Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the Wednesday, March 19th meeting of the Select Board. We're gonna go into executive session pretty shortly. I call the meeting open at 6:04 AM Speaker 2: Pm pm Speaker 1: Pm. Definitely pm Pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 30 a, section 21, A three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining. If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair. So declares and I do maintenance and custodians. Local 1 1 1, 1 1 6. Facilities maintenance.
New York Police Benevolent Association, local 82, New York Pet Natick Patrol Officers Association, local 4 9 6, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, coalition of the Police, deputy Fire Chiefs Association, local 1 7 0 7 International Association of Firefighters, A-F-L-C-I-O and Public Employee Committee on health insurance. Speaker 2: Open SEC Session. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney, seconded by second Ms. Slager to go into executive session. Ms. Wilger? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Yes. Ms. Pope. Mr. Sydney? Yes.
And I'm a yes. So we will return at about approximately 6 45. Alright. I'm calling Calling the meeting back to order. We'll start with announcements. The annual town election is Tuesday, March 25th. There's early voting in town hall. Oh, let's take a moment to pledge allegiance and say a moment of silence. Thank you Mr. Speaker 2: Eon. I was gonna grab you after the announcements. Pledge all pledge all United States of America to the Republic. Understand Nation under God. Indi IES Justice.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So back to announcements. The annual town election is March 25th, next Tuesday. Early vote, early voting's taking place in town hall Right now. Right now, well not at this moment, but tomorrow from eight to 7:00 PM And on Friday from eight till 1230. Speaker 2: Yep. Yes, Speaker 1: I think that's right. And again on Monday from eight to five. And Speaker 2: Saturday Speaker 1: And Saturday. Speaker 2: 10 to two. Speaker 1: 10 to two. Thank you Ms. Slager. I would like Ms. Wilson Martin to speak
to the Green Community's competitive grant. So I'm gonna postpone that announcement until we take up her agenda item. She's here. Ms. Wil Wilson. Martin, could you speak to the announcement about the Green Community's competitive grant? Speaker 3: Sure. Speaker 1: Thank you. Hi, Speaker 3: One second. I'm just getting my camera done. There we go. Hi Jillian. Sorry my camera's a little bit weird. Jillian Wilson Martin, sustainability director for the Town. Thanks for calling on me for this. We were really excited to be awarded approximately a hundred thousand dollars in funding from the Department of Energy Resources, green Communities program to support
several projects for the town. Those projects include the replacement of water heaters at Brown and Lilja Elementary schools. Those water heaters are nearing the end of the use their useful life. And we'll be replacing them with heat pump water heaters using this grant. And the funding also supports the addition of additional vehicles to our fleet that are all electric vehicles as well as tools and some diagnostic equipment for our equipment maintenance team to help take care of those vehicles.
So we're excited to have this award. The Green Communities program is really important to us. We've received over, I think, $2 million from it over the years. So we're grateful for the funding. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much and congratulations. Congratulations. Great job. Very, Speaker 4: Very good job. Speaker 1: I'd like to congratulate Billy Walsh, who serves as support for the select board and for town administration on being nominated by Senator Fit Barry Feingold to participate in the 89th Citizens Legislative Seminar at the Massachusetts State House. The CLS is a citizen seminar that aims, aims
to better educate the public on how the legislative process functions in the commonwealth. Many residents and other town employees have been nominated and and done this. But I wanted to congratulate Billy since he's an in intimate part of our team, or integral part of our team. And I know that Kristen Pope and I did it a couple of years ago together. Other people on the on the board have done this and it's a fantastic experience. So congratulations Billy. Go Billy. Onto a more somber announcement. Susan Marie Lane passed away on Wednesday, March 12th from complications of a heart attack.
In 1996, she opened flowers by the depot in downtown Natick. She owned and operated the flower shop alongside her son for 25 years. In Natick Center in 2014, she was diagnosed with a rare strain of streptococcal pneumonia leading to bacterial meningitis and sepsis, which caused her to become a quadruple amputee. She was in a wheelchair for many years with her son being the co sole caretaker for Susan, this was, this created newfound purpose and determination. Her personality, sharp wit and penchant for laugher laughter was something she will
always be loved and remembered for her feel. Fearlessness helped her into becoming an amputee peer support counselor. And in her later years, she started a Facebook group called Natick Talks respectfully aimed at unifying the town of Natick that she loved so much to be part of. Her sense of community helped bring a lot of the town together to see each other's humanity. Rather than be divided bipartisan or religious barriers, friends and family are invited to a memorial gathering at the Common Streets Spiritual Center, 13 Common Street Natick on Saturday, March 22nd from three to six
to be followed by memorial service at the spiritual center at 6:00 PM We wanted to send out our condolences and our thoughts to her son, Jay Lane, who is understandably devastated. Speaker 5: And I would note that in the note I got, I was advised to wear the brightest tropical shirt I could wear. Speaker 1: Yes, Susan hated black. So if you plan to attend, please come in something tropical, bright and maybe even glitzy. Thank you Mr. Sidney. At this point we will enter into public speak. Any individual Mo Speaker 6: Natick 1 0 1 Speaker 1: Oh yes. Sorry about that please.
Speaker 6: That's all right. Just wanted to give a shout out to the Natick DPW who held their Natick 1 0 1 session last night. That was probably the best one of the one attended. It even surpassed the select board one, which my two colleagues did. So I'm to be very respectful of that. But it was, it was unbelievably chockfull of information. And having served on the board and having been on the finance committee and seen a lot of these things, it still was jaw dropping
to hear about some of the work they're doing. And it was just fantastic. It was it's time well spent learning about what DDPW does, how they do it, and how well they do it. And I encourage people to take the time to check it out. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mr. Evans. Several residents after the NEC 1 0 1 told me that it was probably one of the best that they had seen, and they were stunned by the depth of knowledge that our DPW departments have heads have. So thank you Mr.
Sprat, who's in the room and your team. At this point, we'll enter into public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on tonight's agenda taken under advisement by the board. There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting. Due to the requirements of open meeting law, the section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes. And any individual addressing the board during the section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes while the board endeavors to ensure that all interested persons have the opportunity to address a select board due to time constraints that that may not be possible. In cases where there is intense public interest in a
particular topic, the board may schedule a future meeting to allow for further input. At this time, is there anyone in the room or online who would, who wishes to address the board? And I see none so ahead of schedule, we'll move into discussion and decision. The first item we're gonna take out of order is agenda item. I vote to authorize Lilja, SOI for MSBA a's Accelerated Repair Program. Ms. Martin Wilson. Martin. Speaker 3: Hi. Thank you. Yeah, so the native public school department, I've been collaborating with them on an application to the Ms.
B'S accelerated repair program. This is a program they offer that Natick hasn't really done a lot to participate in before, but it helps schools fund repairs to their buildings. And we have several schools with HVAC equipment that is nearing the end of its useful life or at, or even past the end of, it's the industry standard for useful life. Lja Elementary is one of those schools that is needing to have almost a full HVAC replacement in the coming years. And so we've worked to develop an application to do that.
The school committee voted to authorize the superintendent to submit the SOI on Monday night at their public meeting. The MSBA requires the select board to vote to do the same for that authorization. And we're here tonight to ask you to do that. They're, they have very specific language in terms of a motion that they would accept and that's included in your packet. Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Ms. Wilson. Martin, Ms. Wilger. Speaker 7: Thank you Madam Chair. So what, what typical funding is provided under this?
Is it similar to like the schools where there's a percentage based on how they assess the town? Because I'm not familiar, have we done this before? Speaker 3: I do not believe we've done this before. I worked with Mr. Gillis, the school finance director on this application. He has some experience with it from other schools that he's worked with. My understanding is that it is similar to the core program, the building program that Memorial is currently active in. Memorial remains your priority. SOI, within the application, you need to decide which SOI, that statement of interest is your priority.
So memorial is listed as that, but school departments can submit more than one SOI at any time. I know several other towns that are submitting up to three even more for this program. But yes, it does. It is funded similarly in terms of the town or schools pays for a portion of the project and the MSBA pays for a different amount. Speaker 8: Thank Speaker 1: You Mr. Evans. Speaker 6: Thank you Madam Chair. Is it a fair statement to say that this would be in the category of preventive maintenance? Speaker 3: I don't know if I would say preventative maintenance. It would be deferred maintenance.
It would be what the intent is to reduce our expenditure on our capital plan for an issue that we know we'll have to deal with in the coming years. VJO was renovated in the 1990s and reopened in, I believe, 1997. And so all the HVAC equipment from the unit ventilators to the boilers to the rooftop units or air handling units, to even the building controls are that old. And so that's, they need to be replaced in the coming years. Yeah. Speaker 6: Great. Thank you. Speaker 1: Any other questions
or comments, Mr. Erickson? Speaker 9: I just wanna thank Jillian and the facilities team as well, bill Sprat and Jen on bringing this forward, being diligent and persistent on making sure that we get this application in. This is just another ex excellent example of Jillian and her work, but also just the team's work on just finding creative ways to offset the cost of our capital program, which we know is stressed and underfunded. Largely. It has been for years, but that's not unique. But we have great teams working to try to find any type pot
of funding to put towards our capital program. And this is one that would really just help to offset our capital program. So it's not gonna be something that's part of like a debt exclusion or anything along those lines. Like a memorial, like a larger project would be. It's just helping to offset and stretch our dollars further. So leveraging down dollars to, to the maximum. Speaker 1: Great. Thank you so much Ms. Pope. Speaker 10: Yes. Just gratitude again, considering what you said. Mr. Erickson, deep gratitude to Jillian and her team for just going the extra mile to, I would say close these gaps and help us continue our goals
with limited resources. So thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Clerk, do you have the motion language? Speaker 5: Oh yeah. So I read that off the draft, right? Speaker 1: Yes, please. Speaker 5: Sorry I wasn't prepared. Speaker 1: That's okay. That's unusual. Usually have those motions like this. I know. Speaker 5: I'm just proper seat. It's been one of those days. I Speaker 1: Hear you. Speaker 5: Okay. Oh, interesting. I all, I, I, all I see is the, let me see if I have it. Sample draft. Speaker 11: See, Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't, do we have is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually I don't have it either. Okay. Speaker 3: I can, I know it was in there. I can read it. If that would, if that's allowed, Speaker 5: Can you email it to me and we'll make sure it gets up on peak? Speaker 3: Sure. I know that Donna had added it and I did see it earlier, but I'm not exactly sure Speaker 5: What's, so just to be clear, what's there is, thank you for submitting Speaker 11: That's the submit. Speaker 5: That's doesn't seem to be a motion. Speaker 1: Let me just look in the, Speaker 11: I see it. I just like one tweak. Speaker 3: And so if you click the, I can see it in the agenda. If you click on the
item, I, yeah. When I click on that, it takes me to a cover page that is the vote to authorize the SOI. And the item summary is, yeah, Speaker 1: Go. Go ahead Mr. Evans. Alright. Speaker 11: The motion is resolved. Having convened in an open meeting, I'm Speaker 6: Not on the mike, sorry. Resolved. Having convened in an open meeting on March 19th, 2025 prior to the SOI submission closing date, the Natick Select Board in accordance with this charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorize the superintendent to submit
to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the statement of interest form dated March 20th, 2025 for the Lilja School located at 41 Bacon Street, which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories to which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts Building Authority in the future regarding MSBA priority number five, replacement, renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation
and decrease energy related costs in the school facility. Lilja elementary schools. That is it. I'm sorry. Thank you. That's the end of the question. Speaker 1: So that was a resolution Mr. Clerk, could you So move. Speaker 5: So moved. Speaker 1: Move by Mr. Sidney, seconded by Ms. Wolf Logger. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. Thank you so much, Jillian. Sorry. Speaker 5: Sorry about the confusion, Jillian. Speaker 3: Oh, it's totally fine. Thank you so much. Speaker 6: Thanks. Speaker 1: Next item is the continued hearing for California Pizza Kitchen liquor license, non-compliance.
Vote to approve Section 12, all alcohol application for change of manager and change of officers and directors. And who is here from California Pizza Kitchen. Is that Crystal? Speaker 12: Yes, I'm here. Speaker 1: Thank you. Does do any board members have questions or comments regarding the application? So my only comment is that the California Pizza Kitchen was out of compliance for a year, despite the best efforts of our town administration reaching out numerous times. And I want to ensure that that does not happen when the license comes up again at the
end of the year to be renewed. Speaker 5: From my perspective, if it happens again, I won't renew the license. Speaker 1: Fair. Do you have any questions for us, Ms. Crystal? Speaker 12: No, I don't. Thank you so much for accepting the application. We did work closely with Donna. There were some hiccups with communication and we don't plan for this to happen ever again. We appreciate you hearing this motion today. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'll take a motion to approve. So Speaker 13: Moved. Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Evans, seconded by Ms. Pope. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0.
Speaker 5: And it's not a public hearing so we don't have to close it. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sidney. Mr. Marshall? Five year roadway improvement plan. Speaker 13: Mr. Speaker 1: Spra. Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Sprat. I was thinking capital improvement. Talk about a, Speaker 13: That's another five year, Speaker 1: That's another five year plan. Speaker 14: Does Bill McDowell happen to be on the, on the computer there? Speaker 13: Not Speaker 1: Yet. M Speaker 7: Unless he to you. Speaker 14: So this was supposed to be a joint presentation and he has all the materials. So I'm going to do my best. Speaker 13: Turn the mic off this. Oh, is Speaker 1: Mr. Spprt, do you, can you hear me? Do you wanna Well,
actually no, we really can't move ahead. Speaker 14: No, let's, let's do this. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 7: Do do you need someone to share your presentation or can you Speaker 14: I, I have a piece of it that I can, I think I can share myself, but John might be able to share the, the other piece of the presentation. It is. All right. So Speaker 13: Push it back. Oh, good. Speaker 14: I can see it. I have my screen so you can, we Speaker 13: Can bring it up on our computers. No good deed goes unpunished. Speaker 14: So in your Novus packett, you had the entire five year roadway plan, which included the streets for this current year. So the bottom line for tonight is we're looking
to have you approve this fiscal year's roadway work with a, a view of the entire five year plan. As we get out on the five year plan, it's like a weather forecast. The further you get out, the less known things are. As it gets closer, we have a more finite, what we do in our roadway plan always is try to get the water department, the gas company, other utilities to do their work ahead of us. So it's really almost a three year planning cycle. So we, we can shoo the other underground utilities out
of our way as we come and pave the roads behind it. So that's, that's the goal. One of the things that we've done this year, which is very different than the way we've done it in the past, usually our five way five year roadway plan is supported by an engineering company that comes in and does a pavement condition index, which is a PCI. You've probably heard of that, which is in the past pretty subjective. We know, if you've noticed alligator cracking, and I'll say the word next time you see the pavement, you'll know what that means. It literally looks like alligator
skin as it starts to crack. That's a really good indication that a road is failing. So there's, there's different ways you can assess a road. We stopped doing that about a year ago and we started using ai. We, we hired a company. They outfitted our, about eight of our vehicles with vibration sensors and cameras. And we've doing, we've been doing a really good job proactively at looking at our pavement condition on a weekly basis. As those vehicles drive around town, they're assessing the data, they take pictures, they feel the vibration of the road.
And that's how this plan is being developed. So we're, we're using technology to our advantage and it's, it's much cheaper and it's live. We don't have to wait for five years to do another condition index 'cause things change. Next slide, John. So I'm gonna kind of breeze through his, his presentation. We've done 34 miles of roadway improvements, including sidewalks improvements, curbing, adjusting ramps since 2015, 34 miles of our roadway. And you can see where we've influenced on that map. But we've been doing, so we've got chapter 90,
approximately a million dollars a year. Town meeting has approved about two and a half million dollars. So we're doing about three and a half million dollars a year since 2015. A lot of that has been full depth reclamation, redoing roads completely a road typically has about a 25 year lifespan. We are getting to almost a tipping point where we can start doing more preventive maintenance as well as reconstruction to, to get our roads to last even longer. Next slide please. So I had talked about our RMT, this is kind of a visual of what that looks like.
This again, cameras mounted on the dash and the vibration sensors. So that is updating every single night. So we're getting more proactive reaction to our roadways. The neat part about this, and what I found in, in, in bill's plan is essentially we can look at bits and pieces of roads. In the past we've looked at full lengths of roads, but this RMT really says, okay, your problem is in this stretch, which we haven't typically done before. So we're doing like targeted pavement improvements.
Next slide. I am gonna skip the RMT demo, even though it's wicked cool. I tried to share my screen, but I'm not getting to the demo. So we're gonna skip that part. I can promise you it's really neat if you, you can see a bit piece of it from our Natick 1 0 1. We, we talked about it last night. So go look at that and we'll, I'm giving a pitch to our Natick 1 0 1 bill. Do you want to go over the roads that are currently here? You want me to just keep going? Speaker 8: You're doing fine. Okay. Speaker 14: Our 2025 roadway schedule are the roads in front of you.
And again, those are chosen really because we've done all of the utility work. Gas company has been alerted. So we've looked at RMT, we've, these roads need to get done. And then you have the other decisions that, that are made. You try to keep your paving companies localized. It costs more to bring them all over town. So you try to keep your pavement localized to get more bang for your buck. And this is where we're asking you to approve the 2025 roadway plan, which will go out to bid within the next month so we can get, get working on it.
Is there another slide, John? Speaker 15: There is Speaker 14: Just a quick look back and a quick look forward of where we're looking for total number of streets and mileage. You can see those are sometimes the, the number of streets is more, but the mileage is about the same as we get into the later years. You'll see in the, in the packet that we're doing, we're looking at longer streets, bigger sections, speed street, Hartford, those type of things. This slide here, color coded is showing you what was done in 24
and 25 In 20. So in 2025, I always get confused 'cause our roadway plan goes on calendar year and sometimes we go on fiscal year a lot of times. But the area that we're looking to do for this year, can I point to it on the screen? Speaker 15: Yes, please. I believe it's shown here in I can, yeah, if you can. I think it's the pink colors that we're doing for this year. Speaker 16: It is. And just to note, we met with the gas companies we do every year.
Speaker 9: Just grab the mic, just pull it off and you can carry it with you. Thank you. Speaker 16: In fact, I can point No problem. We met with the gas company as we do in the winter of every year. And the northerly portion of the neighborhood, a Tamarack tournament, that northerly portion, Vernon Road, those areas there, Curtis Road, they're gonna be working extensively there this summer. So we took those off of the list. If you look at the RMT, which we were not able to show you that, you'll see that ly portion of that neighborhood is in need of attention. After we spoke to the gas company, we took that off our list.
We never wanna be ahead of the gas company. So this year we're a little bit more spread out. I know Bill mentioned we like to try to do this in neighborhoods and you've seen the, the information year to year that we try to keep this in a neighborhood. We'll be working in the tournament neighborhood precut road. Speaker 15: Which color? Speaker 16: Pinehurst? It's the pink Speaker 15: John, can you just go back the map? Speaker 16: Thank you. He's Speaker 15: The pink. Speaker 16: We'll be working up in the northwestern portion of Natick on second and Madonna. It's Prescott, Pinehurst and Autumn Lane down in the southwestern corner and Glen Road, for whatever reason this
winter appeared to explode. So between the Sherburn town line and Phillips Pond will be also doing milling and and patching in that area. It's in really tough shape. And Speaker 9: Is that a technical Speaker 16: Term? Asked me to, to take a look at that. Speaker 9: It it appeared to explode. Speaker 16: I'm sorry, that's, Speaker 9: Is that a technical term? Speaker 1: It's an engineering Speaker 15: Term. Speaker 16: Engineering. It's hyperbolic, but no, this, for whatever reason, we had a tough winter on, on Glen and there's particularly along the passenger side of the cars, there's running on both sides of the road that we can't explain. There wasn't any utility work there, but it's an unusual breakage in the pavement.
And we weren't anticipating it this year, but we did bump that up for this year. Okay. And we'll also be doing the small section of Dover Road between Pleasant Street and, and the Dover Town line. These are all of the years for the next five years. There's also a list. I know that the select board normally looks at the list and approves it at know five year program, but year to year you look at it. So we're also asking that you take a look at the five year plan and you know, put your thumbprint on that and approve that as well. And I thank Bill for taking over me. I apologize for being late Speaker 1: Mr. McDowell. We were ahead of you. You weren't late. We were ahead on the agenda. Mr. Mr. Evans. Just
Speaker 6: That very quick question, which is concerning in 2028, which is FY 29, right? It has Speed Street from Hartford to Edwards. And given that we're having the 9 27 work going concurrently, is there a way to either move that up or, you know, schedule around that? Because we, that will be, that's one of the north south arteries that's gonna take a lot on a lot more traffic as that comes on stream. Speaker 14: So all of those things will be taken into consideration.
We also have the potential bridge replacement on Speen right. As well. So again, the, if you're looking at this like a weather forecast, those are outer years and we'll, we'll match those. But the 9 27, that's, that is a consideration. However, in the DOT's plan and with our support too, that traffic pattern has been managed. So they have two separate bridges and those bridges will be alternated to take that traffic flow Speaker 9: That that's part of the intent of the 9 27, not, not the be street bridge. The 9 27 bridge.
Speaker 14: 9 27 bridge. Yes. That was the original question. Speaker 17: We kind considered 2029 aspirational. But by that time, Hey Bill, you bought rental bridge. Speaker 14: Sorry, Speaker 17: Sorry, Speaker 16: We do the fi the fifth year is kind of an aspirational plan. Speed street is in need of repair. If you drive up and down, you'll know that. We do consider that to be a little bit more flexible. But at that time it is a court schedule that they will have the, what would be later the southbound bridge. But it'll be the, the easterly most bridge will be constructed for two lanes. We will have traffic going by in both directions at that point. If that is a problem, these can always be pushed out. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Perfect. Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Wilger. Speaker 7: Thank you. Excited about the new technology, which I just found out about by attending Natick 1 0 1. Another plug for that. Previously you had the, the pavement management study and what was really useful about that is, you know, I know it was a point in time, but it listed every road in town and what its condition was and more importantly, what the cost would be to bring it up to repair. Is that exercise going to continue now that you're getting realtime information on
the road conditions? Speaker 14: Yes. The, the RMT program is essentially the same as the old pavement management program that we had with a engineering consultant. There are dollars, there's a PCI, we have to calibrate our PCI. So our PCI I'm looking at the screen right now. The PCI network for this RMT is 73.33, which was much better than the PCI five years ago. Now consider we've done a ton of repair since the five years, but there is a calibration.
So I'm, I would not sit here and say we have a 73% PCII think it's probably somewhere between we have gotten better. But then you have the subjective nature of the engineering company that's driving around and, and looking at the, the roads. So we need a couple years of data to see what that level set is going to be. But we're getting real time data. So that Glen Street that that build meant mentioned, we're seeing that live, we're seeing, whoa, something's going on here. So we're learning to use the tool,
but it does have values that we can put in so we could, we could do pavement planning and say we want to do these roads and it should cost about this much money. Speaker 7: Yeah. It's not just useful for planning purposes. It's also was useful information for the public so that they could see their road and where it was in relationship to others. And sometimes it would help to know that, yeah, your road may be bad, but there's a whole lot of other roads in town that are worse and that's maybe why they have priority. So is is there any intent to put something like
that together that might be publicly available? Speaker 14: The short answer is maybe, you know, we, we did show that on Natick 1 0 1, it would be, we do have ways to take this data. I, I don't know that we could do it live, but we may be able to do like updates quarterly or something like that to, to see where the, the roads are. But I'm, I'm looking at the program now and it's listing every single road. It's PCI, how it changed in the past 12 months. So it's definitely interesting data. I'd have to maybe work with Jay or somebody to see if we could link that
to the website or something. Yeah, Speaker 7: I think it's, it's useful information for the public to see about how their, their roads compare to others. I know that that was something that was looked at quite a lot previously, so thank you. Speaker 9: Might be possible to do like an annual download from the system though too. Speaker 14: Sure, yeah. I'm sure there's ways to do it. We have not thought of that just yet. Speaker 1: Mr. Sydney. Speaker 5: Yeah. On this topic I would suggest like spring and fall, like just before the season Speaker 9: Starts, like starts capital program or something. Or before and after the season. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Exactly. That's because then people see that things actually changed through the construction season. Could you also though, if you could include and indicate unaccepted roads on that list so that people know, well my road is in really rough shape but it's not accepted and then, you know, maybe link to the, you know, in whatever you do, link to the DPW page so that people who live on those unaccepted roads can start the, the new process to get them accepted.
But you know, people, people don't think about accepted versus unaccepted when they drive up and down their road. They just know it's in crap shape and Speaker 9: Or in really good shape. Yeah, Speaker 5: Or in really good shape. Conversely, some of them are in really good shape, but you know, if somebody lives on a really badly deteriorating unaccepted road and they don't see it on the list, they don't know why. And that's something that would be really useful to include in such a report. Speaker 14: Okay. We, as of right now, that,
that new policy I think is a really important thing to, to consider. And that is currently on the website, but I'm hearing you and we'll, we'll see how we can link that information up. Speaker 1: Ms. Pope, Speaker 10: Thank you for the presentation. I have had two questions. The first one is, are we on schedule the repairs that are currently planned for, are they on schedule? Speaker 14: We still have to go out to bid. So tonight is the, Speaker 10: Not for this, but where we were coming from up until this point are is that on schedule? Speaker 14: I think we've made pretty incredible process
and progress over the past 10 years. So the short answer to that I think is yes, I'd like to get more definitive goals set. So again, we're recalibrating what the PCI really is, but to have goals set and say we want a PCI by this at a, at a certain point in time or we want to be spending and investing this money. But I think Natick has done a really good job putting money forward. Chapter 90 only gives us a million dollars a year and the town of of Natick is putting in another $2.5 million. So we're, we're investing $3.5 million a year in our
roadways, which is, which is excellent. Speaker 10: Thank you. And my second question is, you mentioned that we are getting to the tipping point of being able to proactively address roads. What's, what's creating that Speaker 14: Getting ahead of our PCI? So PCI is, it's, it's just a number, it's just a point in time. Pavement condition index is what that stands for. But we've been doing so much reclamation work and getting a roads from essentially a zero or a road that's failing to almost a brand new road. So once we have a brand new road, we're starting the life cycle all over again.
We have about 25 years of that road to maintain over time that starts to degrade. And what proactive measures are would be like crack sealing or chip sealing ways to keep water from getting into the road, keep the sun from degrading the, the oils in the, in the asphalt. Those are the types of things that take a road that might have a 25 year life cycle. It degrades to say a a 15 year life cycle and you bring it back up to maybe a 20 year again. So you have this like saw tooth effect as opposed to a steady decline of the
Speaker 10: Road. Awesome, thank you. And I just thought of one other, one last question. Is a road only taken to the beginning of the lifecycle, the 25 years if it is made new again, as you're saying, Speaker 14: Yes. Even with proactive measures, a brand new road has it, it's, it's similar. I always use this example like a roof, you know, the roof in your house, you put it on in about 25 years, you're gonna have to replace it. Roads are similar. You build a road, it has a lifespan, you can extend that lifespan, but you're always fighting time of it degrading.
Thank you. It's a depreciating asset. Speaker 1: Ms. Welock, Speaker 7: This isn't a question, it's really a plug just for anyone who might be listening who happens to be on the roadway improvement plan for, for this year or coming up. The town does a great job of communicating what's happening. There are email updates that you can sign up for and there are weekly updates on what's gonna be happening next on the project. So there's, there's really good communication for the town so that you know at all times what's happening and they try very hard not to disrupt if you are getting your street
and it's in front of your driveway, not to have any interruptions. I think it was like only about 10 minutes on our street when we had ours done total in, in terms of interruption. So there's great communication, they're all very willing to help and I just want people to know that. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Slager. Any other questions or comments from the board? Are there any questions or comments from the public, online or in the room? Seeing none, thank you so much. Really appreciate Mr. Spra. And, Speaker 14: And Mr. McDowell, you need a, this, this was his presentation. He's, he's, he's done all the work on. This Speaker 1: Would be great to get the endorsement vote. Okay. We, we, we'll, we'll go ahead and vote the, the plan
Speaker 18: Move to approve the five year roadway Speaker 1: Improvement plan. Second. Second. Moved by Mr. Sidney. Seconded by Ms. Slager. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And it passes five zero. There is somebody with a hand. Mr. Krieger, do you have a question or comment? Speaker 19: Yes, I, I do. Hi, so we're the residents of Jennifer Circle. So I have two questions. One, why is Speed Street only scheduled to be repaired between Edwards and Hartford? We've had numerous complaints about the condition
of Speed Street south of West Central as well. So it's kind of concerning. I mean, literally our houses literally shake when trucks go by. So that's number one. Number two is someone had brought up about unaccepted versus accepted roadways. I've been following up on behalf of my neighbors and myself for better part of a year now. We submitted a petition to the town to Mr. McDowell himself. We have not heard back. We're wondering what the status is because it's, at this point it's become quite frustrating. We've tried our, our best as citizens to really improve the, our, our own roadway. But you know, we're, we're following the process
of the town, but we're not hearing anything. So what, what's going on there? Speaker 14: All right, I think I'll take those one at a time. I'll start with Speed Street South there are, is roadway reconstruction doesn't only take into account the surface of the road. We have to look at the utilities as I mentioned before. So Speed Street South, we have some drainage issues. We have some sewer collector issues there that we're actively looking and working on getting replaced. Those things take time. Those things have to get done first
before we do the roadway. So I totally agree. Sweet suits South is in rough shape. We'll be actively maintaining pothole repair and, and doing some sometimes pothole repair this time of year is just cold patch and a hole, maybe some hot patch on the days the plants are open. But as we get into summer, we can do some milling and paving of our own in smaller sections to, to really bring that road back up to, to snuff. But that's why Speen Street South, it's, it's being considered. We have some other, other things that we're working on
to get that paved, but it's not actively on that plan. It could appear on a, on a future plan within de depending on how things go in. And even a couple years, we might be able to pull that off. The second question was re regarding Unaccepted Streets. So we, I believe Bill, we have three going through the process right now. Four. We have four going through the process right now. So this is our first go around. We wrote a policy with the help of the board and we're going through that process of analyzing the streets as we're going through that process.
We've had a couple things come up. Like for example, every place we're looking at, we're looking at the road boundaries, if we have to do land takings, those type of things. And those things are taking a little more time than we anticipated. Apologize, we're not communicating back quickly, but we're having some internal discussions of how to modify that to make it go smoother. So I'll commit that. We'll, we'll get back in touch as soon as possible. Bill, do you have an update that we could provide Speaker 16: Right now? Right now, and I, I know we've worked with the town administrator as well, we've been trying
to make sure that the format is the same for each roadway that comes in. And all of the roadways are very different. Jennifer Circle happens to be a roadway that's kind of a candy bar. It was a subdivision, it would be an easier road to take. We want all of those reports to look the same. We've had comments back from DPW administration, comments back from town administration about how they'd like that process to look so that when the board reviews these, all of those reports look the same and you're, you're comparing apples to apples each time. So those are some of the things we've been working out over the winter at this time, as you know, with the other things
that are going on within the town as far as town elections override, et cetera. We just didn't feel it was good to come before the, the select board with that matter. It, it's not immediate, but we have every intention of having that before the board in the early summer. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Kreger. I hope I said that right. Any other questions or comments? Speaker 9: Mr. Williamson? Thank you. I just wanna thank Bill and Bill and the team for all their hard work on this and really everything as noted tonight with Natick 1 0 1 and all the hard work that they're doing just throughout the year.
You know, they're down a position, not down a position, but they're down a staff member. And then also just with the stresses of just everything else that's happening at this time of year with the, the winter conditions going away, the prep for the oh for the marathon, the coming out of the winter season into the spring. And they're doing an amazing job. And I think it's kudos to, to the team and their hard work and, and their teamwork really for putting on the Natick 1 0 1 so successfully last night. But also all the supports that they have within their, within their structure.
They're at a great group. So thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: That's for sure. Thanks so much. The next item on the agenda is a letter to Massachusetts Environmental Policy. Speaker 5: Objection. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wrong here. Objection agency. Yeah. Policy act. No Protection Agency office. Regarding the 9 27 interchange improvement project, we're gonna put that out in one meeting. Mr. Erickson is, has reached out to the District three representative and I've been informed that they'll be getting us the documentation that we've asked for. Speaker 9: Correct? Yes. I had a very good conversation with the head
of district three earlier this week after we were just going back and forth a little bit via email. We finally were able to touch base and further explain what's being asked. But also they can help, they helped me understand what they're working to put together. They've been working to put it together for a little while. It's just taking 'em a little bit longer. So we should have it by the board's next meeting and I'll just make sure it gets to the board as soon as we have it. And if I, we don't by next meeting I'll have an explanation as to why. But I believe it's, and the intent is to try to get it within the next week to two weeks. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is discussion
of potential commitments from the select board to residents in the context of the override, I'd like to open this to the board for discussion. Speaker 5: Well, I'll say I admit to being under-prepared for this one at this point. So I would hope we would be continuing whatever discussion we have tonight. I'm hoping we're gonna continue the discussion until our next meeting. Speaker 1: I, I had hoped to have these commitments in place before the vote and before early voting, which is why we had an out of cycle meeting last week. Speaker 5: And I apologize for my lack of preparation. Speaker 1: I appreciate your honesty. Thank you. Other members of the board. Speaker 7: I think if we wanted, I think we could come up with something tonight.
I think we talked about it last time and there are certain things in particular in the Arlington statement that I think we could adopt for ours. I'm not sure. The one thing that I'm not sure is if it's really something that's gonna be meaningful. And that's what I've been struggling with about this is, you know, what could we really say that's going to be Meaningful? We, we can't do some of the commitments that Arlington did for a variety of reasons that are, that were really hard. You know, we're not, I think as a board gonna say,
we're not gonna have another override in X amount of years. I think that, I don't think any of us endorsed that last time for a variety of reasons. Not that any of us thinks it's gonna be necessary, but just general uncertainty about the economy and what things are gonna be like in the next few years. You know, if we have another recession, if we have issues, we don't know. So I think we, and plus I think the chair has mentioned that we don't want to obligate future select boards. Speaker 1: That's correct. I I I think it, it would be unfair for this board to bind a future board that may not consist
of these five members or make commitments that a future board could not uphold. So because the board, this board, the composition of this board is not Yeah, I, I think I've said what I need to say. I, I do have some I think meaningful things that we could adopt that I wanted to bring up for discussion. But I usually, the chair goes last, so I wanted to open it to the four of you or I can just, I can just start. Speaker 10: I too have some recommendations that I found from Hall
two, in fact that I did send to Jamie, Mr. Erickson, that I thought would be helpful for consideration. They didn't seem as hard as Arlington. And I also think that there's something that a future board could commit to, because I feel like they're broad enough. I can share those if you'd like. Okay. The two that I found of the first one is endeavor to keep the community informed on municipal affairs and encourage communication between citizens, the board and the town manager. I think that's broad enough. I think it's what our community is asking of us is to be in communication with them
and just basically be cohesive amongst ourselves, the town manager and then that outward facing relationship that we have with the citizens. And then the second one is to strive to develop strong working relationships among elected boards and appointed committees. Again, something that I think is broad. Something that I think is an expectation of us, but it's a commitment that can be made that regardless of, of whether it's an expectation, people understand that this is something that we have committed ourselves to doing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So along those lines, one of the things that Shy Folkman and I have done since I've been chair and he's chair of the school committee, is to have regular check-ins. So we have a standing, a phone meeting every month as the override approach. We spent more time together ensuring that the school committee and the select board were on the same page. And I would like to institutionalize that practice going forward. And I think that would be a specific example of the kind of commitment you just described is making sure that school committee and that the select board are having,
you know, regular check-ins, sharing our financial information. We get quarterly financials from Mr. Townsend and, you know, ensuring that the school committee is getting the same information. I'm not asking Mr. Townsend to go over that side. They get it from Matt Gillis, but from their finance person. Yes. Speaker 7: I think that's a, a great idea. I would suggest adding someone from the finance committee because that's really what we had when we had the financial planning committee and it was very useful to have everyone on the same page of, so I don't know if, if
that's something that the two chairs would consider, but I think that, that, that's a missing piece that we haven't had since the pandemic started of really being able to share that information. Okay. Speaker 1: I'm getting there too. But yes, I think that's a good idea. I just added that to the list. I will be addressing that point because I do have an idea about that as well. And maybe we can just make that, even if it's just a phone call once a month to check in. I think that's a good idea. Mr. Evans? Speaker 6: Yeah, I just had, this was actually something that that person suggested on Facebook and, and we've kind of looked at it in the past, which is,
and this was from the city of Waltham and it was a using OpenGov as their platform and it basically gave a snapshot of all their financials. And what I'd like to see is, can we move towards doing that? 'cause it, it's called the City of Waltham Financial Transparency portal. And if you look at that, which I'm just clicking at now, it brings up the, you know, the, the budget and expenses overview.
It's all information we have, but it makes it in a, it displays it in, in, in an approachable manner. It shows where, where things are, what the trends are going back, you know, capital projects in this case was from FY 2014 to FY 23. So it goes back a few years and it probably has, if I scroll down a little bit more, a little, maybe a little bit of the forecast moving forward with that. But I think, you know, that to me is more an aspirational
thing that we wanna move towards. I think we can do a better job of putting that information out there and not being reactive to providing information, but being proactive about providing information and an easier to consume method. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Evans. It is a very impressive portal. Mr. Erickson, do you have any insight on whether something like this is on, what it would, what it would take for us to adopt this? Speaker 9: Well, the concept of a portal I think is something that we actually could potentially do.
John's coming up to the screen coincidentally, I think, sorry John, you go ahead. Speaker 20: Sure. Actually, I'm sorry. Actually we already have one. It's called, we don't have open gov. We have clear gov. Right. And it has, I, I haven't actually seen the open gov one, but I'm pretty certain it's probably very similar that it has all the graphs and the, you know, you can by year and everything there's it's fairly robust site. We can be happy to come back and give you a presentation on it. We've had it up for a while, but yeah,
Speaker 9: Some of that's currently on the website. Yeah, coincidentally we use, we use open gov for our building permit platform, so Right. Speaker 6: Yeah. The, the, the genesis also was that I remember from my fin com days of, of looking at clear gov and looking at those reports and finding it useful to, to look at the high level things, but to also be able to drill down when you had a question on a specific area. So I think that would be really helpful if we can expose that to, to the average resident can, can look at the,
at the high level and if that's all they're interested in, that's fine, but if they want to drill down a little bit and be able to look at that and then when they, they have a question, it's a more informed question so they're not starting from square one. So I think that'll be help. That would be helpful. Speaker 7: Yeah. Ms. Wilger, I can just weigh in on that a little bit. I think, you know, clear gov is more geared towards budgeting and I think, isn't it? No, they have more modules than that. Yeah, it's two different things. Two different things. But the school department doesn't use it at this point. Correct. So that's, you know, that's one disadvantage. I, I think, you know, if there's a way maybe to
at least get the school department on board with that, that's not a commitment that we can make that, that might be helpful. But, and I did have a question for Mr. Townsend. I know that Clear Gov used to be able to go in and look at a town's finances. I don't see that online anymore, so I, I don't know if is that available? Speaker 20: It's there. I mean, so I can, Speaker 9: It's, Speaker 20: I think Gloria has that up on our computer. If you just wanna take a quick look at it and it does, it does cover the schools as well. Speaker 9: I'm sharing my screen now. Is this what you're talking about, Gloria? Speaker 20: Lemme share it. Yeah, right there. Speaker 9: Right here? Yep. This is on the, the Towns finance page. Okay. You can click, it's called Transparency Center. Okay.
And you click on it and it goes to this portal and it has a bunch of tabs across the top. Overview revenue expenditures, demographics, debt dashboards, and that's all there today. Like I'm literally on that site right now, just sharing that screen Speaker 20: And, and if, if there's something there that you don't, you'd like to see is not there, you can't find it, let us know. We can talk to clear gov and 'cause this, they actually have something called Open Checkbook, which is you can actually set up a, a portion of the site that actually shows every single PO and every single invoice is being paid on it.
It's probably a little bit of an extreme, but you know, if there's something you're interested in, let us know and we'll see if we can have it put up on the site. Speaker 6: It's tremendous. I, I've, I think developed amnesia to that. I knew we had had it, but I hadn't seen the visibility and I couldn't find it because I've been drilling down on Speaker 9: We can make it more visible and more apparent. It is there and it's, and Speaker 7: It it's still pretty high level. I don't think you can, it, it's not as detailed. I, I think as some of the open ghost stuff that you suggested. But is the school department using it other than just on a, I mean, are, are there multiple line items
or is it just the top line Speaker 20: The school has? I think they, they do their own on Clear Go, don't they? Speaker 21: They're not using Clear, Speaker 20: They're not, Speaker 9: School's not using Clear Go now. Speaker 20: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's very high level. Yeah, Speaker 9: Very high level right now is Right. I'm just showing you what it shows right now. It's just the, the overall budget by trend. Right? I'm trying to go into the various breakdowns and it does do a little bit of it, but it's, it's still fairly limited. So for example, it has like, salaries, expenses, capital, it's, it's fairly limited from that perspective. But the other departments you can drill in more deeply
because it's more linked to it. It kind of gets an upload from our Munis system into clear gov. So it's the, what you see is, is it's actually fairly detailed. You know, I can go into, for example, public safety view breakdown. I'm doing this all on the, on the website right now. And then I go into a pie chart of, of the fire department. I can view a breakdown on that and it goes further into salaries and I see expenses and I can get more detail on their expenses. And it goes by line item. All of this is on the website now. Well
Speaker 7: This is what's used to generate our budget book. Correct. Speaker 9: Yeah. But it is all there is is my point. Yes. School department's not, but everything else is there that we have in, in clear enough Speaker 6: Madam. Sure. Yes, please. Just following up on the sort of, we're, we're, we're sort of setting out possible aspirational goals. One of them might be to work now that the schools are more uni, I'll call 'em unis, unis oriented. Maybe this is the right opportunity to say let's integrate better and be able to present a unified portal
to, to, to see all the, both the school and the townside. Just to determine, you know, what are the obstacles, is it even feasible or what the status is. Speaker 1: I think it's worth having a conversation with school committee. The school committee, yeah. And the administrator and Mr. Gil. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Other comments or from the board about commitments? So I, one of the proposals I had to, for us to discuss is putting together a fiscal governance task force. So this would be a task force, not a committee.
It would be a year long. Two members of school committee, two members of the select board, two off fin comm and three members of the public to look at the way the deci, our budget decisions are made to look at communications by and between the school committee, the select board fin com, and how those are communicated out to the public. I picked those numbers random, so we'd have an odd number of people. Any more than nine I think is gonna be unwieldy. But this gives us the opportunity to have three members of the public who are, have a background in municipal finance and private sector finance so
that we get different perspectives. So I'm just throwing that out for discussion. Speaker 6: I love that idea. Speaker 1: I like the idea of a task force. You know, they would be charged with coming up with recommendations for institutionalizing communication. You know, perhaps even encouraging FinCon to meet throughout the year instead of a whole bunch of meetings that are jammed up against town meeting whereby staff needs to go to, you know, work all day and then go to committee and subcommittee meetings three and four or two nights a week, and then roll right into town meeting
where they're required to be there as well. Speaker 6: Great. Write that down. Speaker 9: If I can ask, just from a perspective, you know, we, we obviously need to continue. We we're already limited in resources. We continue to work throughout the year. One of the hearing, hearing the concept, one of the thoughts I have is keep ensuring that it stays a little bit high level working with staff on how, maybe even asking the question, what can, what can the system do to help us get the word out as well? Meaning one of the things that I know I've struggled with,
we've struggled with as an organization is having that constructive feedback loop throughout the year so that when we get to town meeting, or when we get to submit a budget or when we do, when we get to that time when we're talking about tough financial decisions, we've already had some dialogue throughout the year about that. So having a task force that can help brainstorm about how can we get to that point would be beneficial. Not necessarily doing that work, but just look at the system that we have in place and figuring out how can they be improved. Ms. Speaker 1: Wilger, Speaker 7: I, I, I think I'd really have
to think about this and what the purpose is as someone who was a member of the financial planning committee and saw it really devolve Right. And, and have a lot of issues and turn into, you know, the most embarrassing meeting I have ever been at in the, in the town as one of them. It, I think we'd, if we're gonna do this, it has to be really clear what the purpose is and, and what we're hoping to, to get out of it. So, you know, I'd, I'd like to think about this and see, you know, exactly what we have in mind and I'd wanna make sure that it's something that would be
of use to, to the public, to our employees. You know, I just don't wanna have a task force that takes away from their time that isn't gonna result in something really concrete. So Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons why I didn't want it to be a committee. I wanted it to be a task force with a defined end date and a mission and a specific mission. A written description of what the goals. Speaker 7: Yeah. And that, and that all I'm saying is I, you know, I for sounds good, but you know, the devil's in the details and I'd really like to see what, what the, the plan would would be for that.
Speaker 1: Do you have any suggestion on what those details should be? Speaker 7: I think I'd have to really, you know, think of what the end objective would be. And I think part of that, if it, you know, I would start with asking, you know, the staff what would be useful. I mean, I think we have the idea that the communication is a really important element because we know yes. That it's very difficult for us to communicate to the public. We all understand this, we understand it's an issue. We want the public to be informed. We want the ability to do that and, and maybe do that in a better way. I mean, we've made great strides on our website,
but you know, we're still not getting through to everybody, not even close. So that part of it I think I get, but like I said, I'd really, okay. Wanna wanna think about this, Speaker 1: Mr. Sidney? Speaker 5: Yeah. As I've been listening to this discussion, I, I love the idea of a task force, but one of the things that occurs to me is that this isn't a one year problem. And I'm not suggesting I, I'm not going to, I wouldn't even think of suggesting to make this thing permanent, but it might be something to consider making recurring similar to the way the charter and bylaw review review committee happens five years
after the last one dissolves. Then we have a real process for looking at these things periodically and updating our processes appropriately to whatever the time is. Speaker 1: Well, I'll, I'll, I'll call a elephant in the room. I think our system of government, it makes it very difficult for, for us to have to make progress on this. No, it's not a one year problem. I was hoping for a one year solution, like taking one year to look it away within the confines of having a town meeting form of government within, within
that confine, which is very restrictive. How can we improve where we are? Yeah, Speaker 5: Sure. And, and I get that. And then maybe, you know, we solve some problems in that one year task force and then in three or five years we create another task force to look at it again. That's, that's fair. That's what I'm suggesting. Speaker 1: Seems fair. Speaker 9: If, if I can ask that a task force can take a couple different sort of approaches. And what I'm curious about for a task force like this, and this probably speaks to maybe Linda, just cutting further into the details
and really thinking through it. I don't, I don't envision that a task force like this to be the one that is trying to actually do the implementation. They're just putting forth recommendations on what could then happen next. So they might, similar to like the, we had the equity task force who was really just designed to look at a high level saying, given our current structure, what are some recommendations on how the town can address x? Not necessarily doing that work, but just putting forth the recommendation on how the town can address X. That's one approach for the task force.
And that was, so when I heard task force, that's what I was hearing. That's what I meant not, yeah, okay. Speaker 1: Necessarily Speaker 9: Actually problems doing it. But just sort of like asking the questions. What would make sense in asking the board, asking the school committee, asking the finance committee, asking staff, staff, what do you need? And then coming up with a, oh, an approach would be maybe not FPC, maybe not something else, but try this. We've studied other communities, we've heard your issues. Try this. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 7: So I just wanna point out to the public that this is the first time the board has heard about this
Speaker 1: Because of opening law law. Speaker 7: Because because of open meeting law, and I, I can't stress this enough that it, it is really, it's really difficult to have these conversations when, you know, it, it's just presented at this meeting. And as the chair knows, I mean, it's really due to the form of government we have to listen to, we have to obey open meeting law. So if it sounds like, you know, we're having a kind of awkward conversation, that's why, because it's a surprise to, to the rest of us. So, and yeah, it's really a brainstorming session and you know, it, it, it, it's hard
to watch the sausage being made publicly, but that's what you're seeing. Speaker 5: Yeah. And just to be clear, for the public, I would assume even though it's a task force, it still has to obey open meeting law of course. Speaker 1: And, Speaker 5: You know, post meetings and take minutes and post the minutes and all of that. And, and the meetings would be open to the public. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 9: Yeah. Any appointed entity or body from is subject Speaker 1: To open meeting law, Speaker 9: Select board, or other boards are subject to open meeting law. Speaker 1: Yep. Okay. We can, we can shelve that until we Yes. Speaker 7: I'll just say I think it's a, it's something worth considering for sure.
So I think if we, you know, take more time to flush it out in some way, I think, you know, maybe we can get to something that makes sense. Speaker 5: On the other hand, we could, we could make the commitment to look at such a task force in detail, not to create the task force, but to look at it in detail. That could be the commitment we come out with tonight, right? And then it may result not in having a task force because it's unwieldy, but at least the commitment is there to try something different. Speaker 1: I think that this is something that's this particular topic, the task force is something
that's going to take several meetings to develop because of open meeting law or, yeah, I think we're just gonna have to do it that way. I was gonna suggest a select board subcommittee, but it, it's, I think we should just come back with our ideas on what this is. So for our next meeting in April, let's come back to discuss this with an idea about the, the component. Like does this make sense to from select board to from school committee and to, from fin comm and three from the public, what would be the criteria for
people who apply from the public? I mean, do we wanna have criteria? The third thing, I mean, is it better to have somebody who knows nothing about municipal finance and also what the charge would be, charge length of time and composition. So come back with your ideas. The, so, so far we've only adopted or kind of agreed on having the school committee select board and fin com chairs have a, a monthly meeting. One of the other things I wanted to throw out, I talked to, Speaker 5: Well, Madam Chair, I do think, you know, what I'm hearing is that we're making a commitment to study a task force.
I think we should put that on our list of commitments that we're making tonight, right? Not necessarily to actually create the task force, but to at least study it. Because I mean, if, if your goal, and I think it's a laudable, is to have commitments before the election, that's a commitment we can make. Does that make sense? Speaker 1: It makes sense. I'm just looking to the other board members. Yep. Okay. So I just, just added that. So we have two, Speaker 10: The one question I have is the commitment regard with the select board, the school committee and the finance chair. Can we make that commitment without his agreement
or that person's agreement? Speaker 1: I think we, we can commit to asking them to meet for a monthly meeting. I can't, I can't, we can't bind them. Okay. But we already have it in place and I know, I mean, all of us know the chair of the fin com. I think he would welcome this. That's a good question. Okay. Speaker 7: That Kristen, I, I also think that many times when committees are set up, they're just set. Oh, you know, somebody from the finance committee, they're never asked. It's just when you set up a committee, you have your composition. Not that it isn't good to ask, but that's not uncommon, right. When, when a committee is formed to just say it's gonna consist of these people.
Speaker 1: I think we should give them the courtesy of ask, but Speaker 7: Okay. Right. Speaker 22: You're right. Speaker 1: Curtis. I talked to, I'm sorry, somebody start, I talked to Mrsat last night about how the, there's an ongoing review of trash and recycling to determine whether are potential cost savings, looking at the recycling center, looking at possible outsourcing. And that study was undertaken by our former director of public works. He has left and that's kind of fallen into his lab.
So progress is a little slow, but he thinks he could get it done by the end of the year. I would say like within the year, let's commit to having that finished so that we know whether one of our, you know, on the town side, one of our big sources of expense and in some, not really revenue, but expense is trash and recycling. So I wanted to throw that out there as a commitment or a potential commitment for discussion. Yes. Speaker 7: Is that something we do think is doable within the year? Speaker 1: He said it'd be done by the end of the year. So I'm saying a year. Give him
that time 'cause they are short staffed. Mr. Erickson, did you wanna speak to that? Speaker 9: Yeah, I, I I think we'll at least have fairly significant progress by the end of the year so that we can get some direction. We'll also probably have one or two components that we need to take action on more, more quickly. A good example is like the recycle center, when even just more recently we had to even change a couple things there due to just MEPA requirements. And it is Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act. That's the actual is it really? Yes. But the Mepa office, you know, they, they enforce certain things and sometimes we have to do adjustments, but we might even have some components
that'll come forward in advance. And in reality to wholesale change of trash recycling program likely won't happen overnight anyway. So there's probably gonna be, by the end of the year you'll see updates on report findings and then there'll likely be some type of recommendations that you'll have to review as a, as a, as a select board. And I imagine there'd be appropriation impacts and, and yep, there might be a multi-year approach to how to actually address this or fix this or change this or do whatever. You know, we're fully in one type of trash recycling program
to shift away from that is likely to be a multi-year process, if that's even the recommendation, right? Think about our, how we adjusted water sewer rates. It took us two or three years to truly get to where we are with regards to that revenue stream and how the rates are set. It took us a good two to three years to do that. Speaker 1: Any comments on, on that? Is that something that everyone can get behind as a commitment? Speaker 6: Oh, that's a good one. Speaker 1: So I have another one. This is an easy lift because we're almost there, but adopt standards to move natick from bronze to platinum status, from mass bio
that makes Natick more attractive to US and international companies. And there's a second component to that, which is to ensure that the owners of our labs, our life science buildings, have their buildings listed on mass econ ready mass. It's a website that in particular overseas investors, capital venture and overseas life sciences companies look to, to see what buildings are ready where. And I think that Amanda's been working really hard on this. I think that's we're, we've got it in our sites, but I'd like to make a commitment to the life sciences community and to the business community
because the more businesses and more business friendly we are, the more businesses open here and the more businesses that open generates revenue and they don't have children in the schools, they're very light on using town resources. And I want to ensure that we make ick the most business friendly town in Metro West. Right now we are at bronze and other than Dover, we're the only town in the area that's bronze, framingham's platinum. So I'd like to make that commitment to our life sciences community. Speaker 5: Yeah. And just, just for the public that's listening, the more commercial we bring in, the less the,
the more taxes are paid by commercial and the less burden there is on the residential taxpayer. So that's the purpose of this kind of a, a policy. And I'm happy to support such a commitment, but I wanted the public to understand why it's important. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sidney. Speaker 6: Just to, I chair, just to amplify what Mr. Sidney just said, right now we're basically at 83% residential and 17 commercial. And if we can even move that a coup move
that needle a couple points to 80 20 even that makes a huge difference on, on individual taxpayer, individual residents taxes. So, you know, we, we do need to push on things like this in in, in business development. It's, it's critically important Speaker 1: To, for those who are home listening, the the 83 17 is the percentage of assessed value. So it's 17% of assessed value and our tax levy is commercial and 83 is residential. And it just occurred to me, Mr. Townsend, you are here
for the financial policies and procedures review Speaker 5: And financial management Speaker 1: Principles and the financial management principles. Why don't we stop this because I don't wanna keep you here any longer, the three of you, any longer than you need to be. I apologize. We could have just jumped right into, so for people at home, we'll come back to this topic and right now we're going to go to financial policies and procedures review and the financial management principles. Speaker 9: So if I may, I kind of consider what John's about to go through more about the financial management principles and I kind of consider
that also part and parcel with a commitment. So I don't think it's fully away from what you were talking about. Thank you. I actually think it's an addition to what you're, or a part of what you're talking about because I appreciate that. Yep. These principles, as we discussed at the last select board meeting, haven't been updated in, in a comprehensive way since 2016. Right. I would argue that they're still extremely, extremely relevant and we do follow them, but they can be improved. And what John and team have been doing, based on some of the feedback that we got from the board at the last meeting, based on some of my dialogue with John and the team and based on what just are some of the best practices
and also in talking with our financial advisors and others, it's a step in that direction. It's, this isn't a finished product, it is just, we want to show what they have been doing. They've doing an amazing job at this, but it's not finished. So, you know, give John, you know, the time to just sort of say, here's what we're thinking and then get, we have some point points of feedback where we need from you. Thank Speaker 1: You Speaker 9: Mr. Erickson. But we'll try to keep this fairly brief as Speaker 23: Well. Speaker 9: So this is a working document. John, go ahead. Speaker 20: Thank you. Yes, John Townsend, deputy town administrator and director of finance. Once again, to reiterate what Mr. Erickson said,
this is a working in progress. So what we're showing you here, this is sort of like the template. We haven't gone into a lot of the things in great detail, but I just wanna show you what we're sort of preparing. We will, we'll work on this some more and then we'll provide you with a document so you can take a look at it. Hopefully, you know, one of the things we're definitely trying to do here is make sure that this is easy. I say easy, easier to understand. So make, trying to clarify things, making certain that the calculations of the cards, how much you know, there's commitments to a particular stabilization fund is a
little clearer for people to go through. So we have started that process and we'll just get the high points for you at the moment and then we'll come back at a later day with a full document for you red lined and everything and have a little more detailed discussion on some of the points, which as you can see we're probably a little bit more. So let's, let's skip to the first part, part two principles, part one, just an overall statement which we think is fine principles. And this is sort of like one of the things we wanna do is make certain that we, this is formatted a little bit differently,
a little bit easier to try to actually say, oh we want to go to, you know, part two a section three as opposed to please go to that third bullet point below this particular paragraph. So just making it a little easier to go through in principles. The first one is reserves use and recommended balances. Once again, fairly standard. A couple of just little tweaks here. The first one is the fin com, the fin com reserve. Probably sort of familiar with that. Just a slight tweak. Three three, 3% to 5% 'cause that's what the statute allows.
And then free cash is one of those areas. Free cash reserve. Just trying to make it a little easier for people to understand. I think most people will get it that, you know, half percent of the net general revenues. We just wanna make sure that the policies are of reflected what's sort of going on. I'll go on to the next one is stabilization funds. I could stand up here all evening and talk about stabilization funds. One of the, don't say hot topic these days but something of very interest in a lot of people's minds. So we just took the first three stabilization funds to just sort of go into a little more detail on it.
We will finish this up, of course there are some other stabilization funds would go through. But just a couple of thoughts with regards to how we're, how we should and how much we should fund these stabilization funds. So the first thing off the very top here, stabilization funds should be enhanced whenever possible in order to meet and maintain the desire target levels. One of my favorite statements on the policy buried in the bottom of this pol the, this particular section. So we moved right in the front just to make sure that, you know, the actual sort of purpose behind these is very sort of clear up front general stabilization funds, this is a particular, you know,
to take care of unforeseen and catastrophic emergencies. Now usually when I start to think about that it's like well maybe there's an asteroid that comes down and hits the gazebo out here and that's a catastrophic and I'm Mr. Ericson, be happy about that. But that sort of no comment, catastrophic event. However, in this particular day and age, it's not the asteroid coming and hitting us, it's actually a cyber attack on our systems. It's somebody coming in taking over our systems and wanting a ransom. That's where this particular stabilization fund is sort
of a sort of, that's, we're gonna sort of key on that. And the, the issue here of course is the interaction with our insurance coverage. And that's one of the things. And looking at this, I wanna make sure that we sort of take into account what does our insurance coverage, how does this sort of mesh with that in order to make sure we're totally covered when it comes to those particular catastrophic events we're probably facing these days with regards to that, just a slight tweak to it, two to five, which probably fell a little bit more, two to 3%, which is more in line with what our
ranges will be on. Now once again, going back to, and this is something we've gone to, how do you sort of benchmark this, this against the revenues? Or is it again, your operating budget In this particular instance, taking a look at that and where we're sort of coming out on it, we felt that the general fund operating budget is a little bit more, first of all in tune with how much that should be in that particular stabilization fund. But just easier to sort of calculate out for people if they want to look at this. Secondly, operational stabilization funds. Of course this is something which you know, once again key in everyone's mind these days.
Gloria did a lot of research looking at other towns, other agencies, you know, all over the place trying to find out whether there's any sort of, you know, standards that we could sort of take a look at. And of course there is not. Everybody's all over the place. Some people don't have stabilization funds, they don't, one, it's just all over. So sitting down, taking a look at this, we felt basically that our experience going through COI was probably the best standard that we could use when it comes to deciding how much we should sit away, put away in order for an economic downturn.
So we've taken a look at that, still working through those numbers. But generally speaking, you know, during covid we did lose about $12 million. Now I understand this is one of the things we sort of have to take a look at the, you know, input from federal funds and state funds of course would affect this. But just generally speaking that currently as a sort of benchmark where we wanna sort of have this target for operation stabilization somewhere around $12 million based on our experience in covid. Once again, happy to give some input on that.
We'll work through a little bit more with regards to the detail on it. But that's where we're currently at with that particular one. And then finally, cap capital stabilization fund. One of the interesting sort of, I would say a formatting issue for this particular policy, but the actual amount that was gonna go into the cap stabilization fund actually was in the section at the very end of the policy. So we took that out and we took a look at it and we're having, I guess I'll call it a discussion about how much it actually provided for one range was like 1.4
to $2 million and if you could interpret it in otherwise you were able to put $50,000 into our cap stabilization fund, which didn't seem terribly good idea. So we sort of came up with a little bit different way to approach that free cash and amount equivalent to 50,000 of our local option tax collected during the previous fiscal year. That'll put us in the 1.4 to $2 million range. Now one of the things, and this is one of our second sort of analysis of this whole policy is that once we sort of set these benchmarks, we do sort of on overlay it onto our forecast and figure out, make certain that, you know, these are
targets, which we do feel that it might not be easy to get to, but it's something that's realistic for us to put in a policy to go forward. Speaker 9: Just for, for that one John, that's almost, that's really similar to what's in the current policy just in the EP section, pulling it up to this section where we pull it out. It makes more sense to put it. So it's not, a lot of these things are just tweaks. They're not actual wholesale massively rewriting. It's really just figuring out one where it should be located but then two, tweaking it to make sure it's a little bit more in line with what we think would make more sense this day and age.
Yes. Yeah, in some experience. Speaker 20: So the amounts same, the way we calculate it is probably a little different. Once again, making certain people can actually sort of do the calculations without having these weird sort of, you know, broad ranges on things. Just making it easier to use this policy. And then finally, a couple of thoughts with regards to the stabilization funds and I won't, I won't go into too much detail, I just wanna throw these out here. When you're looking through this, maybe you wanna consider some of those. One of the issues that we will have, we are going to have going forward is the funding of our capital.
And so a couple of those thoughts with regards to that. Happy to, if you're interested in going to more detail on that to come back and give you a presentation on that as well. Capital planning and budget, this is a work in progress. We haven't quite quite gotten through it. This is one of those things we just haven't enough time to working on that and we'll get you some feedback on it in the near future. Debt issuance and management, this looks pretty good. We just made a slight tweak to it can't close excess balances of free cash anymore. It has to be transferred or appropriated through the Municipal Modernization Act. We made that brief change there.
Financial planning and forecasting, just a slight tweak here from three years. Revenue and expenditure forecast, we actually use five. So that's just a thing. Cash investments and management, actually we took that out. We've actually relocated those to a couple of new sections that make a little bit more sense to us. I can see what you think of that. Our retirement system funding, it's generally speaking fine, a little confusing. So we're trying to clarify just a little bit. Made a couple tweaks to it, not an awful lot of substantive changes there. Going to the next one, here's other post-employment benefits funding.
We did change this pretty much reformatted it. It is hopefully clear with regards to both our funding of it as well as just the SAR process to it. And also hitting a little bit with regards to what's gonna happen in 2030 with regards to our opep liabilities. Just on a little bit of a side tangent, we actually just received our valuation on opep today. Today and you'd be happy to know with our new opep trust fund, our liabilities went down by $60 million. Oh, so a little bit of good news there, you know, so
we'll, we'll get that out to everybody in the, in the near future. Yeah, Speaker 9: So, so this, this second bullet speaks to the idea that we really need to, now that we have some of this data, we're gonna be diving into capital, we're gonna be diving into the opep and we're gonna be coming up with a plan of attack in the coming year plus, but a plan of attack on, on how best to approach 2030 and and really beyond. But that 2030 is a, is an initial milestone. Yeah. So thanks to the team for all the hard work with that 'cause they've been working with the actuarial team to get that updated and, and it's a big benefit to us. It still is gonna be a liability
and we're still not meeting the current obligations, but it's gonna be something that we can address once we get to 2030 more completely. Yeah, Speaker 6: That's awesome. Speaker 20: So when the new, the first new section here, free cash, once again, one of the people's most popular topics, just throwing a couple things out there, once again reminding people it's non-recurring and single source thing if necessary. And this is the first time we sort of put this out, so I just wanna highlight it for you. Just take a look through this, whether you think it's sort of reasonable, if necessary. Free cash may be used for town's operational expenditures, not to exceed two to 3%
of the total projected general fund budget expenditures for the fiscal year. So the benchmarks that we sort of put there is pretty much is similar to what we're currently doing, running from about 3.5 to about five to $5 million a year. Which I find that a little on the high side, but once again, trying to be realistic about it. But just sort of highlighting that for you, you know, if you think we should add some more to it or not enough, whatever it is to let us know, happy to work on that. And then finally, town administrator should submit to the select board of spending plan for all free cash
during the development of the budget. Something we do on a regular basis, but just sort of putting it formalize something that we, and then another news session, quarterly financial reporting. This is where they took out a lot of those other ones, they came right down here. So basically on a quarterly basis. And we do provide you a financial report. This currently is what we provide in the report, except for, I added to it the Vera bank scores for all financial institutions holding town deposits. Just a little spoiler alert, they don't really change that much, but we will provide them to you. They have some nice stars and little color bars
and everything, so that might be of interest. But if there's something else that you'd like to see, please let us know so we can reconfigure the report and put those in. And then the final one, new, I had to, I had to think long and hard as to what to call this. I put it to call it other, just Speaker 9: Catchy John, Speaker 20: You know, reading through the policy, there was just these things that got stuck in there for some reason. Don't know why this little bit on encumbrances. So I just put them in the o. Other of the other section here, generally speaking encumbrances
and the town investment policies we cover in our finance department policies. So we might not even need that. You do have the fees and charges, which you do regular regularly review. I don't know whether that's, you wanna put that in the policy or not, but I put it in there just to make sure we're, it's covered if that was something that you particularly interested in making sure is in there. And so that, that's about it. Once again, we'll sort of build this a little bit more. We will provide you with the actual policies, redlined with the changes into it. So you can see the changes that are made with some of the footnotes with regards to how the effects are.
And gimme a little bit more in depth detail with regards to what the actual targets are for those particular items in here so that you can see what the numbers are. And then you can get back to us any, any issues or any sort of questions that you might have. Speaker 9: I, I'd also like to, if you go back just two slides or three slides maybe. Yeah, this section, this slide, the quarterly financial reporting, we are providing these. Now sometimes we do it in a presentation to the board. Sometimes the board agendas are too full so we tend to push it off sometimes. But I'd like to know, is this what you actually want?
Do you need more information or different information? You know, when we know what you need, that helps us provide you with better information. If we don't get that feedback from you, it's hard for us to provide you with what you feel you need. These might be perfect. Or maybe they need to be something different or maybe you just need to add a couple things. We need to hear that. 'cause if we can't hear that from you, then we can't provide you with what you feel you need. Thank you Mr. Ton. So that's one section just to think about as well. As well as obviously the other percentages and any questions that you have about some of the other language. Speaker 1: Thank you. I really appreciate that, Mr. Mr. Sidney? Speaker 5: Yeah, so let's start at the bottom,
since we've got this slide up. I'd also like to see an annual reporting section where, among other things, and I'm not, I, the one thing I want to see is a debt pay down schedule, maybe looking forward 10, 15 years so that we have an idea of when debt is dropping off so that we know and the public knows. I think that's useful information when we think about, when we're thinking about big projects that we might be borrowing for. That's Speaker 1: In our budget book. We get that annually. Speaker 5: It's the last couple
of times it's been in the budget book. It's been chopped off after two or three years. Yeah, it's only two or three years. I, I'd like to see like Speaker 1: The full debt schedule. Yeah. Speaker 20: Debt schedule. So I just, so the full debt schedule is about that thick. So happy to provide that information. We can probably put online is fine. We can put it up online, but it is, it is a document which is very difficult to get through. But, but by all means we'll be happy to put it up online for you. I'm sure. Wait, Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait one second. Can you clarify what you mean by the debt? You mean? You mean the debt exclusions when they fall off or All debt? All debt, Speaker 5: Yeah.
That drives debt schedule. When we can borrow more either through another debt exclusion for a big project or maybe, you know, when we can borrow for equipment. I mean it, it helps us set priorities so that the administration is, so we're on the same page with the administration Okay. On those, on those borrowing decisions. Okay. Mr. So one of the things that gets very confusing about free cash is one,
and if you could bring up the free cash page, it is an unreliable recurring one-time revenue source. If you say it's non-recurring, that means that they'll never, we're not gonna get it next year. We always have some free cash. It might be $10, right? We hope not. We hope not. Hope it's Speaker 20: Not just $10 could be less. But Speaker 5: The point, the point is, if you say in a policy it's a non-recurring revenue source, you're actually misleading, inconsistent everybody. It is a, an unreliable recurring one-time source. Speaker 20: It's not technically a recurring i this,
there are towns out there, you, you can find 'em that do have negative free cash numbers. So I understand that it is, it has been, and that we've been banking on this for a number of years, a fairly constant sort of reoccurring amount. Speaker 5: But this is, yeah, but to say it's non recurrent reoccurring, but Speaker 20: It, it, it's not, it's just, it doesn't, there's no guarantee that we're gonna get Speaker 5: Fakes. Yeah. And you can say there's no guarantee. Yeah. But you know, in the history of Natick, it has been fairly, the amount's been unreliable, but there's been, you know, the, the administration runs very efficiently
and our, our revenue budgeting is sufficiently conservative that we always have some and much more. So it gets confusing when you say it's non-recurring and every year it's there. So I just, I I'm not sure the, what the better way to say that is. How about variable not nonrecurring? Well, yeah, variable unreliable. But Speaker 20: Yeah, no, no, we can, yeah, we can actually work on providing a little bit more of a narrative I think describing what it is and how it works or works. Speaker 5: That'll work. That's not, that's a problem. I think that is, is required because this is misleading
and people aren't gonna understand. But we see it every year. Yeah. Well I don't Speaker 1: Think it's misleading. I just think that Speaker 5: People may misunderstand it. Speaker 20: We just need more, it's Speaker 5: An incomplete description. Yeah. Speaker 20: We'll provide a more detailed, Speaker 9: I think the other part here is it's considered an non-reoccurring, it happens to reoccur, but it's considered an non-reoccurring because there could be years we literally have known or a negative in which case we're cutting at that point to get balances back up. Now it hasn't happened in Natick recent memory, but it could, but it's absolutely possible that it could. I I think we, well, and Speaker 5: I, I think more narrative is
Speaker 9: Recorded, but I think it's more speaking to the narrative. What itself explain what it is as people, people read this, not necessarily Yeah, Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. We can provide more information on it. Not a problem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the last thing is, I think that in the debt section, and maybe as a sub-bullet, there should be, I think some discussion of when and why to use bands. Okay. Go point. Because it, it, you know, there are gonna be times like now when bans are the right decision, but we should understand what those rules are. That's why we're doing it.
As opposed to, you know, you know, what are, what are the rules from to move moving into bans and then out into long term borrowing and, and that should be in our principles. Speaker 1: And right there for the public, a ban is a bond anticipatory note. Speaker 9: Yeah. Bond anticipatory, it's like a Yep. Short term. Short term Speaker 5: Borrowing basically. Yep. Short term on which we don't have to repay the principal right away. Yep. Speaker 9: Right. We do pay interest, but, but yeah, there can be like a line of criteria like on occasion or the town may choose to use bands to in these circumstances. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a definition would be great. Mr. Evan. Speaker 6: Thank you Madam Chair. Just going back to the debt service things, one, one of the things I, I was on the same page that Mr. Sidney was at ear earlier, maybe a month or two ago. And I asked Mr. Townsend to send me the debt schedule and you know, thinking it was a relatively straightforward thing and I got a link to a massive spreadsheet that, that cataloged every single item that is in the debt service budget. But what was interesting to me was that
for the debt exclusion figures, there are really two sets of milestones. One is the, that that one ends in 2032 and the other ends in 2040. So as we look at some of the other debt exclusion projects, in the ideal world, you'd have them one debt exclusion product or a project of a similar size falling off at the time you're adding some. So as, as something like Memorial school comes, onstream,
one of the other ones is, is starting to fall off. The other thing with the schools is there's the MSBA reimbursement and that MSBA reimbursement occurs as you're building the school. So it's front loaded. So you're getting periodic reimbursements as you're building that school. So I think that helps smooth that transition in terms of debt service. So I think that the public would need to, to be aware of that. And so that is, that is how the town is really doing a great job
managing the 20 year bonds. Speaker 9: Just for the public's knowledge. The, there are technically I think five debt service lines, but they're concentrated in four primary projects. The high school, which is a 2032, the community senior center, which is a 2032 payoff. And then Kennedy and West Natick Fire Station, which are both 2040. Right. Those are the two most recent ones. Yeah. But I'm not sure, is there anything from the policy perspective that would be part of that dialogue, Bruce? Or you? Speaker 6: No. Okay. I, I, I think the policies are fine. Okay.
You know, just, just the, to the, the things that Mr. Sidney recommended I think are, are spot on. Speaker 5: Well I wonder if there shouldn't be a principle. It says to the extent PO and I, the, the words are, you know, I'm just going to use some words here. To the extent possible new debt exclusion projects won't be initiated until another one falls off or something like that. Just and to the extent possible, obviously, because sometimes you can't avoid them. But just to smooth the impact on the taxpayer
Speaker 9: Yeah. We can do something a little more about a principle like to, it always says something like should be carefully scheduled and monitored Yes. To minimize borrowing costs while opt optimizing investment opportunities. We can certainly add something like that to that, that exclusion of the debt exclusions are kind of a little bit beyond this even because they're outside of the tax levy. Yeah. And a lot of, I think this is kind of talking about what's inside the tax levy. Right. I dunno if that's intentional or if that's just how it is. Maybe we can look at how that wording will look. But I understand the point. Speaker 6: Yeah, no, that's, that's a good thing Ms. Speaker 7: Ocker. Thank you. A couple things.
If you go back to one of the first slides, maybe it's, let's see. Yeah, that one's great. This is, I'd like to make sure that any terms that we use that are measurements like net general fund, that, that's defined somewhere in the budget. I know we have a glossary of terms, but anything that we're specifying in here as a percentage of something, I wanna make sure that that's defined so that it's very clear for somebody who wants to know what those are, what, what it is and how they can find that information in the budget book. Yep. So that's one point.
And then if you go to the part where you were talking about reporting for us, the end, yeah, the quarterly financial reporting. I actually don't think that belongs in the principles. I think these principles are high, are higher level. I would like to see a document about reporting for the select board. There's a number of things in the financial procedures that you've done that say, you know, we're gonna get a report on a regular basis. So I'd like to have one place where all that exists so that we know as a select board everything
that we're gonna get and on, you know, what the timeframe for those are. So I don't know if that belongs in a higher level principles document, but I would like to see something like that exist as a document. You know, maybe it's a policy for the select board about the fin of the reporting that they'd like to see. I just don't know if it quite fits in here. Yeah. But one of the things of course that I'd always like to see is, you know, comparisons in here. And I, I think that's kind of implied, but it, it doesn't actually say that, you know, it says year
to date departmental spending, but, you know, I'd like to see versus budget with the previous years, you know, that, that, that's probably implied. Yep. Yeah. But I'd also like to see, you know, something about a, a risk analysis. So, you know, where might we be falling short or what, you know, areas where we think that there might be risks in the budget going forward. I think that's really important to understand, not just where we are, but you know, if it's only like the first quarter report, you know, where where are we possibly seeing some things that
that might be troubling in, in the rest of the year. So I'd like, you know, some sort of a narrative analysis on that. And like I said, I, I don't know if that belongs here in our principles, but I do think that we do need something like this. And thank you so much for, for trying to put all this together. I know it was a lot of work and I absolutely know what you were saying about the stabilization funds, Gloria, I, you know, appreciate that work because I've tried to do that as well. And boy, there's no consistency in any of our, you know, in, in towns in, in the Commonwealth. So it it, yeah. Thank you so much for, for doing this.
Speaker 9: This is helpful feedback. 'cause this is a great comment about this particular section. I think it's important for the board to focus on what you do need from a quarterly reporting, but then the secondary question, which or the primary question what you asked, but is should it really be in this particular policy or should that just be a standalone document that just is even that can just be reviewed annual, Hey, do we, are these still the quarterly reports that, I don't know if it needs to be a policy, it's probably just an expectation that needs to be set by the board with town administration. But that's something to, to dialogue and we can figure that out. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 20: Just let us know what you like in it and we'll find some place to put it. Yeah. Speaker 10: Yes, Ms. Thank you. Thank you all for the work that you did on this. The, the questions I had were what would you have needed in those sections that are not complete? What would you have needed to complete those Speaker 20: Just a little more time? Yeah, unfortunately we've been extremely busy this week and last week, so just didn't have the time to commit to it. But things eased up a little bit yesterday and today. So we, you know, concentrate on it. But that's, that's what it's, we'll we will get it done. Speaker 9: We just use this as an opportunity
to get initial feedback from you because if we're going in any direction that was way off, I didn't, I would want to not have them continue down this path. And this is, this could be something that comes back later in April. You have a lot already on your first meeting in April. Maybe this is part of it. Maybe it's something that comes back a little bit later. It really is up to the board. But we felt it was timely given that you were talking about commitments. I think updating this is a commitment. The time it takes to update that I think is to be determined. 'cause we, I think we're gonna have a couple, another couple maybe feedback loops. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you Mr. Townsend.
Thank thank you. 10. Thank you Gloria. Yep. Really appreciate all the hard work. Speaker 20: Thank you. That's Speaker 5: Great stuff. Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, once again, they're a rockstar doing amazing work. So all rock stars all through all three and the team. Speaker 5: Yeah. And as Mr. Erickson just said, we could include in our commitments to the voters that we will review and update our financial management principles this year. That would be a commit what we can make tonight. Speaker 1: I just put that in the list. Alright. Speaker 9: They're, they're eagerly getting out of here,
but I didn't know if you needed them for anything else. No, Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Have a Speaker 9: Good, Speaker 1: In a good way. Have a good night. Really Speaker 9: Getting at, yeah. Speaker 1: So going back to our potential commitments, what I have is review and approval of financial management principles, which we've started tonight. Well we didn't start tonight, but based on this presentation, adopt standards to move natick from bronze to platinum status and inform our biosciences labs to where they need to register their properties for. 'cause right now none of them are on this. It's a ma a mass econ site for ready mass.
And I was surprised that they weren't. But where next month, the CEO of Abby Labs. Is it Gary Kaufman? Yes. I think it's Gary Kaufman. Yes. He'll be coming to talk about and and do a, a presentation on what they do at Abbey Labs. I think Bruce, you Yeah, I think, I think he reached out and I said that we would get him on an agenda probably mid-April. Bruce and I attended the ribbon cutting session with Decon and Abby Labs and it was line blowing the amount of the work
that's being done right next to Dick's Sporting Goods. It's just, wouldn't, wouldn't even think about it. And, Speaker 9: And behind too Speaker 1: 'cause and behind that whole, that whole area back there, Strathmore Mercer Road and that, that was a, a industrial waste zone. Not waste, but industrial zone under, well it used to be Speaker 9: Lot, a lot of the BJ's headquarter buildings. Right. And then when they vacated them, it was largely vacant or just relatively speaking underutilized. And the, they and other lab tech companies have gone in there and done an amazing job.
Especially Abby Labs. They just started doing phenomenal work Speaker 1: Fi finish the review of the trash and recycle to trash and recycling program to determine whether there are potential cost savings there. And that's probably the last major program. You've, for the last three years, you've done a pretty good review of all the major departments, their fee schedules for financial efficiency. I think it's like the LA Speaker 9: It's one of the last ones. We obviously there's still work that we're working with the team and the finance division to continue
to improve and that will continue in the coming year plus, but from where they were four years ago and, and what we were dealing with even in the first two years of my time as ta, which was really about just getting out of the pandemic. So in earnest, the last two years it's been pretty amazing what has the team has done and then the upcoming years, there's also going fire department has also been doing some amazing work. And in the coming year you're also going to see us look at just some of the succession planning that we need to do for really throughout the organization. But we have a couple key ones coming up. The police chiefs contract. We have some pending, you know, need
for succession planning really throughout the organization. But that's gonna be the next area of focus Speaker 1: School committee, select board FinCon monthly meeting and then study whether to form a fiscal governance task force, what the charge would be, the composition and length of time. So for list, I've, I've got more, but wait, there's more. But wait, there's more. We committed a couple of meetings ago to undertake a thorough review of the split tax policy. And we should do that. We should have a subcommittee this summer. I think of the select board. Take two people sit down with Mr. Kaplan. I, I'll volunteer.
Bless your heart. I, I did meet with him last night and he has a lot of interesting data. So meeting with him, I'd like to also have that review. Include talking to town managers and town finance people in towns that have split taxes. I'd like the analysis to include other towns, so not just what might work here. Everybody on board with that. We kind of committed to that earlier review and approval of all financial policies. So we have some listed here. There's 16 of them listed here.
I think that should be on our agenda every meeting. Let's take one or two of them and, and bang them out over the next couple of months. And I know that it'll probably be after town meeting, but there's another set that the finance department is working on so Oh. Of financial policies and procedures. Okay. Speaker 9: Yeah. A lot of what, what they're working on are as, because we've updated unis, we can explore more ways to have efficiencies with updating the policies. A lot of them predate a lot of the people in their current roles and we're really trying to make sure that we set the policy
and the procedures up to, to be successful. So what they usually do and what we usually do is troubleshoot them and then test them and then troubleshoot them again and then test them and just make sure that they work. So that's why it's a slower rollout. Plus we've had throughout the organization, we've had, and we even heard it from DPW tonight, just, you know, staff turnover, which is a challenge. Yep, Speaker 7: That's Speaker 9: True. But capacity is a, is a big challenge with a lot of our departments right Speaker 1: Now. Yes. Ms. Wilger. Speaker 7: Yeah, I think we could probably, again include some
of the things that are on Arlington's Okay. That we talked about. Which particularly the one that, which is, you know, when they were talking about the override and minimizing the impact on taxpayers, particularly seniors, continuing new tax relief programs, including a municipal circuit breaker and increased eligibility for property tax deferral options and publicize existing relief programs. That's what Arlington say. I think that we're trying to do that as well. So I, I think that that's an important component. Speaker 5: I think, I think we should, should be careful about committing to a circuit breaker. I think we should commit to studying that as opposed
to actually creating it. Because it may not be good for the taxpayer as Ms. Coughlin pointed out. Yeah. Speaker 6: Can, can we make it more generalized, something like means tested. 'cause one of the flaws I think we have in coverage for tax relief is we have good programs, great programs actually for age related things, but not, not as good for income restricted people. So if I'm a, let's say I'm a a, a young single person,
not making a lot of money, but I own a home, you know, a starter home and I'm being hit with an override that yeah, I really can't cope with. Let's find a mechanism and, and, and it will require study because we don't want to burden other taxpayers as well, but there's a fairness principle that's involved. So we need to explore, you know, what's available, what makes sense, does it make sense? See what, see what's out there, you know, see what other communities are doing.
So I think maybe the commitment is just general means tested property tax struggling for the right word. I don't wanna use abatement, that's what's popping in my head. But Speaker 1: Like an exemption, Speaker 6: Exemption or reduction of some sort. Speaker 1: I think we need to, we need to study that. We also need to study the impact that has on our staff. So our finance departments and our assessing department is really, really thin. I also, when we talk about means testing, right now, our current program for tax deferral does not look at assets. Right. So that's something we may want to, that,
that would have to be changed at town meeting. That's not, but we could study it and bring recommendations to town meeting in the fall. Speaker 6: Yeah. Speaker 1: So maybe to Ms. Lauger's point, minimize impact on taxpayers particularly, or study the ways study Speaker 6: Well, that's got it right there. Speaker 7: This is, I'm just reading off of the Arlington Speaker 1: One. Yeah. I'm, I I cut and pasted it, so I'm Yeah, yeah. Editing it. That's Speaker 6: Well phrased actually. So, Speaker 1: Study programs or study programs in other municipalities
that minimize impact on taxpayers, particularly seniors and others with income challenges to determine what would work best in Natick. Yeah. Speaker 6: Sounds Speaker 5: Good. And I think, you know, obviously we don't need to use number item C there because of, it's not applicable, but I think we should add an item at the bottom that says, work with the administration to better communicate available programs to the general public. Speaker 1: So along those lines, well, I'm, no, it's Speaker 7: Good getting a little ahead. We were just on, on a there.
I, I think, I think B is also something that we should consider Absolutely. From Arlington pursue new revenue, new sources if we do get the ability to have increased local options taxes. Right. We'll definitely, you know, pursue that or look at it. Right. Maybe we don't wanna say pursue maybe it's study or Speaker 1: I think being an advocate to Senator s SP's office, having the select board, you know, right. Call, I mean, I've already discussed this with her office about the Municipal Empowerment Act. Yeah. Which would increase our local option taxes. I think that is something we really need to advocate for.
There's a lot in the Municipal Empowerment Act Act that would, would do Speaker 6: Definitely help, Speaker 1: Help with Native. Yes. Speaker 7: Well, maybe we ought to just add that then. Yeah. Just including advocacy for the Municipal Empowerment Act. Yeah. Speaker 6: Yeah. I like that. Speaker 1: So, other ideas about pur pursuing other revenue sources. I mean, making Natick as business friendly as possible. Speaker 6: Yeah. I I, I was kind thinking along the same lines of, you know, do, do we, without burdening ceds too much, is there something that we can say concerning economic development and focus? It's kind of hard to,
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you what the chair of the EDC thinks. Speaker 7: Well, right. I mean, there's, there's been a lot of discussion and, and actually I think it's something that the EDC should discuss this year about, you know, the concept of a private public Yeah. You know, entity to really direct business. I know that's been on under discussion for many, many years. We've never really moved the needle on it. So, but I Speaker 1: Don't, at least 10 years. Yep. Speaker 7: But I don't think that that should be part Speaker 1: Of it. No, I don't think so either. Yeah. Speaker 6: Okay. I'm just making sausage to say pursue new revenue sources at this point. I mean, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've changed the alcohol policy and I'm hopeful that we'll be getting some restaurants which will generate local option taxes. We're in line with the mbt A, we're in line with the MBTA. Speaker 9: So a a, a lot of what Amanda has really been working on in CED and what we've been really working on over the last probably eight, nine years, is just streamlining and making our pros less streamlining, but making our processes more predictable, more transparent in front of the various boards and committees.
Because a lot of what the business climate needs from my experience, is a level of predictability. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Speaker 9: Level of understanding, a level of consistency. And, and, and that's, that's a lot of what we've been really working on. And, and a lot of what, for example, the, you mentioned the, the platinum status of the life science community, but also part and parcel with that is what's called Chapter 40 40 3D under MGL is about priority development sites. But a lot of that focus is around just predictability
and having our processes be able to be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Even if the answer is no, at least there's an answer. And it's, it's predictable. A lot of communities get caught with lack of predictability. And I think Natick was there previously. I think the town has come a long way with its permitting processes from a business friendly climate perspective. Once it gets through the process, I would argue we're one of the best out there. You know, our building department, our inspection services, our, our staff and CED do great work in just working with developers. It's just getting through that process that has,
has been a challenge for a lot of communities. I think it's a lot more predictable for Natick now than it has been in many years. And I think continuing to support that work, and it can be very broad. It's just about supporting initiatives that will continue to encourage, you know, development and redevelopment of Natick, you know, commercial areas. 'cause that is going to be where in the coming five, 10 plus years, especially Natick having, you know, a large retail sector and a relatively large commercial sector, we're going to have to be creative and we're gonna have to be willing to be flexible in our thinking.
Yes. And continue to improve our bylaws and regulations. To just continue to encourage that type of redevelopment is gonna be key. So I wouldn't necessarily target one area. I would just say, you know, broad, a broader statement like, and continue to support, I had it first Speaker 1: Second. Business friendly. Speaker 9: Yeah. Business friendly climate and improving our bylaws and regulations to, to to, to attract and retain, support economic development,
attract and retain good businesses. Okay. Something along those lines. Attract Speaker 1: And retain. Yeah. Improving our, sorry, I went blank. I I've got the last part, but I've got something missing between improving and the last part. Improving our bylaws and bylaws. Speaker 9: Yeah. Bylaws and regulations. Regulations Speaker 1: And procedures. Speaker 9: And procedures. Yeah. Speaker 1: What have you got? Award s Come on, Chad. GPT Speaker 9: My, my lawyer point was keep it broad because we don't know where the climate's going to be, even indeed, months from now or a year from now.
Speaker 1: No, indeed. I agree. Speaker 9: You have focused on alcohol policies. You have focused on restaurant policies. We have been successful at doing that work now it's about continuing to reform just our, our bylaws. And, and Amanda's doing an amazing job at it. It was highlighted in the master plan as a need. It was highlighted in our economic target economic development plan from 2017 as a need to create these predictable processes. And it's a lot of work, but we're doing it. And I give credit to the town for doing that and, and supporting that. Speaker 1: So the word salad continue to support business friendly climate, a business friendly climate,
and improving bylaws, regulations and procedures to support, attract and retain businesses. That's not Speaker 9: Bad. There you go. Speaker 1: Alright, Speaker 6: Now we good. Needs, needs a little vinegarette, but it's not word salad. Speaker 10: That's funny. Speaker 7: So what do you have for the revenue sources? Speaker 1: What did That's it. I took out, I, instead of saying specifically the Arlington commitment says, what, where is it? It Speaker 9: Says, pursuing new Speaker 7: Revenue, pursue new revenue sources. Speaker 1: Yeah. I, I don't know that we can pursue, like I can add that. I just don't know how Speaker 7: Well, I think that was in terms of the advocacy. Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Advocate for the Municipal Empowerment Act. Yeah.
Empowerment. Okay. Okay. So that's what I have for revenue. And then we're Speaker 6: Why don't you make the connection and just say, advocate and then to allow us to pursue new revenue sources, make that connection explicit. Speaker 9: There. There could also be, as we continue to look at some of our processes, transferring seconds, a good example, opportunities for revenue sources there that we haven't quite realized either. Speaker 6: Yeah, that's Speaker 9: A great point. That might be completely unrelated to the Municipal Empowerment Act. It just might be something, an example, not advocating for this yet, but an idea that's, that's starting
to be looked at as, for example, like a stormwater enterprise fund helps with our stormwater infrastructure. It's a revenue source that can be targeted and also put back into that infrastructure, kind of like our water and sewer enterprise fund. So again, there's a, we're a long ways away from that being something that Natick should consider, but it's a revenue source that could potentially be explored. Speaker 1: That is, that was on my list to ask you about the potential. That's a really good for a storm water, Speaker 9: A lot that goes into that. So by no means am I saying that we should do that. It's just something that is also out there as a potential revenue source
that I think is worth asking about. It might not be right for Natick, but it's something to at least explore. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 9: But there could be other things like that, that we want that could come up. Speaker 10: I feel as though we mentioned a few things in different ways. So like programs to enroll in. But what I'm getting at is seniors. Is there anything that we need to do in terms of the senior community? Because we've talked so much, especially over the last several months, about programs and tax deferral and property taxes. That if there anything that we need to do,
and maybe it's not senior specific, but just in the way of exploring the types of programs that, you know, native residents who are Speaker 1: So Speaker 10: Who, who need support. Speaker 1: So I've met with our communications director at Jay and about the commitment that I had said in the last override forum, which is that of our, of our town's 6,000, roughly seniors 644 filed for the senior circuit breaker tax credit at the state
level, which means they qualify for the tax deferral program. So Of the 644 that applied, only 25 are in the program. So I don't know if that's because the other 620 some odd don't know about it. So a woman reached out on Saturday to me on Facebook and said her, her text message, I mean, her direct message was, I'm confused, Catherine and I, I didn't know her before this. She said, is the override good or bad for seniors? So I said, here's my cell phone number. Give me a call. So I walked her through basically, you know,
with an override this will happen. I used the, the approved, whatever you call it, flyer that communications put together so that it was nonpartisan. So I said, this is what will happen if we have the override. This is what will happen if we don't have the override. And she said, I cannot afford to pay any more taxes. And I said, I understand that. And I said, could I ask you a question? Do you qualify for the senior circuit breaker credit? And she said, yes. And I said, do you know about the 2% deferral program? She said, well, I can't participate because I have a 401k
and I have savings account. And I said, we don't look at your assets. So she didn't know about that. So in that conversation, I did not have to know about any of her particulars. All I had to do was ask her a rote set of questions going, so is your home. I looked up her home online, 674,000. She pays roughly $7,500 a year. So that's $7,500 a year she's going to have. And I, I asked her, so talk to your, your heirs. She said, she has no heirs. I said, your house isn't a trust. You're gonna need your house, your trust documents.
Do you have a mortgage? I don't need to know the particulars. She said, I have a heloc. I said, you're gonna have to have the bank sign off. And then I said, send me your email address. So I sent her the application, copied the tax assessor, and gave her a list of everything she'd need. She called and spoke to Anne in the assessor's office on Monday, and then called me and said, I can't do it this year, by the way, it's due April one, because there's not enough time to get the bank to sign off. But she was so happy. And she said, 'cause I felt horrible for her. And she said, no. She said, I can, I can, I have time to put everything together. I already took the money outta my 401k to pay my taxes. So this one, you know, I'll go ahead and pay.
But going forward, she's, she's going to join the program. So I don't know if Jay is going to put together something, a mockup for us to look at that has a list of all of the resources for seniors. So water and sewer charge. The pre water, is that what it's called? I dunno what the, the water and sewer program for seniors. Yeah. Yep. I forget what it is. Means tested, but Yep. So it's not just about taxes. So it's, it's about all of the resources that are available. And then we're gonna put that in an envelope so it doesn't get lost in a flyer and send it to those 6,000 houses and see what, see what happens.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And I, I want to go try to answer the rest of your question, which is that, as far as I know, we have adopted every possible deferral program, Speaker 1: An exemption program, Speaker 5: An exemption program that general law allows, Speaker 1: Except the senior tax exemption, Speaker 5: Which is the one that we said might not be good for taxpayers. Right? Speaker 1: That is correct. But we should probably still look at it. We Speaker 5: Should study it. But pretty much we've adopted everything available in general law that veterans can take advantage of or seniors can take advantage of. Speaker 1: Disabled, blind, Speaker 5: Disabled. And so general law changes.
It's, it's a struggle to find other ways to help people who are financially struggling. Speaker 7: And once Jay puts that together, we also ought to bring it when we all go to the senior center for our office hours. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Speaker 5: And the farmer's market. Yeah. I run into seniors there too, Speaker 10: And we should leave it there so that they can access it, you know, whether we're there or not. Speaker 9: He's, he's working with the CSC staff as well. The can be senior center staff. So there'll likely be copies down there available for, for people. We're trying to make sure it's a multi,
Speaker 1: Multi-pronged Speaker 9: Media program. So it can be QR code or paper or on the website. 'cause we know different avenues, especially as we have a, just an aging population with varying degrees of, of technological skills that, that we need to have it in in those different multi, multiple formats. Speaker 5: Yeah. I have had conversations with seniors at the community center that do not have email addresses. Right. That's not uncommon. So there are people out there that the only way we're gonna get to them is, is you know,
through snail mail. Speaker 9: And then there are some that are fully, you know. Yeah. Speaker 1: Right. Yes. Virtual, one of the, one of the letters that came into the select board with regard to saving money is moving away from pensions and defined benefit to other types of retirement programs. Could you say a word on that, Mr. Erickson? Speaker 9: Sure. Yeah. In Massachusetts, we're actually bound by state law as a municipality to be part of the, the state's pension, not system,
but pension regulations and requirements. We have a Natick retirement system. I think there's like 107 retirement systems in Massachusetts or thereabouts. And we're just governed by those. Like we are required to, to be a part of that. I don't, I'm not aware of the, the, the few exceptions of state government that are not part of the state pension system are the quasi state agencies like mass development. But even the universities, state offices, all municipalities are all part of the, the program.
And so we're required to be, that's just not an option unfortunately for the town from a cost perspective. I also think if we were to do that and be the only town that would be out of it, it would actually be a, a disadvantage to the town. I, I, for one, probably wouldn't be working here, for example, because I have almost 20 years in the system. 'cause you can carry your service from town to town or through state government and back out. So, and I think a lot of the people that we have longevity with would probably want to be in a community that has that system. So it's a, it's a benefit. It is there comes at a cost. Although as an employee, we pay also into it significantly.
What we're actually having is a liability in our books now are prior generations of pension recipients that did not have the same amount that they're paying into it. But moving forward, a lot of the new hires are all paying at the higher rates that they're actually becoming a self-sufficient entity. Speaker 1: Are there any other commitments that you want discussed the board would like to discuss tonight? Speaker 5: That's a good list. Did you finish with the Arlington group and did you add the communication one that I Speaker 1: I did add the communication. Speaker 5: Just, I, I just wanna make sure we close the door on that. You know, those four, four
or five items that did come out of the Arlington? I Speaker 1: Don't think I have it opened again. Speaker 5: Well, so item C was about the Arlington High School and I think we can just drop that one. And item D was direct the town manager to continually look for budget efficiencies. We know he is doing that, but I think it's a good commitment to make. Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean some of those are gonna come back to you. Speaker 1: Yeah, right. I know. Can you read that again, Mr. Sydney? Speaker 5: Direct the town administrator to continually look for budget efficiencies that can produce cost savings in each department. Speaker 1: Got it. Got it. Thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah. The, the last one I, I think would be good to have, but I don't think we can include it. And that's the part about protect against future fiscal shocks and maintain this town's strong bond rating. But it talks about maintaining the financial reserves at a certain percentage. I mean, that's not, Speaker 5: I think that comes in through our, our principles rather than Speaker 7: That. That's not really our call either. I mean it's, you know, the town administrator's budget and it's town meetings decision. Yeah. Speaker 6: We influence it. We Speaker 7: Don't. Right. And like you said, that's through our financial management principles. So I don't know if, I mean, if there's a reason
to restate it as part of this, you know, maybe Speaker 5: I don't think, I don't Speaker 7: Think we did, we, we did mention that we're reviewing our financial management principles earlier on, Speaker 1: Right? Yep. Reviewing approval. Yep. Yeah, Speaker 5: I think that takes care Speaker 6: Of Yeah, you should be covered. Speaker 7: Right. But we could say something about, you know, the protecting against future fiscal shock shocks and maintaining the town strong bond rating. I, I think that that's, Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think we can commit to maintaining a strong bond rating if we don't control how money's appropriated, frankly. Yeah. Speaker 7: Yeah. That's hard. Speaker 9: Well, you kind of do.
Speaker 1: Okay, say more about that. Speaker 9: You're the boss of the town administration so we take direction from you on Speaker 1: No, what you misunderstand me. What I mean is, okay, we can, we can't tell town meeting not to raid the stabilization funds. Fair. Fair. Yes. So we have no control over our bond rating. We have little control Speaker 9: We set up. I mean, that's not rephrase that, that goes into bond rating. That's Speaker 7: Not, I don't think Speaker 1: That's, no, it's not the only thing. And Speaker 7: It's probably not even the main thing. Speaker 1: It's one of the main things. Fiscal Speaker 9: School management is a big part of it. And that's what we, Speaker 7: But that's different from our stabilization plus, you know, as you heard tonight, many
times don't even have them. Yeah. So it's, it's part of it, but Speaker 1: It's not, and many towns are double A rated. I mean Yeah. They're not so, Speaker 9: Or they take a different approach to, to keeping reserves. Speaker 1: Having reserves is an important part of our bond rating. Yeah. Speaker 9: It's not the only part, but it's important. Speaker 1: It's not the only part. It's definitely not the only part. And so we don't have no control. We do have control over our fiscal policy over the town administrator's budget. Not control over. But yes, we direct you with regard to the budget. So do you want to add that as a commitment? I'm, I'm ambivalent either way.
Speaker 5: I think, I think it, I think it comes in through our review of the financial management principles indirectly. There is another one we might want to add. And it goes back up to the commitment to look at the split tax rate Speaker 1: That's in here. She has it down there, Speaker 5: Which is there. But we want to also, I think make a commitment to study creating a tax recapitulation policy. Speaker 1: That's my next one. That's my next And last one is a tax recap policy. Speaker 6: Good segue, rich. Speaker 1: As as, as Ms. Wilger pointed out before it, it's largely governed by Mass General law.
But there are towns that set forth a specific process. I ran this by a couple of fiscal conservatives and they were very much in favor of it. Let me find, Hmm. It may make the annual fiscal reporting process much more formal and timely holding internal technicians and officials accountable to dates and workload periods. It may even help align and regiment the finance department so that the three major divisions can sync the responsibilities to the month year recording reconciliation and closing processes. Speaker 5: Well, not only that, but it could also, as part of that policy, could have us doing a deeper dive earlier,
which was another commitment we talked about making. So that would go into that policy is that we would do the deeper dive in, you know, September prior to the November actual recap. Speaker 6: Yeah, I remember Speaker 5: That. So I think, you know, maybe a subheading under that is study earlier review of, Speaker 1: We can just say re review a pot. Yeah. Review adoption of a pot of a of tax recap policy. Speaker 6: And then we can go into the detail later. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 1: That was the end of my list. Speaker 6: Good list.
Speaker 1: Thoughts, comments? Speaker 5: Sounds like a good list. Speaker 1: Okay. I will send this to Mr. Walsh to, actually I'll send it to Mr. Avi. Did I say that right? I never said his name. Port Pat. Speaker 5: Do you want to vote that we're gonna approve that? No, we Speaker 6: Should. Speaker 1: I'll read through them again. Review and approve all financial policies and procedures. Review and approve financial management principles. Undertake a review of the PL of a split tax rate. Adopt standards to move Natick from bronze to plat Platinum status from Mass Bio,
which makes Natick attractive to US. International companies. Register land. I need to take that outta word salad, but re register our business building our bi life sciences buildings in mass Econ mass 100. Finish the review of the trash and recycle problem to deter program to determine whether there are potential cost savings. School committee, select board, FinCon monthly meeting. I'll flush this out a little bit. Study whether to form a fiscal governance task force study programs and other municipalities that minimize impact on taxpayers, particularly seniors
and others with income challenges. To determine what would work based in Natick. Work with town administration to communicate current programs to seniors and other to residents. Advocate for the Municipal Empowerment Act to allow Natick to pursue new revenue sources. Continue to support business friendly, a business friendly climate, and improve bylaws, regulations and procedures to support, attract and retain businesses. Send a letter to Na Natick seniors to inform them of the programs that are available to them. To defray taxes or qualify for other, or qualify for other programs. Study the senior tax exemption program
to see if it would benefit Natick seniors direct the town administrator to continually look for budget efficiencies that can produce cost savings in each department. Review adoption of a tax recap policy and have one more. I think we should study the, the far stabilization fund. Agreed. Speaker 6: Thank you. I was just thinking that Yes, Speaker 1: I've asked for a copy of that report and no one can find it. There was a study group I've asked, I asked the chair and he said he might be able to put his fingers, his hands on it. But I haven't heard Speaker 6: Anything. Can, can we go a step further with that far stabilization fund and say and evaluate whether we can legally
move the balance into the community preservation funds. Speaker 5: And we should also review the 1 0 1 program. 1 0 1 stabilization fund. One Speaker 1: Second. Speaker 6: Yeah. Forgot that one too good. Speaker 5: Might only be four grand. But Speaker 1: What I'd like to say is whether the town can legally move the funds. Yeah. Because not just into the cpa but Speaker 6: Yes. Could go anywhere. Yeah, anywhere. Anywhere that matter. Yeah. Speaker 1: And review the Natick 1 0 1. Speaker 10: The one to one Speaker 1: A one to one Speaker 6: Technology, one Speaker 5: One stabilization fund for technology for the schools.
It's got about, I think you said about 40 808,000 I think. Yeah, I think it's about $8,000, $8,000, whatever. It's not a lot, but we should review. Well Speaker 1: We're, Speaker 5: We're eliminating it. Speaker 1: Looking for change in the cushions. So, yep. Speaker 6: I'm Speaker 5: Sorry. So I move that we as a board accept those commitments. Sorry, adopt those. I'm gonna say adopt those commitments. Speaker 6: I'll second that Speaker 1: I have questions. Yes. Speaker 10: How do we, are we gonna come up with a plan as to how to keep these commitments? Speaker 1: Yes, that is, that will have to be on the next agenda.
'cause we're gonna have to prioritize these. Yeah. Some things are low hanging fruit, some things we can just do. Yeah. So we're gonna need to prioritize them and come up with a work plan so that that will do it the next meeting. Okay. And Speaker 5: I would imagine some of them will end up in our annual goals. Speaker 1: Exactly. I think, I think that when we have right into, after the election, the board will meet to do the reorg and then it will have a retreat at which many of these will likely become select board goals. Thank you. That's awesome. Very good question. That was an excellent. Are there members of the public who would wish to weigh in on these?
Seeing no hands, we have a motion by Mr. Sidney. Second by Mr. Evans. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carries 5 0 0. Spring annual town meeting warrant articles. Are we reviewing those? Speaker 9: Yeah, the big, the big one to report on or for tonight is John can run through very high level the capital program. I believe I briefly talked about most of the other ones at the last meeting. And it's really about ta, the select boards, well let me
caveat that a little bit. Articles 24 and 25, which are citizen petition and CBRC articles. They're non town administration, nons select board articles. We don't have motions for those yet. So I can't provide you with any direction. Speaker 1: I see Speaker 9: Our amend article 22, which is to amend article 80 of the bylaws that is being worked on by town council. It'll be reviewed by the finance committee. I believe they're intending to do it this Thursday. I think town council is working on it today. Those Yes, she was. Yep. So she was working on it today with the team,
with the, the DPW team. Those are largely to ensure compliance with state regulations. So I'm hopeful that the board just supports those from a 'cause you do have to, you do have typically provided some type of report and recommendation to town meeting. So the intent there is for you to be supporting of those. They're, they're very tweaks to our current bylaw that deals with public water supply related more to when the state puts in place, for example a water restriction
because of a drought, we would then be doing the same essentially. Okay. It's more related to that. There's a couple other tweaks, but that's essentially kind of what the, what what we need to do to comply with our permit from the state to have a public water supply. And it, it's part and parcel with our connecting to the MWRA system as well. Okay. Community Preservation Act, I think I talked about that last time. That was a straight percentage of the 5% that's allowed under the statute for administrative purposes. The school bus subsidy this year.
The intent of this was really just to have it on there because we know it's typical on there for, for the town meeting to consider. We with the new school administration, with the override, we've incorporated with the school department the subsidy into their ask. Got it. So the intent that we're gonna ask this year is to seek no action on this. And then this will be sort of the, theoretically the last year that that's seen. But we wanted to make that very deliberate so that people didn't, people fully understood that. That's why we had it as an article this year. Stabilization funds and opep that'll follow the
free cash spending plan, which you've seen. So really no stabilization funds except for cap. But we'll probably do that as part of the budgeting process. And then Opep will be the two 50, I believe it's two 50 that was outlined in the free cash spending plan. The revolving funds. There's really not many changes. We did a, just a comprehensive review of the revolving fund bylaw to make sure we captured all the changes that we've had over the last couple years. 'cause we've made quite a few changes in the last couple years to make for more efficiencies within the organization. For example, the rec and parks revolving fund, which we
adjusted from one version to another version. There's really only a handful of changes there, which include increases to a couple of the items. So for example, DPW vehicles and equipment, we'd like to increase that by about $50,000. 'cause of the cost of things. With any of these increases, you have to have the money in those revolving accounts to spend them. So these are just maximums that were authorized to spend out of those accounts from town meeting. It doesn't mean if we don't have the money in there, we can't spend the money. So you have to have the money in there in order to spend the money is my point. We have one for community senior center activities,
which would be increased by about $25,000 to better match the actual expenditure of those funds over the course of a year. It's currently, I believe, at about 95,000 and we're increasing it to 120,000. We'd like to, anyway. We're seeking that energy efficiency and capital. I'm skipping over the ones that we're seeking no change. So everything else will seek no change. Energy efficiency and clean capital program would seek an increase of $150,000 to $300,000. That's because we're getting more funds in and we'd like to continue to support those projects. And these are great matching funds
to help leverage these dollars for program dollars elsewhere, which is great. Jillian and team are doing an amazing job there. Recreation and park programs, this is part of that shift of one type of fund to another type of fund. And we would like to increase that by $700,000, which better reflects the actual in and out of that program. Those program dollars. That's actually a pretty big one. 'cause we do process about $2 million a year in and out of those funds. That's what we're trying to match. Okay. That's all of our summer programs and other programs throughout the year. But the bulk of that is our summer recreation camp programs. Speaker 24: And just a another reason for having a high capacity,
we actually looked and saw where we were last year as we were moving from the D to the e and a half, which are basically the, the two types of revolving funds last year or kind of as we're looking to close out this year, we're about 101.65 million in terms of what we'll go through between the two accounts. And there's also money that we've been collecting over the years through user fees for replacement of turf. So we've been collecting funding for that. We wanna make sure we have enough capacity because that authorization limit is key.
If we don't have that authorization limit, we can't spend to that. So for that one time item that two, like if it was 200,000 that we were able to put towards the replacement of the turf field from fees we've collected, if we don't have that authorization limit, we couldn't do it. So it's important for us to have that high enough where we can do some of those one-time type items. Speaker 9: And then the final one is could the rail trail maintenance and enhancements com fund, which was established, I wanna say four years ago at $50,000 initially. And we'd like to increase the $75,000, which at again, part
and parcel with the revenue coming in from the fundraising efforts that for example, the yeah. Font has been doing. And then that goes back into maintenance and other projects on the trail. Speaker 13: Great. Speaker 9: So those, the stabilization account, none of those are actual project authorizations, it's just spending limits for the, for the folks in the public who are watching unpaid bills. We do have a handful of those. I don't have those for tonight. So if anything, just pause on those. Yep. They're relatively small funding we're seeing, we're catching some of those and a lot of, we're finding is actually quite a few of those date back to pandemic era
or just coming outta the pandemic era for Townside. And then also on the school side it's, it's, I think it's more the change of administration. They're catching more. Speaker 13: Okay. Speaker 9: So really Capital Article 11 is the final one just to run through tonight with John, if you have just a few moments just to, to hear his presentation. Of course. And this is really a, a recap of what he's provided already to the finance committee. You provided that to the full committee last Tuesday and got a, a full support from them as well. So this has been reviewed by the finance committee as well. Speaker 24: Thank you. So I'm just gonna share a couple of slides. I'm gonna pick and choose which ones I shared.
I'm not gonna go through project by project, but I will pause to kinda give a high level of the projects that we're looking for. But there's a couple of lead up slides that I feel are valuable that set the stage from the capital improvement plan to what we're looking at funding at the SPRINGTOWN meeting and also what's outstanding that we would look to consider for the fall. So let me just share my screen real quick. There we go. Hopefully it's a little bit bigger in the, in what you're looking at in front of you. But this is just an extract from the five yard capital plan
that was submitted on January 2nd. And it just shows by category the amount of dollars that were requested for projects. So the first bucket is general, which in encapsulates borrowing, stabilization, free cash, any other one-time funds that we might have. So those are all within Levy, roughly $17 million for requests in 2026 and then it goes up to 22 23, 22 22 for the out years debt exclusions.
We had a couple of projects in there that we identified when we were putting this together. The 2 million that was identified in fiscal year 26 was related to Memorial School as a consideration. Just 'cause it ends up in the five-year capital plan under one of these funding sources. Doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna fund it through one of these sources. But that's a starting point where we, we might consider certain types of projects, grants. This just identified a number of grants that we're anticipating getting over the course of the year.
This is where Chapter 90 falls our water and sewer and our golf course enterprise funds. So this next slide here, again, it takes that extract from fiscal year 26. And then I look at just the general and the enterprise funds. And at Springtown meeting we're bringing forward $1.2 million worth of projects, which is significantly lower than what we've brought forward in the past. Historically, we fund capital one third at Springtown meeting and two thirds at fall. It is typically heavier weighted at fall town meeting
I did work administration worked with the department heads and we really drilled down and had the conversation with everyone this year of, it's important that if you feel you will not be able to start a project before December of this year, that it needs to get deferred to the fall. And based on some of the turnover that we've had recently with some key people, key department heads that we've had, it's also important that we, our staff doesn't start and stop the process. So I also wanted to give them a reasonable timeline and a reasonable expectation of
what they could start planning for and moving forward. We also got a number of projects that are underway from fall town meeting. So from a capacity standpoint, this felt like what we could take on in the spring. That being said, we have about $12.2 million worth of projects that will will be seeking funding for it the fall. We will not have all of the funding we need in either scenario, either with a, a positive override or a failed override. And we've already identified about $3 million worth of projects that we will defer. The 12.2 million is really gonna have to be choices in terms
of, you know, what is going to fail and some of those items that are at their end of their useful life and should be replaced. We're gonna have to defer those. And just for everyone's purpose, deferring just means that we're pushing it down the road. So that $22 million that I showed for fiscal year 27, whatever we don't fund here, that's gonna be added into that. So I just think it's important for everyone to understand what that means. Related to the enterprise funds, we have really tried to look at anything that we wanna fund through retained earnings and basically retained earnings are free cash balances
for our enterprise funds. So our water and sewer enterprise fund has one and our golf course has one. Any project that is being considered for retain earnings, we wanna fund that at springtown meeting because when we're certifying our free cash, typically in that fall timeframe, we can't access those funds if the state is taking a look at 'em. And we've actually run into this a couple of times with the golf course where we've wanted to fund a mower in the fall. This was actually last fall, but because we were going through that per the process of certifying, we couldn't access it. So we've really tried to identify any projects
that could be completed over the course of the year that we would use retain earnings for and fund those in in the spring, even though it might be a few more months, which is a little different than our other strategy of trying to hit that December time lane timeline for a project starting. So this box a little bit lower down just shows the types of funding that we're looking to use for that 1.2 million. That's what we've identified for this year, 150,000 in reappropriation from prior projects that are done. And we can move towards a project, 544,000 in cash
and then 550,000 for general fund borrowing. And that is an ambulance that borrowing, even though we need the appropriation now to replace an ambulance that already has 145,000 miles on it, we won't see that ambulance for another two years. So it's really important that we get that started now so we can get that build and move forward. This next slide just shows it's a list. We don't need to run through everything, but these are the projects that will be under consideration for the fall totaling that 12.2. Sorry, I have a, I have like a
box over that number at the bottom. I think it's 12.2. I've said it it so many times. Speaker 9: 12.29 million, Speaker 24: 12.29. Yep. So, you know, if you look down at the bottom, some of our, our bigger projects are roadway supplemental, a number of vehicle and equipment replacement, emergency generator replacement. We funded design work over at our public safety building last year. But this is the money that would actually allow us to move forward and complete that generator replacement, some building and mechanical HVAC work. So these are significant projects where we'll have
to make some choices on as we lead up to fall town meeting and hopefully more one-time funding will become available. And our staff does a tremendous job of finding grants and some other opportunities. So we will obviously explore that first. I had noted we already have about $2.9 million worth of projects that we're already planning on deferring for for this year based out of that fiscal year 26 we identified spring, I showed you what we had in fall and we have a number of projects that we're already planning on deferring. So the biggest bucket out of that is our vehicle
and equipment replacement program. We're about $2.5 million worth of vehicles and equipment will not come forward at spring or fall this year. The challenge we run into when we do that is if we aren't replacing our vehicles at the end of their useful life, it's more costly for our equipment maintenance division to be able to maintain those. And the more that they, the older the vehicles are, the more time and effort has to go into that. So the, the older our fleet is, the more work that has
to be done from our team and we have a very lean team and the more costly the repairs are gonna be. So, and then, and Speaker 5: Then subsequently we don't get as much at auction, which means we're not rebuilding that revolving fund that lets us buy the parts to fix those old machines, right? Speaker 24: When, when you get into a vehicle, the way that we use them as heavily as we do at 10 years, it's not one thing you're replacing, you're replacing seat belts, you're replacing seats, you're replacing the frames on some of these vehicles due to rust and everything. So when you start having
to replace major systems within a vehicle, it's not one thing. It's multiple things and then you, you start chasing it. And, and this isn't to say that the effort of our team is not outstanding because it is, it's the reality of the heavy use that we put on our vehicles and the conditions we put our vehicles in with snowplow operations and things around those lines. And so this last slide just details the items that are moving forward at spring and I'm happy to stop there and just answer any questions, Speaker 1: Questions from the board. Speaker 9: If I can just make one quick note just about the deferred
projects to the fall. It's gonna be, I, I give John and, and the, the full team that helped inform this entire capital program. You know, Kenny and, and Bill Sprat and DPW team facilities, really all department heads full credit for being extremely, extremely mindful and just understanding on how we had to approach this spring. Part of the reason why we didn't, we needed to take this approach was because of the override and the, the need to understand what do we have to work
with once if and once, well just really once the decision is made by the voters, that'll really help to inform how we need to approach fall town meeting. And one thing to know about the fall town meeting, you'll see some of the bigger cost items are things that we even heard earlier this evening, such as the roadway improvement program this year is all set. So what you saw tonight when you voted on tonight is set that's funded by last fall, but this upcoming year could be impacted and future years could be impacted. Those are gonna be some of the, the, some of the, the items that we're gonna have to be reviewing coming into the fall town meeting as a team.
Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Any questions or comments from the board? Ms. Wil? Speaker 7: Just one. One quickie given that we, you know, heard our five year roadway improvement plan, the supplement in here that's listed is for th $3,200,000 and is at what is needed to complete the plan that we just approved. Or I, you know, usually we add, you know, usually it's two and a half million that we add so you know, Speaker 9: It has been increased.
Speaker 24: Yeah. So one of the reasons that it, we've been funding that supplemental at about $2.5 million. But from a forecasting and a planning tool, one of the things that has come up a number of times is looking at expanding our sidewalk connectivity and, and network and our multimodal avenues. So in order for us to do that, we're gonna have to have an increase in our budget. So that was reflective of adding additional sidewalks and looking at that multimodal connections
as we update our roads. Speaker 9: And I think it's also reflective of just the reality that it's costing more to do the same amount. So we started the 2.5 million supplement, I wanna say in 20 18, 20 19 timeframe. It got a little bit of a hit during one of the pandemic years just because we had to, but then we brought it right back up to 2.5 million. And that's reflective of how we've been able to improve the CPI, which you heard earlier tonight. But costs have also gone up. So part of the reality is that for us to do even the same amount, we have to put more towards it. And so that's gonna be something that we have to balance in future years. 'cause that's just part of the reality.
And, and it, it's just something even with and without an override, we're going to see impacts to that $12 million because we know we don't have the finances to cover that, but we need to have a fuller picture. And we, we to the John's point of we can't ask department has to start and stop projects. We had to give him a clear picture, you know, a month or two ago. So that's why we took this why John to his credit took this approach and the team took this approach so that we can best prepare for fall town meeting once we know the decision of the voters. Speaker 7: Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you very
much Mr. Marshall? Yes. Thank you Speaker 7: Mr. Marshall. Speaker 24: You're welcome. Speaker 1: Item G discussion of the 2024 fall town meeting warrant articles. I've been in touch with both of the chair Speaker 7: Before. Before we move on from up. Yes. Is this something that we will be voting on in, in terms of recommendations? Speaker 9: The spring annual time meeting ones? Speaker 7: Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh you mean, oh okay. I thought you meant the Sorry, go ahead. Speaker 7: Yeah, I do we plan on voting on these? I mean, 'cause some usually we pick and choose right? Which ones we wanna vote on. Are these all? Yes. So will this be on an agenda for a future meeting and if, if are we, if we're voting on them, I'd like
to see the motions, you Speaker 1: Know, so we're waiting for town council on Article 22. I I think we don't have the motion for 24 and 25. Speaker 9: We, yeah, we don't have them either. I don't think the sponsor has provided them yet. No, Speaker 1: No, no. I've checked with fin com on that Speaker 9: And I apologize. The article 15 motion is available that was already voted on by the, by the finance committee. We can get that to you. It's the standard language for CPA and appropriation of funds school bus subsidy is, we're seeking no action. So that's kind of the motion. And we can work on the final motions
on, I believe they actually, Speaker 25: Did they review their golden funds already or are we doing that soon? Speaker 24: Yeah, the motions for revolving funds we have those are done and those were supported by the finance committee. And I do have in the packet this evening, I do have the motions for capital that were in there. Speaker 5: I suggest we get them on a later future agenda. Speaker 7: Let's do it all at once. Yeah, let's do it all at once. But if the, yeah, I'm just saying that if we are gonna vote on them, you know, wanna make sure we have the motions. That's all Speaker 1: That sounds good. Discussion of 2024 Fall town meeting warrant articles. I've spoken with the warrant sponsors
for both each of these and explained that while they were referred to us in the fall of 2024, the board has not had the time to to take these up and they'll be taken up at a future time. The appointment of select board rep to the Memorial School Building Committee. I want to announce that I'm appointing Bruce Evans to the Memorial School Building Committee as a select board rep. Assume if if he is reelected, he served as a FinCon rep to the Kennedy School program, which came in $2 million under budget. And I would be really happy if he would agree to do that.
Assuming if you're, if you're not elected, then the next chair can pick someone else. We need to revote the author the LH authorization Mr. Clerk. Speaker 9: Yeah. So that, that section that you stopped reading, Bruce, you were supposed to read Speaker 1: Mr. Clerk. Can you read that? Ah, Speaker 9: So I printed it out. Speaker 1: That's, that's my fault. Fault. That's my fault. Yeah, Speaker 9: That's my fault. We were getting fever first texts from John saying can just getting the part of it. So read the whole thing. Speaker 5: Alright, resolved having convened in an open meeting on March 19th, 2025 prior to the SOI submission closing date,
the Natick Select Board in accordance with its charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorize the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The statement of interest form dated March 20th, 2025 for the Ridge School located at 41 Bacon Street, which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future regarding MSBA priority number five, replacement, renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating
and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility. Local elementary schools HVAC systems are 28 years old and at the end of their useful life, Natick public Schools needs to replace these systems within the next two years. Or risk failure that impacts educational programming. Further classrooms in the main building currently lack critical cooling, which impacts students' ability to learn and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting this statement of interest form the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance
or the approval of an application, the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the town of Natick to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. And I So move. Speaker 1: Second sir. Moved by Mr. Sidney. Seconded by Ms. Pope. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's 5 0 0. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, could you read the consent agenda? Speaker 26: We're reading. We're reading. You're on a roll. Speaker 5: Okay, we have six items. Item A, approve A Request to Occupy public way
for the Dana Chang Memorial Run Walk. Item B appoint John M. Carr is a permanent full-time police officer. Effective March 26th, 2025. Item C, approved transfer of common Victor licenses for McDonald's restaurants. Item D approved meeting minutes for October 30th, 24. November 20th, 24. December 11th, 24. December 16th, 24. December 18th, 24 and February 5th, 25. Item E approved banner request. Rotary Club of Natick for the Tour De Natick. June 9th through June 15th, 2025. Charles River Rotary Club for Scpa Palooza.
June 16th through June 22nd, 2025. The Natick Community Organic Farm for the Annual Farm Fest and seedling sale. May 5th through May 11th, 2025. Riverbend schools fall up in house. September 22nd through September 28th, 2025. Item F except the friends of the Navy Trails annual report. Is there anything anybody would like to pull? Speaker 1: No second Speaker 5: Hearing none items I move items A through F. Second Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney and prematurely seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?
Mr. Town Administrator? I'm asking John if he has any updates first. Oh, Speaker 24: When I presented in front of the finance committee the other night, I thanked the town staff for the work that they had done in the finance committee for the work that they did to review. But I want to thank all of you for the work that you do and the effort that you've put into it as volunteers. So thank you all. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Marshall. Thank you. Select board updates. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So move by Mr. Sidney. Seconded by Ms. Slager. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Call the meeting CL adjourned at 9 37.