Andrew, thank you. I think you made some great points. Uh, and just on your last point on the insert, I put in a picture of a a water mane break, uh, that's when people see that driving by or, uh, you realize that, oh, that's,
uh, that's a big issue and that's going to, as we've seen from our hearing, our presentations, that's going to continue to happen. Um, and people will be shocked. We had two years ago I think I I said at a meeting watching the first Fuss and
O'Neal I think our time bond presentation I said oh it's coming and um that the rates are going to skyrocket and we delayed it a bit but now we're here we know what we have to do. Um, I
so I I I kind of a few goals here in thinking about this. If we could have all of our capital costs be tied to our our fixed rates, that'd be great. But that would be an enormous jump right now. And I I don't think that
that is the right way to do it at this point. And Ian, I thought that these were these are really helpful um because it shows you that the fixed rate increases disproportionately hit our low users which makes sense to a large
extent because they were you know in the infrastructure they were locked into the system without paying that much. Um but on the other hand the low users are some of our pe people who may not use water because they're they're old. they
don't they're on fixed income. So my I would like us to thread the needle a little bit on that and not um not hit those people too hard, but at the same time recognize that we uh there are in an incredible amount of projects that we need to do and we need to have a
predictable and uh steady way to fund that. Um, and my other goal is to not be in a position where, as we saw this year, where we're halfway through the fiscal year and we learn that we're short on funds. So, and that uh Lynn and
I and I met today and had a discussion about how this this whole process needs to be moved up and um you all have pointed out to me today, we have all the information we have we need
in March or April. we can we can do this. Um, but we need DPW to talk to us more. Uh, the process more was talking to the capital planning committee about the five-year plan and what their needs were. And now it uh that's something
that we need to close the loop and bring it to us much earlier so we can talk about what needs to be done and how we're going to fund it. And that that way when we're giving our presenting our annual budget at the town meeting that people have know exactly where that
money is going and even if they aren't paying attention to us as you said um we can at least point to it and say here's where that money is going and we have projects need to be done. These have been thought out. These have been uh mapped out in advance
and they've been funded. the planning's been funded and I I but we can do that much earlier in the year and we can set our rate in in April or May. There's no reason for us to to be doing in June. Um I think there there may have been
historical reasons why it was done this this way after town meeting but uh I think it's unfair to the town. It's unfair to DPW. Um so we can push this back. So I I think that looking at this
uh which again I thought was very helpful. Um I would be probably in favor of uh coming in at 100% increase this year. So we are significantly raising that fixed rate and you know the money
it's going to the budget is what the budget is. We have to fund it no matter what. But I think by increasing that, which is something we've recognized for a while, not going crazy this year on the fixed meter rate, but a significant
increase, I I think is the way to go. Great. Thank you. Um, in terms of the discount, I I agree that we should be reflecting what's already in place. I think that's a good place for us to start. This is something that we can visit and see how it's working and and
come back to in the years to come. But I think that's a good place for us to start right now for the fixed beater rate. I I I agree that you know I think Andrew is saying 150 200 Josh is saying 100. I mean I really think anywhere between those two um is is completely
fine. I I do think that one thing that needs to be recognized is that the fixed meter rate in Long Meadow has been artificially low for so long because we have not been doing capital projects. And so uh a one-time increase of this
magnitude is needed just to get us back into a responsible level where we are actually uh addressing our infrastructure needs. Um but again moving forward after that there will probably be more increases but they can
be more um you know smaller increments after that. But this I think one time bigger uh increase is is needed just to get us back to being able to address our infrastructure. And in terms of the big capital projects, I
said at the last meeting that I want to stay aggressive with continuing to replace our water manes. Sean brought uh the projects of the interconnection uh with Enfield as well as the water tank. From what I've heard
and you know in our discussions, I think that the interconnection is absolutely necessary and that's something that we should be planning for and moving forward with. The water tank is something that I do want to hear more about. Um and you know I I I think I I would just want more information, more discussion on that, but I I'm fully in
favor of moving forward with the interconnection um plan. Um, and so, you know, I I do want to say that in terms of telling our DPW, our staff of what, you know, I'm I'm interested at least in
moving forward with so that for planning purposes, uh, folks are aware, I would just say I I agree with with much of what you guys are saying. Um, I just think predictability whether it's in town government and government or in
the private sector. It's it's it's always good to know um what the predictable revenue is going to be for uh the projects that we have. And you know to to Venice point you've all heard me say you know going back that we have done very limited over
the past uh decades. We haven't addressed the water sewer rates. Um, we've had tiered rates thrown at us as well. Um, I'm not suggesting that I'm all in with tiered rates, but my priority has always been to make sure that we can um help our seniors, help
our veterans, help folks that uh that need some some help. Um, and I think at least going this route, we can help the town as a whole with some of these projects and and catching up on some of the some of the needs, some of the the
needs that we should have been doing uh for decades. So, this probably sound like a broken record, but I'm happy that the with all with Lynn, your work and Ian and Alisa and everyone has um come together to um put a a ton of work to to
help get this uh moving. And I feel like we've been talking about water and sewer for almost every meeting it seems like for years uh at least since I've been on the board. So, um appreciate everyone's work. um look forward to tackling some of the uh infrastructure uh needs and
and I think predictability is just one positive aspect of what what we're doing uh tonight and moving forward. And let's face it, we with the weather patterns, whether you get a lot of rain, little rain, that's unpredictable, but at least
this is a starting point to help uh generate some much needed revenue um and move us in a positive direction for some of the the projects. So, I just I I really do want to thank everyone on the town staff uh for all all of your work and and the board for uh robust
conversation over the past several uh months. Thank you. All right. Do we have any motions? Well, I I'm personally u first I'd want to follow on to what Venise said. I I agree that this interconnection with Enfield is frankly
far more valuable in my mind than the possibility of a second water tank because I just think it's just so much more important essentially. So just just bear that just for people to bear in mind I agree with Vene like we would need I would need to hear a lot more on the value of a water tank. Um but I
definitely think like if we if something were to happen to Springfield's water supply we we will benefit from uh another source. Um, I I could make a I'd make a motion that we set the fixed meter water the fixed
meter rate at 150% increase, which would make the water rate $648. Of course, we can continue to discuss it, but that's my motion. Uh, second. All right. Any further discussion? How about Andrew for being the one to
put his neck out there, raise the rates? Um, yeah. I mean, I I you know, I 150% to 100% it's not a big deal. I just thought that was in the middle. Yeah. I mean, I I agree, Andre. And I think if in the range we're talking about,
100% versus 150 is not a significant difference. And 150 probably gets us, you know, closer to like what we're trying to do with capital and and all of our other projects. You got one more. No, this is it. I I
just I found this chart kind of striking on that the highest fixed meter rate leads to the highest bills for the low users and a lower bill overall for the
highest users and moderate users. Uh that I think that that is pushing my thinking a bit on this. Um, but in the long run, we're not talking about a massive amount of money per person.
May make a difference to them, but um, I just thought that that was pretty pretty striking. You're talking about that bar, the teal bar on the far right, correct? Okay. When I look at the actual
amount of dollars when we increase, like right now, for example, I'm looking at last meetings chart. A 200% increase would be $25 a quarter. Uh so 150 would be less than that. That would be I don't know. I'm just guessing $20, $19 a
quarter. Uh I think that I guess it's reflective of how low it is right now. essentially that seems reasonable. Uh not too ownorous kind of knowing the future we might actually do more frankly. So but
again if if there's a strong consensus to 100% we're talking about not a big deal. I don't think there is not a big deal. Problem is I I've been on this board forever. I've been on for four years. So I just inertia I guess. Um, yeah. I mean, I I think Andrew kind of hit on this with us talking about this
in percentages of 150% increase, 200% increase, it gives a very different perception because they are, like I said, kind of artificially low at this point. Um, but actually putting it in dollars, yeah, shows that how little of an increase it is, you know, per quarter
and it leads to an $80,000 increase in fixed meter charges, which is substantial. It's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, do you want to move for 150 or you want to do 200? I've already moved for
150. Okay. I'm okay with that. Um we don't want to get too just the middle of the road is usually I really want Okay. You're doing 180. You're from 100 to 200 now. No, just just asking. All right. Um so if there's nothing further, uh I will All those in favor? All right. All those
opposed? Um, okay. And how about uh for sewer rates? Do do you want to make the same motion, Andrew? Yeah. Um, I move I'm not sure what the fixed rate would be if we went up 150%. Is that
here? I'm sorry. I was looking at last meeting. Yeah, it's 516 is the or as the variable rate. Can you point that out? So, it's on different. So, okay. I move we we increase the fixed sewer rate by
150% of what it currently is. And that would make the sewer rate $516. Okay. Second. Second. All right. Anything further or further discussion? All right. Uh, all those in favor.
Okay. This dorm water rate. Yeah. Do we we had at the last meeting? Okay. I don't believe you voted it. Um, but I also would ask if normally water bill or inserts for utility bills have to be
approved pre-approved by you, but we won't have time between now and the next meeting to have you preapprove it. So, if you could approve us creating a Yeah. Okay. And inserting it. That'd be great. While I find the um storm water rate,
unless you have it. Is it Is the storm water rate 974? Yes. Per equivalent residential unit. Yes. Yes. But I didn't understand the annual rate being $116.84. That's basically what the cost per each household.
So I'll move we set the storm water rate at $9.74 per eru and with an annual rate of 116.84. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Um, and Lynn, do we
is there an appetite for extending the storm water discount to the water and sewer fixed rates? Is that what I was hearing before? Yes. Um, so I will move to apply the
same discount used for storm water to water um water rates. Um, a water fixed rates. Water fixed rates. Fixed meter rate. Yeah. Yeah. Water fixed meter rates. Second. All right. Uh, anything further? All those in favor?
And for sewer as well. Oh, yeah. Uh, and I um move to apply the storm water discount to the sewer uh fixed me rates. Second.
Any further? All those in favor? And then I move to approve a utility bill insert explaining the um explaining the increases in fixed meter and variable rates. Andrew Lamb's
increase. Second. All right. Anything further? And all those in favor? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all your work on that. Thank you. Do we get it all? Yeah. all the votes. We'll have
a special meeting. Thank you. Um, okay. So, moving on to the bottle shop liquor license update. Um, we got a an email on this. Uh, did
not make it to the agenda. Oh, it should have. The letter we got an email for and Mr. Thomas also here. Oh, he is. Okay. Yep. I'm not It's not coming up in mine. Right here. Um, you know what? The old
um agenda topic probably got reinserted in. So, it's possible that Okay. is in the back end somewhere. I I'll retro that right now. Okay. Thanks. All right. Uh, Mr. Thomas, thank you for coming. Why don't you introduce yourself? Sure. James Thomas, 28 Road.
Okay. And uh we asked you to come back to give us an update on the liquor license. Can you please I'd love to be able to give you an update on the liquor license. The puns have been in China for I don't know how long. I've reached out to my lawyer to reach out to them four
times, been responded to once. Uh and they were asking who was buying the license. So they're pay the the lawyers for the puns are paying attention to these meetings. They think they have control of the license. Um, so I I I don't mean to put you on
the spot. I I got I I can't I can't put the license someplace else. No, I understand. And I don't mean to put you on the spot. Okay. We the town reached out to the puns to ask for an update and we're told that you had there's a lawsuit currently. Currently.
Absolutely. May be holding things up. May may not. your guess your guess is as good as mine. The the response I get from them is dribbs and drabs at best. So I personally I I wish you had told us that. Okay. About the lawsuit. I think
full disclosure from the beginning could have been very helpful. I I will tell the board what I I'm thinking this I learned about this today. I feel very uncomfortable letting the landlord
pick the next owner of pick the next package store owner in in Long because I I agree. I don't know where there's anywhere else. The only other uh I don't know if there's anything on Long Meadow Street right now by the mobile maybe. I don't know if that's a
good spot. There's not a lot of parking yada yada. The shops, we already have two full liquor licenses there. I don't think we can put one there, right? Um, so I I generally agree that there are no other spots for this as our town is
currently set. So which gives the landlords effectively whoever they give a lease to can get a liquor license. That's our job. That's that's not their
job. and why they think they have the ability to dictate and they've reached out to other liquor store owners to buy the license to to put a spot there. So, they don't have any control of that license. I really Yeah, I I don't like that. Um,
so and according to the lease I or the complaint I read today, you have a lease and you're When is that lease or did it expire? No, I have I've got another 12 years on 12 15 years on the lease. Okay. And so there's a lawsuit for specific performance. Mr. Thomas has sued and
said I have a lease the puns had to keep a certain amount of insurance on. They did not. I'm not saying making any claims on whether who's right or wrong. But that'll be for the court to decide or
for the parties to make an agreement on. But if we if we took the license as has been kind of hanging over all these proceedings for years now, y it would let the puns
decide who owns a liquor license. And I don't feel comfortable doing that. And I I know that this is new knowledge to you guys, but I I wanted to make sure you were aware of my thinking and where we're at now. And I so I appreciate you
coming in and um we have our update. So uh any any questions or any comments from the other board members? Yeah, thank you for coming in Mr. Thomas. I mean um I know that you keep saying that you don't have any updates but just just communication is the important part really and um and so thank you for
coming in and some of my hesitancy about not updating but being in front of the meeting is I don't want to show my cards to the puns. Yeah. Yeah. I I completely understand that and I empathize with your position. I know that this has been
in the works for a while that you've been trying to sell this liquor license for a long time. Long time. Um and that and and and my point is if they say no to whoever buys it, I will reopen the
store myself. And I'm I'm certainly capable of doing that. Right. Uh yeah. And and I and I and I completely agree with Josh that I you I don't like how this is being handled by the puns. I
want you as the owner of your liquor license to be able to sell it. Um but I also don't know exactly what we can do here. Um and I know beyond giving Mr. taught us more extensions on this. Um
what else we can do to solve this this I mean this is just a very odd situation where there really is just one place in town where this can be put and and I and I have looked at other spots. Yeah. And I I you know, I looked at the Hampton Bank. I looked at the ski house
possibility. Uh that dried up and the Hampton bank was just such an awkward space that it just was not going to work for retail space. So yeah, I don't know if there's any else that we can do to find another
solution to this or figure out how to resolve this, but this is this isn't good for anybody anyone that this keeps dragging on. No. Uh, and now we're seeing actually businesses open up in that same plaza. And this is being held
up and I know that there's a buyer who would like to open up a business and is eager to do so. And uh, this I I'm absolutely frustrated by this and and the and the puns have made it even more difficult because they've got a leasing agent who won't talk to me. I can only
deal with the puns. Uh, I'm just looking at the uh schedule for the court case and the final pre-trial conference is scheduled for uh July 25th.
So, and there's a motion to extend tracking order deadlines. I just learned I learned about this during the meeting. So, I I was looking it up. So, I I I would need I think more information from
uh on what's going on with the court and there's no real loss to prove at this point. So we haven't really pressed the suit as as diligently as as we possibly should. I don't you know there's no loss
to to claim at this point. Well, it's a it's a lawsuit for specific performance. So you are saying right let me use the space right and so that is something to press I mean you don't need that you don't lost it's a different type of
claim right so but you can't make the the court has a deadline that has a deadline right the judgment deadline is uh June 1st or uh July January f 4th 2027
So, you know, I don't know. I we are we're in a terrible spot. Um I I'm sure the the other members of the board are shocked at how much we talk about liquor license uh minutia
lately, but I I just I can't I can't take the license from you be for the reasons I said. Yeah. Um, and I I'm incredibly frustrated by that. But this is a town resident who's getting
third generation stuck a little bit. Third generation. Yeah. Well, um, yeah. So, I I would rather I'd rather give a slight extension again. And I the the two extensions ago,
I didn't think I would do any more extensions, but I I would like to give an extension. hear more, get an update on the court case. Okay. Whether it's going to trial, whether there's it's motion practice. Um, but that that's my thinking is I I just don't feel comfortable letting this
out of our hands. And I think if we terminated the license, it's out of our hands and it's into the punt family's hands. and that, you know, landlords can dictate what they want, but I I don't want to feel like we're
getting strong armed here. Yeah, I I completely agree. I mean, I'm in favor of giving an extension whether uh just looking at our meeting schedule whether I think it might be appropriate to do it until August 18th or September 2nd and get
another update at that point. and I'll keep you informed if anything changes. But prior to that, I I do not want to find out about I I understand you want to play it, but that was public information. I But I never would have thought to look,
but don't just you can see where at least I'm sympathetic. So, please talk to us. I absolutely uh I certainly will. Okay. That and I will keep you up to date as to what is going on. Okay. Mike, can you
remind us what the our motion was last time? Yes, it was to One second. That was on May 5th, I believe. One second. Yeah. So, May 5th
Uh motion to approve the license through June 16th to expire if an ABCC application has not been in place by set date. Um and it was seconded and carried. Okay. Okay. Go ahead, please. Um so I will
move to approve and extend Mr. Thomas' liquor license uh until September 3rd. Um unless a ABCC what was that part portion? Don't need that portion. Um you can either say um
if a ABCC amendment application is put in place or you can say an or it depends on what your appetite is for an additional update. Okay. Well, I Okay. So, I'll just make the motion to approve and extend uh Mr. Thomas' liquor license
until September 3rd, 2025. So September 2nd meeting by then we can get an update and make another decision. Second. All right. Any further discussion? All right. All those in favor?
Thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Uh, moving on to new business. Uh, set the fiscal year 2026 select board meeting schedule. Um, and
anything we should know about this, Mike? I think one thing that I failed to we failed to capture in this is that um right now there's are plans for uh holding conference room space meetings at the Greenwood Center. Um and with
that LCTV is in the process of building out a satellite studio over there so that we can virtually or excuse me so that we could record select board meetings and broadcast it to the public uh similar to we do in this room. um at this time they're working on that buildout right now. So, it's likely that we won't have it set up for the July
21st meeting for the select board to meet there, but we are planning on rolling out board and committee meetings who are not who do not have peg access coverage um over there. So, if the select board has an appetite to come view the site, see it, you know, as it starts to get built out, we can talk about maybe for the September 2nd
meeting starting to to meet over there. Um, so I will say this the schedule is subject to change based on the location, but it's likely that July 21st and August 18th will be here unless um we have some additional updates as to if
the space is available. Okay. Yeah. Uh I just want to make a note too that this schedule looking into 2026 February through April reflects the same kind of schedule that we did this year where we are avoiding meetings during February vacation and April vacation.
Thank you for doing that. I think that's wise. All right. Um any further? No. Okay. I entertain a motion to select to adopt the select board fiscal year 2026 meeting schedule as presented on
the agenda. So moved. Second. Anything further? All those in favor? All right. Thank you very much. Uh oh. Um for the liaison assignments discussion, I um realize that there's no
document posted there. I would suggest honestly deferring that to the next meeting so that Shel could be an attendance. I was going to suggest that anyway. Yeah. Um, all right. Any any objections to that? Okay, we'll bring that up the next meeting with Shelley here. Uh, fiscal year 2026 tax title
custodian appointment. There's a motion right in the document if anyone would like to go ahead. Yep. Uh, I move that the select board appoint treasurer collector Erica Brunell tax custodian through June 30th, 2026 pursuant to Massachusetts general laws
chapter 60 section 77b. Second. All right. Anything further? And all those in favor? Okay. Uh, fiscal year 2026, town council labor council appointments. All right. Um, I move to appoint me
Talererman Casta LLC as the town council for fiscal year 2026. Second. All right. Uh, anything further? Uh, just quick question. So, did this this came up a couple years ago when we looked at like multiple
councils? Is it is that just practice or Yes. Yeah. Just every couple years we kind of open it up or um so every year you have to do an appointment of town council and labor council. Uh a couple years ago we did a formal RFP process. Okay. That's what it was bids. Um that
we're not required to do that every year, right? Okay. And we hadn't done one I I don't know it was a good amount of time 20 years and we and when we were doing that process we didn't do it for Sullivan Hazen Quinn correct we only did
it for uh town council right um me Tererman Costa does have the ability to be labor council for us if we wanted some of those other firms did did bid saying they could do it if we wanted to um the rates at Sullivan Hayes and Quinn are there's
They're really low. So, and from what we've heard from you, you're you're satisfied with their Yes. Yeah. And we don't want to switch a horse medstream. Yeah. Okay. Especially labor stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They everything I've heard, they sound great. Um Okay. Uh I'm sorry.
Where are we at? Just have to appoint labor council. Okay. Do we vote? We voted on town council. No, we haven't council. So, we have a second for town council. Okay. Yep. All right. Anything further? All those in favor? Uh I move to appoint Sullivan Hayes and
Quinn as labor council for FY 2026. Second. All right. Anything further? And all those in favor? Okay. We have a uh Long Middle Pride Street closure application.
I move to approve the Long Meadow Pride Street closure application for September 7th, 2025. Second. Okay. And uh anything further? All those in favor?
A nice early application. Yeah. And uh a one-day liquor license application. Yep. Uh, I move to approve the 1-day liquor license application from the Long Meadow Adult Center Community Fund for
July 10th, 2025. Second. Not any further. All those in favor and uh, traffic and roads amended policy. Okay, I'm happy to start and then kick it to Mike who's um, as the assistant
town manager, this falls under his hat now. hired almost. So the policy um there's a couple recommended changes in here. One is to actually reflect that we have a complete streets bylaw. Uh so we had added a
section in here that mentions that and then um it's important because later on in the policy where it talks about the traffic and road advisory group initial review um it it gives exception to um implementation of of projects. The the
department the DPW has jurisdiction over implementing projects that are listed on the complete streets prior prioritization plan. In our work for the complete streets advisory group that we had to revise our plan, we realized that um that plan was in conflict with the
select board policy um with a lot of those are um traffic calming measures or um measures that are listed in the traffic calming policy that uh require select board approval, but the complete streets prioritization plan is is its
own entity um that the department the department of public works has authority over. So, we just wanted to call that out here. Um, and so you'll see that change. And then another change that we're recommending, um, we've been seeing an uptick in traffic calming
applications. And a lot of them are in areas where there's active construction or active construction in a close proximity and they are a detour route. And so we've spent time talking about those applications and no one feels comfortable recommending
any changes because it's a temporary traffic change. And so it it wouldn't make sense to um to enact some sort of traffic calming measure knowing that the quantity of traffic on that road is not always what it is.
So I know that one is for my neighborhood. Um, so, uh, but I I do appreciate that you all took steps and have done things to to help. So, thank you. Um, just one question on it. Applications may be reevaluated. Do they
need to come back in or if something came in during active construction, will you look at it again? Um, good question. And I don't know that we've gotten Yeah, I think in our initial discussions, we talked about following up with the applicant within a certain time frame after to see to gauge
how that how it's going after post construction. um because it we have seen that a lot of the applications that have come in are are in heavily uh trafficked areas because of construction and um for instance off of Converse during the work on Converse and Laurel Street
intersection and then obviously uh similarly to Emerson Road currently we have um some feedback from there also and they're also going to be uh they're having drainage work right now and they're also going to be milled and overlaid uh sometime in August and September. So, um, yeah, a lot of a lot
of that stuff the projects have to complete come to fruition for us to really dive into some of the traffic mitigation. Okay. And then, um, I don't know if it's in this round. I do anticipate we're going to be bringing you back some more traffic related topics, but one of the
other ones we were considering is, um, a limitation on how frequently you can submit a traffic calming application. So, we just dealt with Ellington two years ago and there's a new application in and how do we feel about that? Is that are we going to allow that every
year, every two years, or is it really something like every 3 to 5 years you can't, you know, you need to wait? Um, so that's something we've been considering. And if I can add too, there's the there's a distinction between the traffic calming application and there's a traffic enforcement
complaint form on the police website that really needs to be um kind of highlighted because during these temporary situations, there is also the ability to reach out to police to suggest increased enforcement or to suggest uh a traffic not necessarily a full-blown traffic study, but um just
some extra traffic detail in that area during that time, which in some of these cases has been has been honored so that we can kind of get a better sense as to what's what's going on in those areas. Um, and we're also going to suggest an amendment to the application itself
because right now the way it's uh listed on the online form is everyone who's submitting it can check off every single traffic mitigation process possible out of the 15 there. We want to limit it to about seven or eight or maybe cut that in half so that it really narrows down
what the applicant is looking for so we don't have to pick and choose and kind of um make assumptions off of them choosing every box as to something that they wish to have see in their neighborhood. That makes sense. Okay.
Uh would you like us to vote on this tonight or we can bring it back next meeting? You can bring it back next time. I mean, that keeps with your rules of procedure that you get it the first night and then you don't vote till the second. But yeah, I I'm okay voting tonight if
there's a motion. Otherwise, we can we'll vote on it next time. Okay, we'll vote on it next time. Um, all right. Anything in correspondence? Um, I know we we talked a little bit about the parks and wreck
letter earlier and which I uh just for my own two cents on this. I was I asked Lynn about this a couple years ago because I the rumor I always heard is that somebody had donated money to pay for the for the upkeep of the clay
courts forever and it turns out it was $12,000 to buy brushes and like do it the first time. So, it costs the town tens of thousands of dollars to get the courts up to playable condition. And I absolutely agree. It's not it's not worth it. You can go to Forest Park if
you want to play for for cheap. You can join the field club if you want to uh pay a little bit more. Uh there's other options and it just does not get enough use for us to pay for it. So, I absolutely agree. I'm glad the parks and recck commission has brought it up to
us. I I look forward to thinking about it and hearing ideas on what people wanted it to be. Yeah, I agree. I I thought uh it was a really good email and I think even beyond the pickle ball course, they did offer some other good ideas, too. And I would really like for us to explore a
better way for us to use that space. Um, and then another uh email from correspondents. I also just want to thank uh Jennifer Falconee for her email in what is really kind of hard to believe. She detailed an incident with
Mr. Gun on Dennis Road, the same street that the Choas live on. Uh that happened 15 years ago. And it probably would have been easy for her to not have reached out because this happened so long ago. But as she said in her email, uh it was hard for her to read about what had
happened and think back about how she had almost exactly the same experience with him 15 years ago. And it's, I think, an important piece of information for our residents to know about as we continue to navigate uh this entire
situation. Thank you. Anything else from the rest of the board? I would like to motion to adjurnn. Second. Anything else? All right. All those in favor? Thank you. All right. Thank you
everybody.