is Tuesday April 8th 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 no none no are there any public comments from the public mr school in Briny i'm Anthony Scullenbriny uh the elder uh
at Five Valley Road in Lunenburgg and I'm here tonight to discuss Brooks House um I uh I've been a participant in the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee for probably two and a half years and other than the chair I have attended more meetings than any other
member of the committee so I have some experience in dealing with this committee and the work that has it has uh been presented with um I'm coming here tonight specifically to address the comments that were made at last week's select board meeting as well as the comments that were made at the Lunberg
Municipal Building Design Committee meeting uh last night um and quite honestly uh I'm very disappointed with both the comments that were made by the select board members as well as the committee members last night
after the special time meeting warrant passed um in November of 2024 I uh called Carter Terzini the acting town manager and said "How can I help?" and he goes "Well," he says "Uh I was
actually planning on getting staff together looking at the requirements that was in the town meeting warrant and then coming up with a response but the select board um decided to go ahead and accept uh Michael Ray Jeffy's uh offer
to have the Lunberg Municipal Build Building Design Committee uh handle the Brooks House." Um I was very concerned about that as was Carter because he also had um you know the idea that uh that committee was going to be pretty busy um on December
15th I met with the chair of the select board Mr caesar Snoozeello and I indicated to him that I thought that the committee was way too busy to handle the Brooks House as a task and uh Caesar you had indicated to me that you were going to talk to Carter about maybe doing that
charge over and what I and what was reported back to me by Carter was that that conversation never happened oh it did okay all right then then the time the time manager misinformed me because I specifically I specifically did the followup all right
so at last night's meeting of the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee by the way there has been a lot of discussion by the Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee about the Brooks House and it fell to the very bottom of the priority list of
what to do with Tom buildings and I think that that was something that made sense given the priorities that the town has for buildings like Town Hall like Ritter like TC Pacios like Turkey Hill and I never had a problem with that um and the and the committee itself never
really made a decision about what to do with the Brooks House and that was one of the reasons why the Architectural Preservation District Commission came before you and asked you to consider um an active program to see if the HOS
could be sold or long-term leased and um as I said to my fellow committee members last night uh when all else fails I had an engineering professor who said to me when all else fails follow directions so at the meeting last night for the first
time in fact Michael Ray Jeff the chair of the committee asked me to summarize what was in that warrant so for the first time last night that committee received what the warrant language said
that was supposed to happen now I have copies of this just in case you all don't remember and and what I find rather interesting about the comments that you all made at your meeting last week was um completely
uh opposite of what this board said as it presented an issue to the town for a vote at special time meeting and what it said was "We recommend approval of this
language that the select board you know look at whether it could sell or it could lease on a long-term basis to Brooks House." Um you have not done that uh and I think that that's my concern
today is that you have a responsibility as an elected body to the people who vote at Tan meeting and for the volunteers who are engaged in supporting the TAN's bylaws for example
the architectural preservation district bylaw if you don't want to have an architectural preservation district bylaw then bring that issue back to the town and say we don't want to do that but when the town citizens vote and ask the select board to come up with the
language that's described in that warrant it wasn't it wasn't mysterious it didn't say come up with a demolition proposal it said come up with a proposal to see if you can sell this building okay so that's my concern is that you
have not lived up to what a time warrant article that was passed at special time meeting asked you to do now I heard last week I heard last week's conversation today finally I I uh ran out of battery power cuz you have such long meetings
and you know so I listened to the uh the to the section that talked about the uh the Brooks house and you said Caesar that the house is really in bad shape caesar um I'm a civil engineer i have renovated old houses i have renovated my daughter's old house i have renovated
houses that were associated with the Wright brothers i have been involved in historic preservation for almost all of my career and I'm here to tell you that the book's house is not in that bad a condition does it have issues does it have problems yes the other thing that we keep hearing is "Oh there's going to
be all this traffic." You know and it's kind of like well that's exactly what you want for businesses you want traffic in fact you know what might actually happen is that you would have more people enjoy and participate and come to the public library that this board h funds year in and year out along with
other people you know so it's like we have u a facility that has value and yet we don't seem to be willing to embrace a process by which we might be able to derive value from that property now you
know parking is obviously an issue i don't debate that but there's ways of dealing with parking in fact the village district bylaw which this town has adopted has said you can have shared by you can have shared parking and it can be as far as a,000 ft away mr school I'm
going to remind you okay I have well over 3 minutes all right I'm past my time all right so I'll stop there because I don't want to I don't want to um abuse my privileges to speak before the board but you have not lived up to what that warrant asked you to do understood thank you are there any other
public comments from the public any on Zoom all right seeing none we're going to move on announcements i don't have any tonight jen are there any announcements you'd like to make i don't have any announcements okay communications from other boards we
don't have any all right we're going to go out of order tonight so we're going to start with the ratification of the town manager's appointment of Chief of Police Jeffrey Tibido and Jen I will pass it off to you thank you through you Mr chairman to the board it is my honor
and privilege to present um the name of Jeffrey Tibido that you know well as Lunberg's next chief of police um Mr tibido has uh been a dedicated member of the Lunenburgg Police Department since 2011 uh he has risen through the ranks
serving in a variety of roles for our community uh including patrol officer detective detective sergeant lieutenant and most recently interim chief of police following Chief Gamble's retirement uh he holds a bachelor's degree from criminal uh in criminal justice from Fitchburg State and prior
to joining our department here he served uh in the towns and police department as a patrol officer and then advancing to the rank of detective throughout his career he has completed over 40 specialized law enforcement training programs further enhancing his expertise and commitment to public safety um for
those members of the community that are not aware of the process uh this selection was made after um a a thorough uh advertisement and with a screening committee that included um the Gratentown manager Mark Hatad Chief
Bennett of Templeton Chief Sullivan of Lunenberg Deb Goodsell and Dr burnham um I will say that uh Chief Tibido interim Chief Tibido soon to be Chief Tibido um really rose through that process and has my full confidence and support as our
next police chief so um pending successful contract negotiations um I would like to recommend uh this appointment and the the support of the board interim Chief Tibido if you'd like to come up and say some things you may i
don't know why you're still over there maybe you're a little shy um but I also want to note for the board and the public if this seems a little less ceremonial uh than typical it's because we're planning an actual swearing in and pinning ceremony next Friday uh so we're really just getting this ratification
done tonight um so that we can start announcing the actual appointment after we ratify it and then we'll have an actual ceremony next week yes so that the board is aware the invitations are ready to go out uh so we are having a swearing in and pinning ceremony next
Friday at 6:00 p.m um to give the chief the full pomp and circumstance that he absolutely deserves thank you i just like to thank the board and the town manager um obviously the you know the ceremony will be at a a later date but
uh there was concessions made for my brother who's uh in the United States Army and is all all around the world uh he serves as a colonel for the Pentagon so he does travel a lot and I I appreciate uh that concession thank you
all right questions or comments from the board i was expecting more of a rehearsal of what he was going to say that that seemed very brief but okay he must he must have it already prepared for the ceremony i'll have a you know a full speech we can Yeah i'll stay up
there for an hour i'll just say for short I mean I was here when we appointed uh now or now pending chief almost chief whatever the title is from now to Friday you know when we appointed him to the Lunberg
Police Department he was an excellent addition then came with great credentials and to see him rise through the ranks you know because of his his uh responsibility and duty duty list i mean it's been impressive uh has excelled at every job including ones that he did
with Lunberg again as we talked before the meeting uh Chief Tibido and I that he did work for the the FBI and and DEA so I mean I couldn't be more thrilled for your appointment here and I look forward to wonderful things thank you Mr alonzo
i um starting with you as you know as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant and now as a chief couldn't be more proud and I know the work that you do firsthand and I'm I know you're going to do a great job and our guys are in good hands thank you i'm always excited to
see how you know Lunberg does such a great job training its officers um that we are consistently the most competitive I think when we are uh when any of our officers are going for positions of higher authority um you know a lot of that is attributable to your leadership
uh over the many years so I'm excited to support this ratification and thank you tremendously for your service to the community thank you i know you're going to make a fantastic chief i'm excited to make this uh official and I will be at your ceremony as well so I look forward
to um the more ceremonious occasion uh next week it'll be nice yeah all right so is there a motion to ratify the town manager's appointment of Chief of Police Jeffrey Tibido contingent upon successful contract negotiation so moved second any
additional discussion those in favor say I i i those opposed no motion passes unanimously thank you so much for coming in tonight thanks Chief all right so now we're going to jump down to scheduled meetings and hearings and up first first we have a two booth
fundraiser request for the Fitsburg Lemonster Shriners Club on June 7th in support of Shriner's Hospital Transportation Fund good evening good evening carl Edmonds from the Fitsburg and Lister Shrine Club and we'd like to request the opportunity
to do another toll booth um event i think this would be our fourth one if if if the opportunity is given to us um what we do is we just collect money with we have like little pales and we we stand in the um the center of town mhm
and uh we're doing it from 9:00 a.m to 2:00 p.m to 2 p.m all right you want to tell us a little bit about what exactly you're raising money so what what we raise the money for is um is is for the transportation of um children all over the world um um there's two different
there's two different accounts there there's accounts for um the hospital itself you know the doctors and all that and then there's also um accounts that we raise money for for just the transportation you can imagine the um the specialized equipment that is needed
to transport those children you know and sometimes you know it can cost you know $50 $60,000 just to transport one child here to the states all right any questions or comments from the board
um is this rain or shine only because it's rained every weekend i was thinking the same thing but we've always lucked out we've always lucked out this week but hopefully by June it'll be over right right and and I do know that I have to notify um a week
before the the police chief and um and the Department of Public Works great yeah that was my all the rules i'm sorry you've done it before so you know all the rules we know retreat yeah yep yep i just would need to get his number yeah okay but and we can do that through our
office and definitely help with that yep good any um questions from Amanda and Michael Ray no are you know you have it issues as always always all right all right so you're okay with no no rain
it's rain or shine right rain or shine all right awesome thank you yeah of course is there a motion i would move that we approve the toll booth fundraiser request uh by the Pittsburgh Limits to Shriners Club in support of the Shriner's Hospital Transportation
Fund to be held in Town Center on June 7th from 9 to 2:00 p.m second any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously thank you all right good luck have a good night
all right up next we have a special 1-day wine and malt license application for May 10th 2025 from 11:00 a.m to 6:00 p.m by Home Fruit Wine and by the way that is for the All Vendor Fair um is there an applicant here for that
good evening i'm Lori from Homeruit Wine i brought a brochure in to share thank you i don't know if I included it in the package no I didn't see it so thank you so my partner David and I we own Home Fruit Wine in Orange and we're trying to branch out more to the East
and um we're doing different vendor fairs and events through the summer and we found this one online and we thought it would be a nice event to try to get involved in it runs May 10th and I was just trying to quickly look up a rain date because she mentioned a rain day i
think it is May 11th yeah I know there is one is it May 11th okay yes yes so and it goes from um 11 to 6 so we want to set up a booth to sell bottles of our wine and also do tastings
and pour by the glass they're going to have a ban there and a specialized area for the um pouring right okay and just reading it on here cuz I actually didn't see this so it's going to be at the Council on Aging patio and there's going to be additional enclosures too just to control the access to that area correct
correct great all right yeah and we'll post that you know you have to be 21 and Right we've we've done it before okay different places any questions from the board no fully supportive i think it's a great idea what can I say for you to the town manager is everything It looks like
everything is here is everything in the package everything is here um and both chiefs have um signed off thank you mhm yep i don't have any further questions i think for me this may be a first everything was in order as I look through it no questions thank you all
right awesome like I said we've been experienced in doing this so I kind of know what the towns want each one's kind of a little different but um I try to check with the um managers to begin with so it was pretty clear thank you so much sounds good all right so is there a motion then would move
that we approve the special 1-day wine and malt license application for a home fruit wines for May 10th 2025 from 11 a.m to 6:00 p.m do you want to also include the rain date just in case and the rain date uh I would assume it would
follow the fair so I think she believes the rain date is 5:11 i'll say 511 second May 11th so all right any additional discussion those in favor say I i i those no the motion passes unanimously all right look forward to it good luck have a good night see all you
there i'm sure you will right let me sign those later waste time yeah I know all right flying right through these up next we have a pedaler's license application for Paul and I know I'm going to Cen Shuli i think if it's Italian it would be Chonuli i know but I
don't want to be that pretentious with it so I kind of like Wow i didn't realize I didn't realize that pronouncing his name in Italian from an Italian name was pretentious most Italian like I don't pronounce my last name in the fully Italian way i think most don't but maybe I'll be surprised
and if that and if so I apologize Paul um so yeah I'll pass it over to you if you want to just introduce yourself tell us about your business and um why you're u submitting this application sure thing thank you so much can you guys hear me okay we can hear you just
fine fantastic and yes Chenuli man that's perfect uh you you nailed it i actually say Chin Chili my wife speaks fluent Italian and she gets mad that I don't say it the proper way chenchuli um but yes um my name is Paul Chinchili i
work for Eoloop and we are a local solar install b installer based in Danvers Massachusetts and so I applied for the peddler's license here in Lunenburgg to go doortodoor um with homes that we identify as having
good potential to produce solar on site and the goal is to uh save homeowners money and uh do something that supports uh the environment as well all right awesome thank you and I I do just have one question that I'll ask for um up
first um so the application just lists you I believe as an applicant correct are you the only person involved in the company that's going to be going door to door so no we have a few reps that we work with uh approximately around 20 um
but most likely it would be just me going door todoor particularly in Lunenburgg actually the license would be for Okay all right any questions from the board i have none
same question I always ask is everything here and everything's all set um Mr chini if you choose to have other folks um join you at the door we'll have to come back and go through this process so just so you're aware um but otherwise
this is all set right Rene so I'm looking am I reading this right the hours of operation 7 days a week starting at 9:00 a.m to 7:00 p.m i wouldn't like someone knocking on my door at 9:00 a.m on a Sunday morning that's totally fine i just kind of put a
general span of time i'm totally um open to whatever your suggestion would be for time i I typically don't actually knock on doors Sunday at 9:00 a.m um but I just wanted to give a good range just uh I wasn't quite sure how to fill that out actually I I would offer
as a response to my colleague that since you are in the business of generating sales not losing customers that you probably know that you wouldn't be knocking at somebody's door on 9:00 a.m on a Sunday morning if that was your intention to actually get a sale out of
that fair point certainly any other questions amanda did you have something i was going to ask if the chief had reviewed it but then I see Yes yep yep yep mhm michael Ray i actually had the pleasure of meeting Chief Tibido in person oh
awesome do I think Chief has a question yep sure coming up may I ask you of Of course you may i did meet with Paul uh and went over his application everything was fine on his end some of the stuff that we encountering is uh the use of
drones i don't know if Paul uses drones or not but uh I would say that a stipulation would be that um you know only with the homeowner's approval if you are going through the you know the solar program and then they use a drone to fly over your house to see where uh
solar can be used on your roof i I don't I it came up a little bit i don't think it was this company but it did come up in the past where uh maybe they were flying drones over the roadways just over houses to see where but uh you know
I would maybe put a stipulation like that cuz in the past it did it did uh cause some confusion for interesting people getting permission for for I would I would recommend permission first from the homeowner you know and then the
use of the drones okay yeah that's interesting um it's just an issue that we faced last year that okay you know you wouldn't think of but in this technology ridden day it's now coming up yeah I can understand that so how would we how would we do that for this i would
ask the right okay do you intend on flying drones without any homeowners permissions no sir so I can explain our process actually but we do in fact use drones however uh that would be further along
in the process and that's if the homeowner has agreed to get a site survey done on their home so it would be a next step from the initial doortodoor it's not something that we just fly around uh without homeowners permission
uh so I'm happy to submit uh we always know when the site survey would take place and I'm I'm more than happy to uh run that by the the police um when we do get one scheduled for a site survey okay thank you that makes a lot of sense mr chair if I may ask so would you be okay
just to be on the safe side given what the chief has now said if we with the peddler's license just prohibited any drone use during the peddler's license would you be object to that um I would not object to it other than
if the homeowner decided that they wanted to move forward with solar um I would ask that with permission from the town we would be able to fly the drone uh the drone footage is actually very important to get a a better picture of
how productive the homeowner's roof will be for solar and also get an accurate picture of any obstructions like if there's trees that aren't on the satellite image that we make the initial presentation with um so it it is very crucial but it's certainly I I would I
don't even bring a drone out ever it's only when we get to the site survey stage uh which is fairly further along in the in the uh in the process and and an agreement would have been authorized at that point well that's what I'm saying i mean the peddler's license authorizes you to go doortodoor and sell
it i mean any any engagement past that is not under the peddler's license that's under Echol Loop doing business so that the the restriction on the drones would just be for the peddler's license and you're telling me you don't do it during the doortodoor initial engagement anyway
gotcha oh so I guess I misunderstood so no that that's totally fine you can say um as a restriction for the peddler's license no drones that doesn't Yeah that that would be completely fine with me okay michael Ray you had something you were going to say yeah I think I think
it's largely been answered mhm um if we can refer to it as a UAS which is the technical term oh sure and just I guess I'll offerform informationally um so any company that uses a UAS for commercial purposes the
operator of that drone is is required to be a licensed pilot i'm sure you're aware of that um licensed pilots are not allowed to fly over uh vehicles or roads um without you know permission of the vehicle drivers which obviously you're never going to get unless it's people
you know um and then typically uh although uh UAS's typically are you know pretty light um most um homeowners or insuranceances are looking for at least a million-doll liability policy on them uh I know this cuz I'm a licensed UAS
pilot and so I have to you commercially uh as well okay all right any other questions jen is this looking good to you yeah I just wanted to clarify are we good on the 9:00 a.m to 7:00 p.m sunday to Saturday i if Mr chair if I may I would
like to exclude Sundays altogether um that's my preference i don't think it's a day of business all right how do other members feel about that well I would be fine with that if we were living 50 years ago so I'm not okay
with that i think it's up to the applicant and if you want to change the time again I don't think he's going to go in those times but I I don't feel a need to restrict him to you know not do it on Sundays everything's open on Sundays if they want to be
all right anyone strongly opposed to Sundays all right that sounds like a no no all right any remaining questions is there a motion then i would move that we approve the peddler's license application for Paul Chen Shulie doing
business as echol loop with the additional stipulation as noted that no UAS flights are available under this permitted under this license second any additional discussion those in favor say I i i those opposed no no
motion passes 4 to one all right Paul thank you very much for coming in tonight good luck with your business thank you all very much thank you so much have a great night you too all right and now we have a pole petition hearing for West Townsen Road plan number
978-L proposed new pole approximately 235 ft north of Howard Street and approximately 3,375 ft south of Townsen Town line and this is a public hearing so I will ask the clerk to read the public hearing notice
in conformity with the requirements of section 22 of chapter 166 of general laws you are hereby notified that a public hearing will be held at Town Hall 17 Main Street second floor in the Joseph J bada meeting room Lunberg Massachusetts on Tuesday April 8th at
7:25 p.m upon petition of Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light for permission to erect or construct and a location for a line of wires poles and such other fixtures as may be necessary to sustain or protect the wires of that of the line for the transmission of electricity upon along across or under the following
public ways of said town loca location approximately as shown on the plan attached floor is all yours so John Kimble representing Unitol um so this is for a new home 433 West Townsen Road they're
going to be building off of this driveway right next to where 39A the proposed pole is uh denoted um we have all the driveways basically it's it's so that we don't create an
aerial trespass so you have pole 40 and you have 39 that are too far away to be able to be utilized for this address so that's why we're requesting to be able to use to have a dupole installed
all right any questions from the board not a question but a comment that after many many years of working with unitil and going back and forth of what we require like this is what we need all the time this is perfect shows me all the driveways have all the existing things very clearly explained what
should be a 10-minute thing is now a 10-minute thing and not a oh you didn't file this and we have to come back again another time so I want to take the time and appreciate all the work and and looking for what we need and taking that advisement and making this really easy
thank you here Renee i only had one one comment the new pole looks like it's pretty close to the edge of the driveway compared to where the existing poles are and that is going to be their driveway yeah and it's going to be roughly Well
they don't have much room to work with the uh that that's why I chose that side i guess they're okay with that being there they're not worried about their teenage kid coming in and not not that that's never happened before next poll and lining up all the
other polls yeah it needed to be over there otherwise we were going to be zigzagging and that's going to add cost and strain on the conductors and the poles so the new homeowners know where this is correct and they're okay with it yes any other questions
all right this is a public hearing so anyone from the public want to uh come up and speak i am not seeing any all right so if we are all set is there a motion to close to close the Oh move to close the public
hearing second any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously and the public hearing is now closed is there a motion on the uh request here move that we approve the pull petition for West
West Towns or New West west Townsen west Towns and Road Plan number 978L with the proposed new poll being as indicated on the pro proposed or the provided documentation second any additional discussion those in favor say
I i those opposed no motion passes unanimously thank you so much for coming in tonight thank you have a great night yeah you too maybe that was less than 10 minutes i know i was thinking that too that was perfect it's cold in here all right back to you Jen town manager
report okay thank you so um as we're turning over one page of town meeting season and starting another um we are organizing a group next Monday to be filming a town meeting preview um with PAC and department heads and representatives from certain boards or
proponents of certain articles um the goal is to have um a little bit more informal of a conversation about the different Warren articles that are more digestible by the public and to be able to have that out to the public um in advance of town meeting and hopefully
answer a few questions along the way um we've been notified that um the attorney general's office is beginning bi-weekly briefings about um about the AGO's response um to mayors and municipal managers um on their efforts to protect
Massachusetts federal funding and defend the laws of the Commonwealth the first one of these is tomorrow i'm not really sure what this these are going to entail and um I guess we'll see so they're doing something and they're informing us of it starting to uh the PO public
employee committee or PEC held their their first meeting with the new bargaining unit representatives most bargaining unit representatives on the PEC had moved on so it's a whole new group more or less other than I believe Mary Foil is the only repeat um person on the PEC uh the
contract between the town and the PEC is expiring this June uh the town's health insurance adviser from Cooking Company Sue Shaloo was also there to present and explain to the group the current insurance market um we are anticipating that we are going to probably sign a
one-year just extension of the current agreement um there's no plan design changes anticipated for this year um but we do recognize that we might want to not not sign an agreement that's longer than a year perhaps um so they are going
to take that back to their bargaining uh units and that'll be the PEC agreement will be back before the board um probably in a month or so um that said I do need to sign the health insurance renewal for FY 26 before April 30th um
so I have asked Sue Shaloo to come in uh next week just to to explain to this board and to the public kind of what the changing landscape is around health insurance and why these costs are so high and what the options are or are not for municipalities so that'll be next week
um so I held a meeting last week with uh the chair and vice chair of parks commission facilities director and recreation director amongst other topics one of the topics that we discussed at some length um was about working together over the course of next several
months uh to explore the possibility of making the rec director full-time so um as the board is aware the fall a special town meeting a new revolving fund was established and we want to see how much of a full-time salary could be supported
with the revolving fund and the activities that would supply that revolving fund i think since coming to Luenberg I've um heard some pretty strong interest in at least exploring making this position um full-time and what the feasibility would be for that
so that is starting and I said good time to start but we'll pick it up in earnest after town meeting um couple of grant announcements uh Lunberg will be receiving $3,964 from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and the
Department of Fire Services um this is uh some FY25 grant money that had not been expended so the state is stoalling it out uh these funds will be used to purchase an additional handheld thermal imaging camera and a plug that disables
electrical systems on electric vehicles to render them safer in the event of an accident i don't really know what that means but perhaps some of you do um we will also be receiving $4,69945 from the FY25 SAFE program and
$2,199.87 from the senior safe program so um let's see i had uh informed the board that we have been notified that we need to begin the ascertainment process the cable licensing renewal process it's a several year process and um that I'd be
keeping you informed as we go along um and I do have a meeting scheduled with the chair of PAC to be who has been involved previously um to discuss that i understand Mr alonzo was quite involved in the last licensing i don't know if you're looking to volunteer some of your
time um I'll let you know okay thank you um Ann Aubrey the executive assistant to the town manager and the select board's last day working for the town will be this Thursday um if you haven't done so already please swing by the office and wish her well on her next chapter and we
thank her for her service to the town of Lunenburgg and uh lastly on the general updates there will be a dunk tank at the Lunenburgg vendor fair and I have been informed that several employees um have already signed up to spend some time in
the tank uh yes okay so nice so this is just one more reason to attend the fair on May 10th um if you have perhaps the employee that you really want to dunk might be in the tank
at the time okay next up so a little bit little bit of a non-update on the Flat Hill Road bridge closure uh we are still waiting for the underwater inspection team to be able to get into the water to inspect that before reopening the road to the public um we do hope that it can
be reopened in the next few days though that's next few days to the end of next week is the timeline for that that we're anticipating um in the meantime we are still uh sorting out some contractual issues with the vendor and I will keep the board apprised where that goes uh we
are putting out an invitation for bids for DPW support services that should go out tomorrow uh work covered under this contract would include installation of drainage water lines catch basin repair manholes preparation of trenches patching road defect shoulder work
grading for swailes um and adding or removing material so perhaps if you are watching this meeting and this is your vocation you are going to want to take a look at that invitation for bid and um the roadway fog seal and crack seal is
out and bids are due back on April 23rd uh our current vacancies uh for uh staff the executive assistant to the town manager and select board closes tomorrow that posting closes tomorrow for the 36 hour per week uh position uh the
assistant to the sewer business manager the offer is pending um we are not at acceptance at the moment um seasonal lifeguards we do have some the off um the interviews have been conducted and offers are forthcoming seasonal beach
director so we do have somebody that's interested in the position that is interviewed um the the posting requires that the person be certified as a water safety instructor um we're not giving swimming lessons so uh we are just
checking with labor council to see if this is some kind of insurance our insurance company hasn't said it's an insurance requirement we've always checked with them if this is some kind of safety requirement that they that you need the certification in this type of role if if not we may be waving that requirement for the water safety
instructor of the posting we're not doing swim lessons this year no no and uh lastly the I think this is the last one the administrative assistant to conservation we had an offer out and that offer was rejected um so that
position is still open and uh the same uh vacancies on boards as we have had and that is the end of my report great thank you Jen any questions for the town manager all right thank you very
much moving on old business finalized votes on annual town meeting articles so I believe we have four left we will go through just to ensure that we don't miss any hold on one second let me just pull up the warrant as well are we using the final warrant i was
just going to ask though so which one do we want final warrant pull up final warrant okay final warrant 4825 okay so do you want me to just jump to the ones that we're still waiting for are we going Article 8 is the first one that's fine yeah okay we can do that all
right so let's go down to article eight this is the capital program article um yeah do you want to speak to that sure so um you've already voted on this article but um it has changed since your vote so uh essentially the um school
department um working with green communities uh received a a grant for um through the green communities program for a heat pump um in order to qualify for that grant uh they needed to also purchase a
central control system uh that control system was on their FY27 capital plan um but in order for the town to be able to continue to go after funding through the green communities program you need all of the prior grant awards closed out
first so um this issue kind of raised at the last school committee meeting and uh we already had scheduled on Friday the meeting between the chairs of the select board school committee fincom myself and the superintendent and we discussed
options at that time um the option that was recommended and that was brought before the school committee last evening was to remove the four uh school related capital items from the FY26 capital program and to in theirstead place a
portion of the 170,000 that's needed um there for the same dollar for-doll exchange of capital item school related capital items so um you will see that on this new chart the school capital items have been removed and the placed at the
bottom um is the primary school heat pump system local funding for green communities award uh in the amount of $146,865 uh so the delta to get to the 170 the school is going to have to figure out where they're drawing that
from um but I do think that this is uh where it is supported by the school committee they voted last evening i I don't think I would substitute my judgment for theirs in this case um it really is a switching out of priorities between two fiscal years so it's taking
their FY26 and their FY27 and essentially swapping them capital Planning Committee had just heard about this and we have not met so I don't know if the chair will call a meeting i would assume there will be but
I also I'm not a predictor but I I hardly believe that anybody's going to object to it it's been it's the school but once again this this this ain't the way it's supposed to work so I I have two questions one the the
delta the 20some thousand is that do you you may not know um is that dependent on the schools getting the free cash at town meeting they they can draw that from a multitude of their accounts maintenance accounts they can they can
draw it down i think the expectation is that this project gets completed right so that we can through the summer and I think that that was the statements that were made last evening right that this project they want it done obviously while school's out right they want it done before and so the next round of funding would be in the fall yeah so my
other question is I assume that the original bid for this project was done last fall because that's when the grant was submitted that's when capital planning met do we I mean you have a decent it looks like you know 69,000 contingency in
here are we is this going to be bid again or are we worried about it going so the a lot higher so the contingency that's in the capital article is spread across this is for all of the sex capital plans so I just want to say that
if anybody's looking at that as as the answer for this one particular project I I would say that that's probably not um something that could be guaranteed uh that said I was not involved with the green communities meetings those I can say having been involved in prior ones
you usually have an engineer involved um and who is helping you put the application together with the consultant um I I can't speak to what procurement or what studies or what the school
department has gone through though to to know how sure those figures are there's been I can say that there's been no bid on this so you know I don't know where the estimate came from yeah my only concern is it comes back yes
significantly higher and then what what do we do if if this if they can't fund it do we well that's put back all the requests on the co capital plan or I mean what happens I don't know I I think that that you
really until bids hit the street and you are starting to open those packages you don't know could we know by town meeting do you think No they could no they No no i mean we're not even going to know because some of this is all equipment driven and given the tariffs we don't
even know i mean minlits come the the major brand of minlits is Mitsubishi so I don't know where they're made and what that the cost of them is going to be even with the quotes they do have so I will say for the other projects on here on this list that also need to go
through the procurement process we don't know for them either right but this one has a really tight time i mean if they wanted the project on this summer by kids go back to school wait August right mr chair I I do I saw the school
committee meeting last night and it was brought up and I would like to know uh if we can get it before town meeting but certainly before the next capital planning I'd like to know when it was noted when somebody raised the flag
that the bid that and the grant that they received had another thing that it relied on that required this change to happen when did that when did was that known and by whom and why wasn't it known sooner i'd like to know that
because we want to avoid this going forward especially with anybody applying for green community grants through the Green Communities Committee mhm all right i guess we could look into that yeah i mean I I did uh try to reach out today through email to Mr blat of
the Green Communities Committee i think he probably doesn't check his email as frequently as some of us may but um perhaps he might be available to come before the board and kind of explain the process as well and help to clarify any misunderstandings that may
be out there yeah we could ask if you'd be interested in that yeah I recall Mr blat Mr chair I recall Mr blat um you know when this was kind of being put on the um urged to be on the capital plan last year uh that Mr at I I recall
saying "Hey you know talk to us about these kinds of things we can help you out with some funding." Um so you know whatever the application was I have to presume that it occurred in the fall um and was relatively um recent but to Mr alonzo's point I think that that is
definitely uh worth understanding um I'm interested Mr chair in withdrawing our recommendation and deferring instead um because I think that you know I really um I I've been very vocal about my support for the uh schools having air
conditioning in the primary school for these kinds of things you know the building was clearly designed for air conditioning i have excuse me have concerns about the amount of penetrations into building facades that come with you know this many uh heat
pumps as I recall their um plan for this um and that it was uh kind of internally pulled together um in terms of how they came up with a a dollar amount on it but you know I think I've been consistent that I support AC i don't know if this is the best way to do it um but I I do
think for me this process changes my overall recommendation okay thank you for that opinion other members do we want to defer are we still okay with recommending approval would there be other information at town
meeting that you think would change your mind or Yeah i mean why defer instead of just I think between Sure i think between now and then you know the information in addition to what what Tom Mr the lawns were just requested i think it would be helpful to for the capital planning committee you know part of what
we require is that they vet these things um and and I think that that is a necessary uh step to occur um I don't know any we don't have any details other than what this says as a subject header primary school heat pump system uh local funding for green communities award so I
mean what is being designed what is being proposed you know what is the system um I think I want to get some clarity on this gap and if the schools believe that they can bridge it um because you know committing $146,000 to a project that may not be able to move forward without the
additional funding is a showstopper um so you know there's other products that are literally ready to go um then they should be ready to go i would Mr chair i would say that in the methodology that we provide recommendations we always
want to have the latest information and if these come from or should come from separate bodies like the capital planning committee and then they change after they've been approved I have to say that I would concur with Mr jeff
that it is prudent to remove the recommendation as a deferred so we would give ourselves time to hear what the capital planning committee thinks and to get some of these answers about is this sufficient with what we know as far as
the project was will this cover it the 175,000 that they're touting 146 coming from this and then whatever money they need so I think those are questions that would be useful for us to hear and so I would I would support that motion of
deferring all right i think that's fair as well i would be fine with deferring jen Senator would you want to know yeah I do have some questions um so hypothetically if we if we got to town meeting and this is I mean the warrant is being sent to the printer right mhm
um if we got to town meeting and there was not support for this one item what happens to the entirety of the FY26 capital plan i I will offer my own opinion is that I will not only because I'm on the capital
planning committee but even if I was not I am prone to support what the goes through the committee process and whatever that committee decides they want to support so if they don't support this for for whatever reasons then I will support the original plan uh that
would be my choice and so I guess to that right um because that's exactly what I'm thinking of the options here the alternates is that with this this is missing as it is as it is it's missing those four
original pro projects so we're not if we if we send this out as is printed right now or as is in your file right now it's not putting the public on notice that there's a playground project that there's a driveway like it's not informing the public what the alternative is so I would be concerned
that we wouldn't be able to swap out at town meeting if let's just say if we're if there's not support for the school heat pump that we wouldn't be able to swap out for those other four school related projects because they didn't
appear that's my I'm just concerned really I don't have a horse in the race oh would you want to see i know we're really cutting on the wire here close but would you want to see if there's a possibility of adding language on the bottom of the table of those four i do not think that I can get an answer back
from legal counsel on this before this needs to go to the printer tomorrow that's unfortunately we are very tight of of getting this yeah it has to go out tomorrow well I mean along that line I mean I is it possible
um that you know we have is it possible to create a second capital plan article in which we have you know as I recall the way that we word this um prohibits um line item modifications on the floor
and so can we put forward an article 8 that's the capital plan excluding the subject of the schools and then put forward a second capital plan that says this is the total dollar amount that has language that allows modification to it and and what's determining what will be
determined is a this or this combination of B i I may suggest an alternate approach but it also involves another article which is put the original article in with what we've been talking about up until this chart and then put an additional one with this one in and
then we vote on one of them and we pass over the other one therefore the not the public is on notice we defer recommendations on both of them but they're both in there mhm i agree that would do it i'm just I'm wondering if we can put it
all under like op one art because I'm a little concerned about creating a new article yeah I am but if we put it under as an option option one option two mhm that's fine too if town council is fine with that I'm fine with the question to
get to him and have the response that one might be a little Yeah okay and then in the summary just explain the difference right and let's say he responds and says "No you cannot do that what are we going to do we were just going to keep it as is and just go into two articles no you just do two separate articles yeah we would still
want to do that yep i would i mean it it puts the public on notice and it gives us options sure we're obviously not going to pass two separate capital projects and don't want to come out of town meeting without a capital right and we don't want to run the risk of hey you can't change the line items because
that's our policy right all right so so I move to withdraw the recommen recommended approval uh and replace it with the defer second any additional discussion those in favor say I i i those opposed no motion passes unanimously all right now we're on to
the SAP articles 13 and 14 and I don't remember exactly why we passed over this do we just want time to digest Julie's presentation was there more information that we I had asked Yeah for a little bit more information which she had sent out okay since I had a chance to look at it okay so are we
good to recommend approval on this now yeah I would make a motion that we recommend approval of article 13 second any additional discussion my only discussion would be that we make a commitment to our employees to to really work on this for the next available time
we can absolutely all right those in favor say I i i those opposed no motion passes unanimously and article 14 uh same thing so is there a motion to recommend approval i move to recommend approval of article for the ST court to
recommend approval of article 14 second any additional discussion those in favor say I i i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously all right we're going to have to scroll down a little bit now uh do you know what the number is 29 we're going to go That's the buildings
right i think that's the last one okay no also we have the board of assessors ones right oh we Yeah so the board of assessors you had Oh I saw a bunch of very very unhappy faces at the end of the table the board of assessors ones
you had already recommended approval yeah right okay good it's just the language on this got changed today without uh the chair of the board did his best to change it on his own today so that's that was the face of the the
very last minute changes to this and what articles are those those two so article 29 we moved the two debt exclusions up a little bit forward not all the way at the end so um and then that article 29 is the municipal
building articles 32 and 33 are the um exemption articles okay so this is the final order this is what I'm proposing yeah again we can discuss it but All right so can I ask why you moved him up i'm just
curious yes so um yes I talked when in that meeting that I had with the parks commission they were concerned about their consultant having to be there until the bitter end and so I thought it was reasonable to move it forward a
little bit okay okay was there anything you else you wanted to say on 32 33 or I scrolled down to it i didn't know i guess the only things on 32 and 33 is
that we don't exactly know for sure what the Department of Revenue is going to do with these so we're going to have a best faith effort of getting these passed and then it may be that they say because there's uh council has says that there's
not quite precedent for what the board of assessors is looking to do um not that it's problematic it's just a little different in the procedure so um he it just he he's not sure what the Department of Revenue is going to do um
and the attorney general so and and I think the board of assessors is fully aware of that that that this is a we're going to try well I'm in support of it and if nobody knows I mean I on its face it would be hard to believe that they wouldn't allow us to do this
since especially given the reasoning and it it actually helps seniors doesn't hurt them all right i agree i am fine by keeping our um recommendation to approve here
anyone else against it all right hearing no opposition we can go back up to uh municipal building design article which was which one again 29 29 can I speak to this briefly you may i
was going to ask you to since we have your summary now yeah so the um the a couple key things here um so in the summary we we went into we borrowed heavily from um I think the write up
that we put in the RFP as well as the report that came out of the um came from the architectural team i want to thank the town manager for her input into this uh and I know that I had some revisions here as well uh overall uh the committee intends over the course of the next
couple of weeks to have a a few open houses um in which we are going to uh coordinate with the town manager and Chris Ruth to allow the public to come into some of the spaces that people don't normally see like the basements the attic and town hall uh to be able to get into Ritter building and really be
able to see what these buildings uh look like in their current condition uh we will have some pamphlets and handouts uh during that time Mr roy has been generous in offering to uh do that and then for town meeting itself we will have story boards and the architectural team that we work with they did prepare
several slides for us to be able to turn into story boards um for this so you know I'm thankful for the work that everyone's done um all the committee members to get to this process uh we will have a presentation at town meeting that will also I think educate the
public on what the process is that Massachusetts requires to design buildings um and and I'll just note that you know where a lot of this stuff comes from is that you know there was a lot of fraud that was going on in the late '60s
and early '7s and it was in you know the ward commission that created a lot of recommendations and and part of it was a lot of projects were being planned and designed that were never getting constructed um and so they were just patting the pockets of a lot of people
and so the way that the process is designed now is to allow you know decision points along the way so that way you only get so far in the first stage of this schematic design and and give the people enough information to decide are they going to commit to kind of keep that project moving um without
again uh giving someone millions of dollars uh for a product so I think that part of this is you know we have to educate the public on the problems that we're trying to solve um on what the process is is I know that some questions that people have asked is you know what are the operational cost of the building um you
know we can apply generally um price per square footage based upon industry norms um but of course you know you're you're taking buildings that are not currently energy efficient and now we need to calculate what the energy costs will be you know several years out without also
knowing what the exact specific equipment is going to be i can say it will be less um but it's really so so some of these things are going to be hard to really find put a fine uh pin on at this stage of this process but you know I want to I think the committee has
worked pretty hard for a long time to arrive at this plan it's a compromised solution um you know certainly if if I were to design this myself this is not what I would come up with um but I think it's a compromised solution that the committee feels really good about so a couple things noted in the dollar amount
here is uh there were when this board received its presentation from the architectural team there were a couple minor modifications to the contingencies um that did drive the cost a little bit um so that way we could account for a little bit more of the known unknowns
like the hazardous material abatement that we know we need to do also we were presented with three different contingency options uh the board uh committee expressed interest really in only one of them which was the phototovotic canopy option and so you know in the current funding schedule uh
the federal government is supposed to be offering uh um payments for 75% of these types of municipal projects we also believe that there's other grants opportunities that will that are out there that we can take advantage of similar to like the parks once the town
commits then you can apply for for several of the grants that may be out there so this does capture the cost of 25% of that phototovaic canopy uh with the assumption that the remaining funds will be u made up in uh in grant funding
or other u funding sources all right thank you any immediate questions from the board with all that yeah so do we know the impact to the taxpayer the parks gave us a a number I think yeah it's approximately $33 a
household and I I I I think the town man is going to pull it up because that was what we had looked at before um for how many years for uh 20 years 20 i believe that was a 20-year number but I'll wait for the town manager to pull it up but we had a couple different scenarios the 20-y year the 30-year you know as we
talked and I mentioned this the cap at the um finance committee meeting that we do have some debt that's falling off so we were kind of looking at it from you know we want to tell the voters what the actual impact is of the project not necessarily what is going to show up in
their tax bill because again as you get $150 coming off and $300 going on it's really only $150 ad i think it's more clear to tell the public what the actual ad is because typically debt gets replaced with new debt
so um the you have in your packets the uh finance committee report uh which has this as well but the direct answer to the question is on the average single family household which has a valuation of $54,937 55,000 it would result in an
increase of $288 a year okay and that's not including the debt that's falling off that's that's taking into account the debt that's falling off oh it is Yep that's as this is based on our current debt okay so wait it now I'm now I'm
confused that's just that is just the impact of the project itself yes it does not Okay yes it does is not an illustration of as Mr jeffrey said debt that might be falling off it's not the net change it correct just if this was a full correct project so 288 is just the
price of the project yes not doing any math with debt coming off based on a $55,000 home right right okay and what is that assuming as far as of loan percentage i thought it was about a
little less than 5% i thought the they said it was like 4.9 let me pull that up because we do have that information did you say the finance committee report was in here yeah in the um which folder is it in the already no if you go in budget
Oh okay and then it that folder updated Lunenburgg finance committee annual report um oh about an hour ago that's why I didn't see oh cool let's see oh it says Eisenthal is that right
budget no look where I is was it Eisenthal eisenthal yes yep thank you i have no idea i know i'm sitting here looking it up as well yep it was David Eisenthal and I think we're all just taking a moment to read this report as well since
it's here let me just get to the bottom here what page is it on uh so it looks like it's on page three i just see one mention of it under the bootable debt section oh okay so I opened it up just to read exactly what the town manager
has read thought there was fancy charts and everything but same sentence right okay okay you do see in there though there they did do um some analysis on the um debt of both projects in relation to the
financial policies yeah that's what I was saying here but I know what's going to come up if we get to the 11% out of 14 right right people are going to say "Well what about in the So the rate in
the world in the world of what aboutism they're going to say "Well what about Turkey Hill?" Yeah well I'm So um do you have that rate cuz I No I I've got a million emails from David yeah so do I Well I have a couple the rates I I'm looking at are 4% and the
other one reflects at 4.5 okay do they in the finance committee report they're saying that our policy limit is 14% of debt policy combined and if we approve both of these projects they'd be
about we'd be at about 11 do they say where we are now yeah that's what it was so um I have I can share with the board the whole um debt schedule that the finance chair put together okay that might be Let me um let me drop that in right now is that
good time to do that i know that as we talked about it we were still within uh so there's but there were like a couple of years I think so there's the um regular debt or inside debt we have almost none of we're
way under the policy then um on the excluded debt or outside debt there's that's the 11% threshold there are three early years so I think it's year three four and five but I'm gonna pull it up that go right over the 11 and then come back down um but then overall we do not
exceed the 14% in any of the years so with that information the finance committee did recommend um this project but I want I'm I'm asking how much it is now because I want to see how much inching up to the line if it was 10 and we're going to 11 now I
mean that's different than if it was like eight and we're going to 11 that would make a huge difference to me and going just over 11 in the early years that's if both of these projects were approved yes yes i thought we were closer to 7 and a half
but I don't with both no no right now yeah it's this is both projects i don't want to talk out of turn but I for some reason the 7.6 Six sticks in my head i've looked at a lot it's not in a text here well maybe while town manager is looking
that up um cuz I think I missed the meeting that you presented the whole plan yeah that's right um so we did put the full document that was present yeah I have I have the document but the things
So the thing I like the most and I value the most is having town and school central office all under one roof yes collocating that's like the number one thing to me that I like the things that give me pause are having
ACE in the new town hall um I I know the administrator of that program needs to be colllocated but I don't understand um if there's a need to have the school central office colllocated so that
that's a total blind spot for me um I don't know if the school committee voted on this or not because the other thing in my mind is well we have a new superintendent coming are they going to have a different outlook on this um it just
feels funny to me to have ACE in the public building adds more security and things like that and and then if it wasn't there then the whole space is a different issue the other thing is well sticking with the the new town hall um
digging the basement for pack i just not knowing what we're going to uncover and if that will add cost you know what that what's ledge and everything else i I mean I I heard talk of you know having test pits or whatever testing is done to
try to find those things out but this building I thought I heard you say cuz so this will be all meeting rooms it's a meeting house during the day is it occupi i thought I heard you say there may be uses during the day and possible revenue sources because the thought of
having this building largely vacant all day and keeping the heat on and whatever that seems really wasteful to me um so I'd like to understand more how this space would be
used instead of just board meetings at night yeah so I can answer the first part and the second part so you know the ACE program quite frankly Rene it gave me a lot of pause it gave the entire committee a lot of pause um I think that
we all couldn't wrap our head around why the school department was advocating for what we saw as a largely school kind of function to be located in an administrative building uh it just didn't kind of follow um the
superintendent was adamant um as was in our interactions with her multiple conversations this was one thing that we kept pushing on cuz we just it just didn't make sense um the and and the school and I even met with the district
office um on their space needs as well as this point and they the general sentiment which was very strong was that this is ACE program is adults that they are learning life skills that they um you know it's not um a population that
has um significant behavioral um um or um mental disabilities that many of the students in the program um have jobs that they attend college that they're attaining life skills and that they felt strongly that it could be compatible
with an office environment and they were insistent um that it was colllocated with their um office environment we asked if it could be located in Turkey Hill um you know if they could separate out that that person from their district and put them in a school-like building
and they raised a lot of concerns about the about this being an adult population and how it needs to be segregated even more so in a school because they're adults um and so while I may not personally agree with
their analysis at some point we had to just accept that we're not educators um and that that was the sentiment that the educators were were advocating was that they wanted this program out of their out of the schools and colllocated with um their office the other thing on pack
uh we do carry some cost for the unknowns uh in that area i think Mr roy had indicated that you know he doesn't have exact things you know from any properties directly abuing it he doesn't anticipate that we're going to hit ledge in there but we did carry some cost just in case um and again uh you know we the
committee's opinion um was uh initially that pack would be preserved for a future phase and um if you may recall in the process of this I kind of raised a couple of alarm bells and said hey let's let this board opine on what we should
do with PAC um this board offered the advice that we need to accommodate for PAC in this phase and so looking at the best way to accommodate for PAC knowing that their request was no windows that they you know and then after meeting with the historical society um who's in
that 30 school street we have an easement with them they were very much so opposed to a a building being erected on 30 School Street that would look like a box essentially without windows and and uh the most cost effective way to resolve or to address the pack in this
phase was to dig it's digging is much cheaper than building um and so we met with the pack several times to ensure that that this plan could work for them um but there are some unknown costs and again we carry contingency and I think that um if all goes well and we don't
run into those issues and we will be returning um some money to the taxpayer so to speak or the product would be coming in below what the estimate is mhm but there is as we note in this delta here of this 18 uh the actual project is you know 18 millionish um and you know
we are carrying a notable delta here to account for some of the known unknowns and what about this building so oh yeah so in this Thank you uh in this building yeah the the vision was that this building we would save energy by it not
being um heated and and cooled all day long it's not heated well right now look at Amanda oh it's terrible it's terrible i mean it's so cold in here at night um um and you know we all know that i mean I'm sure with the new roof that when you go upstairs hopefully you don't look outside anymore i think the uh the
vision for what how this building would be maintained was you know energy efficient heating system that has zones for the different rooms so that way you don't need to heat the entire building or cool the entire building all day long um I think the day uses were you know in the new town hall we don't have
conference rooms uh and so this I thought there were a couple added there's a couple in the um little team like for teams we have we have some small areas in the land use area the town manager has a conference small table and the superintendent has a table
but you know for the meetings like with this what the uh town manager does now every Wednesday or every other Wednesday morning when the whole team comes i mean this they all sit here and all the chairs around it um this would still be used for those types of purposes so when
you're having those like department head all department head type meetings if the school department were to have all their principles in for a training seminar you know so this would become almost like the training center uh it also would have the potential to be rented out by members of the community for some of
those different like purposes an art studio that was one of the things we kept hearing was people want to display their art is there a room that they can rent for and that those kinds of things could generate some income uh so the vision there was that the building would be utilized during the day primarily by staff um and that in the evenings it
would be utilized primarily by the community uh and not just meetings it was also like community groups we know that with the losing the building down here there's a need for more like support group meeting spaces um uh as well as
some of the nonprofits that meet um so the department head meeting there isn't a conference room there wouldn't be a conference room in RER large enough to have a department head meeting no um however however um and that was intentional um
one of the things that we were thinking about was heating and cooling and heating and cooling costs and the main driver was we you know we have existing square footage we wanted to maximize the use of but putting a a conference room into the new uh town hall rotor building
makes it attractive to utilize in the evenings which means now you're heating and cooling an entire building um whole common areas hallways bathrooms so that way you can use one room uh at night and and that unless you say it's not available at night
that's town hall's locked up well it it will be you have this whole building it will be um now I think it will be largely um be unavailable in the evening hours um because and that of course helps reduce heating and cooling costs um in the evening um but you don't have
that room there i think I think the committee's thought was you know we want to maximize existing square footage um and we didn't want to replicate um out you know in that footprint uh for that reason and I and if I recall the conversations correctly it was it it was
the we the building would have had to get bigger and we were mindful of the cost per square foot being about you know $500 $600 now um that you're building a room that is expensive that you're going to be you know for what
gain um essentially and the gain is you have everything here can I piggy back on Yeah one of those questions is it is the plan still the the version um that had potential I think you guys were using future proofing in here with potential offices
if we needed the space yes it still accounts for the future proofing uh there's uh adequate space planned into it that allows for um one you know a couple areas to be converted over into offices same thing in this building this is what I was talking about oh this building yes so there's future proofing
on the first floor um especially that allows for I think two different rooms that are could be converted into office space and and won't have a conference room function um because they are too small and these small rooms we're staying or
is that yeah the configuration changes when the elevator um or the lift um changes in this area of the building and then I think it also had a a change on this side too i'd like to get rid of the stage for what it's worth um so can the design is there still flexibility in
changing the design let's say the new superintendent does not want ACE over there of course or so or something else is decided other than meeting rooms here so there's two critical things I would note so the ACE program the way that
that space has been configured it's a large open room um it certainly allows and and in and the conversation that I had with the school district was uh I personally encourage them that when they plan for uh whatever they're going to do at Turkey Hill to plan to accommodate
ACE again uh I think we I've been pretty consistent it doesn't follow but that this space becomes prime real estate to convert over into office space so what is now the basically the land use area inside of the Ritter building that would be where the ACE program would be and
then they would have that kitchenet area in the uh in the in the lower level area that kitchenet area in the lower level area could function as a secondary staff break room uh in the future but that uh larger room that the land use area uh is currently in could accommodate I think
somewhere between four and six staff members and so that becomes their expansion area um is relocating the ACE program or when they redo Turkey Hill building out a segregated portion of the building to accommodate for the ACE program there all right real quick let's segue back to
Jen i think you pulled up the debt schedule i did so and it's it's in your um if you want to look along it's in under the town meeting warrant folder debt schedule but so currently the total um of the excludable debt against the 11% we're at 6.87%
87% um by 2027 that goes up to 9.86 and then the 2028 2029 and 2030 years it's where it tips just above at 12.27 11.81 and then comes down to 11.22 and then by
uh 2031 is at 10.83 and continues down from there and what's our starting point right now 6.87 see okay so that's a sizable jump mhm and then but this again this is based on both
projects right being built um with no grant funding like I I think both projects there's been talk of grant funding so all right so where are we at right now on this is there any more discussion
that we want to have on this or we ready to start seeing where people feel about it i have no questions not about the project itself okay what are your questions no I said I don't have any question oh you don't have any questions okay renee do you have more
questions not at this time um I need to digest this i will have one question when we get to whatever proposal is so when we ask for the select board's recommendation what
exactly I don't usually ask this question but it's purposeful in this case what exactly are we recommending are we recommending that people should support or not support this or are we recommending something else like what i don't know that's why
I'm asking is it just that we believe that this is the plan that we should go for i I mean I would imagine that's yeah the case so I think you know there will I I think we are recommending that that this plan advances uh there's a couple of
things you know in the next phase of the planning process when you get to construction documents i think you have to stay true to the voters if you give them some renderings you you need to be relatively close to those renderings and what the final product is but there are modifications that get made um there are
changes that get made along the way when you go through that more detailed construction phase project you know when you start talking about wet stacks and other things it starts changing room configurations a little bit um you know when you when you when we start seeing the real world impact of what's going on
in the world you know it will may change materials um in terms of hey this was the vision we had but hey that material cost as envisioned now has 104% tariff on it uh and so is there an alternative that is more cost-effective so I mean
those are just the normal things that happen in the process i think one of the concerns that you know um that we have is is it's an imperfect plan uh all every step of the way there were compromises made um and I think that all
government plans like these are imperfect um we already talked about the ACE program uh that certainly is an imperfect element in this plan um the pack there were many the only parts of the plan that we really heard public opposition to was the pack element um
that that is a part of the plan that again it's a compromised solution on that um we talked a little bit tonight about the lack of conference rooms um you know we were mindful of how much square footage we were adding and and we didn't want that number to explode um
one of the things I think to be mindful of is is what does it what does a no mean um you know a yes means we can move forward and fine-tune and and rework this you know this committee is comprised of a member of the select board the school committee the finance
committee um and then we have our community members at large you know a a no so a yes allows a product to keep moving forward a no what it does is says hey it's not good enough um and again it's a compromised solution but it's
it's not good enough and what we then do is we engage in a lengthier process um to be able to kind of go back to the drawing board it's going to require some money and every time we delay this you know the generally construction increases at
about twice CPI and I what I generally say is that every two plus years the product needs to get about 10% smaller to cost the same amount of money um so you know how long does it take to get to this point about 3 years um so I mean you
know we delays have real world impact uh I think a 4-year delay is the same dollar amount at a 20% smaller project and that to me 20% smaller wipes out all future proofing it eliminates um our actual ability to to me to make this
viable um and at 20% smaller it it becomes a no I think because it's it doesn't do what it needs to do what's the timeline for the construction like to to finish if this were to move forward yeah um 18 to 24month
construction timeline uh but when do you think it would like realistically realistically if this passes we're going to be engaged in a construction document phase is going to take some time um that's likely going to go out to bid at some point late summer realistically um it will be worked on all fall all winter
long and and if all goes well we'll be out to bid um for the actual work next next year in the end of the winter early spring for construction starting in the end of the spring early summer and that would be the start date so to say doors
would open in 5 years doors no I would say uh doors would open certainly in 200 and I think that puts us in our anniversary 2028 well I'm I'm being generous with the I'm being adding a buffer to say 5 years no
I I think realistically that we would be looking at buildings opening in 2028 and some may be a little sooner but 2028 jen I guess that just brings up a question that I had um which I didn't even realize I had until this moment
um the this construction can occur with folks remaining in place relatively in place that is true so one of the the costs we were looking at as well um was you know trailers and you know when we were looking at this across the way uh
you know we had a pretty substantial cost for trailers um one of the benefits here is that it allows everyone in town hall to remain in place and allows most staff in the um in the Ritter building to remain in place it will displace um
some staff when the connections are made into the building and then the last portion of the project would be um renovating the Ritter building but again at that point you're moving people out of the building putting them in the new building and then that is your last part of the project is renovating but you will need to make that likely make the
connection um prior to that you know but yes minimal displacement of staff minimal cost for for any kind of temporary trailers or other locations that um we were able to save a lot of money there and and again 18 months renting trailers you're looking at over
a million dollars usually and cost I think we were carrying previously was about 1.4 before uh so it's a pretty significant savings so there's a lot of tabs on here I just realized so there's tabs for Marshall only town hall only
what are you looking at the that policy that spreadsheet tax implication tab which um there's a lot of tabs on here are you pointing us to a particular no I don't i just realized it's just when I
It breaks it out i think what Miss Mi is is realizing is when I open this document from the chair of FINCOM how informative it truly is and and he did an incredible amount of work um that you can really look at the impact of both projects the impact of the projects
separately and how it all works together yeah all right and I mean I I I think we had uh we're a little late in probably sharing the information but I I know that we had met with U bond council in midFebruary
um to it was you know to go over kind of those preliminary numbers then you know I know there were some you know as we adjusted this number up there were some other changes that came in the last couple of uh days yeah they gave us I believe like 14 different borrowing scenarios depending on a variety of
things how long we borrowed for Marshall Park and so all of those different scenarios change right so they did also an incredible amount of work yeah they did so I guess I'll just say at this point I think this plan is very well thought out everything has been
considered there's been so much time and so much work that has gone into this and I think if we nitpick it there's always going to be details or decisions that we can find that we don't agree with and that's going to be the case for any proposal right um there's a lot that I
like about it i like the fact that the like Renee said the town and the school offices are going to be colllocated i like the fact that we're rehabilitating this building that we all know desperately needs to be rehabilitated i like the idea of converting this
building i know we use the term meeting house and yes it'll be that but it's also going to turn into a sort of community center i think that'll be an asset for the town so there's a lot here that I like so I I I guess I'll just say I'm going to vote for it um I'm going to recommend approval here uh when we get
to that point tonight um where are other members at i think that Sorry if I jumped over you that's true i'm going to um in my mind you know we had a very similar discussion about Marshall Park last week and that we're you know supporting other committees and towns
and projects that they brought forward um I see this in the same vein i think that our town has not had an agreement on what to do with our buildings for a very very very long time and if we continue to just not take action we're
going to have catastrophic failure so for those reasons and I also agree and I was I went to some of the meetings i've watched all of them at this point um I think you guys have done a good job vetting the project and I think we need to move forward so I also will be recommending approval and there's other things that I left out too like I like
the idea of having a town hall that's like really ADA compliant right are we actually comfortable saying that this building's ADA compliant to the point where a disabled or an impaired person by themselves could come in get into this building and get the services that
they need from their local government probably not right no um there was something else that I was just going to say that I forgot already so Renee I see that you wanted to say something go ahead so this building I just thought of something will be open all day is it going to be staffed in any way so you
just worry yeah so I I invite trouble i can hopefully answer that um so the idea is that we're going to use a card access system um that that is something that we have in our heads that that would be employed i don't envision that this building would necessarily be open all
day long um I think that it would be but I think there's opportunity in the building and I think Caesar hit it on the head in terms of like what does a community really get you know I think we have events right that right now we can't have a winter farmers market and
if this building is a uh meeting rooms downstairs we have meeting rooms up here up up here now we have a location for a winter farmers market uh you know if we wanted to have a craft fair and have a a rain option um you know this building becomes that option um you know I think
that we already you know we have those community events that aren't undercover uh and I think this building provides an opportunity for as we think of things we now have covered heated space that's accessible uh for the public to utilize
and I and I would fully expect that some things that maybe aren't an option now because you don't have the space for it that there you know people are creative and when the community has rooms available my own opinion I'm going to support it but I will say the things I don't like about it as well um I don't
like the fact that ACE is in the building i wish the school department did not were not was not adamant about that request um I personally did not necessarily agree with PAC um being at this site either um I think that it adds
cost and and something I mentioned in this committee or to this board was was going to adduh notable cost the advantage though of building out the basement is that we get to take advantage of prime real estate on the first floor um I also agree with the accessibility i've shared the story
several times that my father wanted to come to a meeting and refused to take that elevator and couldn't get up those stairs and so having an accessible building you know that meets those needs it's there any compromised solution it's never going to be what you would do at your own house like right i mean there's
you you if we had a narrow down our community into 100 people 100 people 100 different ideas everyone wants something different and you and and unfortunately in a building you have to have the most you may not agree with everything but to me this is the most compromised
most cost-effective solution we're going to come up with i don't think there's a cheaper way to do this uh anything we do in the future will be more expensive i think this positively impacts morale for the work environment here um it it it's not the greatest working out of these buildings right now that significantly
improves it and for me the real selling point is that when this gets behind us when we finally cross over this hump we're not going to need to address this issue for the rest of our lifetimes and likely you know kids' lifetimes and as
we think about what our town can do when this is behind us it's so much more um when this is finally behind us and so I'm I'm eager to get this behind us uh at the most cost-effective way i wish we could have done it sooner uh 20 years ago 15 years ago but you know here we
are today and I guess one question that I have too and this is also a question I'll pose for the public if not this year then when do we need this building to start falling apart before we have the political motivation to actually move forward on a plan do we need
construction costs to be triple the amount that they are now because that's going to happen regardless and I mean I I don't have the full history i know there was a plan that was put forward a few years ago and it was my understanding that was a lot more expensive and it was just building one
building tc pass it was TC Passios it was consolidating all these uses into one building it was renovating the TC Passios building we were at a $29 million figure and it did not touch town hall or the Ritter building right something we also did was we went back and looked at what's in the TAPE and
Vertex reports cuz they envisioned that we may be doing something like this and they threw dollar amounts out there and we're actually surprisingly pretty close um because the fact that we're you know we're not keeping this office space that the renovation of this building is pretty close to what it was envisioned
to be um 10 years ago it's a Yeah well let's I I want to compare those two plans so whatever that was a few years ago it was of the TC Pasio location and it was consolidating into one building we were effectively building one building and what was the price tag on that uh it the building would look
exactly the same uh it was no exterior change and it was uh um I think the total number we at was 28 12 29 million so now this proposal that we have we're effectively rehabilitating two historic buildings that we have and I believe are cherished in town and we're building a
new town hall and what's the price tag that we have for all that yeah right now without grants 22.4 so I mean it's a lot cheaper it's almost half the price i would say half i think it's 23 i did say almost i'll be a little more specific
2/3 of what of the TC Pasio the TC Pasios plan it just seems like this is a good deal i know it's a lot of money but it seems like we're getting a lot done with this price tag yeah i mean we were working and we've been working for 6 years i mean we came up with the TC
Passios plan and we thought it was too expensive um and so we asked the Tom unit to pass it over and you know this is a more cost-effective solution but it does you know the downside here is we are going to be demolishing existing square footage and building new square
footage um you know we have to educate the public on why and and that why is it just cost too much money um to renovate a building from the 1960s to get it to today's standards it's just cost prohibitive at this point in many ways
so can you explain you have concerns over the increase in the excludable debt oh you talking about me going up well yeah you made a comment going from 7,000 to Well from 6 to 11
gives you very little leeway in you know what could be coming further down which is and it's not further down anymore it's not that it's not that far in the horizon is something to do with Turkey Hill otherwise Turkey
Hill will be the next Pacios so you know it gives So it's not the the delta it's getting it's it's at our that's showing both projects i mean so I would say that clearly
something needs to be done we've been doing this for 12 plus years and anybody who's been in this building and a little to the lesser extent Ritter uh knows that things have to be done and to have two different
buildings across the street with have people separated makes the government the town government really inefficient this building needs structural work in any regard whether we're using it for
town offices or not and eventually and it is cherished i agree with you Mr chair that eventually you run the risk of it getting past the point it's not anywhere near that but getting past the point where you can do something to it
where it's not something really major so from that regard I mean I'm for it i'm I'm at this point I'm almost for any plan that just gets us vote but but that but that leads me to my next point i mean I understand that no plan is
going to be perfect i'm not sure how much I'm behind this plan that much at all we you mentioned or it was mentioned in our meeting here today for instance ADA and I brought up the fact that this lift is still going to be a lift it's not an elevator in in
in Ritter it's going to be the same a lift and not an elevator this was a complaint from people who have to use those lifts that it's it's a little bit dehumanizing that you're in something that you know is really not designed to
be for I mean respectful of people with of disabilities and that they've been made that clear over the years and here we're going to do $20 million and they're still going to be like that so I have a problem with that i have a problem with ACE like a few people do i have a
problem with no conference rooms in that building uh so I am really really trying I'm trying to get over the line but I am really on the fence now that being said I think a lot of this and I know this is the elephant in
the room is kind of a mood point because as the stock market crashes by 10% in the last 5 days and more beyond that with people being unsure what pricing is going to be including pricing of these projects and we have 22 million and 13
million and you know now we're looking at override next year i mean you're going to get a lot of people coming in there like shell shocked and that's before the first article is read so I don't even know how much a recommendation is going to matter
because I think there's going to be a resounding vote on these things that being said also as you said about Marshall Park there is a plan it's it's a wellthoughtout plan so I don't think it was put together on the back of
a napkin it was presented several times so you know I I'm really struggling because I I I there's not many things that I'm on the fence on of and this one is big and so but here I am so I don't
know you know which way to recommend people in town meeting to vote i'm probably leaning toward yes because I think inevitably you need it and people I know people on social media were saying "Oh you're for this project." And
in fact they chastise the finance committee you're for this project but we can't fund the schools but they really are apples and oranges as I told people it's like "Well if you can't afford something for your kids at home do you not do you not replace the roof because
if you can't afford this then I shouldn't even fix the roof that's not these are infrastructure things that need serious addressing so they're not they're not want to haves or nice to haves these are really need to haves and because of that I'm probably leaning
toward voting yes but it's not a big fullthroated yes yeah it's like in principle the ideas are good park has a good plan we need to do something with buildings love getting the idea of getting offices together but I still don't know how I'm going to vote personally on the
day it's going to come down to my wallet probably all right well I will say this i I and with all respect to my colleague I mean I'm I'm not here to guess the economy so my recommendation won't have anything to do with how I vote myself personally one
way or another everybody will vote their own economy everybody will vote their own wallet or pocketbook or whatever you use for money uh because I want to be inclusive in this world although now I'm on list because I'm being inclusive um but as a select as an elected member
is like do I think the town needs this and the answer to that question is yes do I need this plan that's where I start getting a little questionable and then do I think this affects to your question m do I think this affects the financial
policy and situation of the town that is where I start getting into questionable areas too because again turkey hill something being done either a renovation or a rebuild is on the horizon and everybody says well we keep building buildings i will alert people and remind
people that when I joined here in 2005 we had just built it had just gotten passed that we were going to build our first building and we hadn't built anything in in this town in 35 or 36 years before then and everybody's like how do you let things decay to that
thing we had a public safety building that itself was almost unsafe which was kind of ironic uh so you have to always be build you're always going to be building something buildings last 50 years and if you have a dozen buildings just figure it out so you know we do
need it people will find out if they can afford it i'm questioning whether it puts us in financial problem with the town and whether the plan is really something I can get behind mhm and I think my toe is like I said over the line that I'll vote for it right all
right i mean it sounds like we have three yeses here right we've made up our minds for who who's the fourth oh Tom well he just said he's his toes over a little bit i wasn't really counting that that's still over yeah okay that's fine
right the chair talked me out of the line great renee how about you yeah i mean we need to do something i I have the the concerns that I expressed with
the designs i still feel like it's too much space it just feels like a lot of space if adjustments could be made as this evolves i'm worried that it's going to be it's going to come in higher well that a lot higher i mean I
think so too i'm that changes a lot of the numbers um but I can't predict the future um I mean I I'd love to get all of the offices colllocated
um and I don't want to see buildings fall into disrepair and and just I mean man's got her coat on i'm usually cold here at night and when the wind hits this building and and we have the new roof
now i really thought that would snows in the building i mean I hear stories about Ritter and you know the work the the conditions during the day so on top of just getting staff together that's that's also the working conditions um I do think that no matter how many times this goes around
it's never going to be perfect um so I mean I think conceptwise I think the town needs it whether you know I'm looking at this number the smaller project for Marshall
Park would I'd like to know what that would bring this down to cuz that seems like a compromise to me y yeah that's good um and I also feel like we get more bang for our buck with that smaller project most of the work is in the smaller bit but that's for town meeting
floor to discuss but so I mean I I think I would approve it tonight again not knowing how on the day I'm going to cast what button I'm going to hit on the stupid clicker mhm all right so it sounds like we all sort of taken a position here but I do just
want to go back to Jen because if I remember correctly it was your first day it was my first day we had the presentation from the architects and someone on the board asked you what you thought of the project and you were kind of just like uh well it's my first day so you've had time now what do you think
and now you have time to look at all these buildings yeah now I've actually been in the buildings um so I think a couple of things i think that I think to comment on something first that I've heard from the community where that this is build this building versus fund our
schools i think to comment on that in particular is first that this project very clearly encompasses the schools and supports the missions and operations of the schools so I don't think that that's a fair statement i think that the idea
of having the school administration and town administration under one roof fundamentally is just going to lend itself to collaboration and efficiencies even if they weren't going to be under
the roof with us i don't think unless you've worked in another community you can understand how odd it is to not have the functionalities of this building connected with the functionalities of the Ritter building and you know for
somebody that's not using maybe online permitting but is coming in for a project their first stop may be the board of health and then they need to get a tax form so then they were over at this building and then they're back over at that building i mean I used to call it because you'd see the people the
ping-pong effect you'd see them going down the hway on a whatever their application is literally ping ponging from the assessors to the treasur collector to the building office that is just largely inefficient here um I do
see the silos having been here 2 months we do not have a lot of great collaboration um between the these are I call these core town hall functions right the the Ritter building and town hall are all town hall functions we don't have that
um this project frankly excites me um I think that I think that if I was sitting in the design room you know with folks I think that there are some things that I would if I got to vote on how the ultimate project looks I would have voted differently myself right but I
don't think that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater i think that there's been years of work as I understand hundreds of thousands of dollars expended of taxpayer funds one way or another whether they're ours or ARPA
um and you know I I'm hopeful that perhaps if this gets over the hurdle some of those factors that maybe aren't as desirable that there's room to still work around them and that we can work
with we can come to maybe a solution that works a little bit better for operations i do recognize that this is incredibly but for the last week these are already difficult financial times for a lot of
folks and I understand that the last week has changed things for people and so you know I don't want to tell people how how they should manage their finances either but that said I do think that this is a very good project I think
that this will move the community in a positive direction thank you Jen all right any remaining discussion on this all right is there a motion then i move to recommend approval of article 29
second all right any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no the motion passes unanimously and that should be all of the warrant articles although I really do just want to look through and make sure that we didn't
miss any um but I think we're good right we are i highlighted them in advance yep I know i was there um okay all right moving on then what do we have next we have the warrant um a
question when do we do the consent calendar oh we'll do that i was going to do that under the third agenda item oh okay yeah just to the catch all is that on there oh okay yep it's just the the everything else all right so vote to approve and sign annual town meeting and election warrants you want to do the
election warrant first do you want to speak to it i do okay thank you so um a lot of discussion on um not not this question on the ballot this question was more straightforward
on the ballot but we had substantial um discussion on uh the Marshall Park uh project and where we don't know exactly how that project is going to come out of town meeting how to present it to um to
the voters on the ballot uh I I don't know if it was before this board or if that was only before FINCOM where I had talked about two alternates um but having continued conversations with the parks commission and town council what
we have done is we have made one ballot question for the Marshall Park project and it has in it um the base of what would be included regardless of which version passes at town meeting
um and it's so it says it has some legal ease here which include but not necessarily limited to the following and then it describes the base of both projects um you are actually I learned something uh you are not allowed to
include the dollar figure on a debt exclusion on the ballot so while you must include an override figure you are not allowed that's crazy i know i think that's so strange we were talking about this earlier but I just I don't understand it makes no logical sense right it does make no logical and in the
town warrant we do put the So so it has no dollar figure but that also helps with the confusion because there's only one there's only one warrant article here so so what this means we're voting we would be voting on whatever
passed at TW meeting yep basically on on question two yeah it's whatever would pass at town meeting and right and if nothing were to pass at town meeting but in the case that the ballot question passed for Marshall Park the way that
it's constructed it could be brought up at a future town meeting okay that's true for both within a certain within within the Yeah within the times it would have to be a special time yep but just just in that the the option was crafted okay is that that's also true
for the um municipal building yes that any Yeah right but this this one because it's it's the um it's link it's not the the municipal building design project question is very cut and dry this one
it's not it's including but not necessarily limited to so that's tying it to something else we're just not tying it to the May 3rd 2025 article 28 which was an option but we we took that out so that we could have maximum
flexibility well this is a lot more easier to understand and straightforward than what we were looking at and talking about last week so I appreciate the work you and town council did to craft this uh warrant and and Anita Shapers and Karen Menard as well oh yes oh yep thanks to
the the leadership of the parks commission too any questions all right so I will look for a motion to approve the annual town election warrant so moved second any additional
discussion those in favor say I i those no the motion passes unanimously and we can sign that afterwards we don't have to sign how many versions are there to sign seven um All right and do we also want to
approve the annual town meeting warrant too as far as the booklet yes i would move to approve the 2025 annual town meeting booklet as
presented in our drive dated 4625 is that it and as will be amended with all of the updates that are coming in so there's a lot of placeholders in there right now for the booklet like that i will right okay so I would
amend my motion to include any changes that uh required or necessary to complete the booklet per the discretion of the town manager perfect second any additional discussion those in favor say I i i uh
those opposed no don't let me down Jen the motion passes unanimously what' you say i said "Don't let me down." Oh I just gave you a lot of authority no I got you Tom all right moving on is um discussion on budget capital plan
annual town meeting warrant articles um what were we just talking about doing the consent calendar that's right have we heard from finance on this um I didn't know that I was supposed to ask finance i didn't know that either actually i mean so the finance committee also
goes over the consent calendar is that what you're saying um well I mean Tom can chime in on this but usually it's it's discussed with finance and the moderator well we don't have to do it it's not It doesn't need to be finalized tonight so we can definitely still do
that and we also weren't going to finalize it tonight anyway this was just sort of a this is Jen's initial pass at what a consent calendar would look like right yeah yeah but I think in you know without the approval I I think we should probably discuss it but yeah typically I was
going to look for an approval on it tonight finance in case there's something that they're not going to agree to right well the point of doing the consent calendar is that things that would be nonobjectionable to anybody right and so if you start putting things you have to question whether the finance committee is going to approve then you
probably shouldn't have it on there right all right we can go over it do you want to just talk to it or or I can just read what's in it so the yeah the the articles that I had thought um would be the two new failsafe
articles the to be able to borrow in anticipation of revenue and to expend chapter 90 funds in advance of reimbursement the setting the revolving funds uh for the year
um let's see uh transferring free cash to the OPED trust fund um establishing the compensated absence fund and then funding it in the next article uh the
OPED sewer trust fund the sewer INI the transfer to the sewer and INI stabilization fund sewer reserve capacity fund are you reading from the document in here yeah I mean the all the ones under consent agenda agenda the bullet underneath what do you
mean um what we have in our drive it's basically everything okay there we go no no that's every article and then under each article is not just the consent agenda got totally confused now I understand it took me a minute got it got it so these are every this is every article but it's entitled consent
calendar i wasn't expecting every article i'm just reading the ones i saw the calendar i'm looking this is your budget adjustments i'm like I don't think you want that on a No so the ones the ones that I propose have a bullet under him that say okay
yeah okay um the uh sewer reserve capacity solid waste enterprise water enterprise and PEG and based on the change today I would not be recommending articles 32 or
33 for the consent agenda any longer agreed agreed yep all right i have no problem with how many is that oh 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 12 i guess one question I
have is do we think that it's really potentially controversial to authorize uh the town to pay expenses from a prior fiscal year can be it can be well the problem well it depends if there is one but what it does is because that has a
different requirement of vote it raises the whole consent calendar about 910 something 910 specials fourth for an annual so it raises the whole thing of the consent calendar to four fifths and you probably don't want to do that that's actually I think that's exactly what happened at the special town meeting with our consent calendar
because we had one in that was 9/10 and we ended up removing it for that reason right yep all right and it's also generally a you know a simple article that because it's usually one bill yeah i wouldn't think it would should be controversial
but it it isn't controversial but it does require a much higher vote somehow don't risk it oh I've seen those be very controversial i'm sure yeah I'm sure it happens i think I'm just saying that perhaps it
shouldn't um anything else though that should be included that's why I did include the whole list so that people could see kind of what else they might want to i mean I think it definitely looks good for a first pass nothing else really
stood out 22 controversial enterprise um I don't think so but it it has not historically been included i didn't know if there's a reason but I do not think it's controversial i wouldn't say that
there is a reason it hasn't been but I don't know i'd be in favor of adding 22 yeah I'm okay with that i think is there any other enterprise fund of any significant size so the water enterprise fund is of course silly because it's
just 24 10 10 customers that's I think why it may be not cuz it's like a million or two million or something like that i don't can certainly try it do you have any
recall enterprise budget i think it's 1.8 8 million 22 1,886,000 that's what I said so so maybe that people may want to just again we usually the moderator goes
through it and if anybody wants to pull it out they can so right all right i mean I think try it i don't I I don't have a strong feeling about it one way or another yeah I don't either i don't either can add it and see what happens if it
gets removed by someone else they always have the ability to not going to be one of the ones we spend the most time on so no what did you say it's not going to be one of the ones we spend the most time on i Yeah you're right all right um we're not taking any action on this tonight so
just for us to review and talk about um anything else related to the warrant or town meeting that we need to discuss tonight uh just um the distribution of who does what motions do you decide that at a board
meeting um no we normally do it when we create the motions and then we'll have that for the pre-t meeting there's usually an order down the board round but if there are things that people have worked on like capital planning committee I would probably get that
article you know Mr jeff would get the municipal building i mean if you've worked on it you generally but otherwise just round robin okay i'll say what happened at special town meeting is that Carter and I sat down and we did the roundroin taking into consideration that
so um see what else i think that's really it for like town meeting and the warrant right i just want to if I may Mr chair acknowledge and thank the town manager for the amount of work i know coming in you're you know budgeting is the best way any all managers when you
create the budget you definitely can manage it um cuz you know it better um but it still has been a huge undertaking uh from day one till today and so hopefully this is the hump and uh the now is the push to get to town meeting
but I just want to acknowledge all the work that's gone into this from the staff from you from uh Ezekiel um the department heads it's been a tremendous amount of work so I just want to acknowledge that and thank you i would agree and I would also ask you how is
the deep end anyway my floaty is just inflated and I Thank you Jen you're here all right right so we covered the capital plan we kept uh covered the town meeting warrant articles any budget discussion all right seeing none moving on to
minutes we have minutes for January 23rd 2024 March 11th 2025 and March 18th 2025 have members reviewed the minutes yes do members have feedback on the the minutes yes I do okay now that was a lot uh no
there's I don't have a lot well I'm just saying that many people responded to me um what we can do is we could either go through it now make a list of it or do we want to just put it is that what you want to do it's up to you i would recommend that we um make the
modifications tonight and that the minutes are approved so as long as they're manageable if they're manageable the modifications if they're if they're extensive then maybe all right let's start with Renee and then we'll work down do you do you want to start which set of minutes i think let's do that
let's do it that way all right all right let's start with the January 23rd 2024 minutes i don't have anything on those okay let me get to that that one was they they corrected Alanzo yeah they Yeah that was all I had on that one okay i actually attended that meeting as it
turned out first i thought I did mr lanzo my Yeah from from Earth on the 23rd um yes let me remind myself i did you know I started writing an email but there were there it was getting so
lengthy that I'm like let me not send this this is going to come across you know not the way I wanted it to and and just so folks know we do have a senior tax writeoff person who is assisting us with the old minutes yes we were very grateful effort that is good to know and
thank you for that assist thank you i I noticed that there was a very different style on the January 23rd yes um compared to the ones from last year so I definitely noticed that um overall I thought that the the only comments that
I had on the January 23rd and I think it was these ones was um titles and it was consistency with titles um you know it was probably the other ones so like for example typically when we address the town manager it's
written town manager um and maybe you know in this case Lemieux uh as we look at the recent minutes it says Jen oh multiple times that's interesting um and it really should be a title i think that
the on the board even us I mean I'm not picky about being called vice chair i don't know if I've ever referred to myself as the vice chair um but you know in the minutes at least it reflects vice chair and it kind of goes back and forth in the other minutes with titles and
sometimes we're members and sometimes we're not um so that was a comment as well i'm ready to approve the minutes from January but my comments really I I think are on all the new ones mhm okay so is there a motion to approve this i move to approve the minutes of January
23rd 24 second any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no motion passes unanimously all right start over with the March 11th 2025 minutes all right all right so I have one on the second
page the move to adjourn i don't think Tom's on the school committee it says Tom Alonzo move to adjourn the school committee meeting i don't know who made that motion i think it was probably Peter okay we'll have to probably figure out then who made that motion i don't think
I actually don't think that that motion of the school committee needs to be embedded within our minutes period yeah that makes sense cuz Yeah take it out sometimes I get carried away and I make motions anyway so could have been me it was Mr alonzo
so again titles you know Caesar Nazolo it should be the chair um you know when it says Ms warren Diamond it should say the town manager um when it refers to members it should refer to members you know if it's me or
the um clerk or Caesar it should refer to you know those titles just for consistency in how the minutes are usually presented can we go back to page two i am not confident that that the summary
of our joint meeting accurately reflected the end of the conversation about how we all gave our opinions both the school committee and okay so I think what I'm hearing substantial change in my opinion is that I'm actually going to
be assigning these to this Annie's last day is Thursday I'm going to assign these to the assistant town manager to revise i think this one in particular was important because of that meeting and I don't think it captured all of our opinions and our votes not or even if they were more polling all of the
members i think that is important to many oh accurately yeah so have our capture in this one y it's weird by the way one of I was just look I I'm going to mention this kind of out of the minutes but I was looking
up the spelling of one of the school committee members of Laura's last name because I wasn't sure mhm so I went to the town website and on boards and commissions there is no school committee you have to go to the public school website yeah but why can't I know I
don't know and where's the link does it say school it should say schools and bring you to that website yeah we could have a So we should we should add that whoever is taking care of this should Mhm we do elect them as a town so they should be under towns and then they could be a link to schools and while you
mentioned that the uh board of assessors is not a department um and it I you know I I look at the GIS map a lot and and it's really helpful but I mean I know it's underneath departments because I've looked at it but it's it's a it's a board commission but I don't know cuz
it's overlapped right it does so it's it's like almost like for the board of assessors you need duplicates one link to the same page probably in both locations then if possible okay so where are we at on the minutes are we just saying that they're Yeah do we decide
for What' you say i'm sorry i was interrupting no I didn't hear you so I think that we had said they need work yeah but I I just wanted to know is that for We didn't do the March 18th oh it's going to be March 18th okay so we're just going to say it's going to Okay i
just wanted to ask March 18th all right yeah all right there's Thank you Mr chair there similar similar concerns uh about just the style and then um you know when we get into um where was it at i think it was in the uh maybe it was
committee reports in the 18th uh let me just scroll down to it um I'm pretty sure that's where it was yeah um Vice Chair Jeff acknowledged this was an oversight due to a misunderstanding of the holiday's impact and express
intention to reschedule promptly they also voted to implement a fee for school bus transportation the school committee is scheduled to meet again the following night and the storm mortar task force is expected to meet on Thursday okay the committee reports are all jumbled yeah it's
they're out of order and it looked like it jumped from member M key and like took half and then it went from school to economic development committee that was Amanda then back to Yeah that section's jumbled yeah right and as you go through it again I think it's so I think maybe we can just say these are
probably need to be redone yeah but I probably I think it's also maybe helpful to just like list these out too just so it might save some time now I'm going to be really frank with the board because I and I just want to be honest we are going to have a staff vacancy in the
office y it's the minutes are not likely to get more completed than they are now so I'm just flagging that in full transparency um but for these sets that are largely drafted I'm going to have
Julie go ahead and that's understood but I'd rather them be right than agree so that's why I think it's still helpful to keep going through it and just list the things out so Julie can work off of that list so is there anything else for the 18th well the 18th I haven't reviewed i haven't reviewed
that one either all right well don't bother all right thank you very much sometimes when I'm reading this it's like if you've ever had accidentally had closed caption on your TV and you start reading it and it doesn't match anything of what the people are saying and they start
auto you know autocorrecting or not auto correcting autofilling words that are not right because they don't hear it i actually went back and watched part of the 11th meeting because I was like am I crazy so yeah well it's not in fact crazy all right moving on to warrants i don't think we have any right nope okay we
will tomorrow because we always get flooded i'm sure I get a few documents tomorrow morning yeah check your email any action items um it just came up earlier if we could get that ask uh finance committee to give us the breakdown if we just do the
smaller of the Marshall park instead of the total so so that doesn't come from finance committee they use the D so finance committee took the data from bond council oh and so I can we break it down to this i don't
know so I'm not gonna say no i'm not gonna say yes but I don't know okay any other action items so I do have one i It's for the board i received uh the invitation for the Are You Smarter
Than Our Sixth Graders event and we have to put together a team because we have a title to defend we won last year and we are going to win this year again so I'm available it's going to be Friday May 9th at 6:30 p.m count me in so that is a
black that's when the door That's when the doors open okay what time 6:30 is when the door is open oh I see i don't think the game starts till 7:00 oh you I am MCing again excellent year 11 yeah nice year 11 how many people are on the
on a team 3 to four so yeah I'm count me in i've had a blast last couple years on this that was me too it's so much fun i love it i don't I'm not competitive at all but I mean I'm kidding i'm super You may change your mind oh that was sarcasm i'm super competitive and I'm not sure
that that's the right fit for me but I will be there okay great control my competitiveness look I'm telling you we we have a title today i'm serious about that and and last year was a police department i was determined i know well that's why I'm conflicted because how am
I supposed to go here oh well I think it's it gets a little competitive there yeah all right awesome i look forward to that but we did give our prize away to the students last year i don't even remember oh you're right yeah yeah we didn't take it yeah we gave it to Yeah
we have three we have We four i I think I can do it the the 9th unless All right i'm going to be in South Carolina so May 9th yeah i'm leaving when am I leaving yeah i'm here you were the master the next week last year right no
years ago yeah two years ago all right great glad we have a um a solid team here well I'll be there it sounds like Yeah we are are going to be there do we have to post there better not be any questions about municipal government no I'm I'm
I'm totally sarcastic i was going to make put it out there though yeah too basic the hairs too tired all right I'm not hearing any other Maybe I'll throw it Maybe I'll throw in a town meeting question it'll be after meeting i know does the
number need to be included after that exclusion the answer for some reason is no i don't I know this i know this all right anyway committee reports uh yeah ex-wife school committee who
um met I forget last week um so they found four finalists for uh interviews for its superintendent so those interviews will be coming um I think end of May or April
sorry they were targeting um they also had a discussion of potential um ideas of how they could use the $500,000 free cash um if they got it no decisions just some early discussions um and then they
had the monthly facilities report so the new facilities director um has started uh Chris Stevenson um they did talk about which we've already talked about tonight the uh the green communities grant um the exterior door replacement
at Turkey Hill the contract has been awarded uh should be completed by the end of August um also awarded the contract for the um security system at Turkey Hill in the primary school
um the Turkey Hill study so that is nearly complete um they were supposed to get the the school committee was supposed to get the report today no tomorrow the 9th uh and they should be discussing that at next week's school committee meeting um fire alarm upgrade is under
contract yeah and that's all I have next meeting is next week i have no report i still owe an economic development committee report from their meeting um a few weeks ago i have not had a chance to review it and the master plan steering
committee meets tomorrow all right i have a couple um municipal and design uh I know uh we met last evening um and we discussed the Brooks House it took up um a pretty substantial
portion of the time just to recap um we've invited um Mr or we've invited the APDC to provide a representative at the meeting uh which has been Mrs going for the last um 2 and a half years or so um and we certainly operate the meetings as
if he's a full-fledged member even though technically he's not um but we really do you know look for that input i think that's something we were trying to avoid throughout this process is uh is not capturing the APDC's feedback uh into the planning process and and Mr
skull and Brini has been quite uh the advocate for uh expressing um um what his uh views are and really participating and uh so we spent a little bit of time last night talking about the Brooks House you know I will uh correct one comment that was made
earlier today um you know because of who sits on that committee again um school you know Brian Leighton um me Tom Gray um Matt Allison and we have Christina Greg Roy Christina Msidis Greg Roy and
um Dave Blat that you know I think six of the seven of us were at the fall town meeting uh we were aware of what was proposed the the committee was advised that this charge had been passed that the select board discussed it that we were going to attempt to work on
Uh we also um were aware that Chris Riley was working on some conceptuals um Mr roy uh also uh is was you know kind of loosely coming up with some ideas too but we knew it was going to be a little later in the process um nonetheless we
did spend some time last night in which I asked the committee um for their opinion on the um request and the uh I will say the strongest opinion came u from Mr blatt um who said that he thinks the Brooks House should be a training
exercise for the fire department um and I think that four of us agreed with that um or three others agreed with that comment um that building was identified early on as being surplus uh you know we did not identify it as meeting the needs
of the school town or community well um and so it was slated to be de demolished or for surplus um with the new request uh we it's not going to be done in time I think to make it into this bulletin but I do expect that over the course of
the month that we will have some different renderings for what a site there could look like uh the committee you know we didn't vote on it but the soft poll was the committee is not I don't believe going to be in favor of partitioning off the land um but I think that the feeling or the thought last
night was select board has asked us to help we will help and we will do what they've asked and we will offer our opinion with it um and so I do expect that there will be um uh over the course of the next two meetings that we will deliver to the select board some
conceptual idea of what a partition of the Brooks House lot could look like um and then also note the uh limitations that would come with it um for example two sides of the building have roads the other two side has detention basins um
you know parking is is pretty full at the school uh at the library behind it but uh we can make some progress there and then we also discussed as I mentioned earlier coordinating with the town manager and the uh I was given authorization coordinate with the town manager and um Chris Ruth our building
director building facility director um to create some open houses for here at town meeting and then excuse me here at town hall and also across the street at the Ritter building so that way members of the public can come and see what these buildings look like that we will have pamphlets who will have story
boards and Brian Leighton will lead kind of this uh three-w weekek so-called push or a month-long push or so on social media to really kind of advise uh we opted not to counteract some of the initial negative stuff that was out there immediately um but we will uh make
a point and even you might even see me get on social media again uh just to be able to help um share some good news and then for the library I just wanted to share some sad news this evening uh which is a a long-term member Donna uh
who's also served in other capacities in town such as the um on the um light blinking as I say this on the cultural council uh she lost her husband uh and so um you know there will be services I do plan on attending and I'll make sure
I inform the board uh once I have more details on that thank you Michael Ray so this morning I attended the joint ways and means hearing at the state house and I testified there and instead of trying to summarize my testimony I'm just going
to read it um good afternoon committee members my name is Caesar Nuzolo and I serve as a chair of the Lunberg Select Board i made the long trek to Boston this morning on the commuter rail because for the second year in a row the town of Lunenburgg like many other municipalities across the Commonwealth
is in a budget crisis last year we successfully passed an override to close a $948,000 gap in our school budget this year that gap is $2 million representing 8% of our school budget and we're weathering those cuts this year that
means we're laying off 38 school employees that's 9% of our total permanent school staff all of these cost increases health insurance school transportation out of district placements are out of our control and they certainly don't fit within the
confines of Prop 2 and a half so what does that mean for m municipalities like Lunberg right now obviously it means that the quality of public education in the Commonwealth is at risk but it also means each year departments are left to fight over an increasingly small amount
of scraps it means one group is in town is pit against another group in town do we level fund our schools or do we pave our roads how do we justify an increase in services in one department when another department has to cut staff it's not sustainable and it's leaving
communities deeply divided so we could ask for another override but people are already stretched too thin we need more local aid from the state the chapter 70 inflation inflation adjustment would be an extra $100,000 for Lunenburgg in
district transportation funding would be $200,000 the special education circuit breaker would be $190,000 the whole child grant program would be an additional $240,000 municipalities need this funding we need
the minimum per pupil funding level to be increased to $150 we need more unrestricted general government aid chapter 70 needs to be quote cracked open as I keep hearing people say i ask you all to act with urgency to better support municipalities
thank you so it was an all day event there were uh so many people there to testify uh primarily educators that was certainly the focus of the people who were showing up to testify many students um what impact it'll actually have don't
know i couldn't say uh but it's important I think for people to show up and share what is going on in small towns like ours so that people actually know and hear our stories so it was a good day uh who was also there so uh two
school committee members were there laura Bzowski and Tony Skull and Brainy were there uh Mandy Gilman was there and uh Kate Burn was there as well so that was our little Lunenburgg delegation thank you Caesar you're welcome really important I think to go to these things
and you know as I think back on you know when I spoke at the birthing um when we had the public health meeting and I spoke about the birthing center closing and you know even in the moment you feel like all hope may be lost um it had an impact and and you know I think that you
being there today you know people think of Lunenburgg as you know this you know kind of central mass we're all to-do town and every time I'm especially talking to Fitchburg and Lemonster residents they're always talking about our roads um how we must be rich because we have good roads but no I think it's
really impactful to go there and to speak to you know how we are being impacted and I think that what you had to say the content of it was very relevant cuz I think that a lot of people feel that way they feel like we're being pit against each other and and it's this formula where the state says you got to provide transportation
but there's no cap on that cost so you know I I really think that that was really helpful i appreciate you being there and representing the board thank you and I don't have any other committee reports just wanted to echo echo the things i think you did a great job i saw a recording of you speaking so I thought I
thought you did a great job and really appreciate you being there and echo um the vice chair thank you all right upcoming meetings we are meeting April 15th April 22nd and then May 3rd at 900 a.m is our annual town
meeting public comment is there any public comment from the town manager i do have a public comment this evening Mr chairman so my comment is um you know as as some members have remarked this evening it's been a long two months to get to this point um but I would be
remiss to not give public thanks to those um who have assisted me in getting to this point um I'm not going to go through and name everybody but those that serve on uh boards committees and commissions have been more than um
helpful and welcoming and sharing their institutional knowledge and offers for assistance and have been more than accommodating staff has been more than accommodating to get to this point and it really has been a joint effort and um I really appreciate the collaboration
folks didn't have to act that way or or be that way and so it's truly appreciated and um I'm looking forward to getting through town meeting now and getting to some other work but I just really want to thank everybody for um
for your support of course any public comment from the public mr mloud good evening glenn Mloud 436 Reservoir Road just a few quick comments on the um town hall the municipal building design
committee's plan i tried to time myself earlier and I once I got to 20 minutes I figured that's that's why generally I just say there's nothing about this plan that I like so I just want to make a few comments questions that maybe in the coming weeks I can be I can be swayed uh but uh lack of options presented to
voters uh it's too expensive and too large for the parcel and then just you know reviewing the the tapas study um you know option 1A for example mentions in part the demolition of the the former primary school and building of a a new
one-story building was too expensive for the community so here we are today with a um you know the primary school is gone and that the new building um is three stories and then essentially adding an additional building to the
um the town's u repertoire uh and then option option two also even makes in again in the tape a study and this is just taking a peace meal out and that's why I want to mention it here as opposed to at town meetings to give a chance to correct any
any errors or misinterpretations but um in a in a similar proposal in there it just it just mentions that Ritter is on a limited a limited site so that just feeds into my initial uh observations
that it's just too big of a building too expensive of a building for that site um and and in tonight's conversations there was mentions of the school school admin and the ACE program you know they as of next year they will be colllocating I believe in the uh the Turkey Hill School
so that kind of that confuses me as as opposed to the impact they have on that u this project yet they can still be colllocating in in a school um and then along those lines the pending Turkey Hill study i'd really
like to hear what that has to say prior to making such a decision and there are several conversations and they are just conversations that make um Turkey Hill a surplus building for the town and that's just scary to me again with such a such
an expensive such a large building being built is is a is a concern for me um and this and another concern is this this process was uh was not initiated and funded from uh specifically from a
town meeting vote really came from my understanding is you know a vote of the board of selectman and it was funded through um an allocation of ARPA funds as opposed to the uh Lunberg um residents actually authorizing their
their specific you know tax dollars to fund that uh this this plan and then the the ADA issues really should have been addressed many many years ago it's a little difficult to hear those used as examples of why the
pro uh the the um project should go forward and the plans presented by this this um architectural group provide some pretty straightforward solutions to those problems and you know I suggest you know certainly very expensive but
those those issues could be or could or or could even have been addressed with some of those opera funds uh that were in fact used for you know furthering furthering this study so I'll stop there otherwise I'll start rambling but thank you very much thank you Mr mloud all
right Mr skolen Brainy um I wanted to uh just kind of wrap things up from my earlier remarks this evening to say that u I I love the town hall uh town meeting approach to government in New England it's it's
refreshing to see and it's refreshing to be a part of what's what's been very disappointing uh for me personally is that um I spent a significant amount of time dealing with um serving as the chair of the
architectural preservation district commission and and my remarks are not representative of that group because we've not had a chance to discuss the outcome from the Monday night Lunberg Municipal Building Design Committee so these are not my remarks now are not
based on the u the the the sentiments of the commission as a whole but but I think that it's it's safe and it's reasonable for me to say that I spend a significant amount of time as a volunteer and we did it the right way
you know we came to you as as a select board we asked for you to uh you know to do something that could generate revenue and and eliminate costs and nothing was done and and it was and it was a request
made through town hall or through annual time meeting or special time meeting and I thought that you know that that we could see that very little was being done as was voted on at the special time meeting so it's been very disappointing
as a volunteer to to do it the right way you know to to bring the issue before the the the citizens at the time to get their support and then to have the outcome be you know one with such little effort placed forward to satisfy the uh
the requirements of the vote of the people um you know I could say that I'm really frustrated to the point where I want to resign from being a volunteer and you can add another uh vacancy to the long list of of positions that the
tenant has but I'm not going to do that because that's not my nature but I want to make it equivocably clear that this is not the way to embrace volunteers you know if you do it the right way and
you present an issue for the select board to deal with and then they don't that's very disappointing and you each have a responsibility to address that situation if you expect to get volunteers for positions like select
board for positions like finance committee for positions like this the architectural preservation district commission any others you have to be responsive to the citizens when they ask you to do something and you did not
all right thank you Mr school all right i'm not seeing any other public comments on Zoom any public comments from the board i do I just want to I I because we went
before public comment i'm glad Mr sconey brought his comment up again because I will say this you know when when this was brought up this article was brought up uh last week I didn't I hadn't had a chance to review it i didn't know we
were actually you know going to talk about it uh and so when he brought it in well he brought it in but I had already reread it when I went home and I I have to be completely candid i I completely agree with his
assessment i mean I'm on the board and so yes I take responsibility of this too but it is it is he used the word disappointing cuz he's being kind and being generous but it is frustrating and it actually is in a
way is disingenuous that this board from a a vote of town meeting where they clearly ask us to do six things and when we are ready to button up the article we realize we didn't address any of them now we gave our opinions about the
building last week and again it was without review of what the actual article has passed but you know Mr scholriny brings up an excellent point is that people at town meeting as not only the volunteers but the people at town meeting have an expectation that
things that they pass are going to be taken with some level of seriousness and with some level of addressing even if they take some work and we didn't do that we clearly didn't do that and that's frustrating for me
uh and I can hear in his voice again you know again we're lucky that it's not in his nature to resign but there are other people who say you know what I have other things I could be doing that have a more positive impact and would potentially resign we don't want that so
we really have to do a better job of addressing things that come to us from the town's people and I don't know what the vote was but it was probably if I looked at it it probably pretty close to unanimous in that vote and to do the
simplest of things and come back with a report and even though it says request and wasn't you shall do this but you requested it's still they wanted us to do this and we didn't and that's on us and we really need to do a better job in
serving the people of the town when things like this come up so I really I thank him for bringing it up and I hope we can do a better job here any other public comments from the board all right is there a motion to I think
there's somebody who just raised their hand late oh on Zoom oh sure mr bowen I'm assuming that's you uh yes so you're up calling calling from the space station I see yeah hold on hold on sorry about that i'm a little
back here so um I happen to be in my pond so and I for some reason I'm You're upside down turn your phone i have no idea why that is it's fine i can hear you sorry about that so I I just want to comment on Mr skull and Greeny uh
Scullrini's comment okay so uh town meeting is a parliamentary process uh it's the Senate floor uh for the citizens of Lunenburgg that means that we are the voice and
we are the charge you as elected officials have to hear what we have to say mr alonzo was very clear about that that there were certain things that were not addressed i cannot
um I I just want to say that Mr skull Breeny thank you very much for not quitting okay um and the reason for that thank you is because the only way the parliamentary process works in a home rule petition type government like we
have is that the people speak i have a warrant article presented uh to let the people speak and that's how it should work and elected officials should do what they're told they should do what they're told by the people because our
government is for the people not for an elected official not for an elected board not for anything except for what we ask and what I ask is is that you understand what that means and that you
take that to heart that when the people say something at town meeting and they vote unanimously to do it that you take that step forward mr scarland thank you very much and you know what let's keep Lunenburgg center historical
all right thank you for going all right is there a motion to adjourn so moved second any additional discussion those in favor say I i those opposed no motion passes unanimously it is 9:47 p.m
and the select board is adjourned