Uh, actually give me one second here. >> He is running a little late. I'm just trying to find the script. All right, you guys stand in 5 2 1.
>> Welcome to the January 5th, 2026 meeting of the Long Meadow Select Board. This is Vice Chair Veneathy. I will be confirming that all members and persons anticipated in the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Shelley Mayor DeWolf, >> Andrew Lamb, >> here.
>> Uh Dan Zoro >> here. >> We'll give you a second to uh settle in here. Josh Lavine. Um and then staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Uh Peggy Shelvin >> present >> and Lynn Simmons
>> here. Great. Okay. This open meeting of the Long 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 the materials for this meeting are available on the agenda posted on long meadow ma.gov. The public is encouraged to
follow along using the post 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. Then we've also added a new signup sheet over there. If folks are wanting to make a comment,
please uh sign in. Um and then 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 star 9
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. Okay. And we will begin with the pledge of allegiance. >> To the flag of the United States of America to the stands one
indivisible with all. Thank you. >> All right. Uh, thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I appreciate it. I will first move on to select board regular meeting announcements.
Future building use task force. The town of Long Meadow is seeking interested residents to serve as at large members on a the future building Use Task Force. Residents who are interested in applying to serve on this task force should submit an application form no later than 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 13, 2026.
Please also send a resume and cover letter to select board at longma.gov after your application is submitted. Interviews will be held at the select board regular meeting on January 20th. To fill out an application or for more information on the scope and membership of the task force, please visit long
meadow mma.gov GV/Futurebuilding use task force. Citizen petition deadline for annual town meeting. The deadline to submit citizen petition articles for placement on the 2026 annual town meeting warrant is Monday, January 26, 2026. For additional
information, please visit long meadowa.govtown property tax personal exemptions discussion. The Longwater Assessor's Office will hold an information session on Tuesday, January 2026, sorry, January 13, 2026 at 1:30 p.m. at
the Adult Center to provide education on the eligible property tax exemptions and eligibility requirements. Please call the assessor's office at 413-5654115 for additional information. Municipal offices. Town of Longo municipal offices will be closed on
Monday, January 19th, 2026 in observance of observance of Martin Luther King Day. Okay. Uh first up we have resident comments. I'm seeing nobody at our podium. Do we have anybody online, Peggy?
Okay. >> Uh, nobody with a raised hand. >> Uh, so for our my favorite segment at least, kudos and plaudits. Uh, the winter wonderland door decorating or the wow committee um, which we'll explain in
a moment. The winter wonderland door decorating competition. Uh the town of Longmetal wellness of workers wow committee coordinated a winter wonderland door decorating competition in the month of December. Various town departments participated in the doors and vestibule areas really lit up the building to get everyone excited for the
holiday and winter spirit. Uh students in the Greenwood preschools four's room were the esteemed panel judges for the door decor grading competition. Congratulations to the human resources department for winning the competition with their game of thrones themed door. Uh thank you for all the departments for going all out and making town hall a
magical and welcoming place for visitors. In addition to coordinating the recent Thanksgiving food drive among other impactful ideas and initiatives, the WOW committee has done a fantastic job in engage positively engaging staff and members of the community through creative events like this. And if you
click through on the agenda, you can see uh the decorating and it was pretty extensive. So uh looks like a lot of fun and I'm glad that was able to be done in our town hall. Um, anybody else have anything for kudos and plots today? Shelley, >> I just wanted to quickly uh give a kudos
and a congratulations to Gabe Higgins and Aiden Calvin who recently completed their uh basic training in the army and just wishing them the best of luck as they move on in their careers in in our armed forces. >> Great. Absolutely. Uh, anybody else? Dan. Okay.
Um, I'm sure I had something, but winter break was too long and it I have lost all sense. Um, all right, moving on. We have a uh we have no interviews tonight. We just have appointments. >> Appointments.
>> And why don't we go ahead? Um, anybody would like to move? >> I will move to appoint Ellie Greenberg to the board of health for a three-year term expiring June 30th, 2028. >> Second. >> All right. Um, I think Andrew got that one by a hair. Uh, any further
discussion on this. Okay. All those in favor? Oh, sorry. We need a roll. >> Peggy, if you could do a roll. >> Andrew Lamb, >> yes. >> Shelter Wolf, >> yes. >> Josh Le, >> yes. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> And >> uh I will move to appoint Elizabeth
Marinelli to the Cultural Council for a three-year term expiring June 30th, 2028. Second. >> Second. >> Yes. >> Shelley. >> Yes. >> Josh Leavine. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Thank you.
>> Okay. And I will move to appoint Daniel Aldrich to the zoning board of appeals for a three-year associate non- voting term expiring June 30th, 2026. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? Go ahead. >> Yes. >> Shel.
>> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. Yes. >> Thank you. >> All right. Always um we will get in touch with those folks and as always thank you if you're watching uh for your interest and for applying. Um all right,
moving on. We have select board comments. I guess I wasn't alone over winter break. Um all right. Uh nothing today. Moving on to applications. Uh we have a one-day liquor license. I believe we
have two uh from the LACCCF. >> Yep. And I will move to approve uh one-day liquor license applications for January 29th, 2026 and January 8th, 2026 uh submitted by the Long Meadow Adult Community Fund.
>> Second. >> Okay. And are these all in order? >> Leonard Peggy. Okay. Andrew Lamb. >> Yes. Shelley Mandible. >> Yes. Josh Lavine. Yes. Yes. >> Thank you.
>> All right. Uh and we'll get right to the meat of our agenda today. We have three presentations. Uh first up we have the Long Meadow Rev 250 task force and please come on up.
Uh if you could introduce yourself, name and address and uh then please begin. >> My name is Alan McKe 60 William Street. historical society.
The Rev 250 task force um is a collection of folks of uh interest in the history of Long Meadow and the history of our country. It includes quite a varied group members
from Long Meadow Historical Society, the town of Long Meadow, East Long Meadow Historical Commission, the uh Delt Center, First Church, the Long Meadow Historic Commission,
um the Tree Committee, Storage Library, Historic District Commission, the Town of Long Meadow School, schools um town moderator and we have the veterans agent um on in this group and
we have other interested members as well. We've been meeting um several times and we've got another meeting coming up. uh what's happening so far so we bring you up to date is we have a lot of
programs that we have already in the works for between now and the end of June between the library and the Long Adult Center and we're co-promoting a program at the armory
there's 24 programs across those sites already scheduled and we'll have programs across the rest of the year as well. Uh the the website that we have at the Long Meadow Historical Society will soon have
a tab that will be the clearing house for programs and events that are related to the celebration of the 250th. We're not trying to compete with the nation celebration or the state celebration.
This is going to be about what we're doing here in Long Meadow. Um for us, all history is perhaps most um significant when we take it local and
make it real. So we are going to focus on what is happening here in Long Meadow 250 years ago or how it becomes pertinent to today.
To that point, uh Steven Williams, who some of you are familiar with, who was a minister here in town during the time of the revolution, he was not a young man at that time. He had a couple comments to make during this week. For example,
um on January 6, 250 years ago, he wrote, "On the year past, the leaders of our nation have sent troops to subdue and bring us under in this country to bring us to
submit to their arbitrary and tyrannical measures. much blood has been shed and town destroyed and burnt canonated. And then on January 12th, so coming up
next week, he writes, "This day we have a report that the great mortar and some cannon are brought through the woods from Tyiconderoga or Crown Point. What the design is, I know not.
So, what we're doing while we're look looking through Stephen Williams diaries and my wife Betsy is busy reading the diaries every day >> and we are distilling this so that it will be on the website. So, you can be
following this throughout not only this year but for the rest of the eight years that really represent this time period related to the revolution. I know that for many people the celebration of the
250th is all about this year and after July people are going to say what's the 250th but for us it goes through 1783 so we are going to keep this alive on our website now for the other things that we're
going to be involved in doing we're going to have info on our website and we're going to be this clearing house. We're not going to be trying to um judge what projects should be done or
not done and we don't we don't have um a budget. We applied for funding to the state and we're turned down. So all the programs that we are talking about doing, we are self-funding.
the Long Meadow Historical Society, the um adult center and others. These programs are all programs that we are funding ourselves. Um we are going to have these uh online uh history notes that some of you are
aware of. They are going to be throughout the year related to the revolution. We have labels at the historical study that say I was there and it has to do with those objects that were here in Long Meadow at the time of the
revolution. Now, wouldn't it be neat also to have those around town for objects, buildings, and other objects that are related to the time period, and we'd like to involve the community that
way as well. We do have some members in the task force who would like to pull together a big event for Long Meadow. Um that'll depend on whether we can pull together funding at
this late date. Uh there is talk about a time capsule and small parade and things like that. We don't know whether the town has any money that might be available to support this.
We will explore that but uh we invite um interest from others for that event. We are interested in doing something with a flag. This is the flag that we currently are making use of.
We already have this on the uh graves of all of the minute men in Long Meadow that we've identified. We also have been working on making sure that all of the Revolutionary War soldiers both here in
Long Meadow and in what became East Long Meadow are recognized and we still think that some have not been recognized. So, we're busy working on researching all of them. And we think that it would
be very nice by the time we have we come into July to have flags made up that read like this and have these about town if people are interested.
Uh, so that that really is the short version of what's been going to be going on. I don't know whether it'll be this week or next. It'll be something on the website. You'll be able to take a look and then
once it's up, you'll be able to see what's happening at any point. Questions for me? >> Oh, well, thank you very much for coming in. Uh, those the diary quotes were Fascinating. I like to hear that. Um, so
I this is I know you've been working on things for a while and we wanted you to come in to talk to us about what's going on, find out what we can do to help. Um, and I I thought it would be up for discussion if anybody if we wanted to
have a liaison to the committee to the task force uh to to help connect with the select board and uh the town manager's office if there's any helping with funding um or just with uh
the inner workings of the town for permitting any anything we could do to help um because it's uh it's a celebration um but it's a time to look back and uh think about our place in history. Um so I really appreciate you
coming in. Um I I know we have one member who's particularly a history buff who's also a busy man, but uh >> yeah. Yeah. I Ally, I really appreciate all that you're doing and all the people who are behind the scenes as well. I'd love to be a leazison or help in any way
that I could and I'm sure the same goes for my colleagues. But um I have had some informal discussions with some folks about some of the ideas that you have mentioned and I think that I'm just so grateful that you and others are are wanting to make us have a local event.
It doesn't have to be incredibly, you know, ostentatious or anything, but it means a lot to the to all of us just to know how much our town how the part that our town played in this incredible event on a local level. I think that's a very very effective thing um and meaningful
to people as well >> and we do hope that like I say even though there's going to be less interest after this July the truth of the matter is uh the people of Long Meadow 250 years
ago really stepped up and were involved in the Northern Army and their role especially in 1777 was huge. So, we don't want to forget them. >> Great.
>> Have you um talked to the cultural council at all on uh on funding? >> They are actually funding two of our programs this coming year. Yes, they've been very generous. >> Oh, I'm glad to hear that. That's uh this is kind of thing that I think is very important for them to get involved
with. Um any and have you um I know that you're uh talking to the town moderator who's very keed in with the rest of the uh the elected officials in town and the town manager's office. Um have you had any conversations with
any other committees? Uh well I know you mentioned some, but are are there some that you're still looking for for potential funding? I know not all not all of our committees or boards have any >> they don't they don't have funding. You
know they they have if we were to try to do something that involves an event on the green. You know, there's always there always expenses in terms of
stopping traffic and having um a parade or putting up um any kind of boost or having police involved and uh when we went off and having reenactors
um all those things we had hoped to do when I applied for funding through the state. I think most of the funding ended up at the other end of the state. >> Might I suggest um maybe offline you and I could speak or other representatives and then I can also speak to Lynn um
about our upcoming budget and maybe we can see what we can work out. I mean I definitely appreciate and encourage private donations as well from memberships that you have like the historical society and other things but I think that this is something that our
town can and should support. It's not going to be a I don't envision it being like a a huge amount of money probably even necessary to make something meaningful for our town >> and there's going to be a tree planting and you know I think there would be it could be a modest but very thoughtful
and meaningful event and some support would be great but we know after we put on the long meadow days for over 30 years and we know that u it can be very um timeconsuming and very expensive. And
we're not talking about an event that big, but we're talking about something that would be a fun thing for the town to do and uh bring people together. >> Yeah. And there's so much volunteerism in our town as well. There's going to be a lot of people excited about that. It
wouldn't be difficult to do a kind of Memorial Day service like thing that we have often done, which is always very meaningful as well. Um focused on the revolution. So, >> and two other things that kind of tie into this. In the spring, we're going to be moving up in May, we're going to be
moving up our Tales from the Cemetery event and doing that in May instead of in October and focusing on the revolution. And then in the fall, there's going to be a house tour event supporting the library.
And there's going to be a lot of focus on um on the houses and the green and that will also be a time to bring people together. So I think that we can make use of this really as as a
historyelling time. But a lot of people have also taken the focus this is not just about what happened 250 years ago. This is about really what it means to be
um in this country. >> Okay. >> I I didn't mean to speak for the the rest of the board, but uh just Andrew came to mind as a a good I think anybody wants to work with the board. >> Um or the with the task force. I think that
that is >> we should all be involved in this to the extent we can. And I I think that this is it's a great opportunity for the town to come together and do something positive and uh and be proud. >> Yeah. And I and I just want to thank you
both for, you know, taking the initiative to do this and this is really important. And I know that the work that Longman Historical Society does is is really important and such a treasure to our town, especially with Stores House and everything else that you all do. And you know, I'd love to be a supportive as
well. um you know at the very least you know we can help publicize different things like you're talking about with the website um and everything like that but you know even more than that as well. So thank you. Thank you both and looking forward to helping out and supporting the programming for this year. >> Very good. >> Thank you again.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Uh next up on our agenda we have the form of government committee. >> Is this all online? >> Yes. >> Okay. Great. Good. There we go.
Okay, >> good. Good evening. Um, hold on and I will get you a picture. >> Everybody here? Okay. >> Can people hear me? >> Uh, we can hear you. Uh, yes, Michael.
Oh, >> yep. And I just uh Here we go. Well, I'm not quite sure why a picture isn't coming up for me or my uh video my uh face. >> I think we're promoting you to panelist or
>> it's his um video. He has video. >> Oh, okay. >> Once he has a video on, it will change. >> All right. Let me see if it's if I can fix my own video. I can fix my audio.
My apologies. Can uh is uh Andy or uh Tom um are they there? >> Yeah, we can see both of them. >> Hi, Michael. I'm here. This is Andy. >> Yeah, I'm here too. Uh Michael, Tom.
>> Okay. Well, you know what? I will uh why don't I kick it off? Um and then I'll turn it over to you and I'll try to fix my uh camera if anybody wants me to. Um so I uh along with uh Andy Sheen um I'm
Michael Dutton. I'm the co-chair of the Mass Municipal Managers Association form of government committee. Um and our mission essentially is to assist uh cities and towns uh with recommendations and suggestions uh for more effective
governance. Um we respond to outreach from towns when when they uh when they reach out to us and whether it's a wholesale revision uh to the form of government or just simple bylaw changes, we uh we answer the call and uh and
provide advice. Um, I've been, uh, right now I'm the Barnstable County administrator. Barnstable County, one of the few remaining counties, uh, left in Massachusetts. Um, but, uh, prior to that, uh, I was a former town manager in both a city form of government and, uh,
open town meeting form of government. Um, and if it pleases the board, I thought what we would do is Andy and Tom can introduce themselves. Uh, just give you a little bit of their background and then uh uh we could sort of discuss the different different general forms of
government and then uh how you can affect uh how you go about affecting change uh depending on on what you want to do. So uh with that I will uh if it again pleases the chair I'll turn it over to Andy to introduce himself. Yes, please.
>> Thank you, Michael. Uh, good evening everybody. Pleasure to be with you tonight. I'm Andy Sheen. I'm the town manager for the town of Sbury. Uh, I have, like Michael, worked in a number of different forms. I'm currently in a open town meeting strong town manager
form in Sbury, but I've also worked in a um uh in a uh town administrator uh form with open town meeting that had a uh less authority vested in the town
administrator. I've worked in a um strong town manager elected town meeting form, representative town meeting form, and I've worked in a city with a uh council manager form of government, what
we call the the plan form of government in Massachusetts. Tom, >> good evening, folks, and thanks for having us. Uh my name is Tom Dino. I'm uh originally from Greenfield, so I was hoping to be down
in person this evening, but I had to take a couple of days off last week from my job and needed to be here today. So, um I've been a circuit writer. I was a rural development council executive director. I was a town a strong town manager in Vermont. Um was a town
administrator in Bourne. Um that was the first after coming from a full-time select board uh to a town administrator form. That was a fairly weak form when it started. But over the 15 years that I
was there, there were changes made to that charter to bring it really close to a town manager type of government. Um but they instead of doing a whole new charter, they just expanded the role of the uh the town administrator. I'm
currently in Walthleet as town administrator. This is a not a real strong town administrator form here. It's a small town um with a big attitude. Um but and uh so
it's a little different here. Um the good thing is that the select board is very good to work with and they understand the uh limits within the charter. Great. Thank you. >> All right. Well, thank you. I I for some
reason can't figure out my camera, so I'll just plow ahead and um Lynn can tell you what I look like. >> Well, Michael, we'll stipulate you're a handsome lad. >> Oh, well, now I definitely can't turn my camera on.
Um, in any case, so what I what I uh set out uh initially was uh to give you a little brief discussion of the different forms of government. Um, and I think I think you probably know um a little bit about each of these, but uh open town
meeting is uh primarily used by most of the smaller towns in the state. Um it's widely uh widely enough. It's been around since uh since um Meadow was incorporated. It's been around probably a hundred years prior to that. Um so so
it is well well known in Massachusetts, well known in New England, not as well known in other parts of the country. Uh quite frequently when towns get over um a certain size, there's no fixed size, but when they get over a certain size,
they find it more convenient to have uh what's referred to as representative town meeting, which really means instead of everybody showing up uh any any and every uh registered voter showing up for town meeting, uh people elect uh their
representatives to go to town meeting and vote at uh at the um general general town meeting and special town meetings. Um so uh forms of government um what has become slightly more popular although
notice I think there are 13 13 or 14 uh count what are referred to as council manager forms of government u currently in Massachusetts council is by far the most popular form of government in other parts of the country uh certainly out
west and down south uh council manager is sort of the norm. Um it's a usually a council which could be generally anywhere from five members to 15 members. I think there's um I can't remember how many are in Ammeris, but
but Ammeris has quite a few uh counselors on their town council, but uh but the the council hires a professional manager and the professor professional manager is the executive authority and and does uh the day-to-day management uh
of the town, but but generally has a little more authority uh than than you would have in a town meet town manager uh position in an open or representative town meeting form. The council's role is legislative. So if you were to make
comparisons uh between a council manager and and say open town meeting form of government, your council really is that that uh town meeting they're sort of equate and uh and your manager uh is similar to the the select board uh
function in uh in a town. Um, so council manager can be um can be a is technically a city form of government under Massachusetts law. Um, it can be um, uh, referred to as the town of
something or other, but legally uh, in the eyes of the state, it's actually the city of the town known as something or other. So, East Long Meadow, I think you're probably familiar with. technically that's the city known as the town of East Lawn Meadow um for for
legal state purposes. Um and the other the other form is a council mayor form of government and and obviously uh some most of the larger cities in Massachusetts have a council mayor form of government. Um obviously the council
very similar to the council and a council manager form of government elected either at could be at large uh or it could be by district. uh or could be a mix uh of those. And the mayor uh obviously elected um most of the time
elected by the voters in in the community in the municipality. Uh there's some instances where the mayor is elected by the council. Um Cambridge is an example. Um but but the mayor would be elected by the council has in
the case of Cambridge has a little bit more authority than than other uh counselors but uh is essentially one of one of uh the counselors that's been uh elected by uh by his or her peers. Um
most council manager forms of government have uh what's referred to as a council president. So that would that would sort of equate to a mayor a you know, s mayor that's got some uh symbolic uh authority or s uh you know, sort of form for
formalities to to uh go to all the the town functions and represent the council. Um so those very basically the four fours of government. Um and uh and each have their their benefits, each have their detriments. But one of the
things that we like to tell people is that it it whatever form of government uh your community chooses is the form of government that your community chooses. It's a very community ccentric um uh effort. It's a very community ccentric
um decision to make. And so there's no no right or wrong answer in in what form is best for the community. It's it's really what the people people want. So, um, so I that's ran through those very quickly. So, maybe I'll I'll just stop
and and see if, uh, if Andy or Tom want to add anything there or or if there are any questions. >> Well, that was a pretty good explanation. >> Yeah, Michael, I think you covered it. I think we're u we're happy to answer any
questions that the the board may have. So you mentioned a number where you there's no set number where but where you generally see open town meeting go to representative town meeting. Uh what is the range on where you see that?
>> Um I I guess you know I'll tell I'll crack that one. So, the the the um Massachusetts law basically says that if you've got a community of 6,000 people or less, then then you really can't go to a representative town
meeting. Um, I don't think that's Long Meadows issue, but but that's really the only uh the only thing that's set in law about about um, you know, about specific numbers, but you know, you can see uh, representative town meetings anywhere
from probably that 6,000 range um, you know, right up to 30 40,000 people um, or more 60,000 people now that I'm thinking about it. But um but that's you know it's it's a very broad range of uh
population >> and some towns go the other way too just as an example and it's it's just over the line in Brattleboro Vermont but they're they're it's in the local paper the uh they're looking at their elections this year to determine the
fate of representative town meeting or to bring it back to an open town meeting and that's a town of about 13,000. >> Yeah. And as Michael said, there's really no magic number. In other states, there are there are statutory
thresholds. So, you get to 10,000 and you become something else. You become a town or a village or whatever. Um, it's not the same in Massachusetts. And and and that is beneficial because it allows cities and towns or towns to decide what
is most appropriate for them based on not only or not just population but based on the uh the particular characteristics of the community or the um the intricacies and the and the challenges that a community faces. Uh,
one thing that I I would mention is that a lot of communities move they they go towards a change of government or they start to look at changing the form of government when there's a crisis. And as I understand it, that's not the case that you folks
are facing now. U you just kind you kind of have growing pains and and a changing demographic that's encouraging the look, which is which is a good thing. It's it's kind of a the correlary to either buying a car when
you don't need to buy a new car or buying a car because your car died. And so you've got you've got the flexibility to work through uh and really give it the time that it needs to u to make the decision that's right for the community. >> But and I I won't I'm grateful to uh for
you all for coming in today. I think this is an important conversation to have and I I I we're not in crisis. Uh at least as far as I'm concerned, but uh and I I'm glad that um Lynn has connected us and and brought you in here. Uh what I I think why we wanted to
have or I wanted to have this conversation is because every time we have a large important town meeting vote, uh we hear from people that they're upset that they can't go to town meeting. and I uh they have kids, they
have work obligations, and I'm certainly sympathetic to that. Um, but I travel around to a lot of other towns and I do see the the cons of some of the other forms of town government and uh, so we wanted to to talk about that a bit, but
also um, I think get an idea of how these things change because uh, I I know that when we hear complaints about town meeting, it's directed as at us to change
something and that's not how it works. And I want people to get a better understanding of how it works. And um now I've I'll talk about it to somebody until I'm blew in the face, but I I it's helpful to have people who may have had experience with it in other towns and
have seen it work uh to to explain it to people and uh maybe give some I don't want to call them war stories, but uh stories of what they've seen and uh the effects um because there can be consequences that people don't think about uh when they're when they're think
when they're looking when they want things to change. Um because we've had this form government a long time in our town. That doesn't make it mean it's the the best one for us, but we are in kind of a strange spot around 17,000 residents and unless we get a lot of
ADUs, we're not growing at all. So, um that that's that's where we're at. I I definitely don't think we're in crisis, but we have we've been spending a lot of money lately. Uh I think rightly, but not everyone likes that. Um, and but
with town of government, it's who shows up that night. Uh, so if anybody else wants to speak before uh or has any particular questions, I think that would be great. Now, uh, Dan, >> thank Josh and and thank you everybody for for coming tonight. Sorry I couldn't
be there. Um, I guess to to Josh's point, I'm just curious, could you maybe walk us through like some of the scenarios like if there were to be a change in government, what that process would look like? Is it like a ballot question or um I'm just And then the
other question would be the size of the council for example. Would you know could long meadow remain at five? Would it have to go to seven or more for example? >> That's uh that's a great a great question. And so that sort of brings me into the second part of what we were
going to talk about um to the extent that you wanted to know. So uh there there are two uh really three but the two basic ways uh you can use uh to change uh your form of government. One
is uh with an elected uh home ruled uh charter commission. Um and I I'll describe that process uh in a second. And the other one is essentially petitioning the legislature for uh special legislation. Um, so the home
rule home rule uh charter commission uh whole process comes out of the home rule amendment uh to the to the Massachusetts constitution which is article 89 uh I believe and it uh it basically said uh it was came about at a time in the late
60s early 60s mid60s I guess it was um when uh other states were granting their municipalities uh quite a lot of authority um Massachusetts uh made a big show of granting the um the cities and towns a lot of authority.
Uh but really in the in when it comes at the end of the day uh they did not really uh grant a whole lot of authority at all. So uh but one of the things they did do was allow cities and towns to sort of uh self-govern and uh and come
up with their their own form of governance uh with with c within certain guard rails. Um so going that route uh requires uh a s uh you know petition uh from 15% of your uh voter population. Um
once that uh petition gets uh submitted to the the uh the town clerk and those uh signatures are confirmed then the uh select board um can can trigger um a
uh and and that election uh is generally at a an annual town election and it has uh essentially two questions and the first question is do you want to create a an elected charter commission and you know you answer that question the next
question is okay who do you want to sit on this elected charter commission so it's sort of a two two-pronged um election and it's quite frankly confusing to some people. Um, but you you ask the question, do you want to create an elected charter commission?
And then you you let people um you let people um submit um you know their papers to run for the elected charter commission. So one uh once the election is over and presuming that people have said yes we want to elect a have a home
rule charter commission we want to elect a charter commission uh and they have elected the charter commission then that charter commission gets to work and has um at most uh 18 months usually in a town it's more like 10 months uh just to speed things up. they've got 10 10
months to um study your existing charter, determine if there are changes that need to be made or if if wholesale uh as I said earlier a wholesale change in the form of government needs to be made. Um and then that that uh
recommendation gets submitted and that recommendation goes on u the following annual town meeting or sorry the annual town election and the voters decide if they if they want to change uh the form of government or not. So so it's nothing
has nothing to do very little to do with state legislature. Um it's it's purely the uh the registered voters in town that get to make that decision. So, they get to make the decision the whole way through uh whether to have an elected charter commission, who's going to be on
the elected charter commission, and then ultimately whether to accept uh or reject the recommendations of the elected charter commission. So, so that's all referred to as the the home rule charter process.
The second process um can be can be um a little bit quicker um but uh it involves the state legislature. So almost by definition even though the process could be quicker once you mention the state legislature
uh that that immediately you know tells you that it probably isn't going to be quicker. that process. Um the uh select board um and town meeting uh can decide to petition the state uh to do whatever
you're going to petition the state to do. Um allow you to change your form of government. Um adopt a charter that um you know creates you know a council manager form. I'm just using that as an example. Um whatever the case may be. Um
and then the state legislature uh takes that up and having done this a couple of times the legislature will uh council for the legislature will will uh pick apart your proposed charter and uh make
changes and assuming all those uh you know little minutia uh changes are good uh with you then they'll vote that uh and the governor will sign that and then at some period uh outlined in the charter that's just been approved by the
state legislature and the governor. Um you will have um you will implement the charter and have your new form of government. Um they usually it's not required but usually those um special
legislation uh type charters uh come back after they've been approved by the state legislature and the and signed by the governor. they'll come back uh to the local community uh for for uh ballot approval. So again, not required, but uh
I cannot think of of any substantial change in municipal government uh in any town that has not gone back to the voters uh for approval for ratification. So those are those are the two basic ways for for more drastic change. Um,
you can also make make certain changes uh within your bylaws um and and to the extent that the bylaws that you want to create don't conflict with your existing charter um or with state law then then that's another way to to make a little
more incremental change for the form of government. If if I could ask a question please. Um the chair I believe the chair was indicating earlier that you know if you have a meet a town
meeting people are working or they can't get child care or whatever the case may be. Have you offered child care as an option at your town meetings? >> Yeah. So, what really brought this about was our our last we voted on a new
middle school uh our funding for it uh under the MSBA program and we had great attendance and I I I want to say how many kids did we have in child care? >> 50. >> Yeah, there's 50 or so kids in child care. The key the key club has helped
out the last couple meetings. Uh so for the bigger meetings, we do offer child care. Uh, and it's very I I think it is helpful and there's a lot of my kids go to every meeting there. There's kids in there, too. Um, but it's, you know, as a
as somebody in local government, um, I want to see as many people be able to participate as possible. And I I certainly am um sympathetic to people who can't, and I wish everyone could. Uh but that's one of the things that I I try I talk to people about that uh if I
I think that there's maybe a misunderstanding if anybody wants to address this that if we had a different form of government everyone would every question would go to a a full day ballot and that's just not the case to me and
that's so I was wondering if you could address that. >> Um sure. Um so depending obviously depending on what kind of form of government you actually end up choosing um well that it'll depend on what what questions go to the ballot but so you
know mostly um you know the town relies on on a select board to be the executive authority relies on on the town meeting to be the legislative authority. uh with a council manager form of government. Um people and this is a common complaint uh especially you know soon after it
changed you know people lose the ability to vote on very specific issues as they would at town meetings. So they lose the ability to vote uh for a uh for a budget for instance. I mean your budget is your is uh really your most effective policy
document and your uh you know people people um that cherish town meeting are giving up that that opportunity to vote um for the budget or for projects or for you know community preservation um funding all sorts of things. Um so but
against you know that loss um you get consistency and and you know I I joined a town uh soon after it had changed his form of government and about a year into it I was hearing a lot of complaints about how we don't get to you know
voters don't get to go to town meeting and I I went back and I started looking at the financials for the for the prior years and I noticed that you know in year one the fire department would get a huge bump and then in year two the
schools would get a huge bump and then and it kind of would bounce back and forth mostly between those two those two departments. Um and I realized that that the fire department could pack town meeting and and you know they could they
could affect the vote. Um and then the schools, you know, needing additional funding could pack the meeting um and and generate votes uh for the schools and and there's nothing wrong with that. Um but it doesn't provide a lot of consistency when you're trying to manage
the finances of a town uh because you're you're you know constantly overinflating um uh you know your budget um without really looking at a looking at it in a hard sort of reasoned uh fashion. So so
there there are good good things you know you can you can have some more stability in your in your uh town government. Um, but then there are things that you lose and and people will will uh sometimes um complain that
they're losing their ability to go to town meeting to actually make a vote. >> Yeah, I'm certainly not uh trying to advocate one way or another and that I think you you make an important point that it is there's pluses and minus to to every form of government. Um, and I
in a way I'm glad it's so hard to change it because if we were ever going to change, I I want it to be a process where a lot of time is spent on it and a lot of a lot of heads get on get in on it. Um, so uh
and I, you know, you talked about the petitioning the legislature and I think uh we we don't get a lot of love on our side of the state. I I wouldn't really bank on that going through. So, um but I'm glad you gave the explanation. I I I didn't even realize that was a
possibility. >> Go ahead, Andy. I'm sorry. >> I think Michael was gonna answer. >> All right. Sorry, Michael. I no I was just going to say um that you know if if that's sort of the outlook and I get the sense that Long Meadow as Andy pointed
out you know isn't in a crisis you know there's not a disaster brewing it's just you're you're doing the right thing and you're exploring every kind of of different form of government every possibility how you could improve things how you could make things better how you could make things easier for the folks that have to come out uh and vote at a
at a special or or uh annual town meeting. Um, one of the the the way I would recommend going through it if that's, you know, if you're if you do end up going through a process, um, is probably going through an elected uh,
charter um, uh, home rule charter process. um that will give you um you know even though the you know the steps are really very specifically laid out in the law um that will give you uh a better idea a better representation of
the voters um at the table and it will give you uh the time to really flesh out uh all the issues that that may or may not be brewing. But it really it really does it's a better a better mechanism to um to really solicit what people in town
are are thinking. >> I just wanted to add if I could um if you were to look to a representative town meeting I've worked in both representative and open town meeting forums. I've not worked with a council
manager form. um representative town meeting takes a little work. Um the the precinct representatives need some education on what their role is. They need to be able to have meetings
within their precinct to get um or their ward, however you you bring it out down there. Um, so there's a there's a little bit of expectation of responsibility on a representative town meeting member more than there
would be in an open town meeting member because that person is responsible for how however many people are in the precinct uh to get their views to the town meeting. So, and there's a little more pre-work on the town side, um,
getting those packets available and distributed to the representative town meeting members, having a meeting with them before the town meeting, just like you'd have a pre-T town meeting, but it just takes a little bit. There's a little bit more coaching at the beginning that needs to be done.
>> Is there a typical number of residents that each representative uh, represents? >> Well, I if I could, in my hometown of Greenfield, when it had a representative town meeting, they had nine precincts
um and there were 27 members per precinct. >> So, they had um there were nine representatives that were elected in three-year terms that were staggered, nine every three years. So, it was a pretty big representative town meeting.
If you go, you know, 30 by 9 is 27 about 260. About 260. >> That's what we get at our town meetings now. >> Yeah. >> Well, and you wouldn't need to have 27. You could have >> sure >> five. You know, that would be a number
that the town would pick during its charter review phase. >> That That's a It's important to to point out that's a decision that is a local decision. >> Yeah. how big your uh your precinct representation is. The community I
worked in with a representative town meeting had I believe 18 per precinct. So there were 162 at the time that I was there. And um and so and to Tom's earlier point, it takes a little bit more work, but your your work is more
focused. >> Yes. So, in the case of 162 reps or whatever the number is, you're just dealing with uh you you just need to educate that >> that group. Um and you know who's going to be at town meeting and to to
Michael's point, you don't get a a uh town meeting hijacked by a special interest group. And I've I've seen it with schools and public safety and uh you know leash law opponents and
supporters and gun rights and all that stuff. So um so you have a you have a more uh limited number of uh people that that you need to educate and because they're there and you can expect them year after year. You don't you're not
starting at zero ground zero every year in bringing people up to speed on the budget for instance. Um I I just had one more question and um it goes back to what Dan asked about the
uh the number of town council members if if that's the way we went. Uh just more broadly, are there any guard rails on what we could do if we did a charter commission? Um whether could we do a council mayor if we want or are we too small? Or are there any guidelines on
how many council members we have uh based on our population? Anything like that? No, you you really could, you know, you're you're above all the thresholds. So, the threshold for um you know, for a city form of government, which is either a mayor, council or or council manager,
um I believe is 12,000. So, so you're above that. May have gone up to 15, but I regardless you're above that. So, so really you if you were to change your form of government, you could you could opt for any of the forms um uh really
and without a problem. >> Okay. Um any other questions from the rest of the board? >> No, this was helpful. >> Uh anything else uh you'd like to leave us with? Um, no. I apologize for uh for not
having a camera that works, but probably your cruise to your benefit. >> We got to focus on your words. >> That's even worse. >> Well, I >> No, I I we do appreciate it and uh and
if we can be of any more assistance, um you know, Lynn knows where to find us. Um, I assume we're going to be all of us will be most of us will be at uh the Mass Mass Municipal Connect 351 um uh towards
>> Yep. >> I I I found this very helpful u and I see some nodding heads from the rest of the board. So, um yeah, this has been great and I hope uh it's helpful to people in our town who are curious about this kind of thing. Uh, it's And Lynn,
what is our what is 15% of our voting population? >> You're gonna put me on the spot with that. >> I had the number at some point. I >> Yeah, >> 1400 or something like that. >> It's that sounds right. >> Yeah. Um, so if anybody's watching and curious, uh, that's a lot of signatures,
but it can be done. >> So, all right. Well, thank you all so much for coming with us, coming to us tonight. We really appreciate it and for your time, uh, serving. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> Pleasure. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. >> Good night. >> Good night, folks. >> Good night.
>> Okay. Uh, and onto our third presentation. We have Fibers. Got a whole bunch of people sitting in the back. Yeah, please. If we want to pull up other chairs for anybody, so we'll have to figure it out. >> If anybody else, there's plenty of extra chairs if you want to pull them over from there.
Um, yeah, it would be great if Well, actually, no, if you don't mind, uh, >> I'll just say next slide if that's okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay, that's great. >> You want her to start with this one, though? >> Yes, please. >> All right. Well, good evening. Thanks for having us
back. I think we were here about a year ago. Uh thereabouts, right? About about a year ago. Um so if you could just go to the next slide. Um be well before we start, we have a team. Uh we have Kelly from customer service and marketing. We have John Hine who's our chairman of the
board and a former select board member for the town of South Hadley. Many many years of service like like you all provide. Mike and Carrie, our financial manager, um, who's done a lot of the financial analysis for you in this presentation, Adam St. Martin, who's our director of
operations and, uh, really is kind of taking over the charge of project management for Sheld, and Lee Masters, our network engineer and supervisor, telecom supervisor, and myself, the general manager of South Electric and
Fiber Springs. So glad to be back. Okay. So, um we can make this interactive too if you have questions and want to stop and ask. Go ahead. Um can we just go back to Yeah. Uh the previous slide? Sorry. History. Great. So, uh just a
little recap. In in May of last year, you all took the first vote out of two to form a municipal light plant. So, you are a a a foreign municipal light plant. In September of 2024, your municipal uh fiber task force recommended the partnership with us,
South Hadley Electric, to support the planning, design, and building of the fiber to the home network in Long Meadow. We thank you for that, for the confidence. Um, in November of 2024, you took a second vote to form a municipal
light plant and appropriate funds to uh commence engineering uh design and pole application. And that was a believe a town vote where you appropriated those funds. Oh, good. >> You good?
>> This way. Yes, please. Okay, so I'm going to turn this over to Adam. Um, but in summary, a lot's been done since last year. Uh, we've been working on your project for roughly 12 months and let Adam take it away and Lee jump in where necessary. Talk about the
design and engineering. >> Yeah, thank you, Sean. So, just kind of walking through what what we've worked on for the engineering and design. So, you know, essentially we get our right off the jump, we get our boots on the ground out there, and we had individuals out walking the 91 miles of uh of
circuit that's uh available here in the town of Long Meadow. Um, you know, 34% of the town is underground. Well, 66 is about is is overhead at this point. So that's part of the data collection process that then rolls into the development and the submission of the poll applications to both uh Verizon and
Eversource for 20 uh 2,268 polls for a total of 54 applications developed and submitted. Part of the process include the identification of a central office location. I'll talk about that in a second. Uh the establishment of the fiber service areas. I've got
another slide that talks about that a little bit. um really looking to include engineering design uh efforts to be able to provide fiber to each and every one of the customers or passings within the town. So um as we developed the engineering the consideration and part
of the boots on the ground evaluation was to count all the passings and make sure that we had sufficient fiber to support access for all those individuals. Um on the right hand side I just want to take a quick moment. That's that's the architectural that we're recommending here. It's a centralized um
pond network. So really what it does is it manifests itself from the the central office headquarters and then proliferates throughout the town. Each of the fiber service areas gets what's called the fiber distribution cabinet and that's where the fiber splits to provide service for each of the town.
The benefit that we found with the centralized split is that really is truly on on the uptake uh the the maintenance the response and um uh troubleshooting. So it allows us to get identify an issue a problem quicker and get a resolution whole focus around this
is maximizing uptime for the customer. So a centralized split provides a better option for us to be able to identify, troubleshoot and minimize truck rolls. So it comes the benefit of this design comes after the back end >> and that's the design that we utilize. And there's some other ones like home
run which is all the way to the customer all the way back to the head end very expensive >> right >> and there's the other one which is a little less expensive but a little more cascade split which is >> uh not in our we don't believe it's the best choice uh for ongoing maintenance.
>> So we kind of picked the middle of the road and we're suggesting that for yourselves as well. >> Right. Is that um that the street cabinet or vault whatever where the splitter is are those above ground >> things are they an existed are they in
existing ones or is that new things that we put in town? >> No they're new they're um they're cabinets essentially they use there are some that are pad mount which are on the ground there's some that are aerial mount depends on the neighborhood. So if the neighborhood's all underground we wouldn't hang on on a pole you'd have to
be outside that that neighborhood. So, we would just build it on a path and they're usually about this tall. They're pretty small. >> The aerial pole ones are about I don't know 2 ft by 12 in. I think they're >> they're pretty small. >> And they're mounted high enough on the
poles where you can't you know public can't access them readily. So, but those house for each of the FSAs. Those house the split where the distribution cable comes into that neighborhood and then provides an optical output for each of the passings within that FSA.
>> So those and if there's a problem there, that's where the tech will go and they call it shooting light and they'll shoot light from that cabinet all the way to to the house to the house and they'll be able to identify if there's a break or there's a problem. And so we like this design. It's uh more efficient and uh we
recommend it. When you put in those cabinets, is there a hookup for every house in the neighborhood or every place where there could be a house? Yes. >> Even if it's not one for every house, >> right? >> So each of the >> If you if you expand So yeah,
>> if half the people have signed up, do you just do that or can you expand from there? >> So each of the FSAs is broken out and the maximum customer count is what? 288 >> customers. We try to refill to 250, >> right? >> So allows you the opportunity to have
additional fibers for new developments, new housing, things along those lines that come into that neighborhood. So you have those spare fibers that are sitting there waiting for the additional um customers to come into the neighborhood. But >> yeah, there's some growth built in. >> Yep.
>> And this is a two gig uh design. XG pod, right? >> XG pod is a 10 gig. >> 10 gig. But each house could get two gig >> they could theoretically get.4 gigs, >> right? But but we're we're building this actually with more robust uh design and
we actually started with ourselves and we're going this way ourselves. >> Yeah. >> So there's really three main pod architectures. There's GP which is been around for about 15 20 years. That's coming to the end of it life. Everyone's moving to the next PE which is existing
now which is XGS pond and then beyond that is 50 gig pond which is just now starting to uh be developed. They're starting to get chips for it now super expensive. This is what we're moving to. This is pretty much what everyone's moving to. My question was going to be
if we ever wanted to upgrade to the the is is what we're putting in place now going to make it easier for us to upgrade and not kind of have to redo the infrastructure because we know how fast the technology moves and so just >> whatever we I think you said it kind of getting us at the sweet spot but then if
we were to want more is it going to be easier for us? >> Yeah, XGS right now is expecting for about 15 years before they're going to start to really think about moving to something else like where the where the vendors are going to start pushing it. >> Okay. So like end of life like >> Yeah. End of sale type of stuff. Um
>> um so >> talk about the fiber versus the equip. >> Yeah. So the fiber will be in place. >> Infinitely scalable. So the fiber itself is infinitely scalable. It's really just the components you attach to the fiber. >> Okay. They change the electronics. >> All right. Thank you. >> And that's what you're reinvesting in.
>> Okay. >> Next slide, please. So on to the central office or you know the brains of the operation so to speak. So this is you know this is a and if I'll turn your attention to the the picture on the right hand side there this is the
location that we are currently proposing for the central office here for the long middle fiber. Um it's just on the end of the athletic or the tennis courts by the by the high school. Um positioned adjacent to the existing I think it's Verizon infrastructure that's in place right there. So, we kind of blend in
nicely, I think, and through a sighting process. It also offers um two redundant feeds of fiber um one from Bliss Road and I think one from William Street um to to feed into that as a as a failover. So, you know, redundancy, reliability are some of the considerations that we
look at when we're selecting location for this one and two proposing what we're proposed here. You can see an example of the concrete hardened structure that we're proposing. This is, you know, capable of withstanding seismic loads and and heavy snow loads and and other infrastructure falling on
it. It's HVAC temperature controlled. It's locked. It's safe, secured. There's a backup generation. So, Ever Source will provide primary power and backup generator provides alternative source on it. And in inside of this is where you're housing all of your OOLT equipment, your optical line terminal.
This is your head-end gear that takes the it's really the the point where Long Middle Fiber meets the middle mile network provider uh for your service within the town. So, it's from here that everything then branches out into into the neighborhoods into all those
cabinets we talked about and then into each and every one of the residents and c and commercial customers in town. So the recommendation we have here again is is really focused on making sure that this is a resilient and reliable location to house this critical
infrastructure. You have options to put it other places. Um but you know one of the things is is this is going to be really the control cabinet for all of the long metal fiber infrastructure and it's where you want to make sure you're keeping your uptime and that you're not having any issues with this equipment
functioning for the customer. So um so this is the central office and and the proposed location here on Bliss Road. If you can go to the next slide, please. So couple of just visuals of the data collected. On the left, you'll see that you know one of the steps that we take
through the engineering process is to collect G uh the GPS coordinates of each and every one of the poles that's in town that supports the pole application process. So on the left is a picture of all the poles that the town has and on the right hand side you can see the neighborhoods and areas uh differentiating between overhead and
underground infrastructure. Orange is the underground, overhead is the blue. Um when you're doing these types of buildouts, overhead neighborhoods are typically cheaper to access. So this information helps us then put a strategic plan in place about, you know,
where we recommend to to start building out first. uh you know whether it's based on interest but also uh construction costs things along those lines. So you go to the next slide please. A couple more uh examples of some of the engineering that went into this. So on the lefth hand side we
talked about 27 fiber service areas that the town's broken up into. That's really based again on customer counts and having a total capacity of 288. We're building out to that 230 to 250 range to allow for future growth. So you'll see each one of the 27 identified in there.
Um the star red star represents the location of the central office and the blue dots represent the location proposed locations of the fiber uh distribution cabinets. Um so one fiber distribution cabinet supports each of the fiber service areas in town. And
then on the right hand side here it's just a snapshot of what the engineering detail is drawn down to. It shows shows essentially it shows a fiber path to each and every one of the fiber homes. So, this is built up the entire town and I believe we've provided that to the
town at this point. So, next slide, please. Um, I'm going to turn this one over to Kelly. >> Thank you. So, this is just um a brief little glimpse into what our the website looks like. So, our main page is our
website and there's an option for residents to go to a link that says not in South Hadley and it gives them a drop down and they can click on Long Meadow and what will come up um is on the page there's a link that uh links back to the town of Long Meadows website, the fiber
task force page. Um if anyone has any other questions, we can always enhance that if we want to put specific if specific questions are coming up that you kind of want people to see right off the bat. We can always update what's on that page. Um, but what a customer will do is they can click to show their
interest and once they do that it will bring them to that left lefthand side screen where they'll start to type in their address. Um, it will start to prepopulate the address. So, they just click on that. It will ask them for some basic information, name, address, email
address, and a phone number, ways to contact them when the service becomes available. Um, and this is a tool that we use to and we can share with um, Long Meadow to let you know where the interest is. Um, customers information if you want to market certain to market
to certain people. Um, if you decide to do like a marketing campaign, you want to send postcards, whatever you might want to do. Um, and in the background, you can see it a little bit, but there's a map of the of Long Meadow, and it's broken up into those fiber serviceverse areas that Adam talked about. So you can
hover over those when you're on the site and it will tell you the name of that fiber service area. Um so if you know where you live geographically or if you know once you submit your interest it will tell you what neighborhood you're in. Um you can see you know the status there's gathering interest under
construction connected applications being accepted. Um and those can change based upon whatever long meadow wants to call those. Those are the ones that we use through the process. and the map changes colors so people know there's a color for construction, there's a color for gathering interest. So right now it's all just gathering interest. So
it's all the same. Um there's also an option to put the percentage of interest for each fiber service area so people can see. So when you start to construct people understand why this area has 10% and this area has 86%. This is why we chose to go to that area that had the
most interest. Um, it's very easy and then it also gives the customer an email back to let them know that we've gotten their interest. >> Um, >> and it tracks on the back end. It gives a lot of data analytics. >> And this is the exact same technology we used uh to do our project as well very
effectively. >> Yep. >> Yep. That's just a little bit little bit about the website. >> And it's already built as you know. It's built for you. Ready to go. Uh, ready to go. >> Yeah, it's live. Um, we're working on updating on your page the fiber spring logo to long metal fiber. Um, it's like
a hardcoded area, so it takes a little bit longer. Um, but everything else is live and like I said, if there's specific questions that you want to address on that main page, things that come up frequently, things you want to share, um, we took the pricing off because that was our pricing. We wanted to make sure that your page did not say
anything about our pricing. I know you haven't decided any of that yet. Um, but kind of like an FAQ section. If you decide you want to do something like that, we can add that right into that. So that's what people see when they first click on not in South Hadley. They go to the Long Metal page and it would
have um any information you wanted to put out there. >> That's good. Next, please. >> Thank you. >> So, so um you know, we talked about you've established an MLP. That's a great accomplishment. Um you've taken a
town vote to hire us and move forward with engineering and design and poll applications. We've done that for you. That's complete. Um the uh poll applications have been submitted to Eversource and Verizon. Those are your third party pole owners in town. And
we've done refined cost projections. Um and we're going to present those in a minute. So we've done one round of cost projections. Now we've done a second round of cost projections with more detailed information. Now that we have the exact poll counts and poll data, uh
what's next for you? Um this is you've done a lot, right? So now what's next is we need to get make ready costs from these pole owners to get a refined number. Uh we need to refine our cost projection one more time. Uh the town needs to decide and take a vote
authorizing funding for make ready work in construction. That's a big decision that you are now needing to make. Um then once that would happen you would authorize make ready work and that make ready work would require that the third party pole owners Verizon and Eversource
get on the pole move stuff around so that we have the required uh uh space to put the communications on the pole. Um and then we would begin sighting permitting and constructing a central office you know if financing is authorized. And this is the same process
we all went through. The only difference is we did our own make ready work. In this case, we rely on these other providers. Um, the next slide, please. Okay, with that said, we're going to take you Mike's going to take you through these two uh fiber uh plant
reviews for financial review. >> Okay, this is probably a little bit familiar from when we were here the last time. Um when we were here the last time, we we kind of looked and said we thought it was going to be about a $25 million build. Um that it would it would
really fly at 50% take rate at $85 per subscriber. Since we now have all the new data that's changed a little bit, we think the construction cost realistically is going to be between 27.2 and 30 million depending on what your take rate is. The
higher the take rate, the higher the cost. Um, and that we think you're going to still need 50% but maybe at $90 a subscriber instead of 85. Um, because construction costs are going to
be incurred con incurred before the project's actually making money. Um, and you're going to have to borrow before the revenues from the project are going to be sufficient to cover it. you're going to have to come up with um an
amount of money to cover the cash flow deficit during construction and the initial years of operation. And I tried to give you an idea that if you only have a 40% rate, you're going to need 4.3 million and it's probably going to
be 14 years before you hit a a cash flow positive position. And it the higher the higher the take rate, the the better um the payback, the sooner. Again, these are all projections, but
they're projections based on our own experience, what we went through. And I just want to take a moment to emphasize, you know, people may look at that and say, "Wow, that's really not great." But you have to remember, you're building a utility. you're building a 50 to 100year utility and it's not an easy task but
it's a great task if you can accomplish it and so when you look at 14 years 8 years I mean it's pretty good if you can if you can hit those numbers that's really good for building a uh telecom communications distribution network
>> and I just wanted to to point out that you know one what John had mentioned earlier you know we still have the make ready costs from Eversource and Verizon what it's going to cost to make the adjustments on the infrastructure on the poles. We've assumed about $2,000 a pole
at this point. That number could be higher or lower depending on what we get back. So that that's going to drive that next iteration of revisions to these projections was that last piece of data uh from Eversource and Verizon. So, >> and just to put things in perspective,
you're really looking at a forever asset. Um, if you look at Sheld, we're going into our second century of operations and that can be the same for your MLP. >> Next slide, please.
>> Yeah. And um, we just threw some some uh key separations between Long Meadow Fiber and competition, right? You have a lot of third party uh, ventures out there. What's different? What's different about us? It's local control is the key. It's uh in our opinion
superior customer service. Community connection. You're you're building your own fiber plant that you will own and you have a partnership with a local municipal light plant. You are not a a large corporation that you're dealing
with that will come and build in the honey holes where they could just derive revenue and then then then walk away from the other portions of town. You're you're controlling where you build. You're controlling how you manage this project. We have done this. Our chairman of the board has been every step of the
way making these decisions that you're making. So that's a big distinguishing thing about us versus some of these others uh that we've talked about in the past. Yeah. That and I think it's important to emphasize too the the you know the the customer service aspect.
It's local. It's here. It's our folks as well as the response uh itself. So if there is an issue, if there is a problem, our teams are usually out there same day, if not next day, to help customers work through resolutions. And we've walked into houses before and flipped the switch on their power strip
because it was off, you know, said enjoy your day, sir. You know, make sure all your equipment comes back up. But that's that's the kind of steps. >> Yeah. Two weeks, we'll get to you in two weeks maybe. Or you get a bot, you know, it's it's none of that. You're getting humans on the phone. So >> next slide, please, >> Lee.
>> Oh, yeah. So, um, this really circles around why we chose what we chose for design. Um, so there's all types of different cables. You can go with ADSS cable, which is all all dialectric,
self-supporting, um, which is cheap and fast. You can install that stuff. You could put up 10,000 ft in a day. Um, whereas with Mass Strand, which is what we chose, it's 5,000 ft a day roughly. Um,
but the big difference here is that once you put this stuff up, it's up with ADSS. Um, it takes branch strikes, uh, wind, all kind of stuff, and it starts to sag. It comes down real easy. Um, you can have a tree come down and the tree
will take out ADSS. Whereas with messenger strand, it it's supported by the steel wire, so it doesn't really come down as easily. Um, and you know, I've been doing this for a long time, and this is the standard that we use pretty much everywhere that I've worked,
and there's reasons for it in town. Um, you know, we'll have a tree come down. It'll take up power lines, but it hits our stuff and stops on the on the mess. I'm not saying it's, you know, indestructible by any means. It can break, but it definitely helps with maintenance costs. You're not constantly
going out fixing sagging distribution cables. you're not having to go out and, you know, shift slack. You want to do splicing. Splicing is easier on um stranded wire because you can you can slack it inside the span whereas ADSS
you can you have to slack it up on a hole which means you have to boom up to work in it. So you have to put special equipment. Um it's just um messenger strand really is just um the way to go. It's stronger. It has less cost overall
in the long run. has less cost. >> It's really built for New England, you know, the weather and the conditions that we have up here. And what you'll see with some of the, you know, some of the competition that comes in is, you know, they're they're all about trying to get stuff done that's very quick, cheap, and dirty. And unfortunately, it
doesn't have that same level of reliability. And, you know, when you guys are going up and and and and you're trying to battle the incumbents out, keeping out the uh the competition in there, it's really comes down to that reliability component. how quickly, what's the uptime? We're making sure that our customers aren't getting
impacted, they're not seeing down times, and if we're seeing something, we're responding and resolving it quickly. That's that's the process that we've got put into when South Hadley was built, the fibers ring was done, as well as the the the mindset behind the design and the considerations here for long metal
fibers design. So, next slide, please. >> Kick this one back over to Kelly. >> Yeah. >> Um, yeah. So, we've talked about it a few times, but we have um local technician support. So, our technicians work for South Hadley Electric. So, they
work out of South Hadley, so they're local. It's not somebody that we're calling from, you know, New Hampshire to come down and help service our customers. Um we do, um have a lot of our inquiries from customers are resolved remotely. Um, so we have
managed equipment that we supply as part of our package to our customers, which allows our uh tech support to do a lot of things remotely to try to walk customers through things, to try to resolve issues over the phone. And I would say probably like close to um like
80% of our calls in are resolved remotely. We don't roll a truck very often and if we do, sometimes it's just for extra customer education. um uh professional and local fiber technicians. Um again, work in South
Hadley. Typically, if a customer calls in, we are there the same day. If they're out of service, we don't want our customers to be out of service. Um or the next day, um worst case scenario. Um and then the 24/7 365 low live local customer service. Um so we have that all
the time, 24 hours a day. They can call in, they're going to talk to somebody local, they're going to talk to a human. they're not going to go through all kinds of prompts. Um, and they will escalate that up if we need further eyes, like a tier 2, um, support level.
Um, we also, um, you know, we really pride ourselves on the level of service we offer our customers. Um, we do surveys that we send out to our customers. We send it a week after they're installed, 3 months after they're installed, and a year after they're installed, trying to get feedback. Um and we recently started
doing an annual um survey for all of our customers that are connected because you know sometimes people might have something that is frustrating them and it happens very sporadically and it might remind them to call us so that they're not they're not then be frustrated any longer if you have something going on. Um so and you know
again you're going to talk to our team at the office. Um there's three of us in customer service currently. Um, and you're going to talk to one of us if you call. >> And we have an extended help desk as well. >> Correct. >> We have a technical support. >> Technical support.
>> Mhm. >> Next slide, please. >> Um, so, you know, a little bit of discussion here. A couple of examples that we've we pulled together about, you know, the the the market that the fiber world is in currently. So, you know, what makes fiber very unique is the
future proof technology. Sean had mentioned it earlier. infinitely scalable. Once the infrastructure is hanging in the air, you can pump as much. We don't know the limitations that the that fiber optic has, but it's all really about the head-end equipment and the uh equipment at the customer's end
of the side house that limits how much data could flow through these things. Um and and for that reason and and that's been established globally now across the world these fiber optic backbones that are helping and going into place to support you know future AI um future
data centers all these technologies that are coming up. So, you're not going to see that overtaken by 5G or satellite technologies. Um, those will still be um susceptible to interference, disruption, uh whether it's weather for satellites or or just latency and issues associated
with that trying to push wireless to 5G. Um, you know, some of the projections that they have here, you could see current market is about 19 and a half billion projected to 53.8 8 by 2035, you know, and you can see the subscriber
counts double currently about 22 million today to up to about 20 um the 45 million by 2033. So there's just a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of data and input and infrastructure and money that's been
spent on fiber optic backbone. So, it's not going to be easily taken over by any of these other options. >> And more is coming and AI and data centers are coming and um we get calls all the time about our network to sell it. I get calls all the time from
venture capitalists who want to buy our network. That just tells you that there's value. People want to buy it. They just want to own fiber. So, a lot of money is being poured. That 53 uh billion is real. like there's money
being poured into the fiber uh business right now. >> Uh next slide. Um yeah, I'll just grab this. So, so Mass Live put an article out to capture the sentiment of customers around cable,
right? And it's no surprise that right here in Long Meadow, you have a 40.7% loss of cable subscribers. People are dumping cable. They are uh cord cutting. They're taking their content over the top as we call it or cord cutting. They're streaming their content, be it
Netflix, be it uh Hulu, whatever it is, they're no longer using that traditional cable box. Um the state data shows that the the subscriptions in mass have fall almost 45% from their peak dropping 2.119 million
in 2013 to fewer than 1.2 million in December of 2024. That is a cliff that just keep keep on happening. So we believe that the uh concern or the risk around fiber is no longer a concern or a
risk. That's that's what that really tells you. Um next slide please. >> And just you know to reiterate this is South Adley and the the loss in South Adley is 56%. And that coincides with our take rate which is at about 54%.
So we have taken 54% of an incumbent market share in South Hali in 5 years time. That blue chart is up to 3,000 customers on the verge of and it's still going and and and so we see that this
technology is just going to continue to take market share around the nation and it's happening locally and the numbers don't lie. you know, you you can see what's happening. So, this is just more support for your decision. So, that when you're making this decision, is this a
risk? It is, but not when you look at what's happening in in the nation with fiber and cable. Um, next slide, please. >> That's it. >> Yeah, that's it. Okay. And that's it. That's all we had.
I'll just uh add that um um you know being on the select board on the municipal life board in 2019 uh when we took that vote I know the other board members were um anxious and
I I turned to one of them I said you know won't be long before Sheld is going to be a fiber internet service provider that just happens to provide electricity as Well, um they laughed, but we are on
a road to that end point. Um 53% take rate in about 5 years. Our modeling was done on a 40%. So, we're ecstatic. We we've met that and we we've exceeded that and we're now producing a new
revenue stream and it is such a community asset. We had we had a an outage that impacted some people and somebody jumped on the South Hley Graanby community page and complained about service fiber spring
service. Well, the slew of comments that came back saying, "We don't know what you're talking about. Our service is great. We love it. You can go back to Comcast if you want." Um there's just that community feeling that this is a real valuable asset in our town and they
are very satisfied. Our customer service reviews come back with very very high ranking. So it is a community asset and um it's going to be an asset for a very long time. >> Great. Uh thank you guys all you know
for coming in for this presentation. Um I said a few things that I just kind of wanted to highlight and just kind of um you know maybe just to add some of the context task force um you know can provide as well through our work. Um if if we could Peggy if you go back to
slide nine the uh financial slide. Um because I just wanted to kind of highlight some things on that slide just to make it really clear for our residents here.
Yep. That one. Yep. So, when you're looking at this slide, >> okay, and looking over to the graphic on the right side, that last line I think is the one that's really important. The project cash flow deficit to cover. So,
you know, you look at the total project cost of this and it's between 27 to 30 million. But this is also a capital project that is unlike any other capital project that we have uh in that this is actually producing revenue. So although this is a 27 to $30 million project,
most of that is going to be covered through subscriber fees. So that that line at the bottom right there, the you know 43% at a 40% take rate. Um 2.4 2.4 million at a 50% take rate. 1.5 million at a 60%
take rate. Right? That's the number that is going to that's what it's going to cost the town. Um, you know, and most towns that have tried to do this and I think would be uh maybe best for us is to do this through a debt override. Um, and above that you see the year 14, year
8, year 87. That's really the amount of time that that amount of money needs to be raised over. So you're talking about 4.3 million over 14 years, 2.4 million over eight years, uh 1.5 million over seven years. That's what the town will have to cover. And the 40% take rate was
used because although uh towns don't really publish these numbers, they don't have to publish these numbers. You know, I think through our work and our relationships that we have with other municipalities and talking to other municipalities, 40% seems to be the floor of what towns get. Um they get at
minimum 40%. And so that's really kind of what you're looking at as like the worst case scenario for this project is that the town would have to cover $4.3 million of this project. Um, and then I think the other unique part about what makes this project much different than
other capital projects is that we are offering our residents an opportunity to take a monthly bill that they already have. Everyone already pays a monthly internet bill and to replace that bill with something that's most likely going to be much cheaper for them. Um, and so
when we're talking about reducing costs or making it more affordable to live in Long Meadow, like this is a way to make it more affordable to live in Long Meadow in the long run is because we're actually lowering, you know, a family's monthly budget uh through doing this. Um, and so that also makes this very
unique. And then, you know, on top of it, you're giving folks a a lower internet monthly a monthly a lower monthly internet bill and providing a much better product and much better service. um on top of that. So I think that's really important um you know to
just kind of hone in on and and to really recognize when talking about the cost of this project. Um and then you know Sean and Adam did a great job talking about um why fiber is the technology of the future and this is obviously a question that we had on the task force was we're not going to ask we
don't want to ask the town to borrow $30 million if this technology is going to become obsolete in you know 15 20 years. And you know what we kept finding over and over again is that phrase that fiber is future proof. Um, and I think the
best way that I heard it explained to me was that when electric wiring was first put up in towns, people put it up with the intention of bringing light to homes. They never would have dreamt that that's those same electric wires would
one day be powering televisions or dishwashers or everything else that makes a home run. And that's the same thing with fiber optic cables is that the technology on both ends will advance and they will become better and they will make the internet more reliable.
They'll make it faster. Um, but you need that basic infrastructure there to make that work. And on top of that, what we also found was there's a lot of developing technology around fiber optic cables. So uh you know right now there's technology being developed that where
you can use fiber optic cables to run traffic studies because fiber optic cables can um actually detect vibrations and then you'll be able to run a traffic study or uh things like fiber optic cables will be uh one day be able to sense when a water man is failing or
maybe a public utility is failing and be able to uh you know alert the town that something is about to fail. So there's a lot of other uses for fiber optic cables. um other than just internet um which is also I think something that's exciting and will make uh you know this investment that much more important um
and then also I think you know Sean and Adam touched on this people you know ask us all the time about 5G or satellite like Starlink and for the reasons they mentioned you know these those I mean you're talking about radio frequency basically with 5G you're talking about
you know satellite signal that is never going to be able to compete with a fiber optic cable that is inside of your home that is streaming, you know, uh, signals that are infinitely scalable, like it'll never be able to compete with that. And,
um, you know, also kind of what they touched on, this is something that everybody is really recognizing in the European Union right now, the EU has a goal to connect every home in Europe to fiber by 2030. Um that is how especially
with AI with everything that's happening with the amount of data that we are going to need this is you know this is what is this is where we're headed and this is what you know the investments right now um are being made in and need to be made in um and then um I think in
uh you all Lee talked about some of these private parties that come in um you know we've seen folks like goet speed gateway try to build out um in Western Mass. And part of the and I and I've said this a few times, part of the
advantage that we had in kind of being a little bit behind some of the other communities of Western Mass uh that were moving towards fiber is we got to learn a lot from what they did and and what their results were. And you know, we also interviewed uh private companies um
to see if that they would make sense for Long Meadow. And there were just so many reasons why I think, you know, I going with a private company was just uh unanimously for us a non-starter. Um in
Western Mass, there has not been one private company that's come into a town and built out the entire town. Um as Sean said, they come into towns, they build out the most profitable areas of town, and they leave the rest behind.
And the Springfield City Council had this robust discussion about this all summer and the fall because they were kind of um you know they were confronting the same issue and they came to the same conclusion that we did was that this was a this would this will cause a huge problem because if one t if
one company comes in and they build out the most profitable areas of town, no one's going to come in and build out the other areas because then it will take decades for that to become profitable. No one will want to do that. So essentially, you're just going to leave behind whole swats of your community
while the rest can move ahead. Um, and then what will eventually probably end up happening is that that town will probably end up having to build out those nonprofitable areas at a huge loss or, you know, we'll have to sub subsidize it significantly. And that's obviously not a position um that we
would want to be in. And you know um these private companies too they will you know they will sell you they will tell you anything that you want to hear to make the sale. Um we saw this too with the uh you know the city of AWA um
where in 2021 they actually stopped their efforts for municipal fiber and they opened the door for Gonet Speed to come in. Last summer Gonet Speed said actually we changed our mind. We don't want to do it. So they lost four to five years where uh they could have been building. It could have been much
cheaper for them to have built uh beginning in 2020 2021. Uh and now they they're back at you know square one. Um and so um the the their word uh doesn't really go very far and and kind of what
Lee talked about too. um some of the some of the things that we're hearing from communities that do have some of these third parties there. Um the quality of work there um you know the broken promises all of those things you're basically kind of you're almost substituting
Comcast for just a different version of Comcast uh which is I you know which is what I think we want to avoid. Um and then kind of speaking to that as well, um we've seen in Long Meadow the
presence of Mass Priorities, which is um Comcast Dark Money Pack. Um and we've seen that they've done, you know, Facebook ads that they people knocking on doors here. They people making phone calls here. They they're doing mailers and the amount of money that they're
spending is just astronomical and something that we have not seen as a community. And I think it's going to just intensify over the next four to five months before we take uh you know potentially take a town meeting vote. Um right now they are spending on average $10,000 a month just on Facebook ads in
Long Ma. Um and to kind of just put that into context, last year we had this, you know, big middle school vote where we had two organized groups for the middle school project against the middle school project. I don't think that those two groups combined spent anywhere close to $10,000. Um, and this is what they're
spending monthly just on Facebook ads, not even considering all the mailers and door knocking and phone calls and all that. So, uh, for them, they just know that once this goes off the ground, that they can't compete with it. So, they're trying to do everything they can to kill
it before the project can ever even happen. And in Western Mass, where towns have had town councils or city councils, the projects have just passed easily. There have been two towns where they've tried to do what we I think uh will probably try to do is to
do a debt override vote at a town meeting. And in those two communities, those two communities were hit hard by these dark money packs. Um in Hampton, um they actually are a charter community. So there's different dark money pack alliance that is charters
dark money pack. um at town meeting they're they failed to hit the two/3s majority by four votes last year in Southwick same uh same situation they failed to hit the two/3s majority by 15 votes um and they use the same kind of
tactics that we're seeing in Long Meadow which is just you know the theoretical framework of misinformation where you try to uh you know attack the institution's credibility and then also uh you know couple that with fear fear mongering and we see that in the ads
that they're running here where they say, you know, if you if the town can't open Bliss pool in time, how could they run a fiber network? And at the same time, they're running ads that say, you know, if you vote for this, then you're not going to get money for schools, you're not going to get money for roads, you're not going to get money for public safety. So, we're seeing them just use
the same tactics and it's worked for them in Western Mass. So, you know, that's why they're deploying it here and I'm sure we're just going to see um that just jinned up completely uh over the next few months. Um and then finally just just the last um thought I wanted
to add from from the presentation was um you know the the idea of like getting something that is of high quality and that just works has so much value. I mean I think um there was a picture up there of um the customer service slide.
Uh I think there was like seven people in those photos. You know I've met all seven of those people. you know, two of the people are sitting right here. Uh, you know, and that's just the difference is that when you make a phone call, you're not going to be talking to a bot. You're not going to be pulling your hair out trying to figure out, you know,
what's wrong, why your p why your internet price just increased randomly this month. Um, you know, you're talking about people that live just up the road from us. Uh, you're talking about neighbors, people that you're going to run into, you know, at the grocery store, at Thunderbirds games, um,
wherever else. And then you know over the last two years since we've really started working with fiberring we've been monitoring kind of what you know folks in South Hley have been saying about fiber spraying what issues have been going on and over the two years that we've been monitoring this. There
has only been one instance where there was anyone talking about an outage in town and it was an outage in a small part of town that lasted for less than an hour. And some of the responses and comments people made, people were saying things like, "I thought there was
something wrong with my computer or my phone because it didn't even occur to me that something could be wrong with my internet, right?" And like that is such a stark difference to what we have now. I mean, if you go to the Longwood open form any day, people are complaining it there. The internet service is
disrupting their work from home. It's disrupting, you know, their schoolwork. It's disrupting their entertainment. And to just have something that you know that's going to just work and something that you just don't have to even worry about. I mean that is priceless. I go into restaurants and stores in Long
Meadow and owners will ask me when Long Meadow Fiber is coming because they say I want something that is not going to disrupt my business. I want something that's just going to work and I want something that that I know is going to be at this price point uh and is not going to be something that I have to,
you know, worry about changing or anything like that. is something I can just budget for, something that I know it's going to be reliable and it's going to be consistent. Um, and that there's just so much value to that. And um, and I know that you guys kind of touched on that a little bit, but I really wanted to kind of, you know, make that uh, a
fine point. >> Wait till you see how much buffering happens next Sunday night at 8:00. >> Yeah. And and one point is that a lot of these big conglomerates, they they'll they'll do fiber to the node and then it's still copper coax to the house and
then you still get packet loss. You get >> it's happening in my house right now. >> Oh yeah. >> It's driving me crazy. And so it, you know, they'll come in and say, "Oh, we're going to put fiber." But they're not really doing fiber all the way in. They're going fiber to the node. >> Fiber deep.
>> Fiber deep. And it's not enough. I have a couple I think to to what you just said and um I think it's important for us to make sure our residents so when we do bring it to a vote they have the right information. So I think you mentioned it's really getting that kind of make ready number because that for us
it's important I think for us to make sure our residents understand the true cost and what we are going to have to fund. Uh and I think I saw the stat over 60% we are above ground. Um, if those poles are in bad shape, all 70% that's,
if I'm understanding it correctly, that's more cost for us >> to an extent. If if the utility should have that pole should have replaced that pole because of its age infrastructure, that's on them to do. But if they have to replace a pole to put a higher pole in to account for the u the new fiber
optic plant, then that becomes a town. So yeah, those are some slight nuances that so may have to do some. So, I think that next refinement of that cost will be really helpful for us to educate our voters on how much we will have to incur for debt and then when that kind of break even point is for the town. Um,
you heard us talk a lot about some of the debt we're taking on. So, I think it'll be important to educate our voters with the numbers. Um, and just one question I have which I when I read through and tonight from an operationalizing perspective, is there anything the town's going to have to do on top of this? Sounds like we have a
great kind of call center, great text, you know, access to help us, but is there anything that would we are going to have to kind of pay for that we're not thinking of to operationalize this? >> Just the expense of running the MLP, the salary of the manager, the
insuranceances associated with it, things like that. >> I think I saw that on >> if you hire, you don't have to hire a manager. I mean, it depends how you want to run the MLP. >> Okay. >> You know. >> Yeah. And I think uh yeah it's that was in that um it is the right hand side. Um and then in there it's kind of a
placeholder that the manager compensation is 50,000 a year. I mean that's kind of they again what we've appreciated with Fibers is that they've been very conservative with everything. We've talked to a lot of different vendors and a lot of these different even items they never even brought up
with us as potential costs. uh fibers kind of just laid everything on the table and said, you know, this is what you guys should expect and kind of gave us like worst case scenarios with it. Um, you know, I think there are different ways to do this with the manager compensation. I think that, >> you know, we're paying for what we're
paying fiber for is a lot of what an MLP manager would do >> um already. So, I think for the on the town side, it would be somebody like maybe Lynn or maybe Mike that would just kind of be more so like overseeing this.
Um, you know, maybe just like overseeing any kind of intake like communications coming into the town about it. Um, things like that. But for the most part, the MLP board and Fibers will be handling most of what you know is required to run it. Like from a I'm thinking like from a billing perspective
because we would now be billing our residents, right? Would we tack on? >> No, we would do that for you. >> Okay. So that's why I couldn't I couldn't. >> So So let me just So really it's turnkey. We do almost everything, right? What we're talking about is for example, we uh do the town of Leverett and we do
the town of uh Shootsberry and we'll be on the phone with the Shootsberry MLP manager just to you know if there's issues or if there's insurance questions or you know basic stuff that I think your town administration is pretty sophisticated they can handle here. But
I will answer it this way. You don't need to have an MLP manager. It's nice to have if you had someone part-time, but I think that we do enough that you you could get by without it if if that's your choice with an MLP board and you
have someone designated on your board. >> Thank you. Yeah, that's helpful. I couldn't figure out that well part the billing. >> Yeah, I mean we we do two towns right now and you know we do everything pretty much. I mean >> the billing, the collections, customer inquiries, scheduling installations. >> Um
>> so that's helpful. >> Yeah. Yeah. So majority comes to us if there's something like Sean said like a concern or complaint that you know if we have a contact of who that should be okay >> escalated to but we handle all of the >> customer side. Okay. >> And by the way this is all detailed in
an intergovernmental agreement. So we have all the services that we provide. It's all detailed. We've got three or four of them right now. We would just uh replicate that with the town of Log Meadow >> and we would pick a duration. So you said a couple times when when you
make this decision talking about you're not going to find five more people or five people are more educated on this this point than than five of us except people on the task force make >> right. >> What does Fiverr do to educate the people who do make the decision that our
town? Uh do you have public outreach leading up to the town meeting? Uh there any services like that? >> So this question has come up before. we can certainly provide them. We can assist. There's um there are costs associated with marketing campaigns,
collateral that you're going to develop and push out to the public. Um we we know all the messaging. We know what we what you would probably want to say. We know how to counterstrike some of these uh dark money uh messages. So, uh we did
it ourselves. Um, you know, >> well, we would, um, because we already had the municipal light plant with the electric utility and being part of WCO, um, this was not a town vote. It was a a municipal light board vote and the
financing was done through, uh, WCO, >> Emwick, Emwick. >> Um, so it did not Yes. And ultimately the town is responsible for that loan, but it was um you know our revenues uh
took care of it. Plus um you know the Sheld was able to handle that uh without any additional town funding. >> The the electric the electric customer is ultimately the back stop in our condition. Okay. >> Right. We could use our our power
contracts as collateral. Yeah. I think in your case, you're the town's probably going to have to be the back stop for the MLP. >> So maybe I'm being a bit naive. You know, there's a lot of money out there. We don't want to spend $10,000 a month, >> right,
>> on countering those things. Fiberstream wants this to happen in in our town as well. Um >> and that that's why I asked, you know, this is not it's we've already spent a lot of money. It's hard to
say we're going to spend a lot more trying to get to there, but if Fiberspring wants to get us over the finish line, there's some some room. >> We did do a forum. There was like less than 10 people that came to it. >> We don't have a great history.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, you know, there's to get creative with ways that are cost effective to to best give that educate. you know, we had like everybody there like our our tech, our you know, we had all the people to give all the answers. It's figuring out the best way to get
those people to get the information. So, um you know, getting creative doing it that way. Like we're open to doing a forum, >> but we have to discuss internally allocating funds for that. So really what you're talking about is business development cost and and do we want to
pour in some money into messaging and selling the reasons why you should do this and um that's something we can talk about internally. Um and certainly I >> you can see >> yes the people if you look behind you
you can see who we get to show up with. So it's not >> but I I agree with you it's an important thing to do and you can do it cost effectively. I think we should do it. I'm in support of it. I have to have discussions internally to make sure we can do it. Um, you know, being a
municipal light plant, it's our municipal egg plant dollars. >> So, um, but I I I agree with it. I think we should >> because you have you have an upside to this, too. Just absolutely. >> Yes. We we benefit, you know, from all the IGAs we do. We benefit, you know,
and and it's a mutual benefit and and so agree. And if you keep going out and losing town meeting votes, it doesn't look good for five. >> Yeah. And and you know that's correct. >> Yeah. And I think it's it's and also I think just so our residents really
understand what they're voting yes or no for. I think having that data that those the numbers the information what they're going to get. Um that's helpful for us because then you know when the decision is made we can say hey remember we talked about I think having the
information we all just talked a lot about misinformation out there. So the more um information that can speak to vast majorities of people, whether it's not you're a numbers person and you need to see the finances behind it, whether you're a service person and you need to understand your great customer service
scores, I think there's multiple, you know, data points we can provide to our residents that can help educate them on what their vote means. Um, so I think that's what would be helpful for us because I think you've seen this successfully get implemented in towns
and not and then what work well and what's not. So helping us to educate our residents on what they're voting on. I think that would be really powerful and very helpful. >> Seems like Long's got a pretty active social media presence here as well. So there there's some existing uh
individuals that may be of a good asset for us if we choose to help support and push through the social media front as well. So >> good luck. >> I I do think that this educational aspect is by far the most effective way to go. I mean I think people know when
they're trying to be people are trying to sell them something and I think that I mean I think your presentation was excellent. I think I appreciate like I don't think you're sugar coating things. This was a very important meeting for me personally because I mean for a year I'm not I wasn't really sure exactly what
the these figures were going to show. I like the the figure that Vene pointed out here the projected cash flow deficit to cover. That's a very important number for anyone >> who is scared of borrowing 20 27 $30 million after we just are going to
borrow $100 million to build a middle school. >> Beneath obviously made excellent points as well. Um, and I think that educating people, I mean, social media is crazy. And to be honest, this forum that that we have on Facebook, which is probably the most watched one,
>> a a huge percentage of those people aren't even in Long Meadow. But I think the people who live in Long Meadow, if you give them the information >> in a way that's just the facts, they'll know. And I honestly think these this dark money, it's hurting them more than helping them. At least I would like to
hope so. Um, whenever I think of things like this, I'm always kind of I mean, I think another good thing that you did, you know, you acknowledge we all know there's a there's a risk, right? The town is assuming a risk, but there's >> a chance that the a good chance that the risk could turn into a wonderful investment. Um so when I think about
like pitfalls and things whenever we make important decisions like this one question I had was something that's come up in uh my field in medicine but all over all different aspects of businesses and in the economy is is like private equity for example or some corporate
entity buying you because you've already mentioned that it's an attractive asset right >> so one question I had was I know that you know as MLP we'll be in charge of a lot of things but how could there be some pitfalls if you guys you know because it's such a great deal decide to sell the assets. What would long how
would that could that potentially negatively affect Long Meadow? Has that ever come up? >> Well, I would I would answer it this way. Really, nothing can be done without the municipal light board, people like John making that decision. Um, municipal light plants have been around, you know,
we've been around 114 years. I don't foresee any municipal light plant that I know selling an asset like this because it's so valuable. um unless there was some kind of dire straits they got into. Um but most
municipal egg plants are well funded, well capitalized. I mean I don't know a single one. >> Yeah. you know that >> I mean technically I would I would assume that if a third party you know uh bought fiber spring network they would assume all the you know all the
contracts associated with >> long metal elaborate >> and your assets are your assets in town so all the infrastructure remains in town of Long >> right yeah and this is >> something that we asked too when we were interviewing them we talked about in the
task force and the thing is like we what we'll do is we'll sign a contract with them to run our fiber network for, you know, five years or whatever. Um, if we don't like the way that they're running it, we can move on >> to a different um, what would you call it? Internet service,
>> someone else. I mean, we could go to Whip City or, you know, someone else to just say, you know, we want you guys to run it. Um and I think um you know this was also part of what made um us want to work with Fiberspring was because well first of all you know they what the
people that you're seeing in front of you and their whole team they had such a breath of experience folks that started Whip City folks that worked at Chip and uh you know stood up their fiber offering um and we felt like we were kind of catching fibers at the perfect
time because we had this group that was very well experienced but they had just kind of started their own, you know, uh, entity in South Hadley. They just finished building out South Hadley last summer. And so, you know, if we do this
in May and we move forward with this, you know, we will be their next we'll be their first project, right? Like outside of >> Yeah. outside of South Hadley to like build out a town. Um, and what made that kind of attractive to us is, you know, >> they know and we know that if they knock
it out of the park in Long Meadow that all these other communities are going to come calling. Um, and so to have a vendor that has skin in the game, you know, um, that are trying to prove something. I mean, they came in under budget and ahead of schedule in South Hadley, you know, if they can do that in
Long Meadow, you know, uh, which would be great for us. And also I mean they have so much motivation here uh to kind of prove themselves. >> Yeah. And so that's what also made you know us uh you know part of the reason why we selected them. >> Just another couple other followup
questions if we have time. Um >> Sure. Sometimes I wonder with the technology assets when we borrow at it 30 years is it a concern that I mean I know we talked about the risk of obsolescence >> and I don't think anyone could honestly say that we know what the future holds
but do they do sometimes is it considered wiser to have a 15-year loan instead of a 30-year just in case so you're not basically paying for something that doesn't exist anymore or at least decrease the chance of that? Have you seen other towns do that? or is a 30-year always more attractive just because it's a little bit more palatable
>> from a financial um realistic you can't afford the debt service on a 15-year loan. >> Yeah, >> that's why 30. That's what works. And part of that, you know, the part of what you had mentioned too was the
obsolescence that's accounted for for mainly the electronic components of the equipment, not necessarily the fiber optic infrastructure that gets hung on those on the poles. So a portion of that dead service is attributed to those to the wires, the infrastructure that's not going obsolete within that duration of
time. >> Okay. And I think that what's also recommended, and I don't know if it's clear on these slides, um, is to do a 20-year loan with a 30-year immortization period, >> right? >> Yeah. >> And that would be with a balloon payment at the end of 20 years, which you then
refinance >> because I believe there's a restriction for an MLP in the maximum loan period. >> I see. >> That's that's how we did it. And by that point, I mean, you I mean, the MLP should be making so much in profit that
a balloon payment at the end is >> we're hoping to pay our loan off at the end of 20 years as opposed to refinancing that. >> Yeah. I mean, because when you kind of look at 15 to 20 years out, you're looking at, you know, the MLP potentially bringing in two to three
million a year. I mean, that's the size of our entire capital budget. Um, you know, it's a significant amount. The other thing to remember when when you're doing long-term loans, it's like a home mortgage. First few years are real painful, but by the time you get 15, 20
years, it's really small compared to everything else. How h how did we decide? So when we're talking about over eight, seven, eight, 14 years and we say now that it's $90 a month, how do we not accommodate for inflation in that time or did we like it
can't be 90? No. >> Is it $90 for the entire time for 14 years? >> All in today's dollars, >> right? So it's a little >> basically if you were to use inflation, you'd inflate your revenues and you inflate >> your expenses but not your debt service.
And when your debt service is >> Yeah. you know, 80% of your cost, that number is going to stay the same. So, your revenue is probably gonna going to rise quicker than your expenses and you're going to be more profitable as
time goes on. >> Okay, >> these are very conservative projections. >> We have yet to raise our rates. you know, we started um you know, five years ago and people are getting hooked up today are paying the same rate as the
first person who got hooked up five years ago. >> And we have not seen an NLP in Western Mass increase >> and it'll be up to us. >> You set the rates, >> right? >> Yeah. >> We're going to two gigs right now and
we're considering an increase with the two gigs because it's an increase in value and service. Is it a choice or everyone does two gigs? >> Uh, well, it's a choice that we're making to increase the bandwidth that we're providing. We're going from one gig to two gigs called XGON, which is what you're getting out of the gate.
>> And we may we're likely to increase our uh service fee once we implement that technology. >> But customers can pick. They don't have to. >> They have a choice. They can take where they are or they can stay where they are.
This is a minor Go. >> No, please. >> Oh, this is a minor point I think, but like I don't know if these projections included whatever we invested for the town to be paid back for the um project design and things like that, but >> No, I don't believe they do.
>> They do not. >> I don't believe so. >> So, when we when we make our pitch basically, I think just to make sure everyone knows everything, it's important to kind of include that >> for the loan. >> Yeah. the 490,000. >> Right.
>> Uh when you are from on the ground in in South Hav, do you hear from people who are not using Fiber Spring who are upset they're subsidizing the the 60 55% who are on the payments?
>> I have not heard I haven't heard anyone complain. Um but again, that's probably been a question for Kelly. She feels those calls more than he would. >> Well, nobody would call fiber string to say that. >> Well, in the field you see people out and about. >> Yeah. >> Well, but we're getting revenue from our
subscribers that cover our costs. >> Well, I I understand. But >> the others aren't funding >> at the beginning. That's not happening. >> Well, um no, in our situation, >> um we we got a pull loan from um
>> Emmech. I get that right. Um and so the utility is paying back that loan and um we're now at the point where the income from our subscribers is covering that cost.
>> When we first case, I guess when we first started out, we had a pool of electric dollars that we borrowed from to build. Once we got to a certain point, >> we went out and we took a loan against it. That loan then allowed us to repay
those electric dollars and put them back in >> and the rest of the project was funded with with that loan. >> That's right. You don't you don't >> we don't have that. >> You don't have >> So you you need that pool of money as startup >> and which we are relying on every resident.
>> Yes. Well, I I could answer this this way that you're building a utility and people view the internet now as a utility and the one thing that they vote for across the country hands down almost every time is this. It's weird. They they they'll vote down a lot of things but typically not fiber because the
internet is so important to them. We've seen most towns, the only one that uh struck me as odd was was Hampton. We got called into Hampton late in the game. We they were originally a whip city fiber. they weren't with us. They they took a
vote to change to us, but that vote that they lost, I think, by four was really there was zero effort. And um they also have an incumbent over there who's promising that they're going to go fiber. And I think someone should check on that and see where they really are
right now. >> Um but those things are going to exist. You're going to have to we're going to have to deal with those. It's a difficult uh first hurdle, but most people do vote for in communities like South Alley, they want it. The appetite is huge. I sense it's the same thing
here. I sense the appetite for the fiber is huge. >> I I don't want to and this is this board knows this. I'm sure you It's not Education's great. >> You have to especially in town meeting form government. >> Yeah. >> You have to get people there. Yeah. >> And you have to get them excited about
it. It's not just all right. Well, if I show up, I'll show up. >> Yeah. you have to there has to be a concerted effort to push people to be in that room and uh I I don't know what we anticipated but uh our town meeting vote I think we had 1,800 people there and it
was it was more than we've had since I've been to town than in recent memory. If you just have the same people who show up to a town meeting every time, this will not pass. You need to get new people there. And that's um that's part
the task force job, but I I do think it's really something that we if you want this to pass, >> it needs to be a team, >> a partnership. >> I I can't emphasize that more. I mean, this is a twothirds vote that's required, I assume. So,
>> this is this is an uphill I'm going to be honest with you. I think that this is going to be an uphill climb. I think that there's very there's a lot of wonderful reasons to consider doing this, but when you look at when you ask people around town, there
are certainly people who will complain about Comcast, but there is also people from my experience that think it's fine. So, I think that there needs to be for this to get some ground swell of support, you need to have people believe that they have a problem that can be
fixed by this. Otherwise, it looks like um a want, not a need from a town standpoint. You know, like we have so many other things we need to take care of like roads, sewers, water, etc. So, I think um you know, I don't think I and I
know I'm hearing from you guys that it's a no-brainer, but I think that it's not. Um >> I was at the town vote. I remember when they voted for the engineering and I and I saw the line against and the line for and I agree with you. We can do some messaging. We can create something that
we think is powerful that we can provide to you >> and we can talk about the cost. I think we can do it for not a lot of cost and we can disseminate that to try and drive interest. We can do it digitally. We can do it uh postcards. Um we can help
there. We can help there. You're right. I'll be interested to see. Uh I saw a lot of interest in that vote and it it kind of struck me is how much appetite and interest you had. But you're right, we shouldn't rest on our laurels. We should get you something, help you uh
communicate the value of fiber and do the best job we can and hopefully drive some of those votes for you. >> My wife is pretty involved in the middle school vote and so we I know how much they spent and it wasn't that much, >> right? And yeah,
>> uh but there was it's an enthusiasm thing. It's an under thing, but also just the the mailers, >> they sent out a couple mailers and it does help. And there we also have two votes here. >> Is that what's the date of that vote? Is it April? >> May 12th. >> May 12th.
>> May 12th. Yeah. >> Assuming you vote the next to set >> later on. Set the date. >> Yeah. And I'll say, you know, I think um I mean, we're we're up against a behemoth that is going to spend a ton of money and um and this is definitely
going to, you know, take a lot of work. But I will going to kind of referencing the vote that Sean talked about in November 2024. Um in the four weeks leading up to that vote, um Mass Priority spent $30,000 just on Long Meadow and 20 people showed up to town
meeting to vote against it. It passed with 98% of the vote. >> I think Andrew is right. does kind of come back around. So, >> people can see through their messages. >> Yeah. And I think that also I think the task force like I think we've done a good job of I think exposing them and
calling them out and you know this is also stuff that we learned from talking to other communities that have dealt with them about how to message and deal with them. Um and I think that in many ways we have discredited them so far. Um but yeah, I mean of course, yeah, this is going to take a lot of work and we'll
see. We'll see what happens over this. >> Just one more observation just in case it sparks some an idea in somebody as a way to demonstrate something um that's helpful to people. One of the reasons I I worry that people don't feel they need
a change is because they can't compare side by side what would it look like if my house had fiber? Like would I be uh would my Netflix come faster? would my would I have fewer delays? Um, and to what extent versus what they have now,
the status quo they've, you know, they're they're fine with. People don't like change in general. Um, so I don't like there's no way for most of our residents to personally know how fast fiber would be. I mean, I've I
>> Yeah. So, is there a way that can be demonstrated to them that people have considered? I would say, maybe you have a good answer to that, but I would say look at the activity outage map for my neighborhood and just check it. My wife works from home. It's been terrible, >> right? It's almost like they're trying
to >> We just invested a lot of money in schools and high-tech schools and if you I have young adults and I have lots of niece and nephews. You hear about the lack of speed and Wi-Fi in our schools. I I would imagine this project is going
to help that as well. So a lot of people here move to this town or the schools and so that their children have I mean so I think it's about how do we help educate people about what they're getting what they're not um I don't know if that will help >> do the schools already have fiber though supplied with fiber no
>> they already >> but but the there are there's a lot of material we we're a fiber broadband association members there are proven advertising campaigns there are national campaigns We we can work with our we
have a marketing firm that we utilize. There's a ton of information. We can package it and send it to you and if you agree with it, we can utilize it. I will commit that we will do something and we will we will get together some kind of campaign that we can work on to help you
get over that hump as best we can. And I know I've I've been here to Long Meadow a few times associated with this and would have absolutely no problem um you know coming to to again open forums talking with people uh because I think that's another difference um they can
talk to people from fiberpring it's very hard for them to talk to people from other you know providers >> but you need collateral you you need you need postcards you need digital postcards you need you know things that you can send out and we can get that for
Some of these ideas are really good for us to know what's important for, you know, the target. >> You know, we've been on the receiving end of these attacks from a big company in the beginning in the early stages. We know and I've seen it in communities next door in the postcards they put out
and it came from the same entities. You know, it's all dark money being funded saying, "Oh, this group is going to risk the taxpayer dollars." And um the reality is we just showed you all the reasons why that's not accurate, but we can package that. We'll we'll get that
packaged for you. We'll get these are great inputs from you and uh we will help you at a minimum get some messaging out there. >> All right. Fantastic. Thank you so much. >> All right. All right. Thank you. >> Have a good night.
less paperwork in your office. >> See you later. >> All right. Home stretch. Uh correspondence. >> All right. Uh town report. >> Let me just pull that up. Um all of it tonight consists of middle of uh Long
Meadow Schools updates. Um the MSBA accelerated repair project for this center school roof is moving along. The feasibility study cost estimate and draft design were submitted to MSBA. We anticipate a board vote in February.
This is an extensive project though and I do want people to understand that it not only is going to cover the three different roof systems but also will include many other upgrades um which include um uh ADA upgrades uh because
the project itself is going to exceed the 30% of the building value um which will trigger our need to meet those ADA requirements. I go into a lot more detail, but given um the time that we have right now, I'm going to skim through a lot of this. But um uh you can
anticipate that if we have a successful vote at the MSBA board of directors in February that we would be looking to fund approximately $4.2 million um of the town share of this project. And this would come
forward at the um annual town meeting in May. Um and then Wolf Swamp Elementary School, we had some water damage over um the holiday. In the afternoon of December 28th, the Long Meadow Fire Department received a suppression flow
alarm. Um when they arrived on scene, they discovered a burst sprinkler head a few feet north of the Southern Connector fire doors uh where the building transitions from the 1950s to the 2002 construction. This was isolated um right after their arrival and the facilities
team at DPW was contacted and arrived on site very quickly. They started remediation immediately. Um first on site also was called and they arrived to inspect and detect any extent of water infiltration and make recommendations on next steps.
um uh work was ongoing over the break and again I'm skimming through a lot of this here but um essentially the facilities team did a thorough investigation and removed quite a bit of ceiling tiles and located a significant draft in a ceiling cavity area and it
was found to be that half of an exterior brick uh where the building transitions was missing. So that is thought to be the cause of this cold flow um penetrating and causing the freeze up of the sprinkler head. Um all of this has
been uh remediated and um school opened as normal today. Um there's still some minor cosmetic repairs that are needed. So a huge um thank you to the DPW facilities team and the Long Meadow Fire Department for their quick response for
something that could have been much more >> catastrophic. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um and then the last update I have it relates to a previous water damage at the high school over the uh 4th of July holiday. Um work continued uh during
this last break that we just had and room 121 where there was the most significant damage. Um had new cabinets installed over break. Uh the plumbing was supposed to happen but we knew this might take a little bit longer. However, it's it's taking longer right now uh due
to illness. uh the plumber that we have contracted with was um under the weather and not able to complete the work this break. So that will get scheduled for the next break um if not sooner and hopefully be able to turn over that lab back to the schools to put it back into
operation before February break. Uh that concludes my report. Happy to answer any questions that you might have. Um, that is great news on the well, bad news on the Wolf Swamp, but I appreciate what everything DPW and LP LFD did to
make sure to limit the damage. Uh, is there that seems like a pretty big issue that there's there was an open hole. Is do we need to look at all of our buildings to make sure there's nothing like that or is that something that we that is done regularly anyway?
>> Yeah, they do building checks. Um there are we also have done quite a bit of uh heat loss detection. Um and this was not necessarily it wasn't an open hole. I do have photos if you want to see them, but um the exterior brick was missing this
tiny portion which was causing air flow to come in. It was just enough and we've been really cold. >> Um it was just enough that it it caused this. But they are um I mean Wolf Swamp has been one of the areas that has been
under a microscope. So it was pretty disappointing that this happened given all the work that's gone on there and the eyes that have been on it. Um but I will be having a more thorough conversation with um facilities and the director just to to ensure that there's
not something more we could be doing. Well, I feel like we have such I mean, again, this this is we're so lucky that this suppression flow alarm alerted us to this quickly. Y >> and we have so many buildings that are of all these different ages that it's it's definitely a risk in this area. I I
think when I think about how we can um think of trouble spots, I think that certainly someone walking around is helpful, but maybe it'd be helpful to tell people like um that encourage teachers or janitors if they sometimes it's just the people who occupy the spaces all the time every day. They'll
know there's like this part of the this corner of my room is freezing cold or something like that. >> Um you know, you all know your own home is like the back of your hand. So, those are sometimes ways I think we might be able to find trouble spots or places to hone in on where we should be looking
because even different parts of a room might be colder than others and you might notice it if you're there all the time. >> Yep. Great suggestion. >> Um, and then another question just on the center school roof. I I saw Ian was on here before when he recently did our uh long-term projection
was center school was in there correct the roof repair. Was it do you remember about what the amount was? Um I don't off say it was around four. >> I don't off the top of my head. We've had a rough idea on these numbers for several months, so this isn't a surprise to us. Um
>> uh I mean we've known this project's been on the radar for over a year now. >> Yeah, we've had number of town meeting votes and we so we've known it's coming and um I just I thought we had that in a projection. I just wanted >> Yeah. Um >> I remember >> I would I would think that we did because Ian and I have talked about it
before. Um >> Okay. But I I I can't say for certain without looking at that. >> Right. >> Great. Anything else >> that made me the I had a similar question. Um but and then just in conjunction with the conversation we just had around the fiber optics. Is it
possible and I know we have it because Ian walked us through it, but is it possible to have a snapshot for us of our debt just our debt incurrence over the next I think that's going to be important to incorporate that and just so we have that full picture of what the
next what we're taking on. I just think that's going to be helpful for when residents ask us questions. We can have that at the ready because I know it's in the documents, but also those can be a bit hard to navigate through because we have so many other numbers in there. I
was just thinking to have a debt view >> and how just so we can have that story to tell people and how we're financing that. >> Was it the there was a meeting you weren't here, was that when you did the five-year projection? >> No, I was here. I I remember seeing It is one of them. Fiber's not in there, but
>> right. That's what I mean. I mean, fiber's a big piece. It's a large number and so any of our numbers, folks. I think having that one pager for us would be helpful. >> Yeah. I I don't think the fiber is in that partly because that's not being funded through that. We would not be
recommending to fund that through our debt service. Um, but it would show up on their >> as an override. >> Yes. Yes. >> So, it'll be through property taxes. People can actually deduct it, but it won't be debt. It'll be debt service, but it won't be affecting the tax rate. >> It won't be funded through the operating
budget debt service allocation. >> This question will absolutely come up. Yep. Because what will happen to our debt service? Will we go out of even more out of sync? So, it's important to like make distinctions like that. >> Yes, I agree. >> Adding on this windows from center school like obviously a very important project, but
>> we want to be able to just be totally honest with people about what to expect. >> Yep. Thank you. Anybody else? >> Uh, no. Okay. Moving on to approval of
the meeting minutes for December 15th. >> Um, I'll move to approve the December 15th, 2025 select board meeting minutes. >> Second. >> Second. >> Any further? All those in favor? We have a role. Peggy, >> sorry. >> Angel, >> yes.
>> Yes. >> Josh, >> yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Uh and just so to there's nowhere else to discuss this in the agenda really, we are having potentially another meeting next Monday. Uh on the
bottle shop um and for now that I have the whole board so I can discuss it, it's not an open meeting by law violation. I I think uh Vene and Andrew weren't here, but I I think what we should have done was vote to extend the license for longer contingent on an
application going in by the 12th, which is the date we gave um for to end the license. The license was renewed through the 12th. Um but I if we do get an application for transfer in by then, I don't want the license to expire while
the transfer is pending. So I think so it's like a lang we have to add a little more language to what we >> yeah we're so we're gonna we'll know if we have an application in by next Monday. Okay. >> So I think we need to we'll we're going to meet to discuss >> what to do and if we don't have an an
application for transfer we have a different issue. >> Um but it's to give time. So all right now we have transfer application in. Now we can extend this license through X date >> while it's working its way through the state system
>> or our system as well. >> I have a conflict but I I'm trying to see if I can move that. >> Okay. Yeah. We just need a quorum. Hopefully it won't be but and we can that's just a placeholder. We didn't do we send an agenda. >> No for next week. Yeah. So we can move it if uh I would love if everyone's
there. Always try to get everyone there if we can. Okay. Um and then all right so moving on to new business. Uh Lynn, would you like to discuss? >> Sure. Yeah. So it's the time of year where we need to set the annual town meeting date uh and the uh schedule that
follows for articles. Um and as you read earlier tonight, we have the citizen petition deadline coming up. Um January 26th would be the first date. So um the date we're proposing for annual town meeting is May 12th. That's the second Tuesday, which is our standard um time that we
generally hold it. And then um the dates that would follow uh for article submission and when you'd first get a draft of the warrant. Um so tonight's vote was really just to set the annual town meeting date of May 12th, which puts the rest of this in um
in uh what's the word I'm looking for? Sorry. >> In motion. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Um, so yes, just to set the annual town meeting date. >> All right. So I will uh move to set the annual town meeting uh to be held on
Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. >> Second. >> Anything further? Anything? All those in favor, go ahead and roll. >> I'm sorry. Roll. >> Yes. >> Shelley. >> Yes. >> Josh. >> Yes. >> Yes.
>> Yes. >> Thank you. Okay. >> And then um following this um is the vote to set the uh annual town election date which is um actually prescribed pretty much by when you set your um
annual town meeting date. So this is uh June 2nd. >> I will move to set the annual town election for Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026. >> Andrew, >> yes. >> Shel, >> yes. >> Josh, >> yes. Yes.
>> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Uh and um with that, uh nomination papers will be available tomorrow. >> Who's up this time? >> Yeah, I was going to ask who's up. >> Me? >> Just you? >> Just me. >> Okay. Uh I would entertain a motion to
adjurnn. >> Uh so moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. >> Andrew, >> yes. >> Shel, >> yes. >> Josh, >> yes. >> Yes. Thank you everybody.