Okay. Hello and welcome to this warrant committee meeting at uh on the 11th of August 2025. Uh can I have the clerk call ro to start us off? You may. Um, we have Elaine Craighead,
Lorine D, Grace Doherty, Jay Fundling, Larry Johnson, Andrew Co, Macy Lee, Brian Maguire, Lee Michael Mlan, Nicholas Tang, and Cecil Yang. You have a quorum.
Okay, great. Uh, I'd like to start by welcoming our newest member, Larry Johnson, elected at our last meeting. Uh, Larry, I know I didn't give you forewarning, but would you like to say a little bit about who you are? You guys hear me? Okay, I can hear you, Nick.
Uh, yeah, sure. Um, I'm uh Larry Johnson. Um, I've been um I've lived in Milton since 1999. Um, and uh and I've been a town meeting member I'm not really sure how long. I think like maybe 13 years, something
like that. Um, so and you know I've looked into joining the warrant committee a couple of times but um I haven't uh you know the timing has never been right until now. So this is great. I'm really glad to be here and uh you know I work in uh my you know I work in
bunch of different things mostly IT you know some some database work some project management um some um uh cyber security. I've sort of jumped around a bit over the past um over my career and that's it. So yeah, I'm just really
happy to be here. All right, great. And while we're on a roll and while I'm catching people off guard, Grace, I realized you weren't at the first meeting to do an introduction for yourself. Oh, yeah, sure. No, I'm Grace Dy. I've bu been in Milton um for 19 years now. I have to ask figure out how old my my
kids are and then I figure out how long I've been in Milton. Um I've never been part of uh Milton politics but or any of the government stuff. So this is actually really exciting for me. My background, I'm a Boston native, but my background is in finance um and banking
and insurance. So, I do a lot of uh product development. So, basically anything you go to buy at a bank or insurance company, I would run teams that build those um and do a lot of project management and strategy work. So, and I'm excited about this. So,
great. And uh Nikki, keeping on the theme, I'm I'm catching people off guard who weren't at the first meeting and forcing them to introduce themselves. So, no, it's okay. I apologize for joining late. Um I'm Nikki Boyce. Uh it says Nicole. You can call me Nikki. You can
call me Nicole. Either is fine. Um I'm a finance professor at Nor Eastern. I've been there for 21 years. Um I have prior experience in um commercial banking and public accounting. I ran for board of assessors last year and lost by a hair. So, um I've been considering joining
either town meeting or the warrant committee for many years and um finally the time just seemed right. So, um super excited to be here. Great. Yeah. So, we've got a Nikki and a Nick. We've got a Lorraine and an Elaine. Uh I don't know which other
names I'm going to confuse, but um Lee Michael, if you're still stepped away, that's fine. If not, if you're able to introduce yourself between bites of dinner. Hi everybody. I'm Lee Michael McClean. I Can you hear me, Jay? All
right, good. Uh, I currently live in precinct 2. Just recently moved from precinct 10 to precinct 2. So I've been a member of town meeting for more than a decade, but recently stepped out of that role. Uh, but being on the warrant committee now will afford me the opportunity to attend town meeting going
forward until I can run in precinct 2. I was on the warrant committee previously for three years during the last override, not this most recent one. And I served as chair for two years. Okay, great. I did not realize you served as chair for two out of your
three years. Um, so looking at the agenda, I would like to move things around. So, our town administrator, Nick Milano, should be joining us fairly soon, actually, probably in less than 10 minutes, but I would like to jump
around. We uh article one was called to order. Article three is electing a representative to the capital committee. And now, in previous years when I've been on it, it's just been appointed by the chair, but I noticed that other boards elect people like this. Of course, other boards are smaller and
they look around the table and they say, "Who wants to do it?" We're a little bigger. Um, and I sent you an email about the capital committee a couple days ago, but in that email, I lied. I said that we had one experienced member who had been on the capital committee. We have at least two, maybe more
experienced members who've been on the capital committee. Both Lorraine D and Elaine Craighead have been on the capital committee. So, uh, because I'm lazy and don't like doing work, I would like maybe Lorraine to start and Elaine to follow up. Maybe Lorraine could say a
little bit about what the capital committee does. And Elaine, since you were the school committee rep on the capital committee, maybe you could talk about what that role is for a representative from another committee to the capital committee. Okay. Lorraine, do you mind?
Um, no. Uh, so my memory now, it's a memory test for me. The, uh, capital committee, um, what their job is is to look at bigger projects. So projects that sort of go over a five or 10 year
span and have an expense that's either 25,000 or or 50,000. But what each of the committees and boards and it could be the selectmen, the school board, they present their capital project plans to
the capital improvement committee and they discuss why it's needed, what, you know, if we don't have it, what's going to happen, when is it needed, because some of them go over years or they're not needed right now, but in a year. And then the capital um committee takes all
everyone's information and they discuss sort of you know the cost of these what's the timing what's the impact um and they discuss amongst themselves and then there's remember again they put
together um I think two things if I remember one was a capital improvement budget for the fiscal year and The other was um kind of a an improvement plan sort of over a couple of years what would what would go on what would need
to happen and that goes to the select board and they do their stuff and they approve it and then it comes to the war committee and that's when we get to discuss it and then make our recommendations to the town meeting. So
that's what I can remember. So, oh, you're muted. Um, yeah, that's a great description. I have very little to add. The only thing I will add is that the other thing that the capital improvement planning committee discusses is what um can be
purchased with cash now and what needs to be bonded over time. Um, as uh the rep from the school committee, um, I served really as every other member did. I had the same vote as everybody else, but the one thing that I was charged
with from the school committee was speaking to the needs of the schools. Um, you know, why the schools needed new windows in Cunningham or whatever it might be. Um, so that's it. Okay. Thanks. So this role would be a
little bit different because you wouldn't this person wouldn't be speaking of here's what the warrant committee needs for capital needs. It's probably more of a communicating information from the capital committee back to the warrant committee. Um, one thing Elaine, you said that some things
are paid in, and this is partly for new warrant committee members to know, some things are paid out of cash. Like maybe we've got a million dollars to allocate for capital cash. And maybe things that are going to have a short life, we're going to pay for those in cash, but for things that are going to last 10 years,
we'll say, "Well, we're going to borrow for 10 years." What I don't know, um, is I mean, if you have a million dollars in cash to pay for things now, well, you can buy a million dollars worth of things, but how many things can you buy that you're going to then borrow for 20 years? I don't, you know, an infinite
amount. I don't know how how the capital committee approaches that or what sort of guidelines you get from the town finance. Maybe I'm getting off the topic, but it's something I'm curious about.
Um, we get advice from um I don't know what Amy Dexter's title is, the director of finance. Financial director. Financial director. Um, we definitely get guidance and advice from her, but Lorraine served on it longer than I did. So, um, if she wants to speak to it.
Yeah. I mean I I a lot of it because there are different people that sit on the committee, the school, the library, the select board and so there's different but there's you know Amy was actually an unbelievable resource because they talked about free cash,
they talked about borrowing and and how many years we'd have to do that and then any questions people had. I remember the next meeting the information was then brought to us um to discuss it even more. So I I didn't never had a feeling
that we were making decisions with not enough information um about the long-term effects of what it would do with the town finances and and um making sure you know the projects we were
putting forward to the town meeting members. I mean that's who votes on it at the final part of it. um were were with a lot of discussion. So, okay. Um I I don't necessarily want to
offer you two up for answer questions. So, I'll just throw out to the you know, ask questions to me even though I don't know them to the whole warrant committee. Do you have more questions about what this role is and what the what the capital committee is? Not hearing any. I guess I'll throw out
and say, do we have someone who's willing to serve in this role? Someone or more than one someone's. Brian, are you raising your hand because you want to speak or because you're Yeah. Well, both, I guess. I I throw my hat in the ring. I mean, I did that, you
know, for 30 years. I was VP of operations for a major company and that's what we did. We evaluated capital purchases. That was like a big portion of what I did. So I have some experience. Okay. Yeah, we had like 21 locations, one and a half million square feet of warehouse,
um 350 trucks, vehicles, and stuff I could go on, but there a lot of stuff we used to go through and analyze. So, okay, I'm interested. I'd be interested. Uh Lorraine, I see your hand up.
Yeah, I'm interested also. Um and I have a my background it's in health care but it's healthcare management and I manage actually a health center. So there's millions of um of dollars in the budget that get managed and capital projects
and um I think I can bring a wealth of information and experience to the committee. Can you remind us how long you were on the committee previously? Um I I several years. Um, and then there was a
a year that I was on as a um a citizen and then because I was on the warrant committee. This is my third time being on it. And the first time I was on it, I was on there for I think over four years and then I was on for a couple of years. So
two, three years maybe as total. I there were gaps in it. So, okay. Well, as I said in the smaller committees in town, people sort of look around and say, "Who wants it?" We are a bigger committee and unsurprisingly we
have thankfully two people who are willing to serve. Um, how many do you need for it? What's that? How many people do you need on it? One. Only one? Only one? two.
Yeah. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Okay. How big is the committee? Sounds pretty big. It's got representatives from a bunch of different other committees. Uh there are
I see nine people. Yeah. Okay. Select board, school committee, warrant committee, planning board, Amy Dexter, library trustee, consolidated facilities, and to
community at large. Okay. So, given that we have one opening, are the two candidates still interested in are you interested in putting this to a vote or does one do you want to
virtually look at each other across the table and not each other and decide if one of you wants to do it? I can't wrestle. That's it. I didn't hear what you said. My my thing was um like last year I remember asking a lot of questions on
some of the purchases, some of the capital purchases as you remember and um maybe it seemed like I was being a pain, but I was surprised that the lack of answers on it like utilization like one
of them the issues was the um cars then I think there were 13 cars that are owned by the town and they were buying new cars but nobody really it didn't seem like there was a good grasp as utilization on them. were going to buy two new cars, things like that. You
know, like I don't know that there was they keep data on that. I didn't get the impression they did. Issues with um you know hours, engine hours, engine miles on replacement of vehicles. It was sort of like that's they just had a time
thing in their head from the previous chief, but they didn't they people it didn't seem like they were like analyzing those type of things when they were doing some of the stuff. So that's one of the reasons why I'd be interested in it just to try to maybe add u some
discipline on that. That's my thoughts. Okay. Um I mean I don't I certainly hope nobody takes this in a personal way because I don't love having us say oh I like this person or I don't like this person as you all saw at the last meeting. Uh but we have to make a decision as a committee and we have two
candidates who put themselves forward. Uh do people feel like they have information they need to you know we don't need to draw this out. This is not electing a president or something. Do people have the information they need to make a decision? Uh no one is saying they don't. Macy
Mike, you don't have your cameras on. Are you aware of what's going on? I'm aware of what's going on. Okay. I am too, Jay. Okay. I I guess I have a question for Lorraine since Brian mentioned his interest.
Lorine, why are you interested in serving on the committee again? I I think the actually the diverse information that you get from each p each committee and the ability to ask questions back and forth. I I don't
remember the same thing as Brian was discussing of not having the information. I know at the time the Warrant Committee didn't press that they wanted more more information, but I think having um
at least listening to everybody and and hearing about what projects need, what the cost is, having input into that and looking at the big picture of planning for the town on a long-term basis, I find interesting. So,
Okay, if there's no further discussion, I guess we will have a vote for either Brian Magcguire or Lorraine D to be our representative to the capital committee. Uh Karen, are you okay with calling a vote?
I am. Um hang on one second. Uh Nicole I'm going to abstain because I'm not sworn in yet and I apologize. Today I had a work crisis that kept me from going to town hall, but I'll be there tomorrow.
Okay. Elaine. Lorraine. Uh Lorraine. Do I get to vote? Me, I guess. Grace. Uh Brian. Larry.
Do we have Larry? Can you not hear me? Uh, now I can. Sorry. Oh, yeah. I guess uh I guess I mean either one's fine, but you guys are both great, but I guess Lorine, if I have to make a choice. Okay. Andrew. Brian.
Macy. Brian. Brian. myself. Lee Michael, I am going to abstain. I have an appointment to get sworn in on Thursday. Thank you. Okay. Nicholas
Lorine. Cecile. Lorraine. And Jay abstain. Okay. So, it's not a die. It it No, it looks like Lorraine has five, Brian has four. The rest are
abstensions. Congrats. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that committee. So the next thing or the previous thing on the agenda is discussion of fall town
meeting articles which is a little vague. Uh you all saw I sent out assignments for town meeting articles. They were largely so stepping back for people who weren't here last meeting. I wanted to have two assigned experts to each town meeting article because in the
past, for example, let's say we get a 10-page dense legal document from the planning board saying this is our article. Do all 15 warrant committee members need to read all 10 pages of that legal document. I don't know if that's the best use of everyone's time.
I don't know what everyone else did. So, I thought if we, you know, I'm not telling anyone, I'm not preventing anyone from investigating any article, but I want to have at least two people who are really on the ball for these articles. So, you saw I sent out an email. It was mostly based on what
people said their interests were last meeting. Um, for people who weren't here last meeting, I made an educated guess. I was doing this at 11:00 at night, so that's why I didn't text or call any of you and say, "Hey, do you want to do this?" Um, you're welcome to horse trade if you want, but I haven't heard anybody
complaining about their assignments. So, uh, so has Mr. Milano has not yet joined us. He told us it's, uh, he told me it's it's bedtime for his kids. So, Oh, wait. I I'm I'm slandering him. I'm slandering him. Here he is. Okay. So, two things we can do. One is
uh, you know, throw it out to everyone. Do you what what do you think of your assignment? Do you have an idea of what to do? I want to talk about sort of when we want to report back to the warrant committee about these things. But I think first I would like to ask Mr.
Milano to maybe do a brief overview. Well, first of all to introduce yourself. I apologize. You are such an important person to the warrant committee and you haven't been to meet us yet. So, I'm glad people are meeting you virtually. No. Uh, thank you. Hi. Hello.
Uh, do you want me to just I'm sorry. I guess I'll go Nick Milano, town administrator. Uh I've been here for it'll be three years in September. Uh we will spend a decent amount of time together over the next 11 months now, 11 and a half months. Um and you know, if
anybody wants to sit down and chat, feel free to reach out. Um and I I'll be in um to several meetings um you know, particularly in this fall as we work towards the fall town meeting and then start talking and building towards the next year budget process. Um, so feel
free to reach out to connect. I'm happy to kind of debrief on anything whether budget related or town meeting related um in a more casual kind of um conversation um you know I'm in town hall so just feel free to reach out by email call or stop by.
Great. So, I wonder if you could pretty briefly just give like one or two sentences about each of the articles we have in front of us. Like one or two about what they are and then maybe tell us where they stand. Do we have a final written version? Do we not have a final written version? Things like that.
Sure. Um, so I'll go in the and Jay, I just don't know what you have transmitted. Did you send around the draft warrant as I most recently had it? um sent around a draft warrant about two weeks ago and then today like yesterday I sent around the two things you sent me
yesterday. All right. So I'll go in order in which they were in that draft warrant or are in that draft warrant rather. Um the first article is related to of course I don't have it up in front of me. Um this is acceptance of uh
statutory provisions that would authorize the town to set up a taxation aid committee. um and a taxation aid fund. Um and this is brought to um us to the select board rather for a request to
include um fry the town treasurer. Um so the article itself is pretty brief um to accept a statute mass general laws chapter 60 section 3D. Um and I mentioned that because a lot of the decision points will be um made by the
committee once it once it is set up. Um the committee is to be comprised of the chair of the select board, I'm sorry, the chair of the board of assessors, the treasurer, and then three residents who are appointed by the select board. Um and then that committee will work through um how to determine eligibility,
what programs to follow. So um not to say it's a it's a future decision, but um I'll just point out that it is there's a lot of details to be worked out and it's assigned to that committee to do so. I'll note that there are other communities that have established and accepted this um provisions. Needm and
denim, the ones that come to mind. So likely we would um the town would look to copy kind of what other how other communities have approached this to make sure it's administratively easy to process and easy to understand. Um and at the bot at the end of the day, it's about accepting donations from folks who
want to donate to a taxation aid fund that would then be distributed by this committee to those um determined by the committee to to reach a level level of need. And that's for seniors um and the disabled. Um I'll just keep rolling that I guess.
Uh so the next one is again another acceptance. So this is accepting Mass General Laws chapter 40 section 57 um and to establish a new bylaw that would allow um permit granting authorities or L or rather licensing authorities and
permit granting authorities to revoke or deny permits or licenses if the applicant entity is not um up to date on local taxes or fees. Um this is just another um article that was brought to our attention by the town treasur again
just as to add a tool to our toolkit in terms of chasing down property owners who may not be up to date on taxes. It's not a massive issue in Milton. We collect 99 plus% of taxes every year, but there are those problem property owners that this would just give us
another um tool to use um in those cases if they came up. And I'll just note there was there is um so essentially you know we would keep track of folks who are not up to date and then move to deny any new building permits for example or if you're a property owner that has a
liquor license for example the select board if you weren't up to date on your taxes the select board could hold a hearing to determine whether to revoke that license just to you have another means by which to encourage payment um of taxes. Um, both of those, as far as getting the
wording final, those are both easy. Wording is all done. And as far as the content, I'm resisting the urge to ask a bunch of questions because that's the whole point of us having a couple experts who will go ask you all the questions and come back to us. So, understood. Um, no, and feel free to
reach out obviously with questions after the fact if you'd like to. Um, the third one I believe in the draft warrant I sent around was the school building committee's article. Um this one again it it it's very brief um but you have to kind of go to the source material to
understand what it's trying to do. So for um new members this is related to the land swap land proposed land track transactions for potential new school projects off of Guile Road and Blue Hills Parkway. Uh the town meeting and
the legislature have both approved a home rule petition that would authorize um the town to uh exchange land, take some conservation recreation land uh and dedicate that to school purposes and then um take other recreational and conservation land and I'm sorry and take
other general municipal land and dedicate that to recreation conservation. The so-called land swap um the land swap was expected to expire or it has a revert clause in it. This is what it's it's referred to as a verta clause, which says that if the town doesn't vote to approve a school project
by June 30, 2028, the land goes back to the way it was before um except for everything that we um suggested would go into conservation recreation would still do that. So, this is like a deadline that the school building committee had agreed to so that folks knew it wouldn't be this kind of
open-ended um process. uh after the home roll petition was approved by the legislature uh the MSBA the mass school building authority invited the town of Milton into its program whereby if we go through their process we have a chance to get you know
35 to 40% of eligible costs reimbured by the MSBA rather than moving forward with the school project totally on the uh tax residential tax or the property tax owners here in Milton. So, by going through that MSBA process, it'll take longer, but we'll get reimbursement from the state if we adhere to their rules
and regs. Um, as a result, the school building committee wanted to submit an article to say, "Okay, well, the situation has changed a bit. Can we add more time to this land swap because we're now going in a slightly different process uh for the school project that's going to just take longer and hopefully
offset the cost of the taxpayer." So, I know a lot of background needs to go into that. Chapter 147 of the act 2024 which is referenced in the article is the special act that's been approved by the legislature that outlines um the land transactions that have been um
authorized by the legislature. Um and so that's where you can find more detail. But the article itself doesn't touch any of that. All the article proposes to do is submit a new home rule petition asking the legislature just to amend that one clause found at the end of that special act to provide additional time
for the school pro potential new school project um timeline to work uh with MSBA and I know Shauna or from the school building committee would be happy to speak with the war committee on much greater detail than I could just there. Um
the next article is submitted by the climate action planning committee. Um the climate action planning committee has been in uh working for a couple years now to draft a climate action plan for the select board and town's consideration um trying to adhere to the
goals that the Comwalth Massachusetts had set. So, this article um is just I wouldn't say it's it's not really a non-binding, but it's not a binding legal um requirement, but it's just expressing the sense of the town meeting
and the sense of the town that the town should um strive to adhere to those goals and and make certain commitments around climate. Uh they're pretty straightforward. Alex Hasha from um the climate action planning committee. He's the chair of that committee. he's been um you know doing a ton of work around
this effort uh on behalf of the town and the climate action planning committee. So he would be the main contact there. Um and both this I shouldn't say both but this article is pretty um firm and final. Um so that's a climate action one. The next one is a bylaw that's been
bouncing around uh the last several months around light trespass which um would be to provide a mechanism by which um complaints around lighting uh could be addressed. So it's not a there was talk
of just a general um lighting bylaw that would restrict lighting across the town. This is more narrow to trying to address problems and and nuisances. Um, so there's definitions in there and there's there's a layout in terms of how enforcement would work um, and what the
penalties and relief would be um, there. So that that's been submitted by the select board. So reach out to me um, for whoever's got that one and I can coordinate u additional information. Um, this has been um, brought to the select board by a past member Aaron Bradley and
facilitated as well by Sean Or from um, a town meeting member. And then just transitioning to the two artic or the three articles that I that we sent around. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Can I interrupt uh M. So for that one specifically and for a lot of the ones
coming up, is the wording final? Has it been reviewed by town council? Has it been reviewed by you? How, you know, that that's sort of one question we've wrestled with in the warrant committee in the past is how how fully banked is what we're getting?
Sure. the um light trespass is uh according to every I think there's one piece that the town council is looking at in terms of the penalties um but we believe we addressed it correctly so we view that as complete at this time um
and then uh where was I going climate action I would say is complete um and yeah I think everything that's been distributed via the warrant is uh what the submitting authority would view as complete Obviously the warrant committee's
recommendation um can deviate from the article itself but those in terms of what is being submitted is is what we view as final. Thank you. All right. So transitioning to the uh articles that we sent separately. Uh the
first I'm going to talk about is the master plan one. So um the master plan implementation committee was set up in 2014 by town meeting the fall town meeting in 2014 to uh be charged with implementing
and um components of the master plan. Um, so that committee has been working the last 10 years and then was extended, excuse me, it was extended at last uh the most one of last year's special town meetings uh till October of this year.
And their last um charge is to issue a report to the town meeting and to the planning board and to the select board. So um this article is um giving them it's the first line of is just to hear and act upon the report of the master plan imple implementation committee. So,
they're going to report back on what they've worked on out of the master plan, areas where they think additional work is needed, and then they're recommending um a new committee um kind of take the master plan effort from here. Uh they've just labeled it um as
the master plan committee um which would have a charge to continue to monitor the implementation um and to recommend to the planning grant select board others you know actions to keep implementing it make recommendations around what in the master plan needs to be updated um and
then like again just identifying the key areas where uh continued work is needed uh it's recommended to be a nine member committee appointments uh made by the planning board the select board and the town moderator each appointing three. It requires a t a planning board member and
a select board member to serve on the committee. So, uh the master planation committee will make a report and then recommend that a new committee be formed and charged by town meeting um accordingly and take on that work moving forward. I I will note that the master plan implementation committee as part of
the budget does get a $30,000 appropriation. So, it's it's used those funds to carry out different aspects of the uh master plan and and this committee presumably would be seeking to to kind of retain um some appropriation
to to do work around the master plan or around implementing portions of the master plan. And the last two articles that I distributed were the planning board articles. Um the first uh that I'll talk about is the sign bylaw. Um so this um article
proposes to strike the existing provisions related to sign review in the current zoning bylaw and uh replace them with the new proposed language. This has been submitted by the planning board. The planning board will have a public hearing on this. Um I believe
they're looking at the second week of September uh which would be their first September meeting um to have the planning board public hearing. They've been working on it throughout the summer. um we have distributed to town council to the building commissioner,
the building department for review. Um so that work is still um underway and any anything that um the building commissioner town council identify uh they'll bring to the planning board and and likewise to the warrant committee. So I just want to flag that as um one um
that is still um in a I don't want to say it's in a draft form. I think the planning board's perspective is the work is complete, but we're just um having that final review um happening now. And then the last one is some updates to the traffic impact mitigation um clause
or section of the zoning bylaw, which allows for um mitigation measures to be required through special permits projects and site plan and now site plan projects. So, you know, these larger projects that might be more impactful if they're proposed and approved through whether
it's a planning board process, uh, the planning board special permit process or site plan approval process, this new, um, or I should say revised section of the zoning bylaws would, um, clarify kind some expectations around that. Um, and you know, some things that we've
gotten out of this have been changes to projects to incorporate to to reflect impacts on traffic. And then a couple of other projects have contributed payments to the town um in response to traffic impacts. And the the language changes mostly just expand to make sure that
this also includes site plan approval projects, not just special permits. Um that one I would view is um less likely to have um suggested edits and tweaks from town council. Um but it has been shared with town council for review
and uh we'll keep you know like I said the war committee and planning board apprised of any recommended tweaks to that one. So those are the articles as they stand. Um one thing I just want to mention while I'm here is that as members of the war committee may be
aware that we had a resignation from the select board. Um last week John Cohane um resigned from the board which um could trigger a special election um which is not um cheap and it is a cost. We have budgeted for one election in
this year's election and registrations budget um which is the annual town election. Uh this is just one of those years where there's no fall town elections um in Milton. Um, so we're looking at if an if there is a special election, what the cost of that might be if we need to
amend if we feel like we need to amend those fiscal 26 um budget appropriations. So um just to flag that as a potential article. The select board's next regular meeting is August 26th. Um though we're looking at some dates for meeting potentially next week. Um so if anything
moves on that front, I will um let you all know. And I think that's it for me. Uh the uh I didn't hear anything about the art alcohol on town land article. Uh yes, right. It's Yeah. Uh so again um
a bylaw change has been bouncing around. So uh the select board submitted and took to town meeting in February a bylaw to right now there's a blanket prohibition on possession or consumption of alcohol on all town land and all town buildings. Um we proposed through the
select board a you know tweaking of that to say you know rather than a blanket prohibition we can allow it under certain circumstances in certain facilities with certain approvals. Um at town meeting that proposed bylaw was amended to strike um town land and keep
it limited to just town buildings. For example, the library trustees could host an event with alcohol consumption with the approval of the library trustees and the approval of the select board. Um but that approval does not extend to um just town land. Um whether it would be a
park, Warf Park for example down at the landing or the deck in East Milton. Um so that is still has a prohibition on it. So select board is discussing potential changes or a potential bylaw that would would still allow it on townland. um responding to some of the
feedback and the discussion that happened at town meeting that has not been finalized. Um we have a couple of different versions floating around. Um so if that moves in one direction or the other I will keep the committee uh informed.
Okay. Thank you very much. Uh, I didn't um I sort of wanted tonight to be sort of an open-ended discussion, question and answer. When I when I suggested this last week, there were some good questions about, wait, what is it exactly do you want me to do? And the
sharp observers noticed that I didn't have a very good answer. I just sort of said, well, look into it and see what questions you have. So, I thought we might want to revisit that topic. I do want to to help us with our discussion. I want to share my screen. Uh,
that looks like the right thing to share. Think I hope. Am I Nope. Am I Do Do any of you see anything from my screen? Yep.
Yeah, I can see it. A schedule. You see proposed WC schedule. Okay, great. Hey, it worked. Um, I was sort of mapping out what our next two months might look like. And while, you know, thank you Mr. Milano, thank you Select Board for getting us these articles so
early, but still it feels like two months is going to go by really quick. So, right now we're on the 11th. I had planned for meetings every other week, although you'll see that that plan may already be falling by the wayside. So, what I was thinking, and obviously
the alcohol in town land might need to be revised, but uh well, won't worry about that right now. Um what I was thinking was that two weeks from now, we would have people come back and talk about some of these articles. Now, you'll notice that I have some of them
in bold, the climate one, the the light trespass one, alcohol and town land. The ones I put in bold are just my subjective guess of ones that we might have a lot of questions about and might come back for a ne another goround. The ones not in bold, maybe we'll be able to
take care of those right away. That's just my guess. I had to guess something. So, I was thinking we could have some discussions two weeks from now on the 25th. You'll also see I put times next to them. You know, for each of these articles, I put 30 minutes. Now, any
returning warrant committee members are probably laughing to themselves. When did we last have a discussion in the last 30 minutes? Um, it's a bit ambitious, but you know, if I said, let's talk about live trespass for two hours, we could easily talk about it for two hours and more. So, I think I'm sort
of seeing this as a as an aspirational goal and also maybe maybe a challenge to each of us. By us, I mean you. Um, which is, you know, we're doing something a little different. We're having warrant committee experts examine these things and and come back prepared. So maybe if
you could, you know, the people who are on the climate plan, talk to Alex Hasha, talk to anybody else you need to talk to. Every question you have or any or any questions that come from your fellow warrant committee members to you saying, "Hey, can we figure this out?" Hash out
those questions, hash out those answers so that when Mr. Hasha comes, he'll do a presentation to us. Maybe that'll last 15 minutes and then maybe you'll talk about, oh, here are all these questions we had for him and here all the answers he had for us. And we'll see how well that works. We'll
see, you know, how we're doing as a committee, really, you know, getting things done and being thorough and having all our questions answered, but also being efficient with our time and meetings. Let's see how it goes. So, I think obviously alcohol on town land is
not going to be a good choice for two weeks from now. Uh, I'll just highlight that. Um, so then we got a week off for Labor Day. Then I was thinking the next week would be a good time to have the warrant
committee summit where we sort of lay out here's our roles, uh, everything you want to know about the warrant committee but we're afraid to ask and discuss among them ourselves. you know, how are we going to have these discussions? What's in scope? What's out of scope? As I said a couple weeks ago, it's very tempting to say, "Oh, let's push that
off till October." But I think it' be better to have it soon. And, you know, while we're in the middle of deciding things about the fall the fall town meetings. So, we'll decide, ah, how should we have our discussions do? So, then then we don't get a week off, at least according to this schedule that I
dashed off this afternoon. The next week, we'd meet, talk about all the remaining issues, including fines. Mr. Mr. Milano, I might have mentioned to you, I mentioned at the last meeting, I want to have I've assigned two warrant committee members to just look into fines in general because like the light
trespass, that's probably going to have fines. The um the the sign committee, the signed bylaw, that might have fines. Other things are going to come in front of us that have fines. And we always find ourselves sort of winging it like, I don't know, a fine. Is $100 a day too
much? Is $100 a month not enough? So, I've assigned two more committee members to sort of figure out what's the best practice when things come to us that are going to have fines that it's ambiguous, but I have confidence in these people that will come back with something good. Um, so September 15th, talk about
everything else we have in front of us, then that leaves us, again, if we're not taking if we're not taking weeks off in September, we've got two weeks to say, "All right, what did we not actually finish in these first two meetings? What do we need to circle back to?
and or know we already voted on I don't know five out of these eight things that's come with comments. Do we agree that the comments reflect the view of the warrant committee? So that's the schedule I'm looking at. It's not set in stone. Uh if you want to change something, especially if you want to change something that's due to be
presented two weeks from now, I'd prefer you speak up sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you know, I'm hoping people will take these two weeks to investigate these these articles for the next uh the next meeting. So, my question to you is,
do you have a sense of what I'm asking you to do over the next two weeks? All right, we got hands. Good. Good. Lee Michael, I saw your hand first. Um, I'm asking if you can move the fines from September 15th, a week later. I'll I have to miss that meeting live because
I'll be in Las Vegas for work. Uh I can um but then we'll be talking about things that involve fines like light trespass and probably the signs before we figured out what we're doing with fines. So is this something you could put some
time into in the next two weeks? You and the rain. Sure. Sort of a it's like the you know gas expanding to fill the volume. If I give you six weeks, you'll take six weeks. I give you two weeks, you'll take two weeks. Lorraine, are you okay with that?
I'm fine with that. Ah, was that a fine pun? Yep. There we go. Okay. Uh, Larry, the dad jokes to a minimum, Jay. Uh, so yeah, the sign review committee,
I mean, the sign plan, uh, I mean, sorry, the sign bylaw, you know, I think we could have probably moved that up. Uh, I was reviewing it today and and um I had a conversation with John Zikovich already about it. So, I think I think we're it's it's not it's pretty straightforward. You can probably move
that to the 25th if you really wanted to. Uh, Mr. Milano, I'll turn that back to you. I know you said there's still some review of uh of the signed bylaw by the town council. Did I Is that correct?
Yeah, I I I think um that may be a little quick, but it might be helpful for the committee's understanding to um to hear from, you know, I think, you know, you have two members there from the sign review committee that can speak to how signs are uh managed in the planning board.
I'm certainly be happy to participate. So, if there's capacity, I think you could certainly start to talk about the overall intentionality of what has been drafted and then council might have tweaks in terms of accomplishing that, but they might have nothing, too. I just
don't want it to be hung up on that. Okay. So, probably probably no vote that night, but at least learn about it. Okay. Thank you, uh, Grace. Yeah. So, um I've started looking into the senior tax piece. Talked to Nick
last week and um Elaine, I'm not going to be able to be there on the 25th, but can I put stuff together for maybe Elaine to present? Is that suitable or or I can give you information? I think that's suitable. That's fine with me.
Okay. Um yeah, Grace and I um talked um about some of this over the weekend and she actually has way more information on it than I do. So I can put stuff together and I'll have it ready and then it'll be able you guys can talk about it. So
wonderful. Wonderful. So, I would say subjectively, we've heard just now from a couple people who've been really on the ball and already started things. I'm very, very happy to hear from people who not only haven't done that, but are a little confused about what to do next.
Um, don't want to put anybody on the spot, but that's sort of what I thought to meeting tonight would be like. Like, what is it you're asking me to do? and I'll Okay, Grace, I don't know if your hand is still up, but uh Nick Grace, no, I'll take it down. I'll take it down. Sorry. Okay, Nick.
Yeah. So, that's kind of my question. So, the these uh different time slots are set for the different days, which is great. And do you want us to have kind of a summary of what the issues are? Are the representatives of the articles going to come and speak to them or are
we just going to lead a discussion among other warrant committee members to sort of try to get everybody up to the same place on the research that we have may have done? Thank you for asking that. I think that the short answer is I want the sponsors of the articles to be here. For example, climate, Mr. Hasha, I want him to be
here. uh light trespass. I don't know if we'll have anybody I I don't know if the I I don't know if we'll have anybody to represent that, but school building committee, I want the school building committee chair to be here. Uh where it's appropriate, I want maybe a representative from the select board to
be here or the planning board to be here. So, what I'm imagining is like like let's say for the climate bylaw, the Mr. Hasho will present to us for 15 or 20 minutes telling us here's what we're proposing, here's what we're not
proposing, here's why. Um, and then maybe the and then the warrant committee members who were on that will speak up and say, "And here's the maybe this will be incorporated into Mr. Hash's presentation, but or maybe come up and say, "And here's the questions we had. We want to know about this and here's
the answers we found." So, you know, my fellow warrant committee members, you probably have questions like this. Here's the answers already. That's that's what I'm imagining and we'll see how that goes. And who invites the sponsor of the article or do we do that as the different uh I don't know subcommittee
members? Uh do you coordinate that as the chairman? How does that work? That's another very good question. Uh I I think if I I think it's me as the chairman, but uh but you know I'm not going to stand on
formality. Certainly, you know, if you're talking to someone, you know, if you're on one of these other ones and I don't know who's supposed to who the best source is and you say, "Oh, the best person to speak to this is the town treasurer. Jay, you should really invite them." So, you know, I'm not going to stand on formality. If you think
somebody should be invited, please speak up. And last question for me is, should we have anything written for the discussion like an outline of the topics? And if we do that, how do we share that with the group? Okay, I'll take the second part first which is you know you can provide
it to Karen and that'll be shared with the group and that'll be a public document and the first part everybody presents things differently. I love presenting things in PowerPoint. I don't know if if I were in this role I don't know if a PowerPoint would really be appropriate because again the you know
the sponsor is probably going to be presenting what they're thinking and you're just going to be saying yeah here are the issues that came up and here's how how we settled them. if you so I'll leave it up to everyone to how they how if they just prefer to prevent it
verbally written that's up to you. Uh I guess I would say for Mr. Milano um for open meeting law purposes let's say two people go off and they look at the blah blah blah article and they think here's
my strong opinion on this article. Are they able to provide it written to the warrant committee ahead of the meeting or is it something presented figuratively or literally at the meeting and then it's a public document? Is it an open meeting law if they send their opinion around the day before the
meeting and try to avoid that where possible? Okay. So that's so yeah provide your written feedback during the meeting. So provide it to Karen. Let's say Karen will share it with everybody during the meeting and afterwards because otherwise you're
sharing your opinion with people outside of a open meeting. Thank you. And to be clear, that's a problem when you're sharing it with a quorum, eight or more members of the warrant committee. You can talk to your buddy on this committee all you want about it.
You can talk to another one or two or three members of the warrant committee about it all you want. It's only when it gets to being a quorum that's the problem. Um, one thing I want to throw out, I was taking notes. Um, especially when the climate one came up, this popped into my head, although it could apply to all of
them. Something, you know, it's very tempting to do on the warrant committee. I want to emphasize that people should consider the article in front of us. This this popped in my head during the climate one because certainly some people in this town in town meeting on this committee
might look at the climate bylaw and say that's too weak. We need something stronger. And I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but I'm saying we're asked to make a decision on the article in front of us. If you think some different article would be much better, this really isn't the venue to spend a
lot of time talking about that. I I would say um Andrew, you went off mute. Do you have wisdom about that? Or you just went off mute. Okay. No, I've been off mute. So yeah, it it's it's tempting to ask
about everything under the sun and certainly when you're discussing with the article sponsors, you can have discussions, but when you come back to us, stay focused on what is the article that we're being asked to say yes or no on. We can say yes, we can say no. We can amend things a little bit, but
pretty much focus on the article in front of us. Um, what else? Yeah, I didn't have a whole lot planned cuz I thought it' just be open questions. So, now I think with the way I've
rearranged things, I think I'm back at It's a little long. Maybe I'll move It's a little long with the fines. Um, maybe I'll move these down to the subsequent meeting because I got to be somewhat realistic
about what we can accomplish in one meeting. So, if we're talking about fines and the planning board signed by law and light trespass and the climate and the school building committee,
that's a I might have said one of those twice. That's a lot to realistically cover in a two and a half, three hour meeting. Um Brian, I see your hand is up. Do you want to contribute to this topic? Well, you're right. That meeting is
going to be a six hour meeting probably. Um but one thing I wanted to ask which might help. Are we I don't know if you said this, Jay, so I apologize, but are we going to get the articles in advance? Because what I would like to do is, you know, instead of them coming in and
asking questions that they're not going to that they say, "Oh, I have to get back to you on, you know, and you might never get the answer." Like, I'd rather if we got it like in a week in advance, we could send them questions and it might help the process.
I think. Yeah. I think the answer is that was one thing Mr. Milano covered is we've got some of them in advance. No, alcohol in Thailand, we don't have it all. other ones we have I think for all the rest of them we have either some some
level of draft either pretty close to final or final. So I think we have all the rest of them and yeah I would encourage you to send your questions to the two experts on each article. So yes getting the questions answered ahead of time very much encouraged.
Uh Grace. Yeah. Um just to help others out. I know what uh Elaine and I did is we came up with the list of questions we had around our topic and then when I met with um Nick it seemed that they had a lot of work already done. So I think as much as
you can try and get the pre-work that's already been done and use that as information to feed off what you bring to the committee. I think that's helpful. I think there's been a lot of work done in different I would imagine there's a lot of work done that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Let's try and get what's already built and then
ask the questions that aren't answered in what we have. Yeah. And I think I mean that's something I've seen as a as a warrant committee member for several years is the people who are proposing this know a lot of stuff about it and a lot of the
problem difficulty is getting their knowledge into the warrant committee's heads and then there's difficulty getting the knowledge from the warrant committee's heads into town meeting heads. Uh, I might be getting a little off topic, but uh, there was an article
regarding recording of town meetings a couple years ago and we spent hours and hours discussing that article, got a lot of our questions answered and then I went to town meeting and town meeting spent a couple hours discussing it, asking a lot of the same questions we asked. So,
I don't know what the moral of that story is, but efficiently conveying information is is going to be, you know, very important for us. So, if I'm looking at planning board sign bylaw, light
trespass, those will just those are just chunky. Those just take a lot of time to even talk about everything that's in there. Um, I'd still like to I'd still like to sort of have everybody prepared to I'd still like to keep this for the
first meeting and do what we can to have clipped efficient conversations. And if that fails miserably, well, it's better to fail miserably in August 25th than, you know, 3 weeks into September. If we fail miserably, that means we'll kick
things off till September, and that's fine. Uh, we've got, you all have 14 brains and I have one brain. What do you think about this proposal? It looks fine, Jay. Let's make sure they're not we're not spending too much
time talking about not spending too much time talking. Thank you for keeping me grounded. Um, on that note, possibly I've beat this agenda item to death and uh,
people know what they're supposed to do and uh, it started. So, uh, the only remaining agenda item was, uh, approval of minutes. Uh, Macy, can you speak to that? Um, let me pull out um I know that Let
me turn on my light because I can't see very well anymore. So, I need like a lot. So, I know that um the minutes from July 14th were approved and published. Have they been published yet, Karen? But
I know they've been approved um at the last meeting. Um they've been published. Great. So, the only outstanding ones that did not that were not voted on last at the last meeting were
March 12th, 2025, June 16th um at the special town meeting um June 17th also special town meeting and June 24th and then I added uh the last um war committee meeting minutes um to today
which was July 28th. So those were distributed by Karen I believe earlier a lot late last week I think right I was out of town. So am I correct in that Karen? You are. Yes. Okay great. So I know based on doing the
July 28th minutes with Karen that the new committee members were hesitant to vote on the 47 minutes from last. Um am I correct in that too? I believe that that was in the minutes. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to move to
since there are new committee meeting um new warrant committee members here. I'm going to move to vote on the July 28th uh minutes since I believe everyone was here and are familiar with it and hope hopefully everyone had a chance to review them.
Second. Thank you, Elaine. Would you like me to call the vote? Yes, please, Karen. Okay. Um, uh, Nicole, sorry, unmuting. I I can't vote. I'm not
sworn in yet, so I'm just going to call your name. Okay. So, no worries. I appreciate it. Thank you. Elaine. Uh, yes. Lorraine. Yes. Grace. Yes,
Larry. Yes, Andrew. Yes, Macy. Yes, Brian. Yes. Uh, Lee Michael,
abstain. Yep. Okay. Nicholas, yes. Cecile, yes. And Jay, abstain. Okay, the July 28th minutes are
approved. I'd like to also request um or move I should say to approve the fourth set of minutes from the last fiscal year. But my understanding again based on my review of the July 28th minutes
um was that the current the new members weren't comfortable voting on it. Am I is that still correct and that understanding? Okay. So, I just want to just inform everyone here that you do not need to be present at our previous meetings to vote on the minutes. You can
go on YouTube, um, which is where Milton Access TV is at, and you can go through those meetings if you really want to, um, and compare the meeting to the minutes, um, that were circulated to you. I know that's time consuming um, but you can do that. So you don't I
don't want pe everyone to think that you have to be present at the meeting in order to to vote to approve um the minutes. You can always review the meeting itself and compare it to the minutes and make sure that the minutes are a true and accurate reflection of that particular meeting. Um but I can
also move um to vote on on these four set of meeting uh minutes because Jay was obviously there. I know Julia is not here today, but Andrew and Brian um are here. Is that enough for a vote though? I don't know the answer to that. Um Jay,
do you know the answer to that? Is that enough for a vote? If everyone else Yeah, I believe I mean we have a quorum here. If a whole bunch of people abstain, we still have a quorum. Okay, so let's do it. Um let's let's go for it so we can get those off and so that I can get the next five set of
minutes for our our next meeting so we can get these published. Um, okay. So, I'm going to move um that we vote on the following minutes. March 12th, 2025,
June 16, 2025, June 17, 2025, and June 24th, 2025. And Karen, if you can call the role, that'd be great. Please. Do you have a second? A second. And who seconded? Andrew. Andrew. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay. Um, uh, Nicole, you're an abstension, correct? Yes. Okay. Elaine, abstain. Abstain. Grace. Um, I read through them, so yes,
Jay. Oh, Jay, you're last. I'm sorry. Uh, Larry, yes. Andrew, yes. Macy, yes. Brian, yes. Lee Michael,
abstain. Nicholas, abstain. Cecile, abstain. And Jay, abstain. Uh, the minutes are approved.
Excellent. Thank you, everyone. Okay. And I would just like to follow up on what Macy said with a plug of my own. So Macy talked about watching the minutes on um YouTube. For those who don't know, there is a podcast. It's not
very creatively titled. It's the Milton Massachusetts public meetings podcast. That's where I share the audio of various public meetings, planning board, select board, our meetings. Uh it's pretty subjective. It's if I think it'll be interesting, I put it out on the podcast. Uh, so you know, getting ready
for the fall town meeting, some of you may want to review quite a few of the planning board meetings, for example, I found it a lot easier to while I'm going for a walk or washing dishes to listen to a podcast rather than watch the video. So the podcast is intended for an audience of one, me, and if any of you
listen to these meetings on podcast, that's just a bonus. So hopefully that's an easy way to consume some of the public meetings that will help us do our work. Jay, could you remind us where that is, please? I'm sorry. Yeah, so it's again, it's called Milton, Massachusetts Public
Meetings. It's on Spotify. It's on iTunes. It's on Google, and it's on Pocketcast because that's the one I use. Um, I'm about a week, a week and a half behind, so I'm I'm I'm somewhat caught up. I
Did that answer your question? Thanks. Perfect. Thank you. And I believe that's our business. So unless someone else has something to bring up, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjourn. Second.
All in favor, wave at the camera. Yay. Okay. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye. Good night.