Did I give everybody an agenda except myself? Did I not hand out the agendas? No. Oh my god. Oh, there's It's not like you haven't had All right. Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Lunberg Select Board and today is Tuesday, July 15th. Please stand for the pledge of
allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
In accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast live over the Lunberg Public Access channel on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page and will be uploaded to the Lunberg Access YouTube channel after the meeting. The agenda
lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by
the open meeting law. All right, we're going to start off with announcements and the town is now accepting nominations for special merit awards. At the 2024 special town meeting, special merit awards were officially added to the salary
administration plan for SAP employees to recognize outstanding contributions by town staff. You can nominate a deserving SAP employee, full or part-time, in one of the following categories. One, communications, going above and beyond in keeping the public informed and
improving transparency. Two, efficiency, helping the town run more smoothly through cross trainining, flexibility, and time-saving ideas. And three, pinnacle of excellence, making extraordinary efforts to support others and improve how we work. Nominations are
open to residents, board, and committee members, department heads, and fellow employees. And I encourage anyone who would like to nominate an employee for one of the special merit awards to do so. Nominations can be made by a form that you can find on our town website under the news flash for the special
merit awards, and it was also posted to the town's Facebook page, and they are to be submitted by July 24th to the town manager's office. Are there any other announcements? Okay.
So, we are going to move on to our 7:15 appointment. And I want to apologize that we're starting a little late. We had some te technical difficulties. Uh, so this is the toll booth fundraiser request for the Lunberg Music AERS for August 9th, 2025 from 10:00 a.m. to 3
p.m. Hi. Thank you for putting uh that first. I appreciate that. at Laura Brion 389 Malpus Road and I submitted the application for a certificate to provide put a fill the boot toll road on August
9th for the musicators. Can you tell us about the organization? Yeah, so we support basically anything related to the school music programs fifth grade and up. Um anything that the town you know can't isn't doesn't have the wherewithal to fund or it's outside
services. So, if there's equipment fixes, um, you know, the uniforms get, you know, the marching band uniforms get dry cleananed each year. We take care of all the hemming. We have volunteers that man this snack shack during the football season. Um, we're really looking this
year to do a lot more fundraising to fill some of the budget cuts. So, we've really got a great group of parents and we had a really great, fantastic fifth grade class that's moving up to the sixth grade. and our I've got from Miss McGregor, we've gone from 12 band marching band students last year. We're
at 19 this year. So, a huge bump up and that's what we had hoped to see coming out of COVID and having the kids get back into the music program. So, um we've got a really good group of kids. They're super excited and um we've got a full week of band camp coming up the week of the 11th.
The 11th. Um so, we'll have a bunch of parent volunteers there too. So, we'll be at the high school and marching all over the field. So, yeah. Awesome. How's everything doing with the application? Is everything looking good? The application is 100% in order. Okay, great. Awesome. All right. I You did ask for our IRS determination
letter. What you gave me was available. I gave you from the IRS website. Good. In fact, I didn't realize I don't have a copy of it, but the IRS is sending me one. I will have it in 10 to 14 business days. And I have reach I have heard from the police chief and the DPW. And we have our vests and we'll have all our
waiverss submitted once I didn't want to put out the call for volunteers until tonight. So, all right. Sounds good. Any questions from the board? Is this rain or shine or do you have rain days? We'll do rain or shine. Okay. We want we want to put it right that it's the Saturday right before band camp. So, we want really we'll do rain
or shine as long as it's safe. Yeah. All right. Great. Well, I will move to accept the tool booth to approve the toll booth fundraiser request by the Lunberg Music AERS for August 9th, 2025 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Second. Any additional discussion? Those in favor say I.
I. Those opposed? No. Motion P. No. Okay. The motion passes 3 to one. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming in tonight and I hope your fundraiser goes well. Thank you. Thank you. Yep.
All right. So, it looks like PAC is now in Zoom, which means that we can go back to our first meeting here, which is the role and jurisdiction of the Lunberg Board of Commissioners of Trust Funds, presented by Town Council.
Good evening. Let me try and get my video on so I can see or you can see me. I can see you already. How's that? Perfect. Great. Uh so thank you uh Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Um good to good to
see you all again. Um so uh yes, as as uh you just read, the item on your agenda is uh a discussion of the role and authority of the board of commissioners of trust funds. This has been a a topic of discussion between um
town manager Warren and I over the course of the past few weeks uh in connection with uh certain inquiries or requests that have been made uh by uh a member maybe both members uh of the uh board of commissioners of trust funds.
Um my understanding of the history of this particular board is that while it is a board that's referenced in your charter as some of you may know as as all of you may know uh there is a section an article within your charter article three that identifies various
elected officials including boards commissions and committees. Uh everything from the select board to the school committee to the board of health. Um, and I think that there's some 14 or 15 subsections of article 3. Uh, and one
of those sections, section 3-11, is entitled Board of Commissioners of Trust Funds. And what that section does is in very simple terms much like the other subsections of article 3, it identifies in uh in one subsection,
subsection A uh the composition and term of office of the board of commissioners of trust funds. And then in a second and the only other subsection uh B, it identifies the powers and duties of uh the board of commissioners of trust
funds. the entire the entire uh section 3-11 I think is four sentences. So it's not terribly wordy or comprehensive or detailed. Um but it does set forth those basic parameters. And the truth is um as
is the case with many of your other charter provisions. It mimics uh existing provisions in Massachusetts general laws. So, chapter 41, section 45 of Massachusetts general laws allows cities and towns in Massachusetts to
create boards of commissioners of trust funds. And that statute defines the membership. It defines the term of members and it defines their powers and duties. And in many respects, almost verbatim, your charter includes those same provisions.
So, um, so that's in a nutshell what we're what we're working with. Um, let me tell you a bit about what it says and and our uh our guidance to to Miss Warren and ultimately to to the town. So um don't think there's any debate
concerning composition and term of office. This board consists of three members. Those members are elected for terms of three years each uh in such a manner that every year the term of one member expires and is uh is up for um for for for either renewal
or I guess re-election or or the election of a new individual to to that particular seat if uh the uh if the incumbent doesn't run for reelection. Um, my understanding is that in recent years, and as you know, I've been I've been town council, my firm has been
since 2017, um, I've never received a question in the past uh 8 or nine years about the board of commissioners and trust funds. And as I understand it, maybe the reason for that is because I I don't think you've had uh membership on that board.
Um, and that happens in municipalities from time to time. I I will get this question in many of our communities. How how can that possibly be? if we have a board, we we need to have members. Well, that's true, but you you you can't force the hand of of the citizens to uh to
nominate themselves or or run for these positions. Um, and so it's not unusual for um these uh I'll refer to them as lesser boards, and I don't mean lesser significance, but boards that don't necessarily perform as significant of a dayto-day or week- toeek function as
maybe let's say um in Lunberg, the board of sewer commissioners or the planning board. Um it's not uncommon for there to be vacancies in these boards and sometimes uh vacancies in all of the seats of of a board like the board of commissioners in which case the board effectively doesn't doesn't operate. Um
but again my further understanding is that there were a couple of individuals uh who were were white in candidates uh for uh two seats on on the on the board uh and they were consequently elected at your recent uh annual municipal
election. Um and so now you now you have at least two members of a three-member um board of commissioners of trust funds. So moving on to the powers and duties. Uh the language of the charter and I'm just going to read it for you so you know uh the starting point for for
our discussion. It says that the board of commissioners of trust funds shall have the management of all trust funds given or bequeafd for the benefit of the town or the inhabitants thereof unless the donor in making the gift or bequest shall make some other provision for the
management of the fund. So that's the first sentence of this subsection entitled powers and duties. And then the next two sentences go on to say that the board of commissioners of trust funds shall consistent with the terms of the trusts, manage and control the trusts
and distribute the income in accordance with the terms of the trusts. And furthermore that the board of commissioners of trust funds shall keep a record of its doings and at the close of each financial year shall make a report to town meeting showing the total amount of the funds, their investments,
receipts and dispersements. So the question that arose uh in in the context of those last three sentences that define the powers and duties of the board of commissioners of trust funds is well what which trust funds does the board of commissioners have authority
over? What is within their purview? What is um what are they empowered to um to to uh to to manage control uh consistent with the terms of the charter? And so we we have to we have to answer that question by looking in two places.
Number one, the language of the charter itself. And we know one exception. It's it's in the language of the charter is if in making the gift or bequest, the donor that creates uh the the trust and and that that donates uh the the monies
that that uh constitute the the trust property. um if the donor makes some other provision for the management of the fund then the donor's wishes have to be um have to be honored. So that's that's clear within the language of your your charter. But then there's another
another component to this and it's not necessarily explicit on the face of the charter but there are many um in the context of municipal government less so uh in the world of of of trust in estates law but in the world of municipal government there are many
trusts that are the consequence of specific statutory provisions that will authorize the creation of trust funds or even more generically will give a certain board commission or committee within in a city or a town the authority
to manage monies that are placed um within its oversight that that that are are within its purview. And so what what uh what Miss Warren provided to me as a starting point is she provided a list of the various funds uh the various trust
funds that are in the town's possession. And I guess what I would say is I would sort of categorize these maybe maybe place them into four categories. You've got funds that are uh conservation funds. Um and I'll just leave it at
that. We'll talk in a moment about what it means to be a conservation fund. Uh there are library funds. I think that's obvious from the terminology what those funds are intended for. uh there are cemetery funds and then there's everything else which I think in the in
the the documentation that I was provided was just under the category of miscellaneous and there are a handful of miscellaneous trust fun uh trust funds um that have been bequeefed to the town to be used for various different different purposes. Um, and I won't get
into too many details cuz I don't think that we need to for purposes of discussing the the the board's uh the board of of commissioners per purview. So, as we look to these individual funds, we looked first at conservation funds and I have some experience with
conservation money so this wasn't difficult for us. We looked to chapter 40 section 8C in Massachusetts general laws which authorizes the creation of conservation commissions. is sort of the um the uh uh enabling legislation for concom Massachusetts. And that language
is clear that the commission can contract for materials and services with available funds that are placed within its purview. So monies that are donated to the town through donation through a a bequest for conservation purposes or to
the conservation commission or for the conservation of lands or particular property or a park within the town of Lunberg. Those are conservation funds and I would say that those are within the purview of the conservation commission consistent with that specific
authority in the statute. um library funds similar analysis. Although I will tell you there's not a lot of case law. I I referenced before that um this is a a charter provision but that it mimics chapter 41 section 45
of Massachusetts general laws. Well, I sometimes um I'm almost always happy to find that a charter provision mimics a provision in mass general laws because of course there's not a lot of case law concerning your specific charter. How many times has your charter been
challenged and resulted in a decision of the courts? It it hasn't happened. And that's the case in most municipalities. When there's a a a mass general law that mirrors the language in in your charter, I can at least look to uh court cases that might exist interpreting that
specific provision in mass general laws. Unfortunately, when you look to chapter 41, section 45, um again, because this is not um the these these commissions are not necessarily performing such a significant day-to-day function that um there has been controversy that has
resulted in in in voluminous litigation in Massachusetts. There's virtually no case law. The case law that does exist is quite old. Um and it's none of it's really particularly on point. However, the exception to that is that there are a handful of cases, I think we found three in total, that address library
funds. And those cases all stand for the proposition that money that is raised or appropriated by the town for support or maintenance of a library or for library purposes um uh is is of course managed by the library itself. And similarly,
gifts or bequests to the library are likewise managed by either the library corporation if one exists um or the library if it's a if it's a a department or an entity within uh city or town government. So again, the analysis is a bit different with some supporting case
law, but the the the end result is the same as it was with conservation funds, which is that those library funds are within the purview um of the of the the board of trustees of the library. And then finally with respect to cemetery funds once again there's a statute
directly on point uh chapter 114 section 25 which speaks to cemetery commissioners um receiving gifts for bequest for the purpose of maintaining cemeteries and cemetery lots. So again that authority the oversight lies with the cemetery commission. So
conservation, library, cemetery, there is there are there are statutes, there's case law in in the instance of the library that um vest those bodies, conservation commission, uh library board of trustees and cemetery commission with the authority to manage
their their own funds, their their own uh donations and bequests. Now the the analysis is not the same with the various trust funds that fall under the category of again miscellaneous and that's our terminology not anybody else's. Um but those various
miscellaneous funds uh some of those are specific for specific purposes and that appears in the name of the title that's been given to the miscellaneous fund. Um, others are devises from estates or other donations that don't necessarily have titles, but they're specific within
the the the the device. Um, whether it's a will or some other form of bequest, what those monies can be used for. Um, those are within the purview of the board of commissioners of trust funds. Uh and the board of commissioners of trust funds consistent with the language
of the charter would have the responsibility consistent with the terms of those individual donations or bequests to manage and control those those trusts and to distribute the income of those trusts in accordance with the terms of the trust. And of
course all this ultimately goes to the treasurer who has the fiduciary responsibility to perform the actual function of transfers and accounting with respect to these funds. But it's the board of commissioners of trust funds that have the oversight of those miscellaneous funds. And you know, this
is not unique. Um, I guess I'll say this as sort of my my my my final words and then I'll I'll certainly entertain any questions that the board might have. Um, this the existence of this board of of commissioners of trust funds or board of trust fund commissioners, it goes by different names in different
communities. It's not unique to Lunberg. In fact, several of your surrounding communities um that have charters in some cases similar charters to yours have these boards. Um a number of cities have them. Uh u we we represent the city
of Fitchburg. City of Fitchburg has has a a board of commissioners of trust funds. Um, I actually found in in doing some of our due diligence, uh, I found a a board of, uh, trust fund commissioners in, uh, the city of Salem, um, but a ways from from Lunenburgg, but but
closer to me here in Newport. Um, and they have a a comprehensive website that provides a summary of who they are and how they were created. They were actually created through special legislation as opposed to through to a through a town charter. um and they provide an explanation of what they do and they give examples of the sorts of
functions that are often performed by these boards. Um they will accept donations for various purposes often general assistance purposes and then they will uh issue awards sometimes on an annual basis, sometimes on a quarterly basis or even more frequently
um often in different categories. For example, Salem has a general assistance category and a scholarships category and a fuel assistance category um to provide to provide help for for those in need within your community. Um and again that
that speaks to sort of the general nature of the monies that these boards often have uh within their purview as opposed to the much more specific trust funds that are left in the purview of conservation commissions or cemetery commissions or um or library boards of
trustees. So that was our analysis. Um I'm I'm confident that it's consistent with the language of your charter and what exists in in Massachusetts general laws. Um, and if board members have any questions, I'm certainly happy to to answer them. All right. Are there any questions from
the board? Nope. Okay. So, I just want to clarify. Let's see if I'm getting all this right. In terms of the conservation, the library, and the cemetery funds, the board of commissioner of trust funds has no authority over them at all.
That's correct. Okay. So it just leaves these five miscellaneous funds. Um I think that is consistent with the count that I had was five miscellaneous funds. Correct. So all of these funds essentially have a
creating document, right? Which I think you mentioned can determine how the funds are managed and distributed. Is that correct? Um they they they they should my care my careful answer to that question. So yes, I mean certainly um
there there ought to have been uh and most often almost always is documentation establishing the donation, the bequest. Um but I will say in the context of the five miscellaneous funds that you referenced, we have we had access to some of that. For example, one
of these was a donation from the American Legion from back in 2013. Well, 2013 wasn't that long ago. It's just over a decade ago. So we have the documentation. it's only a decade old. It's very specific in terms of establishment of the fund and the
purposes for which the the money is to be to be utilized. Um what often happens however with some of these much older funds is that that the the the originating document can't be found uh or it can be found but it's not nearly
as comprehensive as we would expect a legal document to be in 2025. um or there are some some some some vagaries or ambiguities within the document that make it unclear. So those are challenges that are are dealt with and there is a lot of case law on that
even outside of the municipal context where there's an effort in interpreting an older trust even again in the private context. Um and the language can't be interpreted and the courts have to be have to be sought out for assistance in determining the intent of the of the
donor. Um that's not unusual. Okay, understood. And I'll also loop the town manager in now too. So are we experiencing that issue not being able to find any of these documents or any sort of ambiguity with any of these funds? Yes. So um just for the public's clarity
because we're looking at a document in front of us that the public isn't seeing. So I just want to kind of name what these funds are and what as of March 25th the balance is of those funds just so that everybody has a full understanding of what we're talking about. American Legion Poor. The fund
had an ending balance of $12,48953. J&M Howard Sidewalk $22,211.58. Worthy Poor $22,88722. Gazebo Restoration $10,72546. and Lunenburgg Post2838 $8,690.14.
Um, we have been able to find two of the controlling documents. Um, in talking to a former member of the trust commission, this has been a problem for a long time. Um, and I think that, you know, folks
will have to do their diligence to to find those documents. um and if can't work with town council on how to distri distribute and dis disperse those funds in accordance to the uh minutes and information that we do have about those
funds. And to be clear, who exactly would be leading the search for those? Well, I think that it starts with the treasur collector who's already been working on it. But um certainly if there are folks who are listening to this recording and they were perhaps on the
trust commission years ago and there might be files in somebody's home as was the case in oftent times in boards and committees where there wasn't a central office and people were working as committees out of their homes. If folks have anything um it would be great if you could bring it forward. We could do
research at the um or the trust commission could do research at the uh registry of probate. Um, but I I think that we'll have to work with council on what that looks like and what would be necessary based on what we do have.
Okay. Thank you. So, which two did you find documentation for? Worthy poor and one of the legions. One of them. Any other questions from board members? Okay. Well, since we do have town council here and we have the chair of
the board of commissioner of trust funds here, um, if you'd like, I can invite you up if you have any specific questions for town council. Sure. Thank you. Hi. Uh, John Bowen. I'm 162 Highland Street. I'm the chairman of the Trust
Funding Commission. Adam, how are you? Good, John. How are you? Uh, pretty good. Good to talk to you again. So just for some clarification, I know that there's um there's some overlapping information um that I had read in the statute with regard to conservation library and library and
cemetery funds as well as uh workers compensation fund where there is a lack of a syncing uh uh committee here that um there are portions of the um uh workers compensation fund uh that comes under the control of the trust fund
commission and I don't have the chapter uh in front of me. I mean, I can dig it up, but I don't want to take everybody's time to find it. I have it there on my phone, but I could send you something with regard to that. But my question is this is that in uh in uh chapter 114
uh 25 uh it says um that and in chapter 203C as well. It highlights perpetual care and cemetery funds as invested in trust accounts of which are used uh to
be able to benefit uh the town uh with regard to uh specific reimbursements that come back to the town. And I believe I had raised that issue with you before but I believe that um there is a little bit of
contradiction there with regard to how cemetery funds are handled as well as conservation. Library is quite clear. Library has their own uh uh private trust company. Uh they run their own private uh trust fund board uh that they
have within their purview per charter. But uh cemetery does not and neither does conservation uh in charter. And I know that you said that we would default to the preemptive uh doctrine of mass general laws. And what it clearly says in the statute with is the
identification. And my question is is that I think this requires a little bit more research because I think that the overall benefit to the town when it comes to trust funds being invested and not being uh
separated out is an asset uh by the funds being managed by one entity as opposed to being managed by three entities. And where there is some conflict in Mass general laws where it does speak about the authorization of funds by trust fund commissioners if
there is a trust fund commission that um we basically say you know yes this fits chapter uh 114 section 25. There's a couple other chapters there. Same thing with conservation that basically that's the trust document that we review and
then we just say yes this fits into the conscript of that. let's uh authorize the fund and that is how uh we as a commission have looked at this uh these trusts. So, just out of curiosity, um I'd like to know where,
you know, where the case law is for that because you're saying the case law exists, but where's the case law that says that what Mass General Law says trust fund commissioners are responsible, okay, for bequath or given. Okay. Anything that's given to cemetery
or conservation are bequeaf or given. So my question to that is is basically if it's bequeath or given and it says specifically that it is the direction of the trust fund commission to be able to authorize the expenditure
um based on what the trust documents say whether it's the declaration or specific identifiable information. This is where I'm basically going with that. And I just think that uh there's a little bit more to that where this is an additional avenue of oversight that comes to uh the
spending of expenditures. But again, like I had mentioned, 203C clearly talks about perpetual care and cemetery funds and the use of that to be able to make sure that we're getting the best bang for our buck on the investment outside of what the standard 20 list is that we've been on, which right now I think
Bartholomew Company told us that we were um we were spending we were spending most of our wheels in pharmaceuticals which was a waste of time and a forensic audit is necessary by Mr. Scullumi of the budget task force recommended. So these are my these are my concerns and I
just want to have some clarity from you because I know all right Mr. I know you I know you have that clarity that you made we're asking questions. Yes I know you I know you I know you made that clarity but I don't think that you have provided the evidence to that because you said of a lack of evidence
and I'd like a little bit more uh information with regard to Bowen enough let him respond. Sure. So, let me let me try and a lot was said, so let me try and um respond in sort of a as much of a peace meal man as I can. If you could just turn the
volume down a little bit. My apologies. Go ahead, Adam. That's okay. Is it okay now? Yes. Okay. Um so um to be clear I I I've not cited to case law except in the context of
boards of library trustees where I said I found uh two or three separate cases that address the authority of boards of library trustees and it it doesn't appear that that Mr. Bowen is is contesting that. Um what I did say was that there's actually a lack of case law. I expressed initial excitement that
the language of your charter mirrors the language of state statute, hopeful that there might be some case law interpreting the state statute and providing some additional guidance, which would be an easy uh uh resolution to my to my research project, but I didn't find any because the the case law
that exists was either number one, it was quite old, number two, it was not on point addressing these very issues. uh and there wasn't there there wasn't any any sort of meaningful um uh number of cases interpreting um interpreting the statute in question. So I'm not relying
on or citing the case law. Um what I am saying is that while I appreciate that there are other statutes that address um the holding the expenditure the investment of trust monies and one of the statutes that you referenced is
chapter 203C and um some of members of the board uh the select board may may remember the reference to 203C because this was u a a statutory adoption that occurred I think it was a a year ago a year and a half ago at town meeting uh refer referred to as the prudent
investment or prudent investor statute. And uh what was explained at town meeting and the adoption of that statute for purposes of certain trust funds is that it provided uh provided and now provides given that that that town meeting vote did pass. It provides uh
the town some greater flexibility with respect to its choices for the investment of trust monies. Um, I wouldn't I wouldn't characterize the the new choices as especially risky to to the contrary. They're my understanding um based upon conversations I've had
with not just your investment adviser but investment adviserss uh to other municipalities is that they are quite conservative investments still. Um but they are I guess somewhat riskier uh than the traditional and very limited list of investment options for
municipalities. Um, and I don't I'm not disputing that looking to to that statute in an instance where the charter is silent or other provisions of mass general law are silent wouldn't make some sense. Um, I think you could look to that statute and look for some
guidance within the statute relative to expenditure or investment I should say of trust monies. But when it comes to specific entities within a municipal government and again we're talking about I I'll place the libraries aside for the moment. conservation commissions and
cemetery commissions. There are separate statutory provisions that address the creation of those entities and the authority they have with respect to their monies, including monies that they hold in trust. Um, and I've cited to those statutes, chapter 40, section 8,
uh, and the other statute, Mr. Bowen, that you just referenced, chapter 114, section 25. Um, I'm not aware of the sort of, um, inconsistencies or internal conflict you're referring to within Mass General Laws. To be clear, after we performed our analysis, just in an
abundance of caution, um, and before we reported anything to the town, we did consult with general counsel for the Division of Local Services within the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and got general confirmation of of the analysis that I've sort of laid out for
the board uh, tonight. So, uh, it does appear to us to be to be rather rather black and white in light of the research we've done and the types of accounts. Again, it it it might be a different analysis if we were talking about um a a different board, commission or
committee. Um not a miscellaneous fund, but also not a conservation commission or a board of library trustees or cemetery commission uh that had monies. Well, we'd have to do the analysis for that individual board or commissioner committee to say, okay, what's their
enabling legislation? What does that enabling legislation with say with respect to monies that they've received whether it be monies in their possession through an appropriation from the general fund or from the town or it be monies that have been bequeathed or don't or donated to them. Um and if that
statute is silent it may be a circumstance then where that silence means that we defer to the language of your charter which places the authority for oversight in the hands of the board of commissioners of trust funds. All right. Thank you Mr. Costa, do you
have any other questions, Mr. Bowen? Uh, no. That was basically the only question I just wanted to have every Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. If there are no other questions for town council at this time, thank you, Adam, for coming in tonight, and I hope that clarifies things for the public and for the board as well.
Sure. Thank you for your time. Have a good night. You, too. Okay. Moving on. We have a joint meeting with the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee to discuss the direction for the town hall and Ritter Memorial building projects. So, I will invite up
the members that are in the room. We also have Mr. Blatt over Zoom as well. Yeah. Hey Dave, you have some um noise going on in the background. Just so you know, unfortunately, I'm in a vehicle and my
I'm going to try to uh uh have to say that kind of I can't tell if that's you talking or if it's background noise, but we can't hear and you guys are just going to have to turn your microphones on as well. We've had a lot of IT issues tonight. Um and
since Dave is remotely, I don't know if he can call the meeting to order, right? Normally you need someone in person to do that. No, he can call. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Black, do you mind uh calling your meeting to order? Sure. This is uh Dave Black, vice chair
of the uh uh we we lost you, Dave. What was that? Try again. Hi, this is Dave Glad, vice chair of the building reuse committee. I'd like to call our uh uh meeting to order. um uh at 7:56
p.m. on Tuesday the 14th. All right, perfect. Thank you, Mr. Blat. Well, I want to thank you guys for being here tonight and for continuing to stay on with this project. I know you guys have put in years worth of work on this project and it's been certainly
frustrating at times. Uh, so I really appreciate you guys sticking with it and I think it's going to take a lot of perseverance to continue pushing it forward, but this is a project that the town really needs to see done. It addresses really critical needs. So, thank you for being here tonight. And
Mr. Blat, I believe you guys have compiled some feedback that you want to present to us. Sure. So, I apologize. I had a little family thing today and unfortunately could not be there in person. So you don't get to see my uh multimedia PowerPoint presentation. Just wanted to
talk about a few points that the group got together and we talked about um that we found from this process and that we would uh like to point out moving forward as we move forward. Um the first thing is is that when we you know we know we had this uh brought a building
we brought a building to uh that you know that that the price tag was more than we originally thought or would like to have seen. However, we were very impressed with how well the town responded to it and how close the uh
during this difficult time of financial times, how close the actual vote was during a town meeting. So for that reason we do feel that there is a lot of um uh b you know that this project has got a lot of good merit and we'd like to
have you guys talk to a little bit about to you guys and get your sentiments about things that we should look at moving forward. Some of the things that we found that we would like to talk you know that we found that we need to do is
the first thing is is that we realize that there is a huge need to improve the working condition and to solidate
town government into a single building. Um the second thing that we we found was that there the two buildings in town of both the Ritter endings and there's a need to uh to preserve these buildings and that they should be with us and with
the town for many as they um um that they make them more ADA compliant and uh that there is you know a need a definite need for that as well as to improve you know efficiencies in the buildings both uh you know energy efficiencies to basically upgrade the buildings uh considerably
um felt that the uh um one of the problems that we ran into was you know as you see with lots of projects with those of folks who have been in industry and things like that is that we felt like the project might have ended up having a little bit of uh feature creep. In other
words, that you know, the original scope of the project was one thing and then as folks got along, people said, "Well, why don't you what about putting this in there and what about putting that in there?" And that might not have been the best thing to do when we're coming to a
limited budget or kind of keeping the project under a certain budget and things like that. The other thing that we found was that we really need to better educate, you know, involve the public. Even though all of our meetings were open meetings and things of that, we still felt we had people who said,
well, you know, this is the first I'm hearing about it or other things. And until the presentation at town hall, most folks did not realize the real working conditions that people had. So with that note, what we're really looking from you guys is to get some uh
you know get some direction of what you really would like to see from a project or what you would like to see from you know from us as we worked on things because the other side of things is that um we felt like you know the biggest one of the things that goes on in this town
is what's going on with the other buildings and this um we are you know do we are we just looking at the Ritter and Town Hall or is this something that you guys want us to look at a bunch of buildings and just talk and come up with
a plan for the town for as we move forward? So, I'm going to uh kind of put myself on mute and ask that you guys just, you know, give us a little bit of uh feedback about what you're thinking and what you guys would feel um should be the charter as this if
this committee does move forward. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. at any other members of the committee want to say anything? Well, I'll just say that, you know, we're working for you. So, I think that's sort of the sentiment why we're here tonight. We're at serve at the
Thank you. serve at the pleasure of your board. So, we wanted to make sure we came here and uh reopen the dialogue. Sorry, it's really touchy. All right. Understood. Um, I mean I still want your feedback.
Yeah. No, I know. No, no, I know what we think. But we we feel like we're in a little bit of an impass here. Like where should Can you just mute that and just use one? Where should we be directing our resource, you know, our discussion and and things. So that's why we're here,
just to have a round table discussion. I'm not saying it's one-sided, but I'm just Yeah. All right. Um, so just can I add to the just a little bit to the conversation too because at our last select board meeting, so I'm on both committees, but at our last select board meeting, we had talked about ARPA funds not being spent and the Lunberg
Municipal Building Design had come up that it was 18,500 short. Um, I mentioned it at our last meeting and I reached out with David Blat to the architect and they had just recently sent out that invoice so it should be fully spent. So there are no additional
for 18 months, right? It was already Yeah, it was already sent. I have the email from the architect, but it was I think the architect Yeah. planned on spending all the money. Yeah. Mhm. So I just want to say, you know, you guys were incredibly close at town
meeting. You were six votes away. So I just want to ask, do you guys want to move forward with the same plan again in the fall? Like do you think that's something you guys want to consider? Well, well, I mean, there's the that's
the question there because we, you know, in a way we have a brand new superintendent that just started July 1st. And, you know, I'd like to, you know, what we have for a vision for how her administration worked and what she
expected might be different than what she has for a vision of what she looks at. So, um, I don't know if it's the best thing. And I also look at it as that um that you know there could be things to help lower the budget quite a
bit. Um we there's a big difference between wants and needs. And I think we want we we looked at wants on the committee. We ended up looking at wants more than we looked at at as needs
more than anything else. And I think we, you know, have having a better collaboration with you guys on the actual needs for the town might make this even a a more economical project, if I could say it that way.
So, I'd be interested in hearing any feedback you got after town meeting. Um, why people voted against it, what they didn't like, what they want changed. Did you get any feedback? um you know we got as I think we got it
we didn't get it towards the committee itself but I think we got you know some of us got it as individuals we got we received feedback of just you know questioning whether it the project was larger than it needed to be you know
larger than it needed to be m um you know I'll look at as anam my personal and I'm just going to say this personally like one of the examples for me is that we were told that we had to make an accommodation in town hall for PAC.
And you know, our original plan was that PAC would occupy a a good portion of the first floor of the uh of the T of Town Hall and you know that that way they can still have their studio upstairs and
that's where they mostly are. thought, you know, it was thrown on us kind of late that no, we had to make accommodation at the new Ritter building for for a pack. And, you know, that's a lot of square footage, but that what we look at and if we look at dollars per
square foot, that's almost that that's just, you know, a half million dollars worth of building square footage that we're using for that we're adding on for I'm not sure what the reason is. The other side of things is that if you looked at the the uh report, it had all
new furniture for everybody. And is that really necessary that we have all new furniture for everybody in this building or are some of the things that we have today usable moving forward? And that also since if anybody's looked at what
brand new office furniture looks like is costwise is a was a huge expense as well added to the project because you know to redo town hall to make it safe and to make it a building that will last for a long time. The numbers were not that
bad. It was under under 3 million to do town hall and that to us is you know money well spent. But, you know, when you start adding in all the extras, it it the the feature creep, this is where I mentioned with feature creep, it went
up quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And it might be karma, but I just got a cut from some uh rough wood on this piece of desk, so I'm going to figure it's not karma. But so watching watching their um meetings, there was
definitely some interest on their the board, the municipal building design committee's board of uh moving forward with the with the exact and to their their credit, they were coming here to the board to get some some guidance on that end. And you know, you know, my
position would be absolutely not. We should not go forward with that same original plan. So that that would that would be my my initial feedback and giving them guidance from watching watching their meetings. Um and you know
without going down you know into the rabbit hole you know I do appreciate all the work that they have done you know both this committee and all the other iterations of the committees over the years but um you know I I would look forward to a more collaborative approach
between the select board and the municipal board um uh building design committee and not really just leaving them out there in the lurch. Um, and so I mean I I do have as I've said before other comments that I'm willing willing to get into, but I just, you know, for
the point of this comment is that I my recommendation my individual would be like certainly not to go forward with the the failed plan and that let's work you know what the holistically collaborative what all these power words
are but I think you know coming again from the uh the various meetings that their commitment and you know the feedback or the feel if they get from the community is, you know, a um a really uh thoughtful uh rehabilitation
historic of the historic buildings Ritter in in this building. And I think, you know, that seems to be the core uh focus and to their the the the points made about uh the the the creep that may have been a big part of the problem
because I I think if we capture the needs of the employees and you know the the the lack of um improvements the town has made to the buildings over the years, if if we just focus on you know the the core issues all the while
keeping in um context this this this concept we hear so frequently about is long-term planning and as as we develop these plans and in in creep does try to come um you know reemerge we have to consider TCP we have to consider Turkey
Hill we have to consider PAS that the water water takers the 2500 water takers in town are confronting you know a conversation they're dealing with that ranges from you know 30 to 50 to 70 plus million dollars to be divided up by
those those users. The storm water utility fee that that'll be um um coming up, you know, a lot of conversation about the community pre uh preservation act and then overall the school funding. So, we just have to keep all of those
issues in in uh in mind. So, I don't know how you want to do this, but I I have plenty of feedback to give you guys and suggestions. And I I put it into three categories, if you will. One
is the composition of the committee. You've lost some members and I'm not sure you've lost maybe more than I know for sure. Um the second part is I have some specific feedback on on the plan. I agree. I don't think it should be the exact same that you bring forward again.
Um, and then some suggestions with respect to PR and education. Last year was so rushed, so last minute. Um, that I I think it worked against you and then getting caught up in the the tsunami of the override and all of that.
It, you know, I think Marshall Park was in the same boat. So, I don't know how you guys want to do it, but I have a a list of stuff that I'm happy to You can start if you want. You want to do a composition first? It's kind of just general housekeeping. Um,
so Mr. Skull and BBrini attended all your meetings, was not a voting member. I think he should be a voting member. Um, or at least a representative from the APDC. I think he's been attending. I I would,
if I could make a suggestion as a a rep from the APDC, I would I would um recommend Mr. Scholrini. Um I also think that um the facilities director should be more involved. Um now he's also a resident of Lunberg.
So would he be a member at large member and vote or facilities director role vote not vote? I I don't care but I think he needs to be involved and consulted as long as he is willing and able to do so. Um I have questions about
the other me. So, um, Brian is now our select board. So, you replaced Michael Ray, Laura replaced, and Laura replaced you. So, those are covered. Um, I I watch all the meeting. I I watch like every meeting in town. Um, so, but I've noticed like the last
two meetings you don't have a planning board member and one of your other members at large was not there. I don't know. It is still Matthew, Allison, and Christina. So, they're staying us as of now. as of like have you confirmed that with them
or you just haven't heard otherwise? I think there hasn't been a change in the the members. Well, I would encourage you to confirm. I know Christina recently had a baby and Matthew is I think it's important to have planning board representation as well. Yes.
Um so that's the easy bit about the composition. If if I talk about the plan design, I' I've shared some of this feedback in the past, I don't feel like ACE belongs in in the new town hall. Um I view that
building, you know, that is the town employees is where people go for c for building permits. You know, the idea is we bring all these things under one roof. You go to conservation, you go to building, whatever you have to do, all your business, you pay your taxes all under one roof. Um I know that that was
um a you know the school wanted that superintendent school committee. I don't know as you mentioned we have a new superintendent. I don't know how she feels. Um I know that the director of the ACE program has to be collocicalized.
Um but personally my my perception from where I sit I'm not sure that director has to be collocicalized with the superintendent in central office. Um, the other thing that bothered me was
this turning into just all meeting rooms. And for the town manager to have a department head meeting, they all have to walk over here. They're all over there already. Why can you imagine walking over here and oh, I left my
notebook in my office. Now I got to go. You know, it's just that's not efficient. I I I would like to see a space in the new town hall that's large enough for department head meeting. It doesn't have to be a dedicated conference room. Maybe some kind of multi-use room that serves as a
conference room and something else. I don't know. That's for, you know, an architect to figure out or someone who works in this space um with pack. So, it is a town department. It is a very important resource as I'll
get to later. Um, I don't like digging if we don't have to. Um, I I don't know. Maybe it's just me being a worry wart. I don't know what we'd find. And I I just imagine, you know, chuch-ching, chuch-ching, chuch-ching.
Um, and I'm not sure. I have to go back and watch their presentation to us in terms of space. Um, I'm not sure they need need need need the space they're asking for because right now they're in TCP. I don't know what that space looks like. Do they have
15t ceilings over there? They they may be, but they certainly don't have what was being designed in the in the basement. So, and I know again I don't remember everything that was wrong with going in here. All I remember was a creek.
You do this building right, there should be no creek. Now, I don't know access. I remember something about access security. You know, I don't know how much they're moving equipment in and out. You don't want them to have to walk upstairs with equipment. I I I feel like it could be
addressed. Like you said, the booth is here. Um I I would like to avoid having a basement and and try to, you know, work with PAC to come to what is a reasonable amount of space and maybe it could be in this building or
I don't even I don't even want to know. I'll say this once and Mr. Blat is probably gonna oh um is is probably going to I don't know fall over but um Brooks House is that an option for like ACE or something
like that. I don't know. I'll just throw that out there. Um okay. Lastly, the the third category of PR and education. I think you guys and and Marshall Park as well, it was a
because of everything going on at town meeting. I think it it was a mistake not to talk about our debt capacity and the timing of this of these projects and how it now is a good time to do something like this. Um I think everyone hears oh
I I mean you I saw it all over Facebook more money for this money for this. But it's different and I think there's some education with the public that has to be done um with respect to and I know the chair of the finance committee had has you know already presentation ready
to go. Um I think Michael Ray's videos in his pictures were great. It's too bad it wasn't earlier. Um but I think you can use those or maybe do them again.
take advantage of pack and do like just a short recording of hey here's what it's like to work in town hall and use those videos and here's you know look at the clerk's office this is what the Ritter looks like um and what there were
three oh and pack pack space to have short video clips because you know what I people don't come they don't come to info sessions parks had info sessions mbta communities had info sessions aster plan has info sess people don't show up.
But I run into people all the time saying, "Oh, I know you. I see you on, you know, on YouTube. People watch the recordings. They watch pack. Let's take advantage of that." Um, even if you do have an info session and, you know, only a few people show up and it's recorded,
I think people will watch it. I think the word will get out if you start it early enough. Um, even on social media, I know you posted like all the meeting and the agenda on Facebook, but to to post the links to these little 5 10 minute videos showing
what it's like. I mean, yes, you can offer tours, too. Um, but that require that's an activation energy. Get people over here and and get somebody from town to take them through. Um, so I think those are all of my
my key points, but I I think we need to do something. We definitely you guys have done a lot of work and and people who aren't here preceded you have done a lot of work. We we need to to do something and and it's so close. It's so close.
So I would agree with uh members Mloud and Mi with uh most of what they said. Um the vote at at the meeting was so close uh because of the presentation uh by Mr. Jeff and I think that was the education
that people got but it was still that uphill battle against the school funding and the override that that really shut it down. So I could see going again in the fall but then I look at the lack of support that we got from the APDC at town meeting and I think that's what was
missing too. I think having again having an APDC voting member and also a facilities director voting member I think can make it a little bit better. Um I think there is a concern about having the the town hall be open. I think a lot of people want to restore it
but it it should be used or have more of a purpose. Um it would be good to hear from the superintendent about ACE. And I think little things like that, I think there can be some improvements in the design. Uh Pack, I know that there was even a
post on social media about PAC uh potentially in like the gas station down the street. Like I would like to explore more with PAC leadership to see if there are buildings that they could use and maybe that saves some space too, other
town buildings. Um space and money. But I think the PR education, we saw it with people who voted in the town meeting. they understood and they appreciated it, but it was that battle. And then once it got to the ballot, people didn't have that education watching that video, watching the
presentation, that's why it did so poorly. So, I think the education to the public could definitely help. But that was that challenge. Um, the debt capacity also, I think that conversation and that presentation would have helped a lot too and that could have got it over at town meeting too. Uh
my big cons concern and question I had is if the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee goes back to the the table and works on this, where's the funding to make that new design? Right. That's my big concern. I was hoping there was 18,000 left.
Mr. Skull and Breenini, do you want to share any feedback? You've been pretty quiet. I did. Um, first of all, one of the reasons why I'm quiet is because I'm not a member of the committee. And I do appreciate uh Rene's comment that there should be a representative from the APDC
on this committee. Um, I want to take exception to what Brian said. My comments u in opposition to what was designed was never from my position as the chair of the APDC. And I think I made that clear in my
conversations. In fact, what I did say as a member of the APDC was how glad I was to see the project validate that both Town Hall and Ritter were great buildings to renovate. Because if you
remember back uh I think in 22 or 21 when we were talking about a $35 million project for the town, both Ritter and Town Hall were left off the table because they were in such bad
shape. And I think that we've proven through this process two things. One is that these buildings can be renovated and two the cost to renovating existing is always going to be cheaper than adding new square footage to the town.
And my comments have have always been focused on two things. One, scoping the project correctly. In fact, what I am glad that the town why I am glad that the town voted not to move forward the with the project is because we do have a
new superintendent and she has different ideas about where the ACE program should be and it might be in a building that got left off to the to the side in the Brooks house. Mhm. And I think that that makes so much more
sense than having that ACE program in the second in the lower level of the Ritter building. And thank God that we the town didn't approve that because that would have been a mistake. And in fact, on January 8th, after watching the
school committee on January 7th, I sent a note to the chair of the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee and said, "Whoa, we got a school committee that's really kind of uncertain as to how they want to handle the ACE program. We need to kind of stop and reconvene
and and have a discussion about this so that we don't design something that won't warrant support." And then of course the school committee I think made a decision that really made selling this at town meeting difficult to do because you had space. You moved the
superintendent. You moved the ACE program to Turkey Hill. So my comments have never been because I wasn't a member of the uh committee. My comments have never been representing the APDC other than to say these old buildings
have value. they can be renovated uh fairly economically and I think that we could move forward with these being a part of the town administrative redo that's so desperately needed. That's the other thing is that I've been saying that we need to get the town manager,
the staff, they need to be engaged in this process. We can't do this at an arms length with them. And I think that that's a huge issue. The second major point that I have been trying to make, this goes back to debt service. we may
be we may be at a good time to do major construction work, but no one's convinced me of that because I haven't seen that data and I've been a part of this process since January 2022. So, how can we expect the town residents
to understand that when the people who are working this issue right now and and you know, we're right up against it and we don't really know you know what the debt service issues are. I think that connected to debt service is the town
has lots of elephants to eat. It has a need to improve town administrative space. Absolutely. Positively needs to improve. The you shouldn't have to walk into a building like this where the town clerk's office looks the way it does and there's all
kinds of stuff in the way. I mean, those need to get addressed. So we have a town we have a town administration function and this also goes back to a comment that Carter Teranzini made and uh to me after he looked at the uh Lunberg
municipal building design committee meeting where we saw the first concept from uh Taylor and Burns and he oh my god what a horrible design that was. So so we need to look at what's the priority for town administrative functions. I like Marshall Park. I wish
we could get something done with Marshall Park. I'm a park guy. I used to be on a county commission associated with development parks in Ohio and I know that those those really have value to the quality of life of Lunenburgg. We have a major major elephant in Turkey
Hill. You know, we have been talking about TA Pac as a community for how many years? At least five plus cuz I've been living here for 5 years, you know. So, we have that and then we have another one that's kind of cropped up and that's the re redo of the intersection of the
primary school um on uh route to you know because or Mass Avenue because of the problems that that that that are down there and one of these days if we're not careful and we don't just and we don't solve that problem we might have a bus get hit by somebody and that's the last thing that we ever want
to do and I think the school committee has identified that as a need you know so we've got these multiple And then we have a fire uh public safety building which probably doesn't need something but we should kind of look at that where that elephant will fit in the future you
know and we have the the eagle house you know which is another little elephant that kind of needs to fit you know in the future and then of course you know every one of those things that we add to our tax rules kind of looks like an
override you know so you know we want to make sure that while we don't have to call it an override. We just have to have a vote for it. We want to make sure that we're not going to override the citizens to death. And I think that that's one of the things that needs to
happen. So, you know, I have I have provided information to the town manager that kind of summarizes what I'm describing now. And that is what should happen first is that the talent it's a select board. You all should pray help
establish some priority based on what that debt load is for what which one of these elephants comes first, comes second, comes third, comes fourth, which oh by the way having uh attended a three-hour master plan steering
committee meeting last week was a topic of discussion is that you know members of the master plan steering committee are saying where's the plan for town facilities not where's the plan for town hall, where's the plan for Turkey Hill,
where is the plan for a redo of the intersection? I think that if we had a plan, if we said this is what we're going to do first, this is what we're going to do second, this is what we're going to do third, the town will get behind it. You know, I think that they will. And I think that that's really
what was missing. We need to make sure that we develop that comprehensive, you know, which elephant comes first, which comes fourth, which comes fifth, which comes sixth. So those are my comments. Renee, thank you very much for recognizing that APD should have been on
the committee. But my comments once again, Brian, they were never made as a member of the APDC because we never had a vote about what I was saying, which by the way, last week, last Thursday night, we did vote. And and if this hadn't come
up, Renee, I was going to stay for the correspondents from other boards to say that the ABDC really wants a seat at the table as this committee moves forward. That's my comments. Do you want to share your thoughts on town manager?
Is if everybody else from both committees has um I should probably state I did speak with the superintendent. Um she's we're still not exactly sure what our needs are for district offices. They
moved to Turkey Hill two weeks ago. They're still setting up offices. There are not students in the building yet. Uh so we're not in the full swing of things. Um I I heard several mentions of the ACE
program going in the Brooks House. I'm not going to speak for the school committee, but I am thrilled to hear of an actual use for like a concrete use for the Brooks House. um thrilled to hear about something we could put in the town could actually
utilize that historic property that's been sitting there. Um part I I wonder if part of the plan forward should be uh like was mentioned the needs versus the wants and pairing
it down and removing the school part from the town hall and then considering that would lower cost because Turkey Hill is going to need something in the future and whatever happens in the future with Turkey Hill could we could
roll district offices into that plan. Um, but I'm hesitant to say exactly because we haven't discussed it as a committee. Uh, and the superintendent needs a little more time. She has been there two weeks. Um, and none of those weeks have involved ceilings
being put together cuz they're currently doing work on Turkey Hill. So, um, we do need more time, but we could that is a possibility of going not back to the drawing board, but removing some things and having a very slim down Ritter
building. That is a possibility. Mr. Ml. Yes. I just wanted to thank Mr. Skull and Breeny for his comments. I think he's spot on and I found him to be a, you know, a source of um hope in the process. you know, at the time I had no
idea, you know, who anybody was, but certainly who who he was. But we we were two early ones that were kind of giving them the the committee some some push back. And I think he would be a perfect he personally would be a perfect uh addition to the um the committee as
Renee had suggested. [Music] It's your chart like we're here. You guys could add a voting member correctly. We can't you you can't you can modify the chart that was created by the select board. So okay that's that's on you guys. So
but it would be nice if you guys you know it was a mutual it was not forced upon us unwillingly. I I'll also echo that uh Tony and I have had our disagreements. Yes we have. But we share a profession so I'm going to stick with them.
Um, no, I I think that uh Tony has been uh probably one of the most steadfast participators since he joined in 2022, even even of the uh standing committee members. Um, so I as a to that point, I would fully support that. Also, I mean,
we try we engaged with um the facilities director on a number of occasions through the process, but that's not a bad idea. I don't know what he'd think about it, but um maybe he doesn't have a choice, but uh I think making him a standing committee member
isn't uh isn't a bad idea. Seems seems like a good idea. This just must be me, huh? Everybody's mic's turned off. Um I I guess I'll also say that um I I was the first chair of this committee in 2019.
We met a couple times before COVID. We hired the first architect I think late February of 2020 and held one inerson meeting and then went all virtual and spent the next number of years um really
uh really doing a lot of the work that we talked about tonight. It's just old now. We we engaged town hall. We engaged all of the department heads. Uh we engaged the school committee. Um, we had lots of feedback from all of those
people throughout that process to really refine that vision. Um, perhaps one of the weaknesses of the second effort was that we relied on we we we sort of um used that data, did a
little refreshing, but we didn't go back and re-engage that process um when we hired the um the latest architect. we sort of just relied on that data which is like 5 years old now. Um town town town hall has changed, school department
has now changed. Um and so, you know, I think that a lot of those comments that that folks have have raised about engaging um uh re-engaging with all those folks, I think is is is appropriate. I I also went on record last week, we have a new
town manager who I don't know, but I believe will be a very valuable um participant and voice in this. Um she was drinking from a fire hose when this was being presented. So, uh I don't
think she had an opportunity to uh to really digest it and certainly not the superintendent um because she she's 14 days into her into her new job. So, I think that all those things are really um really important. Um I have lots of
other things I can say, but I I think I'll just leave it at that. All right. Thank you. Yeah. So, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of comments. Um, one is that I I'm hearing that there's very much not a strong desire to return to
town meeting um with the project as is at the fall special. Um, and I do want to say that a town meeting vote, while it can be close, um, you often see a very different vote at the ballot box. So uh sometimes you have a project that
will pass overwhelmingly at town meeting and often will fail miserably at the ballot box. That's so so the town meeting vote while it was encouraging probably is probably is not indicative of what the voters would do at the ballot box.
Um, with that said, I just want to say that I think spending too much time in kind of going back to square one, I think we'll lose a lot of uh momentum, effort, engagement. And so, while I
think maybe another year um or half of a year makes sense, I wouldn't want to see this linger on for years. Um, that's good. Uh I would wonder if um surveying those
who did vote at tow meeting would provide some utility especially those who voted no um I think it's important to know for the no voters especially is there anything that would get them to yes um because there's going to be a
certain amount of the population who is never going to get to yes right um but for the other folks what was it the cost was it the information, what was driving the no? Um, and was the no a no to the project or just a no to no at this time
I don't have enough of information or no, I don't like this element or no, I don't like the cost. So, I think that that would be important for the committee to drill down. Um, I think that perhaps, and maybe this is even at the staff level, that I think
that there could be some benefit of folks visiting other municipalities and looking at what their setups look like. Um, I know I heard conversations about I think it was specifically the land use department having a bullpen and that there was some reaction to a bullpen and
a bullpen is very common in a land use department. So I think that folks even if they're staff just seeing what other how other towns function would have a benefit. Um and my last kind of question
comment um has you know Taylor and Burns has done an incredible amount of work already and they already have you know I'm sure I I don't know what systems they use but I'm sure they have base layers already drawn and and making adjustments isn't the same as doing it from the start. Have there been
conversations with them about what the cost potentially would be if we I think we kind of hear where we're talking about changing the plan at least generally what that looks like. Um and if those conversations haven't happened perhaps they could. Um because I think
it makes a huge difference if we're talking about a $20,000 increase versus a $200,000 project. So, I think just to know what that increased cost for a redesign would be would be really helpful for folks.
I actually did have that conversation with Taylor and Barnes and I had it uh in January and when I called, you got to understand my background. I I used to work for the United States military and chain of command is everything. And the first thing that I said to to Robert
Taylor when I got him on the phone was, I am not the chair. I am just a a citizen who's on a committee and if you want to hang up feel free to do so. So we so he says no he says um let's have a
conversation. I says good. So we talked about the whole issue of ACE being in town hall because I don't think anybody really thought that that was heading in the right direction. And I said, "Could
we look at a redesign with Ace not being there?" And he said, "Yes." He says, "We could." He says, "There's money to do that. Not enough money for me to give you a full-blown engineering cost
estimate associated with a different concept." He says, "But we have to know right now." And I says, "I agree." So he he at that point in time I think he was thinking that there was still we hadn't burned all of the money. You know we had
gone through two iterations and that was one of my concerns is that we may have burned up all of the money except for a few bucks cuz we did have our presentation in February with the select board. And he said no. He says I think I could get that to you. you know, so I
think going back to Taylor Burns and saying, "Let's have a conversation about what a redesign, a rescoping might look like, you know, with with the idea that now ACE won't be in." I think that's not a bad thing. But I got to tell you, um,
I've worked with architects. I've I've spent millions of your federal tax dollars with architects, and I've worked with better architects, you know. So, while we might get some information, I'm not convinced that they
got it they got it right the first time, I'm not sure they'll get it right the second time. Now, that's just Tony Skelebrin's two cents worth, but it's based on me spending millions of dollars doing uh architectural work and hiring
architectural firms. All right. So, it sounds like we want to modify the charge to include representation for APDC and also facilities, right? We're all in agreement on that. Okay. And I think it kind of sounds like we're all sort of at
least in the right direction here where we like the plan, but we want to modify the scope a little bit, right? So, the ACE program, we want to explore putting that in the Brooks House potentially. Doesn't belong in town hall. Um, what else have we talked about? PAC maybe in this building. Like what do you guys
think about PAC specifically in this building? This is made for PAC. They're already here. They're already here. They're already here. You know, the other thing that that I I I might get in trouble with my architectural preservation district commission members, but you guys need to
be down on the first floor, you know, not up here. And then let's have pack up here. Now, that means you'd have to have an elevator cuz they got a lot of heavy equipment. But that man chair thing back there, it doesn't work anyhow. Or right there, it doesn't work right anyhow. You know, so this is where Pat could be. No
digging, you know. I completely agree with that too, Renee. Is it putting them in the basement? That was like like insane, you know. So I think Pat could be here. And then you now you're using this building every day. There's not a question of who's in the building.
Somebody's in the building every day. And then you have the meeting rooms for downstairs for for you all and the planning board and everybody else that has a need for meetings. So I think the packet could could prosper in this facility. We could move some of the
historic stuff like that and that downstairs. You know, we could we could move some of the the uh the ceiling downstairs, which by the way, if you're going to renovate the building and upgrade the coach, you got to do that anyhow. you know, you got to take some of the stuff out of the way so that you can put sprinklers in this building, you
can upgrade the electric, you know, there's a there's a fuse box back there by that that panel. You can't have that, you know. So, that means that that has to get moved anyhow. So, move it downstairs and then our seniors who come in here don't have much of a challenge
to to come to a select board meeting, right? Our meetings will actually be accessible. Yes. And then you all can get off to stage. I've been wanting to do I was just thinking that the stage is very intimidating. It It's like half you guys are up there judging down on people and
half uh elementary school play. It's I think it to have you guys elevated and you know the end of a room without it being so so very high up. Um, also, yeah, the accessibility issue is a huge one
because I was thinking we we're going to have to put a lift in this building no matter what because we're not designing spaces that are not accessible to people. Uh, however, if the power goes out in the middle of a meeting, things like that, it's just far more accessible to have it downstairs and then there's going to be less of a demand on the
lift. Um, I will say one thing that I've heard from people is that they would prefer it to just be on 30 School Street further in and not exactly, you know, as far out on Massav as it would be. I'm curious what the history of that decision is
because I'm sure you guys explored that at some point, right? Do you know? This is why there isn't an ABDC rep on this committee because the person who was the chair was a staunch opponent to
demolishing 30 school street. Okay. and and uh and you know I would I personally I think 30 school street could have made a great senior housing facility and I've seen that all over the place and our interim time
manager Carter had actually worked on a project like that at his previous place of employment. I know two developers that made a run at that property. Yeah. And it just didn't it just didn't work. But anyway, um I think that the history
with using 30 school street goes back to the TAP a study back TAP a associates was the architect that we used to uh when we built the new middle high school and I I can't remember exactly how they got involved in the
building reuse committee. I wasn't involved then. I was involved in the municipal building uh in the uh middle high school project but not in the reuse at that time. But they did a study that looked at several options, one of which I think was a standalone building at 30
School Street. Um why that wasn't advanced. Um, I guess I I don't have it square in my head and it's probably a pretty long story um that I don't know we'd have time for
anyway, but I I guess I think that the plan that we that this committee brought most recently was in response to something that that Tony mentioned earlier was that the previous plan when we were looking at TCP when our charge
was really just limited to TCP, there was definitely the sentiment that well what the heck are we going to do with we already have I think at the time we still had 30 school streets standing vacant and then you know now we're going to have two more buildings standing vacant uh which no one by the way wants to neglect because they're really historic
no one disputes that Ritter and and town hall um are historically significant. So I think that's why this plan was developed because we we saw the need to um consolidate town offices in a manner
that was at least attempting to be cost sensitive. So the idea was to use as much as we could with Ritter add on as little as possible. I understand that when you look at the massing of the proposed building, it doesn't look that way, but we were using existing square
footage in the Ritter and adding on, right? So, I think that instead of building a whole new building um over in over in So, I mean, I think that that might be as simple as it, you know, there's a answer I could give you tonight, but I'm, you know, I'm sure it's a much more convoluted answer.
There's probably many other people maybe in this room that have more of a a history on that than me, but um there's been lots of permutations. Of course, your previous iterations of your board did surveys um public surveys of what we should do with 30 school street. Should
it be green space? Should it be um town I think you you even had town hall in there. Should it be senior housing? All this kind of thing. And I think uh the sentiment was was green space in some capacity. I think that was that emerged as one of the So there's been just a lot
of information floating around there on different iterations of this project. And I'm sure I didn't answer the question very effectively, but that's a little bit of a best uh recollection for me. Anyway, that's I thought I'd ask. Um, but I also
think, you know, there's benefit in having that one consolidated building, right, with the connection between Ritter and the town hall as well. So, um, David, are you still on? Yes. I just had myself unmute, so
Okay. Um, will you get in touch with the architects to ask out to with Taylor and Burns to ask about a second go? I guess Dave Dave, it's Greg. I could do that if you want. I I had a relationship with
them through the process, I think. Well, I have to agree with Mr. Scary. I you know as a member of know that enthralled with what they ended up with. The fact
of the matter is is that you know um I look at the Ritter building itself the original Oh, I think you just dropped. Oh yeah. Oh, he's right there.
He's muted. Hold on one second. He's unmuted now. Yep. I got you. Go ahead, Dave. So, I don't know how from where I got cut off there, but anyway, I look at it as that I'm not I wasn't that excited about what the architects ended up doing
personally. And I do believe that as a group it's you know I I I mean personally myself I've designed several h houses and se and have done this for many other people. I believe that I can do a piece of paper you know that the group could have done a piece of paper
thing and done some looking that way that would have done the town a better justice. So, as much as I believe that the architect has a lot of information, I'm not sure if they fully understood
what a you know, the historic of preserving a historical building what that really meant when it came to Ritter. So, I'm happy to have you know, Greg, if you wanted to to reach out to them. However, I do believe that as a group, we we we
need to I I with the temp with the direction of the select board, we need to really think about what what the building is going to have and what the building should should be at this point. I I agree with the idea that um you know, the second floor of town hall is
an amazing space for pack and why not use it that way? And I and that would have you know that and that there I do agree also that there needs to be some space in town hall for people to meet and whether that's a multi-purpose space or whatever I do believe that that could
be done you know whether you know if you need like groups of up to 10 people a group of up to 10 people that's all the space you would need. So, I'm not sure we got what we were really looking for, but but once again, I believed everything got condensed into a very
short time period and that's what and we got what we could get at that point. Did that make any sense? Yes. Okay. Thanks. I would like to still see the connection with the the architect. I think it's going to be a better selling point too
to the the citizens. Sure. Yeah, but we don't lose anything by asking the question how much it's going to cost and so we might as well do that. Okay, you don't lose anything by asking them questions. But I'm going to give you one example of why they're not on my top 10 list. The first iteration of design we
saw, the architect put the school superintendent who is our highest paid town employee at the time in the in the lower level of the Ritter building. And no one no good architect should ever put
the highest compensated employee in the lower level of a building like the Ritter building. And and I when I saw that it was like oh my god you know they don't get it. So that's just an example of why I don't think I mean that we can get data from them about costs you know
like a rescoping costs but I don't think it would be in our best interest to bring them back. Okay. Well through you Mr. Chairman if I could ask a question to Mr. Roy. Um, where this is your line of work somewhat tangentially
where we spent about 185,000 with Taylor and Burns. I would imagine there's some tens of thousands of dollars for a redesign, but under a hundred, some tens, but under 100. If if we went to a
brand new architect, would we is there some of this architect's work that could be reused by another professional that we're not into this for another 185 with a new designer? Because I think if we're starting I mean I think if if we hadn't
already spent $185,000 with Taylor and Burns, I think we could be having a conversation about whether or not they're our favorite architect or not. But I I feel like we're 50 ft into the woods here on this one. Uh thanks. So
you're welcome. Not to put me on the spot or anything, right? So just to be clear, I'm a civil engineer, but I I uh I do dabble in the space uh like my friend here. Um, I think my over and under for asking Taylor and Burns to do analysis of that
when you first were popping this round is you're probably they're probably going to tell you 75K plus or minus, I'm guessing. Um, I don't know that a new firm would have to completely reinvent the wheel, but
uh, particularly if they have to share the same opinion that that Tony does with the quality work or or have question the same type of questions, they're probably going to want to do a lot of it over again. Um, so I don't know that it's going to be 180,
but you're probably going to spend a lot of it, I bet. You know, I I think that most firms will want to take a good clean pass at it. I agree with that. But, you know, we could certainly ask some I mean, we I know some people in the field and see
what they think. I know some architects that would candidly give me some opinion on that that do a municipal work. So, we could we could try to get some data on that and see because yeah, any anything we do, I mean, my sense is even if it's 75K, this is a town meeting. Yes. Proposition, correct? So, I mean, we
have some time to put this together. Y um although we all know that time passes quick quick quicker than we'd like. Um but um yeah, we we can you know, we we can I mean it we don't lose anything by asking the question from Taylor and
Burns. Um, so and unless this objection to doing that, we can we can do that and we can uh I can ask some questions for some people that I know and see what you know what the answer to that question is in particular. Thank you. Okay.
My concern is at this point if we go to another architect that will be the fourth iteration of this. Well, so we've we did TCP renovation, then we did TCP brand new on the site of TCP, then we did this plan that just
failed. And as it feels a little better going back for a modification of an already existing plan than it would be to spend another large sum of money on what would end up being a fourth plan. We're we're we're throwing a lot of
money at design at these plans. And I know why. I understand the history of it. Um it it doesn't feel good. No, it it feels that's a lot of money. So that would be why I would go towards
Taylor and Burns. Yeah, I feel the same way. So I I I will say I I don't and no disrespect to the the folks that have their opinions, I personally want to go and I actually like the plan. Mhm. I uh and I was a pretty outspoken
supporter of it through the process and even as as recently as last Thursday when we met. Um I still like the plan. Um and I didn't get any feedback from towns people that I talked to
saying that they hated the plan. That wasn't the feedback that I got. The feedback I got was you had bad timing. Yeah. um the schools had a $2 million shortfall and uh Marshall Park was asking for $12 million, whatever. You know, it just those that's the kind of
feedback that I got. It wasn't that um that it was a bad plan. Um that doesn't mean that it was a good plan. I'm just saying that personally I didn't think it was that and I didn't think that and I didn't get that feedback from folks. I certainly didn't talk to everybody
though, but I'll just leave that there. I feel like it's really close. Yeah. Like I think I think it's a price tag and I think some of the changes will reduce that price tag. At least that's my hope. And I think if there's a plan for the schools I think that gets more support,
too. If we're going to go in a direction, would you prefer we still try to have a lower cost all-encompassing plan or would you be more geared towards very cheap get get this done at a price point that the town will
actually vote for? Make it as cheap as possible. Which which would you prefer? No, it's got to it's got to have longevity. Okay. And I think honestly with with the context that we've talked about at town meeting, the fact that it
was so close means, you know, I I would expect if the price tag was seriously an issue, it would have been resoundingly defeated at town meeting and it wasn't. So yeah, I think we can cut down the scale a little bit, maybe make it a little less expensive, but you know, I
don't think it was interpreted as being wildly too expensive. And also, sorry, sorry. I was just going to say I agree with what the town manager said, too, but surveying surveying get get the people who were close. What's what's
their yes? What's their point that gets them to say yes? And I was going to say um that I shared the opinions that were that were expressed about uh disappointment that we didn't share the financials in the presentation. I mean,
we we needed to do that and we didn't. I don't I thought that should have been done even before town meeting because I there isn't I don't think there's anybody on this committee that that wished we didn't do have more time to do more public outreach. Okay. And it's and it's not the um
it it it's not to say that the public outreach that we did Brian did a lot of work on social media and things like this was was bad. It's just I think everybody would we wish we had done more for sure. Um but um
my point was to say that if we had I think if I understood in talking with Mr. Manard um we we had the that this project fits into the plan even if you put some numbers at Turkey Hill. Yes. Yes. Yes.
If we had made that presentation, you know, I think it would have gone a long way and we still have time to do it, but we're running out, I think. Right. I'll I'll tell you some comments I heard um were that people saw the price tag but didn't believe it and thought it was going to be even higher
like yeah it's what was it 20 something they were like it's going to be 40 I I don't know I don't know how you address that you know I think one of the biggest issues that we've faced and this is why
this this may be the fourth iteration um I've said this before before this body to have a successful project, you have to have a good builder, a good designer, and a good owner. Lunenburgg has not been a good owner. And I think that
that's the reason why. So, just from my short history, 5 years of being here, the first the first thing that the owner said was, "Hey, we got this place called TC Basio. Let's see what we can do with it, forgetting Town Hall and um and the river." And then we started working on
these two buildings. We finally agreed with that, but we never really said how many square foot do we need and and that's like the basic thing that the owner has to decide. Like if you're going to buy a house, you don't say, "Hey, I want to go buy a 5,000t house,
you know, when you can only when you know that you can only afford uh a 2,000t house." And and the and the 10 hasn't hasn't really done what done that. And then going back to this disconnect between the people who are going to work in these town
administrative areas, we had hardly any conversation with them while this committee met from September through February. Hardly any conversation. And those are the people that really help define what does the owner want and what
does the owner need. In fact, Carter is the one who come up with the bullpen language, you know, and he came up with that after he saw the first design iteration and he went, "Oh my god, you know, we don't have enough people to have private offices. We have to have a bullpen." you know, which is which is
one of the things that the owner should have said to the architect when we first brought them on board is to say, you know, we want bullpens, you know, and we would have known that had the owner taken the time to sit down with staff and say, well, what do you guys want?
What do you ladies want? And I think that that's, you know, if if we start this process again with just trying to nibble on scope and get to a point where we think we're going to have something the town that the town would support, I think it'll fail for two reasons. One is
you've got to come up with a farm. You got to come up with a firm square footage. Like when we talked about this, you know, this addition, it was a 4,000t edition. It ended up being 14,000 ft², you know. So, the first thing you got to do is have some discipline to decide what does the owner
want and what can the owner afford and and then I think that you'll be able to start the process. I I don't like the idea of hiring an architect for the fourth time either. But I'm here to tell you, you get what you pay for. Always, always, always, always. And I think that
if we kind of say, well, you know, they kind of have these drawings and they kind of know this. They didn't get it right the first time and there's no reason to believe they're going to get it right the second time, especially if we're not a good owner. So, so Tony, I do have to say something
on the one one point there. I think when it came to the new architect, we we relied on the information that was provided by the folks who looked at the TC Pacios who went to talk to all the departments and there was conversations
with departments. However, I do agree with you that the owner never went back and said, "Okay, this is what the departments said they wanted and re really reviewed what they said they wanted versus what they were going to get." But we relied on the ar the
original architect of TCP to do all that work for us. Shame on us. But that's and that's the information we ended up giving to the second architect, the folks for the for the Ritter and the uh and town hall. we gave them that same information and say here go with this
and because this is what we've done so far and I do agree though that the owner in the end should have been the one reviewing that with the department and saying why do you need this why do you need that um versus just taking taking the interviews of the architect at at
its word but I'll add that that's one of the reasons why this second or this this recent iteration was 180,000 and not 240 like it was the first just get what you pay for. Right. Right. But I just want to be clear that to to Tony's point, yeah, you you add in those
things, you're going to pay for it. David, I'm not saying we shouldn't, but David, should we go back and take another before we even Well, we should get a cost from Taylor and Burns and then other ones. But should we go back and take a look at the space
requirements and take a very hard look to separate out needs versus wants again? I I I believe so because as we we you know as you've heard and different things that has been mentioned you know the idea of each department having their
own space is a nice nicity but the fact of shared space does allow for more a lot more flexibility as things as departments shift and as we as as needs shift. So you know there's one thing for them to say I need this much space. It's
another thing for us to say, "Hey, by the way, this is the you you're going to get that space, but this is the way it's going to look." Not individual, you know, maybe not as individuals, maybe as a group, per se. Walls walls cost money to to say the least.
The the town manager also mentioned visiting other town halls, and I'm intrigued by that. I would like to also see how other towns are doing it uh and observe their space needs and how they're utilizing space compared to us
or what we're asking for in a newer build. Uh, you know, Laura, one of the things that I've said is that in the two years plus that I was on from January 2022 since I've been on this committee, the committee never once looked at all the
buildings that we were talking about when we never walked around. And in fact, the only the only time I ever saw this building was when Taylor and Burns come out to look at it to start their design work. And and I think it's good for us to have an idea as to what other
tenants do, but I think that it would have been really helpful for us all to look at the buildings that we have and we didn't, you know, and it's kind of like how did that happen? you know, we and then we could have we could have we could have kind of built off of each other and said, "Hey, you know, we could
have had maybe a more robust discussion because we went over and looked at the pack space as a committee in TC Pacios and said, well, what about you guys being on the second floor of town hall, you know, and then we wouldn't have had
that wild wild curveball, you know, thrown in January of, okay, let's take a basement so we can put back in there because pack's important." Is it easier for you if we come as a group or would it be easier if we came one at a time? Well, I think the nice thing about
coming Oh, let me say this two ways. The nice thing about coming as a group is that you can post it as a meeting and you can discuss and deliberate while you're going through. The nice thing about not doing it as a group is that you don't have to post it as a meeting
and you can go in pairs of twos and not have it be part of a meeting. So in terms of disruption, don't worry about that like because it's there's only maximum what seven if we add an additional. So um I'm not concerned
about the disruption of the offices. I I'm coming either way. Um cuz I I think that needs to get done. I don't know how you guys want to. So you you can file that a little bit under we what I said earlier about maybe one of the weaknesses of this new
approach was to rely on old data. I mean I think mo I know I've been in all those those spaces. So I think maybe there was an underlying assumption that we we were relying on on that assumption which we probably shouldn't have done. Um but I that's valid. It's a valid concern Tony.
All right. So we have a couple action items so we can modify our charge tonight. I'm okay with that. Uh so what we can do is modify it to include representation from the APDC. Um how should we handle the facilities? Should that be a voting member or is it
something that's actually in the composition or So I wouldn't want to I'm hearing this tonight for the first time, right? This is a an employee who has a life outside of work with young children. So I wouldn't want to commit him to night meetings without talking to him first on that one.
Okay. So I'm okay with just doing the APDC tonight. Um, and then also I guess authorizing the committee to explore housing the ACE program in the Brooks House as well. What do you guys think about that? Do you want us to come up with plans for
that and a cost estimate because that's going to take money through you, Mr. Chairman. I think that if we are talking about rescoping um and we have to do that anyways, I think that it is perhaps prudent um to
wrap the two projects together into one borrowing. You are already doing a borrowing for the ACE program here. Just because it's in two buildings doesn't mean we can't still wrap it under the same borrowing. I would be concerned that if we don't do it at the same time that one gets lost.
But don't they need to check with the superintendent first? Well, of course we need to scope need to scope this and get a plan and then we're going to need some time there just because everything is Oh, yeah. very new. Um the other thing that just occurred to
me if we increase the size of the group um quorum will that become an issue? Can we do what they did for master plans during committee and reduce the quorum? We can. So we can actually set the quorum ourselves because we're the ones that wrote write the charge. So
cuz you guys now have like like you've already met twice since town meeting which is I mean you went like a year not Laura wasn't even on there but the committee went like a year without meeting and I feel like now you have momentum and I don't want that to stall because of quum issues.
So how many members total are we in? There's seven total. Seven with to and so if we add one it would be eight. Mhm. Make it four. I think the quorum four and and and in actuality that's that's probably if you go back and look at the meeting minutes that's that's probably where we were almost with
Yeah. 90% of the meetings four people present. Mhm. Coming and go. We're seven right now without AP. Yes. It was seven. Rene has the list up. Yeah. Oh, right. So it's Oh, finance committee. Sorry. I got it.
Yeah. Okay. I got it now. So that would put us at eight and uh finance planning and then member at large. A natural corn would be five. That doesn't seem too unrealistic. I don't know. Guess you I' I'd like to see it stay at four. I
mean that's that would make life easier. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, I will make the motion to modify the charge of the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee to include a representative from the Architectural Preservation District Commission to modify the quorum to four
members and to authorize the committee to explore housing the ACEs program in the Brooks House. Second. Any additional discussion? Mr. Just a question. Would we be limiting his ability to Mr. Scullenbrin's ability to express his opinion if he's
representing the um APDC. No, he would be a full member of the committee that represent carry that also. Good luck ever. I'm just wondering if just a member at large as opposed to No, he would be a voting member. So, we
would be fully on the committee. Well, a member at large can be a voting member is a voting member, too. or I think the question was that if he's that Mr. Skull andrini has a lot of
thoughts and that and that some of those may not be the same thoughts as the other members of the APDC. Am I right? And that and that if he is the the representative of APDC, he may not be able to express all of those thoughts as opposed to
being a member at large. But we could say the same for I would say the same for both of us. Yeah. Right. It's a fun position. I think that uh there might be an there might be an occasion where someone will say well we don't want to see the you know select
boardroom get changed and that'd be a voice from the architectural preservation district commission. First first of all we don't have the authority to do that because it's an interior renovation and the bylaw doesn't include that you know. So I think there's ways of dealing through
that. Very good. And and then the other thing is if there is a difference of opinion better that it comes out in conversations as committee members rather than in front of everybody at time at time meeting. That's how you that's how you get support is to say we talked about that
and now we're going to move forward. One one other thing you not to put words in your mouth but and not not to take anything against Dodie because I think they already for they already voted on it but you shouldn't vote to appoint Tony. Well, I was going to I was going to just say that. Yeah.
You should you should make a motion to include a member of the architectural presentation and then let that motion and that and that's how we we voted on it. It wasn't to make me the member. No, you know, I'll bring that back to the be clear the commit they're going to have to vote to like someone. Maybe it
will you, maybe it won't. Can I ask for one modification that we explore moving the ACE program to the Brooks House or another Yeah. or a different space just so that we're not locked into that in case because I don't know what the school committee feels about that or
or on the superintendent needs more time. Like I said, it it felt very awkward asking her on her. Do we need to call that out specifically? Cuz we didn't call out pack looking at pack space looking at what do you can we just make a general motion of
taking our feedback and and you know I don't think there needs to be an ace or pack specific change. You've already broadened the scope of the you already broadened the scope of this committee past t the TCP building I think last time we modified this charge.
Okay. So I don't think you necessarily need to do that in my opinion to say no that's fine. I will modify my motion to only include um the representation for APDC in the quorum as four members. Second. All right. Any more discussion? All
right. Those in favor say I. I. Those opposed? No. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you guys so much. This was helpful and it was nice getting all this feedback. Thank you. I know. That's Thanks for coming in and waiting around and
I know. Thank you for holding the meeting till I got Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for coming in tonight. I'll make I'll make a motion to adjourn the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee at 9:16 p.m. Second. All in favor?
Roll call. Roll call. Oh, sorry. I don't I can't see who's on. That's my my I'll roll call Dave. Uh Dave Blat. I Laura I can't pronounce your last name.
I was waiting for the attempt Rosski. Yes. Uh and Brian Leighton I and an eye for me. Excellent. Thanks guys. I appreciate all the help and support. Sorry. Thank you. I talk so bad I
All right. Thank you guys. Thanks a lot. All right. We're going to move on to annual selectboard appointments. And we have two people here tonight. I know, sorry, these meetings went a lot longer
than I thought. And we also had quite a late start uh because of our IT issues. Uh so I will invite up uh Kim Muzzy first. [Music] Hi, Kim Muzzy, 659 West Towns in the Road.
Welcome back. So, I believe you attended one of their meetings. How did it go? I did. Um, I enjoyed it. Um, it was enlightening because I didn't know much about the agricultural committee and seeing what they're talking about and trying to plan was something I was interested in.
Great. All right. Well, any questions for Kim? Thank you for stepping forward. Thank you for having me back. Yeah, of course. All right. So, I'll make a motion to appoint Kim Muzzy to the Agricultural Commission term to expire June 30th,
2029. Second. Any additional discussion? Those in favor say I. I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes unanimously. All right. You will have to get sworn in. No, I'm I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Yes. It's It's the term to expire June
30th, 2026. Well, then Okay. It's It's a short term. Oh, so this one would be ex Oh, okay. My one year. Well, and then because the terms are staggered, so this is an empty term that's been vacated. So then the next
appointment would be a three-year term. Yep. My apologies. So, um, okay, never mind. Um, I will move to appoint Kim Muzzy to the Agricultural Commission. term to expire June 30th, 2026. Second. All right. All those in favor say I.
I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes unanimously. All right. My apologies. You will have to get sworn in like I was saying, so you'll just have to visit the town clerk. Uh she's downstairs and you can reach out to the chair as I know you have been talking to her for more information.
Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. And I believe we also have Mark Muzzy here as well too. All right. Mark Muzzy, 659 West Townsen Road. Uh, and so did you, um,
so I attended Stormwater Task Force, which was enlightening, and I got to watch a YouTube video on pack cuz unfortunately timing didn't work. Um, so I think I'm going to go with the storm water.
Okay. Don't be excited or anything. It's going to be very interesting and entertaining to say the least. So, okay. Oh, I don't know. I'm nervous. You need a deep term. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm just trying to find
when the term expires here. We don't have it in our spreadsheet. So, hold on one second. Oh, there's no terms online. It's just it's for the project duration. Oh, I see. Okay. for eternity. It's for life. Okay. Well, with that then I move to
appoint uh Mark Muzzy to the stormwater task force. Second. Any additional discussion? All right. Those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes unanimously. You will also have to get sworn in. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And we have a
meeting. Both are waiting. Okay. Let's keep going through these appointments. So, we have the appointment of select board member to the master plan steering committee. Um, so Amanda is experiencing some health challenges. It's nothing too serious, but it does require that she scale back
her involvement in the town. Uh, so she has asked that we uh vote for a new replacement for the master plan steering committee. Is anyone interested in doing this? Now, is that like an actual voting member or more of like a leazison? No,
it's an actual member of the committee. I'll do it if no one's interested. I mean, that's basically where where I fall. I mean, it it is a it's a lot, you know, all the various assignments and stuff, but I did I did actually attend their their last last meeting.
Um, so another awkward silence. Do you want to do it? Um, sure. I'll do it. Okay. I move to um appoint Glenn McCloud as the select board member to the master
plan steering committee. Second. Any additional discussion? Those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes unanimously. Okay. And then to the town manager, we have two resignations to acknowledge the police officer Jeffrey Hill and
conservation agent Sophie Doro. if you'd like to speak. Well, um you know, uh people resigned for all different reasons. Uh Mr. Hill is joining the state police, unfortunately. Great addition to them. Um but a loss for us
and and that's Yep. Fair enough. Um yeah, I mean, I'd like to thank Officer Hill for his service to the town. Um he's been before us on a couple of different cases or related. Um, and he was um, always very
professional and thorough. Um, and like the town manager said, it will be a loss for us, but I congratulate him on his new job. All right, town manager report. Okay, so a lot to go through. I um, in talking to council, I said if I don't
have an actual update about the Flatill Road Bridge at the next select board meeting, I'm going to be in trouble. So um we have not h we don't have an agreement reduced to writing but council is working on right now we have an agreement in substance. So um kc has
performed some prep work um already and they are requesting uh payment for that work um which we have agreed that we will pay that work pay for that work uh within one week of payment. We are requesting through this agreement that they will install an 8 foot by 20 foot
plate over the existing pipe culvert at their cost and reopen the road at no additional cost to the town. Um work will resume in the fall with a December 31st, this says 2026, it should say 2025 date for substantial completion. Um and
why not final completion? Well, the end of this project is going to likely be when the temperature drops and the asphalt plants are no longer operating. So, due to the hot asphalt plant availability, the town will agree to a final completion date of May 29th, 2026.
Um, this has I know that this has um caused substantial concern for those who have to travel in that area every day. Um, and we have worked our best to to get this contract back under under
control and I think we're there now. Uh, Page Street is closed from Flat Hill Road to Shirley Town Line from today, July 15th to August 5th. The road uh is open to local residents and deliveries only as the town of Shirley is replacing a culvert on Whitney Road.
Uh, I did have something in here about the special merit awards and just in the case that there's folks who tuned in at the end of the meeting, I'm just going to announce it again. Um, the special merit award nominations are now open. Uh, applications are available on July 24th. This is for employees who uh
belong to the salary administrative plan. Um, and award nominations are being accepted for communications as a category, efficiency, and pinnacle of excellence. I've already received quite a few nominations. Um, but keep them coming.
Uh, we had a summer ice cream social last week during which employees were provided opportunities to comment on topics such as future employee events, onboarding and orientation, the SAP, and the sickleaf bank. And I wanted to thank Cherry Hill for contributing several
additional pints of cookie dough uh ice cream to that event. Um, okay. At a previous select board meeting, there were some questions about the sewer billing and delinquency rates. Um, so in response to that inquiry, I
asked the sewers sewer business manager to provide some details on the FY25 delinquency rates. Um, you'll see that embedded in the town manager report, but there's a total of $107,653.99 owed from FY25. And the chart breaks
that down by quarter. So you'll see the first quarter has the lowest amount, lowest percent delinquency. Those are the oldest bills. That's what you would expect. So um the first quarter is uh monetarily wise is 4.8.1%
delinquent verse at $14,000 and change owed versus fourth quarter which just concluded with $39,420 at a 15.97% owed. So, um I I had heard talk of some big 29% delinquency rate. Um that's not
evidenced by these numbers. Um and then there's just some data there as well for uh the board about the majority of customers owing um more than uh one quarter. So 115 customers owe more than
one quarter and 15 through 53 customers owe all four quarters. Uh last week the facilities director and I joined the green communities meeting. Dave Black uh invited us. So thank you Dave if you're still listening. Um he had recently attended the Mass Save
Summit and was reporting on a variety of funding opportunities. Uh based on his presentation, we are meeting with our regional coordinator for green communities and national grid to discuss two of the funding uh opportunities that were presented. The first is the portfolio prioritization plan which is a
highle energy use analysis of all buildings within the town and results in and schools and results in a list of buildings being prioritized for electrification complete with next steps. So, we're going to perhaps pursue that funding. And as well, there's um
the comprehensive building assessment where we would attain obtain detailed evaluation of one building's energy performance as well as the systems with recommendations for upgrades. Um
so, uh member MK I want to thank for the next uh item uh with the recent tra tragedy in Texas. um she encouraged me to put back out to me to residents about our code red system. So uh residents are
encouraged to sign up for Lunenberg's code red notification system. This system allows residents to be notified in the event of emergency situations or critical community alerts such as evacuation notices, bioteterrorism alerts, boil water notices, and missing child reports. We have recently
revertized Cone Red on our town news section of our website and as well as social media for those folks that are listening and are interested in learning more or looking where to sign up. It's great. We don't use it as a community. Some communities use it for announcements about everything like we
really don't. We use it for emergencies so you won't get spammed. Um and you can always unenroll. Grant writer program. Um, as a reminder, $50,000 was included in the FY26 budget for the grant writer program. I am finalizing the application package to
send out and hope to send it out to departments, uh, boards, committees, and commissions by the end of the week. Um, I know I've had a few folks asking about how they can access that fund, those funds. Um, and so those that set of documents are going to outline all of all of what the funding is for.
Um, at a prior meeting, I had reported damage to the fence and play structure at Wallace Park. Uh, I had reported that the estimate was $18,000. Um, and that current estimate based on um, getting actual quotes for the
replacement is now $3,900.34 and we have forward that on to our insurance company. I also reported at the last meeting that the MAR connect program um had been cancelled and as it had not been carried forward through the FY26
budget. Um MART has informed the town that they're continuing coverage through just through July. Um so they did pick up an extra month at their cost. So thank you Mart. Uh project updates. Uh the Ritter roof project is nearly complete. The
facilities director is viewing the project with u with a drone uh to establish the final punch list. Um the access control project at town hall remains in a holding pattern due to component availability. Um parts are starting to be delivered now but it will
take several weeks before all the electrical components are in hand. And yesterday the town open bids for cleaning of municipal buildings. As you recall we had to terminate our previous contract and rebid it. Um and the award will be made and contract executed in
the next several weeks. Uh in the meantime, we do have a temporary cleaning company servicing the buildings. Uh for staff vacancies, we have a 9-hour week uh dietary aid position. We have u a 36-hour per week meal site worker
position, which will be posted this week, both internal and external. Uh we have a payroll and benefits coordinator position which has not been advertised yet at 32 hours per week. Um this is to replace a planned retirement uh that's going to occur in October. Uh the
executive assistant to the town manager and select board is posted at 36 hours per week. Equipment operator 40 hours per week. And I am still waiting on labor council for the land use director position and uh for the conservation administrator position. I had reported
that the interim conservation agent Herman Jamie has agreed to continue uh on with us as we explore next steps. Um and last week the chair of the conservation commission uh met with myself and the HR director to discuss potential revisions uh to the job description before we take any next
steps. Um let's see. I I don't necessarily have all these still board and committee vacancies anymore. So Agricultural Commission no longer has a vacancy. Uh thank you Miss Muzzy. Um, architectural preservation district commission has one, cultural council has two, green communities has two
associates, historical commission has one, personnel board has five, pack has one, storm warner task force no longer has one. Thank you, Mr. Muzzy. And the zoning board of appeals has one vacancy for an associate member. Great. Thank you very much. Any
questions for the town manager? I have two around sewer. Two around sewer. Okay. Um, have the bills gone out? So, the bills are the four uh first quarter bills are scheduled to go out the first week in August. Will that be the first run through the
So, he has done some things through the system. This will be the first bill run through the system. Okay. All right. Let's hope it goes No, he's that's been a that's been a problem in the past. He's he's saying he's not concerned, but we'll see. I I hope that fixed it. Um the other thing and and you may not know this, I'm
just curious so it's not that important, but of the delinquent delinquent um bills, do you know residents versus business? Oo, looking I think we've had an issue in the past with some businesses.
Looking at the detailed list that I have, there are some businesses, but the vast majority are residents. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. New business. Vote to declare police
vehicles, DPW vehicles and equipment, and pack equipments as surplus to the town manager. Do you want to just talk to all of these pieces of equipment? Sure. Give me a moment. So PAC is seeking to surplus a DVD duplicator with no value, a Mac computer
tower with no value, um a tririccaster and keyboard, a monitor, PC speakers, two Sony camcorders, a telephone, a Neckar router, and two PC towers. And then uh DPW and police.
There is a 2004 Ford F350 um which must be towed off site. Um it has an estimated value of $1,000. A 2001 Ford F350 uh which has been sitting for a number
of years estimated at $1,000. a 2008 Ford F350. Um, also estimated $1,000 and it's been sitting for a few months. A 2008 trackless MT5T with attachments. Estimated value is $1,000. It has a
broken axle. A GMC pickup truck. If you look, you can see in the in the images you have, there's a tree sitting on the hood of it. Um, estimated value is less than $500. Uh, these are these are the two police vehicles that were picked up. The GMC cabin chassis also estimated at
less than $500. All right. Any questions on any of this? So, is there like a policy in place to prevent things like this from happening? Like vehicles sitting in the in the lot for for apparently years.
So, and and are they So, there's no policy. I'll say that there is not, this is my third municipality and there's not one that doesn't have this issue. Um, I think it's just simply a matter of getting the
time to say that this is something that we are no longer going to go forward with trying to maintain or retain. And then the next steps are really what is the takes time is getting this auctioned off. Um, we did have somebody show. So,
typically the typical way is that you are listing on a as a on a website like municip um if not municip and you are dealing with all of the interactions for the sales and people coming to pick it up and it it really is
not just as simple as the vote that occurs tonight. Um, but there is a a new vendor that approached the DPW and said, "We'll take care of all that for you." And so that's that's the route he's going to go, which is really what caused
some of the impetus to make this happen at this time. I have been encouraging all departments throughout town to look at all of their spaces and things and purge the documents and purge the stuff. And that's why you're
seeing some of the departments put forward a lot more surplus requests than they normally have. But there's no policy per se about how how long we hold on to our trash. Yeah. I know it is an awkward process for the town, but like particularly with
the pack equipment, there's really no identifying information. You know, it's just like computer towers. Is that something that we're just affirming a vote that they took that they've identified this property as? So, this isn't coming from the pack board. They don't deal with day-to-day operations of PAC. This is coming from
the director of PAC. Okay. And there's just but it's it's it's interesting because it's just really pretty nondescript, you know, it's just computer towers. So, I'm happy to go back to the staff and ask for a more detailed request. It's going to be more time of the staff
going through and and I don't know. I mean, like serial numbers, is that what we're looking for? Well, I guess my my point was they might as well just get rid of the stuff and it it doesn't necessarily even have to have this process. Oh, well, so that would be illegal. That would be illegal. So,
we need to vote to declare things surplus um to dispose of them or to auction them. Y um I think that the board certainly could have a surplus policy that
anything under a certain value. Sometimes you see things like 500, a thousand don't require a vote of the select board. That could be a policy that those things can be surplused by the town manager. That's certainly what some communities do. Yeah, that seems to
make more sense than us just approving getting rid of two computer towers. There is literally a room in the TC Pacios building. We've already surplused it, but that is just the it is a repository of where all of the old it
went. And some of it you hold on to because you have to pay to dispose of it. All right. So I will move to declare the vehicles and pack equipment as surplus. Second. Any additional discussion? Those in
favor say I. Those opposed? No. Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to old business. So discussion on tri board meeting of the select board, finance committee, and school committee. All I will say is that I thought it went really well. I thought it was productive. Um I think there were times where people had disagreements,
but they were able to work through those. Um, and it was really good to see and I'm pretty hopeful on the process. Any discussion on that tonight? No. How to break? All right. Great. Moving on. Discussion on sick leave bank policy. We'll pick
this back up at a future meeting. Tax investigation report. Same thing. And 56 car a. So, we did have our site visit yesterday. Um, wouldn't say we were really able to see too much of the property. Uh so car A is a pretty narrow
gravel road and it doesn't actually go all the way up uh to the property. Um so it kind of stops at 54 CAR A which is a developed property that is completely um
surrounded by 56 car A. Uh it is pretty um there's a lot of woods back there. It's very steep as well. Um, so I just wanted to open it up for a discussion to see what people's reactions were to actually seeing the property and where
we're at. I don't think there's much we can do with it. It's it's zoned currently as residential A. Does anyone I think so. A Yep. I don't know what A means. Um, I think we talked a little bit about potentially
one use would be like a solar field, but not you would have to go to ZBA, change the zoning, have to clear a lot of land, it's not accessible, steep cliff, it's wet. Um, it's not really an attractive piece land.
I would agree. I think there's other opportunities of Lutenberg land too for a solar field. Uh, I would also, uh, reference what the town manager had stated at one point that it the the goal is to get it back on the tax roles and I think that's that's where my head is is
get it back on the tax roles and sell the property. Yes, I agree. It's not an attractive piece of property. Yeah, I agree. It's hard to imagine really anything going there and there's really certainly no value for the town and uh, trying to do anything with it
uh, quite frankly. So, looks like we're all in agreement on that. Um, so we could vote on this. We could hold off on taking action. Um, I don't think you need to vote because Mhm. I think if you were if you were going to
hold it, I think that that changes the trajectory. That's why I think this was being But if if you're not going to hold it, I think that's fine. I don't think a vote's necessary. and you let it go through the process and then you take your formal vote um after the judgment enters. If the judgment enters,
you do have to take a formal vote within those 14 days. 14 days. Okay, understood. All right. Well, is there any other discussion on that tonight? All right. Minutes. We do have two sets, right? April 8th and June 3rd. Have members had a chance to look over
those? Yes. Yes. Okay. Is there a motion? Um, I move to approve the minutes from April 8th, 2025 and June 3rd, 2025. Second. Any additional discussion?
Those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes unanimously. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. I always forget to ask for extensions. Any abstensions? I All right. The motion passes 301.
Any action items? And I did skip over warrants. I don't believe there's any warrants. All right. Committee reports. Planning board had a brief meeting the other night. A lot of their public um hearings were cancelled, so there's nothing to report on a planning board.
That's about it. The board of assessors met June 11th. They're also meeting tomorrow. Uh they do have a vacancy for one member. Uh they're only at two right now. They had 17 excise tax abatements.
Um a lot more abatements are coming in. Um chapter land applications have been organized. Four of them have no leans. Uh one sold and they're trying to go back to the seller. They're all supposed
to have leans on chapter 61 uh for roll back taxes. Uh for years it wasn't being monitored and now they're staying on top of it. Uh filing leans with the registry of deeds and going forward isn't going to be an issue. Um the building department and board of health have been
helping a lot of the work. Um they're going through about 500 cyclical inspections. Um, just for data purposes, they talked about how in 2023 with the tax abatements, there were about 427, but
historically it's around 30 to 40. Um, they talked about chapter land. They're going to be doing uh site visits on the chapter land. Um, two people working together on the same street, but there's no escorts of police officers or
anything like that. Um September 30th is the cont is the contract deadline. A vision contract. Um they're up to date on the deeds. 13A is additional growth has been submitted. There's this other
state um similar to chapter 61, but it's called APR. Uh and if land is in APR, it can't be valued more than chapter 61. And there's no leans on the properties. Uh there's quite a few, but they didn't want to make you can't have a duplicate
of chapter 61 in APR. So, they were making sure that that didn't happen. Uh 222 West Towns and Road property was approved. They were talking about approving or not approving for potential sale. Um that was approved. Um
they also discussed the brochure posting in the adult activity center uh for applying for tax breaks and exemptions. And they also talked to town council on 41A uh and and different addresses and 61A and 61B in leans whe they could whether
they could do that an open meeting. And they did have a they did have a meeting that was not an open meeting in between the dates. Where was I'm trying to think of the language they went to executive session.
Oh, okay. But there's no minutes for now. Do you have any? No. Okay. So, the Council on Aging met last Tuesday. It was Lou Franco and Jack Rabbit's first meeting. So, they were welcomed to the council. Um, a thank you
letter from the outgoing members Judy Tarbell and Pete Lincoln was read thanking the Council on Aging Members for their dedication to our senior citizens. Um, the kitchen staff is very limited right now uh due to some injuries actually. So Deb Goodsell,
Pauline, and Michelle have pretty much taken over the kitchen duties. Uh, and they are asking for volunteers in the kitchen as well as uh meals on wheels drivers. Uh, so they're looking for backup drivers and they also have one uh shift that is on Thursdays for 1 hour
that they're looking for a volunteer for as well. Jack Rabbit discussed uh Margaret Scarsdale's ambassador program that she has put together. So she has a program of ambassadors, one from each community that she represents. And Jack
Rabbit is the ambassador from Lunenburgg. Um so he wants to use that as an opportunity to advocate for senior citizens directly to her. Um and he also discussed uh some updates with the deferral program, the tax deferral
program. they um are pretty much working through the first case, I guess, and they're using it as um a case study. There's a lot of discussion on a proposal to offer free building permits to seniors. Um so, it was mentioned that
it could specifically go for projects under $10,000. Um the council sort of discussed what sort of uh qualifications they would want, whether it was just age, but there was no um formalized uh plan on that.
Um, and the goal really is to encourage seniors to get permits for their own per protection and to uh simplify the process by um pretty much giving an incentive to then educate the public on what the proper process is for
permitting. Uh they discussed upcoming programs and events. There's a whole bunch of them. So August 4th there is uh a cooking for one class which is something that um the director wants to try to do regularly now. Uh and they
will be uh teaching you how to cook summer orzo salad. Uh so they will give you the ingredients to bring home as well. On August 11th is uh what is called close encounters. Uh so they are bringing in an expert on
extraterrestrial life to uh discuss aliens. Um on let's see August 18th there's a henna class and many others and that's pretty much it. All right upcoming meetings uh we are
going to have a meeting on August 5th August 19th and then August 26th is a tri board meeting. Public comment. Is there any public comment from the public? Not seeing any. Any any public comment from the town manager? Nope. Any public comment from the board?
I will not be present at the August 5th meeting. I will be away. Okay. Thank you. I have um a comment. I was asked to um I was contacted by the group
called the Artisans of Hickory Hills. Um they sent me a letter to read, but I'll give you a little introduction. Um there was a group of residents on Hickory Hills Lake that organized and created this group, the artisans of Hickory Hills. Um it consists of a lot of
artisans, people who paint, do all all sorts of of art and um they organized to everyone donated pieces of work and it was on display at the library for about 2 or 3 weeks um as
a silent auction. Um, and this was the first year they did it. Um, and so I'll I'll read you uh their official uh letter and it it covers the uh the results of of the auction.
So, the artisans of Hickory Hills orchestrated an art auction on June 14th this summer which was held at the Lunberg Public Library. Many gifted and talented residents of Hickory Hills donated original art, including watercolors, acrylics, and frame photographs, and handmade crafts such as
jewelry, quilts, sculpture, and wearables. The silent auction was open to all Lunberg residents who purchased over 60 items. The auction was a huge success with over $4,000 being generated. The Artisans of Hickory Hills
Committee will be gifting two $1,000 scholarships to the Lunberg High School Art Program recipients and the remainder will benefit the Hickory Hills Lake Restoration Program. The artisans of Hickory Hills are thrilled to be able to donate scholarship funds to high school arts program recipients. Giving back to
the community is so important. Um so I think one, this was the first year they did it. It was more successful than I expected. So, I want to thank the organizers, thank um the folks at the library, thank the people who contributed um their work, and of course
the residents who who bid and and bought these um different pieces of work. Um the group reached out to the um the high school art program. This was kind of when we were coming out of all of the
override and budget um because I wanted to uh give back to the school is particularly the art program. Um and so the um this the high school art and and the superintendent I think was also involved rather than than having the
money go towards supplies. They actually um preferred to have it go through to these scholarships. So I think they'll be awarded in May and I think they're going to do it again. So hopefully if they do, I hope they are um even more successful um because you know you
always learn after you do an event the first time. So um thanks to everyone residents for you know taking the initiative and and giving back to the community. Great. Thank you. All right. Is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved.
Second. Any additional discussion? Those in favor say I. I. Those opposed no. It is 9:52 p.m. and the select board is adjourned.