no except for the one random well um the one random koiish yeah all right good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Lunberg Select Board today is Tuesday April 22nd 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 we're going to begin with public comment are there any
public comments from the board nope nope any public comments from the public well actually I do have one one public thing only cuz because we only have one more meeting before this and that is May 9th are you smarter than a sixth grader
yes uh at the high school auditorium for the the club of Lunenburgg uh this is the 11th the 11th not the 11th year the 13th year but the 11th time we're doing it because there were two missed years in co uh great fundraiser great family
event a lot of fun i know members of this board will be there and I will certainly be there mceing it for the 11th year so looking forward to seeing everybody there i think the door is open at 6:30 and the whole game show starts at 7 all right thank you any public
comments from the public not seeing to the booth we're getting some feedback on the microphones here all right not seeing anyone on Zoom moving on to announcements i have a couple annual town meeting is quickly
approaching it'll be on Saturday May 3rd at 9:00 a.m at the middle high school auditorium any registered voter in town is allowed to attend and vote on warrant articles and there's quite a few important articles that'll be considered and voted on this year there's two excluded debt articles for Marshall Park
and Municipal Buildings and a citizens petition for an override so I hope you set aside some time out of your day or maybe a lot of time out of your day to attend uh we'll be making some important decisions as a community at town meeting this year and your opinion matters before you read your next one I just saw
on our way in um I believe the last day to register for to vote for town meeting is um tomorrow oh okay thank you i saw that on my way in oh nice so if anyone's not registered and does want to attend you have tomorrow to do so parks Commission is holding a
community meeting on Marshall Park this Saturday April 26 at 10 a.m at the TC Pacios Gymnasium so if you want to learn more about the Marshall Park project ahead of town meeting you can attend that community meeting spring 2025 yardway stays the landfill at 27 Young's
Road is open it's open every Saturday from 8 am to 4 pm except Memorial Day weekend and will be open until the end of May and the all vendor fair is on May 10th from 11:00 a.m to 6:00 p.m outside TC Pacios mark that down your calendars
it's going to be a great event any other announcements all right communications from other boards don't see anyone here no meetings tonight no appointments ratifications so we're going to jump right down to town manager report thank
you Mr chairman so uh the first item to report on for the community is that the swearing in and p pinning ceremony for Chief Tibido was held last Friday evening from all accounts this was a great ceremony and many turned out in support of the chief chair Nolo did a
wonderful job mceing the event and I thank him for stepping in to lead the ceremonies thank you well I just want to say real quick it's truly impressive how quickly that event was planned i think we settled on the date like last week right so uh Jen the town manager and
Julie our assistant town manager planned that entire event in about a week and it was just absolutely incredible so truly thank you so much for making that happen yeah I'm glad that it was a really special night for the chief if I can piggyback on that um I know many of the board members weren't there but that was
not for lack of wanting to be there um those of us that weren't there did have prior commitments and as chair just stated you know that was sort of a last minute thing to allow the chief's family to attend so please don't interpret that as lack of support um from the board yeah I felt badly that I wasn't here
probably the first time we've uh appointed a chief that I wasn't here and and I I wish I would have been but same and wow I've worked with many chiefs this was my first appointment ever as a of a chief and I also was not able to
attend but this is a nice segue because for those in the community who also were not able to attend PAC was there and they filmed it and they're right now editing a nice um a nice video that'll be put out shortly uh the next item is that the house uh will be the state um
house of representatives will be beginning debate on the FY26 bud budget next Monday April 28th the House Ways and Means Budget released last week recommended uh funding chapter 70 at um a rate of 6.7% higher than was funded in
the last fiscal year and levelfunded unrestricted uh general government aid with the latest release of the budget Lunenburgg is budgeted to receive a net increase over what we were planning $124,310 there were increases to chapter 70 but those were coupled with decreases to
charter tuition reimbursements and unrestricted government aid so at this point I'm not making any changes if there's any changes to come we can handle those in in the special town meeting but um for folks uh who want to do some last minute advocacy to the
state representatives um debate starts next Monday uh the Lunberg Council on Aging will be celebrating Lunberg's own Charles Sanderson on Monday May 5th at 100 p.m at the Lunberg Adult Activity Center with a presentation of the Boston Post Cane and welcoming Charles into the
Century Club uh Charles is a World War II veteran and a remarkable 101year-old uh some updates um in addition to the updates from the chair on town meeting uh booklets for town meeting have been mailed to households and we have several hund hundred extras
that we will disperse around town as well as bring to town meeting uh the booklet has also been posted online for folks that would like to view the material on the computer and I will be having large print versions of the budget available as a handout at town meeting for folks that that print is
just a little too small um but also if folks do have access to a computer and they they want to look online they can zoom in if anybody would like a if you're watching this filming of this meeting and you would like a large print version of the budget in advance of town meeting just reach out to my office and
I'm happy to provide you that uh the pre-Town meeting was held last week with the moderator and town council and the logistics for town meeting are coming together nicely um for this is really an announcement for the community the school department will once again be selling a limited number of pre-bagged
lunches for town meeting um I am going to send out an email to all town officials to reserve a lunch with responses due uh by May 1st so board members please look out for that if you're a town official please look out for that but residents will be able to purchase a lunch first come first served for $8 from 11 to 1 and there are uh
several options including vegetarian options uh since the departure of the executive assistant to the town manager and select board the duty of completing the annual town report has been shifted to the IT administrative assistant um but unfortunately not all of the submissions had been completely pulled
together and the book has not been sent off to the printer as of yet although it is a short week this week we are hopeful that we can at least complete uh compiling the book this week which would mean the annual town report would be available online in advance of town meeting but hard copies would like not
likely be back in time for the um from the printer again though if anybody is I know a lot of folks read different sections of the annual town report in advance of town meeting um if folks would like pieces of of the town report in advance to educate themselves on what
has happened in the prior fiscal year please reach out happy to get you that information uh project updates as reported last week the masdot underwater bridge inspection team has inspected the bridge on Flat Hill Road um they did note additional section loss and
recommended that given the documented deterioration including the newly observed section loss we are recommending the structure remain closed uh through our town council we are reaching out to the contractor to see if there can be any interim solution that would allow the bridge to be opened for
vehicles up to a certain weight until repairs can be completed um we have updated the town website and social media and truly appreciate the continued uh patience and understanding of the public this is not an ideal situation for anybody and we understand the
frustration uh work on the roof and gutter at Ritter building has been somewhat slow to start the contract had already been extended through April 30th although an additional contract extension is likely needed we are emphasizing to the contractor that work
needs to begin on um Ritter currently before we extend it again so before April 30 we need to see their their uh there it did originally get delayed through all the weather okay so this project question it was weather related okay weather related here but now we
were expecting that that job would have started by now it's not uh the kitchen at the adult activity center is nearly complete uh the sink does need to be rewelded and we have a plumber coming to reweld that sink um that was the most efficient way to do it rather than order
a new sink all told and the access control project for town buildings is about one month from commencement as the vendor is waiting for uh parts to arrive uh current vacancies uh the executive assistant to the town manager and select board six candidates were
interviewed last week and all had great skill sets uh three have been asked to come back for a second round interview which will be a practical skills assessment uh we are confident that we have will have a great candidate who will be able to start in the role before the end of the May in the meantime um
I'd like to thank and announce that the IT administrative assistant assistant town accountant assistant town manager and I have all been divvying up various elements of the role um part-time assistant to the sewer business manager uh we are still waiting
on some reference checks and then for our beach staff the beach director and lifeguard um appointments will be likely before you at your next meeting uh but we do have folks on board in the queue for those and um if the conservation
commission position has been reposted for the 10 hours a week for the recording secretary administrative assistant and we do have a recording clerk secretary that was initially posted internally only but now we're going to also be posting that one externally um the vacancies remain the
same but I do want to give one special call out uh for boards and committees if anybody is at all interested in the sewer commission if you have any interest in the sewer commission um the sewer commission is desperate uh for members um they might be sending out
another all resident mailer um but at this point they are concerned about their ability to proceed as a commission but that um that concludes my report all right thank you Jen any questions for the town manager all right thank you very much and we're going to jump back to communications
from other boards because I believe we may have one now or I just saw you there Mr blat so I didn't know if you wanted to show up there before me so that's fine yeah that's okay hi Dave Blat uh chair of the green committee pleasure to come up i've
got some new faces so I'm excited here since the last time I was in front of you guys yeah so there were two things right one of them was the one thing that you wanted to bring up and we did ask you in about the grant for the primary school heat test um so we had some confusion uh when we learned about the
requirement for that central operating system um so we just wanted to know like process-wise because I know that you've been work you worked on it for a long time uh was that also a surprise to you uh we were just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the process and maybe answer any questions that
board members have um so the the original request for the heat pumps was that the schools required were requiring the heat pumps for cooling um I had tried to emphasize to them you know because of the green and because of the state's initiatives that if you use them
for heat there were quite a few rebates and quite a few grant available from them not only from the state through the green community but also through UNATIL mass save program and things of that sort so when we um when we got involved
when they uh had us get involved and help with the second phase that they had we looked to we reached out to UNATIL and to the green communities to see if there was a way of getting some subsidies for the units that had already been installed and that's where we had
it moved towards the central unit so the central unit now will allow them to use the heat pumps longer into the year so you know how we have like times now like now where all of a sudden you'll get days where it's still a little chilly or something like that you don't really
want to heat the whole building but you can heat a single room or things of that sort so we felt it was going to be much more efficient especially with the um available of lower cost electricity that we have in the town between the solar panels the solar fields and all those
wonderful things so um when we approached the green communities for the grant it included a retrofit of phase one to put in a central system allowing that each individual well the individual classrooms could be monitored from a
central station could also be controlled from a central station with one uh with the facilities manager having that controls as well as um some grant subsidies and some I think it ended up being an additional two units two two or three units that we were able to get for
them through the through the funding so in total between uh the unitil rebates and the grant funding uh roughly 65 67% of that project was funded through would be funded through the state um and through and through grants and
incentives and things of that sort so we were very excited when we were um awarded that grant um each this this round we had a a maximum of of $240,000 for us and out of that 200,000
was going to the heat pumps the the additional were going to other projects like cruisers and uh refrigeration units and other other upgrades around town so um that's where we're at i don't know if there's questions on that or how' I do
any questions from the board yes sure so it came back to us that the money that they were allotted by the capital planning committee the grant wasn't going to be full fulfilled or they they were going to wait because they didn't have the
money for the central units and they were going to do that next year and then they were told I'm assuming by the green communities committee that no if you did that if you didn't spend the money this year we couldn't go for grants next year
that that is corre so so in in order for the in order for the uh town to be eligible to apply for additional grants all grant funds need to have been spended and the grant round has to be closed so if they they could they did
have the ability to wait however if they waited the town all any additional projects that we would have uh wanted to do or been eligible for we could not apply for right we couldn't do the one that was in front of us because it wasn't complete is that correct well I mean it was I I'm not sure what you mean
by it wasn't complete it was complete in the fact that we received all the funding that we that we requested for the for the project the rest was the school i see what Tom's trying to say here so the grant was 200,000 uh we were made aware that with the requirement for
that central system whatever it was was an additional 174,000 okay so there was that gap let me clear that up so the so the entire project was 400 was the quote that the schools received for the entire project was
480,000 that was for the additional units and retrofitting the central system and and retrofitting the older units putting in the central controls in okay the 310,000 the 200 from green communities
and the 110 from UNATIL was contingent on that central system the rest of the project was only going to be 170 for the town for the school for the re and that would have if if they did not do the central unit that project could never
have been done for $170,000 their quotes that they were receiving were over the $300,000 number for just the units the central unit was minor in the whole grand scheme of things but we needed to get that done in order to get the grant
right you needed to get it done in order to f in order it needed to be done in order to be uh able to apply for any grants or incentives right so they needed to get it done correct this year they needed to get Yes they needed to get it done period okay okay whether
they did it this year next year the reason why we were looking for that to be done this year is because we're trying to gear up the next round of projects right right so the question I have on top of that is sure when did they know when did they know that those two were tied together they knew from
day one that the two were tied together okay so we we made it clear Unatil green communities mass save all made it clear to them that the central units was critical in order to have any incentives at or any ability to have any incentives
at all and it was clear for them in their strategy to wait for all of it to be done next year it was clear to them that you guys wouldn't be able to apply for any other grants then if they did that strategy it we we made it clear to them they had they had um included us in
a conversation with green communities with green communities you do have the ability to wait to close the projects now I understand that part right but you wouldn't but the town wouldn't be able to apply for new funding until the current funding was exhausted correct
okay and when did they know that um they believe I've told I told them earlier however when they when they when there was any inklining of them waiting that's when we made them that's when we
reiterated and made them aware again that that was the case okay thank you no problem all right i think you cleared up the confusion thank you um and then the other thing that you wanted to talk about was the charge for the green communities committee so by the way just
on one thing can I just do on one thing i just want to give you an update that we did now we're working closely with UNIL have found a amazing gentleman who's helped us with uh with that's our representative for Unil that's helped us actually identify um projects as well as
get us a energy audit one of the things that the community committee has struggled with is we don't have that expertise we don't have the ability to go in and see all of the records that the schools have the towns have and be able to do things like that nor do we
have the ability to just walk around buildings so we're right now looking at doing a energy audit uh for this would be to have weatherization as well as um HVAC improvement recommendations done by
MA a representative from Massave this this is a free service that we're offering for both Turkey Hill because we felt that was the next critical when it came to the schools as well as for the town and uh the and we're looking to do the public safety building as well great so um this way we'll be more prepared be
able to approach you guys and and let you know exactly what they have as along with the capital committee to let them know what funds might be available or what we can have available to maybe expedite some of these projects before they become necessary when they more
when they should be done right okay that's awesome thank you excellent thanks um and then you want to talk about the charge so the charge of the committee well the charge of the committee it's not as much the charge of well the charge of the committee i'd like to talk a little bit more because one of the things we continue to struggle with
is we're we're having to search for projects that the town might be able to do and I'm looking to make it and you guys to help us with asking the boards asking the other entities here to approach us early on to talk about the
projects they might want to do to see if those projects might have ability to have grant funding we've struggled for a long time now that's why we haven't done as many projects as we could have done in this town because we don't have that
insight or expertise we get you know I think you guys have known since last town meeting been rather vocal about this HVAC system at the school that if it was done correctly the first time I think we could have had a lot more done that's why we're trying to make sure Turkey Hill is done in a completely
different fashion as we look for that building to m be able to maintain that building for the next 20 years and beyond but we look for you guys to help us asking the boards or requesting that the boards come to us to look at anything that might have some kind of
impact on energy usage in this town and things of that sort the other thing that we're asking is that right now our charge is that we have five members and two um associates associates and I'm looking
to change that language to be two alternates you know with everybody's busy schedules with folks with kids and trying to make a quorum for a meeting um you guys know how much fun that is at least yours is every you know but you you got more months uh weeks in the
month to make it but the fact of the matter is sometimes we like to and we it also feel it's a better incentive for new members um to bring new members in where they get to be voting members early on and not just have to sit there and wait for somebody to move on before
they can can do it so we feel it would be a better charter for us a charge for us to be able to have alternates versus associates i know it's a wording thing well how do can you speak to what the difference would be so if my understanding is that an an associate is
not a voting member and an alternate can be a voting member right okay basically he wants the charge updated so that if there's an issue with a quorum those two associate members are able to stand in for a regular member and vote correct right correct is is the expectation the
alternates go to every meeting that they can they just don't vote if they're not needed or work I don't think they're able to vote at all right now right now no no i'm talking about an alternate if you if you'd change to an alternate what would the expectation be as far as the alternates attending we would like them to be able to attend every meeting we
ask for all of our members to attend every meeting however if they're there you know in fact um I've done this as a member of the ZBA i've let the alternate members be the voting person instead of myself you know as a member uh sometimes just because it's you know they the ZBA
is not they have associate members they have alternates i thought they had associate members i thought they were alternates that's what I'm saying that's why I asked you the difference because my understanding is the ZBA but of course the ZBA is they have they have certain parameters under state law as does the planning board like you can you
can do it an associate member can vote on the ZBA if they're involved with X amount of number of the meetings okay and but the Green Communities Act I don't think has any of that because it's not state run so anybody should be able to vote so I don't have any problem as long as it's legal and we should check
with town council of having alternate members i'm fine with it or not changing the title and just saying alter associate members when lacking a quorum can be voting members at that meeting whatever we need to do perfect to make a quorum yes and I mean we I we also look
at as it's it's a better incentive for I get the I get the intention so we should because we are looking at as probably having to ch uh recruit new members very quickly in fact I'd like to I have a candidate that I'd like to bring for next for next meeting if I could great too yeah and I also like I have no issue
with updating the charge so that they can vote as well i think it's a very fair request so yeah Mr chair if I may uh first of all to to Mr blat's request of letting departments know he has come to us this is not the first time this is not the third time it's way more than that right
so if we can for the town manager get something on the calendar in like July or August and say or prepare people saying if you are planning a project please check with the green communities act it it brings in serious money with
projects we should want to do anyway and and there shouldn't be any of these where where the committee is and they've done this several times chasing something after the fact right it just makes things not run efficiently can we make that part of the capital plan process like in order to even submit a
project on the capital plan that it's part of the process that they have to do this as a check first well right but I not not that no no we should we should be included and I bring it up in all the meetings but by the time it gets to the capital plan which is like October it's already late to get them involved they have to be involved in the planning plan
which is why I was thinking wouldn't the It's really the summer yeah I I think we can definitely do both of these things i think I've heard from the capital planning committee that they'd like standardization of some of the forms and the way that the material comes in is presented and that part of that is a
section where they describe alternative uh funding that has been sought or that will be sought um so absolutely um but I think also you know maybe not every department head but the key department heads who have either facilities or vehicles or something under them we
should yeah connect in in the summer so that they understand they may not even understand the program itself right so correct yeah and the other thing I want to do is I want to take the opportunity with Mr bl in front of us first of all I have the utmost respect for people who stay with committees over a long number
of years he has done that by thank but you know the the committee Mr blad has been there for a long time maybe from the beginning and chaired it for many years they've brought in serious money whether it's the the street light conversions or all the energy uh issues with the heat pumps being the most
recent but the police vehicles and any other vehicles and the library lighting etc etc serious money into this town and I want to commend them for their for their job they do and the effort they put in to do that to bring in state money to these projects so thank you very much thank you how long have we had
the green communities designation um we had the committee from the time when the state um made inception of of the committee of the green communities we've had that the committee since then however it took Gunberg probably I'd say
five to six years to finally decide to become a green communities okay um I commend us that we got on that early right however you know because there's towns uh in fact it's funny but just Peabody was one town and uh just just I it was either Peody or Susan just became
one last year of after all these years it's like guys you're missing out but um we I think it's seven years six or seven years we've been a green community oh no we've been longer than that it's third it's uh well uh 2013 we've been a green community since really yeah 12 years wow
okay yeah we we struggled like I say a lot some of the projects we've we've like I said we struggled i just didn't think it was that I'm very bad with time and same here no I that's making me realize I how long I've been the chair then so I'm It's almost scary that's okay well it really is a great program i
mean these are pretty sizable grants that we get it it is very sizable Grants and um especially right now with everything that we can do in this town and need to do it's it you know I think it's time that I think we've all learned that you know uh doing the putting put
putting the band-aids on doesn't really work and if we can get the state to help us of course why not yeah yeah i could say you know the the the commendation I could give to the town and to your committee for joining it even though it took several years for
us to be a green communities takes a little bit off this sting that we never joined the community preservation so so you know this this is this is one of the glowing good examples that counters at least somewhat a really Oh and I poor
example and I must say I don't know how the folks in town but you know the impact I think uh to the the the impact that that it had to folks in town having to do the stretch code make their house more efficient I think has been utterly minimal compared to the rewards that
this town has seen from that i think we're up to now um close to $900,000 that we've received or actually over that that we've received from the from the state in grant funding so we haven't always been able to use all that money but it's however it's it's available one
last question have we talking about the street lights i know I mentioned it have we done a a post update you know a postcon conversion audit see how much we we'd love to show we I will put something together for you guys i guess let me have something but it is incredible if you look at what our
street light costs are if you knew what they were before we were roughly I trying to say over 10,000 a month or something like that to pay those bills yes yes and we are now in that realm of like 1,500 wow a month so the savings
has been amazing um we've paid we've already pretty much paid for all the grief and I mean um all the what it cost us to get through Unatail it's just we just kick ourselves and I Mr pacios will yell at me uh but we kick ourselves that we couldn't get it done three years sooner when we first
started trying to trying to argue with I mean uh discuss this with unit so well thank you Mr blat for all you do to help us they've always a pleasure yes same here same here all right all right have a good night for coming in my pleasure enjoy guys
all right they throw you out you know um All right we did the Tom manager report now down to new business review annual town meeting consent calendar so we had our pre-T town meeting last week uh the town moderator did ask that we
remove a couple of articles from the consent calendar so there was um article two borrow in anticipation of revenue article three expend funds in anticipation of reimbursement of state highway aid uh and 19 and 20 the compensated abs uh absences reserve fund
and his reasoning for that is while they may be non-controversial they're new to the town okay so he thought that it would be good to have them actually considered outside the consent calendar and he did also add one um payment of prior year's bills so he agreed with me
on that one um so I don't know if you guys have any um issues with these uh removals in that one edition or the only comment I will make is that the prior town one just changes the whole voting you know to it does yeah and we discussed that a little bit i mean
anything you want to say on that but I just I So I actually have in here I sent these off to Adam today the question to him if the motion under the prior town prior fiscal year bill is to pass over it and not appropriate is it then only a
simple majority because right now we don't have any prior prior fiscal year bills so but we could in the next couple weeks in that in that case we could pull it pull it out or he said but council's kind of comment was it does raise it would raise everything to the four fifths and he said but typically the
consent calendar is either going to be it's going to be an up or down vote either way so it's I only make the comment I don't think it's going to be an issue i always just worry about creating a high like the highest threshold there is of any vote so
um I had one question I think article 27 which one is that the PEG access and cable i wonder if there will be discussion about that we There has been yeah we Yeah we talked about that too that makes me a little nervous leaving it on the
consent calendar well you can you can Yeah somebody's although I again just what it costs to run it it's not like I know but Yeah so if if there is something that's controversial they'll pull pull that out and then vote the rest of the consent
calendar right we can go through them if you want uh any need no no renee any more no that was the only one that caught my eye okay oh wait no I take it back what is 32 32 which one's that that's the
That's okay 32 and 33 33 i just think that's going to need some explanation so why even put it there i think it's going to Yeah yeah i mean you're not wrong there i think my opinion is if we can pull them
off not leave them and with the chance of us Were they planning on making any sort of presentation i guess i don't know i don't know yeah and as soon as I started saying it I'm like so um the the board of assessors it will be prepared if if it's pulled off to
answer questions or discuss it um about what their intent here is i think yeah I think Brian knows you know what he's trying to do and Right those are the two I think might get pulled whether you want to put them on there and see if they get pulled or pull them now
I don't know if it matters i I want to get through so there's meeting right so there's two reasons i think the town moderator was correct on one of the reasons why you don't put something on the consent calendar if it's new the second thing is even if it's not controversial but somebody reads that
and like I have no idea what that be like what it's confusing well I don't I don't know that it's confus it's confusing if left alone it's not I will say this way i don't think it's confusing but it's also not self-explanatory right no you have to go to the booklet and read the summary
right so I mean again if some we give people a chance to pull it out mhm if if we were to take a straw poll vote I would say take them out now and have them at least explain it and take the 10 minutes to explain it as long as we it it of course it always depends on who
does the explaining but that's another story i don't really feel strongly either way i don't either yeah no okay there you go rene how about you do you want to pull it out i don't know if it matters does Does it make Let's leave it probably not someone If someone has questions they could stand up on the floor and just say "Hey
like I have questions about have to stand up." They just say hold that's all they have to do it's one word from their seat they don't have to get to the microphone mhm can I say we leave it as is okay we'll leave it and we'll see what happens all right any other questions on the consent calendar
all right is there a motion to approve the consent calendar so moved second any additional discussion those in favor say I i i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously all right old business we can skip all of this and just focus on town meeting stuff tonight so moving
down to budget capital plan and town meeting warrant articles i think I have two more things I want to cover um if there's anything else we can cover we can do that as well um but the first thing so for the motion sheets uh there's something new in there this
year that we're maybe considering um I would like to ask the board about it um but it came up in the meeting of having non- select board members make motions when appropriate for example um like the Marshall Park warrant article um could
potentially be made by the chair of the parks commission um I thought it warranted a conversation from the board do we want to allow that or do we want to just do what we always have done just have it done by select board members quick and efficient down the line well you have to be careful when you say do
what we always have done because what we're doing in the last few years is not what we've always done okay because if there were elected bodies look usually the planning board introduces planning board articles sewer commission would introduce sewer articles that are not just you know just budget like
enterprise fund so in this case the Marshall Park should be introduced by the parks commission it's an elected body they're the ones pre presenting it and do so I I would agree that they should present it and make the motion uh and I think that
the building municipal building it's they're not an elected body so I could see why one of the elected members in in this case the chair is from the select board so makes sense to them do it but anytime we can I think we should and citizen petitions should be read by the
citizen okay okay well that's one thing that we if we're going to go down that path we might as well add those too as well okay so I'm trying to I don't have them all off the top of my head but you know the chair of the planning board was making those i think I can yeah so the the um
article that transfers I think it's 11 transfer for the school the free cash the free cash to the school would we want the school committee chair to make that motion since he's going to have to be answering any questions i would think so um the Marshall Park project
um and then the two planning board articles I think are the ones that I had in here as options and the citizen petitions again I would re reinvoke the fact that whoever presented the citizen petition somebody who signed it should be presenting it and if nobody's there
it's kind of like if you fight a traffic ticket in court if the cop's not there then yeah doesn't get moved right like there it's a citizen petition so the citizen should be there to move it right i agree i think that makes sense
yeah I don't have any issue with it all right so then we'll let that happen and then we'll also add um the citizens petitions being moved by um whoever submitted them all right so that was all I had for the motions anything else that we want to
cover with the motion sheet while we're already talking about it jen is there anything you wanted to go through no I think um town council is out of town this week so he said he was going to try to look at these while out of town but I think they're in okay shape um
so I'm assuming that we'll hear back next week if not this week all right great any questions nope nope okay and then the other thing that I wanted to bring up is whether or not we want to schedule a meeting before town meeting
to vote on the articles that we deferred at like 8:30 we didn't do it last year we haven't done it last year previous yeah two years ago yeah but we used to do it all the time as standing meeting just in case so do we want to schedule it just in case and then if we don't want to
have it at least it's scheduled that makes sense to me okay sure we'll go ahead and do that a lot of them we I feel like a lot of the deferrals I wanted to hear presentations on the floor but I can't remember up all of them off the top of my head but I have no problem meeting ahead of time i wrote down the ones that we deferred just in
case it came up there's four of them uh so some we needed numbers right yeah we're waiting on payment of prior year's bill um FY2025 budget adjustments and closeouts and then there's the capital program i think those are all our deferrals i think so i went through it
maybe I missed some but I think you're correct Mr chair there has been no calling of the capital planning committee to review anything i was going to ask that no I haven't seen anything okay well we can go ahead and schedule it if we don't need it then y we can show up a
little bit later all right anything else we want to cover for town meeting that was all I had for tonight sorry that'll be there right you won't be here for No no any budget change since we're on that whole Oh sure yes any budget changes at all to report
uh there's a a minor change with the sewer enterprise budget um as it's printed in the warrant in the actual summary is is the older version but I was able to make the change to the hand to the u individual sewer article sheet
that's in the book so that's accurate that's it's a very minor change just having to do with indirect costs other than that no good great great anything else all right let's move on minutes i don't believe we have any i didn't see any let's see if any got dropped in nope
no minutes warrants nope action items did you guys get the action item tracker no i was I was thinking about it before this meeting i didn't do it but I will i promise no worries i We're so busy this week i didn't wouldn't have looked at it anyway can you put moving the action
item over to the new thing as part of the action item yeah then I'll close it out after I do it's a It's a recursive problem i know i can handle that i wanted to check the action item tracker to see because I think this is on there um only because how many meetings we have left before the election not many
um at this point the tax investigation report I think been on there yes may 6th yeah there was there was a whole bunch of questions that I thought Yeah the report itself questions that that went along with right the uh the
investigation report okay there were there were questions that were submitted yep at a meeting did we get them electronically i think we did yeah I think we got them by email we got a copy they were presented in person and then they were followed up by an email yeah
okay all right any other action items committee reports uh school committee met last week and they talked about the use of the 500,000 of free cash should they um get
it at town meeting which is going to um majority of it going towards um replenishment of of staff um Turkey Hill EDA study the draft report was presented
um and they talked about uh the repairs mostly the they prioritized I haven't seen the report and it was just like there wasn't a presentation they were just scrolling through the report live um I think it's like 128 pages they prioritized the
building envelope the roof and all the windows and many doors and everything taken together to to basically carry Turkey Hill forward you know 2030 years was in the order of $16
million i don't know if that includes any contingencies escalations yada yada but um that was a number that was thrown out and the other item was the superintendent search so they have four candidates they will be interviewing
beginning next week and I think they're supposed to wrap up the week of like May 5th and 6th so and then I think maybe potentially decide you know vote on a superintendent uh that that same week so May 7th 8th or
9th and storm water task force meets Thursday this week that's it tom do you have any i do not okay sorry i don't either master Plan is meeting tomorrow and economic development committee is meeting on May 1st um and I
am missing still an economic development committee report so I will have both of those um at our next meeting all right and I don't have a committee report tonight upcoming meetings May 3rd 9:00 a.m annual town meeting at the middle high school auditorium and then we'll be
meeting May 6th public comment any public comments from the town manager no any public comments from the public not seeing any not seeing anyone on Zoom any public comment from the board i have one public comment that
uh town meetings are always important it's the most our open town meeting is the purest form of democracy you will find in America uh this year probably uh with all the stuff and uncertainty going on in the economy and everything I would
encourage people more than ever to come to town meeting and vote on very uh substantial budgets and projects so this town meeting will have a $49 million plus omnibus budget it will have a 22
plus million dollar municipal building project and a 13 plus million dollar park plan for Marshall Park now however you feel about these pro or con this is the time to come and voice your opinion and participate because projects of this
size believe me will need we'd like to to feel that whatever the vote is it's representative of the whole town and not 120 people who decided to come one Saturday in May so I encourage people to attend and be involved and participate
in the direction of the town thank you Mr chair all right thank you Mr alonzo any other public comments all right with that is there a motion can I do a public comment you absolutely can come on up dave Blat 411 Goodrich Street um I I
know it's part of the town charter or things like that but the um town meetings on Saturday are extremely extremely wrong it's uh for some folks it's a religious day for them and they cannot come for others they have
actually have children that might be in an event and how do you tell your 8-year-old nine-year-old that I can't come to your event because I have to sit and do town meeting and we wonder why we don't have a quorum or we have we we we struggle to get 15 the same 150 people i
understand that Tuesday nights can get very very long however I I I would like love to see that town meetings are not held especially this time of year are not held on Saturdays thank you Mr black
you're all right is there a motion to adjurnn so moved second any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously it is 7:49 p.m and the select board is adjourned we will see you all at town
meeting is that a record for