Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the June 25th Natick Select Board hearing. We will call this session, this meeting to order at 6:04 PM and we will start with announcements. Mr. Erickson. Speaker 2: Thank you Madam Chair. Just a brief announcement, just to make note of a, a recent award that our finance division and really town of Natick received, I just wanna give, give big kudos to our talented finance division for getting the national GFOA or Government Finance Officers Association distinguished
budget presentation award for f for GY government, year 26 for our budget book for this FY 26. It's a award that really sets a standard for how budgets are formed and presented. It ensures that our budget is meeting, you know, national expectations and standards in the industry. This isn't the first year we received this. We've had it for the last several years, and they just keep, keep doing a great job down in our finance division with, you know, John Townsend, Gloria Huong, who really is the, the mastermind behind the budget, TN and the team.
So just a announcement that we see that reward, we're waiting for the official plaque. We actually do get a physical plaque and we'll try to get some up on the walls here in the select board meeting room. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Erickson. At this time, the meeting will move into public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on tonight's agenda, and it will be 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, this section of the agenda shall be listed limited to 10 minutes, and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the room who wishes
to address the board during public speak? Please raise your hand. Seeing none. I'll ask those online who are watching via Zoom. If you could raise your hand if you wish to address the board during this section of the meeting. Seeing none, we will take about a 10 minute recess while we wait for Senate President Spilker to attend or to arrive. And then we will move into the legislative update. And before we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, I'd like to ask Mr. DeJesus, who has his hand up, were you seeking to address the board in public speak
but didn't get your hand up in time? If you could unmute yourself. Speaker 3: Hello? Can you hear me? Speaker 1: I can hear you. For what purpose do you seek the floor? Speaker 3: I just wanted to talk about a, a request and a little bit about myself. Speaker 1: If this is for public speak. You have three minutes, so I will go ahead and start. You now. Go ahead. Speaker 3: Okay. I'll probably just take a minute. I wanted to say that I would like to see and have a parade about the city of Natick at that center area that we were just watching on the recess.
My name is Christian De Jesus. I am from WOR Massachusetts and I moved over here not too long ago. I am Hispanic and so far living in this city. I have been to the mall several times, been to the library a handful of times and been by the schools, been by some meetings and I'm planning on having goals for this city. I've been trying to make adjustments
and improve improvements for the health department, specifically about mental health because that plays a big key role in there's a day and age in this world with young people, with all this technology and elders passing things on with this technology and all this new advanced knowledge. So yeah, I just wanted to get myself known and out there and thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. De and welcome 10 Natick.
At this time, I'd like to ask all of those in the room who are able to stand for the pledge allegiance. In a moment of silence, Speaker 4: I pledge Speaker 5: Allegiance to include the flag, the United States of America, and to the republic for stands, one nation under God, individual liberty and justice for all. Speaker 4: Thank you, Linda. Speaker 1: Representative Linsky, Speaker 4: I'm waiting an invitation to come Speaker 1: Forward. Please come forward and senator, president, please come forward. Take a seat. We've got an extra microphone if you wanna move
it over so you can sit together. We didn't mean to segregate you. Speaker 4: We get along quite well actually. Right. Speaker 1: Madam President, would you like to begin? Speaker 6: Sure, sure. Good evening everyone. It's wonderful being with you. I appreciate the invitation to be here. Speaker 7: Oh, thank you. That helps. That's great. Thank you. Good evening. I really appreciate the invitation to be here, and it's always a pleasure to be with my friend and col colleague Dave Linsky, working really well together. On behalf of all the citizens of Natick, I wanna thank
the chair, the entire select board chair of school committee. Thank you so much, and the entire school committee and Jamie, it's always great. I mean, I have to say the close communication from the the town of Natick really makes a difference as well. We are aware of what the issues are here, so if something, particularly just for example, if something comes up, we're able to respond quickly through the State House to help, to help Naus at Natick. And I really appreciate that. Thank you for all that you do for the town of Natick as well.
Realize that it's not always an easy job to be on the select board or on the school committee or administrator either. Thank you. Just happy to share a few updates for, for the past few weeks and what's happening at the State House. Let me start with the real breaking news this week. I am very happy that the conference committee on joint legislative rules reach agreement on a new set of rules for the first time since 2019. There are buzzwords that, that you hear us say sometimes.
And in the beginning of the session in January, speaker, Mariano and I independently said we wanted to deliver rules and deliver more transparency, more efficiency to the legislative process. And I have to say that the new rules meet the moment. A moment when news is are accessed digitally and instantaneously, and when trust in our institutions is at an all time low. Unfortunately, our agreement draws on the best provisions
from both the House and the Senate and truly blends the House and the Senate proposed rules together, it represents our shared commitment to creating an efficient, transparent, accessible legislative process to bring people in. We want people to know what we're doing 'cause we are really proud of all that we're accomplishing. We made the calendar more efficient, required longer public notice periods for hearings, mandatory committee hearing, live streaming, and archiving the recording
and posting of committee votes, new requirements for bill summaries so that if you, you know, you don't have to read the 30 pages of a bill, each bill will have a public online bill. Summary and rules, ensuring we're timely access to conference committee reports. This is a win for the public and for transparency, also breaking news. Tomorrow the Senate will pass debate and pass a bill to protect, protect women's healthcare
and gender affirming care and better protect the providers performing this type of healthcare. This is exciting. We, we did the first blush at this a few years ago. Since then, we've realized that we need to better protect people coming here and living here seeking the reproductive care, women's healthcare, and gender affirming care. And this is a, a big thing for, for our, our commonwealth. Last week, the legislature agreed on a supplemental budget that invests $1.4 billion from the millionaires
tax that was passed a few years back into public statewide education and public statewide transportation Revenues from the millionaires tax out outpace our predictions. So with these sur surplus dollars, just for example, some of the things that will help Natick, we included $73 million for regional transit authorities, which will help enlarge the Metro West Regional Transit Authority, more hours, more locations and, and Fuller.
We had fair free for the regional transit authorities so that it should help expand the services and access to Natick and Metro West residents. We put hundreds of millions of dollars into special education to help cover the special education costs that we were hearing about from all school districts. Public hire, education and career and technical education. We're hearing across the state that people want more seats. So we, we've invested money to put more seats to create
and increase access to career and technical education. We also added $75,000 for Natick pedestrian and mobility improvements. And I included some funding for electric vehicle chargers for this community. And I, David can talk about other things. So this is good, really good news for the town and for the school district with, with funding. And I am very happy to report. This is sort of breaking news too. The House and Senate are very, very close
to agreeing on a fiscal 26 budget for Massachusetts. It's this, you know, the house passed their version April. We did ours in May, delivering support to communities and vulnerable populations. We pr we adopted an amendment to lower the cost of prescription drugs focused on education and mental health, and gave cities the authority, cities and towns, the authority to decide how many liquor licenses they have. So you wouldn't have to go
through the legislative process and approval anymore. We gave 225 to Boston figuring if that Boston couldn't get that many. Certainly if a town wanted to increase by a few, the town should have the right to do that as well. I know the board is specifically interested, the boards are specifically interested in educational funding and opportunities. I can't speak until we have a final budget in place, but, you know, we fought hard for education funding and continue, will continue to do so under the Senate unrestricted local aid, which have,
would have a 2.2% increase, which is what we projected the budget would grow for this year. So a 2.2% increase for chapter 70 Natick would get a 5.8% increase from last year, which is about 14 and a half thou million dollars in chapter 78. So hopefully that would be helpful. I again, added 700,000 for mental health funding for Metro S communities, which Natick would receive, could receive at least a hundred thousand dollars knowing
that our schools need this mental health. This would specifically go to Metro S schools and, and Natick schools would get a hundred thousand dollars from that as well. We increased funding for libraries and cultural councils and restored the funding for the healthy incentive programs, 25 million that helps farmers, farmers markets, and I know that's a big deal. Families and students and, and schools. I mean, it's, it's healthy food that we wanna support. So I'm really pla proud of coming off of last, the last session.
We had a historically productive last session when we cut taxes past major climate economic development, reigned in private equity in healthcare, and so many other areas. I I won't go into them all. I do wanna say though, that this comes at a moment when we are bracing for uncertainty from the federal government. I have to raise that. I am hoping that the US Senate comes to its senses and does not make the devastating cuts that the US House made.
They can pull back and, and curtail what's going on and take their constitutional power back. And I am hoping that they do. There's still hope. We are continuing to monitor Washington closely and we can't predict what they're going to do, but we will adopt, we'll adopt as best that we as we can. But I need to say that federal cuts will be painful. Just for an example, we get somewhere between 13 and 15 $16 billion from Medicaid funding from
the US government. They, we are predicting some of that. Even if they cut a portion of that, we cannot backfill that funding. And that will have a severe, painful impact on our residents and our healthcare providers, our hospitals, our providers. That will be devastating. The federal government is trying to get rid of the US Department of Education and Cuts. We get three, four someti, 5 billion. Some of it goes directly to the state, some directly to the cities and towns. Some of that has already been cut.
So we are looking and monitoring closely and we will try working with all of you and, and trying to adopt and protect our residents as best as we can. The Senate is not waiting. I announced a few weeks ago the Senate response Initiative in response to what is happening on the federal level. And as part of that, that initiative, we are working to protect our residents, defend our Massachusetts values, and help lead us through these dark time.
We've had hearings on how we can protect our climate. We've heard from the Canadian general console about the impact on tariffs and the fact that a lot of Canadians are in are not coming to Massachusetts. Tourism is gonna be down, European visitors will be down, other, other Canadians will be down. We've proposed a study on eliminating the sales tax for shovel ready housing projects to help builders who have put a red light and stopped building because of these tariffs.
They have put, the tariffs have put the project out of touch, out of reach for the developers. And so we're hoping that if we can get rid of the 6.25% sales tax, maybe the developers will put a green light back on these projects. 'cause housing is such an important priority right now. We are working so hard to increase our housing production and increase our housing units and these tariffs and the Trump policies are actually working in the exact opposite direction of, of that.
So we'll keep looking at that. And housing is one of the biggest priorities for the Senate coming up this session. We are looking as, in addition to the SHIELD Act, we're looking at other areas and data privacy legislation to keep the government from unwanted tracking of all of our movements from our devices. Having access to that. We have boosted our funding for areas that we know the federal government may cut in areas such
as our veterans, who would've thought our veterans would get major cuts and fired from jobs and have trouble accessing their, their benefits. We've boosted benefits and funding for veterans, for seniors, farmers for food, helping with food insecurity, residents with special needs. Our children, families are vulnerable populations. And we will continue to looking at what is, what is happening. There's very little the state government can do in a lot of the areas that the federal government is cutting.
But we will continue working and, and I believe it's important, we will not be silent. We've already been outspoken. And so both in terms of not being silent and taking concrete action with whatever bills we can, like the SHIELD Act, looking at getting rid of the sales tax. You know, anything that we can do. And with that, I, I invite you, if you have any other ideas as to what we can do as a Massachusetts legislature to, to fight some of this, please let us know.
Lastly, I wanna say on the horizon, I've committed the Senate to passing a ban on cell phones in schools before the next school year. It is such a distraction. It's an unnecessary distraction. It, I, I hear from so many people, it causes cheating in schools cyber bullying, and there's really no need for it. So we are bills, were heard, they're being reported out of the committee. I would love feedback from the school committee, from the select board as to what your thoughts are. There are different ways to do it,
but I think it's really important. School should be a safe, healthy place for students to make friends have fun and not have to worry about the cyber bullying and all the, the pressure from the cell phones. So I think that that's a really Im important piece of legislation that, that we need to take up and pass and we'll take up the Municipal Empower Empowerment Act. I know that there are pieces to that that may be important for Na Natick. So please, you know, when when we get it, we, we will.
But let let us know what are the pieces that, that you think are important and what are pieces that, that may not be at all. I think that there's a lot of pieces in there, and certainly we wanna do what we can to help. I'm proud the legislature agreed to extend hybrid public meetings, and I've committed for us to be looking at making that permanent. I think that that's in favor, that's important too, and I'm in favor of that. So in conclusion, you know, I wanna thank all of you for what you do.
I know everyone here and at home. I wanna thank you for your passion and for helping Natick move forward. It's a privilege to be in the State House and represent such a diverse, wonderful, vibrant community. I have to say, with everything that's going on, you're a model for so many others, and I thank you for all that you do to help make way Natick such a wonderful place to be. So thank you. That's it. Speaker 1: Thank you Madam President, representative Speaker 8: Linsky, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here and it's a pleasure to sit alongside my friend and colleague, Senator Spko from Ashland,
who thankfully now represents all of the town of Natick rather than just 60%. So it's, it's a real joy. Yes, it is. It is. It is. So I, I want to just, some of the spoke, went through a lot of the major pieces that we've done. I just want to highlight a couple of local earmarks that I expect will be in the final budget that we vote on in a couple of days. There are some earmarks to both Senator Spilker and I worked on that are gonna be gonna be very helpful. There's $50,000 for Natick Public Schools programming support, 30,000
for the Natick Veterans Oral History project, 25,000 for the Natick Service Council food pantry, something that I've been working on. And similarly, 25,000 for the place to turn Food pantry as well. There's 50,000 for the Honeywell and Murphy Fields. That's sort of a, that's been a priority of mine for a long time, ever since I was a little league coach. Most importantly, over 14 point a half million dollars in chapter 70 funds. In addition, in the fair share sub that Bilko talked about,
that was signed into law actually yesterday by the, by the governor. There's $75,000 for improvements at the West Natick Commuter Real Station and something, again, that's a priority of mine. There's $500,000 for METCO late buses, not just for Natick obviously, but that's something that I find very, very important in making sure their METCO students are able to fully participate in the full school day, which includes afterschool sports and, and programs. I also want to talk a little bit about, this is a thank you
partly, but it's not easy to be a public official or public servant these days either in a volunteer or professional capacity. So I want to thank all of you and all of the people on local town boards who serve. It's not an easy time to be in, in public service and we really need good people to stand up and try to do the right thing. Unfortunately, we take a lot of abuse. I'm gonna share something with you right now that not many of you know, Melissa Hortman was a dear friend of mine.
Melissa Hortman was the speaker emerita of the Minnesota House who was murdered because she was a member of the Minnesota House last weekend. And that has hit me hard, quite frankly, and it should hit anybody in public service hard. You know, we're all as public servants, we're all trying to do the right thing. And you know, people have a right to to peacefully disagree. They have a right to contact us, but, you know, we shouldn't have to put our lives and our families at stake
and at risk quite frankly for doing this. So I want to thank each and every person in the town of Natick who participates in town government in some fashion for the job that you do. It's not easy and that this town can't survive with what you do. Alright, we're happy to answer any of the questions that you put forth to us and we'll probably go back and forth. Yeah, Speaker 7: Yeah. If we can, as best we can. Speaker 8: We, we do, we, this is the 26th time I've got to do this, and about the 20th time that Karen's got to do this. Yeah. So yeah, Speaker 1: It is the 20th, 2000. Thank you both. I really wanna appre thank you
for taking your time to come out and, and speak with us and what, what we'll do going forward. The school committee is represented by the vice chair, Catherine Brunell, and we'll take turns going between select board members and Ms. Brunell to ask follow up questions. So at this point okay, I'd like to look to the board to see if you have a specific question you would like to ask and follow up. Then I will move to Ms. Brunell. Ms. Pope, Speaker 9: Thank you both for your service and for your courage in such trying times.
I, this might be a question that the school committee will share, but I just wanted to get clarification. I know that the chapter 70 funding, you talked about, I think 14 million, $14 million, is that right? But then there's the 50,000 you talked about for programmatic support. Explain how that works. Speaker 8: So chapter 70 is a direct formulaic, mostly formulaic, we'll say. Yeah. That goes into the, into the town budget that the town town meeting has to appropriate, obviously there, then there are certain local earmarks that the Senate president and
and I worked hard to try to include there. And those are administered through dsi, the Department of Education, elementary and Secondary Education that, you know, the, the school administration makes requests, they fill out a form and they get a check, and then they get to fill out what they want to do. And it's something that they, they're very good at and they know how to do it. So Speaker 7: You, you need to make sure that you request it though, otherwise it, it may not come Right. So that's why it's important to keep track of that
and, and ask for it. Yeah. And the, there's several things that Desi would be working with the town of Natick to allocate appropriate to Natick. Speaker 10: Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, Speaker 8: I, I wanna mention one other thing in the, that we neglected in the, in the fair share sup that we did yesterday in it, you know, obviously there's a lot of different line items in it, but there's $250 million for special ed circuit breaker on Yeah, yeah. That, that, but, and one other thing, there's $80 million in additional chapter 90 funds.
Right. So Natick historically gets around 1.3 million a year in chapter 90. Obviously this will be distributed by formula on top of that. So I think that's good news for Natick and for all the rest of the towns Speaker 7: For roads, bridges, culverts, anything that would help with that. Speaker 10: Ms au Thank you. I have a list of questions compiled from other members, so I'll just ask them off and on with other members. Thank you. The first one comes from our administration. So the circuit breaker is a special account that's set up through the state funding.
There's a request to see if something like that fund could be set up for transportation reimbursement for homeless students. And it's not vocational students. I get that. Speaker 7: It, it's not a separate fund. It's paid through the general fund. Every year there, there is no separate fund to, to, to mirror for, for anything. So the circuit breaker comes out of the general fund like the other items. Speaker 10: I see. So when it comes to the school department, it's, but it's specifically earmarked as circuit breaker money?
Speaker 7: It, it might be, they figure out it's retroactive because they figure out what was last year, if I remember correctly. So, and then it's sent to the, the city or town, it would be sent to Natick and that's the appropriation that goes to the town for, for the circuit breaker. Speaker 10: I see. And but you're saying from your end, it's all, it's on the, in your general fund? Correct. So it looks different to us, but to you it's from the same fund. Correct. I see. Yeah. Do you know, do you have any more specifics about the circuit breaker then and how Speaker 7: That Speaker 8: Well, let me, let me say this.
This is, I, I saw your question. Yeah. This was the first time that I had ever seen that. Quite frankly, I would appreciate it if the finance director from the school department could contact me and maybe explain this to me a little more. And this would be the type of thing, if a tweak needs to be made, we could put it theoretically into the Municipal Empowerment Act. If a tweak in the accounting procedure needs to be done, that would be a natural place for us to do this. But if you could Speaker 7: Contact me, but there's no fund, there's no, there's no special fund or, or anything. It Speaker 8: Sounds like an accounting issue more
Speaker 7: Than anything else. Speaker 10: Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Thank you Speaker 1: Board member Ms. Slager. Speaker 11: Thank you. Thank you both. Appreciate the overview and appreciate your attendance here tonight. It's, it's wonderful to see you and, and to hear what's going on on Beacon Hill. This is one of the questions that maybe you don't have an answer to that was given, but what steps can the Commonwealth take to ensure that the 9 27 project is completed? You know, it is federally funded and 80% federally, 20% state. But it, it is going to be a huge disruption to our town and,
and also probably to, to neighboring towns. So we wanna make sure that there won't be any interruptions in this project and that the funding will continue. Do you have any update on that? Speaker 7: Yeah, I think the funding is allocated already and I think it's been started already. So I I, you know, we can stay on top of it, but they, the, the agency is aware of this and, and our keen interest in this, and I think that it is moving forward and should be completed by Nick Spring. Speaker 8: We, we actually posed that question at the public meeting at Wilson a couple
of weeks ago, and the people from the highway department were adamant the money is physically here. So unless somehow the federal government tries to claw at back, I think we're, I think we're good to go. Right? Speaker 7: But the funds are secured, these are funds, these funds for this project are not discretionary by the federal government, which is good. Which means that they're, they're appropriated, they, they're already here, you know, they're, they're, they're set. They shouldn't be able to take them back. Speaker 11: That's good to know. Thank you. Speaker 1: In follow up to that, if there are cost overruns,
where would we look to, if there are cost revenue, if, if the project has cost rev overruns on, on the particular budgeted items, where would we look? Speaker 8: This is a design build contract. It is. So yeah, it's, that's a hard, that's a hard scenario. I think that falls on the contractor, to be honest with you. It Speaker 7: Falls on the contractor and if, if for some some reason there's extraordinary circumstances, DOT does have some extraordinary sort of, you know, funds in that they're allocated for, for special circumstances.
So I don't foresee that either as being a problem. Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Yeah. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 10: Thank you for addressing the concern that people have around the federal government pulling back money and the uncertainty there. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but several members asked questions related to that, specifically about mental health supports. But in general, were federal funds to be pulled back from our school districts. Is there anything you anticipate the state doing to help backfill or create opportunities through grants
or other revenue sources so that it's not left on the, in the hands of the local authorities or in local citizens? Speaker 8: I know that this is something that the senate president and I share a passion for, which is mental health supports in public schools. There's probably no issue that both of us feel more strongly about than that. And I can assure you, we will do whatever we possibly Speaker 7: Can, right. As best as we can. And that's why we, we've increased the statewide supports for social and emotional learning, mental health supports in schools
by millions of dollars. And we, we've included an earmark, a local, a priority in, in the budget of, as I mentioned, that Natick would get a hundred thousand. But I do wanna be clear that if the federal government cuts billions and billions of dollars from our budget, we don't have the money to backfill all of it, or a huge portion of it. I, and I just think people need to be clear and, and, you know, contact your, our federal delegation and push them to, to fight this.
It's really important. And our revenue, we don't know what our revenue will be next year. We have a surplus right now, but most of that is from either the millionaires tax or capital gains, which can't be used for general operational on a, on a yearly basis either. So it, it, it will be painful. Speaker 10: Thank you. Speaker 1: Members of the board, Mr. Sidney, Speaker 12: Thank you both for being here. We really appreciate it. So these, one of couple of the questions that were sent to you were curious about the status of
the Assistant Fire chief bill and our special act. If you could fill us in on those. I'll Speaker 8: Let you take that. Yeah, they, they're both filed in the house. They've both had their public hearings. The clock is now ticking on that. They've got 60 days to report those out. That's will bring us, I think the end of July, the beginning of August. I've talked with the chairman of each of those committees and I expect that they'll be reported out favorably pretty soon and we'll get 'em to the house floor. Speaker 10: Ms. Brunell, thank you. Speaking about projects
and things like, you know, infrastructure not for FY 26, but is the legislature perhaps in the future looking at additional funding for school capital or town buildings to extend the life of existing buildings? We know that when repairs or replacements are not made, then that shortens the life of any building. So in Natick, I think that's a concern certainly for the school committee and the age of some of our schools, even with the generosity of the MSBA process happening right now.
Speaker 7: Right. Yeah. We did start M-M-S-B-A accelerated repair program and we started a commission we put in for the, a commission potentially to look at repairs specifically. So we'll see how that progresses. But we're hoping that those pass. Speaker 10: Thank you. I think that, I think our board would support that. Speaker 7: Great. Speaker 10: Members of the board, Ms. Pope? Speaker 9: Yes. Representative Linsky and Senate President SP wanted to know about your top priorities for this legislative session.
I'm very grateful for the breaking news that you gave us. And, you know, some may say it's obvious, but I would love for if you could articulate that for us. Speaker 8: Do you wanna go first? Sure. Speaker 7: Okay. Education will continue to be a top priority as it has since the beginning of my, my career as a legislator. It's expanded though, and I explain it as the interest being from cradle to career. So from early ed in care to K to 12, which is why I originally ran for the legislature years ago. And now public higher education.
I am very proud of Mass Educate, a legislative initiative for free public community college for our residents. We also have put a lot of funding into supports for those students to make sure that those that come that never saw themselves as possible at being able to, to attend college so that they can stay in school. We've also expanded tremendously our support for our state unit, public state universities and our UMass system. So that really, if somebody gets a Pell Federal Pell Grant
with the Senate and house working together, the state support, their four year college would be free. We've heard for so long how people wanted to lower the school debt and help make people it more accessible. And we have accomplished that in Massachusetts. I'm very proud of that. If we continue more work, we need to continue to work on early education and care reform to enable parents to be, to be able to have seats in, in early education and go back to work if they want to,
and stabilize the, the whole system. It's a workforce issue as well as, as support for, for the whole system. Housing remains a, a really top priority for, for me in the, the Senate. I'm very proud of the $5 billion housing bond bill we did last session. It will dramatically increase the number of housing units in the state, but that takes time. You know, it takes time to permit and build and, and the whole process. We need more housing now. So I've instructed the senate chair of the housing committee, Senator Seer, to go
around the state, find out what are the barriers to creating more housing now, what can we do? Nothing is off the table looking at affordable housing, workforce housing, market rate housing and, and what can we do for rental, for, for construction of homes, first time home buyers. It's any and everything we need to act otherwise, our economy, our quality of life will suffer for, for lack of housing right now. So education, housing, healthcare is another major,
major priority. I've had discussions the last few days and also working with the, this the chair of healthcare finance, pri you know, primary care is an issue. How many times I've heard people trying to find a doctor as a primary care physician, and then once they find somebody to make an appointment, it's sometimes six to eight months. That's not acceptable. We need to, to fix our primary care system here in Massachusetts. And it's, and there are things that we can do to increase accessibility
and we need to lower the cost of healthcare. So those two areas of healthcare, increasing access and lowering the cost will continue to be a priority for, for us. Then there's the, the cell phone ban. Those areas will take a little bit of time. The cell phone ban, I feel is something, talk about our students' mental health. That is such a, such a terrible thing for them to have in school and we need to take action. I think as adults, we are responsible to help them with this
and, and it can't wait. Thank you. Speaker 8: I think that from Senator Spilker, you, you just heard sort of the breadth of issues that we as state legislators have to deal with. And the reality is, is that all of those issues and so many, many more are also directly affected by what I'll call the dysfunction of Congress in Washington right now. Because it's all, quite frankly falling on the states to try to solve these problems. And that's the reality.
And I think a lot of you have heard me talk about what I say are the three different jobs of a state legislator. You know, that's the legislative job. The second job is representing the cities and towns in our districts as we went through just a few minutes ago with state funding and state projects and state grants and making sure that all of you in municipal government, you know, gets what you need and what you deserve. And then the third part of the job, and you've heard me talk about this, is the constituent service job
because that's where I can really find out what's going on in my community, quite frankly. And this, I'm gonna tell you something that's scares me. My office has really noticed an uptick since the first of the year in unemployment claims for people who live in Natick and, and Wayland in my district, and problems with them getting unemployment benefits. The Massachusetts economy, as all of us know are, is highly dependent on higher education, healthcare and pharma and biotech.
All of those, those Speaker 7: Sectors, meds and nss, they're called meds and ns, meds Speaker 8: And ns. All of those are deeply affected by what's going on in Washington right now. And the way that we get affected, quite frankly, is that when one of our constituents works, you know, at Harvard University or the Mass General Hospital, which by the way, mass General Brigham is the single largest recipient of NIH grants in the country. Okay. When those grants get cut or,
or healthcare funding gets cut or higher, ed gets cut, that plays out right here in Natick, Massachusetts when somebody loses their job and has to file for unemployment benefits. So these are the things that keep us worrying and up at night, quite frankly. Speaker 12: Right. Yeah. And by the way, it's worse than Mass General Brigham, it's also Children's, which is number two. Right? Right. And Beth Israel Deaconess, which is number three in NIH grant recipients, Speaker 7: It's, yeah, it's many of the hospitals. And this is why it's hard to project, if we get the cuts, how that will impact our state revenue.
It's not only the cuts, but then how many people will be laid off and other areas of revenue so that what we take in for next year, the year after can decrease as well. And we'll have less of a pot to distribute to cities, towns to residents and all of the, the programs that we all hold near and dear. Speaker 10: Thank you Ms. Brunell. Well, speaking of meds and eds, the vaccine bills that are in front of you, can you speak about that and where those are?
Speaker 8: They don't have a, they, they haven't had their public hearing yet, I don't think before the public health committee. There's a number of bills being filed. I'm a co-sponsor of, I will say the mandatory vaccination side of things. But we hear, just so you know, we hear from lots and lots of people repeatedly on both sides of this issue. And it's not being helped, quite frankly, by what the federal HHS is doing. Speaker 7: Definitely not. Yeah. I'm a believer in the science of, of vaccine. Yeah. So, yeah, I I think there will be a debate on,
on this issue though, so Speaker 10: We'll see. Thank you. Thank you. You have a timeline, do you think, beyond the debate? Speaker 7: No, I mean, we can keep track and try to, to, to let you know when they do come up and, and what happens. Speaker 10: Thank you Mr. Evans. Speaker 13: Thank you Madam Chair. Going back to affordable housing, one of the things that we see in Natick, like many other communities, is a lot of tear downs of existing properties. And this really often removes the, the, I'll call 'em starter home
to mid market homes, puts them out of the reach we're built. We're, we're getting really good at, as a town of building million dollar homes, most of us probably couldn't afford to buy our homes if, if we had to buy them today. A lot of that ties back to the subdivision control law, which to my knowledge hasn't sub been substantively changed in decades. What can we do to, we we're doing a reasonably good job of
multi-unit housing and accessory dwelling unit type things. But what can we do on top of that to encourage developers to not build the biggest house they can possibly fit on a property? Speaker 8: I don't have a good answer for you, Bruce. Speaker 7: I don't either. 'cause it's basic, it's a market. It's Speaker 8: What the market drives Speaker 7: And if they own the property, they generally have the right subject to town and, and some statewide limitations. But to build on it what, what they want. Well think about that. Yeah. Speaker 13: Yeah. Just I appreciate that.
There is a very quick follow up to that. One of the characterizations, or I guess the rulings on section six six findings is it can't be substantially more detrimental to the neighborhood, which is, is highly subjective. And if there's a way to tighten up how that's defined so that a zoning board has more to hang their hat on to be able to refuse a,
I'll call it an outsized house in a, in a given neighborhood. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 10: We Speaker 7: Will ponder that. Speaker 13: Thank you Speaker 10: Again. Perhaps related, the question here is about the state climate schools and if you believe, if you see in the future, again, not FY 26, but the legislature taking action to fully align the MSBA funding with the state climate goals. Do you see any, Speaker 7: I mean, we have done some, I I I'm not certain that, I don't know if there are any bills concerning
that we can check into that, but you're actually the first person that has ever asked me that. Right? Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 10: Well, I can't take credit for the question again. I, I wanted to mention member Matt Brand is here in the audience and also Jamon Patel from the school committee. This was a compilation of, of questions. Okay. But Speaker 1: I just wanted to let the public know and, and others who are interested, that you can follow bills and laws by going to ma legislature.gov. You can create your own account so that you can follow bills, you can put in Natick,
you can put in climate change, you can put in MSBA and it'll pull up everything including the hearings and events. It's a really important tool for all of us to use so that we are fully aware of what's going on and able to, you know, communicate with our legislative delegation about specificities and also follow hearings. So that's ma legislature.gov and you can create an account. Right. Speaker 8: All all hearings, by the way, are now live streamed Speaker 7: And they're archived. So if you miss it, you can archive it and, and watch it afterwards as well. So I do just wanna mention too, that I have, I'm blessed,
I have my district director, Susan Nichol here for all of my towns who I know has interacted and worked with, I think most of you, if not all of you, and talk about when, when David talked about constituent services, that is an incredibly large and important part of what we do as well. And to say to the public that no issue is too small or too complicated, we will try to help you with whatever issue it is. And we, we do sometimes, I I never, before I was a legislator, I never would've thought
of calling my senator or representative about anything. You know, I, I never would've thought of it. But it, this is an important role that we play. Sometimes it helps to just cut through red tape. Sometimes we can connect you to somebody in an agency to help get you an answer a little faster. We will, at the very worst case scenario, listen and, and try to try to help as much as we can. Speaker 10: Thank you Ms. Speaker 11: Slager. Thank you. This one is a little tough. I recently spoke to someone who is a legislative aide
not working for either one of you. She's in her mid twenties. Although she is an American citizen, many of the people that she interacts with are not. And she has personally guaranteed with a number of people that she knows to take guardianship of their children in the event that they're the parents that, that she knows are detained by ice. And it's just heartbreaking that that's what it it has come to for her. So I'm wondering, what are you seeing
and what are you doing in your offices and what is a legislator legislature doing to help our citizens that are concerned about potentially being detained or even, you know, citizens that are potentially going to be arrested just on the basis of, of, of their skin color. So what, what's going on, Speaker 10: If I may add to that, the, the school committee had a very similar question because students will stop coming to school, have stopped coming to school because of this fear from immigrant families. So we have a very similar question and it's a real concern,
Speaker 7: Right? Schools and, and community places, people are not students and adults are, are not coming anymore, unfortunately. And I'll let David also answer 'cause this is very complicated. Yeah. And we as a state states do not have much control over immigration that is expressly put in our constitution. It's a federal issue. And we can't stop ice, to be honest with you. We can, we can help residents, we can, if a situation like that comes, maybe legal aid can help them get the guardianship papers
in, in line so they feel more comfortable. It, it's a heartbreaking situation for many families and especially when they don't know what's gonna happen or when and if or, or any of that. But we, we don't have control over ICE and immigration. We have been very outspoken with our federal delegation with contacting the, the federal authorities. But there, there's not a whole lot we can do, but help the families as best as we can to,
to get them set up as well as if something happens, they should certainly contact us and their federal delegation as well to get assistance. I don't know. Speaker 8: Yeah, I I I mean this is heartbreaking, Linda. 'cause I'm, I'm hearing those stories from all over Massachusetts, but all over the country as well. And it's unfor it's unfortunate, but this is what where our country is right now, we've both been very supportive of putting more funding into legal aid services, Speaker 7: Right.
For, for folks in these situations. Speaker 8: We have, but we know it's not enough. Right. And, you know, we, it, it, it really is heartbreaking and this is not what America is supposed to be about. And I'm hoping that, you know, and we've been hoping for this for decades, but the answer to this is to get congress to do comprehensive immigration laws reform. Yep. Speaker 7: This is, again, them pulling back their power, you Speaker 8: Know? Yeah. It really is. Congress needs to get on this and they've refused to act for decades now, quite frankly.
Right. And this is what it has wr Speaker 7: And they were close just before the election and then unfortunately before, you know, the Trump asked them, told them not to, not to pass, to pass it. They were very close. Right. He wanted to make it one of the biggest issues in the election. And he did. Right. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, do you have another question? Speaker 10: That's all of the questions I collected from the members. Does anyone else? No. And also I wanted to thank assistant superintendent Sue Baloni is here with us too. Okay. Thank you very much. You have a moment afterwards? Very much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Susan. Thank you Karen and David, Speaker 1: Members of the board, Speaker 9: Just thank you, thank you for your, you know, honesty,
transparency, availability. You have heard the issues that we're challenged with and we know that you all are, you know, see that are challenged with other issues that are beyond that. And it's just, it's, it's critical, especially this last one that we talked about. And so it's critical that we're able to continue to overcome these hurdles. And so thank you, thank you, Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 8: And thank you all, all for your service and for your invitation tonight. Yes. Speaker 1: Actually, we have a few more questions. I wanna let Mr. Erickson, did you have a question or a comment? And then I have a few Speaker 2: Thank you. Just a quick question and I won't be too long.
But first, thank you obviously for coming and for your partnership. I think I talked to your teams sometimes weekly, sometimes daily. I know Susan extremely well and Dennis and, and well you're, you've had a couple change in your office, but met them just last week here in town hall. But thank you for the partnership. It's been really great. It's critical. One, one question I had. So municipalities, especially Massachusetts, just given the high cost of living and, and, and, and just the, the economy here, you know, we we're strapped
with some challenge of finding high quality people even just work for the communities. And that, I'm sure that's true on the school side as well, just given the, the challenge of hiring teachers and, and, and quality people to work in the school system. But one thing that we're looking towards and that we've actually done successfully on a number of occasion is partnering with our, with other municipalities and just regionalization in general. So just recently, for example, Natick and the city of Framingham have partnered to create a regional dispatch center. Right. Still not up and running yet. Congratulations. We're still working on that. So, and then we've also signed on a regional housing consortium through Concord
with a number of communities. What in the maybe upcoming legislative agenda or maybe I can give you some ideas Yeah. Outside of this meeting to continue to look at regionalization. 'cause it's a way to do more with less essentially, or do more with the same. It allows us to do similar services and there's a lot, a lot of services that we are all mandated or even or similarly provide to our constituents across the spectrum of municipal governments and maybe even in the school systems that we're mandated to provide that it really could be more regionalized and giving the tools
or at least breaking down some of the barriers to that would be extremely beneficial to, to allow communities to do more of that. Especially in Massachusetts where we really don't have much, at least, especially in Natick anyway, form of county governments anymore or any other things that could almost have that regionalization. Speaker 7: That's a really great observation. And as you're speaking, I I think of sometimes when there's hardship, people are more open to changing the way they do business. And that's been part of it in the past. Cities and towns don't wanna give up their autonomy, whether it be the school district or municipal services and programs.
But with, and as things are getting more expensive and times are getting tighter and tougher, there may be more opportunities for that. So we can certainly look at what vehicles there may be to help strengthen that. So if you have ideas, let's con continue the conversation. Thank you. Speaker 1: I had a question and then I was just gonna speak on the Municipal Empowerment Act. Our board recently sent a letter to both of you with regard to how certain aspects of the Municipal Empowerment Act would, would be helpful to Natick.
But my first question is that since 1980, the Commonwealth has not raised alcohol taxes on the excise level. And so due to inflation, that revenue has lost 74% of its value. And at, at a time of real fiscal constraints. I wanna point out to members of the public that our beer excise is 11 cents a gallon, which is the 44th in the state in the, in the United States. 44th out of 50, it's the lowest in New England. Wine is the lowest in New England except for Vermont 32nd overall and distilled spirits,
the excise tax is lowest in New England except New Hampshire. And so it seems to me that this is an opportunity ripe for especially the, the associated healthcare costs that arise due to the use and misuse of alcohol. So I'm wondering why there hasn't really been that I can see an effort to since 1980 to raise taxes on And, and for those of you don't know, when you buy alcohol, you don't pay tax at the register. It's paid at the distributor level. Speaker 7: But we did have the sales tax repealed. Right. We did have a sales tax repealed but ballot initiative in 2010.
Speaker 8: This is, that's a tax that unfortunately voters hate. I will say that there are two, the two most hated taxes are sales taxes on alcohol and then the auto excise tax. That's Yes. Clearly. What, what they, I mean certainly it's something we can look at if we need revenue, but I can tell you people aren't lining up and asking us to raise those taxes, Speaker 1: But they also don't see it at the register. Right? No, that's right. I mean, it's not something that, and and even a small increase could be billions of dollars of revenue at a time when we desperately need it.
So I would encourage the legis legislative delegation to look into that as a possibility. But Speaker 7: Okay, we will, Speaker 1: You're right that, I mean there are taxes and they do have a hierarchy of how much people hate them, Speaker 7: Which most of them are pretty high. Speaker 1: Most of them are, yes. There's, Speaker 7: They want the services, there's, they want, you know, but they don't want, yeah. There Speaker 1: Aren't a lot of taxes. We're running out and embracing with regard to the Municipal Empowerment Act. The board has identified several proposed areas that would benefit Natick. The increase to local meals and lodge taxes. Natick brings in between a half a million and a million dollars on lodging, which is one of the,
the higher amounts that you know, is, is in terms of like assessing towns regionalization would be helpful with, especially with regard to assessors, regional boards of assessors would be really helpful. The changing the post-retirement or allowing temporary exemptions to post-retirement employment status to allow for experts who are retiring. And we don't have a groundswell of people, engineers, finance officers, assessors
who are going into the public sector. So that's something that would, would help. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 1: And I think allowing up to 5% local option motor vehicle excise surcharge would be helpful. I don't know that it's something that we would necessarily adopt, but having that in our toolkit and then the proposed new property tax exemption for seniors that will allow, with the increase in taxes, would allow the most vulnerable and seniors on fixed income to be exempted out of the levying of those. So those types of things would be helpful for the Muni, for,
for Natick to have in its toolbox. Speaker 7: Okay. That's great to know. And we will keep that letter in front of us when we work on the bill. Thank you. Speaker 1: Well, I wanna thank you both for coming out and spending an hour with us of your time and being so candid about, you know, the challenges that both of both the House and the Senate are facing and the work that you're undertaking to serve the towns that are in your, your districts. And thank you and the state, the commonwealth, and thank Speaker 8: You. Thank you. And, and we'll both I'm sure take this opportunity to just encourage any constituent who has an issue or a concern to reach out,
email, phone call. We're both incredibly accessible. Speaker 14: Right. So, Speaker 7: And thank you again for being such great partners. Really. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you so much. Thank you. Speaker 7: Thanks Speaker 1: Guys. Take care. We're gonna take a two minute recess. We are back. The next part of our meeting is appointments. The first set of appointments is the Board of Registrars. We're having interviews for one three year term expiring March 31st, 2028. We have two candidates for members of the public who wanna understand how this works. The represent the Democratic Town Committee and the Republican Town Committees put forward candidates.
The board of registrar is consists of the clerk of the, the town clerk and three members who are appointed by the select board. So at this time, I'd like to ask Michael Vidor to come to the podium. If you could introduce yourself, say why you'd like to serve and tell us a little bit about yourself. We have your application. Speaker 14: Great, thank you. Yeah. I'm Mike Zer. I have lived in Natick for 16 years, precinct nine. Throughout that time, on
and off I have been on various committees of the town in an appointed role. Most recently on the Town Governance Study committee. I was also a town meeting member for a brief period, and I am a longtime member of the Natick Town Democratic Committee. So when they approached me about possibly applying for this position with the Board of Registrars, I thought that would be a, an interesting
and rewarding way to continue my public service in a, in a way for the town. I have an interest, as you know, I think everybody does in upholding the integrity of elections, improving public trust in the process. Transparency. So I think this would be a good fit and I have learned a bit about the position. I think it's something that, that, as I said, would be, would be interesting and, and rewarding
and something that I think that I could handle. So I'm happy to talk more with you about it, answer any questions you may have. Speaker 1: Thank you. Members of the board. Any questions? No, no. Thank you so much. Okay. Speaker 14: Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Debbie Shaw. Speaker 15: Hello. Speaker 1: Hello. Speaker 15: So I'm Debbie Shaw. I've lived in Natick seven years. I'm from the Midwest. I, I'm retired about three, four years now. And I started volunteering in town. I'm currently on the Council on Aging,
which I've seen a couple of you there, which it's been a rewarding experience. I've also, years leading up to my, I served as one year as replacement registrar this past year. And prior to that I had worked in the polls a couple years out in the polls and then also in the office with sorting and working with the ballots. So I've seen the sides of processing. And so when I was approached to be a registrar replacement, I, you know, was very interested in seeing this side of it. And so the past year has been very interesting.
It's been kind of a little bit of a learning curve 'cause there's a lot to it that you don't quite realize until you're actually in it. So I've appreciated learning with Nancy and Bob, who are the other registrars, aunt Andrew now. And I would like to continue as a registrar, and I'm interested in, of course, as everyone is in, in everything being on the up and up with the voting machines and all the elections. So, do you have any questions? Speaker 1: Thank you, Michelle. Board questions? Comments, Mr. Sidney? Yeah. Speaker 12: What party are you registered in?
Speaker 15: Republican. Speaker 12: If I may ask, who are the other registrars at this time? Speaker 1: So currently the clerk is unenrolled Bob Awkward is Democrat Speaker 12: And Nancy North Speaker 1: Graves. Nancy North Graves a Republican. And so this position became open because of the change in the composition of the board. So in other words, prior to Andrew's appointment, Diane Packer was a member of the Democratic committee. So there were two Democrats and two Republicans when the composition changed with the introduction of Andrew who was appointed, and he's a member of the unenrolled that allowed both parties to submit candidates.
Speaker 12: Okay. And was Ms. Shaw submitted by the Republicans? Speaker 1: She is she, she, yes. Yes, she was last year. And now she's up for reappointment. That's correct. Thank Speaker 12: You. I I just wanted to underst this year. I, I just wanted to understand how that was working. Yep. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Okay. We'll vote at this time. Each of you have a ballot. Speaker 4: Oh, Speaker 1: Mr. Erickson. Speaker 2: Certainly. Madam Chair, I have four votes for Michael Abbott and one vote for Debbie Shaw. Speaker 1: Roll call. Say who voted? Mr. Sidney. Speaker 12: Mr. T Speaker 1: Sir? Mr. Evans. Mr. Speaker 12: T Speaker 1: Sir. Ms. Slager? Mr. Abbott? Sir. Mr. Abbott? Sir.
Ms. Shaw? Okay. Thank you for your service, Ms. Shaw and Mr. Abbott. Sir, please, Mr. Walsh will be in touch with you with regard to next steps. You'll need to be signed in by the clerk's office. Next up are appointments for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We have five positions that are open to your terms. And just a couple of comments. Randy Johnson and Susan Crossley are actually traveling and they are on now. So I'm gonna take them first and then we'll, we'll move through the rest of the, the list. Yes. So, Mr. Johnson, are you available
or are you still on a ferry? Speaker 16: Hi, I'm off the ferry. I'm in a car with my wife, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, but I'm able to talk. Speaker 1: Wonderful. We, we have your application materials and so, because there's so many applicants for this board, I'd like to ask, instead of going through your reason for wanting to serve again, I'm going to ask the board if they have any questions for you. Speaker 16: That's great. Speaker 1: I have no any questions from members of the board? Speaker 9: I do have one question. Hi, Mr. Johnson.
Thank you for your service. Do you feel in, in your, in your role, do you feel that you, what challenges do you see with our affordable housing residents that you are gonna have to respond to? What, what upcoming challenges do you foresee? Speaker 16: Well, I think one thing that trust always endeavors to do is create or facilitate the creation of more units of affordable housing. And, you know, anyone familiar with that field knows it's always a struggle to get that done.
I think, you know, the trust was instrumental in getting Auburn Street in the position it's in now. I think we're looking ahead to work on getting another project underway of similar scale and that's, I I see that as the primary thing that I would like to be involved in and, you know, being on the, on the board. Speaker 9: Thank you so much. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Okay, let's move on to Susan Crossley. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Safe travels. Speaker 16: You're welcome. Thank you. Speaker 1: Ms. Crossley, are you in a place where you can speak?
Speaker 17: Yes, I am welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm up in overlooking Niagara Falls and I have a little corner in the restaurant here on a deck, so I'm fine, I can speak. Speaker 1: Okay. We'll try not to hold all of that against you. Speaker 17: So you, Speaker 1: You were at the, I believe the end of your first term. Speaker 17: Correct. Speaker 1: And I'd like to ask the board if you have any questions or comments after reviewing the application materials. Ms. Crossley, I'd like to know what you have found most challenging over, over this first term. Speaker 17: I think that, you know, there's, it's twofold, I think with what we're trying to do.
I completely agree with Randy and the need for more units to be developed, but I'm also very concerned about maintaining properties that people have in Natick. I think, you know, my background in the nonprofit sector, I, I saw what would happen when people are at risk of eviction because rents go up and they can't afford it. So I, I think that's another major role that the trust, you know, has to keep, keep working towards, to make sure the people living in affordable housing in Natick, seniors, people with disabilities, families,
that they have the support and resources they need to be able to, to stay in their homes and not be at risk of eviction. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Crosley. Any questions, comments from the board? Then we'll go on to the next applicant. Is Reggie Lease on? Okay, we'll come back to him. Oh, he's, he is, sorry, I have to find up. I don't see him earlier. Speaker 16: Yes, I off. Speaker 1: Oh, there you are. Yes, Mr. Lee, Speaker 16: You've just un you've just unmuted. Speaker 1: I find him on there, so, thanks Mr. Lee, could you tell us, just to refresh my memory, how many terms you've served? Speaker 16: I've just completed my first term. Speaker 1: Your first term, Speaker 16: Correct. Speaker 1: And what have you found most challenging in this in the
last three years or last two years? Sorry. Speaker 16: You know, I'm gonna, I'll have to reiterate a little bit of, of prior speakers is regard to, you know, the need for an access of affordable housing in the town of Natick. And it, the challenge that takes to develop affordable housing and maintain affordable housing in the town. But more explicit, I think we, we need, we, we, we started to be more expensive regarding, you know, letting people know in the town what we're trying to achieve and what the goals are of the, of the Affordable Housing trust board.
And I think this takes work, it takes time and I think it, we need to allow the people of Natick to understand what we're trying to achieve and how we're going about our, what our strategic goal goals are, what we, how we're, how we're doing versus their goals. Those goals and essentially, and the, and, and, and highlighting the programs and successes that we're having. So I think it, you know, that's twofold type of issue that we need to do that we, that we've had and we need to continue to address in the, hopefully in the next two years. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Lee. Mr. Evans.
Speaker 13: Thank you Madam Chair. Just a question following up on that. One of the things that the zoning bylaws stipulates is you either can contribute to an affordable housing trust fund or you can create affordable housing units. Now most developers these days opt to do the payment in lieu. So my question is, how would you see optimizing the use of collecting those funds from builders
in, in the Affordable housing trust? Speaker 16: Clearly the, you know, funds flowing to affordable housing is beneficial, but however, you know, I think that, however, you know, some of these numbers that we do speak about could be quite large, but with, without, without control of property, the land itself, the ability of the town to, to effectuate, you know, the developments of substantial affording housing is, is low. I, I will assure you that taking funds in lieu
and utilize them towards our goals and our programs is much appreciated and we'll do that efficiently in the future. However, I think that anything that can be done with regarding to change zoning in the town of Natick to facilitate the development of affordable housing units directly, it would be a, a significant benefit to the town and that would require change to our zoning and zoning. S Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Any other questions for members of the board? Okay, thank you Mr. Lee. Mr. Kramer.
Speaker 18: Hello? Speaker 1: Hello, Mr. Kramer. How are you? Speaker 18: I'm good, how are you? Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I'd like to ask members of the board you have, you've served, we have your application materials. I'd like to ask members of the board if, if you have any questions for Mr. Kramer, then I will ask the same question. Over the last several years that you've served on the Affordable Housing Trust, what are some of the challenges that you, that you've encountered and you foresee the trust facing in the next two to four years? Speaker 18: You know, I, I, I think my, my colleagues have hit on many of, of the significant points in,
in some of, of the biggest challenges. You know, I would say the number one challenge being real estate and Natick is expensive. So, you know, we need to, you know, five Auburn Street was a, was a rare opportunity and, and we've taken it and we've done what we can with what we have to advance it. You know, and I, I think, you know, the biggest challenge is to be, is to continue looking for those opportunities where we truly can make an impact and, and create units of affordable housing. I think another challenge slash goal would be to
preserve the units that we have. Other challenges that I could think of are the fact that we are a, a, a board of volunteers and, and, you know, I think we've become stronger and, and more informed about affordable housing and how the programs work on a local, state and federal level. And, you know, it, it, it's a, it truly takes time and effort to learn how to be an effective member of the board as opposed to just, you know,
cheering and advocating for affordable housing, which is, I think only one part of our job. Arja. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Kramer, that, that is a very good point. Any questions or comments from members of the board? Thank you, Mr. Kramer. Mr. Ramachandran, Speaker 19: Thank you. Speaker 1: As the chair of the, the current chair of the NA Affordable Housing Trust, I'd like you to also answer the same question, and I recognize that you'll probably need to reiterate some of what your colleagues have said, but what do you see are the challenges facing the trust in the next two to four years? Speaker 19: You know, there's definitely an overlap
between the points that raised by others. I just wanted to add a few more points. So I kind of see the challenges. There's like fourfold challenges. The first thing is funding. I mean, it's, there's very little source of funding. You know, we are thankful for the town appropriation for what we have been getting so far. You know, at between like at $80,000 you could barely build a bathroom and like, you know, you're really looking forward to leveraging some of the CPA funds. The, the second is there's a significant amount of disinformation because of the,
the nature of the political discourse and the, the nature of the conversations that happen over social media with very little information. So that continues to be a challenge. So I think it is important for trust members to be able to provide facts and to dispel any myths where such myths arise. The, the third is, it's just expensive to build housing. I mean, this is not just an affordable housing challenge, it's just housing challenge. In some ways it's more expensive to build affordable housing than market rate housing. If you take the regulations into consideration.
Case in point, the total development cost for a unit at five Auburn Street, if you average it out, it's $650,000. I was talking with a colleague who works in affordable housing in Cambridge where it's close to between 750 to $800,000 for a two bedroom, two bath affordable housing units. The fourth is like, there's very little land to build affordable housing and this is where zoning is going to come into play, not just to create more affordable housing. In some ways, I think it's important to create more housing,
even though we are an affordable housing trust, let's say. If there is a zone identified within, you know, walkable distance from Natick Center and West Natick station, where you can build perhaps like three units instead of one unit. Like many cities are embracing, like, you know, like challenging single family zones. This also answers Mr. Evan's question, like, how do you prevent developers from building enormous homes on these parcels? I mean, the developers will do whatever it takes to make a profit. If they're allowed to build three small homes
and they can make the same profit, they'll do that. I mean, but we need to have the kind of zoning laws that all of them. So that's where it'll, it's really important to continue the dialogue and I will wrap it up by maybe not a challenge, but an opportunity here to work with other town bodies and town administration to perhaps like rethink the rules we have on our books to like just pave the way for more housing. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Ramachandran. Any questions or comments from members of the board? Okay, we will move on to Ms. Hughes, Kaitlyn Hughes.
Speaker 20: Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you Billy for setting this up. My name is Kaitlyn Hughes. I'm a two year resident of Natick. My full-time job is with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. I also hold a master of law in international human rights law. I am a founding member of the Young Professionals Board with Rodman for Kids. So I do have board experience, but really what most aligns me with this board is my home ownership through the 40 DB program in Nat. I bought my condo two years ago through that program as a first generation low income student and daughter of an immigrant traditional pathways towards home ownership really were not attainable to me. Bruce, like you said, housing is really, really terribly
unaffordable, especially in Natick. I got the chance to shadow the board last month that they're meeting. They're really doing incredible work. But I feel like this is a perspective that might be missing from the current roster. So I'd love to offer my list on where I can. Thank you for your consideration. Happy to take any questions. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Hughes. Questions from the board. Ms. Hughes, if you were not appointed tonight, would you be interested in being involved as an associate member of the trust? Speaker 20: Yes, absolutely. Speaker 1: I appreciate you putting your application forward and I will go to the seventh applicant, which is Mr. Duggan. Ah, Mr.
Duggan, if you could come to the podium, introduce yourself and if you could tell us briefly why you want to serve. We do have your application materials. Speaker 21: Thank you for having me tonight. I've been a resident of Natick for going on seven years now. My wife and I bought our home here. Then we've been raising our family here. I have two young children who are at Lilja, one going into third grade. The other starting. And I have been very interested in becoming more involved in the community as my kids have gotten older and life's gotten a little easier.
I have deep experience in affordable housing. I am the head of marketing and communications for a firm that invests exclusively in and builds only affordable housing. I've been doing that for several years and I have a perspective that encompasses everything from the developer perspective, the thin margins to build affordable housing, as well as what it takes to get community buy-in while to develop new affordable housing and preserve the affordable housing that we have. I also happen to come from a background that is not very affluent.
I know what it's like to struggle. I know what it's like to grocery shop with a calculator and so I've seen it from all sides and I just wanted to, you know, take this opportunity to put myself forward for consideration for the trust fund. I trust the select board to make the right mix of people and experience for this. And I thank you for your consideration. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mr. Duggan. Members of the board questions or comments? I'll ask you the same question I asked Ms. Hughes were, if you were not to be appointed tonight, would you be interested in being involved as an associate member? Speaker 21: I would, yes. Speaker 1: Thank you. And you've applied to another border committee?
Speaker 21: Yeah, the, the Leonard Morris Grants committee. Okay. Speaker 1: We will not be hearing those interviews this week, this evening, but thank you. Thank you. At this time we've heard all of the applicants for the Affordable Housing Trust fund. If you could fill out your applica, your ballots and pass 'em down to Mr. Erickson, that would be great. Speaker 4: Just gonna get them Speaker 1: Or he can Speaker 4: Five, right? Alright. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 4: Thank you Speaker 22: Catherine. We're not doing the Moore line of credit. Okay. Speaker 1: I'll, I'll explain why. Okay. Speaker 22: Are we doing the net zero? Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
And again next week because there's a resignation we got today, so we're doing both times. Actually, Speaker 12: You know, if I may, Madam Chair, yes. I just wanna say the quality of applicants for this, for these positions is extraordinarily high. I agree. Yes, it is time and this was at least for me, an extremely tough decision. And I just wanted to say that whatever the result is, we're gonna end up with a really good set of appointees. Speaker 1: It has not always been the case that we've had a strong
community interest in affordable housing. So I I too am very pleased. Agreed. Ditto. Wonderful. Speaker 11: And while we're waiting, if I can just add that if you are not appointed it, please think about other ways that you can be involved because this really was the most impressive group of, of the full slate of candidates that I've seen since I've been on the board. I would be happy with any of them. So if you aren't, it's not a reflection on you in any way. Speaker 13: That's actually true for almost any board we've seen. They are getting good.
Speaker 1: We've had a very strong response from the community for which I'm very thankful. Yes, Mr. Evans. Mad Speaker 13: Chair. I just had a question about the assistant positions Associate. Associate, I'm sorry. Thank you. Is there a limit in that or is it? Speaker 1: Nope, there's no limit. So the Affordable Housing Trust has discussed the Declaration of Trust sets the number of voting members, but what they are doing now, there are people who are interested and expressed interest, but wouldn't be able to submit their name, for example, because one withdrew his application because he said he didn't have enough specialized knowledge
or understand the regulations and the, the context he wanted to be, have a better and deeper background understanding of affordable housing trust. So he withdrew his application, but he's willing to, he's been attending meetings and he's willing to serve on subcommittees with voting members on projects in order to ramp up and build bench strength. That's one thing the trust has not had in the last five, six years, maybe longer, is to have a deep bench of experience and people who are willing to work in subcommittees.
So that's my understanding of what that role will look like. Perfect. Speaker 13: Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Erickson. Speaker 2: Thank you. Would you like me to just read from the top to the bottom please and number of votes? Yes. Okay. So just starting at the top and then I'm just following along with the names as listed on the agenda. Reginald received five votes. Glenn received four votes. Susan received five votes. Ganesh received five votes. Caitlin received, received one vote. Randy received two votes and Patrick received three votes.
So top five vote getters for the five seats that I have. So please correct my math is Reg Reginald, Glenn, Susan, Ganesh, and Patrick Speaker 1: That, that's what I have. Thank you for, I'm Speaker 2: Sorry, do you want to read who you voted for into the record? Speaker 1: Yes, please. Speaker 23: Could you Speaker 2: Test? Do you wanna pass him back? Okay. Speaker 23: Where's your short term memory? Speaker 11: I'm sorry, I don't remember either. Rich, I'll just Speaker 1: To save time, I'll just go ahead and do mine. Reginald, I voted for Reginald Lee, Glenn Kramer,
Susan Crossley, Ganesh Ram, and Randy Johnson. Speaker 13: I am. Speaker 24: Thank you very much. Speaker 13: Ditto. Speaker 1: Okay, we got a ditto. Speaker 13: I I have Reginald Lease, Glenn Kramer, Sue Crossley, Ganesh, and Patrick. Speaker 24: I voted for Reginald, Susan, Ganesh, Kaitlyn and Patrick. Speaker 9: I voted for Reginald Lee, Glenn Kramer, Susan Crosley, Ganesh Ramachandra, and Patrick Duggan. Speaker 1: Thank you. So, okay, Speaker 13: Posterity. Speaker 1: Mr. Dugin. Did I say that right? Duggans Duggans. Yeah.
Duggans. Mr. Duggan, bill Billy Walsh from the town administrator office will be in touch with you about being sworn in and what you need next steps. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone who applied. Thank you. Ms. Hughes. I encourage you to be involved and also to look at other committees that you might be interested in. Thank you so much for putting your name forward and submitting an application. So with reference to the two other sets of appointments, I'm just going to explain a couple things. Morris Leonard Grant's panel, there are two
positions and three year terms. Sarah Bennis has withdrawn her application. However, there are the two incumbents. There was a miscommunication between the Metro West Community Foundation and our office with regard to their need to reapply. And so they were unaware of that requirement until today. So I have asked them to submit their applications and then Mr. Dugan, cor and Isra and those two will be interviewed on July 9th at our next meeting. So we are not going to be hearing those interviews today.
With regard to the net zero natick committee interview, there is one opening advertised with one incumbent and two new applicants. However, today we received a resignation from Connor who is on that committee opening up a second three year term. He is, he's unable to continue serving so at the request of the members of the net zero N community, instead of, instead
of having interviews today and then again for an empty seat next week, which seems a bit redundant, we're gonna move all of those to 7 9 25 as well. So the net zero commu interviews will be held on 7 9 20 25. At this point, we'll move into discussion and decision and the first item on the agenda is critical success factors to town to guide town staff initiatives. And I will invite Mr. Por Pap, I'm gonna mess up your name. Jay, I'm so sorry. Poor paddock. I have a mental blank and I apologize for that. Mr.
Jay, if Mr. J thank you. If you would like to, yeah, I I just wanted you to talk a bit about what the critical success factors are. Just contextualize it for us and then we, then we can talk about why we chose the ones we did. Speaker 25: So Jay Port Paddock Town communications director and are you gonna share Jamie Speaker 2: The, I made you co-host a few Got it. Wanted to share Speaker 25: Directly. I just wasn't, if you gimme one minute, I've, Speaker 2: I'm more than happy to pull it up though too. Speaker 25: Well, I'm gonna, I think I've got a pretty big roll coming up, so I don't mind sharing, but one second to get all the documents.
Jamie, I need to pull it up on a browser. Do you, I don't go too deep, but do you mind just giving me a little bit of time and then I'll take over in then 60 seconds? Speaker 2: Sure. Would the board wanna move on to just another item to let Jay, I can, I can cover one South main if the board like, let's, Speaker 1: Let's talk about one South Maine, that's item F That would be great. Speaker 2: And I believe I sent an email to the board just to try to frame this conversation just in brief and for the public. About five years ago, in 2020, the, the select board voted to enter into an agreement with the owner
of one South Maine to do, among, among other things, complete or support. And the completion of the town is actually gonna take the lead on completing some sidewalk work at that location in exchange for an easement. So that's another building in downtown Natick where the property boundaries actually extend into the right of, into what's perceived of as the right of way and sidewalk. So it was a negotiated agreement at that time. Fast forward to today, that project's under construction and in working with the same developer, same owner, we realized that there's efficiencies to having the developer actually do the, all the sidewalk work. So the town wouldn't do any
of the sidewalk work still in exchange for an easement. However, we do need an amendment, an agreement to, to amend the agreement in exchange for the town doing the work. We would give essentially, or the proposal is to give a credit to the developer for fees that they would pay the town and equivalent or, or approximate to the amount that the sidewalk costs would be. Again, there's information in the packet and there's information that was sent to the board in advance. It's all public documentation. In my opinion, this is a strong benefit. It, it allows for the developer to have the flexibility
and the, and the, the timing and getting that work done all in with one contractor at once. 'cause it wasn't all the sidewalk work, it was only sidewalk work on South Maine that the town was gonna be doing. So Pond Street and West Central Street were gonna be, it was gonna be challenging to coordinate all that work. There's still the financial benefit to the developer as well. We're giving them a credit or, or an an a forgiveness on some fees. Not all, it's a, it's a capped amount and the town still receives the easement that's important for the town. So I would argue it's a win-win. Any questions just needs to vote
of the board and then we'll execute. If you have any questions that we're happy to answer any questions, Speaker 1: Any questions seems clear to me. So the motion would be to approve and allow yes, self main agreement and allow the chair to sign or to instruct the Speaker 2: Town administrator? No, we have your signature on there so we can add your electronic signatures to it. Okay. It's all, Speaker 1: All Speaker 2: Of us is, yeah, it's all of us on the document. Okay. Speaker 9: We're just approving Speaker 2: That and it's really just an updated agreement. We're not doing an amendment to the former agreement, we're just doing a new agreement. Okay. Speaker 9: I move to approve the updated agreement
for one South Maine. Speaker 2: Second, Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Pope, seconded by Mr. Sydney. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes. Any opposed? Passes. 5 0 0. Thank you Mr. Erickson. Speaker 2: There is one second part to this though, to approve a request to occupy a public way for the sidewalk replacement. Right. So now that we're gonna let them do the work, they don't need to be able to occupy the way to do the work. This is more on the Pond Street and other side. So second. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney, seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. Thank you Mr. Erickson.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. J. Speaker 25: Yep. And just a brief question for the chair. I can, I'm only gonna use three minutes. I can give a total voiceover or I could share two slides, which may or may not be helpful. I'm content doing either one. I Speaker 1: I yield to you. Speaker 25: Okay. We'll do the voiceover version. Okay. So the topic we're talking about right now is the idea of introducing critical success factors. You might hear me say CSF just as an acronym, but fundamentally what we're doing is we're talking about a set of work that's been going on for almost two full years, where ultimately this becomes
a guiding set of materials and ultimately really principles that shape how we achieve the vision of what the town wants to accomplish. In corporate America. This is very common. You have goals and objectives and you can pick your favorite acronym, the various consultants sell. We essentially embodied a version that Westboro actually did and it successfully rolled out in a municipal setting. I come from a 20 year corporate America background. First 10 years I was just a kid. Next eight years I figured out how to do business at Staples, a Fortune 100 company.
And then my next five years I kind of worked within startups and got to figure out how you actually build this. It wasn't a natural fit in the municipal setting. So that's why I stole from Westboro. We've been talking to various iterations of the board over time and we were able to make some good progress in recent months. So what, I guess, Jamie, I'll steal the screen share just in case I move it, but what we're gonna flash are critical success factors. Eight of those, which the board has been discussing and ultimately is ult, you know, been having some degree
of meetings but wants to bring this in front of the public so you guys can, you know, have a public discussion about the eight success factors, which will ultimately guide all town work. Any town initiative that we town staff work on should ultimately map to one of these eight items. So that's what we're proposing and that's just kind of framing the conversation that the board can now have. Speaker 1: Thank you. A, a note to the public, these are numbered but they're not numbered in order of importance or weight or anything like that. They're just numbered for, for reference purposes, I'd like to open it to the, the board to discuss
how we came about these or anything that you want the public to know. Mr. Evans, I Speaker 13: Just wanted to reiterate what Mr. Per paddock mentioned that we've, we've discussed this at great length to try to get it all on one page and, and to get it to, to be meaningful. And I think I'm confident that we did that. Speaker 1: I agree. And the most important part of putting this together was to avoid jargon. To ensure that the words we used were the words we wanted to use that had weight and meaning and meant what we said, which is one
of the reasons it took a couple of years and several retreat sessions. I'm really proud of the work we did. I think it gives town departments and town staff a sense of what the board holds important and what our values are and what we expect to see in terms of the work they produce. Mr. Sidney? Speaker 24: Yeah, I, the only comment I have, I, I really appreciate all the work Mr. Poor Paddock put in to, you know, working with our, the discussions we had during our retreats.
I would like to see the numbers replaced with bullets in the final version. Speaker 13: That's fair. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 24: Just to make it really clear that they're not prioritized. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 9: I could agree with, with that. Fair enough. Speaker 13: Yeah, fair enough. Speaker 1: That sounds perfectly well And to also have an adoption date on it. Speaker 9: Yes. Speaker 13: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's very important. Other members of the board, and I Speaker 9: Think we talked about both an adoption date as well as perhaps did we talk about an update date? Maybe we talked about that for another policy, an Speaker 1: Update date. I, Speaker 9: I think that was on there that we would have an adoption
and then once, if it were updated we would Speaker 1: Say annually we should review this. Right. Same thing with the financial management principles, right? This should be on a calendar for us to review. So, so we are in June and next year and June, prior to June, probably after the board reorg in April during a retreat. Let's look at this and make sure, I know we've gotten feedback from departments that whether there's something that's not clear, but yes, this should be on a regular review cycle. Like some of the, I mean we don't look at every policy every
year, but this is something that's important. So Agreed. Good Speaker 26: Ion Speaker 11: And just, yes, please just comment as we go through the next year, if we can get feedback from our staff and if you can compile that, if there are any so that, you know, we're ready to review this next year, that would be very helpful. Speaker 25: Yeah, just, just to speak briefly to kind of the last two comments as far as revisions and then feedback. We can do both just to kind of refresh and, you know, ultimately give the public some information on the backside of us, you know, and having the board adopt these, these, these aren't very similar to like our current vision
and value statement that's up on the select board or other sort of documents. This becomes truly operational. So we're doing an inventory and audit of everything the towns departments are working on and then ultimately it maps to these, so we just have to figure out the right cadence when the board potentially revises it. But then to the last question about feedback, absolutely we'll fundamentally be giving feedback because it's not, again, it's not a static document. This will literally drive the work we do. So there will be feedback and iterations or at least suggestions coming from town staff that the board can ultimately adopt. Speaker 1: So at this time, if there are no more comments from the
board or questions from public, Ms. Vickers, if you could approach the podium, introduce yourself. Speaker 10: Hello, Brinley Vickers. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say I've been following this and one of the reasons I came in person tonight is 'cause I really wanted to say I was very happy to see the depth and breadth of this. I think that it's very important and I love the fact that you put the proactive environmental sustainability in there. I feel like that works in partnership with so many things and oftentimes gets left off of the list in terms of a lens for how to view things. And so I really wanted to speak publicly to say thank you
so much for including that specifically in this process. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. If there are no other comments, is there anyone online who has a comment, please raise your virtual hand or a question. Speaker 26: Seeing, Speaker 1: Seeing none, I'll ask for a motion from the board move Speaker 24: To adopt the critical success factor three document revised. April 24th, 25. Speaker 1: Second. Moved by Mr. Sidney, seconded by Ms. Pope. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0, 0. And thank you so much for leading us through this process over the last two years.
Thank you Jay. Our next item is to, our communications director will talk about a communications calendar. And this is an opportunity for the board to decide to standardize which days and months the board will observe. We've never done that before. It's kind of been hit or miss in what we remember and doing. And so Jay, please. Speaker 25: Yep. So as the chair kind of spoke there, it's definitely for the board ultimately to adopt this document and inform what we town staff do.
Ultimately, a lot of the holidays, federal or cultural holidays, anything that we recognize ends up kinda showing up on Facebook and social media as well as potentially our website and select instances. What this does is it allows us to have a plan, quite frankly, as we go through this too often, I, myself and my day job end up promoting, you know, event or holiday X and then the next question is, why not Y? So this just adds some formality, a chance for the board
to give any feedback. Revisions, we're not seeking a vote today. This is very preliminary. Ultimately, as well as the public giving any feedback that they choose to this. If you as I'll scroll through and show you the 36 observances that are featured here. You know, think of it pretty simply. We don't want to do something too often. There's only 52 weeks in a year. So what we have is a, you know, a menu of a preliminary 36. Ultimately there are additional opportunities for us to do some proactive engagement if the board chooses to give that direction, whether it be the interfaith community, Natick is United, our veteran affairs
or veteran services director, we can ultimately, you know, seek a lot of input. But this is a very early stage preliminary to get the conversation going. And then it primarily comes to life on the town's Facebook page. Our fire department, our police department all do also do some sporadic recognition. It gives them a tool as well. And ultimately it gives the board the ultimate opportunity to adopt and give feedback. So as I scroll through, just to kind of allow everyone to take in what's on this document, like I mentioned,
there's 36 individual holidays. I'm not gonna go through and reference any of them, but January through December 11, federal holidays that are marked in a blue.as well as 23 cultural holidays and or events. And then two that just fit the other bucket. So this, this was informed by looking, I talked with our NPS counter, my NPS counterpart. The schools don't necessarily have a calendar per se, they adopt individual holidays, but I thought this approach is a little bit more programmatic for us to operationalize.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Members of the board, do you have questions or comments Mr. Sidney and then Ms. Schlager? Speaker 12: Yeah, I got one to add. We have an election day every March. Speaker 9: That was one of my Speaker 12: Questions and I would add that because it's our local election and is in some ways more important than the one that happens occasionally in November. Speaker 11: Yep. Speaker 1: Ms. Schlager. Speaker 11: Yeah, I, I realize it's not a, the most celebrated religious holiday, but I think Hanukkah should be on theirs because we do celebrate that on the common we have a Menorah lighting
and I think that should be part of it for December. Good point. Speaker 1: No, I missed that. Ms. Pope Speaker 9: Rich, thank you. That was one Mr. Sydney, that was one of my questions was about our NA election. One other question I have was about Columbus Day and I see that it says is currently named per the select board. Perhaps we are resolved on, on, on that. I, maybe this is something for us to discuss later. The name of it Columbus Day versus Indigenous People's Day. I think this is something that we might discuss. Speaker 1: So that was something that was discussed when I was, when Bruce and I were first elected to the board
and it was put, the suggestion was put forth Columbus Day slash Indigenous People's Day. And then the temperature of the board was, that's kind of like saying, you know, recognizing the union and the South on the end of the Civil War, it's either one or the other. And the board needed to make a decision at the time the board punted. And so today at currently it is called Lum Columbus Day. So should the board decide to change that, that we need to put that slate that as an agenda item and discuss Mr. Erickson,
Speaker 2: Another component of that dialogue is that it hasn't officially been changed by the state or federal government either. Right. So we actually are observing the federal and state holiday known as Columbus Day. Were not, they have not changed that name. So the term is sort of a beyond the town officially that, and one of the arguments that I remember hearing was that Columbus Day was less about Columbus and more about Italian heritage and about the, they use Columbus as sort of the, the face of that is my understanding from the, from the, from the dialogue that the board had at that time. So it's just thinking about what, what that holiday for some
might mean versus, and that could be why the, the name has not changed, but just providing a little bit of that additional context from that dialogue that I recall from, I think it was four or five years ago when this was, Speaker 1: Yeah, four years ago. Four years ago Speaker 2: When this was debated by this board Speaker 13: The first year. Speaker 1: Any other comments about the schedule of the draft schedule that has been put before us, Ms. Wilger and then Mr. Evans? Yeah, just Speaker 11: You, you probably have already spoken to some, but reaching out to, you know, our, our religious members in, in our community to make sure that,
that there's nothing that we're leaving off that's important to them. Speaker 25: Yeah, I, I mentioned that briefly. I have not yet, but absolutely. That's a great call and I, I can take that. I do have pretty strong relations across those folks. Speaker 11: Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Mine Speaker 13: Is just a quick comment on a a thank you for, for putting this together. It's, it is very helpful. We've overly relied on our chair quite honestly to, to flag a lot of these and it's very helpful for us to see what's coming in the next month or two. So thank you.
Speaker 1: It's a far more equitable approach. Speaker 2: I'm also curious why August has nothing Speaker 1: Because it's hot. Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. Speaker 12: It was words we could add Beltane, Speaker 1: That's, we could add my birthday. Yes. That could be an other, that's Speaker 13: Definitely a national holiday. Yes. Speaker 12: Well, you know, it's interesting because you know, obviously we recognize the Solstice system and equinoxes just sort of normally, but there's also the halves between those and we recognize three out of the four of the halves, Groundhog Day May day and Halloween. The one we don't recognize is the one in August, which is Beltane Speaker 13: That is like so deep into the trivia land.
Speaker 1: That's like me saying Speaker 13: Rainman Speaker 1: Of you. That's like me saying Halloween really should be all Hallows Eve and be cultural slash religious, but I'm not gonna impose that all Saints Day. My Speaker 12: Wife complains about it every year. So that's how I know it. Speaker 1: Ah, okay. Or Boxing Day, I think, I think this is a great first start and perhaps at the end of the summer coming back with whatever you find for us to look at. Yep. That was, thank you for this initiative. This was really great. Thanks. Next up is the Johnson survey report decision criteria. And again, we'll turn it over to Mr. J, Speaker 13: It's the j Speaker 25: You can go with Mr.
J going forward. I'm just, so I'm gonna walk us through a recent flash vote survey. I will say, just as a little disclaimer, or maybe it's a movie trailer before you watch the feature film, I definitely think there's an, there's an opportunity for me to come back to the board at the end of the summer, potentially even fall and do a little bit of a informational about what flash vote is and is not. I just, I Speaker 1: Would deeply appreciate that. Speaker 25: Yeah, I, and I, I take the onus, it's a little bit of education, but I can say I think it'll head off some of the recent dialogue that I've heard.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Yep. Speaker 11: If, if I might just interrupt here, I think it would be helpful to have that somewhere on the website whenever we are discussing the results of this because people have the wrong impression about what it is and, you know, rather than spend the time at every meeting where the flash vote is discussed to have, you know, something that gets distributed maybe along with the results or, or you know, Speaker 1: Or just a reference reference. Like if it's on the website, say, please see. Speaker 25: So you mean a reference Speaker 1: To what you're talking about explaining what Speaker 11: To do, an explanation of flash vote.
Speaker 1: Why it's statistically Speaker 25: I definitely wanna do a meeting and I would definitely put the materials on the website. There is a webpage that's very prominently linked from the homepage. So I guess I'm just trying to make sure that I deliver on that. But Speaker 11: Yeah, but I think that every time we discuss this, that there's a, a, a baseline education that needs to be given to people that are seeing it for the first time or maybe the second time or the 10th time because they had the wrong impression about what it is. And you know, I think you're right. You know, what you're hearing in the community is,
is I think people don't understand it yet. So if there's a way to, and I'll leave that up to you a, a way to figure out how to make sure that that happens not just one time, but every time we do a flash vote that we, Speaker 25: Yeah, just one clarification, we've, this is I believe the sixth or seventh flash vote. Yeah, but this is only the third one we brought to the select board. So this is part of our normal course of business. The ones that we brought to the select board are, because they're prominent, they're more important and those also bring more divisive topics, more emotionally charged. So therefore the concern often is heightened in that regard.
So with thus far we've done immigration documentation and now the second Johnson. But absolutely every time we bring someone into a flash vote, there's gonna be a subset of people that it's brand new. There's also gonna be a subset of people that hasn't gotten past that barrier. But I think, I think the materials I, I'm probably 51% complete. I think they can take us from, we'll say the second floor of a 24 building to at least the 15th floor. So like fundamentally there's, there's a huge education and I, I, I understand the trust things, but I think education will yield some positive trust.
Awesome. So just, just a brief headline but to the survey at hand. So this is a Johnson related survey. The intent was around decision criteria that the board can start to use towards the final, you know, parts of this two and a half year process. There's three primary findings pretty succinctly around the potential decision criteria. The two that popped was the notion of preserving open space parks and fields, 72% of all of our responders. And the second being minimizing the
impact to the neighborhood. And that was 57 of all responders. We asked about the preferred financial approach and it was preferred to use the existing funds, which was 48%, which was 37% higher than the next choice, which was really the yin and yang of worry about funds later. So I'll, we'll go into some details. This is just to get us started. The particular survey sample is certainly engaged with the Johnson future use project. 82% are at least somewhat engaged. There's a population, 26% of those 82 percentage points is actively engaged.
So it's a, I think that will end up playing itself out as we go through these reser results. So as far as the validity of the data, oops, sorry. As far as the validity of the data in total we had 681 responses a against our 37,000 natick residents. So no, we did not get everyone at the table. But ultimately even with that 681 and then I'm gonna talk about the member panel 580 of the 6 81, we have a margin of error that fits within the,
you know, kind of, you know, the strong range of within four or five percentage points. So that just means anything within that four percentage point bound should not be taken to the bank as long as it stays, there's a variability within that margin of error. We should feel good about it. The member panel response rate, again member panels is defined as someone who registered prior to the survey being deployed. The response rate was about 44% of that population. It's a little bit lower than we've seen in recent ones. I'll talk through some of the variants of the member panel versus the other, which is the delta.
Fundamentally this is our, it's kind of a, not a best practice to do the same topic. Back to back flash vote is very different than what people might perceive as general surveys. These are five question surveys in 48 hours to get immediate results, you often bring in sometimes single topic motivators and in that case sometimes you can see a little bit of a bias. So in order to mitigate that, and I'll show the data in the next few slides, we're gonna rely on the member panel but show the other. As far as the first question, which was geared around the awareness and engagement, that 82 percentage points that I've referenced is breaks out
between 56% somewhat engaged or the 26 percentage points actively engaged. When you look at the variances with within chart A, you can see we're gonna primarily focus on the blue, which is the member panel. So when you go from the member panel, you can see that the actively engaged to, sorry, actively engaged at 26 percentage points all the way up to 56% somewhat engaged. But when you compare the red and blue, so blue being the member panel, red being the other, that's where you see plus 31
and minus 49 percentage points. There's just a large variability of the people that came in or were unregistered and there could be a whole multitude of reasons why people, you know, would choose not to register data privacy. Maybe I just don't wanna do it, but there could be other people that came in and registered and potentially had a particular motivation on this single topic. So again, the member panels are leased bias sample. Going over to question two preferred criteria. So this would be the criteria that the board could choose to develop a scorecard or ultimately make a decision at the very end of this process.
I've already read the results on the first two priority, you can scan at the chart B, as I talk through, there's some next up sort of criteria that I'll have between 30 and 40 percentage points. And then that drops a little steeper if you go down to the sixth and final response, which is in fact the idea of maximizing financial return. So there was a less energy around those areas. There are some interesting variabilities you look between member panel and other. But ultimately the blue, the member panel is what we're using. When we did look at the final response, which is other,
these are people who chose to do an open-ended response. So about 13 percentage points of all re of all the responders or so 85 people. If you look at the bottom, I was able to, you know, just load that into chat GPT and the prompts there for anyone that feels motivated to check the work or see it. But that could be a host of factors. It's a little bit high to see 13 percentage of people wanting to fill something out. It could be a general dissatisfaction with the six criteria up above, which that's just the reality of surveys. It also could be just that there's a wide array
and preferences that folks have when you look at the open-ended. A lot of the question, or sorry, a lot of the responses from the survey responders were what I will deem use cases, not decision criteria. Mm. So I have some listed here. So there's, there again, this is a emotional charge topic and there's a lot of people that you, you'll notice even on the final question, when I say any suggestions or comments about decision criteria, again, a lot of use cases are coming out and I think you know, the, some folks aren't delineating between those two things.
There, there was one new potential criteria which I found interesting. There were eight references to preserving town ownership as a criteria which could be considered as well that, you know, whether it be to build and have town property to do a land lease, whatever those options might be. But there's a preference towards that as well. Moving us along, sorry, one second. Question three. This question itself was a little bit more geared toward the idea of what's our financial approach. So it read something to the effect of which best describes
how you would want the select board to move forward. And ultimately the member panel had a preference towards the best project existing funds. Now if you look at the way it's phrased, if I'm, I'm scrolling now and referring to chart C, the first one, if you just focus on the blue is the, the response or the option was focus on finding the right project for the community first and worry about funding later. I'm gonna call that a little bit of a blue sky. Think about the, you know, sort of the idea, the use case and we'll figure out budget as opposed to a little bit more,
we'll say fiscally conservative, find the best project that works within existing budgets and approved funding limits. So you can see that the other group, which this is consistent, I also looked at this for the near Johnson group, had a bias towards the first option, which was more the blue sky. But when we looked at our member panel, there was a little bit more of the fiscal responsibility. We're on the heels of a recent override. There's federal uncertainty that we just heard the state legislation talk about. So that that tends to be the overarching response with 48% of people choosing the more fiscally conservative approach.
And I'll note that the very modest amount of the revenue generating approach, which would be more the classic wholesale, the wholesale of the property. Moving us into the fourth question around process. So ultimately the overall rating for this process was a 2.79. That's a weighted average. When you just look at the five point score and you assign it to the distribution of everyone that chose each respective one, the descriptor is moderately confident. So I'd call that not a great score, but when you dig into it, the information, it gets a little bit more interesting.
I mean, first of all, 23% of people chose not sure, not familiar enough. It's really early if we're still in month three officially if you do the April, may, June. And so that it's a bit on the early side. When I looked at some of the more engaged or closer to Johnson, the scores were slightly lower. But ultimately this question was really a benchmarking question. We're in month three, so let's see how people feel about the process now. And let's see in, I don't know if we want a midpoint check, but at least on month, you know, two and or year two and a half. How do people feel about the process At the close of it?
The decision is a separate discussion because the decision's not gonna make a large number of individuals happy. Happy 'cause it's a, this is not a binary restore, remove the dam, this is what do we do with this property? There's a lot of options, but again, just a benchmark to see how folks are feeling about the process. We'll also get into the next open-ended question I think as well as the walk-in report meeting, which is gonna be the next item and you can potentially draw some conclusions open-ended. So our very final question was comments or suggestions tied to the decision criteria.
So we had 166 of the 6 81 gave us a response against these. So what, what you have in front of you, the top four decision making themes. I'm not gonna read those. I think everyone can see the four items that are in the gray box. But when I actually looked across the data, there were a couple interesting things in the chat GPT prompt that, you know, is linked in here. There was an iterative prompt because when I asked for the thematic summary, there was a lot of references to the to use cases. Mm. So I ended up re-asking chat GPT to filter it down into,
no, I'm looking for decision criteria. And I think that's where it got a little bit of a better output. And then ultimately another comment is 28 of the 166 or 17 percentage of those were just general frustrations around local government. Those could be past select board decisions, the Johnson closure itself. So again, I think when people see an open-ended final question, this is like my chance to say how I feel, and that's fine, and that's still information. But I tried to isolate it down to the decision criteria, which I think chat, chat GPD did.
Okay. But again, I guess just one other call out, any of the insights you're seeing, we're purposely leaning into AI because we want to build trust, we wanna lean away from this notion of bias. So these are simply technology telling us how people are responding. So that that is it. As far as this particular survey, I can hand it back to the board Speaker 1: Members of the board questions. Speaker 12: I have a comment rather than a question because I'm not sure how to, how what's, what the right way to deal with it is. But I noted a comment on Facebook
that there was a group of people specifically trying to have this conversation in their group with a very strong bias against what the town is doing. And just to be aware of that, that there is a subset of the population of Natick that is leaning away from trusting anything the town is doing relative to this conversation. I don't know how to deal with that either. Speaker 25: Sorry. Are you, just to confirm, are you referring to the Johnson project? Yes. Or the flash vote Speaker 12: Tool? No, to the Johnson project. Yeah. They, they, I saw that the started the discussion
and I posted a link to the Johnson header page, and the response I got was, we don't trust the towns page. We're gonna have our own discussions here. Speaker 25: Well, I, I think that's gonna come out very strong in the next to agenda topic on the walking meeting. And I mean, not to discount Mr. Zuckerberg's creation, but social media is absolutely has some degree of value. But when it comes to understanding, I mean, that's fundamentally what Flash vote is attempting to counter No. Is to bring, and so I don't think we probably should focus on solving
Facebook matters, but I do think there fundamentally trust issues, which were very fair and very prominent during the walking meeting. Speaker 12: Right. And I think, but what I'm, what I'm also noting is there is a, there is a segment of the population, I don't think it's very large, but it definitely exists, that is not going to, is explicitly not gonna respond to f Flash vote is explicitly not gonna pay attention to what we post as upcoming events on the website. And I don't know if there's a, any way we can get those people on board. Speaker 25: So I think you're saying they made a choice. Yeah.
Speaker 12: Yeah. They made a choice. Yeah. Speaker 1: I mean, I, I don't, I don't know that the greatest powers of persuasion is going to change that. Yeah. No, that's, I I think that the, the response to that is to do what the select board has set out to do, which is to have a clearly articulated process, a, a two and a half year communications plan. And to be as transparent as possible, that's, that's all we can do. Speaker 12: Yeah. And, and I totally agree. And you know,
I just wanna acknowledge there are people out there that are, that are explicitly choosing not to pay attention to us and Speaker 1: Complaining. And I think that's fine. That's fine. Let them, you know, they, they, they're voters too. So when they're unhappy with this process, they can go to the ballot box and vote us all out. Mr. Evans, Speaker 13: I just want to echo what both the chair and Jay have mentioned during the walk, at least in my group, that there were elements I would say of, of skepticism of this. But I think when we talk to people
about our commitment to the process and what's involved in the process and the steps of the process, and that we haven't made any decisions, and that we're looking to get feedback from people, you're gonna get some people who are gonna say, no way, no how, I'm never gonna trust you ever again. Fine, that's gonna happen. We can't do anything about that. What we can do though is, is try to continue the conversation as the chair suggested on an ongoing basis and say, here's what we're doing, here's when we're doing it. We'd love your inputs. That's all we can do.
Those, there are the things that we can affect and the things that we, we can't. And we should just focus on the things we can affect. Speaker 1: Nope. Any other comments about the survey? Let's move on to the walking report. Speaker 25: All right. So this topic is about the site walking meeting that happened this past Saturday on the 21st of June. So we ultimately had 60 folks show up, about 45 were pre-registered, another 15 or so just based on the old eyeball test
we're kind of mingling. And we broke up into groups of three. And these groups were led by a combination of a, a staff member and a select board member. This report that you're gonna look at really attempts to look at ultimately three groups, or sorry, three reports. One being a resident report. We asked residents in a one, or maybe it was more than one question, but one primary question to give us their notes. And we gave them some prompts. We asked them to tell us about the questions they asked, the responses that were given by staff, open questions, open concerns.
So we were able to, from residents, get a total of 12 folks who took the time. So again, I mean just to kind of counter this idea of what we can't do with social media, we can embrace these 60 people who showed up, these 12 people who voiced their opinion, or the 681 who sat on their couch and gave us a flash vote survey. Those are people really engaged and, you know, coming to the table. So kudos to all the residents who showed up. It was generally well received. It was a 4.75. We asked them for a score of one through five. Again, it's a modest number of people. We do have 37,000 residents. We all know that.
And we will continue to do our best to engage everyone and convince them over time that this process is a strong one. We did a staff report, myself and two other staff members, our town administrator and our deputy town administrator, as well as the interesting report, which I'll spend the majority of time is on the variance report just to look at the difference between what residents said versus what staff said. Spoiler alert it was scored an eight outta 10 according to chat GPT to be similar. Mm. So very similar, but some fascinating themes. So I'm gonna show you the resident report. I'm not gonna read through this, but I think it's worth at least surfacing it in case there's
questions from the board or the public. There is 10 key themes. These are prioritized in order, which was deemed, you know, most common given by the residents. Again, these were 12 residents totaled just over 3,500 words that they input. So they spent a decent amount of time. One of those was an article that was written in the Natick report by one of the attendees as well. It was really the top three questions about the building and a lot of focus on the building as well. You know, just the use of what's eligible.
Can they get access in the open questions? There's some other items as well, wanting the board themselves to make sure that at least they have access, even if the residents can't keeping the town involved. And then supporting the community use. Those were themes I I asked, you know, the robots for, but then when I asked for the top takeaways, if you look at the bottom left, the gray box, you'll see, I'd say in my particular group number three as well as the other two groups, it was a lot of around sharing the cost by the option or use case that dominated the dialogue.
I think it's a fair request, and quite frankly, it's why we had it in the decision criteria survey. We've talked about it internally, it's a little bit on the early stage, but residents made it very clear that they feel like they're chicken and egg and caught between this idea, you're asking me what I want, but I don't know how much money I have to spend yet. And I think that's the reality of an early stage of a project. But you know, loud and clear, we heard that providing building access or even a video and then they talked about chat. GPT picked up the idea of trees and improving the fencing. I think that's more so on the backside of this project.
But then you'll also hear some references about maintenance and upkeep as well. Just to briefly speak to the notes on the right side, again, there were 12 individuals. You can get the chat GPT prompt right there. I also cataloged a series of 25 open questions and concerns that's linked right there. And we town staff are committed to get that back to the residents and let them receive an answer. Because again, it's this value exchange. If you're gonna give us a chunk of your Saturday morning, we owe you at least 25 answers to the questions you asked. So that's the resident report. Again, just to kind of breeze through the staff report,
you can see the top 10 themes, a lot of keeping you as a gathering spot, thinking about it more than just a school, protecting the open space in nature. And then you, once again, just asking for that transparent and open process throughout the top three takeaways, just focusing on community input, sharing the financial info later, and then considering an advisory committee, that was also a common thread throughout the conversation. And then to get through the variance report. So now you can see ultimately we, I asked for a,
a similarity score to understand how similar these two things were. And then ultimately, ultimately, a comparison report. So the technology's able to tell us on a, you know, arbitrary zero to 10 scale, it's about an eight outta 10 as far as the notes are similar. So they check out we were all at the same meeting, but then when we look, the both documents reflect this particular emphasis. And I, you know, themes I've already read, but the difference is on the focus and tone I think is really interesting. Residents inputs emphasize emotional connections,
trust issues, and desire for control, which I think is a really fair and honest, you know, thing that a lot of individuals want. Whereas the staff was more focused on procedure structure, feasibility and timelines. So it feels like a great marriage. Like everyone's telling us what they want and they do have some trust issues. And there's, you know, this a school closure fundamentally in, in our particular instance in Natick, it's the last walking school to close and there's a lot of emotions held up in this one. And so that was a very, very common theme.
And there was, you know, we did three groups of 17, and you could start to see groups of two and three go off to the side, and it felt like that's where the conversation got even more real. So that was, I think, a helpful opportunity for staff, the board members and the public to interact The differences, I think I've hit on, you know, these same themes. The third one, you don't, it just kind of maybe puts a finer point on it, but residents were focused on the idea of cleanup. Any temporary uses a video of the building itself. There were also references to wanting to, in the future,
go in the building if we do additional site walks. And then staff was more so focused on the process and, you know, eventually the potential for consultants. So a Saturday 90 minute meeting, we had 60 folks there, plus three staff members, three select board members. It was well received. We have an opportunity to do this in the future. I'll hand it back to the board. I will just mention we're gonna have a little bit of break with public meetings on Johnson, but we'll come back July 23rd with a quarterly report that we'll do on a quarterly basis as well as the next iteration of Johnson Public Speak.
So that, that'll be the next touch point. But I hand it back to the board. Speaker 11: Ms. Saga. Thank you, Jay. This is a great summary and some of it's a little different than some of the conclusions that happened in my, in my group, but I think overall, I think it's really a good summary of what people were talking about and, and, you know, some of the concerns that they have. The one thing that I would ask, because I think people will be interested in it, is reloading the document on peak so that the links work. They don't link, they don't work right now.
So like, you know, the, the chat GBT prompts and other things, the links aren't working. So, okay. People may want to, those that are interested will probably want to go into some depth on this. And you know, I know that this is, it's, you know, peak is new and there may be issues with, with, with how it treats links and documents, but it isn't working right now. So just wanted to point that out. But thank Speaker 25: You. Yeah, I'll make sure that works. But just while the public hears us, the, the project page has all the documents
and I'll check to make sure those are clickable. The PDF upload in peak might have broken, but yes, I'll make sure those are clickable. Speaker 11: All right. Thank you. And, and really good information. Thank Speaker 1: You Ms Speaker 9: I really appreciate this summary. I unfortunately had to miss and so I just am thankful that you put this together and so quickly appreciate this and, and, and for the public, I really appreciate it. For those who, who are following along, who are making the choice to follow along, I think this is extremely helpful. And I think to your point, building that trust throughout the entire process
of really communicative process. So thank you Jay. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Pope. Ditto. Anyone else? Speaker 26: No. Speaker 1: Swear this is really helpful. Questions from the public. Ms. Vickers? Jamie, can you see if anyone has their hand up online? There's no, nobody there. Okay, now there is. Speaker 26: Okay. Speaker 1: Yes indeed, please. Speaker 10: Thank you. B Brinley Vickers. So I was there and I'm grateful very much for all of this work. I wasn't able to contribute feedback by the close time
because a lot of the people that I've spoken to have been since then. But I will say one of the questions that has come up in a lot of come conversation in the neighborhood and for the people that I've spoken to who went and who weren't able to go, is hoping that in the future we could have a conversation about, more specifically about what multi-use means. Because I think there's some back and forth about what that actually means. I think it's showed up in the, in the surveys a couple of times where people are like, I dunno, I need more information.
So I do think as we move forward, it would help the community to have a better understanding of what, when, when the question is asked, multi-use, what that actually means. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Ms. Gly, please unmute yourself. Speaker 27: Hi, can you hear me now? Speaker 13: Yes, Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 27: Hold, lemme just see there's my actual microphone. That should be clear. Can you hear me now? Yes. All right. Hi. So I just wanted to say, you know, what other stuff said, I thank you for coming out and making the time, especially on a Saturday.
I haven't been to an event where, you know, five to six town staff members or volunteers have been out. So I appreciate that. 'cause you could have made this, you know, Wednesday at 12 o'clock, but I think that this helped make as many people as possible show up. So I really appreciate that. And I also think it was one of the most more human connections I guess I've had with select work, because usually in my interactions it's usually in this setting, which has a little more decor and a little more, you know, timing to pay attention to. So I enjoyed, you know, being able to get
to know you all a little more as people. So I guess, so one, one question here is I'm wondering how many people, how many people on the select board have been to Johnson prior to Saturday's meeting? And for those who were at the meeting, sorry, at the walking tour, whatever you wanna call it, was there anything that stood out to you or surprised you? Speaker 1: Mr. Evans? Speaker 13: I can answer that because I had been to Johnson, but I'd only been to part of Johnson. I had never really walked the entire property.
And what struck me was I knew of things but hadn't experienced them. I hadn't walked all the way around the building. I hadn't walked in the woods in the path. And to me it just reinforced in my mind the need to preserve it as a community resource and commun by community, I mean local community resource. It's, it's reinforced in my
mind the need to collaborate closely with all residents to figure out what the best use of this property is. And I, I'm very, you know, I can't make a commitment to anything being done, but certainly the open space requirement and the multi-use aspects of it just really resonated with me. And, and, and I heard that loud and clear from the group that I was walking around with
Speaker 1: Ms. Slager and then Mr. Sydney Speaker 11: Somewhat similar to my colleague. I had been in the building, but I had never really walked around the area before. And a couple things struck me, one for seven acres, it seemed smaller than that. It didn't seem as as big as I expected it to be. So there was less space. And I was also surprised with how close some of the houses were to even to the existing building. I mean, I, I'm familiar with how close they are on Route 27, but particularly in the back of, of the school, they're very close by.
And then the other part that really struck me is, is how wooded it was. I I wasn't prepared for to see that in that area. And, and I'd heard about the grade of the building and the grade of the, of the, not the building, but the, the plots. And I think that's something that I don't think we've really touched on enough about, you know, how we would accommodate the various topography and, you know, we're gonna have to really look hard if we,
you know, depending on what, what we come up with as alternatives about how that fits into the existing topography. So those are the things that, that stuck out to me. Speaker 1: Mr. Sidney, did you wanna mention about your experience with Johnson? Speaker 12: Yeah, so I am both a neighbor and a Johnson parent. I have been in that building extensively when my child was there. I've been on the fields. The woods are extensive almo I think, I think, and I don't quote me on this, but I think almost half the property is wooded. And I have my own as a neighbor,
and I have to speak as a neighbor first before I speak as a, a board member, which it's a little different. It, it's unusual for my opinions as a neighbor to be different than as a board member, but as a neighbor, I have my own ideas about what I'd like to see that pros property do, do. And that's kind of the reason I wasn't there on Saturday. And I wanna be clear, I'm very interested in this pro property, but I didn't want, as a parent and a neighbor to be a distraction to the process for the staff and the other board members, which is why I didn't show up.
I am paying very close attention and I'm not really gonna talk about what my ideas are, both as a neighbor, because the process has to happen. We have to go through this process and as a board come to the right decision for the town. So I just wanna be really clear about that because I'm, I'm trying to keep a very bright line between how I feel as a neighbor and how I feel as a board member. And also not distract from the process as a neighbor showing up to some of these events. So I'm very fam but I am very familiar with the property.
My daughter was on the playground. We did field days, we used the sledding hill. All of that stuff to me is extraordinarily important. I love the woods, I love the facade of the building. I don't particularly love the building. So those are, that's my experience and my, and my comments. Speaker 1: So just a, a word to the public. Saturday was conceived not with all five members attending. We just selected three because that made the most sense to have th given the number of people who pre-registered, we'd have three groups, there'll be additional walking tour,
we will all be involved in that. So someone not being there is an indicative of a lack of interest or this isn't a priority, it's just that we only needed three groups. And that's what made most sense on Saturday. I, I've spent some time inside and on the grounds. Speaker 9: I too have spent sat spent time inside of the building as well as on the grounds. I've had a daughter to experience summer camp there. While I'm not a Johnson parent, I am deeply concerned and curious
and plugged into the community as to what the community most desires and what is best for the town. I won't go into why I was not able to be there, but I appreciate all that the town is doing to make sure that this is an equitable process that reaches it's as far as reaching as possible. But I do look forward to the next opportunity to, to participate with the community on a walking tour. Speaker 1: Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions from members of the public Speaker 12: Madam Chair? Yes. I just wanna address something Ms.
G Greenley said that about the human contact with the select board. And I wanna remind people who are listening that we show up at office hours, both at the farmer's market and the community senior center periodically to have that human contact if you want to talk to us one-on-one. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Sidney. Ms. Wolf, Speaker 11: If I can just interrupt Bruce and I just swapped and I will be at the community senior center tomorrow at nine o'clock if anyone wants to show up. So thank you Mr. Sidney. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Wilger, thank you so much
for bringing all this information and, and also the extraordinary effort you've made Mr. J to organize a transparent, comprehensive, and complete plan for the board to adopt and, and follow. And I deeply appreciate it. Speaker 28: Thank you Speaker 13: Stuff. Speaker 1: Next item on the agenda, our select board norms. So by means of introduction during our, the select board has had a number of retreats. And one thing that we discussed last year
and this year is the need to adopt norms. These aren't, this isn't a, a policy to be enforced, but they're norms to guide the behavior of the select board. It informs both the board and the public, how the board operates and what our expectations are of ourselves and of each other. The document that's attached to the agenda has introduction, responsibilities, I'm not going to read them. And then a number of 10 norms which we've narrowed down and refined over time. Initially these were not public facing, but we decided at the last retreat that we wanted them
to be public facing so that the public understands what level of behavior we expect of each other and what we hold each other to. Many of them are self-explanatory. We, one that I hold particularly dear and then I'll open up to the board to talk about is that once the board's made a decision, all members support that decision and they uphold it publicly. Even if we personally disagree during deliberations. A board decision is a board decision and we're members of the board. So we support that. And also the need for the board to treat each other staff
and the public with respect and courtesy at all times, even during disagreements. That's critically important. And that, you know, I've watched other board and committee meetings where colleagues were not terribly kind to each other or were sarcastic or unkind. And that is not a behavior that this board will support or endorse among ourselves. So I'll turn it over the board to talk about it and it's my hope that we will be able to adopt these tonight. Any comments, Mr. Evans? Yeah, Speaker 13: Just I feel very comfortable
advocating for this because I think we all discussed this, like the critical success factors. I think we, we started out with ideas at, at retreat and we kept chipping away at them or refining them. And I think where we landed is, is the, the appropriate level. And I think these are very constructive, helpful guidelines and that govern our behavior and how we should treat each other at the staff and the public. So I think there, there are rules that we can all abide by
and to the benefit of both us and the town. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Mr. Sidney. Speaker 12: Yeah. One of the things that, and and I appreciate these and I'm not advocating any particular changes, but one of the things that I've realized in the, in particular in the past couple of weeks is I sometimes get through one or another of my personal emails. I have several business for the board. My personal policy with those is I respond with, I can't deal with this because this is my personal email.
Write me at if it's sufficiently important or sufficiently time critical, I will then forward that mail to the board from my personal email. And I just, I think that's a practice, not a norm that, you know, we should all kind of like figure out how to work our on our own. Because board business that comes to our personal emails should get on the record somehow. So I just, I wanted to mention that because it's, it's happened a couple of times recently. It's not typical. Speaker 1: One of the things we can do, and I would advocate this as a best practice,
I think it's fine to respond from your personal email, but copy say, you know, that copy your personal and any email that members of the board responds to that are sent to individuals, the board needs to be copied on that respect. Speaker 12: Well that's, that particular thing is in the, in the, in Speaker 1: The norm. Yes, I understand that. Speaker 12: Yeah. I'm just talking about the, the, you know, if it comes to a personal email, how do you get it to the board and how do you also, you know, one of the things, one of the reasons I do it, the way I do it is to educate people. This is board business.
Talk to me as a board member, not as a personal. Speaker 1: And I think, I think that's perfectly fine. Yes, Ms. Slager, Speaker 11: I think your concern is actually covered in there in this because, because it does say email sent to individual select board members. It doesn't say at your select board email address. I think that your personal email address, if it involves a select board, I think that that number five here Speaker 12: Becomes, yeah, I, I'm not, I wasn't, like I said, I wasn't advocating for a change. I was just like diving into a net. Yeah, Speaker 11: But I'm saying that I do believe that that part is covered. Speaker 1: Any other comments with regard to our norms?
I will take a motion. Speaker 12: Move we adopt, move we adopt the norms. Speaker 11: Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney, seconded by Ms. Slager to adopt the select board norms as attached to the agenda. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And we have adopted the select board norms. Mr. Erickson, could you see that those, those are on the select board, that those are posted on the select board website? Speaker 2: Certainly obviously we'll update it with a, an adopted date. Speaker 1: That'd be awesomely. Yep. Thank you so much. The last agenda item in open meeting is a hearing
for Gabs Gadsby's chop house LLCs section 12, all alcohol license, license, not in use. The license holder and his attorney are unavailable for tonight's meeting. So we're just gonna open a hearing and continue it until 7 23 when both of them can attend so that we don't need a motion on that. That is just Speaker 12: Madam, Madam chair. Since this isn't posted as a public hearing, why don't we just get a public hearing posted for the 23rd? Speaker 1: 'cause I've already written to the attorney. So, yes, while your solution is more elegant, I've already written to the attorney prior
to not understanding that this was not going to be a public hearing. So I've indicated that we are going to open a hearing. Okay. Speaker 12: You can open a hearing without a vote. Speaker 1: I understand that. That's why I'm saying I don't need a vote. I'm just announcing it. It's on the agenda and it will be continued to July 23rd. Consent agenda, Madam Clerk Speaker 9: Item a approve common request. Natick Health Department to host the annual health and wellness fair on Saturday, July 19th, 2025 from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM in conjunction with the Natick farmer's market. Item B, approve letter designating Morgan Griffith's as Natick's representative to the M-W-R-T-A advisory board.
Item C, vote to declare surplus police equipment. Item D approve town approve. I'm sorry, approve. Request to bag parking meters for NA Knights. Is there anything that anyone wants to pull from the agenda from the consent agenda? Apologies. Speaker 1: No. Speaker 9: Okay, I move to approve the consent agenda. Speaker 12: Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Pope. Seconded by Mr. Sidney. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Mr. Erickson? It's 5 0 0. It carries.
Do you have any updates for the board? Speaker 2: Just briefly. We're we're entering the winter, the winter, the summer months and we've already are, are actually ending our first heat wave. So you might have noticed that we did have some cooling shelters because we're hitting the heat wave. These periodically happen. We have a great team that works together to set up the announcements and get the word out there. And so as we hit the months just for public awareness and for the board's awareness, you will probably see that happening. It's part of our standard practice. Also the summer months, the, the Monday starts the new town hall hours.
So we will be implementing those. We'll be monitoring those over the next several months to see how they work and see how, how the protocols are working. We are intending, for example, to try to have the doors sort of lock automatically open automatically and lock automatically at certain times to try to just give our staff the time in the building without the public necessarily here asking for their time to get work done. We feel this is important for quality work for the community and for the public. So just that's some new practices and protocols that are gonna be working through over the coming weeks ahead.
So for example, Monday through Wednesday at four 30 the doors will lock. This mean you can't get out. It just means there'll be a limitation on people getting in. And then for night meetings they'll open back up, typically around five 30 for a six o'clock meeting, for example. Okay. And we will be monitoring the meetings in case there's a four 30 or a five o'clock meeting. We'll adjust that accordingly. And then Thursdays at six o'clock. But again, if there's a Thursday night meeting, they might not actually lock at that point. It'll just continue. And then Fridays, we already do a summer adjustment to Friday hours
because the school department has early hours on Friday. So the doors have been locking last several years at 1230. And then it's just the summertime. So please be safe. Please hydrate and stay safe out there Speaker 1: Ms. Wgo. Speaker 11: Thank you. How so how are we publicizing the, the change in hours? Will there be, I assume we'll have something on the website. Are we going to also have some signage on the doors or some, Speaker 2: So there's already signage on all the doors. There's already at all the windows of every single department. So everything
Speaker 11: Has already been changed Speaker 2: And they'll be changed. Jay is working on all the changes for the website. We wanted to be mindful of timing. Yep. 'cause people could still be going to the website like today. And we wanted them to know that today, I believe it's already been in the Natick report and it's been in the Natick report. But all there are signs, temporary signs because we're making up more permanent signs. But they're at every window of every department and at the main doors. Great. Speaker 11: Alright. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Are there any select board updates? Speaker 2: I do have one quick other update. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: With the announced retirement
of our deputy town administrator for opera for finance, John Townsend in September, we've actually posted the position on the MMA website on the mass GFOA government, the, the award we got on the national level, there's a Massachusetts chapter that we've been posted on that website. So we're actively recruiting for that position. Our hope is that we can get some good candidates in. We can even have maybe some overlap with, with John or at least have them lined up to start soon thereafter. So we're, we're, we're actively pursuing that early and we are seeking the support of, of a consultant to help us with some of the recruitment. Consultants are extremely busy
'cause there's a lot of similar positions. So we can't get somebody fully on board, but we are still trying to get some help as best we can. So, just wanted the board to be aware of that. 'cause you'll, you've, if you haven't seen it already, it's on the MMA website. It's crazy because we only just posted it yesterday and there's already about 20 jobs above it. That's how much the local government, you know, job market is strong in one sense, but also concerning in another sense. So Speaker 1: Very competitive. Mr. Erickson, are you done? Yes. Okay. Members of the board, do you have any select board updates?
Certainly none. I'll entertain a motion. Speaker 2: Move to adjourn. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Slager, seconded by Mr. Mr. Bruce. Mr. Bruce, all in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes 5 0 0. Goodnight. Thank you. 9 0 8. Thank you.