Speaker 1: Tonight is, it is 6:05 PM calling the January 21st, 2026 board meeting to order. We'll start out an open session and we'll go through the open part of our agenda, but then we will go to executive session, take a roll call, vote to enter executive session, and we will adjourn from an executive session. We won't be coming back into open session. So I wanted to just
make a couple comments about tonight's agenda. Number one, most of the is here for item C, the exception of Mr. Raat, who was up until the wee hours of the morning, along with the water and sewer department, repairing a major, major water main break and kudos to him and his team for all the work that they did above and beyond the call of duty in extreme weather conditions. This never happens in the middle of the summer.
This doesn't work out that way, but thank you. And, and get some rest after this. We'll, we'll try to get you outta here quickly. So the rest of you, however, I strongly suspect are here for item C, which is the flock cameras pilot. And I just wanted to say upfront that the select board had no prior knowledge to this pilot prior to last Saturday when one of our members found that was asked by a resident about
them, and this was news to us. We had not seen, we had not been notified that they were active. We had not been notified of a pilot. And so I contacted Mr. Erickson and the Chief, chief Hicks and asked them to put together a memo on this. We share a hundred percent plus of the concerns that have been expressed in a lot of emails. We have read every one of those emails. They are being posted. I when we get to that topic, you will note that I'm going
to let the chief go through his presentation. I am going to let the board ask questions and I'm limiting public comments to 15 minutes total. If you have sent an email in, I do not want to see you stand up. I I want to see it to allow residents who have not expressed their opinion to express their opinion. We have taken them. I didn't have time to do this, but if I run it through ai, there's gonna be a top 10.
It's gonna be like Letterman's top 10. I did. Oh, you did? You did. And that's why I have a vice chair. Okay. So maybe I'll at that point defer to Linda when, when, when she goes through it. But there are common threads we have, we have concerns about security, who it's being shared with under wet conditions, especially under the current federal regime. And I use that word very carefully 'cause it is a regime in my opinion, and we have to be cognizant of the
unintended consequences of something seemingly innocuous. So without further ado, let me go to announcements. Does anyone on the board have a a, a further announcement? Speaker 2: Good evening, everyone. This is just a, a bit of a reflection. I attended the, the Spark Kindness MLK day program on Monday, and it just, it was incredibly impactful. So well done. I'm so thankful to spark kindness to their team and the teams that do put it together every single year.
And it was an inclement weather. It had snowed so greatly that morning and people still came out and they, we gathered in community and in solidarity. And so I'm just want to publicly thank Spark kindness. The, the teams who organize it and everybody who came out and acknowledged the holiday Speaker 1: Ms. I also meant to say something about that DPW, the aforementioned DPW were the ones responsible for plowing the NA High school a lot, as well
as the roads that enabled people to get to that Martin Luther King celebration. So thank them publicly for that. I had the flu and was unable to attend. So thank you Christner for representing us there. The other item that I have in public speak, if I can find it, is the Charles River. Lemme see. Charles River Watershed Association is hosting a free screening of their new documentary, reconnecting Rivers at Lee Woods. Meeting Hall on at North Institute Library
on January 28th from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM It's produced by CW CRWA and turnaround films. And the documentary explores the challenges posed by defunct dams on the Charles River and beyond, and the efforts by local groups to address them. That discussion on the documentary and defunct dams and the Charles will follow the screening and life refreshments will be provided. So again, that's January 28th, six 30 to eight at the Morris Library.
Does anybody else have anything? Speaker 3: I thought Mr. Sidney had Speaker 4: His hand, Speaker 1: Sir. Sydney? Speaker 5: Nope. You got it. Thank you. And, and probably should note I'm remote because I have the flu. Speaker 1: All right, thank you, Richard. Feel better. All right. On the way. On the way on the band. Alright. All right. First, next we have, for those in the room, let's stand for Pledge of Allegiance. And among the silence I pledge allegiance, Speaker 6: The United States and Justice Speaker 1: Thank you. Up is public speak.
Any individual can raise an issue that's not on tonight's agenda. It'll be taken under advisement by this board. There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion due to the requirements of open meeting law and sections limited to 10 minutes. And any one individual please limited to three minutes. Do we have anybody wishing to speak? And can you introduce yourself and tell us your name? Speaker 3: Thank you. So my name is Cory Spalding. And so I have three minutes. Did you say? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 3: Okay. So I, I'm a whistleblower.
I'm an accidental whistleblower. Some time ago I happened to inadvertently stumble upon some embezzlement of over $20 million here in Natick. And my family's been retaliated against since. So the fraud that you are all aware of is municipal malfeasance and it involves the Massachusetts Municipal Association. We have Josh Ostroff here. He was the president and resigned at the time that this had become public by statute general law Chapter 44, subsection 53 A.
All elected boards are supposed to be accepting the funds in a public meeting. It's documented in the agenda in minutes. I happen to realize that the school committee wasn't doing that and my daughter was mercilessly, Mercilessly, bullied and abused to the point that she had to be hospitalized for over 30 days and she's left fully disabled. She has never been allowed to finish her schooling. She was illegally excluded by the Natick School Committee to cover up for this ongoing fraud that again,
the select board also can't account for federal grants and federal funding. We would like this to be put on in an upcoming agenda. I have a constitutional right to question the fiduciary duty. There is no open meeting law that says that items can't be debated. So with all due respect, we would like this to be put on an upcoming agenda so that the public, we do have documents that support Representative David Linsky, Josh Ostroff. We know that the select board going back for at least 10 years. The school committee, we have all kinds of, chief Hicks is here too.
He is fully aware and complicit and violated Massachusetts General Law Chapter 66 of Section 10, beginning in August of 2014. And anyway, so it's, I do not like public speaking. We have a service dog that left in the car. I'm very concerned for her. So we would like to come back, my daughter and I at a time when we can actually have a discussion about your fiduciary duty and the retaliation that my family to date still Speaker 7: Suffers. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I'm gonna, I have some documents I would like to be as part of
this meeting and I believe that is open meeting law. Speaker 7: So I will give them to you. And could you just tell me if the audit comfort, the Speaker 3: Audit committee Speaker 7: Is speaking tonight. You go back to the mic. Could you back to mic? Could you pass this to, Speaker 3: I would like to know if the audit committee is speaking. Is it on? It's on the agenda. Speaker 1: My, again, I can't debate anything. My understanding is they're going to talk about the report that they've delivered. I don't believe that it's an interactive q and a. Speaker 7: Alright, well Speaker 3: As you know, it's very inaccurate.
It's not pleasant. I understand. I have a duty to my child to stand up for her. Speaker 1: I understand. I cannot comment either way. So thank Speaker 3: You. I just wanted to be heard. Thank you. Speaker 7: We good Speaker 1: Mr. Ooff? Speaker 7: Yeah. Speaker 1: Only for items not on the agenda and not previously mentioned. Speaker 7: Judge, Speaker 8: I am here on a completely different topic. Josh, also a phonetic resident, a town meeting member. I am gonna send a note that expands that. What I want to talk about tonight, I want to acknowledge town administration, particularly Deputy town administrator, John Marshall,
for all his work on the Capital Investment plan, which you obviously got at at your last meeting. I mean, I want to thank staff in particular for including a bicycle pedestrian accessibility plan on the CIP, which is scheduled for fiscal 28. The note I'll, I'll follow up with just says like 10 or 12 reasons. I think this will be a wonderful thing for the people who made it. And if it were possible to do it sooner than fiscal 28, that would be great. It was made very clear. And I, I know as do you, that there's funding constraints
and there's staff capacity issues. So if something that I may feel as a priority, well, there's a lot of things that a lot of people feel are priorities. But the things that I wanna just highlight are that, you know, this is something that I did in the 2030 plan and in that zero plan has been a longstanding goal of the town. This is a process that would help to identify capital investments that would complement things that are already underway. It will help unlock state funding, complete streets or state, state routes and schools publics.
It will help inform the priorities of the town wide roadway and sidewalk improvements. And we're spending potentially about $16 million over the next five years. So this a hundred thousand dollars investment can help target our, you know, pedestrian access investments in a way that I think will help that those dollars go go further. So it's inherently a public process to make sure that we're hearing from people, whether they're people with disabilities, people who want their kids to be able
to walk or ride safely to school and and other users. It's also an economic development engine in that walkable communities such as Natick Center or others are inherently more productive return, greater tax value, have more, you know, commerce. 'cause people can walk more easily to and from their destinations. So I just, I'm, I'm really gratified that this is on a plan. So I'm not here to complain. I'm here to applaud that work and to say the reasons that I hope
that it ultimately is funded and executed. I think it'll return many benefits to the community. Thank you so much for your time tonight. I'm glad to be here. I'm not gonna stick around for the main event, but I'll be watching it on tv. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Speaker 1: Going online, Kim, Speaker 9: We're not seeing any online though. Is there a way we can see this Zoom screens? It's on the back side there. I can, I don't know if we can, can try. Speaker 1: Let's move on to discussion and decision is the finance department update.
And Ari please, Ari would ask me to, for him to do each segment of a tax settle update, then the audit updates, and then do view them sequentially. So tax title gets completed, his presentation, and then you can ask questions and we'll go up to the second part that way. Go ahead. Gary, can Speaker 10: You, Mr. Chairman, board members, I'll try to be brief. I know you have a busy agenda tonight. Just on the side, we are well into finalizing the FY 27 budget.
We are planning on of February. I believe the date's still being worked. So I'm here to talk about a couple things, giving update on tax tile and also talk a bit about the success of the audit. And I'm sure that Mr. Sydney will wanted to chime in as well regarding the audit committees meeting last week as well. So on tax title, as you know, the town embarked in a proactive effort to collect delinquent tax property beginning last year. That really got away in March or so when the town sent demand letters to properties
with delinquent taxes for 2019 to 24, 24. Subsequent to that, after the completion of FY 25, the demand letters were sent for, for that as well in August. So we sent demand letters for 19 through 25. Now we generate some pretty significant onetime revenue, as you know, that affected our free cash in a very positive way. And gen, just to give you some context of general perspective, in January of 25, the town had identified 3,862 accounts with about $3.6 million in receivables total as include penalties, interest in value receivables following the issuance of the demand letters under the
delinquent accounts, the town received about $2.4 million in payments plus another $600,000 in penalties. In interest. As of this month, the overall status of tax title stands at about 2.2 million, a little less than that 2.2 million, one 91,699 accounts. So we've reduced that, not we quite dramatically. There's a new state law, as you may know, which I changed the process a little bit on the latter stages of this process, which involve taking things like that. The next step in this process would involve mailing notices
of intent to advertise under, under delinquent properties to those property owners and waiting for some period of time before advertising. We're about at that stage now. And the plan is to send the notices of intent to advertise. It's basically gonna be that reduced, the reduced set of properties in the next week or two and then several weeks later, we'll, we'll we will be planning to advertise them in the newspaper, but we of course will let you know when that's coming. So that's the update on tax title I hearing. Any questions? Questions we may have on that? Speaker 11: Thank you. Mr. Skye, can you tell me if the list
of the properties for the notice of intent will be provided to the select board prior to a a advertising? Absolutely. Speaker 10: Thank you. Yeah, that, that I I said that earlier. Yes, absolutely. Speaker 11: You, you may have, I can't really hear you very well. Is the microphone on? Speaker 10: I think so. I'm talking too. I may be talking too quietly. I'm not sure. Speaker 11: You might, you might be just really too quiet. Yeah. Thank you Speaker 10: Mrs. Sky. I'll speak louder. Speaker 11: Thank you. Speaker 10: Yes, we, we will, we will def we will, we'll be, we'll be providing you with the list before it becomes public. Speaker 11: Thank you. That's all I had. Sure. Speaker 12: Thank you Ari. On that same vein,
will the list be published on the website? Speaker 10: Yes. Yes. That's part of the process. So Speaker 12: That'll be after it's in the newspaper or Correct. At the same time? Speaker 10: It could be simultaneously or, or it could be a little bit later. We really, there's no requirement on that either way. Speaker 12: But you do plan on doing it. Speaker 10: It wouldn't be before. Okay. Yeah, Speaker 12: It wouldn't be before. Will you have extra staff involved to get any phone calls that might be occurring afterwards? Speaker 10: Well, what I can say is that there was a, I wasn't here at the time, but there was a rather dramatic
pickup in payments after the, the demand letters went out back in March. And then there's another little blip that happened after the, that August mailing went out. So there is reaction to that. The, the, the good news is that Natick, I having been in several different municipalities, I can tell you that natick, the, the, the inventory of tax title that we have, the, the, the volume is pretty small compared to a lot of other jurisdictions. I mean, I, I worked in the jurisdiction as you know, with the, the tax title total was over $30 million. And so when we published that list, we published that list
and there was, we, we, we did have to have extra staff and so on. It became a, it was, it was, it was a heavy lift. I, I don't want to talk it down, but I don't think this is something that I, I don't think this is something that, that the charter's office can't handle. Speaker 12: Will there be any effort to publicize that this is happening since it's been a long time since we've published such a list? Speaker 10: Well, the, the notice of intent to advertise will be the notice going directly to those residents before, well before the time we advertise, saying to them, listen,
we're gonna do this if, you know, if you don't pay your delinquent taxes. So the, the, that, that, that outreach will take place. Speaker 12: Right. But will there be any outreach to the general public? Because sometimes people don't pay attention. I remember one time I happened to be looking through the paper and I found my neighbor that they had no idea. They, I don't know, they had been getting notices, but they ignored them or it went to, went somewhere else. It went to their mortgage company, it didn't go to them or something happened. So I, I think it's, it would be good to alert the general public. Speaker 10: I think that's a good point. I wouldn't want to of course,
let the public know which of their neighbors until we actually advertise the list. I wouldn't wanna do that. No, but, but I think it's probably worthwhile for us to have, you know, but on the website or has have outreach that says, you know, notice of intent to advertise town intends to advertise, you know, by this date, something like that. Yeah, we can certainly do that. Speaker 13: It's kind of an alert but not alarm. Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna be careful not to, you know, out residents that way. Yeah. But, but I think certainly time people keep an eye out if you, you know, if you know this, this will be coming. So yeah.
Speaker 12: Good. Can you just talk briefly about what would happen afterwards, what the process is Speaker 10: After we advertise? Okay. So the, we have a fair amount of discretion after that as to when we do things. But if once you, once you, once you, the law has changed quite a bit in the past year. So once you actually advertise, there's a process you have to go through to be able to do, to put a lien on the property. I, they call it taking, and the, the, there are a number
of forms now and number of different types of notifications that there has to be a notification placed at the house, you know, or the, or the residence or the property, which is something that wasn't the case before certain it's prescribed form. I don't wanna get into the details of it too much. And, and there's a, a filing that has to take place publicly in, in the public court of record and so on. It's a very, it's become a much more arcane process than it used to be. And, you know, I wouldn't make it clear to anyone watching or listening that the treasurer has the ability to decide, has the ability to negotiate payment agreements as well.
And we are welcome, we welcome that and, and encourage people to do so rather than to get to the point where they're gonna have a lien on their property. Speaker 12: I think that's important for everyone to know. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you for the update. Mr. Skye, is there a, a timeline or a runway that, that you're working with in terms of how soon or how quickly we want, you know, as much as we can or the majority of the tax title remitted and cleaned up, Speaker 10: In my experience, it never gets entirely cleaned up, right?
So I, there, there, there's, there are dated properties, people pass away, ownership changes, all sorts of things happen. People just don't, just not gonna decide they're not gonna pay or whatever. You can't pay. So you'll never, you'll never clean up entirely. The objective is always kind of chasing down a number so that the, so the, the taxpayers who, who, who, who pay, who pay their taxes aren't given a raw deal where someone else gets away with it. They don't, you know, something like when they're paying their taxes.
So you want, you wanna, you wanna just kind of, it, it should be a continual process, right? We should be very pleased by the fact that we've reduced the number of delinquent accounts from 3,800 to 600 to under 700. That's really quite remarkable in a, in a space of time. And I think it speaks to the fact that Natick in general had, you know, you know, the, the, the, the, the city I was that referred to earlier that I was in with New Bedford, where a lot of people have a lot of, a lot, there's a lot of economic difficulty in terms of ability to pay. I don't think it's quite as extreme here in the same way. So, and some days it's just sort of reminding people
who have, who haven't done it or, or had a problem with a mortgage company or whatever could have been a lot of things. So I think that's the majority of what happens there. So you're never gonna get it all, but, but the key is every year to just kind of go through at least these steps of issuing demand letters and so on. It doesn't mean you have to exercise a taking on every property. You probably won't. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 11: Mr. You indicated that there was 2.2 million that's been brought in, so 0.4 yeah, two, 2.4 million in March. I believe the board of assessors will look at the overlay account and make recommendations to town meeting or
before that to an encumber the overlay account. Speaker 10: I don't want to give show too much of a hand in terms of what the 27 budget's gonna propose, but I would say that the overlay, the overlay release proposed in that budget, which has been put together in consultation with the assessors, does take this into account. Speaker 11: Okay. My question was just, which year would it hit fi? Fiscal 27 or 28. Speaker 10: Which one? The overlay release? Yes. For 27. Okay. Speaker 11: That's all I had. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Course. Speaker 1: Thank you. Moving on. Yes, please. Alright, Speaker 10: Moving on. Okay. So as you know, I came here in September.
When I, when I started in September, we already had a rather delayed process with our audit. And the audit for FFR 24 was still outstanding. There wa that was not really due to too many issues on the town side issues that was due primarily to corporate ownership and transfer issues with the auditor themselves and kind of reorganization, I guess is probably the best way to put it. So the audit status is not where we want it to be right now. FFR 24 is not complete. FY 25 has not even begun. So we're working very closely with Cbis.
That's the, the company now to kind of, to try to get that moving and, and get it going. We're meeting with EM weekly, actually had a meeting today. The near term objective was of course delivering the FY 24, the complete FY 24 audits because financial statements, because honestly, you know, the town would have trouble selling debt at its current bond rating without 24 audit. You having 24 audit. So we have draft financials, we got those in November and they're finalizing the financials now. I had, as I said, we had a meeting today and they've assured and they are very confident that we'll final financials
by the end of the month letter probably a week or a few weeks later. But honestly, for the, for the, you know, vision letter is very important. I wanna bring it to the audit committee and to the board see it. But for the purposes of debt issuance, the, the financials are what's most important. So as I've mentioned, the FY 25 audit activities overdue, the town has a a three year contract with cbi. It actually was originally with Markum by cbi and 24 was the first year 25.
There are two one year extension options in that, in that, in that contract. Given the timing, we are looking, we have looked at alternatives, but we also, you know, want to get the train kind of back on the track here. So our recommendation was that we do a one year extension with Cbis to get 25 going. They've indicated to us that the portal's ready to go as soon as we have the contract signed and we need start to upload our, our information in there and we'll get that going. The, but as I said, we've conducted due diligence to identify contingency options if the situation requires,
I believe we have a good shot. If, you know, would the information indications we're getting from C bases are correct to get the audit done in time for FY the FY 26 audit to start in a timely manner. And I'd be very pleased with that outcome if that would end up the audit advisory committee met on January 15th, as Mr. City indicated there, indicated his report, there was a vote to recommend a one year extension with Cbis and also, not to just thunder too much,
but the audit advisory committee also has requested to, to meet with CB once the stage gets going, which we're planning on doing in February. So I'll be having to answer any questions on that as well. Speaker 1: Personal here, Mr. Sidney's got his hand up. Speaker 10: Thank Speaker 5: You Mr. Chairman. I just wanna supplement that a little bit. You have the report in the memo in your packet. The audit advisory committee is pretty concerned about how late, how long it took to get going on this audit and some of the major delays that happened.
And you know, in particular, there was a long delay when our staff thought that everything had been submitted and then Cbis came back and said, oh, we need these eight, eight or 10 other things. And that was, there's a long delay there and the whole thing has not been a great experience as far as I can tell. So the audit advisory committee recognizing that there really isn't time to switch auditors right now is recommending the one year extension and also to look into alternatives for the future and also to, we, we plan to bring them in
for an in-person meeting and we'll certainly let you let you let the rest of the board know when this happens and, and to find out if there are things we can do to improve the situation. If there are any actions we can take or any actions the town can take that will make this better going forward and, and really get their feedback on, you know, what's gonna, what's gonna go forward in the future. Other towns have had good experiences with CCB, so it's a bit of a surprise. So I just wanted to supplement what Mr. Skye said. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sidney. Ms. Walger, Speaker 12: Thank you.
Will the one year extension be enough to complete FY 25? Speaker 10: That would be the intention Speaker 12: And, but not FY 26? No. Alright, so in order to get FY 26 underway, we might need to make a, another decision about Speaker 10: You would need to do it. Yeah, I mean I'm hoping to bo right now. I'm you honestly, when I keep coming here into the situation for me was kinda a triage process just to, you know, had it done and it was impractical to start over
with somebody new or anything like that. So, so we're, we're continuing in that vein knowing that we're this late now on 25. I'm trying to get sort of us back on schedule here. And the only way I know to do that, if Cbis is willing, which they've indicated they are, is to have the, is a, is a, you know, that goes straight into 25 audit, 25 audit. If we do that, I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll get to 2226 set up to a place where we can, you know, make a decision without a perial gun to our heads in terms of pro to the timing
and be able to say, okay, we wanna, you know, they, they redeem themselves, they didn't redeem themselves, you know, whatever they, they're, you know, we'll have a little more freedom of movement. I, I'm Speaker 12: Hoping Yeah, I'm still, I'm, I'm a little struggling with the timeline there with a one year extension and when FY 26 would start, if they're not going be working on that, then Speaker 10: Well, in the way the contract is structured term of a year, but it's a year for associated with a year with a, with audit
for a specific year. You see what I'm saying? Speaker 1: Okay. Those, it tied to a fiscal year, so we're doing Speaker 9: Correct. Speaker 10: So we're kind of overdue now in 24, been passed a year, but they're, but they, but they're, they're still obligated to give, deliver us 24. And so if we do do an extension, we'll be, you know, we'll be obligated to do 25 Speaker 12: But not 26. Speaker 10: They would, that would be another, Speaker 9: That'd have to be another extension. Okay. Speaker 12: But so, so the, the year extension is not a a year and a calendar year, it correct? It is, it is an audit year. Speaker 9: It's an audit year. Yep. Speaker 12: Okay. All right.
Speaker 9: Okay. And obviously we're in the middle of 26th now, so we don't need to make a decision on 26th until Speaker 10: Yeah. Speaker 9: The end of the fiscal year, maybe even like July, August timeframe. But preferably well in advance of that, if we know that they're gonna survive Speaker 12: That, that was my concern that we would, that we would make that decision early in order to get FY 26 on track. Yep. Speaker 10: I apologize. The engagement is for the audit year. Speaker 12: Thank you. I'm sorry, Speaker 1: Is is there a penalty for termination of the agreement? You know, I know it has an extension, but Speaker 10: We have a termination for convenience in there. Speaker 9: Okay. That's also a year
to year contract. It's year to year. Speaker 10: We, we did, yeah. I mean the, the, the, the town, frankly wisely at the time, not even, even, I mean, hindsight very wisely, but wisely anyway. Didn't negotiate like a, you know, it was with a new auditor, so did not say just waiting for you for three years. They may could be within for up to three years, but you have to make a, a conscious decision to do that. Yeah, Speaker 9: Right. Speaker 1: And cut. Ms. Cfa, Speaker 11: This question is for the town administrator. Mr. Erickson lasts August when I was the chair. I met with the contributory,
the native contributory retirement board then chair Michael Reardon. Part of the complications with getting the fiscal 24 done was the lack of timely response to the auditor's. The then auditor's questions and reports that need to be generated, et cetera. I met with Mr. Reardon, who was the then chair, and we agreed that going forward, the retirement board and town administration would meet twice yearly in order to make sure that there wasn't any uns, any complications, surprises,
and to be able to share mutual concerns. So that was in August. This is January. Have you heard from the retirement board Speaker 9: N not about that particular item? Speaker 11: That's what I meant specifically about that item. No, the new chair is Mr. Melchiorri, Mr. Chair, I would like to follow up, since I had spoken with Mr. Rearden with retirement board and find out where we are in that, Speaker 1: I would be very grateful. Speaker 11: Thank you. The second point was that they would come before the board and do a presentation at some point
to explain to NAIC residents what they do, how they do it, and what the difference between their office, which is a separate independent entity, legal entity, and our HR department and what they do. So I will also follow up with that, if that's okay, Mr. Chair? Speaker 1: Yes, please. Thank you. Speaker 11: Thank you. Speaker 1: Any further questions? Thank you Mr. Scott. One last thing. Sure. Speaker 10: I know this is of concern to the board or has been passed out. Make it very quick just to, to note two items that the board and administration had committed to pass
probably during the period of the override update, updating of the financial management principles and updating the financial policies. Those are on our radar. We're planning on coming back to you on with those probably, well, the financial management policies probably in the spring policy sometime in the summer. Just wanna keep you updated. Speaker 9: I wanna make sure our and this team get through the budget process. It's the first time Ari's doing it and Gloria's doing a great job. And then, then we'll revisit that. We're also learning first year, doing the budget post override, what we need to come back to you with, not necessarily on those exact items, but there's gonna need to be some conversations with the board, the, the, the various boards
and committees in town, and then just the broader community as well. Speaker 10: Yeah, to that point, it's been, this process has been very revealing in that way, just going through the, the you as you put this all together. So yeah, Speaker 1: Thanks for, for keeping your eye on the multiple poll in the air here. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank Speaker 10: You. Speaker 1: Next up we've got EPW updates and general and staffing and then water and sew operations. Mr. Pr welcome. Speaker 14: Thank you. Just providing some updates for a lot of information in the packet.
So I'll try to be as safe as possible. I'm not asking for any, anything of the board tonight is really just informational, teeing up water rates, which will be sometime in March, shall be back with you. And also thinking ahead, just revisiting or acknowledging our five year water plan. We're about four years into that or three years into that. And we'll have some decisions to make in the next six months. So that's really the, the overall what I'm to do tonight. Speaker 9: I have to pull up the presentation, so gimme a sec. Sure.
Speaker 1: At number three, Speaker 9: Working on it. Speaker 1: While Mr. Erickson's bringing this up, I just wanted to make a couple comments from what I've seen in the presentation. And without stealing too much of your thunder, I just wanted to congratulate you on the organizational changes that you're planning for f or implemented in FY 26. And I think one of the, one of the things we hear from residents all the time is how can we make operations more efficient? And what I, what I see in the organizational changes are
things that make the organization more efficient now that is due to your activity and your planning. And I wanted to highlight that to the residents to, to point out that our departments in town are looking for ways to become more efficient. So thank you. Speaker 14: Thank you. And really the only reason I'm able to do that is I have a, an amazing team Speaker 4: Working, Speaker 14: Making operational changes with the good staff is, is easy. If we could move to the next slide, Speaker 9: Bill, just for your knowledge, the mic isn't totally working or Cal calibrating the in the room so you don't have
to speak up for the people in the room. Speaker 14: Okay, that is not a problem for me. If we can go to the next slide please. Speaker 9: I'm working on, Speaker 4: Okay, I, why it's, there you go. Speaker 14: So as chairman's alluded, we, we have done some operational changes specifically in staffing as you recall. John Westering was former DPW director here. When he went to Worcester, we took that opportunity to really evaluate what we were doing and, and John and I had some discussions before he left that there were some, there was some overlap and that's where we were looking
to gain some operational efficiency. So we essentially eliminated the DPW director position. I assumed a lot of that role, but also we added the director of finance and operations. So what we heard from our staff, the supervisors, is that they really needed help on the budgeting and kind of day-to-day operations. We were managing things well and, and the supervisors do an amazing job at their, their routines, but they needed help with the fiscal part of the job and in preparing budget reports and those type of things. So that's why we added the director
of finance and operations. And that coincided with another employee that another town, we had a business manager. So we really just combined the business manager and director positions into one position, which gives some efficiency to our staff. In addition, we had a role that was a personnel board role for a safety manager and we had tried some iterations of the safety manager and it just, it wasn't taking root. So we, we abandoned that idea of having a safety manager and created a new division within the DPW, which was environmental compliance and safety.
So we had two people in the compliance department, Casey Chacha, Tebow, I'm try to say that name twice. She was an existing employee, did an amazing job in compliance and we empowered her to take on an elevated role. She became a full division supervisor. Caitlyn Ledou is, is underneath her. And we hired a new employee, Sarah Yu, who had a lot of safety and department of labor standards safety compliance experience. So we've really built that team internally and created a new division that supports DPW and facilities primarily to start, we can do other things
with other town departments in the future, but really getting us up to compliance. The Department of Labor standards in Massachusetts, which is really the local arm of OSHA in 2019, I believe formerly the departments of public works or towns were exempt from OSHA regulations. They are now part of OSHA regulations and that that's a lot of paperwork and coming up to speed. So that, that's really what that department is focused on as well as the compliance with you. You've probably heard Casey talk about compliance on the water side.
PAS, she's our resident expert. So we, we really combined those two into one department. You can go into the next slide, Jamie. This is just a little more detail of that. I won't go into too much of the detail, but our director of finance and operation is Steven, Steven Marshall. He joins us. He's supporting the, the supervisors and also the facilities department as well. Their finances and, and day-to-day work, listing out the compliance and safety division and what their roles are. But more importantly on this slide, bill McDowell,
our town engineer, has announced his retirement. So he'll be retiring for at the end of this fiscal year. And we currently are advertising that job looking for a town engineer to replace him. So we'd like to have a succession plan while we still have him. He has a lot of internal knowledge, comes to speak with you on the road acceptances and then land takings and those type of things that quite honestly, he's our resident expert. So we really have to backfill that and hopefully have a good succession plan for him. Speaker 9: That job is posted on town's website.
For those who are interested, please visit the town's website and submit your application. Speaker 14: Absolutely. So I'm just gonna quickly pause there. Any questions on those departmental changes? Okay. Speaker 9: Alright. I'll just briefly note that all those changes were done without adding an additional staff. It was all to Bill's credit, working with Bill and his team to take advantage of opportunities of open positions to really readjust positions to the needs of the department and the town.
Speaker 14: We, we created about $130,000 of operational surplus in that and, and hopefully are applying that in FY 27 to some new initiatives and helping to fund those new initiatives. So you'll see that in the budget for next year. So moving on to water sewer updates. And you can go right to the next slide. Jamie, please. I'm just gonna briefly give an overview. This is, this is really the teeing up part of what we be doing in, in March. The, the water and sewer division is an enterprise fund. It operates like a business independently from the tax revenue. It's just a, a summary of the, the different parts of our operation.
It's, it's big, it's the, the bottom line is it's big serve over a billion gallons of water to residents every single year. And we do that with all of the highlighted things that, that are part a part of that. But it's, it's a big operation, it's complicated. And we have emergencies that happen. Like, like last night they did an amazing job working with water, fixing a water main break. So they're amazing team. Next slide please. So kind of the big picture here is these are the things we have to be thinking about.
We're making progress on our 50 year plan. We have, part of that 50 year plan was really taking a hybrid solution. We could have gone the route of a full MWR ra. That was one of the options we could have invested differently in more treatment plants. And what we decided on about three years ago or so was a hybrid solution of increasing our filtration so we can deal with the PAS, but also creating a supplemental MWA connection to help offset what will be El Elm bank
regulations are changing. And that's, that's the, the challenge we have. Decisions are tough to make 'cause regulations change so much. Right now we're operating with about 21 parts per trillion PAS that's deps limit. That might be, or, or probably will be changing to four parts per trillion, which we don't achieve four parts per trillion. We're well within the 21 parts per trillion right now. And that really means building future treatment plants. And we're, we're looking at a a $30 million plant in the next three to five years, depending on regulation changes.
So that's, that's the forecast. You know, the forecast is a little gloomy. We're gonna figure out how to get there and that's, that's where our rates and, and how we operate really make a difference. Right now we are running a pilot program. This is the second round of a pilot program. What a pilot program is, is trying to figure out, or we have two main treatment plants. We have the h and t plant and Tonka plant both located at Springvale. The h and t plant is running PFAS free. Essentially. We have really large granulated activated carbon, if I said
that right, gac, that's, that's filtering out PFAS. The Tonka treatment train doesn't have full capacity for filtration. And we're running a pilot program right now to see what media would be best. GAK works, we have temporary gak filters at Tonka, but we can't get our full capacity. Tonka is our biggest producer of water and we can't get our full capacity because we don't have enough PFAS treatment in there. We also are realizing that the treatment train coming out of Tonka, the PFAS media is, is not working
as long as we'd like it to. And that's a operational expense. We already spent a half a million dollars a year changing social media. We just, that that's not affordable to do. So we're looking at pilot programs for different types of media to filter out PFAS and that, that pilot the first time around, we weren't getting the run two. So we restarted the pilot again with some different media to try some different things. And that really will be decision making for what kind of plant we built build that is what we're looking at approximately a $30 million cost in
the next three to five years to stay compliant. So that's the, that's on the horizon. We, we need to discuss that and we'll get into that in more detail as we know. More information right now, it all depends on how the, the success of the pilot program. I anticipate probably in the next three to six months we'd have information on that, on PFAS. So again, the limit's not known yet, but one thing we have, we've been part of a, a class action lawsuit. As you're, as you're we're aware, we do have revenues coming in from that. I don't know what the full amount total will be, but right now we're somewhere between 3.5
and $4 million of settlement money that can help offset treatment of PAS for the future. And then all of that means debt service is gonna be a bigger issue on the horizon. Speaker 1: Could I just ask a question on the settlement fund? So it's a onetime settlement Speaker 14: To the, so it's various settlements. I think there were multiple companies that made PFAS materials at the time. So my, to the best of my knowledge, yes, it's a onetime settlement. We have different revenue streams coming in on that and I don't believe we're a hundred percent final yet. So that number could grow.
Speaker 1: Alright, thank you. Speaker 14: All right. Sorry, Speaker 11: Are we waiting till the end or Speaker 1: Go Speaker 14: Ahead, I'm sorry. I Speaker 1: Interrupted. Really set the stage up. Speaker 11: The regard to the settlement money. Mr. Erickson, when that money comes in, is that money that's going to have to be allocated by town meeting to the enterprise fund? Speaker 9: That's a great question. I I wish I was still Oh, is already here. Do you know that by chance? Sorry. So we do have settlement funds in, they're sitting in an account, they will have to be appropriated by town meeting when we're ready to use them. I don't know if they need to be first transferred though to an enterprise fund account.
Okay. Or if they just stay in that account until appropriation. Do you know, I Speaker 10: I missed that part. I'm sorry. Which, which? Speaker 9: So the settlement funds for PFAS. Yeah. Which we are still part of some accounts, so we still could get more in just be appropriated. Appropriated. Yes. But do they first need to go to an account related to the enterprise fund or they can sit where they are now until appropriation. Speaker 10: So they can, they can be reserved for appropriation until they get, Speaker 9: Yeah. So, so they'll likely stay as, as Ari mentioned, for those walk, walk, walk watching or listening from home, they'll likely stay in the account that they're currently in until time of appropriation. Speaker 11: Thank you. Speaker 9: And our intent is to use them
for the future planning that you're hearing here. Try to leverage them as much as possible. Speaker 1: Thank you. Just Speaker 12: A quick question about the pilot program. So are the different filtration media that you're looking at, are they more expensive, less expensive than what we're using right now? Speaker 14: They're, they're different. So different. They're testing GAC as well. You know, we wanna know how long we can run GAC and the pilot study is, it's a very small scale of what we do, but it matches our, our volumes. There's also, ironically, a plastic media
VP fest, that idea that's being tested as well, that's being tested alone as well as GAC in front of it. We're also testing nano filtration, which is similar to not a sand pool filter, but ous earth pull filter. It's like smaller filter media and that the challenge with those is they have to be back washed. And then we have highly concentrated PFAS that we're backwash. So EDP doesn't have great data yet of
how they're going to treat the backwash of the water. So filtration seems like our best option until we have to deal with the waste of the nano filtration. So all of those things are in play right now. Speaker 12: So when you come back in, let's say six months, will we also have an idea of what, what the additional costs are gonna be per year for each one of these options? Speaker 14: Part of the pilot development. And it will also influence what design of a plant each, each one of those things is a different footprint. So there's a, it's, it's complicated. There's a lot of variables
and I hope to come back with more information so we can make some decisions. Thank you. Speaker 9: I think just quickly note, this has been an ongoing thing from the beginning of PFAS. I think early on Natick worked, the team worked. I, we might have been a loner with some other communities to actually test how just home filtration systems like a Brita filter works with PFAS. Just because we weren't even sure what we could do at the time. This goes back four years now, I think even maybe even before Bill was with us. And so this has been such an amazing effort by the team to really understand what are our best options for the community, for the public water supply.
Speaker 14: We are in good shape. That's, that's the bottom line we're doing. We're being very proactive at this. And Jamie mentioned the burning water filters. That's essentially what GAC is. It's, it's that black Carbone stuff inside a Brita water filter that's gac. So we're treating it, we're treating it well, we're providing good clean water. We just have to do it efficiently and, and at the lowest cost possible. So I'm gonna kind of breeze through the next slides here, but just kind of a review of what eventually we're going to be doing with water rates. We have made several IT iterations a few years back,
we changed our water tiers last year. We didn't change water tiers, but we increased some rates in those tiers and also added the RTS fee, the readiness to serve fee. That's been, we've had some feedback regarding the RTS fee. We are actually in our, in a really good position. So kind of bottom line up front here for the, for the next slide, our projections midyear are about roughly $4 million ahead of where we anticipated being. Our model's working fine,
we had increased volume usage this year in some areas. So we're ahead of schedule, which is, which is good news. It gives us an opportunity when I come back for great recommendations. What I'm hoping to do and when working with Rayburn and Consulting and our team, but I'm hoping to do is kind of readjust where we need to be and maybe provide some upfront water as part of the RTS fee. That seems to be the, the catch my, my rates went up. We have this $25 fee. I don't get anything for it.
'cause you don't see the behind the scenes of the RTS fee. You might use water every day, but you might not need your fire hydrant out in front of your house. Hopefully you never do need that. But we are ready to provide that firefighting water. So we hope to have some iteration that maybe includes some free water with the RTSV, but it continue to raise the RTS fee. So we get to the goal of about 20% fixed revenue. It's the volume revenue that's really challenging for us. Some years we are way less on our prediction
because of a drought condition or a regulation change and we want to create that stability. So that's, that's the goal heading forward. But kind of bottom line up front, we're doing well ahead of our, ahead of our rates right now. You can see that on the next slide. So the red line is our model, the blue line solid is our current year to date. That's half of our revenue. And then the dotted line is the projected revenue using last spring's actuals. So that's our projection.
You can see where slightly ahead of where, where we need to be. And just going to the next slide, that's just breaking down our different user classes really. The first one, the water sewer combo and the water usage that's primarily, that represents roughly 1200 accounts of our 14,000, I'm sorry, 12,000 accounts. Of our 14,000 accounts. The other ones sewer only irrigation. The elderly and municipal are a much smaller data set. But out of that you can see that sewer only customers that brought in more revenue than projected.
The reason for that is we actually added some, it's a small subset and we added participants in that category. So that kind of offsets the numbers a little bit. And then surprisingly, or not surprised, surprising really, we had a very dry summer. So irrigation was a high volume. This year it's a little bit surprising because we had some drought conditions that mandated every once a week sprinkling and those type of things. So those are the two major drivers of where the, the actuals were different from the model. Everything else is pretty much in line with what we expected are a little bit lower. We go to the next slide, that's just the, the numbers behind
that that you showed. But you can see the bottom line there. Actually, I'll just pause two seconds. The upper part of that, the RTS fees, that's our fixed revenue. You can see it's easy to predict. We know how many clients we have. We know how many people we've charged the RTS fee from. So you can see those numbers are pretty accurate from the model. And then again, the volume sales, which are unpredictable. You can see we're ahead on those projections. Speaker 4: So Speaker 14: Wrapping up, we'll be back in touch with you. Our challenge is to really up update our fixed revenue
from 3% to 8%, which is good. It's, it's a, it's a good boost, but we really need to get to that 20% fixed revenue to be on power with industry standards. We're going to be doing our 50 year strategy and with new data coming in, and then we'll be proposing different rates, really looking to make sure we're having our revenue streams accurate, but also balancing user cost. That's, I know that's a sensitive topic and we're, we have an eye to that coming up questions.
Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you Mr. Sprat for the presentation. Did our increased fixed revenue from the R ts fees go from 3% to 8% in the, just the 2024 to I guess 2025 year? Speaker 14: Correct? Yes. Our increase in RTSV, which is the major change that we made last year, that is representative in this data. So that's the current data. Speaker 2: Knowing that the goal is to get to this 20 to 23%, do you anticipate that that's, that's the trajectory
we will likely anticipate this 5% jump or increase per fiscal year? Speaker 14: So the short answer to that is, is yes, but we're not, I wouldn't look at it as a percentage. So there's different ways we can tweak our revenue stream. It doesn't have to be a straight 5% across the board. Based on the fact that we're a little ahead of schedule, we can probably pull back on percentages and maybe deal with an increased RTS fee that includes some free wallet on that. So we're, we're trying to figure out ways
to not really impact the customer's pocketbook, but also continue to generate the revenue that we need. Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you. Speaker 11: With the exception of MathWorks, do you know of any commercial entities that are creating data centers in our town? Speaker 14: I don't know that information. Speaker 11: Is it, it, is it under consider is something that might be under consideration increasing the RTS on the commercial side or based on usage. So for example, companies that have a, a high,
you know, share or use of of water that that their RTS fee would be increased. Speaker 14: So from the data, probably not. And the reason is we are already generating revenue because they're at the top tier of the water rates. So balance out all the different revenue streams. The RTS fee is really just to make sure all of our customers are paying into, we could adjust that in various categories, but we also have to be sensitive to they're already paying the highest tier, so they're really subsidizing some of the lower rate
Speaker 11: Payers. Understood. Speaker 14: It's a very complicated balance and we can get into that detail when we go over the, the actual rates. Speaker 11: Appreciate that. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: So just a quick question and we get, each of us gets asked this question all the time, what the RTS fee is cover. And my answer typically has been a lot of the water sewer treatment facility is fixed cost. You know, there's, there's some variable cost, but it's mostly fixed cost in terms of the infrastructure
to support cleaning it. Whereas the revenues are largely variable depending on seasonality, depending on usage. So the RTSV is to, to sort of smooth out a revenue stream. Is that an accurate prediction or should I change by tune? It's Speaker 14: A fairly accurate prediction or explanation, but I think the, the bigger thing we have to look at is all of the assets that drive water. So just because you turn the faucet on in your home and water comes out, there might be a 12 inch water
main in front of your house. It doesn't have to be a 12 inch water Maine for your particular spigot, but it does for fire protection or for other things that happen with the water system. So we have to be ready to serve a major fire in town or everybody turning on their sprinklers at the same time. So there's a, we have a capacity of about 6 million gallons a day, but on average we only use about 3 million gallons a day. So the RTS fee is to build that capacity, that 6 million gallons per day for when we need it,
even though we don't need it every single day. So that's really what the RTS fees are. And if you think about the cost of water main, we spend sometimes about $2 million a year replacing one section of water main. And you multiply that by the whole town. We have billions of dollars of assets under management and that takes, that takes cost to operate. Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay. Any other questions, Sidney? Sorry, I'm my back turned. Do you? Okay. He doesn't you I'm back turned. Speaker 15: I'm good. Thank you. Probably he
Speaker 14: Knows you're looking right at him. Speaker 1: I told him. Alright. Thank you Mr. Get some rest. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 15: Yeah, congratulations on getting that fixed. Speaker 1: Great job. Except we've got the, could we take a five minute recess? We can take a five minute recess. Thank you. So we'll be back in five minutes about seven 15. Alright, we're back. We're gonna have a, a slight inversion, I can find the right page. We're gonna first have Chief Hicks talk about the flock update and then what we're gonna do is go to Ms.
Slager and Ms. Coughlin to do their AI update of our, the emails that, that we received. And then we will have 15 minutes, that's all we can afford tonight to, to, for anybody who has not sent an email and, and wishes to speak tonight, either online or in the room. And I'm gonna limit you those to one minute. So we've gotta get through these notes. So take it away. Speaker 14: Thank you Mr. You the
opportunity to, to speak tonight. I, if I could, I would just go back to those who were here at the beginning of the meeting comments made by, by the chair about the knowledge of the board. And I want to take full responsibility. That's on me, that that didn't happen. It should have happened. The plan was, it was going to happen. I can go drone horn and on about how it occurred with the, the, the sequence of events. But it's no excuse and no reason this meeting should have. And we hoped it had taken place about a month prior
to where we are today. But at the end we will still have that opportunity. We at that opportunity to have discussion. So I take all that as my responsibility and do apologize to the board, to the members of Speaker 1: The community. Speaker 14: But we are where we are today. And I just wanna give an update where we are and how we got here so that everyone understand my thinking as head of the department falls on me and I just want to give as part of my presentation for everyone to understand how the decisions were made. Yeah, I have some information on slide.
Boy, it looks tiny up there when you try to read it, Speaker 1: But Speaker 14: I'll go through it very, very quickly and give a review a little bit about license plate readers. Speaker 9: Just, just briefly, chief, this is also attached to the peak agenda online. So anybody can view, can pull this up and read along. If, if we're starting on slide 13 of that presentation, that's on the, on the, with the agenda on the website. Speaker 14: So just a little bit of a history. So license plate readers as, as it, it stands have been in, in in town Nat, even before I arrived here 15 minutes ago, not 15 minutes ago. 15 years ago.
Speaker 16: Feels like 15 Speaker 14: Here. Yeah, 15, 15 years ago. The, the technology was used by the native case department, but in, but in those cases it still continue. They are on cruises. So they're mobile license plate reading systems. In 2022, about 2022, we were approached, I was approached by my investigation division as well as surrounding communities. Especially as we were investigating some criminal activity, especially as organized retail crime and some narcotics activity that was going back
and forth across the borders, especially to the west of, of Natick, towards Marlboro about joining on to a program they had with flock safety. They had already had flock safety and they had it for a while and they asked me to, to consider joining at that time. To be honest, I wasn't convinced. I wasn't convinced based on a whole lot of different things. One is, is cost versus value, cost versus value to the department and what impact it will have. With that Flock did approach me
and allowed us to have access to the flock data of all those flock license plate readers that were being used in surrounding communities to which we agreed to. So what was happening is that we had access to the data but we weren't contributing to that data. 'cause we had no, we didn't have any license plate readers in town at that point. And that is because we were working very closely with our neighbors to the west and also even further west of them as part of our regional drug task force. At the same time we had many of our private companies around us that would start that added flock cameras,
you know, specifically at the mall, Macy's, home Depot, TJX, a few others who also allowed us to have access to their data. So what that meant is the investigators, when they had opportunities or had need to use such a system, had access to that. And between 2022 and 2025, early 20, late 2025, I got a report from them as we sat down with the original organizations around us and found out that during that time we had access
or needed access to that data almost 3000 times in three years. Meaning times where our officers had used the data for fraud for investigatory purposes. Still, still at that time I had to weigh the costs, the value to the organization as well as in my other capacities. I have the opportunity to be on the board of not only the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, but also the International Chiefs of Police Police Association, in which as I sat in meetings
to talk about this as well as other tools, some of the concerns that were out there about the use of license plate readers and also specifically with flock safety. So with that, I still took a step back to see where the value would be. Can Speaker 1: I just pause here one second. I just wanted to let the audience know that flock safety is the name of the company. It's not a reflection on the safety of the flock. Just wanted to make that Speaker 14: Good clarification.
Thank you. So the vendor Flock safety approached us in early 2025 and knowing that the native police was kind of an outlier to a certain extent, when I mean outlier, if you look all around us, all the communities around us had technologies all have flock safety. Some one had another vendor and that is the town of Wellesley had, was using another vendor. But the technology was being used all around us. I explained to them that I still had some concerns, especially when you're talking about value, cost,
value analysis. With that, they offered to do a pilot as part of their way of saying, let's see if there's value, if we can address the value to the town of Natick. Had internal discussions with the department, looked at the, the type of cases that we had solved prior to no bringing the cameras in with that. I had relented and had discussions with town administrator specifically about placement of these cameras in town
where they could and may be placed with that, things move very, very quick. So I agreed to the pilot with the total understanding with flock safety that I'm not, was not convinced as of that time about the the cost that I would have, the cost and I would, that this would be part of my priorities and projects here in town. And with that, at the same time I was notified by the state of a grant program in order
to bring these cameras to to town. Sat with flock safety and said I'd be more than happy to look at during a pilot. However you need to understand that at the end of the pilot, I had to be no obligations to me, which they agreed to as part of their program. In other words, they'll install 'em and after 60 days, if we don't like 'em, I don't like 'em, they'll take 'em out. No obligation to us at all agreed to that. In the meantime, we were awarded a grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in order to be able
to continue the program if we chose. So where are we now? We are in the middle of that pilot program and at the same time, before beginning the pilot program, I sat down with Flock Safety. It is a representative from Flock Safety who is here today. Trevor Chandler. If there's any questions that may come up relating to some of the, I know some of the questions that I've seen is about flock, safety's programs, their agreements, et cetera, et cetera, that they have been working with many organizations up until this point.
Especially those, especially those that come up in Massachusetts. We talk about that in a second. So if there's any questions about flock safety's processing program that anyone has tonight that we have time to answer, they will be able to, he will be able to answer. So as we started down the path, the concerns that I had and had come through many organizations including the A CLU at the local and at the international level was some of the questions that I did see that came across now specifically about sharing of data.
So one of the questions is, is about sharing of data under the current agreement. I determine what data we share and with who at this point in time. We are not sharing our data with anyone and staying totally in-house. We have not chosen to share that data with anyone as we go through the pilot. Because first I wanna see how it's used internally with just us question was who has access to it? Even internally, the entire department doesn't have access to it. There's only a certain group of people, including detectives
and investigators who have access to that data. As we stand now, even within the organization, why that's my way of limiting to see where the value may come up. Second part, other part I hear about is where that data may or may not go. So in working with the A CLU and look, and I think this was posted on the website also about the recommendations from the A CLU to towns and administration and also through legal advisory from Mass chiefs where we,
where they made certain recommendations as far as who and where data is shared. And I concur and agree with their recommendation that if data is shared, that it be shared only with those departments from Massachusetts. I agree if this go forward and I say it's a big, if this what goes forward, I will commit that that's where only place it will go. We also learned along the way that that flock has changed their, their business practice about where it gets shared or how it gets shared
or if they even have contracts with federal organization, which is another issue we heard about and they, they guaranteed us and told us that they will do not share at the federal level. The other piece of it is that we asked Flock as a kind of like a newer vendor to do certain things, which may seem minor to anyone else but it's major to us. One of those is they created a specific, and, and I don't have it in front of me here, to show you specific buttons on our system that if we put that button on, we would, if anyone in Massachusetts
uses the words or try to do any investigation which says it's about immigration or anything that violates the SHIELD law, they cannot get our data. Even if we set, we would share it with them. The other thing that flock did it, and we at our request is that, and this is to us, it's a major thing because it used to be, now I hope I can explain this, that when you did a search, you had to put a reason in for the search. But the reason was free flowing text so anyone could put anything, you know, whether it be test
and still be for immigration. We asked, and it's not only we as nat, but I think most of the department of Massachusetts who pushed back wanted it to be specific and had to be mandated. What that means is now there's a dropdown list that you have to choose from and those dropdown lists includes criminal acts and violations that are standard for our reporting for our neighbors. In other words, you have to choose a criminal type activity. And it's not a civil, it's not civil, all of it is criminal.
In addition to, we asked them to include a mandatory field that you have to put in either investigatory number or a log number. Why is that important? Why is it important? Because anyone, if they go in and choose an investigatory case, say like alar or a kidnapping, we wanna be able to, when we do our audit, if we have any indication that it's being not being used correctly, that we can go and say to them, give us the specific case number that you're working on to show us that you use
that data appropriately and flock has allowed that. And then we have other mandatory fields that we have in there for us to do some follow up as to the result of that particular request or search. At the same time we can do audits, which we have already started to do and the audit is basically what we've been using it for. So again, we take the opportunity to hear what has been said, hear the concerns, work, work
with the ACL U, and again when we get down to, I'm trying to find their, their recommendations here, the, okay data storage. The other request, and this is not new 'cause we've been working with A CLU on other areas of storage when they say I got it, is that we are required, we are using their guidelines of storing data for 30 days, 30 day zoning. So we took the opportunity to look at their recommendations as well as recommendations from mass chiefs around those areas that we thought were a concern
and we incorporated into our guidelines and we are developing policies to that fact. So that's how we got to the pilot program and that's where we are today and that's where we've had the opportunity. And just as an example from an corp investor investigatory, I gotta say that slowly investigatory tool, which is what we are using this for, resulting in literally four days after we installed one of our cameras, we had an incident of a possible abduction of a fourth grader.
We were able to utilize not only the one camera that we had in that area, but also cameras that were installed already in Framingham to resolve that situation in less than an hour and a half in order to determine that it wasn't the case, that it was an attempted deduction. But the question we asked is what if it was, what if it was, and what if we had to go even further to identify that person very, very quickly to keep the community safe. In addition, we've had others most recently, which may not seem no rises to the level of major crime,
but we had an elderly member of our community that was lost and driving around not only this community, about the region and their family was concerned about their wellbeing and was able to use the cameras to define that, to find that resident turns out to be, was up at the mall in a parking garage at that point in order to bring them home safely to their family. I have a whole list of others just since we've added around solving a, a house break. Recently we were, when there was a $40,000 loss
to the family organized retail theft that we had credit card thefts in certain areas. They have the private cameras that we were able to serve one link to a suspect with over $30,000 stealing from one of our, our businesses up off of Route nine scam investigations. All these that detect detectives put together just from our cameras and our cameras that we've had for the last four weeks. So we are still in the pilot. This is still not a given, this is still not a done deal.
We will listen to the concerns of of the citizens and the residents. We'll listen to the concerns of the select board and before a decision is made to go forward with a permanent decision to, to use the grant funding, which is for a year, we will be back and we want, we'll be back to, to give more updates as to value that it has to us. But right now we see that it's been a tremendous investigatory tool and one that we hope that once we do our total analysis
before we make our final decision, we'll show that the value is there for the town and for the organization. Speaker 1: Thank you Chief. Thank you chief. Now I'd like to turn to Ms. Walser and Ms. Coughlin for a summary of our emails that we've received and we've all read them, but this will hopefully resonate with everybody either online or in the room. So Linda, Speaker 12: Thanks. So by my count we have received 65 emails,
six from 65 people on this topic. The analysis is for 59 because I did it earlier and we've been, we're still getting emails in, so I'll just read this. This is through Chet PT and it's gonna take a little while. It says below is a neutral thematic summary of the 59 public emails submitted regarding Natick flock license plate reader, A LPR pilot with emphasis on the main areas of concern raised. The synthesis reflects recurring themes and representative viewpoints across the full set of comments. So just for background, I took every single email,
pasted it in a document, sent it off. Alright. Overall sentiment. Overwhelmingly opposed to continuing or making permanent the flock pilot, many writers explicitly ask for immediate termination of the pilot and removal or deactivation of the cameras. A minority acknowledge potential public safety benefits, but still conclude that risks outweigh benefits under current conditions. And there's nine or eight, nine main areas of concern. And here's the themes. One is privacy and mass surveillance.
And that's the most frequent concern. And I think it was mentioned by over 90% of the people that were, that emailed us. So flock is characterized as indiscriminate mass surveillance of law abiding residents and visitors objections focus on continuous tracking of movement, creation of travel histories and lack of individualized suspicion or warrants. Many writers invoke Fourth Amendment principles and broader civil liberties erosion. Number two, data control sharing and sovereignty. Strong concern about who owns controls
and accesses the data. Repeated fear that data can be accessed by out-of-state law enforcement queried through flock nationwide network used for purposes beyond NATICK'S intent and their skepticism. The contractual assurances check the box restrictions are enforceable or auditable. Number three, used by ICE and federal agencies. That's very prominent. Many emails explicitly cite ice immigration enforcement and real or feared examples of immigrant abductions. Flock is viewed as facilitating deportations, undermining community trust in local police
and contradicting natick stated values in prior positions on cooperation with federal, federal civil warrant enforcement. Number four, conflict with Massachusetts and Natick Shield laws repeated concern that flock data could be used to track people seeking, seeking reproductive healthcare. Track people seeking gender affirming care enable enforcement of other states laws inside Massachusetts. Writers argue this contradicts the the Commonwealth Shield law and na, locally adopted protections and values. Number five, data security and vendor risk.
Many emails cite flocks, security vulnerabilities, refusal to allow independent audits known or alleged breaches, expose cameras or AI training issues. Concerns include hacking, stalking, or misuse and municipal liability and cost if a breach occurs. Number six, mission creep and future abuse. Fear that even if current use is narrow, scope will expand over time. Tools will be repurposed for minor infractions, protests or political monitoring. Historical analogies are frequently invoked.
Tools never stay limited. Number seven, lack of transparency, process and public input. Strong frustration that cameras were installed before public notice. No prior select board vote or hearing was visible. Residents learn through media or social posts. Many argue this erodes trust. Conflicts with commitments to community engagement should have triggered a public forum before deployment. Number eight, cost priorities and return on investment questions raised about long-term costs after the free trial, subscription fees and future budget impacts. Many argue funds would be better spent on infrastructure,
traditional community policing or other public services. And last number nine, equity and disproportionate harm. Frequent concern that harms will fall most heavenly on immigrants, people of color, low income residents, protestors and political activists. Survivors of domestic violence flock is described as incompatible with an inclusive welcoming community. Now there's a, there are some minority views. A smaller subset of rider say they acknowledge legitimate public safety uses such as stolen vehicles, missing persons. And they state they might support
APRs only if data is strictly local. Sharing is legally impossible without warrants. Retention limits are short and enforced and contracts, policies and audits are public. Even these comments typically conclude that flock is currently structured does not meet those conditions. So this is the summary and I think for those of you in the audience that did write in, probably looks familiar to you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much Ms. Wells. Ms. Coughlin, do you have some addition? Speaker 11: So my, my use of AI was to, I, I used several different platforms to prompt the question as
as if the AI platform was the elected official in a 36,000 person community evaluating whether to adopt flock cameras for its police department. And what are the top 10 concerns? So the top 10 concerns are privacy and civil liberties implications. I'm not gonna go into sub paragraphs. Data retention and access policies, cost benefit analysis and alternative use of funds. Number four, accuracy and error rates. Lack of independent oversight and transparency. Vendor lock-in and data, data ownership. For this, I'll just mention that the customer owns the data.
So we're natick to be a part of or have a contract with the vendor. The town would own the data, but we wouldn't own byproducts of the data. So that's just a an aside, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, hacking breaches, community trust and perception, potential for discriminatory deployment and use legal liability and exposure. My second question was based on that research and that's a summary of the different platforms. Based on that research as an elected official, it would you compare
and contrast specific information about privacy and data practices of alternative vendors? There were, there are number of vendors they looked at and said the uncomfortable truth is, the core concerns largely remain across vendors. The difference is with flock. Flock has a nationwide network that it where the customer, where the, it's not clear that the community data is segregated or how it's segregated or where the data is stored. So I sent a list of questions regarding data privacy questions, data collection
and retention sharing and third party access, transparency and accountability infrastructure and security access controls, compliance and standards, incident response and policies, questions to, to flock. And I indicated I didn't, this was on Monday. I said we don't need the answers to all of these 'cause it's quite extensive by tonight. So I don't have answers to that. But I was referred to their legal page and I went through their legal page on terms and conditions. So I have one question. Can I ask one question for Mr. Chandler? Who's on the line? Mr. Chandler,
for the Optout period. 'cause this is not a trial period, right? This is an optout period during which the town decides whether or not to opt out. Is that correct? Speaker 9: He should be able to unmute himself and, and have a screen. Yeah, that was, Speaker 17: Hello? Yes. Sorry, could you repeat the question please? Speaker 11: So it, two parts. One question. So during the trial period, which is not technically a trial, it's an optout period, is that correct? Using, using flock safety's terminology. It's an optout period, Speaker 17: Yes. So you would be able to opt out with, with no penalties, no conditions. Speaker 11: Okay. And then the, the part of that question is, according to the terms
and conditions, when a contract is executed, the contract begins on the date of the installation of the first camera. Is that the same? Yes. Is that the same for the opt out? Speaker 17: I, I can check on that. That's a the good question that I'll get you an answer to Speaker 1: The crux of the question. We, we signed an MOU on September 29th I think it was. And, but the last camera chiefs, it was sometime in December, got installed. So there's a 60 day clock for the opt out start on the last installation being completed or is it started when the MOU was signed?
Speaker 17: My expectation is that it's on when the camera was completed. But I will double check on that and get you a firm answer Speaker 1: On when the MOU was signed. Could we have an extension from 60 days from when the last camera was installed in December? If you could look into that as well. Speaker 17: Absolutely. I'm, I'm sure that won't be a problem on our end. We, we wanna make this as customer friendly as possible. Speaker 1: Appreciate anything else Speaker 11: Mr. Chair? I was wondering if we could take comments from the public and then have the board discuss
amongst ourselves. I'm Speaker 1: Absolutely going there. Speaker 11: Thank you. I I just, we were all wanted, we're all anxious to share. Speaker 1: So thank you Chief. As I said earlier, I'm gonna limit this section to 10 minutes and, and the people are limited to one minute each. And if you have already submitted an email, please let others voice their opinions so that we have it on record. So if anyone's interested, please step up to the podium and introduce yourself.
Sorry. Speaker 18: Hello, my name is Sophia. So I work in cybersecurity. These devices currently are and historically have been proven to be insecure for the date of their handling. I can provide recent references to a recent white paper as well as a video that is only four weeks old in which researchers were able to gain access to live flock safety cameras and their admin panels. Additionally, there's been a Russian cyber crime forum shown to be allegedly selling logins to flock. I'm sure flock will say that they follow standard security practices, but regardless of the vendor we use here, the collection
of this data alone makes our community a target. Malicious actors will find a way to access it if they want. It's a constant game. I live right next to one of these cameras, my preferred route to leave my house drives past it. Every time I leave my house, it is being tracked and logged. That doesn't make me safe. It makes me surveilled to the point of the police department. I believe them when they say that it helps them to solve crimes. Obviously having cameras like these that require no warrants to do that will help solve crimes. That doesn't mean it doesn't invade the privacy of individual citizens. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your comments and if you would be kind enough to send an email to select board that work. Speaker 18: Yeah, Speaker 1: Call up. Sorry. Speaker 19: Hello, my name is Jason Haynes. I am a NA resident. I won't go on for long but I just want to make clear that I'm connected to a lot of younger groups in the city. I'm connected to a lot of immigrant groups in the city. The overwhelming feeling today is that we are less safe than we were weeks ago. I don't welcome these cameras to my community. I don't believe in all of the assertions of honesty
and trust and you know, trust us data is being held securely. I don't trust that the company behind Flock is known as Palantir. I recommend you look them up and they're war crimes and I do not like that. That is in my neighborhood and I would appreciate it. Select board could do work to remove them immediately. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you sir. Speaker 20: Hello, my name is Steven Remington. I am in Natick. I, I live in Natick. I moved here from Florida. I am a queer person and I've had a lot of friends and family who live in Florida
and have had to travel for medical reasons and to provide care. So this is something that is very close to my heart. I understand that a lot of people say that this information is going to be restricted under certain jurisdictions, but we have seen time and time again that companies who have access to this data will find ways to exploit it or other ma untoward actors will find ways to exploit this information. And I don't want the people Medicare about to have a sort of damocles held above their neck.
If this data exists, it will be exploited and if it doesn't exist, it can't be exploited. Additionally, we've also seen that there have been certain courts across the country who have deemed the images captured by these devices as public information and thus available through public records requests. And having that information available to the public at large can opens up everyone to additional security threats and does not make anyone feel safer. Thank you. Speaker 1: Here sir. Speaker 21: Hi, my name is Easton Erlich. I am also a native resident and I work in the field of tech.
My main secure security issue with this mirrors what Sophia said of V'S. Devices have been proven to be insecure by various researchers. The video feeds have been accessed publicly through just a search engine, just live feeds. And I have many concerns mainly because in response to this, the flock company just flat out denied that these were security flaws even though there was public information that these were live feeds.
That is my main concern that they don't seem to be honest with what they are putting forth. Thank you. Speaker 1: Anyone else in the room? Anybody on line? I'm not seeing anybody who, one person just put their hand up and Mr. Ravi, if I'm pronouncing that correctly? Speaker 22: Yes, can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Excellent. Sorry, I was just letting everybody in the room go first. So Bill Revi Natick resident and I like a few other folks here also work in tech.
So I run the world's largest customer data and technology organization in the world for the world's third largest consulting agency. So I just wanna start by saying that my opinions are entirely mine because they have to be in terms of service for this particular system, not let alone who owns it. And the Palantir space explicitly say that anything requested on behalf of an investigative purpose can actually bypass the town's ability to request that data remain private. The A CLU has requested that anybody in Massachusetts in particular exclude those
terms of service from their contracts. But I don't know if we've even done so beyond that point. Fundamentally, and I hate to be this about it, but has nobody read 1984 here? Like this is not who we are. This is not what we do. It is not lost on me. The general demeanor of everybody who's got to discuss this, the fact that three of the four of us work in tech and this terrifies us should tell people something. Right. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Mr. Ruby. Is there anyone else online
down to board comments, questions, Speaker 14: Chair? Just, just one clarification is a minor one and I've heard it said so I just wanna make sure that we're on the same page. We do not have cameras. So there's no live feed, there's no flock does have live feed cameras and they have 'em in different parts of the country. We don't have that. We are just have license plate readers. So I just wanna make sure we, that is clear as we had the conversation. Speaker 1: Thank you Chief, Speaker 14: How are they reading Speaker 1: License plates Speaker 11: Chief, what do you hope to
see or achieve in the next 30 days of this opt-out period? Speaker 14: So we're evaluated based on, I wanna see what the audits are. I wanna see what the usage is is for and how often it's being used in our community. That goes to looking at value. I mean the, the question of cost has come up. I have some concerns about cost to, to be blunt. I know where we are with this town as far as projects. So that needs to be a consideration also moving forward. Speaker 2: Chief, you mentioned this grant that's been awarded.
If you decide to continue with this, was that Grant sought out or did that grant was that grant somehow awarded without trigger? Speaker 14: The grant was put out by the Commonwealth as looking at projects and it was applied for by us. Okay. So we applied for the grant for this specific project if it was to continue. Speaker 1: So it's for LPR specifically or? Speaker 14: Yes. Speaker 2: So I'm, I'm curious of the intention of the grant. Was it because there was this thought that we're, this, we intend to keep moving down this path?
Speaker 14: The, the intent of the grant. 'cause again, we aren't committed to utilize the grant either. The intent was that after we went through a period of trial, if it's something we decided we wanted to keep, that we would have funding in order to do that for at least a year. Speaker 2: Thank you. My next question is, you mentioned these cases that you feel this technology better helped resolve. Do you think that that would've still been the case without this technology? Speaker 14: That's a very good question. I think that, you know,
let's take the case of the attempted abduction. If we didn't have this, this technology, it is not likely that we would've been able to identify, for instance, a vehicle that may have been involved in or in being able to see where that vehicle may have gone. We would've had witness testimony says it's a red Ford, alright, so now we know it's a red Ford, which direction did it go? Where could it have gone? Did we see it in different places? So there's value to it. And again, I'm, I'm evaluating this also as we go forward. That's an example of do I think that we would've been able
to track that vehicle down in that particular case? I don't believe so given some of the dynamics of where that, you know, statements and things like that. Okay. Which helped. And there's other cases that are out there that we've used that not specifically to Natick that we've seen some value in, in solving those cases, including the recent shooting at Brown University where, where these cameras play a role in that. Speaker 2: Chairman Evans, I have three more questions. Is that okay? Sure. Okay. There's a, a comment about opting out that we are in an opt out period.
What happens if we don't opt out? Because opting out is an a is an intentional action. What happens if we don't do that? Speaker 14: If we don't opt in, then we're, then we end and then we have to sign an agreement and a contract and, and commit to paying for one year of service. Speaker 2: And so what I'm also thinking of is kind of like a subscription. If you have a subscription and they tell you you have a trial period for however long, but you don't opt out of that subscription, they just start charging you and you become embedded in that. Is that what would happen? Speaker 14: You mean after the first year if we use a grape Speaker 2: After the 60 days? After the
Speaker 14: 60 days, that is correct. Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. My next question is, do you believe that Natick, that the, the Natick that we current live in, whatever crime, you know, insecurity warrants this type of technology? Speaker 14: That's part of the evaluation and that's what I mentioned. There are incidents, again, I have to look at the audit report to see how our detectives are using it. I know that there's, the, prior to it using it in Natick, there, there was 3000 up to early 2025 at that point,
3000 incidents in where they found a need to utilize this to investigate crimes. We have a lot of incidents of, of high level crimes, especially when we talk about the mall area and also on route nine that there are crimes that, that this will be very helpful in order to be able to investigate. Speaker 2: I have two more questions. Is it, is it accurate to say that there's already cameras and surveillance by the mall? Speaker 14: Oh yes. There. Speaker 2: Okay. So could we use that type of technology that already exists to help, you know, resolve those types
of the crimes that you're talking about? Well, Speaker 14: We do now. Speaker 2: Okay. So we already do that outside of the flock. Speaker 14: The only difference is, is outside of the mall proper speaking about on Route nine itself, where, where those areas are not covered by their LPRs. Okay. Speaker 2: And Speaker 14: You gotta say, I don't wanna say cameras, but they have also, there's no cameras at these locations either. Speaker 2: Okay. My my last question for now is, there has been an expressed concern about flock, specifically Flock is a vendor and there's been an expressed concern about it.
I have a concern. I I have concerns about this vendor and based, based on the things that I have read. What, what is your take on that? Speaker 14: I would need to do more, do more evaluations and hear from others who have, I've heard here and I've also read some issues with flock. I would put flock on the, on the hot seat and come and explain to us how do they address these issues or what these issues or concerns were. That's why it's valuable to hear this so that flock can be able to respond to that. If they don't respond in a, in, in a way that's satisfactory, then we'll move on from there.
Speaker 1: Now something else that I'd note is something that Ms. Kaufman pointed out that in her question of ai, she asked vendor neutral question and said is any, is, are, are the problems associated with this vendor or all vendors of this technology? And the answer coming back is, is all vendors, it's not just flock. So, Speaker 11: But there are particular concerns about flock just because of the size of its surveillance network Speaker 1: And, and the fact that it's countrywide. Speaker 11: Yes. Speaker 12: Thank you. Thank you Chief. I'm, I'm all set for now. Speaker 11: And Rich too. Linda first
and then Rich, if you don't mind. Sorry. Sorry, Speaker 12: It's running. Speaker 11: Didn't mean to run the meeting. Sorry. Speaker 1: It's okay. Just have it, you, you just read my mind. Speaker 12: You did that. All right. Thank you Chief, when you were looking at this, how in depth did you consider some of the issues that you've been hearing about, you know, that, that obviously are a concern of our community. Did you, did you look at, did you consider some of the, the data protection issues? Or did you just think, well, it's a trial, it's, you know,
we can see, you know, how, how it works for us. I mean, what kind of an analysis did you do when you were agreeing to do this? Speaker 14: So the, the analysis that I do, again, I'm not in the tech field, so that's not my area of expertise. So I sit down and, and, and listen to, there's been forums, especially on the law enforcement leaders, like I said at the state and, and also at the national level on this particular subject matter. And what I hear from, from those who utilize this and also have more knowledge in it is kind
of a, a a 50 50. Now I heard some specific ear issues with, with flock safety, which is one vendor. We use another vendor, which is called Vigilant. And we use another one, which is L sag for our, our mobile LPRs. And which as we saw with the, with the ai, I've heard some of the, the similar issues. So the question comes as to, and I've seen some articles about cases that occur in other parts of the country. And many of those, what I've seen relate to those cameras and the sharing of data and the ability to, to hack into these
no live camera feeds that they have. So I did hear about that, but specifically about the LPRs and some of the questions that have been answered against vendors, not only flock safety, but other vendors about the protection of the LPR data, the video data. I have a totally different point of view as was stated here, that there are concerns about being able to hack into those videos, live video feeds. If it was live video feeds and live video cameras, I would have no interest in those at all now. But as far as the LPR, I hear different factors
and different things that have been done by a vendor. Now of course, you know, as they come up I need to learn more about that. And that's what we hope to do during this period for LPR data itself. And there's other concerns that's come up since we had this is public records law. No, we all have that. You know, and what does that mean at the end? That, that, what do we have to provide under public records? And that's where I talk about the value to the organization. 'cause the value also goes to, if the value is such that what we collect and what we do as far as investigation is going to be detrimental to our citizens, we have to consider that.
And that's what I've been looking at. Speaker 12: How were the number of cameras and locations determined? Is that something that you decided? Or is Speaker 14: It's, it's, we decided it's strategic. It's based on the flow of traffic in the town now where traffic can go, what we've seen in past history as far as where do we find that those situations that if we had a camera here, we would've been able to do this. And those are the areas that we looked at. So again, it could be as part of the also evaluation, it may be that we're totally off base that
maybe we only need two cameras maybe instead of Speaker 12: So the locations were determined by you? Yes. And the number of cameras, was that a recommendation by flock about for a community our size, about how many we would need to cover it or no, that Speaker 14: Was, that was only us. Just look into those areas of town that we wanted to cover. Speaker 1: Lemme just pause here a second. I saw a couple hands back and forth. Yeah. What I would suggest at this point in the meeting, we really are only talking amongst the board. So if you have some concerns that have been peaked, please send it to select board@natickma.org.
Right. We gotta just keep things moving along. Otherwise we'll be here. It'll midnight. Thank you for that. Appreciate. Just Speaker 9: Quickly, chief, you keep saying cameras. You mean LPRL ps. Speaker 14: Okay. I should use the same. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 14: Take my own advice. Speaker 12: They're cameras though. They're cap they're capturing something, right? Speaker 1: Mr. Sha? Speaker 9: I'm just not sure if they're live. Yeah, I, I don't know the technology. Speaker 1: Think you're able to speak now? You alright? Speaker 5: Yeah, I, I'm here. I'm just waiting for the go ahead. Okay, thank you. I would say, you know, the,
we're talking about LPRs, but fundamentally they must be some form of camera. They may not be recording everything. One of the, I was the, I was the board member that heard this information. Speaker 1: Alright, we're back in action finally. Sorry about that interruption. We had a momentary internet out outage, which was mo longer than momentary. Just a few minutes. So, well, when we were last communicating, Mr. Sidney had the floor and was asking some questions
and making some observations. So back to you Mr. Sydney. Yeah. Speaker 5: So can can you just gimme a hint of where I will, where what The last thing you heard was, Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mr. Sidney, so Speaker 5: I'll, I'll just start over. I was the, I was the person the citizen came to at the farm Farmer's Market telling me about these cameras. And I was surprised and upset. I'm just gonna say I'm retired from tech. I have a grave number of concerns about the technology sharing these things are, I assume, I assume they're cameras of some sort because that's how you get images.
They might be infrared or something else, but they're cameras and their signals are over the air. I'm sure, I'm sure they're not hardwired to anything. 'cause they have batteries and solar panels and they go to some sort of a central server which decodes the, the data and then stores it in a database for local use. One of my concerns is in the terms of use is that the local municipality may own the decoded data, but it doesn't own the original source. Which means that once the original source is out there,
it can be decoded by somebody else and used, it's not, basically we don't own it. That's a big concern for me. This seems to me, as a prior speaker said, a 1984 situation, it concerns me a great deal that one of our cameras is in front of one of our poll, one of our biggest polling places. The ability to record who might be going into vote is a, a big concern to me. I'm just, I'm, I'm very concerned about these cameras. I'm very concerned about their use.
I recognize the significant impact they can have on, you know, in, in some really serious criminal situations. But the significant impact they can have on non-criminal situations is very high as well. And, you know, we can, we can't trade safety for freedom. That's what I would say. I think Thomas Payne said it originally, we can either be free or safe. And so I just, I'm very concerned about these. I'm not gonna go on any longer.
I hope we're gonna have a, take a really deep close look at whether these have an, have, have enough value to us. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sitton. Further questions. Mr. Kaufman, Speaker 11: Chief Hicks, could you talk us through a little bit of the decision making and who was involved? For example, was it department involved in discussing? Speaker 14: No, it was all, Speaker 11: And Town Council didn't review the MOU Speaker 14: Town council didn't involve and didn't look at the MOU because there wasn't any purpose. So we didn't have the purpose procurement,
procurement did review it. Speaker 11: Okay. In the report that you, you forwarded to the select board for the state of the department update presentation on one of the slides you mentioned that 24% of the calls that the department responded to are motor vehicle involved. I mean, I I came up with that number. You Speaker 14: Percentage. Speaker 11: I came up with the percentage. You, you said the total amount and then the number that were involved with motor vehicles. All of the police cruisers are equipped with license plate readers? Speaker 14: No, only one. Speaker 11: Only one. Speaker 14: Only one. The traffic vehicle. Okay.
That one's out for repair at that moment. Speaker 11: Okay. Do you know if that data is stored locally? Speaker 14: That is stored locally on, on the laptop that's in the cruiser. Okay. Speaker 11: Were the abutters where the cameras are installed, were they notified? No, they were not. Just a point of clarification, the a c U'S recommendation is holding the data for seven days. I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing, but you were mentioning 30, Speaker 14: You say 30 days. Speaker 11: The memo that I read in I think March of this year said seven. I'm not saying that that's what we should adopt. I'm just saying, just as a point of clarification,
also research on flock in the pacer case database, which is the database of all of the federal and state district court court of appeals cases throughout the entire country, reveals that Flock Group Inc. Flock Safety are involved in 10 district court and two six circuit court of appeals for various breaches of contract including data breach. So that's not really a question, that's just a, a a a point, a data point. I, as I mentioned earlier, I had sent a list.
I, I worked with somebody in who works for his company in merger and acquisitions, specifically in data security and data privacy issues. So we put together a, a very long list of questions regarding data. And I have spent the time, I think all of the board has in reviewing flocks terms and conditions, they're contractual. So we don't have a contract now to look and say what would this look like? But we do have what the terms and conditions, the definitions and the elements that would be plugged in. And that's up on, you know, you can look at their flock legal page at, at this time, Mr.
Chair, if or whenever I have a motion. Speaker 1: Okay. Lemme just make one follow up. It's more an observation based on a question that you asked, which is on the LPR readers, on the cruisers. Can we es estimate the cost to put those in all our cruisers? Speaker 11: Hmm. Speaker 15: I was Speaker 14: Thinking about, I I don't have an estimate because the unit we have is all five years old. Okay. So I could not imagine what a, what a new one would cost. Now Speaker 1: I I, I didn't expect you to have it out at the W Tongue, but can we, can we get that number?
I can get back to you. Yeah. Thank you. Speaker 11: A great suggestion for the use of his grant funds. If we could, yeah, if it were possible. Mr. Chair, at this time I move that we opt out of the MOU and the, as a corollary corollary motion. I ask that an informal working group with the chief town administration, IT procurement, legal, and two members of the select board hammer out what a policy would look like, what procedures would look like, and what types of terms would be acceptable. Were we to decide to engage flock
or any license plate camera readers in Natick Speaker 15: Second. Speaker 1: So that's moved and, and on both Richard, Speaker 15: I'm sorry. Yes. Speaker 5: And I would suggest we might consider involving the information systems advisory board who have sp who are, can help with that kind of study. Speaker 1: I think that we have a room full of people who'd be happy to give us their input. Speaker 11: I I would suggest a smaller working group as possible, so that's nimble and quick. Speaker 9: I'd also prefer if some of the items are security sensitives that we're just mindful of that. Yeah. Speaker 11: Yes. Speaker 9: Not that we don't be transparent with terms
and things like that, but some of the items might be a little bit, I'm just trying to be mindful of that. Speaker 11: Mr. Chair. I'd like to amend my motion that the working group be convened by Mr. Erickson. Speaker 15: So I, I'll I'll go with that. Speaker 11: And in discussion in Sure. In discussion, we have 30 days of information. I think that it is, you know, maybe in September when things on the streets weren't so crazy with ICE and the debates about surveillance, maybe then it seemed like a really good idea. But I think that the best approach for the town at this point is not to decide whether
or not it's a good law enforcement tool and then opt in on the 61st day and have a bill for $30,000 and then build a policy and then build procedures and then build and then execute a contract. I think we're kind of doing it. The word that comes to mind is ask backwards. But I think that there's probably a better term. I think we're doing it backwards. Speaker 1: We're doing it hastily. How's that? Well, Speaker 11: We, we, I I don't think we, we did it hastily. I think that the chief deliberate it. Yes. But I don't think the order in which we're doing it is, is, is appropriate. So that was my discussion, Speaker 1: Mr. Chair. Yes. Speaker 5: So the, the, the thing, the thing I'd add is that
I, I think we need, do, need some policy questions answered. I would also point out that Cambridge did a trial like this and on opting and, and on opting out as we are asking to do right now, it took them quite a bit of time to they, the cameras kept going up even after they canceled the contract. So it's, we wanna be really cautious here and make sure that not only do we, you know, opt out, but that the cameras actually come down Speaker 1: That should say opt out and remove.
Speaker 11: So the, the terms and conditions say that the camera on, on exiting a contract, and I assume that soon this applies to an MOU, that the cameras will be be removed as soon as commercially, commercially reasonable, reasonable. So whatever that means. But, but if the, if the services stopped, service stopped immediately. Speaker 1: Immediately and then removal Speaker 11: And ask that they remove Speaker 1: Practical. Okay. All right. Any co other comments? Speaker 2: I, I appreciate the motion. I, I appreciate you chief for, you know,
having the conversation. I, I believe that public sentiment is extremely important, especially in public safety. And for something that is being marketed as more safe for or more efficient for the police department and maybe more safe for the town. Yet our our res our residents are saying they feel less sa less safe in, in a consensus is, is something that I, that I pay attention to. So I'm, I'm grateful that, that we're moving in this direction. Speaker 12: Yeah, I, I absolutely intend to support Ms.
Coughlin's motion, but I just wanna thank everyone for weighing in on this. It, I can't think of another topic that would have such universal agreement amongst everyone. There wasn't a single email that was in support of this. Some of it were maybe a little qualified, but it's very clear that we have to listen to our community and what our community wants. That said, I think, you know, the best intentions may have been there for the chief
and it looks like there was some due diligence done, but not enough. And I, and I do agree that we do need, that. We need as the select board establish policies to understand what it is that, that we feel would be appropriate for this. And first, before we go ahead and, and do any other further investigation about this kind of technology. I think given the current climate privacy is a huge concern. And so is, you know, I I have a lot of experience with data compliance as well.
I don't trust anybody's database. Having, having, having had to make up for a, a publicly traded company that did not want to announce their hack and find a way to keep their systems going for, for three months. It's, it's out there. There's so many bad actors out there. Yeah. And you know, this is data that is ripe for the picking. So I'm very concerned about this and you know, I get it, chief, this isn't your area of expertise, nor should it be. So I'm really grateful to Ms. Coughlin to coming, coming up with the idea
of having a group of, of people that really do know what they're doing looking at this. So thank you. And Speaker 11: That includes the law enforcement perspective, not independent of, Speaker 1: Let me briefly say thank, thank you Mr. Sidney for talking about Cambridge. I wanted to bring that up as well. But there have been other towns, not just in Massachusetts but across the country that have, that have moved away from this platform. Prior to retiring, I worked in marketing for technology companies and I have written many a marketing, sales,
marketing legal agreement. And I recognize legal documents for what they are. They are documents that are written to provide the appearance that everything is covered, when in reality they're toothless and they really aren't protective of customer data. And that concerns me gravely. And that was the reason why I wanted to, I, I recognize the value of the LPRs and that's why I asked the question of what would it take to retrofit our cruisers with those devices.
I see the value in it. I see the value of finding an elderly person who's wandered off, off and their, their loved ones are worried about finding them. I have a neighbor who was in that situation a few months ago, so I'm very sensitive to it. But there are too many unanswered questions. Were we not in the Trump 2.0 regime? I may have a different view on this, but I probably wouldn't anyway. But with this administration, I, it particularly, what's the right word, raises my hackles.
We're going through arcane stuff tonight I think. So I'm very concerned and I support the, the opting out of the MOU. So let's take a vote. All in favor please say aye. We have to do roll call as rich is remote rich. Speaker 15: Aye. Aye. A Aye. Speaker 1: All right. Ms. Clin. Speaker 11: Aye. Speaker 1: Ms. Walsh? Speaker 11: Yes. Speaker 1: Ms. Pope. Aye. An aye 5 0 0 onto your second suggestion of a policy and procedures committee convened by the town administrator
and the town administrator will define, we want to have a relatively small mental committee and we'll leave it to town administrator's discretion as to the composition and the personnel involved. So any discussion French? You okay? Yep. Alright. All in favor? Nope. Speaker 11: I would just amend that to say the town administrator or his designee. Okay. He has a very packed agenda for fiscal 26 and 27 and 28. Why not? Well indeed,
Speaker 1: Foreseeable Speaker 11: Lifetime. Indeed. I just don't want you to melt under the pressure beyond that Speaker 9: Board chooses. Speaker 1: Alright, so all in favor, please say Aye. Mr. Sidney. Speaker 15: Aye. Aye. Speaker 1: Lin. Speaker 11: Aye. Paul? Yes. Aye Speaker 1: And I. An aye S 5 0 0. So let's take a two minute five break. You guys are wanting to leave now unless you want to get a police update. All right, chief Hick, welcome back to part two of your presentation. Thank you. Speaker 14: Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the board state for this opportunity. I'm going to, I had a lot in the presentation
which is shared for you and I know is it's getting late in the evening. So I'm gonna just highlight a lot of things. If you had any questions that was part of it. I know at least one came up to last, but this is an opportunity and I can, and I talked to the town administrator who says I, I haven't done this in many, many years to the board. I'm talking about many, many years. So it's a great opportunity to do this and probably should do it on more regular business. By the way, start off my presentation by just talking about and who the Natick Police Department is. Meaning what do we do? And this is an interesting concept
that came up when we were doing our citizens academy where we ran through and talked about what encompasses the police department and and its responsibilities. And it's not only law enforcement duties and the 9 1 1 communication being dispatched, investigations, traffic enforcement, police records, school resource officers, town wide emergency management. I as an emergency manager director, those are areas that kind of people believe and understand as part of police and the police work. But what we also have is that we oversee the park enforcement
and the park enforcement program, animal control, animal inspectors services. But the most important piece is our support for many town committees and organizations including planning board. We have representation and support, disability commission services, recreation and parks, affordable housing. Somebody say what's the police do with affordable housing? Well we have a program where we can place people if there's a need for emergency sheltering in which we operate. In fact, I was just getting texts. We just placed a family of six who had an emergency need tonight. And as we get into cold weather the next week we'll be looking at that again,
that falls under the police department. Now all that falls under the police department. We also have a representation at the Framingham and Natick drug court where we work who are in the court system trying to help them better their lives. So it's not a perpetual life of situations where they're caught up in the, in a criminal justice system. We also have the same for the Framingham Veterans Court. Meaning that we have someone who's down at the court on a regular basis with those individuals. So that's a a a A one
and responsibilities that we take on as a police department as part of what we do, not just what you see out there, innclusive, that's valuable but there's other pieces that we do. Next slide. So wanted to go by, these are the things that people like to hear. We do include most of this in our, our annual report. But for perspective, our total CAD calls for service, that means total calls that get entered into our computer, computer aid or dispatch is 23,197 calls for the calendar year of 2025. Total 9 1 1 calls handled by our emergency dispatch is 9,699,
almost 10,000 9 1 1 calls handled within a year. I've put this interesting note in there because it's important and it's valuable and, and the dispatchers have a lot of pride at that. How many calls under the current guidelines? Nine one one call should be answered within 10 seconds as a minimum. 9.52% of our calls are handled within 10 seconds. That's a tremendous accolade for our dispatchers in the work they do because they are balancing many things 'cause they also take our business calls. So they're taking our business calls, they're answering the police and fire radio
and they're answering 9 1 1 calls. So kudos to them in the work they do. Total calls for service for police services. Of those 23 police handle 17,371 calls during the calendar year 2025. And just an example of what some of those calls are. Motor vehicle stops, 4,000 crashes. We have a lot of crashes in town. 672 is a tremendous number for a town off size when you start comparing it to other towns within the commonwealth. Lossing and shoplifting is over 700 cases. Psychological responses. These are the calls that we respond to with those
with mental health issues and this is why we look at having our clinicians who have joined us and we have a second clinician coming on again, we had one, we had a second one, that one left and we just have another one coming on. 'cause when you look at these numbers, it's when we go to the Department of Mental Health looking for funding and support. So that number is high for a community our size. Going up to the next slide. Now I'm still biting numbers. So now we talk about our records division in the work they do. The records division is, is made up of staff of two.
They had processed, processed 1,803 reports and that doesn't even count those that get requested for public records. So most of those are gonna be a public records request either to lawyers, attorneys and insurance companies or citizens in the criminal courts. Arrest reports that they process 1,609 motor vehicle crash reports. All those crash reports require another report from the police department and then sometime. And they also gotta do those that come from citizens. So that way that number's a little bit off traffic citations
that the work that the officers do. Over 4,000, I put this in there. Total animal control calls. We have a new animal control officer who is fantastic. He's doing a phenomenal work in town and I was amazed when I saw this number. We handle over 1100 calls for service. One person, 1100 calls for service, annual related calls. I say we have parking, so parking, total parking tickets issued in 2025, 8,399. And we have two and a half parking enforcement officers who are out there Monday through Saturday working.
And they also do repairs of meters rep repair, clearing of meters, collecting, you know coins. All that is planned that they do and they still do that. Next slide. I'll start going pretty quick here 'cause some of this you can read some of the programs and activities that occurred in 2025. I'll highlight a few police accreditation and only update and developer policies. We are deep into this. This was a a priority as part of my evaluation to make that happen.
We are deep in the middle of that as well as doing the required mandates for pulse certification. Regional dispatch, I know we've spoken to you a lot about that. We're deep in the middle of it now. I say not in the middle but we're in the middle of that planning because now it looks like the building will be done in 12 months. So now the real planning starts, you know, what does a building look like if we wanna be prepared to move in. As soon as that's ready we in the middle of that for 20 leadership and developed succession planning. I'll talk about that a little bit later. We ran two set of sessions
of the Citizens Police Academy in 2025 and I mentioned this and that's been hugely successful. We brought that back and we get a lot of input from the citizens. We are gonna have another one in the fall and we, we'd be out there advertising that again, I'll skip some of the second annual national night out again. Lieutenant Howard came to us two years ago, says I want to do this. And those who have been there have seen the success that it has with the community. It brings a community together and it's a great opportunity for the police to work with the community. Other thing, SIM plans, sheltering plans you were aware
of 'cause you voted on us. That was done in 2025. 2025. You're also instituting a wellness program and this is why. And we named a wellness coordinate coordinator. This is important to law enforcement 'cause officers go through a lot and they're going through a lot, especially in this day and age. It's important that we prioritize their health. Not only their physical health but their mental health. And this is what we've made a priority in 2025. We named the wellness coordinator who's taking that on the run. Others areas, developing a drone program. One of the officers are interested. We see opportunities, we saw that with missing persons.
We have calls that we can use a drone. We have to call Wellesley, Framingham. And sometimes we call the regional to come down. There's a delay, there's an interest in doing aro core program. We're right at the beginning of looking at that and evaluate that in 2025. Possibly something we can look at in 2026. And then I want to talk more about the one mine campaign and the trust building campaign. So next slide. So what is our future? We say the police department's going through go through a substantial transformation of transformation over the next one to three years.
The average year as of service in the police department now, and we have 60 sworn officers. The average years of service is 13.1 years. 13 1.1 years is, is child level in law enforcement with experience. 30% of the department has five years or less experience. New, very new at that. And 18% of the department has 25 years experience. And those, you can look at the numbers and see that we have a good amount, large number here, a large amount up here. And in the middle is still less than 13 to 15 years of service.
It's a very young city depart right now and we have a lot to do to help work with them. Next slide again. I said current au authorized staff is 60 staffing as of January 1st this year as 55 with one of those being in the academy. He has since graduated last Friday. But that 55 means that we're short five offices right now to fill and do all those tasks that I talked about at the beginning. And of those 55 3 occurring on long term illness.
So instead of 55, we have 52 that we are able to work with three members of the current command staff. And the command staff is a chief, deputy chief and lieutenants. Three of those members are due to retire in the next 13 months. 13 months goes quick. So we have to consider that one of our sergeants is due to retire in three months in March. One patrol officer is due to retire on in three months. So we have a of those and those are the top level. So we talk about those who have the most experience, you're looking at most of that time and those who are gonna be leaving in the next 13 months.
Next slide. So we have some challenges within the organization. Number one, recruitment and retention. This is a nationwide issue with law enforcement and I'm sure that Chief KY will tell you it's the same for fire services. And probably the same thing for any public service anyone. DPW has to say. We have our, our meetings and we have this constant conversation about the difficulty in hiring no matter where it's, where it's, but this is a struggle because some things that happened, especially in law enforcement, it's become a a wide open field. It's, we call it free agency where officers can go anywhere they want.
When before, especially when we were restricted by civil service, we didn't have the opportunity to recruit. Now we do have that coming outta civil service. But something to for of note four, we had four new officers join us in 2025 but seven left the department. Now some who, there was two that just totally left the, the profession altogether, which you just never saw. Wow, you never saw. So we have to plan for that and we have to be strategic. The loss of four top level leadership positions will leave a void that will impact the organization. When you lose your top four, there's an impact there.
And we're working to make sure that, that we try to cover that. Just a matter of facts to replace an officer takes 10 months. And what I say and that's not even recruit and hire once they hire and once you approve them here and we start the academy is 10 months before they are accessible and able to to work with us. For example, we had four start the academy that the before you recently approved last Monday. We aren't gonna see them get graduate the academy and then go through their field training until October. So just imagine what that looks like when you're trying
to backfill and at the same time trying to develop future leaders. And it also depends on academy schedules. Sometimes we have some ready to go now, but the next academy is not until March and then after that is August. So we're struggling with some of this and working with the town administrator now on seeing if we can bolster our staff in doing some, some planning is what we're trying to do now. Next slide. I know I'm going real fast so if there's any questions just stop me and I'm sure if we mute it, how are we gonna address this? Challenges aggressive development
of leaders starting with patrol officers. We're starting with, and I'm starting to meet with the patrol officers to get them to understand they're all leaders. It's not just those with with who are supervisors who are sergeants. We have to train them to be leaders and be out there and prepared to work. And also that's gonna help with retention. If you start developing them and giving those opportunities, they'll stay within the organization, develop a hiring process as a result of leaving civil service. And I think I explained this, when we, when you approve those offices, we have that process in place. We have better numbers to choose from. Now we don't have an ocean of numbers,
but it's better than the little puddle we used to have. So we got a little bit of a pond to choose from. These are all language we use because we love the way the images come out when we say that. And again, as I said, look to focus on the mental health and wellbeing of personnel in the organization to show that we care, you know, and we are there for them, you know, in order to show that this organization does care. Next slide. I wanna go through this very, so one of those is is the ISEP one Mind campaign. And I told and, and the reason I love these programs is because we are doing these already and,
and this one mind campaign is a NA actually it's an international campaign where a department can be recognized if they fulfill all these areas that are part of that campaign. When you look at the, the bulleted items, I look through that and see that we do that, but we, you know, we have all that. It's just a matter of a couple more trainings and certification. Then I'll submit the department to the IF, the International Association Chief of Police so we can be recognized for those efforts. And I think that's a tremendous opportunity to show the work that this organization does and the officers do on an international level
because it's an international program. Next slide. The trust building campaign is another international program that that's working with IACP. And this goes directly to how you work with your community and how you work and show your community that your partners but also at the same time understanding that you're transparent. And so those bullet items are, are things that we have always worked on. In other words, develop policies and procedures about bias free policing now. And we have that use of force policies that people understand leadership
and culture as we just talked about. Recruitment, hiring, retention. Another one we just talked about all development policies and procedures. And it's not about putting it down on paper, you have to also show that you're doing it. So it's not that we do it, we say we do it, hand it in. You're gonna get this recognition, you have to demonstrate that you're doing it from actual task and duties that are part of it. And lastly, community relations. Another part, another campaign that we hope that we will be shortly be recognized as part of ISEP. And when that comes in we'll be sure to know. 'cause we'll be very proud of that when that comes in.
Next slide. Almost there. This slide 1213. We know what that slide was. And finally, what is, what's in our future for programs and project projects that we're working on? We're gonna bring back the kine. There is a desire even within the organization, school resource officer. We're gonna develop school resource. Our current school resource officers, they're part of that upper group that's gonna be looking to retire soon. We have younger members that if we get them involved, especially with the youth of the community, it's gonna be a bit involved. The drug task force and the EDEA task force, we need
to keep up and running That work is very valuable and it's a lot of work that's, that's saving this community in a lot of different ways, especially with the work we're doing with those that have addictions. 'cause that's part of the work that they also, our traffic division we have right now we have one officer who's officer Travis Moran who he works, he's in at seven, I think he's working at 7 0 1. And the traffic division is not all about giving out tickets, it's also about doing analysis. They work with the community especially of issues
and complaints that may come to the safety committee. They do that evaluation. They work with the, with them to, to make sure that our, our roadways are safe. We'd like to add another one to that because some of the traffic issues we have are at night. He works during the day. We'd like to be able to address all those. So traffic division, temporary detective assignment, another way of building up and giving resources and given abilities to officers to have something other than just riding around and approving. So we want to bring that program back. We're working with the fire chief and and Chief KY to develop a team dive team.
The fire department runs a dive team out of the district. Chief KY has has, you know, approached us to say he'd like to put together a of both public safety. So police and fire. We have those, we have people who are interested in it and we wanna move forward to create that. That's something we can do. Although it's not gonna impact staffing. So that's something we can do right away. I talked about the drone team that we're looking at. And then the last but not least is, is mle, which is the North Northeastern Massachusetts Law
Enforcement Council in which we are a member. And what that is, is an opportunity. They give us resources that we can't have, such as a SWAT team. We're not gonna have a SWAT team here, but there may be a need. And if there's a need we can have officers as part of this regional team. Niec has made of, I think of 58 different agencies in Essex and Middlesex County. We've had 'em here respond here on a couple of occasions where they were a force multiplier. So you see 'em at the marathon. So you probably go out the marathon and you say, where do all those officers come from?
We can have, if we need be 120 officers in, in this town, if we have a need within an hour, hour and a half, two hours to ramp up our needs. The key por portion of that is when they come here, they're under my control. So they may come from Swamp Skit or Marblehead or Wakefield, but when they come here, they belong to me and they follow my direction. So that's a great opportunity to be able to, so what this does also is allows our offices to participate and be able to do the exact same thing to those communities. And these are the areas we're looking at.
Swat RRT is called a regional response team. That's the team that can respond with a hundred members here in a short period of time. Im a is our, our, you know, our communications van, which our dispatchers could get involved with if need be. Our STARS team is at school threat and assessment response system. You know, so we can have officers that can respond to other schools that have issues. Not only threats in schools, but they also respond if there's a student death or a faculty death to go support the schools. A tremendous opportunity that that unit has gotten nationwide recognition for
how they work and operate it. Proud to be part of that wellness unit, which our U wellness coordinator is part of that in order to be able to hear what others are doing. We do have some SWAT trials in May, 2026. 'cause I'm sharing this, this, this same presentation to everyone in the department. And hopefully we'll get some more who will be interested in joining that unit and participating in that unit Very, very quickly. Speaker 23: Take a breath. Yep. Speaker 14: I dunno if there's any questions, comments, thoughts? Speaker 23: I have some questions. Speaker 7: Go.
Did I hear you right when you said the dispatchers also answer all your business calls? Yes. So when a non-emergency number comes in, that's really impressive. Having 99.5% under 10 seconds handling all of your phone work. So that's kudos. And also I wanted just give a shout out to our two, I don't know the half police off parking enforcement officer, but I do know Bonnie and Pete and they are ambassadors to our downtown business. They're phenomenal. And the fact that they write about, they wrote about 8,400 tickets in fiscal or last year or in 25 is amazing
because they're so good about talking to people and saying, oh no, just push this. You get 15 seconds and helping them navigate with the kiosks. 15 minutes. Speaker 14: 15 minutes, Speaker 7: Right. 15. What did I say? Seconds. Speaker 14: They're fast but not, Speaker 7: That's not that fast. 15 minutes. Speaker 14: But Speaker 7: Yeah, not that fast. Just a, a question if sometime in the, for the Citizens Police Academy, if they would not be held on Wednesday night so members of the select board could attend. Yeah. So sometime in the future. Yeah, Speaker 14: So we are trying to work on that. But usually when we come in the fall then you're competing with town meeting.
Speaker 7: Ah, good Speaker 14: Point. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, yeah. So we have Tuesdays and Thursdays town meeting. Wednesdays select board. Mondays usually school committee. Right. So we can circumvent school committee and do it on a Monday. Speaker 7: No understand. Speaker 14: So it's yeah, Speaker 7: Understood. Speaker 14: Get the spring you annual town meeting it, it's, it's a balance. No, I understand. Wants to come out on Friday nights. Speaker 7: No, absolutely. Speaker 14: Although they come out to do write of arms. Speaker 7: Oh Speaker 14: Yeah. So yeah, Speaker 7: Sign me up. I didn't wanna think you did that. So, and my last question is, what are, there's a lot going on in 2026. A lot of great initiatives. What are your top three priorities
for the initiative dashboard in 2046? Speaker 14: Our top is development leaders. That's our, our top priority. Are you talking about our programs and projects? Speaker 7: Whatever you would put in that initiative that you would wanna be measured against at the event Speaker 14: Development, development leader and succession planning. Okay. Those, those are the key components. The, the rest is all is part of developing the organization towards recruitment and retention. That would probably be my second component. Okay. Is more fo focusing on the retention piece. Okay. Is what is important. 'cause it's important to build up the organization
and that takes some work. You know, it takes, it takes all of us being out there. We, the mantra I give to the department is that they're all recruiters for the organization and we want to recruit those as you see that comes in front of you that have to have a certain characteristic and desire of officers that we want to have here. And they're not easy to find. But it's gonna be our role to get out there and take those opportunities to do that. That Speaker 7: Those are great three great initiatives. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Speaker 12: So I just, I just have a, a small critique here on the range of services
that you provide where it said support to many town committees. You left off the select board because I think there is so much that you do for the select board. You know, every meeting we probably have some kind of a report from the police, even if it's just about a block party or it's a liquor license. And so please don't forget us. I'll and, and all the good work that you know, particularly the deputy chief and others do on, on our behalf. So you can edit that'll Speaker 7: You call. Alright, Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Pope, do you have any?
Speaker 2: No thank you Speaker 1: Answer. Mr. Sidney, do you have any thoughts on this? Well, I Speaker 5: Just wanna thank you for the update Chief. It's very impressive. You know, I, I really appreciate the look forward at the challenges ahead and we're gonna have to face those. So thank you very much. Speaker 1: I just wanted to add my thanks to, to this presentation. I think it makes the, not only the board, but more specifically the public aware of all the things that the police is involved in and, and moving forward.
And it's all positives. When, when you talked about the free agency, I, my mind went to college football and a transfer portal. We need to get more officers from the transfer portal. So thank you again chief and thanks for staying so late. Appreciate it. Thanks. Speaker 7: It's been a long night. Thank you. Speaker 1: All right, next up is veteran services officer interview process. Erickson, do you mind walking through that one just pretty quickly? I think Speaker 9: Yeah, that, that, let me pull up the memo, but while I do that, I just wanna thank Chief for putting
that presentation together. A couple points that I really wanna make sure the board's aware of as well is in the coming year we do you, Catherine you mentioned the idea of the, not the idea of the fact that our dispatchers also call it business with the regional dispatch. We're gonna have to have a conversation with the board about what then takes its place. 'cause that is something that's gonna be coming up in the, but that's, you know, more six to 12 months down the road as we go through that transition. And part of that is the planning that we need to do in the next six months with the regional dispatch to figure out what is gonna go to dispatch, what's gonna stay here and vice versa. So all that's in the works. And I think it's impressive
to note that the police is one of two departments that are required to operate 24 7 in this town, 365. They don't, I mean they, individuals get holidays, but the department is open 24 7, 365 holidays every day. You say two fire department and DPW Pww, they're, but they, they, they do re they respond 24 7, but they're not there. And honestly they're 24 7. So the, their offices and those buildings are open 24 7 DPW does shut down. I was gonna separately say DPW does respond 24 7 amazingly
as we heard earlier, to, to water and, and to miss phone calls, but to, to, to, you know, to emergencies. So that's why they're often referred to as the silent arm of public safety because they tend to be a little bit, they know they're not always 20. I mean they're available 24 7, but I just wanna give kudos to police and fire. But in, in the case of tonight, the police department for that, because it also helps put, put perspective in, in regards to all those numbers. Plus, you know, currently 53, I guess 52, when you take into account that's a 24 hour operation,
seven days a week, three, that's, it's actually pretty impressive. Yes, it's extremely impressive. And the animal control officer handling on average, if they work 365, 3 calls, like that's, and and everybody else. But it's just, it's just that the volume is pretty impressive. Yep. Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard this at least a hundred times, that, that everybody's who's ever encountered Peter has just said what a phenomenal job Yes. That he's done. So please pass that along. I I definitely will. Speaker 9: Okay, moving on to the VSO, the veteran service officer.
So I believe at the last meeting, or maybe two meetings ago, I mentioned that we are in the recruitment process. The job has been posted. We are receiving applications. We always keep it up for a certain amount of time before we go into the next round, which is reviewing the applications and, and the interview process. This is a unique position in the sense that it's one of the, the, I think four, five positions that are direct appointments of the select board. So it just means our interview process. I wanna make sure you're, and really just the overall process that you are, the select board is aware of what, what our recommendation is and you know, give us any sort
of feedback on that recommendation. We put together a very high level, very brief memo just to frame the conversation. And a lot of it obviously depends on the number of applicants we get. You know, if we have 50 applicants, we might adjust the process. In this case so far we have in the single digits. But for this type of position, we would expect kind of that number because it's a very specialized position and you have to have per state law, certain requirements, you have to be a veteran, for example, that's a state law requirement. So that, that just continues to sort of limit the pool of, of prospective applicants.
So our recommendation is to have a two round process, you know, we'll, we'll vet the first round that'll be made up of a panel of community services director, town administration slash human resources. It's usually like John and and Dorothy from hr, a staff member, TBD potentially from community services. That works a lot in that veteran services realm or a veteran services officer from a surrounding community. I don't want to I say or because we have to ask and they have to be willing to do that. And then a select board member. So our thinking is to have your, the appointing authority,
but from the beginning have one of you on the first panel and then one of you on the second panel. And then by the time it gets to the full board, at least two of you will have a little bit of knowledge of the, the applicant pool, the process. And then the recommendation from that point, second round would be, again, community service director, town administrator at that point or, and then a select board member for that round two. Again, this would be modified if, if we get a slew of applicants. Right now we're, I, I mentioned we're in the single digits. So that's why we're thinking of, of fairly simple, just two step process makes the most sense. And there's a rough timeline in here.
We started the recruitment process earlier in January. We'd like to start reviewing the applications next week with the idea that starting maybe as early as next week we would and into the first week in February, we'd start the interviews scheduling. And that's just to schedule the interviews for then that first week in February. And then the second rounds would be later in February. We are trying to time this up so that we can have the appointment at one of your meetings as noted at the end of, of the, of VM of the memo. Either the last meeting in February, but more likely one of those two meetings in March because the current VSO is March is the end date.
I believe it's the end of March or mid-March when that per, when the current VSO Paul crew intends to retire. So we, if there's a potential for even, even some overlap, that'd be ideal even just to, to pass things ideal longer if possible. But we're just trying to time that because you do need to make the appointment so it's subject to your sort of calendar. So that's the current thinking. If, if you have any suggestions or any modifications, please let us know. This is similar to what we've used in the past for, for positions. So it's not atypical that we have this and we, we, once we know who the select board member is,
you don't have to designate tonight Bruce. Or if you just, if people wanna volunteer, that's great, then we will probably, John and Dorothy will reach out with a link to the Google drive where we have the application so we can start reviewing of the, of the applicants. Speaker 1: Okay. I've been approached, and correct me if I'm wrong, Linda, on this, that you wanted to be involved in this as well as Catherine. I know Catherine has been working with the VSO extensively and, and vets in general. So I'll leave it up to you two to work out on the schedules
as to whether you want to be the first or second round. Not unless you decline. No. Speaker 12: As far as the scheduling goes, you know, I see you've got three potential dates when we could approve it. Would, would that potentially change the interviews? Do do we feel like we have a good pool of candidates at this point? I know you haven't really looked at the applications, but I mean, I would probably be in favor of pushing things out if we think we need more time to put Speaker 9: Together. Yeah, this is fully flexible. Okay. I never lock in dates when it comes to an interview process. 'cause if, if, if there's,
we're gonna keep this open until we fill it. I do think we have viable candidates. I have, I will say that I did look at the applicants that came in over the weekend and though it's relatively, you know, small in number I do, I I subject to interviews, subject to the review process, subject to background, all that stuff. I do think there's a, a viable candidate or two in there, but absolutely right. And I would, I would never want to, well, with any hiring we typically retain a probationary period that's standard per our bylaws. Actually it's up to a year.
But our typical process is usually six months or, or nine months depending on the position and the role. Not that I would want to even make an offer to somebody that we know is not the right candidate. Right. So if we just don't have the right candidate through any of your process, I'd much rather figure out plan B and we have explored those, you know, we could contract this out to a certain degree, meaning work with a re another VSO to do the services for us, like a surrounding communities. VSO. We actually do that now for a a community. We, there are such called there, there are regional VSOs.
So Wellesley along with a number of communities that are part of a regional VSO, we could potentially not join them, but maybe they could provide us some of this service while we're going through our recruitment process. So we have, we are, we have those options. We, we'd have to more, we talked about them with those town reps, but we haven't said, yes, we're ready to do this because we wanted to see how this process went. Speaker 19: We have a plan B. Speaker 11: Mr. Erickson, I had a question. Do you know if the VSO upon hiring must be certified by the state or is there a period of time in which they can qualify
Speaker 9: That? I don't know. I'd have to confirm that. Thanks. Speaker 11: That Jo just occurred to me. Yeah, Speaker 9: Typ typically there's like a time, a period, a time period, like six months or a year before that's Speaker 11: Certified thought. I hope so. Speaker 9: I I don't know the answer to Speaker 19: That. Okay, so it's actually, it does look like it's been off this whole time by the way. It's like, not the light's on. So it sounded Speaker 12: Quiet. You, you may have been our technical support there, Cody. Speaker 19: Is it like something Speaker 9: It people can I have received some, I was talking texting with John Marshall who was checking in to see how they,
because he's watching from voice said, I can hear everybody fine. Oh, weird. So he has been able to hear people fine. Which the light is Speaker 19: Off, but Speaker 9: It's probably picking up from the other mics. But I'll Speaker 19: Just, I'll try to speak loud. So I, I'm Cody Jacobs. I just had a question and it, maybe you guys already thought about this and it's not, it's not feasible or whatever, but in terms of the, the interview panel, I was wondering if it would be possible or feasible to include someone who's like a member of the community, the community meaning like someone from one of the veterans groups locally or something like that. I don't know if that's, if that's possible, you know, in, in something like this in terms of, you know,
obviously you gotta think about the timing of finding someone like that. But I know there's, there's several veterans groups in town that are active and, you know, getting that, that kind of buy-in or input on the process, I think would be, would be good if it was possible. But maybe there's, you know, some reason that you can't do that in terms of the, the timing of this. But I just wanted to raise that in terms of looking at it. I mean, obviously, you know, there's people who have expertise who will be on these panels and things like that. But I think in terms of the close relationship thinking about, you know, fall crew and things like that, I think that would be, that would be good if it was possible.
So anyway, just wanted to throw that out there. But thank you guys. Speaker 1: I I, my my thought on that is that we do not, we want to keep it unbiased and we don't want, we want to be as objective on the person's qualifications and go through the interview process. That's one of the reasons I, that Catherine asked to be in the review process is she's has extensive experience in dealing with these veterans groups. And I think her, her insights
and her experience will be, will serve the purpose of what you're trying to convey. So, okay. That's, any see anything from, let's move on to the draft remote meeting policy. And let me ask you a question. It's already 10 past nine. Can we punt this? Speaker 11: Could we punt this? Could we punt this to the retreat? Yes. On the 28th? That would be great. Yes. I, I'd like to see this implemented sooner than later. And that's, I take full responsibility for not having this to you guys beforehand. Well,
Speaker 1: It's also the late hours. Speaker 11: No, I indeed, I, i I agree Speaker 1: Onto consent agenda Speaker 2: Tonight. The consent agenda reads item a approve request to occupy a public way. Pause for a cause. 5K run walk item B approve Putt shack Boston Natick, L-L-C-D-B-A putt shack S 12, all alcohol change of hours approved hours are 10:00 AM to 12:00 AM Monday through Sunday. Current hours requiring approval are Sunday through Thursday, 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM and Friday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM
c approve requests to bag meters for elections for election date in 2026 D accept FY 2025 report from the friends of Natick Trails e approved California Pizza Kitchen Incorporated S 12 all alcohol change of hours application approved hours are Sunday 10:00 AM to 12:00 AM Monday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 12:00 AM Current hours requiring approval are Sunday 10:30 AM to 8:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 10:30 AM to 10:00 PM Friday through Saturday, 10:30 AM
to 11:00 PM Does anyone wanna pull anything from the consent agenda? Speaker 11: No. No. Speaker 2: Can I make a motion to move the agenda for approval? Speaker 11: Second, Speaker 1: I just wanted to, to make one small comment quickly, which is both the requests for changes of hours are for fewer hours. So I just wanted to note that for the record. And it's, it's very responsible for those two organizations to come to us requesting those change of hours because their business doesn't want
to be open that late. And if they were not to do this, they would be required to do so. So good on them for, for taking proactive steps. Speaker 9: And I think they attended the training. Speaker 11: I was just gonna say that. Kudos to paying attention Donna Donovan for organizing the training, which explains mass general law. Yep. Yep. Speaker 1: So all in favor, please say aye Mr. Sidney, we have to do voice votes. Aye. Ms. Coughlin? Aye. Ms. Walser? Yes. Ms. Pope. Aye. Aye.
All we are out of consent agenda now to move on to the exec session Speaker 11: Down of Mr. Goman. Your updates, select board updates. Speaker 1: Oh, you guys are calling me out Speaker 11: On there. I just have one question for the town administrator, administrator updates. Oh, but please, Speaker 9: Sure. I mean a lot of the updates I was gonna provide were covered during the meeting with the, the outage with superior drive and the great work of our DPW. They've had an exceptionally challenging being part of the year with the amount of storms, with the amount of water main breaks. I think one stat had one person who over the course of a,
of the, one of the weeks, like the holiday weeks worked of total hours that actually occurred just in the world. They worked more than 50% of the hours. So that means 50% of the time that they were just living, they were, that's, you know, 12 hours, 84 hours. 12 hours. 12 hours. 12 hours. 12 hours. That's 84 hours. Yes, it was nonstop. What's their name in Speaker 1: One Speaker 9: Week? I'll, I'll let you know after the meeting. I have it written down. I just don't have it on on. Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be Speaker 9: Good. Like to, so it's amazing recognition for the Speaker 12: Do we do something for for Speaker 1: That? Yeah.
Speaker 9: We've never had that before, so. No, but but we are, we are thinking about figuring out how to do something for that. I mean, we've done internal recognitions before and we have done, we've already recognized that d PW with some internal communication that we've done. But there could be something more that we want to do. I just wanna give kudos to them. 'cause they, they do an amazing job and there's another big storm coming this weekend. Yes. So it's gonna be a big one for the community. We're already figuring out just sort of plans. We don't know the final track of the storm obviously. So it kind of is sometimes a day call, but already talked about the library, about Sunday
and Sunday hours might be limited or not existent at the library this Sunday. So just this, this is the time of year where, you know, we're plugging on with our regular stuff and then we, it all depends on the weather. We get bombarded and then bombarded and, and then, so kudos to all and, and public, like I said, public safety officials are here 24 7 no matter what. So fires there, police is there. So it's just some, it's an impressive operation that this town is fortunate to have. So, So that was part of my updates. And other parts are, I believe we're,
as Ari mentioned, we're gonna be very ready and I could again to the team for preparing this. But for the budget presentation, hopefully we're gonna have a joint one. But I know it's still pending on February 4th. I think it's now not pending anymore. It's not pending. Right. Okay. Just wanted to confirm that. I know it's been in the works. So that's potentially, we'll have a joint meeting on February 4th with the school committee. Committee. Speaker 1: Committee. They're gonna put it up on their agendas once we, once we have our agenda. Speaker 9: Great. So that'll be a couple weeks out. But that'll be a joint meeting on that night.
Basically two weeks from tonight. Okay. Where were it? It's our regular meeting. Are Speaker 12: We gonna have it in the other, in the school committee room? Speaker 9: We, we'll we'll map that out 'cause we need to figure out how to accommodate everybody. The last couple years we've had it upstairs in the school committee meeting room. It, it's better. Which makes sense. 'cause you can fit more people there. And then what we can do is move back down to this room. So it's the, it's the night of your regular meeting cadence. Yep. Right. And my thinking is it'll be from six to seven for example. And then we can move back down here at seven o'clock. Yeah, we'll probably post it as a single meeting just for you. And then you just continue on
with your agenda at seven or whenever it goes. But we'll post it for that room and then we'll make some note like this. We'll move down to the, okay. As long as it's in the same building. You're not having people cart across town. You can do it as a single agenda or we can separate it out. We'll, we'll Speaker 1: Figure it. That's why we didn't last year. Speaker 9: Well, last year I think it coincided with the school committee meeting. It Speaker 12: Did. It was in Monday. So we yeah, so we, Speaker 1: So we, so we Speaker 9: Left Adjo. So, so you, yeah, so, so just make note of that. Just for the board and for the public to be aware that's coming down the pipeline. 'cause the board also has a pretty full agenda that night
Speaker 1: That we do. We just added no, nevermind. Different meeting. It's been a long day. All right. Anything else? You're all set Debbie? Speaker 9: I'm all set. Yeah, for, for tonight. Speaker 7: Mr. Erickson. Okay. Speaker 11: Does the town have a data privacy policy for the town side? Speaker 9: Not a formal one. We are working on one with our IT department though. Thanks. One of the benefits of having the joint IT with schools is that Dennis Roach, who's strong on the data side, is gonna help us revamp that. Speaker 7: Great. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay.
Any Slack board updates? No. I have one that my wife will shoot me if I don't do this one, which is the, the former two day book sale at the Mors Institute library is going to be a one day book sale this coming Saturday, January 24th from eight 30 to 4:30 PM The Moss Institute Library. There's a big storm coming on Sunday. They, that's alleged. And so the library will not be open during that time.
So there will not be, normally there's a 12 to 3:00 PM opening for the second day of the sale. That will not happen because the library will not be open. And you will need lots of books, lots of baked goods and music to get you through the winter storms. So stock up on Saturday, January 24th, open 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM Speaker 7: And watch the PAT scan. Speaker 1: And watch the PAT scan. It's in Denver but maybe it'll snow there too.
Anyway, so that's all I've got on to that session, which we're, the topic is pursuant to MGL L chapter 30 a section 21, A two to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel police chief. So I need a vote Voice our voice vote. Mr. Sydney second. First, yes. Mr. Sidney and Mr.
Slager. Mr. Sydneys? Aye. Ms. Coughlin? Aye. Ms. Wal? Yes. Ms. Pope. Aye, I'm an aye. So we're now going into executive session. We'll be ad journey from executive session. Thank you for all your patience, those who've been watching at home and on online as well. So thank you.