Speaker 1: I call the meeting to order at 6:06 PM and ask that all in the room who are able to stand and say the pledge of Allegiance and observe a moment of silence Speaker 2: To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation underground, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: We'll start this evening with announcements. The first announcement is regarding the recent hate incident at Lusia Elementary School, Mr. Marshall. Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. So over the weekend we noticed that on the outside of the Lilja School
there was hateful language and symbols that were painted and affixed on that we promptly removed those. The police department, town administrator, school superintendent got together and we released a statement following that. Certainly any act of hate is unacceptable and we just wanted the public to know that everyone should be welcome and supported within the community. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Marshall. The second announcement is an announcement about the select board delaying its review and implementation of an e-bike policy in November
of 2024, I believe. Yes, the, the governor signed into law a the Mass Leads Act, which established a special commission to study and recommend ways to improve micro mobility and regulate micro mobility vehicles in anticipation of the glacial pace at which legislation happens at the state level. We had discussed jumping ahead and developing our own policies and procedures, but given that the governor, the state, the Senate,
and the House have both issued bills incorporating many of the special commission's re micro mobility report, which was issued in January. And the governor has set or has strongly indicated that it would support having public hearings. The first hearing is tomorrow, given that they're going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of definitions and providing a rubric for the issue of micro mobility, we are temporarily delaying the select board is delaying formulating policy regarding E-bikes. We may take it up sooner rather than later.
It just depends on the legislature and what we see our immediate needs in the community. Third announcement is rail meets Trail. This is an event on June 25th, 2026 at the Kiki Rail Trail at the Natick Center T stop. So this is to celebrate the new direct connection from the Kiki Rail Trail to the Natick Center, MBTA station and 1 million visits on the Natick CRT since August, 2021. So 1 million is slightly undercounting because the counter two people could be walking side by side and the counter might pick up just one.
But we can say safely say that there have been 1 million visits on this, on this trail in the last five years. So this will take place on Thursday, June 25th at 3:00 PM It's presented by the Friends of Natick Trails in partnership with the town of Natick and the Natick Center Cultural District. This will kick off Natick nights, which will start at 5:00 PM on the town common. There'll be a motley crew of dignitaries who will usher in the event. And I encourage everyone to turn out and celebrate the some momentous occasion. Again, that's June 25th at 3:00 PM Fourth announcement is a level three drought declaration.
Mr. Marshall. Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm just gonna share my screen briefly for the, the public at home. So on the town's main page, we've noted that there's a mandatory ban that we have on outdoor uses. The town of Natick has moved from a level two to a level three drought, which basically has limited water use more than in the past. So we wanted to make sure it was easily accessible for the public. And we also had heard from a number of members from the public regarding, well, what is non-essential water usage? So we wanted to make sure we highlighted those
within this information. So things like automatic lawn sprinkler systems, washing driveways and sidewalks, washing cars at home. Those things right now as we're in level three drought are prohibited. If you do have like vegetable gardens at your house, you can water those, hand water those. If you have a newly established lawn that you have, those things are allowable. And you know, for more information, look on our website and that can give you some details regarding the level three drought. We do have to follow because our wells are licensed with the state. We do have to follow when the state makes that determination. So we are adhering to that
and encourage everyone to adhere to those requirements of a level three drought. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans and then Ms. Wolf Schwager. Speaker 5: Mr. Marshall, could you scroll back up to, to show the water district that we're in now, as people can see at home, that's a pretty broad water district. So a lot of people have asked why are we in a drought rains every other day. And the reason is it's, it's the entire region. There are five regions, I think five in the state and we're in that big orange one, right? So that you can see it extends from pretty well the end
of Massachusetts Northern to pretty well past the central Massachusetts. So it's a big area. So there could be, the Essex River could be really dry and we could have the Charles River overflowing here, yet we will still be in a drought condition. So I just wanted to make the public aware of that. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Ms. Slager, Speaker 6: As a follow on to that, also on our website, if you would like to purchase a rain barrel, which I would recommend they are available for $70
versus the retail price of 119. You can order it through the online payment system and Publix works will deliver it to your house. So you don't even have to go and pick it up or worry about how you're gonna fit it in your car. So I would highly recommend getting one of those because these level three droughts are occurring more and more frequently. This way you can still continue to utter. And then I have another thing. So tomorrow I will be at the Natick Community Senior Center and for office hours, this, these are,
we have office hours twice a month for the select board at the senior center and at Farmer's Market. So tomorrow is 9:00 AM Hmm? 9:00 AM 9:00 AM 9:00 AM to 10. Speaker 1: Thank you. Ms. Wils Lago. Mr. Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 4: Yeah, just real quick, I just wanted to acknowledge that this week is I alta, which is an important holiday for our Muslim neighbors. So just wanted to say I mu bark to everyone celebrating. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Jacobs. Does any other member of the board have an announcement at this time? At this time, we'll 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 the portion of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law. This section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes and any individual addressing the board during the section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to address the select board? Yes sir. If you could come to the podium, introduce yourself, tell us whether you're a resident or a business owner in Natick. Speaker 7: I am a resident of Natick. Speaker 1: And your name? Speaker 7: Mark Roberts. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Roberts. I had Speaker 7: A couple of questions on the waterfall, the decision,
Speaker 1: Just one moment. Let me interrupt you. So because of open meeting law, we cannot answer questions or respond to inquiries and it's also on the agenda. Yep. So there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions. Can I Speaker 7: Just ask them without getting an answer? Just so they're out there if everybody has them, Speaker 1: If that's the way you wish to use your time. Sure. In three minutes. Sure. Speaker 7: Yeah. 'cause it's not it really. First question is, did the people that decide to take away the iconic, I stress that word, there aren't too many iconic things in the town. The iconic waterfall. Did they live in the town?
The people that decided that? The second question is, was the decision made Because the state offered to pay for most of it. Obviously that, that would be a big incentive. I, I grew up at the town, I spent a lot of time down at the waterfall and it just, for me, I don't understand. It was nothing done for years and years and years. It was no cost of the town that I'm aware of. So I just don't understand the, the process to, to take it away. And then the last thing is, I talked to a resident in South Natick, an elder gentleman,
and he said, I looked at these plans and none of them have, it's, it's a two area park. And to get from this side to this side or vice versa, you have to cross the street, walk down the sidewalk, cross the street again to get into one side or the other. And his comment was, why don't, part of this project is to build a bridge from one side to the other that could be used as easy access for both sides. And, and as you know, the parking is limited. It's on that one, one way street.
And then there's a few spots on Pleasant Street which get taken up during baseball season by baseball people. And so that seemed like a good idea to me. Just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Roberts. Yeah. Is there anyone else in the room who wishes to address the select board? Seeing none in the room. Ms. Vickers? Speaker 8: Hi, can Speaker 1: You guys hear me? Yes. Loud and clear. Thank you. Okay. Speaker 8: 'cause I can't hear you guys at all on Zoom. I don't know if anybody else on Zoom can hear, but I can't hear. So I thought I would point that I only know that you said you could hear me
'cause I'm watching you nod your head. So I'm not sure if there's a problem or not, but I just thought I'd let you know. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Vickers. Is there anyone? Ms. De Mayo. Ms. De Mayo? I apologize. Mr. Mayo, did you wish to speak? Speaker 9: Yes. Sorry. I had the same problem as Brinley all of a sudden. I can hear what you're saying in the room, but I didn't until this point. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. De Mayo. Is there anyone else on Zoom who wishes to address the select board during public speak? Seeing none, that will conclude our section on public speak.
And I'm going to do the proclamations out of order. The first proclamation is for the select board to accept the Kibby proclamation from the afford Affordable Housing Trust fund. And we have ran Randy Johnson from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Speaker 3: Thank Speaker 10: You. Good evening. Randy Johnson, member of the Natick Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The Kibby Award was created by the trust to give recognition to those responsible for exemplary contribution to the expansion of housing opportunities
for citizens of Natick. It's been awarded two previous times. The last recipient, bill Werner, a tireless advocate for the creation of veterans housing, is unable to attend. Tonight he's up in New Hampshire running his seasonal boat tour operation on Winni Psaki. He gives his regrets for not being able to participate in tonight's presentation. The idea of this award came into being during the construction of the Bacon Street duplex when the Kippy bottle As seen here
was unearthed during the excavation of the basement. We did some research. Kippy was produced by Coca-Cola in WSA in the forties. And the bottle is symbolic of the process of transforming an idea, a rough preliminary concept into something tangible and beneficial. And that's what the trust endeavors to do. And we all know the uphill battle, the challenges of getting an affordable housing development through the approval process and then funded and then built. With that in mind. It was an easy decision for the trust
to award the kibby to the select board. As the proclamation states, the Natick Select board has continuously supported the mission of the Natick Affordable Housing Trust fund. Perhaps no more significantly with their thoughtful deliberation and ultimate decision to dedicate the Auburn Street School site to the creation of housing for families that are precluded by market forces from living in Natick. In light of these actions and and in anticipation of future collaboration, the Natick Affordable Housing Trust Fund unanimously voted
to award the kibby to the select board. The trust expresses both gratitude and congratulations. You are now the custodian of the kibby. May it remind you of your guidance, commitment and support of the mission of the trust. And I should award the Kibby and the proclamation to Speaker 1: Mr. Evans will accept the award on behalf of the select board. Thank you Mr. Johnson. You're welcome. Speaker 3: I thought you read, there it is. Speaker 5: Thank Just say a couple things. Speaker 1: You may. Speaker 5: I I'd like to thank my fellow board members
who had made a commitment to, of creating affordable housing in Natick. It is a very difficult thing to do in not only Natick, but in other communities a lot of times. And some of it has to do with the loss. The state mandates of 10% to 15% affordable housing and new developments. But that's at 80% of the area median income, which is roughly in this area, the most expensive area in the country, roughly $110,000,
which isn't exactly affordable housing. By contrast, the Auburn Street development as 30%, 50% of the units are 30% A MI and 60% are, I'm sorry, 50% are 60% a MI. Too many numbers. So that, that is a much more affordable situation where a school teacher, a DPW worker, a nurse, whoever it might be, can enter a lottery and have a chance to own a, a modern well located
living situation. So I think the affordable House, our housing trust, who supported that activity, it's a two-way street. We didn't do it all alone. The select board had good partners. And I'd also like to thank publicly Metro West Collaborative Development, who did a ton of work to move this forward. So thank you on behalf of the board. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Next item on the agenda is our annual Pride month proclamation. I'm going to ask acting clerk Mr. Evans to behind your computer to read
that into the record and then we'll take a vote. Speaker 5: Thank you Madam Chair. Whereas the Natick Select Board believes in the inherent dignity and worth of all who live, work, and spend time in our community. And affirms that every person deserves to be safe, valued, and free to live there as their authentic self. And whereas the Natick Select Board values the substantial contributions of L-G-B-T-Q individuals to our community and to the civic, cultural, scientific, and professional life of the nation, including the milestone election of Sarah McBride
of Delaware as the first out transgender person ever to serve in the United States Congress. The continued leadership of Massachusetts Governor Mara Healy as the first lesbian out lesbian elected to a governorship in American history. And the more than 1,334 openly L-G-B-T-Q elected officials now serving across the country. And whereas Pride Month honors the June 28th, 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising in New York City where members
of the L-G-B-T-Q community and their friends were assaulted, harassed, arrested and worse. And where their courageous resistance marked the beginning of a heightened national consciousness of the injustice of discriminatory laws and practices against L-G-P-T-Q Americans. And whereas recently, the United States Supreme Court issued a series of rulings that collectively eroded hard won L-G-B-T-Q rights, including upholding Tennessee's ban on gender affirming medical care for transgender youth,
perens us via ti I'm pronouncing that right, permitting parents to opt their children out of LB L-G-B-T-Q inclusive school curricular Mahmud versus Taylor. And ruling that anticon conversion therapy laws protecting minors from discredited and harmful practices must face the highest level of judicial scrutiny, child versus Salazar decisions that the human rights campaign described as a devastating series that eroded hard fought LGBTQ plus rights.
And whereas federal executive actions since January, 2025 have included a ban on transgender service members in the United States Armed forces the elimination of the ex gender marker on the United States password ports directives withholding federal funds from medical providers that offer gender affirming care to minors. And at least nine states having introduced or passed legislation seeking to block same-sex marriage licenses or urging the Supreme Court
to con reconsider its Landmark 2015 ruling in Obergfel versus Hodges, a ruling that currently predicts approximately 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, and whereas so-called conversion therapy has been rejected as harmful and ineffective by every major medical and mental health organization. And research by the Trevor Project that deter demonstrates that L-G-B-T-Q youth subjected to such practices are more than twice as likely
to attempt suicide compared with their peers. Whereas the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has long been a leader in L-G-B-T-Q-Q equality becoming the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004 and continues to affirm strong state level civil rights protections for L-G-B-T-Q residents in employment, housing, public accommodations and education. And whereas the Natick Select Board strongly upholds the
rights of all who live, work, and spend time in Natick of every sexual orientation, gender identity and expression to be safe, valued, empowered, and supported by their neighbors and community leaders, and recognizes that local government has both an obligation and an opportunity to affirm these rights when federal protections are uncertain now, therefore be it resolved that the Natick Select Board on this fourth day of June 20, 20, 26 declares the month of June, 2026
as L-G-B-T-Q Pride Month in Natick, Massachusetts, and urges all residents, businesses and institutions to recognize the contributions of L-G-B-T-Q people to stand with our L-G-B-T-Q neighbors at a moment of heightened national challenge and to promote the enduring principles of equity, liberty, and justice for all. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Clerk. At this time, is there a motion, Mr. Jacobs, Speaker 4: I, I move that we adopt the proclamation as just read
Speaker 1: Second move by Mr. Jacobs. Second by Ms. Slager. Any discussion Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 4: I just wanted to briefly thank the chair for writing such a thoughtful and thorough proclamation that acknowledges the current in, that acknowledges the current reality that we face. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Jacobs. Mr. Evans, Speaker 11: I just want to go on record. Ditto. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Mr. Evans. As this is a pride month proclamation by the board. On behalf of the board, I'm not gonna be taking public
comments, but we do welcome comments sent to select board@neekma.org. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 4 0 0. Now we'll move into appointments. Appointment of new full-time police officers, Matthew Hanley and Joshua Rege. Rege. Chief Hicks. Welcome. Speaker 11: Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board, and as I always say, and it's, it's always great to repeat, it's always great opportunity to be, to see the beginning of a great career, especially for the organization such
as the Natick Police Department, which takes pride in, in our process of hiring and also bringing on great candidates to serve this community. For those who don't know, I'm Jim Hicks here, the Chief of Police here at Natick. I always forget to introduce myself with that. I, I, as the select board are the appointment authorities for police officers at the town of Natick. I am respectfully requesting that, that you report, that you appoint these two who I'll present to you tonight when the time does come, I just request that this appointment should be contingent upon sec successful completion of the police academy and any other requirements necessary
for successful certification with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Peace Officer and Standard Commission. I also request that these appointments would be effective on Monday, June 1st, which is coming up, which would be their first day at the Marlborough Police Academy. So they have a lot of work to do in a short period of time. With that I'd, first I'd like to introduce Matthew Hanley. Matthew is 26 years old and, and resides in Braintree. He is here tonight with his wife Catherine, the star of the show, ala seven months old, and also his mother-in-law. Elaine here to, to witness him tonight. Mr.
Hanley graduated from Arlington Catholic High School in 2018. After graduation, he enlisted in the United States Army, completing basic combat training and advanced individual training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Mr. Hanley was selected assigned to the 13th Battalion Third Infantry Regiment, what is known as the Old Guard. Everyone should know the old guard. If you visited down to dc, which is Army's most prestigious non-special operations assignments to be considered and selected for the Old Guard soldiers must be extremely motivated, squared away, have an impeccable appearance in excellent fitness,
discipline, and professionalism. Mr. Hanley spent three years as an active duty in receiving honorable discharge from the Army for his, his duties. Upon discharge, he attended Southern New Hampshire University as a full, as a full-time student, student on cybersecurity program and still working towards his bachelor's degree. He's currently employed as a gun vault specialist with Bass Gun Vault specialists at Bass Pro Shops in Foxborough, where he has to manage over 1000 firearms, which as a firearms licenser, I know what that means, takes a lot.
And speaking to his immediate supervisor, he described him as he meets his performance expectation. He constantly exceeds them, excuse me, doesn't only meet his job performance expectation. He constantly exceeds them. And he further describes him as detailed and team oriented, always open to feedback and wanted to learn. He went through our expansive process, including a interview process. During that process, the committee says he demonstrated composure, maturity, and a genuine passion for career and law enforcement.
Next, I'll introduce Joshua Je stay here. We practiced this before coming in. Mr. JE is 24 years of age and currently resides in Bellingham. And he's here tonight with his wife Ashley. Mr. JE is a 2016 graduate of Belling Bellingham High School. And after his high school, he enrolled at Worcester State University. We started criminal justice, subsequently transferred into Southern New Hampshire University. We completed his associate degree in criminal justice in November of 2021. Mr. Raje is also a licensed EMT
and certified through the National Registry Emergency Medical Technicians. He's employed currently here in Natick, or officially still here in Natick, working as a heavy equipment operator with our water department since 2019. When speaking to his immediate supervisor, he described Mr. JE as overall work performance as excellent, consistently on time and dependable. Often the first employee to step up and lead or help noting that he regularly ask, how can I help? This is important in a letter that Mr. Je sent to me as part of his process, and I want to quote some of his areas.
He stated, I'm committed to serving a community. I've been proud to work alongside for more than six years. Through my time working with the town, I have become familiar with its neighborhoods, residents, and values, which has strengthened my desire to continue contributing in a meaningful way with an associate's degree in criminal justice and a genuine passion for law enforcement. I'm driven to make a positive impact in people's lives and be the kind of officer who helps shape trust, respect in confidence in policing. My goal is to be one of the reasons why people feel safe in this community
and why they can look at their local police officers with appreciation and pride unquote. During this interview, they, the committee describe him as well spoken, calm and prepared and easygoing, professional and personable. With that, Madam Chairman members a board, I would recommend and request that you appoint these two gentlemen as full-time police officers for the town of Natick. Speaker 1: Thank you Chief. Mr. Evans. I Speaker 5: Got the motion. Speaker 1: Oh, okay. So Speaker 5: Move to appoint Matthew w Hanley and Joshua p je, his permanent full-time officer is effective June 1st, 2026,
contingent upon successful completion of the police academy and any other requirements necessary for successful certification with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Speaker 3: Second, Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Evans, seconded by Mr. Jacobs. Is there any discussion or comment from members of the board, Mr. Evans? Speaker 5: Yep. Just very briefly. It is always great to see people with a strong breadth of experience and, and a great interest in the town of Natick. And, and in particular, I'll,
I'll just leave it at that. It's encouraging to see a group of people committed to the town and it's very important to me for that. So thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Slager. Speaker 6: Thank you. And congratulations Chief Hicks. It's been such a pleasure to see the candidates that you have brought forward recently. And it's good to know that your standards have not slipped in any way because once again, we have two outstanding candidates available. And I look forward to you having long careers
with our department and much success and hope to see you around town. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Wilger. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 4 0 0. Welcome, Mr. Hanley. And Mr. Je, Mr. Chief, I had a quick question. Could you tell me how many officers we have now in academy and how many we have actively serving, including these two being in academy? These Speaker 11: Two will make nine, Speaker 1: Nine in academy. Okay. Currently Speaker 11: In academy. Speaker 1: And how many do we have actively serving? Speaker 11: We have 50.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Let's take a five minute recess. Okay. I'm calling the meeting to order again at 6:47 PM Speaker 12: Hello. Speaker 13: Hello. Speaker 1: Calling the meeting back to order at 6:47 PM Discussion and decision update on the election recount. Mr. Clerk, Speaker 14: Mr. Town Clerk, right? Speaker 1: Yes. Mr. Town Clerk, not Mr. Board Clerk. Speaker 12: Good evening. My name is Andrew Gobrial, you're Town Clerk. I thank you for allowing me to be here before you today. And before I begin, I would also like to extend a gratitude for all the volunteers, poll workers, DPW, personnel,
facilities, police, and all those who helped us carry out the town election. It's a huge lift and everyone was on board helping us out through the process. It's a, it's a great feeling and a great team effort and I'm very grateful for these partnerships and everyone that stepped in to help. So, looking back, we had our annual town election on March 31st and prior to town election, we a, we advertised nomination papers being available for people that wish to run. We typically do that the Monday after Thanksgiving. So that I feel, I, I think that fell on,
on December 1st last year. I, I don't have the calendar in front of me, but in any case, the nomination paper process is open for a period of about a month, month and a half. And then we have to go and get the ballot started. So during this time we had some people turn in papers and then when that period closed, we actually made a push to get people to run as write-ins for the slots that were still vacant. And there was a notation on our town, on the town website, the election page specifically, that encouraged and directed individuals to notify the town clerk's office
if they were going to conduct a write in campaign. And the reason for this is it, this is a state, it's not set in law from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Elections Division, but it is highly encouraged by them because it does give the poll workers the ability to ascertain and determine what to look for at the conclusion of the polling hours when they have to tally out all the ballots and, you know, fill in the tally sheets with the write-ins. I, this is a point, this is a very important piece because at the end of the day, all I receive are the tally sheets with those write-ins.
I am not privy and I cannot legally open the sealed boxes to view the ballots. Those are kept away, stashed away in a locked, in a locked part of town hall. And they're only to be opened in the presence of a police officer during a recount or any court action. So for my purposes, I have to rely on those tally sheets. So with, with that said, we had one candidate reach out to me to be included on the tally, on the tally sheets for the associate member position of the planning board, which I did, I did include 'em.
And then shortly after, we made a push to get people to run for write-ins as write-ins for Vacan seats. 'cause ultimately we wanna have our seats town offices filled. We don't want vacancies in, in town wide positions, nor in town meeting. So there was a pitch, there was a, there was a press release that was put on the homepage of the town website asking people to run and to inform us if they were going to do a write in campaign. Shortly after the town election happened, I was putting together all the election results
and it came to, came to my attention that there were some discrepancies. And that first alarmed me, I was very alarmed by this, but also I was trying to make sense of everything. So I had to, I reviewed the tally sheets once more. I looked at everything thoroughly and it, it became clear that there was an issue at that point. I received emails from individuals in town asking for a recount, which I happily explained the process.
I explain, explained the process to Mr. Lunta, Brian Lunta, who wanted to initiate this recount. I encouraged him to get ample signatures to ensure that this recount happened. It was a tight window and he pulled through and got a lot, a lot of signatures. Got the notaries that he needed to get that recount going. It was about a day and a half, if you will. And he did it all. It was, it was amazing. And the recount actually took shape on in this room on April 17th, Friday afternoon, right before April vacation. And the way, the way we did it is we actually had nine teams
of two set up in this room. I should also point out that we had repetitions for precincts two through 10. One was not included as a recount, so it was nine precincts of the 10 that had to be recounted. So we had nine groups of two working here to count each precinct. And the process involved a tellier and a recorder, so, I'm sorry, a recorder and a reader. So the reader would basically look at the ballot and ascertain who got the vote or if it's a blank, and read that, say that out loud while the recorder would
indicate this on the tally sheet. This process worked out pretty well. And we, at the end of the process, we determined that there was a tie that evening Town Council, Carris North was present. And she, despite there being a tie, we did the math over and over again. We did it maybe two, three times just to determine the accuracy of that tie. And in fact, it was a tie. So at that point, council North did some re research on her computer and determined that this constituted a failure to elect to
given the town charter. And at that point it was determined that the select board would appoint an individual to serve the remainder of the term until the next regularly scheduled town election in 2027. And so that actually, I think that ensued a week or two ago. And looking after this was all said and done, I start, I, I analyzed the results with my team. I looked at what happened, where did we go wrong, was there anything else we could do to enhance this process? Is there a way we could en enhance transparency, enhance the counting process. And so what we came up with was
ballots are the ballots need to be tallied with accuracy and integrity. And in, and in order to do so, we're gonna revamp the process by which ballots are counted at the end of the night. So similar like the recount, we're gonna have the clerk and warden each precinct act as the reader and recorder. Okay. This will allow the reader to look at every ballot in that box and determine if there's any write-ins on that ballot. If there are any write-ins on that ballot, the reader will read it aloud out loud while the teller
or recorder will actually mark it on the tally sheet. This way, no vote is left behind. We wanna ensure that all our, our elections are fair and transparent. And this will ensure that this process leads to better integrity, better accountability, and more fairness. Another thing that came up as a result of this recount was several votes were actually cast for both parties, but they did not have the oval filled in. So this is something that we're gonna try to hone in on
and inform the voter. I'm thinking maybe we can have neon neon colored signs affixed to the polling booth that, you know, show how to actually fill in the bubble just as a reminder, just so that we can make sure that people actually fill in those bubbles and that the machine gets that right in. Because the machine, the machine does not actually capture what is written in, it captures that there's a write in on that ballot and then it segregates it into a different pile that PE poll workers have to go through. If, if the oval is not filled in for a write-in ballot,
it goes into a separate box that the poll workers are supposed to look, look through at the end of the night. But oftentimes after working a 14 hour day, they, it might be a little difficult to, you know, view each ballot one at a time. So this process that we we're gonna implement, we're gonna start training on, is gonna help ensure transparency and help ensure that all votes are are accounted for because people's voices matter. And this is, this is my job and this is my mission, is to make sure that people's voices are heard and that we can carry out fear and impartial elections and that people can have,
the public can have faith in our, in in the election process. So these are some of the changes that we're gonna implement going forward. We're gonna have trainings sessions with all the poll workers and we're gonna drill this new process. We're gonna have materials that illustrate this new process and we're gonna work hard to make sure that this is implemented and carry it out with precision for every election here on out. And I encourage anyone with feedback to reach out to me or give me any pointers that they may have.
Again, at the end of the day, I'm here to serve the public. I'm here to make sure that elections are carried out fairly in impart with, with fairness and impartiality. So with that, I am happy to answer any questions or address any concerns Speaker 1: First from members of the board questions or comments, Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you. This is really helpful and I appreciate the, the memo which is attached to the agenda so anyone can, can read it. Who wants to, that outlines this? I just had a couple of questions. One is the process you, you described makes sense that is gonna be implemented. I was curious how that differs from the current process.
Like what is the current process or what was the process in this election for counting write-in votes that each precinct? Speaker 12: Absolutely. I appreciate the question. So the current process actually, it basically the warden and the clerk, which are the two, the two highest ranking officials at the polls, they typically put away the machines, print out the receipts showing the, the totals of votes and so so on and so forth while the inspectors do the tallies. That has been the process. But this time going forward, i, there's gonna be a shift where the inspectors are trained to, to close the polls,
generate the end of day totals, and to put things away while the warden and the clerk actually carry out this, this tallying process and capture all the write-ins. And I should also add that my goal is to have one or two, two inspectors oversee that process. So if there is, when, when there, when the warden and the clerk are doing the tallying and recording, there's gonna be an inspector on the side observing the process to make sure everything's done with accuracy and precision. Speaker 4: Great. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. And then my, my other question is sort of, it's sort of an umbrella of questions,
but I think you can probably answer it all in kind of one Sure. Like, just about, kind of more specifics about this particular election because, you know, a lot of people pointed out that there was sort of a change from not, not before the recount happened, but that there was sort of a shift of votes in the tally, in the initial tally where it was initially tallied as, as I think it was, you know, in, in a preliminary results or something like that, where it was tallied as as one thing and then, you know, votes a, a couple of votes were, were added to a candidate, I think.
And if you just walk through kind of what any changes that happen sort of between, and I know there's a reason they call it a preliminary account, the thing that they release on, on election night, but what kind of, what happens there and why, you know, sometimes a vote might be counted later. Speaker 12: Absolutely. So this is actually, this is part of the process by which I learned a lot from on the night of elections on, on, on March 31st. That night I released a preliminary unofficial results, which were affixed to the town website homepage. Later on, after getting some rest
and coming in with a fresh set of eyes, I started to analyze all the tally sheets, the provisional ballots and mail-in mail-in ballots that were not taken to the polls for an array of reasons. There was just a few of them. One of them was unfortunately a deceased person that had devoted before passing on. So that had to be manually counted. And then the, the few provisionals that we had. And so those were all added to the tally sheet, added to the, to, based on the precinct. And then once the official results were posted,
I posted the official results and I quickly got feedback from constituents that there were some votes that were not properly captured. And that was a challenging part for me because I couldn't ascertain exactly where I went wrong. I was looking at the tally sheets and yes, I did see some votes for assigned to Mr. Lunta, but they were not clear, they were not clear in which office they were for. So I, in, in my, in my opinion, and to be as fair and impartial as I can, I cannot ascertain whether this was for a select board planning as board or associate planner of the planning board.
So like I left those off because I couldn't ascertain where they belonged. But when I got feedback from members of the public saying, you know, I voted for this individual at this precinct and then I see this number on my tally sheets, but it's not a fixed to a a certain office, that's where I went wrong and I assigned those votes to that candidate. And I did. That was, that was unfortunately a mess up on my part. I take full responsibility for that. And I, I learned from the, when I, when I reached out to the state elections division, the, the, the chief of elections, I learned that that was a big mishap that I should never do again.
So I, I learned that lesson real, real quickly, but that was part of the issue. I was just trying to be as fair as I possibly could. And when I found out that people had devoted for a certain individual and that those votes were not clearly illustrated for what office on the tally sheet, I, you know, I used that judgment and that conversation to ascertain that yes, maybe those votes should have gone to this individual. Okay. Speaker 5: Thank you. I appreciate that Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Speaker 5: Thank you Madam Chair. As a, as a warden, I just wanna thank you.
Our former warden can't do that anymore. It's a difficult process that, that you described. It's, it's a kind of mad scramble. The polls close at eight. It's a mad scramble to get it to town hall as soon as possible. It's already been a long day. The steps that you're taking to improve the categorization and count for write-ins is spot on it. It'll make it it more accurate and, and prevent these sorts of things from happening.
I think you're being extraordinarily hard on yourself when you, when you say that you messed up. I think there were things that weren't in the, the general processes weren't spelled out anywhere, and you weren't guided by the state until you ask this question. So I think you're being un unduly harsh on yourself. I think I, I want to applaud Mr. Lucent's efforts to bring this to our attention. Write write-ins are complicated,
there's no getting around that. But developing a process to isolate them and make sure those voted votes are counted because they are important. Because most of them, most of the write-ins are for local offices. Things like, typically they're for boards, sometimes town meeting members, right? So it's important that, you know, one or two votes might be the difference between somebody being elected and not elected. So I applaud the effort that went into this and, and the thoughtfulness of analyzing it and,
and talking about next steps in training. I think that will be helpful to not have a recurrence of this problem. I think you've done a great job under a difficult, in difficult circumstances to come to the correct conclusion. So I, I applaud all the effort and thank you for the memo. It's very clear. Thank you Speaker 6: Ms. Slager. Thank you Andrew. And your candor and sincerity and fortitude
and dealing with all of this during what had to be a pretty trying time for you is, is, is admirable. Appreciate all the efforts that you've done on this one. One question that I've heard in the public, and I just wanted to ask you, is that some people have said that it's the kind of voting machine that we have gotten that might have caused problems. Can you address that? Speaker 12: This is, I appreciate the question. I actually, I don't believe that that's has any bearing on the machines. These machines are actually tested before every election and we publicly announce that and it's open to the members of the public to come
and, and, and view this process. The board of registrars does participate in this extensive process and we te test at least 50 ballots per per ballot machine. And basically the, the, the machine testing encompasses testing for blanks, for write-ins, for over votes, for under votes. So we try to capture every possible scenario within each of these precincts to ascertain that the machine does actually work. I do have, I do intend to actually meet with the, the vendor next week and there are some questions that I do wanna, you know,
engage this vendor with and just to ascertain, you know, maybe get a better feel for, for how I could do things better or how I could use the machines to, for our advantage going forward. So I do have that scheduled with the vendor next week and hopefully we can, we can make progress in that regard. But I do not think that the machines have any bearing on the, this, this issue or, You know, they, they, they're not designed to capture write-ins that don't have a ballot, that don't have a, an oval filled in.
They're just designed to read that oval. Both the ESNS machines that we have and the LHS machines that the, there's only two vendors that are allowed to service elections here in mass and we use ESNS election systems and support or EL and, and, but both, both vendors use the same technology and, and it's the same standard put out by the Secretary of State. So I don't, I don't think that has any bearing. Speaker 6: All right, great. Thank you for that clarification. So the process that you're describing, it seems like it might take a while. Do you anticipate that counting
the, the ballots afterwards will take a longer period of time? I know that many people come to town hall and eagerly await the election results on election night. So do we have to tell them to be prepared to wait a little longer with this process? Speaker 12: Unfortunately, I think that's gonna be part of the process. I know everyone's in a hurry to get back to town hall and get home after working a 14 hour day at the polls. But in order to ensure accuracy, I think we need to step back a little bit, take our time review ballot by ballot to make sure that nothing is missed. So we don't have a situation like this on our hands again. Speaker 6: So have, have you looked at how many write-ins,
let's say there might be during a presidential election? Is it, is it conceivable that it might take a very long time to count the number of them for those elections? Speaker 12: I think yes, it will definitely increase the time to count those ballots, but I think the, this is, is most pressing in town elections because that's where a singular vote could make a huge difference. So while I'm not undermining presidential elections or anything like that write-ins in presidential, I'm not, I I I think that we're gonna have to do this process in every election going forward just to make sure that everyone's doing it consistently
and things are done right, the right way going forward. Yes, it'll take more time, but at the end of the day we'll have better results and more accurate results. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank, thank you Mr. Gore. My questions have been asked and answered, so I'd like to open it to members of the public please. If there's anyone in the room who wishes to ask a question, if you could come to the podium, introduce yourself, say whether you're an NAIC resident or a business owner, or Ms. Mr. Lunta, come forward. Speaker 15: Hi, Brian Lunta 20 Locust Street. I didn't have any questions. I just w wanted to say something if that's okay. I just wanted to, with Ms. Wolf Schlager's comment about the
time, it took almost two months to get an election result this time. So I think people can wait a little bit longer to get it right. I don't mean that to be smart either, but it was a very long process this time. So I i hopefully people can have the patience to wait another hour or two to make sure it's right. I just wanted to thank the select board. I know there was a lot of time and questions given to you guys. I know there was a ton to the clerk's office and not just you Andrew, but the whole office was phenomenal throughout this process. And I I just want to touch on the community wanted an answer for what happens. People didn't go sign those recount petitions
'cause they wanted me to win, they wanted election integrity. You guys addressed that and you addressed it very quickly. I am shocked to be here tonight listening to this and have I, I can't think of that. They could have done a better job with addressing this and coming up with a solution in such a quick time, well before I ever would've thought this would be happening. But I, I just wanna say there was, I mean, watching my ring camera, like Andrew said, we, I maybe had it, I had less than two days to get that done. There had to be at least a hundred people that showed up at my house during the day
for no other reason but to sign a petition for our election integrity. And I just wanna stress how important that was clearly to the whole town and you guys have clearly addressed it and I hope that this can be communicated to everyone, the plan that you guys have and that I, I'm very happy with it and I hope the four of you here are today and you should be proud of yourself. Andrew, you did a phenomenal job with this and to anyone else involved. So I just wanna say thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Lunta. Is there anyone else else in the room who wishes to address the board or as a question or comment? I don't see anyone online, so we'll close this agenda item
and we will move on to South Natick Dam update. Mr. Sprat. Speaker 16: Great, thank you very much. So tonight we're gonna go over a, a dam construction update. As you know, I like to give the bottom line up front always the bottom line up front in this pres presentation is the permitting phase is complete construction begins in the next month or so, and state grants will pay for the majority of this work. So if, if you don't pay attention to anything else, those are the three takeaways from the, from the meeting. Speaker 3: Hey Bill, I'm sorry. You speak up little bit like you're happy
card. Thanks. Speaker 16: Is that better? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Can I just see in the back? Can you, bill, could you just say something? I know that Speaker 16: Testing, Speaker 1: Can you hear him in the back testing? Say testing? Yep. Okay. If, if everyone, if someone online can't hear, I do have somebody monitoring online and they will alert me in real time if there's an issue online. Speaker 16: All right, I will speak up. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 16: Shall I start from the beginning? Speaker 1: I think we got the start from the beginning please. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 16: My name is Bill Sprat, I'm executive director of Public Works, the leading this dam construction project. We're gonna be talking tonight about the construction. The takeaways really for, for this is that the permitting pro phase of this is complete construction will begin in the next month or two. And that state grants will pay for the vast majority of this work. I also would like to say a huge thank you to Jillian Claire, Adrian Dung from GZA, who's online, what an amazing team to work with. We've been permitting this project for about two years
and it's, it's been quite a process with a great team. First of all, I'd like to orient ourselves to the project. Looking at this map here to the north. Over here is the bacon free library. This is the, the Charles River obviously. And this is our dam project. So what we're going to look at here on the, the north is the bacon free library. The south is Grove Park. The, the initial parts in yellow there,
spillway and fish ladder. Those, those are what's labeled. That is what will be part of the construction project or really the demolition project. Those are the two things that will be removed. The spillway up to the gate box, which I'll, I'll get to in a little bit. So right now in the project timeline, as I mentioned in the past couple years, we've been permitting this, this is a massive amount of permitting with state and federal and local organizations. We are now past that phase and heading into the construction phase. As you can see, the construction phase is really the
smallest part of this project. If we're looking in a, in a large timeframe, this really from June through maybe September, October, that's about the construction phase of this project. We've been permitted for in water work from July 16th through August 31st. Obviously there's work that's gonna happen ahead of that and work that's gonna happen after that. But the in water work, the demolition is mid-July through the end of August. So a little more detail on the actual construction phase. We have signed a contract with Flynn Enterprises Incorporated.
Flynn will be the contractor that will, that will do this work To start the work really maybe mid-June. We will do per orders of the con com. We'll do environmental controls, site security, those type of things. When I say site security, basically a construction fence. We have impoundment draw down, so that's where we open the gates and let the, let the water of the impoundment go down. Once that's done, we'll be doing in water work, which will be, and I'll get into the, some of the details of that, but essentially with an excavator coming across the,
the upstream side of the spillway and starting the demolition. And then after that it's really cleaning up the, that process, making Grove Park look like it does today. And then demobilizing from the site. And then after that we have sediment monitoring, which will happen all throughout the project. And after all of that's complete, we will just watch the river and, and do monitoring look for invasive species and other things, which is really the third phase of this project. Some more details about the site. You see we have Pleasant Street and Mill Lane. The work will happen only on the south side of the spillway.
So the construction access will be in Grove Park. That yellow box is the staging area. You might see rubble or site materials coming in there. Site fence likely will be along Pleasant Street, maybe some along the north side of the spillway just on the side just to protect from rocks or debris or things like that. But really from bacon free library or all the way through the park to the, to the north side, you should be able to watch this and enjoy the park. And really there'll be no, no work taking place there.
The blue dotted line is essentially the top of the embankment that there's a current trail there. That trail will be protected. All the tree work that's been, that will be done at that park has already been completed. With the permission of con com. We removed, I believe five trees this past fall. And that's all the tree work that will be done. The rest of the trees there will be protected. The excavator and crew will work along that blue dotted line. They will build essentially a, a rip wrap road to the west of the spillway. And they'll work from looking at the screen from right
to left as they demolish the spillway. As I mentioned, the top of the embankment will be, will be the access. That's what it looks like today. That's what it should look like when the project is done. There'll be protections along the top of that embankment. I believe there's about six inches of wood chips that will be on top of a protective barrier. And at the end of the project, all of that comes out. So you should see what you see today. Speaker 3: I Speaker 16: Looking upstream. So this is basically from the Pleasant Street bridge looking west, you see the spillway and the fish ladder is to the left.
And then that red line shows where the current gate valves are. Those gates will be opened. That's where the water will flow, that, that structure will stay as part of the construction. So to the right of those, that gate box, the spillway removed there, This is not our, our dam project, but this is very much what it will look like. You see the excavator on top of a, a rip wrap road. That road will be to the west of the spillway upstream. There'll be somewhat of a coffer dam.
It's really just big sacks of sand that will be put downstream to, to make a a water free work zone. Water will flow through the gate valves and then the, the construction will will happen. And as the construction happens, starting at the bacon free library side to the north, the water will start to pass by as they remove the spillway and then they'll work back to the Grove Park side. So we definitely want to communicate through this entire project. Our website site is up to date. We'll be putting up construction signage. There's a meeting June 10th I believe with the Abutters.
We're also doing a vibration survey. This work happens with excavators and hydraulic hammers and they will cause some noise and vibration. And we're offering a free site survey to Abutters in case of foundation cracks or things like that. We do not anticipate any of that happening, but this survey is free and there'll be a communication sent out soon for the abutting properties to have that survey done. We're going to commit to biweekly website updates and hopefully with through the website you can sign up for email lists and
that way we can continuously communicate all of our signage will have a QR code to point you back to the website. From a cost perspective, I mentioned before that 90% of this project is paid for by state grants. We are responsible for 10%. Looking at the bottom line there where we look at approximately a $1.4 million project. However, if you look at the contingencies, there are very large contingencies there. We do not anticipate using those. So really we should be somewhere around the million dollar mark by the end of the project.
And the anticipated out of pocket Natick money is really somewhere between 110 and $140,000 total. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Raat. I'll first open it up to questions and comments by members of the board. Ms. Slager. Speaker 6: Thank you Bill. And thank you for the informative update. If you wouldn't mind, I think there's always people that are new to this project. If you would just go over why we're doing it in the first place. Speaker 16: Okay. We are doing this in the first place because the, the dam naec is considered a high hazard dam.
There's responsibilities through the office of DAM Safety to maintain that dam and this, the removal of the spillway eliminates a high hazard dam naec and the risks associated with having a high hazard dam. Speaker 6: Thank Speaker 1: You. Mr. Sprat. Could I add onto your answer if you don't mind please? There were two other factors that I wanted to raise. One is that if the town were to bring the DAM up to a grade a for example, as rated by the Office of DAM Safety and it were to be maintained as an A dam
and there were a and a a one in a hundred year weather event were to occur. It's important to note that our DAM is not the only dam on the Charles. There are six to seven failing dams upstream of ours, things we have absolutely no control over. And Mass General law holds the DAM owner, which would be the town of Natick, to strict liability in the case of any loss. So property loss, loss of life. So we're there to be a one in 100 year climate event or even a one in a 50 year,
one in a 25 year bad climate event. And those upstream dams failed and the town had chosen to retain the Earth dam, which would require removing all trees from the Earth and DAM and to install rip wrap and other safety measures. If we were to do that and continue maintenance and have an A plus dam as as as determined by the Office of Dam Safety. If there were a dam failure and there was downstream loss of property or life, the town is held in strict liability,
meaning there's no affirmative defense. We can't say yes, the damn failed, but we did everything we knew to do and the Office of Damn Safety gave us an A, there's no affirmative defense. We are responsible for that. So that was one of the considerations I sat on that board that made this decision. That was one of the considerations that that was presented or that I presented. I'm gonna ask people in the room to keep conversations to a minimum or take them out into the hall 'cause I know people in the back are having a difficult time hearing Ms. Slager. That was it, Mr. Jacobs. Jacobs. And then Mr. Evans.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. Really appreciate it. I just had a couple of quick questions. One is, well just about the, the work itself, you know, you mentioned some of the work would've cause vibration. It sounds a little bit noisy potentially, so I was just curious what the hours would be that that work would be getting done. Speaker 16: So Natick has restrictions on any construction work and will abide by those restrictions. I believe those are from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM We will likely work. That's what I thought. Well within those, those work times. Speaker 4: Okay. And then also just like as far
as the the most noisy, like this heavy vibration work, would you say that that is mostly, or, or maybe entirely going to be done during, and I, I forgot the exact time you had in the, in the slide deck, but that, that in water time that you mentioned on that slide? Speaker 16: Yes, that's correct. July 16th through August 31st is the permitted time to be in the water. Speaker 4: Great. And then my, my last question is the, the stuff in the, in the slide on costs for the stuff that Natick does, I understand most of it's grant funded, but for the stuff that we do have to pay for, I was curious
how that is going to be or the stuff that we haven't paid yet, how that is going to be paid for, if that's gonna be a capital expense or if it's going to be paid out of the operating budget. Speaker 16: It's a capital expense already funded that we already funded. Okay. We've been working on through. Okay. Speaker 4: Alright, thank you Then no other question Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Speaker 5: Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Bill for the presentation. Couple questions. Getting into the weeds a little bit, but try not to get too deep. When you, the impoundment area gets drawn down, what sort of, there are obviously a fish
habitat in the Charles River. How, how would that be affected by that area? How are they routed around the construction work? Speaker 16: So I might have Adrian answer this a little more knowledgeably. I'm gonna answer it kind of common sense wise. Okay. Right now we have a fish ladder. Right now we have different species of fish on in the IPO area and downstream of the impo area. So we're naturally not doing what the river was supposed to do during construction. Those gate valves will have a pass through. Right. So, which is actually a larger area
than the fish ladder offers right now. Okay. And then during construction, we'll be working from north to south. Once we start moving and say 10 feet of the spillway is removed, that will be natural river flow at that point. Okay. Adrian, did I answer that appropriately? Speaker 17: Yes, you did. Bill. So the, the, there will be continuous flow through the gates during construction. There'll be no disruption to river flow and mass wildlife division of and division of marine fisheries have been consulted on the project. Speaker 5: Awesome. Alright. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Dung.
Thank you. Thank you. Next question is, one of the things that I read somewhere in the various different things that I've read on this project is one of the things that happens as, and this might be further down the road than just the demolition, which is the channeling or rechanneling of the river. How during this project, how does the who, how do the engineers develop the channel or the, the new channel? Speaker 16: So the short answer is they don't. Okay.
The channel is naturally going to form. Okay. So, so it's a hands-off process really. We've been approved for a passive release of the sediment behind and the impoundment. And just, if I could take a second to tell people what the impoundment is, we use these terms and maybe it's not always intuitive, but my arrow is slow on the screen. Lemme just look at my own screen here. Gimme two seconds. So when we talk about the earth and berm, we are talking about, I apologize, my, my mouse is not moving on screen here.
So the earthen berm is labeled there. And that is really, it's a land dam. It's it's earth put there to create what looks like a pond behind the dam. That is the impoundment. When we talk impoundment, we're talking about the water that's held back behind the dam and the spillway when we remove the spillway and even before we remove the spillway, that when we open the gates, that water will slowly be released. And so that river channel will start to form really
as we open the gates and let more water down. Our current dam is what's called a run of the river. So water that comes in goes out the impoundment, I, I like to use the analogy if you had a, a glass of water and filled it with water, that's the impoundment. Anything you add to that glass is gonna over spill. And that's what happens right now. That impoundment is releasing the water from the glass slowly over time. And we're doing this work in low flow conditions. That's why we have the window of opportunity. So we're really downstream. It wouldn't look more other than a a,
a bigger rain event or something like that. Bruce, could you repeat your specific question? 'cause I just wanted to get that empowerment detail. Speaker 5: It had had to do with the channeling and, and I think you answered it, which is you're just gonna let the, the river find its way. And one of the things actually that, that I thought about as you were speaking about the earth and berm is that area is still guiding the river in that direction and it's just going to find its root to connect to the rest of the river. It is naturally.
Speaker 16: I do have a couple other slides that show other dams and what it might look like if that would be helpful Speaker 5: Offline. Okay, sounds good. That might be useful just to see. One of the things also, this is my last question, I think. Yeah. Which is on the, you mentioned the open gate that, that, that's there now, one of the things during the earlier hearings on this was the, the gate was damaged and that it likely couldn't be repaired and placed with the earth and berm remaining.
Is that something that will get sealed off? What will happen to that, to that gate right there Is that removed and then sealed, sealed off. Speaker 16: So I'm gonna defer to Adrian in two seconds. The, the big picture is we're going to try to operate the gates. We have a gate wheel, we're gonna try to operate them and we'll do that slowly over time. If the gates don't operate, we will likely, mechanically remove them. Okay. To, to get the river to flow. Adrian, could you answer in the specifications what is planned after? Speaker 17: If the gates are removed because they can't be opened, then, then the contractor
and the engineer will work on a, a solution to be able to close the gates. Whether that's a new gate, you know, a new flashboard or gates. But they would be closed at the end of construction. Speaker 5: Okay. That answers. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank Speaker 1: You Ms. Sla. I wanna take a minute to address some of the questions that Mark Roberts raised during public speak during which he used his time to address questions. Did the people who made the decision
to remove the spillway live here? The answer is yes. The people who made the decision is the select board and we are elected residents of Natick. So it was an iteration of this board was state funding and incentive. I can't speak to the deliberate, I don't remember the deliberations, but I'm certain it was one of many factors, including the strict liability, the f failing dams upstream, the amount of money that it would cost to bring the, the dam from its failing status to good to a,
an A status as adjudicated by the office of DAM safety. There was a $1.5 million appropriation at spring 20 2019 town meeting to allow the town to borrow to repair the dam. But that money was never borrowed. The question about part of the project, about installing a bridge to create easy access, I imagine that's something that's going to need to be considered at a future date since our budget is extremely tight and right now our capital improvement budget is underfunded. So those are just some things I wanted to throw out.
I didn't have any questions for you. So at this point I will turn, I may circle back after the public has had an opportunity to ask questions. Is there someone in the room who'd like to ask questions or make comments? Dr. McKenzie, Speaker 18: Donna McKenzie, EDI member, I've a question or maybe a suggestion, and maybe it's 'cause I'm Irish and there's nothing like a good Irish wake or we do grief Well, and is it tets that said that somebody had enough sense of tragedy to sustain them through temporary periods of joy. And I I think that there are, there is sadness in this
and I wonder if we could have some kind of communal celebration to recognize the transition as, as this work begins. I don't know what it would be like. Maybe we get a couple of ice cream trucks and maybe we invite people who've had their wedding pictures taken down there. Or people who have come back from Vietnam and thoughtfully sat by the river. We invite them back to take another last sit before the river stops flowing exactly as it is. I mean, it's a Charles River,
it's still gonna be the Charles River. It's still gonna be beautiful. And I actually like what Mr. Evans said a lot asking about the channeling. It's just gonna be different channeling, it's gonna be new channeling. 'cause I was sitting here thinking construction, we're talking about this as construction and we're demolishing something. So it, but it's both. It really is both. And I just wonder if there's some way to commemorate it. And Jillian suggested a celebration of life. I mean, I don't know what we should call it. And she said maybe the Charles River watershed folks would
have something in mind to do something. But I, I think it, it could be positive and it would give people a chance to come and sit by those falls one last time and to feel the sadness they feel and then move on to the new river. Speaker 1: Thanks. Thank you Dr. Mackenzie for that suggestion. Yes sir. If you could come to the podium, introduce yourself and say whether you're an Natick resident or a business owner. Speaker 19: Hi, good evening. My name's Richard Klug. My wife and I live on 45 Water Street.
We live on the river, a couple of blocks down stream from this high hazard dam. I can't quote any poets on this, but I'm gonna just say how pleased I am that this high hazard dam is going to be fixed in our lifetime. I'm really happy with the process. I want to thank Mr. Pratt, the other members of the town government, and the consultants over the past four or five years. Our opinion as people that live on the river downstream
of the dam has been sought repeatedly. We've had many opportunities to express our concerns in focus groups and other public meetings. I'm gonna look forward to the process of seeing what the river looks like in the future. And I hope that my thanks are shared by lots of other people in na. Speaker 1: Thank you so much, sir. I think before we go to someone else in the room, let's go to someone on zoom. Mr. Trinidad, if you could unmute yourself. Speaker 3: I Speaker 20: Can you guys hear me? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 20: Can you guys hear me? Yep. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 20: Okay. Yep. Thank, thank you Madam Chair. Sorry I couldn't be there this evening.
Just a couple quick questions. Some are regards to the permits and one question is probably for GCA since we have the opportunity to have them on, on call here, the permits that set are all in place. We just had a notice that on May 14th, the Army Corps of Engineers was evaluating the DAM as a historical structure and that was May 14th. So I'm just curious about that. And then also the mass DEP permit was for release in the sediment in July 16th
through August 31st, 2025. Was there an amendment file for that as far as releasing in 2026? And, and then to your concern as well, Madam Chair with multiple dams, you know, releasing and falling and causing problems. Just there's something that, you know, I had brought to the board a while ago. It started in February and has gone a little further than that. But, and again, I would like to GCA to comment on this as well. The classification for the DAM occurred back in 1987 as a high hazard dam, both by observation
and an old program. And since then, a lot of the GCA reports have indicated, you know, very low levels of water, both before and after the dam under the two foot limit that's applied by state and federal agencies. And I realize there's more to that, you know, in dams. But in general, if the dam was declassified in non-jurisdictional, my understanding, and I may be wrong with that, is that even if those dams fell upstream and your dam was non-jurisdictional, that you wouldn't be liable for any damages. It would be the people upstream of you that did not take care of their dam.
So those are my comments on this. I'm just kind of curious if, if any of those could be addressed quickly. And I I thank you for the opportunity to speak. Speaker 1: I'd like to address the latter question with regard to liability advice of counsels. It's regardless of the classification of the dam, a dam owner is responsible for all downstream liability, strictly liable regardless of the nature or the size of the dam. Now, to be fair, with six or seven upstream failing dams, the lawsuits and cross lawsuits will go on for a decade of who's responsible and which one failed first, et cetera.
Ideally, we'd have no loss of life and no loss of property. So advice of counsel, I was just looking it up. I think it's from, I was just looking it up in my Dropbox, October 3rd, 2022, legal li liability for damn failures. So any, any owned dam, private or public, the owner of the DAM is responsible. Mr. Sprat, could you and, and Ms. Dunk, could you respond to Mr. Trinidad's Other questions? Speaker 16: Sure. I'm going to defer to Ms. Dunk.
She's the expert on these things. Adrian, can we start with the, the 1 0 6 permit? Speaker 17: Absolutely. The Army Corps issued the Clean Water Act, the section 4 0 4 of the Clean Water Act authorization. That's the Army Corps permit for the dam removal. In their issuance of that permit, there had been some jurisdictional miscommunication between the Army Corps and fema. And the full historic evaluation with Mass Historic was not entirely completed. It is at this point completed
and awaiting final signature by mass historic. So that has been, has been done. And the town, it didn't actually change any of the permit conditions related to the project. So the town had already undertaken mitigation measures that were what was ultimately required. Speaker 16: And as far as DEP goes, the 25 26 in water work, Speaker 17: Yes, that was carried forward from communications. And it is being revised to the time of year restriction being July 16th to August 31st of any given year. Speaker 16: Thank you
Speaker 1: Mr. Trinidad. Was that, did that answer all of your questions? So right now, we'll move on to someone in the room. If, if there's someone else in the room who wishes to address the board, could you please come to the podium? Introduce yourself, Ms. Young. Speaker 21: Thank you very much. Diane Young Morgan Drive town meeting member. So I have a question about the pipe that is running under the river that goes from one side of the shore to the other. It's a DPW pipe. I know back one 2022.
The question came up, if something happened to that pipe after the water was released, maybe the sediment moves under it, the scour whatever it was. Never, you didn't know. They said it was unknown. Who would be responsible Natick or the DPW if something happens to that sewer pipe. So I wondered what you found out since 2022, who's responsible for repairing or whatever happens? Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Young. Mr. Sprat, Speaker 16: Thank you for the question. The pipe that runs across the Charles River is an
MWRA sewer pipe. It's not a DPW pipe. We did get permits through MWRA, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that was all called an M eight permit. And that has been worked out with MWRA Speaker 1: Ms. Young. Speaker 21: Thank you. But that didn't quite answer my question. The, the pipe could be compromised. We don't know, but it could be compromised. It's not that far from the spillway. Should that happen, who's responsible for paying for anything that should happen to it? Speaker 1: Mr. Sprout, could you, could you also speak to the likelihood or probability of thank you?
Speaker 16: That pipe is well upstream of the construction work, but I don't know legally for sure. But that's m ws pipe and it would be, in my opinion, MW a's responsibility. But the likelihood of that is, is fairly low. It's pretty far away from the construction work. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sprat. I do wanna note that none of us are lawyers and I should not rely on legal advice from me, the board or member of town staff, unless it's town council.
But thank you Mr. Spprt. Ms. Young. Thank Speaker 21: You. So there's one other thing I wanted to talk about last night. I actually sat and listened to the entire select board meeting that took place November 9th in 2022. And this was a meeting when you voted to breached the dam. So during that meeting, select board meeting, multiple officials indicated the decision could be revisited if meaningful new information emerged.
The clearest statement came around two hours. And that was actually from select board member Bruce Evans, who voted to remove and quote, this is the first step in a long process. And that is permitting takes place and new information emerges. The decision could be revisited by the town based on new, more in-depth information. We'll come back and, and re and revisit that decision. There was also similar remarks by chair Paul, Paul Joseph, quote at two minutes and se two hours to 17 minutes.
He said this is the beginning of a long process and encouraged continued public participation as the process move forward. Quote, if better information in future comes forward, there will be reconsiderations based on what we learn. In addition, the actual advisory committee report stated that a future engineering or environmental analysis produced new conflicting information. The select board should review the recommendation. Again, in light of those findings.
As a lifelong resident of Natick and a town meeting member, I'm respectfully requesting the select board to honor their commitment to visit, revisit the dam removal decision if significant new information comes forward. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Young. I'll speak on behalf of the board and then open it to the board. We stand by that and when new information has come in, we have examined it. There's been no new significant findings that would cause us to put a vote to revisit to open this decision.
Mr. Sprott, do you have anything to add? Do are you aware of any significant new information that would merit the board revisiting this decision? Speaker 16: I have not. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sprat. Mr. Evans? Speaker 5: Yes. I was quoted as saying this is the first step in a long process, et cetera, et cetera. That was in 2022. It's now 2026. So depending on your definition of what a long process is, we're four years in, there'll be till 20, 28 till the spillway is removed and the parks are developed.
I think that's, that's first step in a long process. We had to get the designs, we had to get the approvals by numerous agencies, which we have done. As my colleague said, there's been no significant demonstrable change in the information that we've received. And we've gone through the process, we've gone through town meetings, we've gone through reviews with and, and gained approvals of all the permitting authorities. And there were many, you can go to the website to look at
how many there are, but they've all been approved. Some had clerical issues and those were resolved. But nothing substantive has changed. So I reiterate my comment. It's a long process. It's a well thought out process. And I thank the person who talked about the involvement of community outreach. 'cause from day one, this was the dam advisory committee was the exemplar of outreach to community. Now, not everyone agreed with their decision,
but 16 of 18 people on a committee agreed to that and the other two agreed to the ultimate decision, but had concerns about the recreational impacts. So 18 out of 18 is a pretty good number. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Mr. Honeywell, you had your hand raised. Would you still like to address the board? I'll go on to Reverend Isky. Mr. Honeywell, if you change your mind, please put your hand up. Reverend is Isky. I apologize if I've mutilated your name. If you could unmute yourself.
Speaker 22: Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes, you said it correctly. Reverend Adamski, the minister of the Elliot Church in South Natick. I am new to Natick having just started at the church in January. And I just wanted to offer that every element of change involves grief and loss. And in response to Dr. Mackenzie's comment from earlier, the Elliot Church, I'd like to offer us up to collaborate on some sort of marking of the, the changing
of the dam. If the church can be helpful in that, we certainly, someone can reach out to me and we would be happy to participate. Speaker 1: Thank you Reverend. Appreciate the, the comments. Is there someone in the room who wishes to address the board? I'll just, I'll alternate back and forth. Yes sir. If you could come to the podium, introduce yourself and say whether you're a Natick resident or business owner. Speaker 23: Good evening, my name is Steven Howard. Speaker 1: Can I ask you to move the mic closer to your Sure. Thank you. Speaker 23: Yes. My name is Steven Howard and I, my family grew up on Water Street
and as a child we enjoyed the dam and fishing and so forth. And I just have some questions about the different ratings that I've read online about what was found. You stated that the dam was unable to withstand a hundred year storm. I read online that the dam was unable to withstand a 500 year storm surge, a once in 500 year event with no problems. And further, I understand that a town
of Natick engineer refuted the claims that the dam was in poor condition and said that it was in fair condition. And not only that, but the, I understood that GCA was recommending initially to repair the dam. And I'm trying to figure out, you know, people are talking about the environmental effects of the river and nobody's mentioned anything about all of the aquatic life that lives in the river presently,
all along the edges of the river banks. And what's gonna happen to that when you drop the river level five feet? I heard people say that the water by the dam is too warm for the fish, which is a bunch of baloney because if you drop the water level five feet, you're gonna have six inches of water. Is it gonna be colder? No, it's gonna be warmer. So there's a lot of concerns there. And I really think that if this is just, seems like it's just coming out within this year as much
as you've been through a four year process for the whole thing. And I'm trying to wrap my head around what the actual concerns are, where this dam has existed for a hundred years with no environmental problems to the river. And everybody whose house lives along the river is gonna be living next to a swamp that's gonna be filled with mosquitoes now. So you know what exactly is gonna get better after you remove this dam? It doesn't seem like it's gonna be a positive change.
And that's a historic district that supposedly, you know, Indians were buried in the island below the dam and it just doesn't seem like there's anything positive coming out of this. That's all I have to Speaker 1: Say. Thank you Mr. Howard. I'd like to correct. I may have misspoken, or you may have misunderstood me. I did not say that the Dan could not stand a hundred year storm. What I said was, if it cannot, especially with six or seven failing dams upstream, if it encounters a storm 50 year, 10 year, five year,
one year storm and the upstream dams fail and our dam fails, the downstream liability is 100% the towns regardless of the state of the dam. The next thing you had, another thing you had said was that you have heard, and I would strongly recommend that everyone listening not hear, but look at the website for actual information that's been posted. But you have heard that the, the dam is in good condition or not good condition, fair, fair, fair condition. And that a town engineer cited that unfortunately we are under the, the regulatory body
of the office of DAM safety. So anyone can go out there, inspect it and say, it is my professional assessment that X, Y, Z, but we have to conduct the business of the town based on what the office of dam safety, which is the regulatory body says it is. So those are the two points I wanted to make to correct what was stated. And before we go to the board, I'd like to ask Mr. Sprat or our representative from GZA, if there are any comments you had about concerns or the environment, wildlife, water quality, and also, I don't know anywhere that it says that the
water level will drop five feet. Ms. I I, Speaker 16: Adrian, could you please answer those from the environmental perspective and also the height of the dam? Speaker 17: Yes. The, the dam spillway is about eight feet. And so the, the height of the water will decrease by several feet on average, there will still be a couple of feet of water in the new stream. Channel dam removal is a recognized river restoration practice.
And that is because dams inherently are a human alteration on river systems that alter stream flow and stream processes and they degrade rivers by being in place and their removal improves river systems and allows the formation of vegetated wetlands and flood plains on their bank, which are excellent wildlife habitat and are supportive of fisheries habitat in the new stream channel. This was documented throughout the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act process
very rigorously and received quite a bit of public comment and review and also is documented throughout the Wetlands Protection Act, permitting process. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. So that was Speaker 17: Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Sprat. Did you have anything to add? I did not. Members of the board, I saw a few hands. Mr. Evans, Speaker 5: I just wanted to, excuse me, just wanted to comment on the phishing aspect of it. One of the things that I would encourage you to read is the report that the select board received from the Charles River
Dam Advisory Committee of the people on that board. I happen to know that there were at least two members from South Natick who talked about fishing in, in South Natick and talked about having concerns prior to joining that committee about the impact on fishing. You know, he had gone there, one of them in particular had gone fishing with his kids, you know, their entire lives and was concerned about it. And he was convinced that the life of the river would improve after that
because the river is now flowing. One of the things that we've seen recently in both the Charles River and some of our ponds, notably Lake Capitate, is ano cyanobacteria algae blooms. Right. What causes those caused by two things, primarily fertilizer runoff and stagnant water. Water that's not moving is hotter. It encourages those al algae blooms. So if you wanted to kayak, let's say down the Charles River, that would affect you because they'd close the Charles River
off to you and say it's dangerous to humans, animal lot wildlife, you don't want your, your pets anywhere near it. You don't want your dog going in the water. They could die from it. So I think, you know, like everything, there are pros and cons, but there are in, in my view, more pros than cons with this. Speaker 1: Any other member of the board, I'd like to take a, a resident from online, Ms. De Mayo. D Ms. De Mayo. I apologize. Speaker 9: Thank you Madam Chair. Patricia DeMeo, 39 Wellesley Road.
Mr. Sprats presentation stated that there'll be two years of sediment monitoring. So my question is, the last I heard was that there will not be dredging or dredging won't be required. Is that still accurate? And whether they'd be dredging or not, they'd still be sediment monitoring. Speaker 3: Mr Speaker 16: Thank you for the question. So this is a passive release of sediment behind the spillway. So the goal is it will naturally form and,
and spread downriver, the s sentiment, excuse me, the sediment monitoring that will happen over the course of those two years. And I would say primarily in the, in the first few months, that's when the, the bulk of the sediment will be down river. We'll, we have specific points along the river, especially where it bends and you might have sediment accumulation. If the river slows down, we'll be watching that. And that's what we mean by monitoring. If sediment builds up, we have several options. One could be as simple as wait for a, a major rainstorm
and see if that gets deposited. Another option could be to use a fire hose and push that sediment downstream. In an extreme situation you could mechanically remove it with a shovel or maybe a small excavator or something. But there is no current plan for any dredging for the sediment. Speaker 3: Thank you Mr. Sprat. Speaker 9: Okay. And to follow up, if I may, of course, has the team been been in touch with the town of Wellesley, which I believe is the next town down on, on the river regarding the fact that there will be no dredging
and also giving them a timeline for the release and the demolition, et cetera? Speaker 16: I have not been directly in contact with Wellesley. I believe Claire has reached out. Adrian, can you answer any of the communications that we've had from the project downstream? Speaker 17: My understanding is that Claire has reached out and there have been communications with Wellesley specifically around the project in terms of the lack of changes to the floodplain.
That is a requirement through FEMA to coordinate with neighboring communities. And also the Army Corps does do what they call a neighboring jurisdiction review. And so with, before they issue their permit, they coordinate with neighboring communities to notify them of projects. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thanks Mr. May, is there anyone in the room who wishes to Yes ma'am. If you could come to the podium and introduce yourself and say whether you're an NAIC resident
or a business owner or other. Speaker 24: My name is Candy Halton. I am a resident since 1979, tax taxpayer and all of the above. As a Proud neighbor of the dam, my concern is going back to the first time, all of us, many of the people in the room were actively involved with the dam. This is for personal reasons, we all live either on the water or nearby the water.
And at that point there was significant information from the Medfield State Hospital, which was dumping chemicals, toxic chemicals into the water. Therefore, they could potentially be trapped by our spillway. As anybody looked into that, the midfield State Hospital, as some might know, was brought to court over this. So I assume that that is legitimately toxic information. Have we noticed it? And if we haven't, why haven't we?
Speaker 1: I believe we have done sediment testing. Mr. Spprt or Ms. Dunk, Speaker 16: I'd like to defer that question to Ms. Dunk, Speaker 1: Please. Thank you. Speaker 17: Yes, we sampled the sediment twice and Stantec and other consulting firm under contract to mass to ER also sampled the sediment and the sediment sampling data is all reviewed by mass DEP and there are not contaminant exceedances above regulatory thresholds. And that is why the sediment is permitted by mass DEP
to be allowed to go downstream. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dunk. Mr. Fo, you can unmute yourself. Speaker 25: There you go, Madam Chair. Thank you. I have, I guess two topics and I'll make it really quick back to what Mr. Trinity had asked and the response by Ms. Dunk with regards to the permits and some of the changes that have occurred over time. And I believe Ms. Dunk mentioned that there had been communications about the changes or the things that Mr.
Trinidad asked for and to Mr. Erickson and to yourself, Madam Chair, that's exactly why I filed the, the foer request a couple weeks ago. To that end, can we, can we see those, those communications public documents and that just to have a peace of mind, can Ms. Dunk and the the town offices provide that for our viewing? Speaker 1: Mr. Foss, I just have a clarifying question. Was that part of your original public records request? Speaker 25: That I I su Yes. Provided yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: So you asked, my understanding is that no, Speaker 25: Not spec, it didn't ask specifically, it was broadened up so that these documents should, should be part of that request. Speaker 1: I will bring that to the attention of the town administrator. It was my understanding that everything that you had asked for in the public records request was posted on the town website. Unfortunately, Mr. Erickson could not be here tonight. Oh, so I will, Speaker 25: I can't see. Speaker 1: Oh no, he, he could not be here tonight. So I will bring this to his attention and report back to you and the public. Speaker 25: That's excellent. I guess the second piece, it,
this question might be directed to Mrs. Pratt as far as during the construction, there's gonna be a lot of vibration from moving equipment in and out as well as moving the concrete and, and whatever construction is gonna be or infrastructure that's gonna be removed. Do we have a high confidence that moving this, these pieces of infrastructure are not gonna affect the bridge, the 18 something built bridge
or even the gem that we have with a bacon free fire library? Has, has that been looked at and because and okay, that would be the first question. Speaker 16: So the short answer to the question is yes, that has been looked at as an abundance of caution. We are working with an a third party independent vibration analysis firm that will be monitoring pre-construction in case god forbid there's any damage to surrounding properties, specifically bacon free library is one of them. We will have a, a benchmark assessment and then we can go
after construction if there is a perceived problem and investigate that further. But Toa to classify the vibration as a lot is, is not really accurate. This is fairly routine construction. The vibratory hammer will cause some vibration, but it, it shouldn't really be felt too far away from the, the, the dam. And we've, we have analyzed that. Speaker 25: Did it happen? Who's liable for that? Madam Chair? Speaker 1: I'm going to fall back on the board is not there. We're not lawyers and we're not gonna make a forecast about liability.
My guess is that there would be shared liability among contractors, the town. But again, I, I'm not willing to go on the record and assign liability. Speaker 25: Thank you. Speaker 1: Mr. Fos, could I ask a favor? If, if you're done, could Speaker 25: You say, you can always ask a favor? Sure. Speaker 1: Let me, let me rephrase that. Will you kindly grant me a favor? I'd like to ask you to send an email to the, the board and if you could kind of outline the specifically what you're looking for to and from the te the town
Administration, army court and, and I will ask the town administrator air on the side of inclusivity. I just wanna make sure that we're addressing what your question is. I'm not trying to nail you down to only one point or another. It would just be helpful for me to have something to reference since he's not here. Speaker 25: You already have the information, but I'll re I'll refine that and yes, I'll resend that either tomorrow or the next day. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Thank you Mr. Foss. Speaker 25: No, thank you. Speaker 1: Is there someone in the room who wishes to address the board regarding this topic? Yes, sir. Speaker 26: Good evening. Ken Van Larcom, 63 Elliot Street, Natick,
I have a question sort of back, it's backing up a bit, but when you look at the gate structure, which we know has sort of a valve on the top of it, if you will. My understanding that that gate structure was, was frozen and couldn't be opened. And if it, if that's now gonna be the form for releasing the water initially, that means they've figured out a way that it can be opened. That's my first question. Number one, if it can, that's good. That'll make it easy, I assume to do it. But in the end I see that you plan to leave the gate structure there.
When the spillway, the cement spillway is gone, why leave that gate structure there? It, it won't serve any purpose at that point. It'll just be an obstruction to that point there. So why, if it's, if it serves its purpose, releases the water, why is it gonna be left there? Speaker 1: That's my question. Thank you. Speaker 16: Thank you for the question. So first off, we hope the gate structure works. If it doesn't work, it'll be mechanically removed to allow the water to flow and then put back in, in some form after construction, if that has to be removed, so it, it would be demolished.
The gate structure internally would be demolished to let water flow. The gate structure will stay there really as protection against the bank of the river, although the river should be in inside of that. But the training walls that you see there, they're going to be left there on purpose to make sure erosion doesn't happen on the sides. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sprat. Mr. Gates, if you could unmute yourself. Speaker 27: Yes. Can you hear me? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 27: Thank you. Just a quick question, and I apologize that this has probably been answered in the
past, but once the dam is gone, does that affect the flood levels and therefore the insurance and the flood zone of the folks that have properties downstream? And if there is a flood as a result, who is, is the insurance company liable or the town liable? Speaker 1: As for the first part of the question, I'm going to defer to Ms. Dunk from GCA. She has answered this question in writing to other residents. So I will, and then I will answer
the second part of the question. Speaker 17: Thank you. Downstream of the dam, there will not be a change in the flood elevation. The dam, as Mr. Sprat had said, is a run of the river dam. And so it is not a flood control dam, it does not provide flood control benefits today. Any of the water that comes in goes over the spillway and goes out. So in the future, once the dam is removed and the water that's in the impoundment is, is carefully released in a managed way, the water that goes beyond the spillway in the future is, will be the same
fluctuating water that's, that's observed today. And during a storm event would be the same, same storm flows we did prepare and provide to the town a no rise assessment. And that is a FEMA federal emergency management agency no rise assessment, which documents that for several thousand feet downstream of the dam, which was the extent of the modeled area, there was no change between existing conditions and proposed conditions with the dam removed in flood elevation during the a hundred year storm.
And that's what drives flood insurance. Speaker 1: And with regard to the second part of your question, Mr. Gates, my conversation with counsel in November of 2022 was that when the, when the dam is removed, any flooding or, you know, rise in the river and that incurs property damage would be considered an act of God. So I'm not, thank you not issuing a legal opinion, just sharing what I learned in November of 2022. Speaker 27: Thanks. And my apologies, I I hadn't read up on everything. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Is there anyone in the room
who wishes to address the board? Yes ma'am. If you could come to the podium, introduce yourself, let us know whether you're a resident or a business owner or other. Speaker 28: My name is Emily Norton. I'm the executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. Not a resident of Natick, though we do have over 150 members and supporters in the town. So we're very grateful. And, and while I'm here, I just want to take the opportunity to compliment your staff. CRWA works very closely with the town of Natick, particularly on projects related to reducing flood risk. And you know this, but you really do have fantastic, hardworking, committed,
passionate public servants. So it's really a, a pleasure for us to work with them. I just wanted to comment on the environmental aspects of the dam CWAs history. We were founded 61 years ago by a group of residents who did not accept the conventional wisdom at the time that the Charles could not be cleaned up. And in fact, when I took this job, I said to the board, the board of CRWA, you know, a lot of my job's gonna be being a Debbie Downer. So many people think that the job is done because for those of us who've lived in the area a long time, I'm a lifelong native of the, of the watershed.
We've seen the trajectory and it is so much cleaner than it was, but the job is not done. And the continuing risks are the sewage discharges. It still happen. Storm water runoff, which you all are taking steps on, and dams are a big part of that. We have 19 on the main stem, dozens more on tributaries. Most of them do not serve a purpose anymore. They did when they were built. And a lot of people think, oh, if it's a dam is still there, there must be a reason. But often there's no one's job to take it out once it's not doing the job anymore. So, and I'm very sympathetic, we've heard this,
that statement that was made tonight many times that, well, it's been there such a long time, isn't it? Isn't it doing good for the river? And you know, even a dam that's been there a hundred years or the Watertown Dam is probably the first dam we believe that was built in Massachusetts. Been there 400 years. That sounds like a long time, but the river's been here 10,000 years. So anything that evolved with the river did not evolve with the dam. And some of the impacts are obviously blocking fish passage. Migratory fish doesn't seem so obvious that it's a big deal. But even local fish that
that do not migrate will have wider areas for spawning finding mates. The dams block sediment, which need to be traveling downstream. They make more habitat for bugs and, and, and wildlife that causes what's called thermal pollution, heating up the water, making it more stagnant, causing cyanobacteria, invasive plants, fish kills, which we've seen. So we know not just from our work, but from the dam removals across the state and across the country, that there will be a restoration. It will be faster than anyone believes possible,
and it really will be better for the river. Just as if you block an artery in our bodies. It's bad for us. A blockage in the river really is bad for the river. And so we're very grateful to the steps that the town has taken. I I'm very wanna offer my word to the folks who aren't as thrilled about this direction, that we'd love to partner with you and work with you to make the, the transition as as painless as possible. And, and hopefully we can all be celebrating the restored river. It still will be beautiful and it will be healthier.
So thanks for that. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I believe we've come to the end of questions or comments. I'm gonna leave it to the board if the board has any parting comments you'd like to make before we close this agenda item. Mr. Evans? Speaker 5: Just one last bit. One of the things that we've not talked about tonight is the other piece of what we, when we made the decision in 2022, we were firmly talking about how we were taking away a, a
beautiful spot in Natick and that we needed to replace it with a similarly beautiful location. And that led to the development of the Charles River Dam Park work that we had prior to that work. The, and I know I'm gonna get 'em back. The Grove Park is this side, what is the other side? Anyway, it doesn't matter. There, there are two aspects of it. Speaker 16: Old Town and Grove Park Town is near the taken
Speaker 5: Grove is the further one with the Speaker 16: Tree grove is the further one south. Yes. Speaker 5: Okay. That, that makes sense intuitively. So that area, the Grove Park was chronically flooded and not utilized by the town. We tried, you know, I've been here a while, but not forever. They had tennis courts there that were unusable because they were flooded all the time. So the intention is to, to have a park that is a DA accessible on both sides that has much, that replaces something
that's loved by the town. We're not gonna replace it a hundred percent. We can't. Right. But what we can do as a board and as a community is invest in developing this park on both sides of the river, such that people can enjoy the river when it's restored to its natural state. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. At this time I'd like to move to the water and sewer abatement appeal. Arthur ar Vanis. Let's take a, just a two minute break so the room can empty and we'll be back in two minutes.
It's 8:27 PM The next item on the agenda is water and sewer abatement appeal. Arthur Arvin. I do not see him in the room or online. Speaker 5: Do you wanna move to postponement in the next meeting? Speaker 1: Nope. Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 1: Nope. This is his second appearance before the board. And we do not have plumbing. We do not have any paperwork from a plumber, so let's just hold it in abeyance and we'll move to select board financial commitments following the override. So members of the public who are still with us, I drafted a memo in full disclosure,
my colleagues on the board have not had an opportunity to read it. I did clear it with clear the content with the, the town administration, the finance department, department of public works with sustainability in terms of actual facts. But I printed out a copy for all of us at the, at the table so that we could kind of go through it together. And if there are amendments or changes that the board would like to make, I will make those and give an updated version or additions. So in, in, in March of 2025,
in the context of asking the public for $7 million budget override, the Natick Select board made a series of commitments to Natick businesses and to residents. And you'll see those outlined in the memo that's online. They fall under the category of policies and procedures, revenue enhancement and cost savings, supporting local businesses, communications, and then further study before we go through this, I should have mentioned this at the beginning of the meeting, Ms. Pope is out of the country and she was not able to be here tonight. She's sends her apologies.
Let's see. Yes, Speaker 5: Evan, having said that, I, I think we should definitely go through all these items, but we should delay any vote Speaker 1: For that reason. I hadn't really anticipated a vote. What we can do is go ahead and go through them to inform the public and then take this home. Yeah. And if we wanna make changes, updates, there are additions or things I may have missed. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure Speaker 5: We're on the same page. Speaker 1: Yep. We can up present an updated memo at a future meeting. Awesome. Also, our town administrator, who's out
of town has not had an opportunity to review it. Although I did clear numbers and statistics and figures with various illustrative members of town staff. One commitment was to review and approve all financial policies and financial procedures. So financial policies that are current, that are currently in use have all been reviewed and adopted by the select board. Those were 10 policies. Those were only policies that were not the financial print management principles and they were not the seizures. So Mi Ms. Ger, Speaker 6: I'm not sure. I mean, have, have you talked to Ari about this? Because I think that there are different things in
that potentially are in place now that we have not looked at. I know that e things are being worked on. So it may be true that there are a series of policies that we have approved, but they may not be what is currently being done. So I did, so that's, that's a small little nuance. Speaker 1: That's a very good point. I did talk to him. We don't approve procedures and we have not reviewed procedures because they're still being involved. So we approved a series of 10 policies. We sent them over to the former town adminis, deputy town administrator for finance, who has since left. He handed those over to Mr. Skye. And Mr.
Skye is in the process of developing procedures and tweaking them. He'll come back in the fall with procedures in the fall or early spring, depending on how involved they are. Speaker 6: But some of, some of the policies, I don't know, are still current. That, that, my, my issue is with that. Okay. Term current, not that we haven't done it, but that they may not be what is currently in place. Speaker 1: Very good point. And I will check that language. He did have an opportunity to read this today, but that may be something that, that
he wasn't paying specific attention to. So I will draw his attention to that. We committed to conduct an annual review and approval of financial management principles. Yes. Speaker 4: Sorry, just sorry, just one, one other. I'm sorry. One other No, it's okay. Just one other thing on the, on the first item, the, you know, this, I, I think I know the distinction, but just for the public's benefit, if it could say briefly what the differences between the financial policies and the financial procedures. Speaker 1: Sure. So this a very good point. The select board is not involved in the day-to-day running of the town, right? So we set policies
and so policies are broad umbrellas of what we want to see accomplished, but we don't tell administration how to accomplish it. So an example would be the select board would like the administration and the school committee to undertake and develop a joint crisis communications protocol. For example, a procedure would be, here's one that we drew up, implement that, which we don't do. So we, we pass broad policies and actually what I will do is ask that those be uploaded to this agenda tomorrow, the ones that we, ones
that we did approve, which may or may not be the ones that are currently in use. And I will follow up with Mr. Sky on that. The second item under policies and procedures is to conduct an annual review and approval of fin financial management principles. Specifically, we were curious whether the percentages that are in our FMPs for use and recommended balances need to be adjusted according to today's financial climate. You'll see those listed, there's seven of them that have been pulled out of the FMP. Those are under review and scheduled later in 2026 for discussion,
potential revision and annual adoption, given that we have a new, we have a, a new director, there's an onboarding and there's many other things consuming his time. So this is something that he and his office are looking at. It takes, it's, it's kind of a, a heavy lift to go through and look at every single financial management principle and ensure that they are best practices today. So we're taking our time with that. Speaker 5: The Speaker 1: Question Yes. Speaker 5: And there, just to add to that, there's, there's guidance from organizations like DLS Yes. That, that provide sort of benchmarks.
We're not just pulling these percentages out of thin air. So just, just to let the public know that there is some rhyme or reason to that based on proven methodologies that DLS division of local services provides. And those two are frequently reviewed. So they come out with updates to them and say, these were the best practices, but now given the current climate, these, we make these modifications. Speaker 1: Yes. They're constantly in flux. And they also, we also rely on our bond rating agencies.
So bond rating agencies will say what they expect our debt to be as a percentage of our annual budget. And also you'll note the stabilization fund should be at minimum, at a level equal to 2% of revenues with a target being 5% of revenues. So bond rating agencies, DLS and the, the MMAs Finance Division also provides best practices. Speaker 6: But, but just to be clear, when we did discuss this last time, one of the things we talked about was not just are the numbers right, but whether
or not these principles were the right ones to have. So when we, when we revisit it, we're not just looking at tweaks, we're looking at the whole thing and our, and in, in totality and, and what are the, the metrics we should be using as a town. Speaker 1: Absolutely. These were just in, yeah, this was just including, yep. But yes, every, every principle is under review. Number three, review a split tax rate policy by a select board subcommittee to determine whether to adopt a factor of one or not when setting the tax rate, November working group to be established in financial committee and fin com
or financial committee to participate. And then a determination of foundational research for an outside consultant if necessary. That was a suggestion by a resident. So thus far, we've only had one session with business owners about the potential impact of a split tax rate, scheduling out the agenda through the, through the end of the year. Excuse me. I anticipate the board will schedule at least two discussions in fall and next spring. One, including small business owners and residents, and one, including either current or former tax assessors members of boards of assessors and
or select boards from towns with split tax rates. One of the challenges with this latter group has been committing current members of boards of assessors and or tax assessors and or current members of select boards in towns with split tax rate going on the record and saying what works and doesn't work. So that has been a challenge. And to that end, we're have, we're gonna have to look for former who are willing to make that commitment. Yes. Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple of items on this, I think, I think one I might consider, I mean, you know, I I I know there's, you know, maybe some reasons not to change too much of the substance of the commitment
that was made at the time, but I, I might make that a little bit more open-ended, kind of for the reasons you're saying about that. There'll be further meetings that will, you know, include different perspectives on the tax rate setting. 'cause I think there could be, I mean I've, you know, we talked about this a little bit at the retreat meeting and I've been doing some very preliminary start of research on possible options here. And it could be possible to find like a, a subject matter expert or people with, you know, advocacy organizations or something like that, that might be appropriate speakers for, you know, balanced perspectives on, on split tax.
So I wouldn't necessarily list anything. I think I, you could just have it say there's gonna be, you know, more discussions, but we'll include small business owners, residents, maybe some of these other things, but, you know, also other perspectives or something like that with Speaker 1: Different perspectives on different Yeah, I think from different backgrounds, different sub subject matter expertise. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. That doesn't lock us into something that we can't, Speaker 4: That we can't produce. Exactly. And the, the other thing I was gonna say is, I, I don't know if we want to say review a split tax rate policy. Like, I don't know if the output of it would be a po like,
I mean, my unders from looking at other, you know, I, I have looked at this a bit in other towns and I like, I don't think they usually have a policy. You're right on that. Like, it's just, Speaker 1: It's just determining the factor we Speaker 4: Said it, you know, every, every tax classification. So Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 4: Just, you know, review whether we should do that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Whether to adopt a factor of one or not. Right. That's, Speaker 5: That's the part. Speaker 1: That's a good point. Speaker 4: But yeah, that's my comments on that. Speaker 1: Yes. Just Speaker 5: A quick one, which is where you say the board will schedule at least two discussions in the fall and next spring. That means that we are not going to
have this information prior to our setting of the tax rate for this. Speaker 1: I, I don't, given our, I mean, it's, we can shoot for it, but given the schedule, Speaker 5: I, I just wanted to make sure that that's what we want. We're agreeing to. I, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think we need to study this and it's gonna take time to do it properly. Speaker 1: I, I, I also wanna note at the outset, although, well not at the outset, but I, I want to note that all of these commitments were a very heavy lift given what the business before the select board anyway,
last year we met 55 times, and there's 52 weeks in a year. Now some of those meetings were lunch Zoom, where we issued the warrant or closed the warrant. Some of them were, you know, short ad hoc meetings to approve a liquor license that didn't make it onto a regularly scheduled agenda. But a lot of them weren't, weren't, a lot of them were two and three and four hour off cycle meetings. So given the business of the board and given the, the very real commitment we made to the public, some
of these things are just going to take time. Speaker 4: Yeah. I maybe if I, if I could suggest you could, you could just take out the, in the fall and next spring part maybe, and just leave it open-ended of, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna work on it Discussions. Yeah, yeah. Multiple discussions. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. And then it just reiterates that we'll consider forming a working group and if it's formed, it'll include a member of fin comm and either the tax assessor or a member of the board of assessors. So it's not a commitment to form a working group. Let's just figure out where we are when we get to the end
of our research. That Speaker 5: Was good. Speaker 1: Something I had thrown onto the list of commitments was review. Review adoption of a tax recapitulation policy. Now we do have tax recap procedures 'cause we're required to by DLS and then discuss the potential for additional financial policies. That is something that is being postponed until after there's the financial management principles and the tax title processes have been completed because that is the, the most important thing that the finance department is doing right now. Yeah, Speaker 5: Agreed. Speaker 1: Revenue enhancement and cost savings.
My favorite part, the first thing we did was we directed town administration to complete a review of the trash and recycle program to determine whether there are potential cost savings in changing the program, adopting new fees or outsourcing. So to date, the uni mass, DEP has provide, I believe the funding is from them for municipal assistance coordinator. We will have an update. I confirm that today we'll have an update from Mr. Sprat this summer on what they've found, the historic review of trash and recycling costs, including staff and equipment,
and then also the benchmarking, researching market trends and benchmarking us to similar communities. So we will have that, that's been about a year of work and we'll have that later on this summer. Speaker 5: So yes, chair. Speaker 1: Yeah, just jump in. This is very formal. Speaker 5: This is for the municipal assistance coordinator. That is a part or a time limited function. Speaker 1: Yeah, A time limited consultant is not the word that Yeah. They prefer to use intern or No, it's not intern. It's an actual person who's an expert in Okay.
In trash and recycling. Even better from DEP. Yes, definitely even better. We committed to advocating with the state delegation for passage of the Municipal Empowerment Act to allow Natick to pursue new user based revenue sources. It's a bandaid, it's not a cure all, but we did send a letter, and I testified before the Joint Committee on Municipalities and regional government in 2025. So that one's checked off. We directed the town administration to look continually for budget efficiencies that can produce cost savings in each department. This is an ongoing process. The town administration has been reviewing, starting
with the major cost drivers in the, the town budget, which makes sense. So in fiscal 25, the town returned roughly 3.4 million, which is 44% more than it did in fiscal 24 from savings in the town. And the shared services budget, significant portion, it was difficult without doing a deep dive into Mr. Sky explained a deep dive into looking at the coding of what was turned back. But we did do a hiring freeze and we, the town administration issued a requirement that any additional department initiatives had
to be accompanied by a funding source and cost savings. Oh. And then we also achieved cost savings and health insurance negotiations. The tax title initiative launched last spring has produced, is generated approximately 2.4 million, and that's a meaningful improvement in property tax collection, including penalties and interest. And that is an ongoing process. In addition to that, Natick is a part of the West Suburban Health Group. And through negotiations we achieved in, we achieved a low premium increase as compared to the market, which was 3.85% on our plans this past year.
It was West Suburban was comparable to the market with plans increasing an average of 8.25%. You'll find that the other insurance groups were roughly that or more. And the West Suburban Health Group is currently conducting an RFP process for administrative services, looking for additional opportunities to control and mitigate costs for both the employer and the employee. In 2025, the town went to market, not marker market for insurance. 15 carriers were contacted for quotes on 12 lines of insurance. Speaker 3: That's Speaker 1: Good. We were, do we received a 1.5% reduction in premiums from fiscal 25
to fiscal 26? Next item or next, you know, yes, Speaker 3: Go Speaker 4: Ahead. John. If it would be helpful just to point out on the insurances. So one of the things that we've asked of the broker is, you know, you can't go to market every year because if you do, you're just not gonna get people to respond. So strategically, we want to do that every, you know, couple of years ago out to market. So we did a pretty robust process last year. We had a number of carriers actually come in and ask a series of questions to key staff throughout town, whether it was police facilities, you know, administration,
hr, kind of, everything along those lines. So last year we went through probably one of the more robust processes that we've gone through. I will say the one item we were able to get a two year premium on was our property and liability, which is a significant portion of it. So we will have likely some type of increase this year, but, you know, probably a, a third of our portfolio in property and liability will stay flat. So that was good. We were able to negotiate that as part of it. That's huge. And then I know on West Suburban Health Group,
we're very active. The town is in this, and I think the RFP process that we're undertaking right now, kind of following the savings that we had last year, will hopefully help us in the future in pulling whatever levers we can in the health insurance market. And kind of the, the big thing that everything comes down to that I've learned a lot about are the claims are the claims. So, you know, I think there were a couple of Maya communities that came in at like 2.5. I think Catherine, you might have even spoken to some of 'em at a conference. They came in really low. They had an extremely good claims
experience year, but there were other communities under Maya that came in very high that ended up at that 14% increase. So, you know, there's a little bit of that, you know, labor. Exactly. So Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Marshall. Supporting local businesses, one of the very first things we asked was the community economic development team to, to ensure that we had adopted all of the mass bio.org standards that would move Natick from a bronze classification to a platinum classification.
So what that means is we have to provide a certain number of standards, policies, facilities, and ease in getting permits and things like that. For, for life sciences, when you go from bronze, just if, if you look at the map, mass bio.org of the communities that are platinum in our area, there were a number of them, including Framingham. So it was a bit embarrassing for us to be bronze. Amanda took the lead and that was done with a matter of weeks.
What that means in practical terms is that when international organizations are looking to establish life sciences, they pull up that map and they go to the towns, they check their property tax rate, they check the facilities that are here, and they just start with platinum because it's so much easier than having to go to a community that might have a lower tax rate, for example, that's silver. But then they have to jump through more hoops to get permitting. Yeah. Speaker 5: So that, that's when we, we've checked off, Speaker 1: Right. We've checked that off. That was done in a matter of weeks after the commitment. I think it was done in, in May. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 5: We Speaker 1: Announced that. So yeah, two months. And then the second part of supporting local businesses, we wanted to continue to support business, business friendly climate and improving our bylaws, regulations and procedures to support, attract and retain businesses. This effort to date has largely been centered around, centered around the development and deployment of additional features in our open gov portal or platform. So it had been the case that you could apply for building permits, you could apply for certain inspections online,
but that has been greatly expanded. So, and, and the searchability has been increased so that you can search by address or record number, a permit record number. Also in the last roughly year and a half, the permits and paperwork, most of it has been digitized. So if you're a business and you're looking to pick up a property and you wanna know, or you, you want to rent a property at, say, I'm gonna make up an address 27 North Main Street, you could go into 27 North Main Street and see the permits and the build outs that had taken place and get a sense of what else you would need to do
before you even met with the landlord. The select board permits, CED, which is, which includes parking permits are available online. The Community preservation Committee applications and letters of interest are available online, health department, historic District Commission, and the town clerk's office. I, I think we can all agree that we're gonna continue to improve bylaws, regulations, and procedures to support track and retain businesses. A lot of it that has to do with meeting with business owners and finding out what they need and where they need it. And I think we've all been pretty active doing
that on a one-on-one basis for communications, we committed to establishing regular meetings among the chairs and vice chairs of the school committee, select board, and the chair of fin com. The point of this tri board committee was to establish a venue for all three entities to communicate throughout the year about issues including the budget. We have a meeting coming up, coming up in a couple of weeks, and it's to ensure that we are, we are all communicating with each other about concerns and ideas, questions that we have about budget,
working together, communications and so on. We also committed to working with town administration to communicate current programs to residents, including sending a letter to Natick seniors to inform them of the programs that are available to them to defer, reduce, or defer real estate taxes or qualify for free water and sewer or other benefits. That letter has not gone out. And one of the, one of the stumbling blocks is narrowing it only to seniors because there are programs that are available to all residents. So working with the communications director, which
we've seen him very active on the Johnson School, on issue on Main Street improvement project, developing a communications calendar, working with communities that are victims of hate biases. This is something that's kind of taken a backseat and I'd like to circle around and see what we can do in terms of communicating those, not just online, which we, the communications director's done a really good job of ensuring that the various departments, websites that offer information for residents seeking to reduce
or defer taxes or obtain other benefits like free water and sewer or oil, fuel, oil assistance to ensure that the websites are up, up to date with current information. The challenge with that is not everybody is on the website. Not everyone knows to go to the website and not everyone knows where to look. So you may say, I need fuel assistance, but you're not really sure where to go. So that's a, that's a project that we need to revitalize. But part of the engagement has been at least two
presentations at the community senior center by the town's tax assessor to discuss the tax deferral program for seniors. Those efforts will continue to be ongoing. A resident or a resident and her husband who are seniors, asked whether they could be trained in this program. And so working with the town administrator and this couple, I came up with six questions. The idea being that seniors socialize with other seniors and they're the ones who hear the concerns about the taxes. So these six questions are questions that you can ask without ever knowing anything about
their financial situation. Yeah. And by going through that checklist, a resident could tell another resident, here's who you need to talk to, these are the benefits of this, and direct them to our tax assessor's office. I've talked to the tax assessor about rolling this out and having, in the fall, likely September, a meeting at the community senior center where we advertise this for all seniors to come and learn how to peer coach, you know, their friends and understand what the program is and how it works. Because we do have Deb Bud, who is a social worker in the community senior
center in Human services. But if you don't know that one contact, you may be missing out. There's, Speaker 5: There's also the factor of peer communications among senior citizens. They're, they're more trusting of their peers and, and, and trust is the wrong word, is more Speaker 1: Willing to confide. Willing Speaker 5: To, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking. And this couple came up with this great idea and I love that, like to see it deployed. And then we have five things under further study,
which have all either been postponed or waiting until additional work has been done on the previous, of the other previous commitments. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 1: I anticipate this is going to be a multi-year effort and some things are gonna be ongoing. So some things are gonna be, you know, the administration is doing a complete review of its cost drivers. And that's something that will always be ongoing communication, I think is something that we'll continue to develop and finding ways to support our local businesses. Speaker 5: This is a great start of the document, honestly, Cody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I, well, I was gonna say, I mean, you know, maybe, maybe I can, I can say this since I wasn't on the, the, the board for most of this, but this is, this is really impressive and also important for people to know about. And I know, you know, you just talked about all the things that JR is has on his plate, so I hesitate to add another one. But if, you know, we could ask him to just push once you have a finalized version of this to sort of push it out so that voters can actually see what has been done in just a year on these commitments
and what is still to be done. You know, so we're, you know, adding the transparency because I think, I think I would, I would hate to see this get buried. Buried. Yeah. So agreed. I, I would like to see that. Speaker 1: So to that end, I'd like to ask the board to go through this. I, I marked up two, at least two typos, but if you could go through it and over the next two weeks you Speaker 4: Gonna Speaker 5: Mail it to us? Speaker 1: Yes, I will email it to you. Yeah, that would be helpful. I expect you to retype the entire thing, including the logo, man. Yes. I will send that to you and if over the next two weeks
you can get changes or questions like Linda's question was very good about current and questioning whether that was the case and also maybe what financial policies have not been reviewed. I think there were 10 that, yeah, I think the, the way it was set up is there were 10 policies, 10 procedures, and then there were 10 additional policies that we were contemplating or that needed review. So, and then what I can do tomorrow with Mr. Walsh is pull up some of the items that are referenced in this and ask him to attach it to the agenda. And then in, in maybe in two weeks we can, I can turn it
around and get it back to you with everyone's comments if you can send it to me only to avoid Yep, sure. Violation with open meeting law discussion on bylaw Article 22 Town Council. So I've done a little bit of research, I just wanna share the very little bit I've done for people at home. Article 22 sets forth the, the means by which the town hires town council. It only contemplates one outside firm. It does not contemplate also having in-house counsel. There was a study done that's uploaded to, to your agenda on these of town council.
I contacted the Mass Select Board association, asked them which towns, which towns with representative town meeting, there's only 30 taking a stab, 36 or 37 of them use in-house counsel. So none of those use both outside counsel and in-house counsel. So an example of that would be for is having in-house counsel review all contracts. Right now our procurement officer is a, is a lawyer who formerly worked at the law firm that we retain. But because of Article 22 and
because we don't carry liability insurance on him, he does not perform as an attorney for the town. The towns that do have in-house council don't have both. They use only in-house and they're the larger towns. Brookline. Arlington, Speaker 6: Yeah, Speaker 1: A few others. Those are the two big ones, but there are a few others. Speaker 29: Interest city though I think she only worked IT towns representative that's sure. Speaker 1: En large. So one of the things I just wanted to bring up for us to kind of informally discuss is what would, what would you see the benefit of or, or not of having in-house counsel in addition to?
We, we, we could not hire in-house counsel for what we pay in, in, in my opinion, for what we pay Murphy Hessey and Murphy Hessey's hourly rate. So there's a retainer they pay, we, we pay them to be available for almost all town, but we pay extra for litigation. We pay extra for a couple of other things that, that are billed at Speaker 29: Litigation Speaker 1: Or Yeah, I know Litigation, alcohol license. Yeah. Appeals a few other things that are not in the course. And scope zoning, zoning, zoning, zoning, planning.
So the hourly rate we pay Murphy Hessey is about a hundred dollars an hour below market. That's what it was last year when we appointed town council according to Article 22, when have to appoint town council in, in June. So that's coming up next month. And I wanted to kind of kick off the discussion to see what people's thoughts were on this. On changing the bylaw or changing articles. The charter, right, Speaker 6: This is beens Speaker 29: The by it's a or no, it's Speaker 1: Charter article. Charter.
Speaker 29: Charter. Yeah. Speaker 1: It's a bylaw 22 is the bylaw. Okay. Speaker 6: 22 is, I mean, this has been an idea that's been kicking around town for quite a while. I mean it's, it's nothing new. And, and the, the question that, that I would have is, you know, what specifically would we want to use in-house counsel for? And, and that's something that I don't know has fully been flushed out. If we were to hire it, you know, have someone on staff, what would they do? And then there's always the issue of, you know, what do they do if, if we have conflicts between our in-house council and our town council.
So to me it would make sense if they had very separate functions. Speaker 1: Agreed. Speaker 6: So, but what would those be? I don't know. I mean I think, you know, we, we've all been a little frustrated about our own business, maybe not taking priority to other business in the town for the select board. You know, we've asked for policies to be reviewed and it's taking a long time. I understand that may be getting better, but I think before we do it, I think we need to decide what the purpose of it would be. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mr. Evans and Mr. Jacobs, just Speaker 5: Following up on Ms.
Slegers point, it's the, I think we've all experienced the delays that we've had and, and things and, and most of the time, sorry I'm away from the mic. It, it is because town council's flat out and, and they're not doing as good a job as they might delegating to, to others. And I think probably what, as part of our discussion, we should be thinking about how do we get our town council
to hand off things more expeditiously. Speaker 1: So I have an assurance from her that, that that is happening. Okay. And there, up until recently through this town meeting season, she had six towns as clients. She's handed off one, she's fired one. So she has four. Speaker 5: Okay, good. That's Speaker 1: Good news. My, my thoughts about having in-house counsel and they are unformed. So just saying that is that every contract and everything in procurement goes through Murphy Hessey if we had that in-house.
So that that isn't clogging up the arteries of stuff we send in. And maybe additional things, I don't know. But those were two of the things that came to mind. That we already have someone on staff who is competent and who used to do those very things at Murphy Hessey. Now I'm not suggesting that needs to be him, it needs to be this, those were the, the unformed and unresearched thoughts that I had on this Speaker 5: F following up on that point. The, the question in my mind becomes, you know, and you alluded to it earlier that we're, that town council is, the way we're billed
by them is, is multi-part. It's, it's the baseline rate and then it's the adders. Right? So the question is, if we were to hire or allow in the bylaw in in-house counsel, what would it be? What would it be for? How would we differentiate, differentiated? And I'm, I'm just throwing stuff out here, so bear with me. How would we differentiated from between what we assigned to town council and what we assign to in-house counsel?
'cause there has to be a, a clear demarcation between the two because otherwise you get to the scenario you just talked about, which is, you know, town council says one thing and in-house council says something completely different. Who do we listen to? Speaker 1: Cody. Speaker 4: Yeah. Well actually, like, I, I kind of think the, well, I I guess first just a, a process point, I do think that we should try to change the bylaw because I think it should, it should be more flexible. Even if we, if we want to do in-house counsel at some point,
just to have the option I think would be a good thing to, 'cause it take, you know, it's a process right. To change the bylaws. So we might as well go through it and then, you know, we would have the option in the future. But the thing I was gonna say about what some of you guys are saying, I think the position of in-house counsel could be, could be a little broader than, than that. Like it could be, and and Jamie sort of alluded to this when we talked about it a bit at the retreat, but the in-house council could manage the relationships with outside council. Like it could all go through in-house council. So that essentially it's like in a, in a, in the private sector, right?
Where you have an in-house council that's, you know, the, the general counsel for a firm for a a a not, not a law firm for like a, for a private company, right? And they, you know, there's outside counsel for, they might have outside counsel for litigation. They usually do, right? But that all goes through the GCs office because that they have the expertise to be able to manage that, to keep costs down, like whatever. And so there wouldn't, there, there doesn't have to be a, a conflict if what we decided to do was set it up where this person is sort of the, you know, the GC of the town and it all the, you know, whatever it is,
whether it's zoning, whether it's us, whatever. Like they'd be responsible for managing that workflow with, with any outside counsel that, that they, that, you know, we, the, the, the town decided that we needed to supplement what they wouldn't be able to do as an individual themselves. And so that person could have like sort of a, a managerial role in managing that process. And that could be that I think that could be good for ultimately for like our workflow. And you know, again, to your point that I, I totally agree with you that it's not, this isn't a cost savings. This would be a, an additional cost for us,
but it would make, it could make things run much more efficiently. Speaker 6: I mean I think we would really have to look at what the cost benefit would be. 'cause the person that way in some of these scenarios, the scenario that you're describing, yeah, that's an expensive person. It is an expensive yeah's gonna be, yeah, it's a higher level person. That's Speaker 1: A much higher level and it's liability insurance. So it's, well it's Speaker 4: Liability insurance either way, right? Speaker 1: We don't pay liability on Murphy Hess. Yeah, there's liability insurance if we have in-house counsel. But if we have general counsel, that is, I just spoke to someone today who was recently hired as assistant general counsel for a major public private entity
that's mid two, two hundreds. Then there's liability insurance, then there's the OPE obligations and then there is the benefits then well benefits, but also conferences travel. Yeah, I I hear you. So, so there is, I that's big one. I do take Cody's point though that if we're going to do something, changing the bylaw, we we can change the bylaw and do nothing. In fact, we're not doing anything before the end of June anyway when we reappoint counsel. Yeah, yeah. And, and maybe we need to go through the, the services study. I, I spoke with someone, you know, if we had just
a little bit less litigation, maybe our costs wouldn't be so high. I spoke to the town administrator in Franklin who has a part-time in-house counsel. Now they're a city form of government. They're town of Franklin, but the city form of government. And so I asked him, how does it work? 'cause you have outside counsel for like, for instance litigation. And he said, and this is a quote, well if we were sued, do, do, do, the only quote I'm parting is if we were sued must be nice, we would hire litigation outside. They have about the same population as we do plus or minus 3000 Speaker 6: And they get double the chapter of 78.
Speaker 1: They get double a chapter 70 and lots of other benefits. But Speaker 4: To, to that, to that point though, like, doesn't that kind of go to what one of the benefits of having in-house counsel would be? That it could be someone, I mean, again, this is thinking about the more expensive kind of general person, but like someone who was looking affirmatively to protect us from risk, who was looking at what we were doing from that perspective and thinking, hey, like this is something you should have, the select board should have a policy about it. The police should have a policy about or whatever on an, on an affirmative like prevention basis that we maybe don't get from having a more reactive driven,
you know, that's sort of driven by, I mean, you know, not that our town administration I think does does the best they can with that, but someone who's looking at it from a, whose entire job or part of their job would be to look at town operations from a legal risk management perspective that that could help Speaker 6: Agree. But then it it could, but it's also you lose the independent voice a little bit. I mean there, you know, when when we have discussions with town council, let's focus maybe potentially on litigation. Yeah. You know, it's our decision. But we do get that independent voice that is looking out for
what your liability is. Yeah. And you know, if it's somebody that's a town employee, it makes it a little bit, a little bit more of a gray area. That's certainly true in, in the private sector as well. Yes. And Speaker 5: It causes problems in the private sector too. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 6: So that, that would be something we would have to really weigh. Speaker 5: Can can just a, just a thought of, you know, car has experience, you know, car has great experience in her, let's just say four or six communities. Do any of them have in-house Speaker 1: Counsel? They all have just Murphy Hessey Speaker 5: In in her.
I think we most of them. So the, they're they're making a choice of in-house counsel or outside council, right. So by and large the communities. So I think it, it, it does come back to cost benefit analysis. I think, you know, in theory, yes, this would all be good then, but at what cost? Speaker 1: It's a conversation I'd also wanna have with the town administrator who's had experience with having in-house counsel. Yeah. I mean for him being able to go down the hall and knock on the door and say, Hey,
I just had a question about X, Y, Z and getting an opinion Speaker 6: That's worth a lot. Speaker 5: That is worth a lot. It is definitely worth Speaker 1: A, so yeah, a cost benefit analysis would need to include some of the intangibles such as immediate access or let's say I'm the town administrator, I've just written a letter to Soandso in response to such and such. Can you look at this real quickly? Yeah, yeah. Stop write what you're doing. Yeah. And can you take a look at this so I can get it off my desk? Yeah, yeah, Speaker 5: That's definitely a positive. Yeah, no question. So let's,
Speaker 1: Let's keep this as a topic and, and maybe revisit it in a, Speaker 4: If, if I could just say of course in, you know, I didn't work as directly kind of in my role when I was in Arlington, but the couple of times where I worked with council in Arlington, having counsel in-house, you, you were able to prioritize things a little bit differently. And I know you're all referencing that right now, but there certainly was value in that from a timeliness standpoint that, you know, from an administration standpoint, being able to prioritize kind of what's most critical
and make sure that those things happen within that, it was certainly very helpful in my experience. So, Speaker 6: But there, I think there's also value in having someone that's on the outside that works with different towns that's familiar with different ways of doing it as opposed to, you know, maybe it's a little more insular if you, if you're just working in Nat and then you know, how Natick does does things. But I mean the, the out an outside perspective that, you know, as f familiar with, well here's how you do it here. And not to say that an in-house council couldn't have a network to, you know, to, to find out
that same kind of information. But, Speaker 1: But there is, there is value in having someone work with not just the four communities she works with now, but the community she's worked with for the last 20 years. And I know that some of our policies that we've, we've sent to her, she's weighed in on using her knowledge of what deep, deep bench knowledge of what other communities have done. Even language, what they've used, what's been challenged, what hasn't been challenged. Yeah, that's, yeah, I was kind of thinking of it as a yes and as opposed to instead of Yeah, but I take Linda's point, we would need to have,
so a cost benefit analysis and it would need to be able to include intangibles such as expediency, prioritizing access, and then also like a clear, either, either the model that Cody mentioned, which is having general counsel here, which serves as the funnel point for stuff like this is what I'm going to do and maybe with a circumscribed portfolio of what that person works on. So I will, you know, I'm that person. I will work on all zoning, land use, procurement and contracts and then everything else is funneled out.
But that person manages the risk, manages the, the relationship, et cetera. I don't wanna lose a select board's relationship with town council. I think we have a really good relationship with her. So I'm not suggesting instead of, I just wanted to get these different models out for us to talk about and maybe sometime over the summer looking at our agendas going forward, maybe July or August, revisit about whether, does anyone know off the top of their head when the warrant closes for fall? Speaker 5: It's usually August. It's usually the third week of August. Speaker 1: So why don't we say we don't shoot for this fall for a bylaw change and we think about it for spring.
Yeah, I think there's still too much that we'd have to talk about. Speaker 5: Yeah, I Speaker 1: Agree. And more information we'd need. And I'll, I'll keep talking to towns that have in-house counsel and find out what they think is the, because towns that have in-house counsel also use specialty counsel. Yes. So they have their own cannabis, right? Sometimes they have their own litigation, they have their own Oh, appellate filings or that's a whole different practice of law. So that's a whole different, so there is kind of a, a model. It's just I'd, I'd wanna know more about what those models look like. Yeah. Okay, I think we can move to the consent agenda.
It's nine 15 and I will turn that over to Mr. Temporary clerk. Temporary Speaker 5: Clerk. All right, here we go. Item A approved meeting minutes for 5 13, 20 26 Item B accept Polly Smith's resignation from the open space advisory committee. Item C approved native community organic farms applications for one day alcohol licenses on 7 18 20 26. Barn dance rain date 7 19 9 19 20 26.
Fundraising dinner with 9 20 26 as a rain date. Item D approved native community organic farms applications for one day entertainment license on those same dates. How's that saving time Item E approve request to occupy a public way on 6 13 20 26 Richmond Road block party Item F approve Massachusetts Fine Wine and spirits LLC doing business as total wine and Moore's application for an S 15.
All alcohol off-premise license change of manager. Item G, approve amended remote meeting policy item H approve annual select board agenda. Calendar item I approve. Cultural observance, communications calendar item J, approve Amvets post 79 doing business as amvets application for S 12. All alcohol license, temporary change of hours approved hours are 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM Sunday to Thursday, 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM Friday and Saturday. Current hours requiring approval are 12:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Fri on Friday, 5 30, 20, 26 and I so or does anybody want to remove? I'd like to pull item J. Item J. Okay. And Speaker 4: I'd like to pull item I, Speaker 5: Oh you guys made it easy. So items A through HI moved and approve. Second. Speaker 1: All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Four zero. Zero. Okay, I let's take them in order. So, aye Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 4: Yeah, so item I I think this
calendar looks really good that Jay put together and sent around to us. But I did note under October, Columbus day is listed and it says as currently named per select board. I asked the administration about this a little bit and essentially like, you know, they, they talked about sort of the history of it that they had come in 2021 I think with a discussion about whether we should recognize Indigenous People's Day instead or in addition to Columbus Day. And the select board at the time decided not to do that for a number of reasons. But I think we should revisit that. I think we should especially for, and
and I wanna be clear about something 'cause I'm talking about this for public communication purposes. 'cause there's sort of two separate things, right? There's sort of the holidays that we recognize that we're, you know, that are kind of bound up in legal obligations, right? Like there's things in collective bargaining agreements that say people get Columbus day off. There's article 24 of the town bylaws that list the, the holidays we recognize, which lists Columbus Day. I'm not talking about changing any of that. I'm talking about this which is an out facing, you know, our how, what our communications are around different holidays and cultural observances including many
or mo most of these aren't, you know, that kind of legal holiday or anything like that. And for those purposes I think we should recognize Indigenous People's Day. So, you know, granted this is an end of the agenda consent item and you know, maybe that's not something we want to talk about at this point, but I wouldn't want to approve this without having that, at least having the conversation Speaker 1: So we can schedule that for discussion before the October holiday, I, I'm disinclined to take a vote on something
that's on the consent agenda knowing that the public has not had an opportunity to weigh in. So I will look to add that in August or September for discussion. And to be, to be clear, I think it should be one or the other. This discussion when it took place, oh, in, I'm gonna say five or six years ago, they said 2021. Yeah, there was discussion about making it Columbus Day slash Indigenous Peoples Day, which is kind of like saying Israel Gaza Day or Israel Palestine Day or India China Day recognize one or the other,
but we're not recognizing Speaker 6: It. It was also recognizing that the, the title of the formal holiday and I, and I get that Cody's point is maybe separating that from Speaker 1: Yeah, and I didn't understand that to be the point. Cody, can you ex Speaker 4: Yeah, well I I was saying that we could, we could separately like the the for 'cause I'm, there's a process we could go through to actually formally change like in our bylaw colo, you know, Columbus data, indigenous peoples, I think some communities have done that. I'm saying I don't think we have to do that necessarily. I'm just saying that for public communications purposes to,
to Catherine's point, I think that could, that in my opinion it should just be indigenous people's day. You know, again, continuing to not, you know, not change our bylaw whatever, like do whatever we need to do internally as far as that kind of stuff. But externally, I think it, it should be indigenous people's day. And also another thing that's kind of related that I think perhaps the agenda item could be broad enough that we could discuss this too, is that October is actually recognized in Mass general law as Italian American Heritage Month. Yes. And I would like to see that on,
on this as well possibly. So if, if, if it could be broad enough that we could talk about that too, that would be good. Speaker 1: Yeah. Why don't we, why don't we post it as discussing the entire communications calendar. Okay. Which has been on, just to be clear, numerous agendas predating your time on the board, right. But there's also, you know, may, in addition to Mental Health Month, in addition to Lupus month, a LS month and numerous other physical health issues, it's also Jewish American Heritage Month. So there's a discussion about whether we add that in addition to Asian American Pacific Islander.
So for everyone we include, we're excluding one, so we need to acknowledge that or excluding another. I do think that the way this is structured is the way we're rec the town is recognizing for communications purposes, federal holidays. So I do think that it either has to be, we either have to change it so that we acknowledge Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. This is just my personal opinion or what, what our communications director has already decided to do, which is through official channels marking Columbus, marking Columbus Day, the federal holiday of Columbus Day.
And then the content of it is recognizing the people who lived on this land, the Nipmuck, the Wampanoag, and the Praying Indians and the, and other tribes. So they're all different. There are different creative ways we can do it. This topic deserves a very full Yeah. And, and public discussion. And so I will see that it's on an agenda well before the October holiday and moving to j item JI meant not j Speaker 6: Okay, the reason I brought this up is, is purely technical, but it's annoying and I would hope that when these come
before us again, that there won't be a problem. And that is the date of the event is May 30th, the rain date is May 18th in the application, you obviously cannot have a rain date that's before the event. Yeah, so it the, you know, I don't think it, I didn't catch that it, it does not materially affect our approval, but on the other hand, what we approve should, should make some sense logically. So I Speaker 1: Think it does material we approve because that gives them an opportunity to hold it on the 18th. So I would
Speaker 6: No, the, the 18th has already happened. Speaker 5: The 18th is already over. Speaker 6: It's May 18th. Speaker 1: Okay. Sorry, I'm still in April. I'm still working on go back from Speaker 29: The time machine. We time travel the way back. Speaker 6: Yeah. So just, just a point that I, I didn't want that to go on a notice that a, a technical issue with this, but I don't think it, it, like I said, material affects that it Speaker 5: Doesn't rise to, so let's hope it doesn't rain. Speaker 1: So there is no rain date for this date. It's either May 30th from Yes. Or bust noon to 11:00 PM or it's not at all. Yep. Correct. Speaker 6: So Speaker 5: Can we communicate that to them? Yes.
Speaker 1: That there is no rain Speaker 6: Date. I'll add, there is no rain date. I mean potentially they meant six 18 but I we can't approve that, that because that's not what it says. No, Speaker 1: That's not, no, you're right Ms. Walser and that I missed that. So I will ask. I miss that Mr. Walsh to inform them that it, it has been approved as soon as we vote on it. Sands Rain date Speaker 29: 16th is the middle. Speaker 1: Do I have a motion to approve it? Yes. Without a rain date. So Speaker 6: Moved. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Ger, seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 4 0 0 Town administrator updates? None.
Okay. I'm, I'm just using Speaker 4: It. I was, I was just gonna mention, I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but the town was reaffirmed for its AAA bond rating by s and p earlier today. I know it's gonna be brought up at your next meeting, but I just wanted to mention it. Speaker 1: That's great news. Thank you John. Speaker 29: And team, Speaker 1: That was a very long phone call. I understand meeting Speaker 29: That was always over looking under rocks. Yep. Speaker 1: Select board updates. Speaker 29: Nope. Speaker 1: Ms. Wilger will be at the community senior center for office hours tomorrow at nine o'clock. I will not be. There's correspondence that has been posted
and we have a 9 25 adjournment if I have a motion. Move to Speaker 6: Adjourn. Speaker 29: Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Ger, seconded by Mr. Jacobs. All in favor please say aye. Any opposed? 4 0 0 And we are adjourned at 9:25 PM.