Speaker 1: Welcome to the June 24th, 6:00 PM select Board meeting. I call the meeting to order at 6:04 PM announcements. So we'll take some community announcements first. Tomorrow marks the kickoff at five o'clock of Natick nights. So, and celebrating pride for the month of June. That will be from five o'clock to 8:00 PM on the Natick common earlier from three to four o'clock. The rail meets trail will be celebrating the connection of the CRT, the Kaki Rail Trail and the Natick Center MBTA. There'll be a ribbon cutting
and a celebration of the millionth visits on the CRT since it was o since it opened. And then immediately after that, at four o'clock on the grounds of the Mor Institute Library, there'll be a public art installation opening with an introduction by the, to the, an introduction by the artist, and then Na Knights at six. So tomorrow is a very big day, and I will turn it over to Mr. Evans for the other two announcements. Speaker 2: One second. Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 3: Turn the light on. First item is,
and I love saying the scoop of Palooza, which is a, the Natick, I'm sorry, Charles River Rotary, which is also a Natick. They're big fundraiser for the year. It's on Saturday the 27th from 1130 to three o'clock on Natick Common. It's one of their big fundraisers. And I'll read you their blurb, which is joined the Charles River Rotary Club as we celebrate our 13th annual scoop of palooza. All you can eat ice cream fundraiser on native common June,
Saturday, June 27th from 11:30 AM to 3:00 PM Rain ine Tickets are $8. Enjoy many ice cream flavors provided by our major sponsor. Hood Ice Cream Scuba Palooza raises significant funds for Charles Brewer River Rotary Rotaries programs, including youth scholarships and many nonprofits. We expect to draw over 2000 people, so see you there on Saturday. And for tickets, I thought I put that here, but it's, it is on the Natick Town website, a link
to that information. The next one is the 4th of July, picnic Natick, 4th of July, community picnic. Celebrate our Nation's 250th birthday on the common with your friends and neighbors. Music games funds, kids parade with decorated wagons, bikes, strollers and wheelchairs. Learn more@natickfourth.org. Bring your picnic basket and be prepared to smile. I like that attitude. It is from 12 o'clock to 4:00 PM on July 4th. Again, natick fourth.org. Use the website for more information.
Speaker 1: Last announcement. At the most recent select board meeting on June 10th, a comment was made by a resident during public speak. And because of open meeting law, the board cannot respond to or debate matters that are brought to the board for board's consideration during o during public speak. So tonight I'd like to address some of those comments for the public. A resident noted that a Needham public employee stole $200,000. And the misstatement was that the, the allegation of the embezzlement was from town funds.
The Neek resident who, the ick public employee who allegedly embezzled $200,000. It was from a, the chair of the Park and Recs committee, and it was from a little league team. So the admonition from the resident was that the town needed to be more transparent and to ensure that we did not have an opportunity for our employees to be embezzling money. The resident shared a book, which town meeting members get referenced this book and said that town meeting members are asked to
vote on departmental budgets without line items or departments. It just says an amount. So what I wanted to share with the public tonight, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the budget process, the budget is released, it's about this thick on February 1st of every year, and then subsequently, there'll be an amended town meeting budget as we get closer or town budget that includes the school budget as we get closer. All of these are public documents and available to the public, and they are online. The school does its own budget book, even though its numbers are also included in this, in the Town administration's budget book. And it explains, goes into detail about each fund,
how user fees are, are used or applied. Then we get financial statements. So these financial statements are also available to the public. And then after that, we also get audited every single year. So for those of you who are interested in ensuring that we have full transparency, I encourage you to go to the Town of Natick Finance website. There's a section called Transparency Center Center. All of these documents are there. And in addition to this, during the budget process, there are 18, last year there were 18 public meetings, subcommittee meetings,
and full committee meetings in the finance committee in which up to 15 members of the finance committee ask detailed questions of departments about their budgets. So I wanted to take the opportunity to ensure the public, ensure residents, businesses, business owners, staff and employees and anyone else interested that it is highly unlikely that we, we'll find ourselves in a position where we'll have a town employee embezzling $200,000 and we won't know about it. So just wanted to address those comments from last week or last, last meeting two weeks ago.
Now we'll move into public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on tonight's agenda, and it will be taken under advisement by the board. There will be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law. This section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes total, and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda is limited to three minutes. And to ensure equity, I will be timing those minutes. Is there anybody in the in the room who wishes to address the board on an item that is not on the agenda? Mr. Joseph, you could just introduce yourself. Sure.
Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. Paul Joseph, currently chair of the Economic Development Committee, just here speaking in my own capacity, I'm also a local small business owner. Just wanted to thank publicly the Natick Public Safety Departments. About a week and a half ago at the coworking location that I have in Natick Center, I have a psychologist on site who was treating a veteran for PTSD related issues. And he had a mental health health crisis. And I cannot speak more highly of how quickly Natick Police showed up secured and, and made everyone on site feel secure,
brought in the embedded social worker to work with the psychologist and work with the AFF afflicted veteran. And then Natick Fire and, and Health Services came in and we had probably a dozen professional staff on site, including members of this veteran's family who were at risk unbeknownst to them. So in terms of professionalism, execution, just resolution of something that could have been very dangerous and escalated very quickly. I cannot thank our public safety departments enough. So to both chiefs, I hope on those related calls, I hope they hear this and well, I will be sending an email
as well, but I wanted the public to know that and through you, so thank you. Secondly, I believe there are still open seats on the Economic Development Committee. I do want to publicly thank Mr. Scott Laughlin, who was not renewing his term on the, on the committee. I met Mr. Laughlin back in 2008 as members of the Revenue Enhancement Task Force, and the committee was actually formed as a recommendation of that committee. Scott had served very capably as chair of the Economic Development Committee from 2015 until 2022, I believe. And he is stepping down now after many years of service.
So I just wanted to publicly acknowledge and thank him for his service on that committee. Thank Speaker 1: You, Mr. Joseph. On July 9th, we will be interviewing, I believe, nine applicants for two positions on the EDC. And, and thank you very much for your sharing the accolades that are well deserved by both our fire, our public safety complex. I really appreciate that, Mr. Ostroff. Speaker 5: Mr. Speaker 6: Hi, Josh Ostroff. I am here in my capacity as President of the Friends of Dan Trails in partnership
with the Recreation Parks Department and I, Melissa Carter and Angela Snell. We staff a vol, a program called All Aboard that You made announcements before in the past. It provides cycling opportunities on the rail trail for people of all abilities. It's funded by various grant funding. At the most recent event, we had three outstanding volunteers who also work for Recreation and Parks Camp Arrow had in the schools and, and, and and elsewhere. So, so Christine and, and Alex
and Carter, along with Melissa Carter, the, the, the Adaptive programs director are just outstanding folks. They came on their own time. They really helped provide services to writers. We have volunteers from all over, not just in Natick and riders from all over, but I just want the board and the public to know how caring and thoughtful these particular employees are. And I've let their, their, you know, supervisors know at Rec and Parks and Community Services, but I was really proud of, of, of how people step up to provide fun, safe experiences outdoors for,
for the people that use this program. And it'll be back in September and we'll be back to you before then with more opportunities. We take a break in the warm weather in those summer months. Weather can be unpredictable. So thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Mr. Ostroff. Is there a number, another member of the public in the room who would like to address the board under public speak? Seeing none, Speaker 5: Nothing online. Anyone online? Speaker 1: Okay. We'll close this section of the agenda. Next up. Appointment reappointment of Murphy Hessey, Toney and Lehe Carris North as town council.
Speaker 5: Is she online? I don't believe Carris is here. Speaker 1: Okay. Do you expect her to be? Speaker 7: I don't believe so. I know she had a conflict tonight, but she did provide a, a letter requesting the, the reappointment, but unfortunately she wasn't Most recently. I, I don't believe she's available for this evening. Speaker 1: This is a routine matter. Every June we reappoint town council. And at this time I'll entertain a motion based on the letter that's in your packet, Speaker 8: Move to approve the reappointment of Murphy Hessey to me and Lehan as our NA Town counsel. Second Speaker 1: Move by Ms.
Slager, seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Speaker 9: Is there a moment for discussion? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes. After, no, go ahead. Okay. Speaker 9: I just wanted to highlight that we, I think we've discussed that we're gonna have maybe some additional help or on their team some additional support in this next appointment. Is that accurate? Speaker 1: W I've had comments or Mr. Erickson and I met with car and they are going to be devoting a little bit more time and there's gonna be more delegation so that what we will be able to in the next coming months, move some
of the things that have been pending onto, onto an agenda for, for us to execute. So yes. Awesome. Speaker 9: Thank Speaker 1: You. Thanks for that clarification. I was in the midst of an all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. Mr. Erickson, could you inform? Yes, thank you. Yeah, Speaker 10: We'll let them know for sure. Speaker 1: Discussion and decision. The first item on the agenda is the presentation of the Na Contributory retirement board chair Michael Rearden and the NCRB actuary. Could I invite Mr. Rearden to come to the podium?
And if you could introduce yourself and your colleague. Speaker 10: Hello everybody, my name is Mike Rearden. I'm the chair of the Natick Retirement Board. This is our longtime actuary For how many years? Speaker 5: 20. Speaker 10: 20 some odd years. I've also been a trustee on the board. This is my sixth term. And going into my 18th year before that, I was on the fin comm briefly. And Kathy Riley is, is our, is our actuary. What I thought I'd do is a lot of new faces here, so I thought I'd throw a little bit of background out there. Not too much. I want to get to Kathy, who is the,
the main event and then maybe give a quick state of the state sort of on the investments, just in round numbers and performance and rankings and stuff. And then we'll get into the actuarial because there's quite a bit of material there. And I wanna make sure we get to the, the, the highlights. Most of it is a recent valuation that we just completed today or yesterday. But a little bit of is forward looking because there is a, there's a lot of partnership that's gonna be required here as we get closer and closer to fully funding this, this obligation.
And it's our, it's the board's goal to have a steady and responsible glide path towards more and more relief for the town's budget. And that that's our, that's one of our main goals. But we also don't wanna leave ourselves in a position where there could be a setback that would be quite harmful to the budget process. So anyways, about in 1988, the state told all the towns that y'all gotta get your act together by in 40 years. And guess what we're, we're almost there.
We're two years away. It's like a mortgage, right? The, the, the appropriation you're back filling a gap over the years that was created by non-con tribes. Five percenters, seven percenters. And now we're, we're probably paying more than our share as if you're a public employee. Congratulations. But, so looking forward, the, you know, as time went on, you had events like 2008, 2022 that created some, some problems with that deadline. The deadline in oh 8 0 9 was moved out to 2040 at the time
I was on the board and we voted not to accept the elongated timeframe not to use it. It's there, we always have it. It's dry powder for us. What, at the time Kathy and her firm calculated that that would've, if we extended the budget to give ourselves relief in the moment, it would've added 75 million in interest extra to the payment schedule. And we just found that untenable. So we, we all agreed to take our medicine and it's paid off.
It really has. Glad to see Mr. Ostroff in the room. 'cause he recruited me way back then. At the time, the, you know, a lot of the, the talk was that maybe we should go into mass prim and let them just handle it through the state. They know they know more than us At the time, we were probably on the brink of receivership as we look back maybe within a even a basis 0.1 year. But we sort of pulled outta that. We decided not to go in the state. And Josh, I'm happy to report that we're 40 million the richer for it.
So it ended up being a good move using what I call more of a belt and suspenders approach to the investment process. And by that I mean we use a, an in investment advisor, or consultant, an institutional consultant. And there've been several over the years. The current one is Duchen out of Connecticut in Chicago, they're great. But also starting in oh nine, just before I got on the board for the first time, we hired what's called an OCIO and not, I'd say maybe less than 10% of the state's boards utilize this approach.
And the nice part about this is they make discretionary decisions on which managers we use in each asset class. And why is this good? This is good because frankly, you know, having worked at the state pension board from oh three to oh eight and covering 88 of the 106 boards, I saw very few that were, that should be calling the shots on which managers they hire, right? They just didn't have the expertise. So since that time, we've had two we're on our second OCIO firm in, in 17 years. So we had one that we just replaced.
One of the reasons that we replaced them is that the firm that we hired has a very strong actuarial investment team. And we saw that our biggest need would be to have, in addition to our excellent in-house actuary an a, an investment team that had a strong actuarial bent so that we could de-risk this plan and provide steady responsible relief to the town. I just have one more, couple more numbers for you then I'm, I'm gonna hand over the microphone to Kathy, but hopefully you all got the performance,
the brief performance booklet. You can see in here, you know, pretty clearly our real benchmark is the state. I mean, we have a benchmark, but the benchmark is the state because that's the default. If you can't beat the state, you should be the, be with the state, right? So, and we've, we've steadily beat them over every time period. As I reported earlier, the reason there's only about, it only goes back to oh eight because that's when fiducia started. And before that there was a hodgepodge of consultants and we could probably pull together, Parrack does track the long-term returns and they're consistent with, with this.
But we, I just don't have the 40 years of data in front of me. I will tell you that I'm, I'm happy to report that the 2025 numbers just came out and they go by calendar year Natick was ranked over a five year period. We ranked number two out of the 106 municipalities and counties at 9.5% per year. And then over the 10 year period, which a longer data set there, we came in number three at 10.18. So we're pretty happy with these numbers. Remember our hurdle rate is 7% to kind
of break even on whether we owe more money. You owe more money or or less money. So anything over seven is a gain, everything is under seven is a gain. But I'm getting into the actuarial realm here. So with that I will, I'll hand it off and you know, I may jump back in if there's any follow up questions or clarifications. Great, Speaker 11: Thank you. Yep. I think you have a short presentation that we put together. So I will just follow along with that. And on page three of the presentation, we talk about the key changes since the prior evaluation.
So we presented the, I presented the prior the 2026 valuation to the board a short while ago. Valuations are done every other year. The last one was done in 2024. So we were capturing the experience for the last two calendar years, 25 and 24 and 25 and making recommendations on a going forward basis. With the valuation, we recommended two key assumption changes. We recommended a reduction in the investment return assumption from 7% to six and three quarters percent. And we recommended an update to the mortality assumption being used in the valuation.
Both of those changes added liability to the retirement system. We also recognized because between the prior valuation and the current valuation, the board approved and town meeting subsequently approved increasing the COLA base from the $13,000 level. That was reflected in the prior evaluation up to ultimately $20,000. It phases in over time the $20,000 cola base is not effective until fiscal 2030. That also added some liability to the retirement system. Overall, the experience in the two years was positive,
but the net impact of the experience, the assumption changes in the cola base is an increase in liability in the, in the increases in liability and increase in unfunded liability. Having said that, in the third bullet, we see improvement in the funded ratios. And we measure funded ratios two ways. One, using what we refer to as the actuarial value of assets where we smooth out market volatility. So we can manage employer contribution volatility on that basis. The funded ratio increased from a rounded numbers, 87 to 85% a modest increase. But on market value, which represents the money in the bank,
the much bigger increase from 83% to almost 92%. So 92% funded on a market value basis. The retirement system is projected to be fully funded in fiscal 2030. This is two years later than the prior evaluation because of the changes that have been made and implemented with this valuation. And it's a key caveat almost with everything we say, if all assumptions are met and there are no changes in, in the plan of benefits or the assumptions on a going forward basis. Have to remember that almost with every one of these numbers that we're looking at, especially as we get closer
and closer to full funding. There are two funding schedules that we prepared for the board, which I'll review with you and tell you which one the board approved. And then we just wanna caution when a system gets to full funding, the goal is to, you know, to keep it at full funding, right? Is the first, is the first goal. And the second goal is to try to manage employer volatility. And that gets really hard as you get to, as you get closer to fully funding and even harder when you get to full funding because of some of the constraints in the ch in the law and depending on what you do with your contribution patterns
as you get closer and closer to full funding. So the board would like, you know, will likely look at various risk de-risking strategies as we get closer to 2030 to, you know, lower risk and manage that contribution volatility. So with that, I'll review with you the two schedules that we put together. The first one is on page four, the presentation, we labeled it funding schedule one. This follows the, the numbers you really wanna look at are in column four there labeled the actuary determined contribution. That's the amount that you need to put set aside each year to fund the benefits that are currently being earned
to reduce the unfunded liability in this, on this schedule by 2030. And the contributions start out at 15.7, almost $15.8 million. And they increase 4% per year until you get to that last year in fiscal 2030, it doesn't require the full 4% increase. The contribution drops to about $13 million. And that 4% increasing schedule is this as follows the pattern that the board has been using for the last several valuations. On the next page we developed a schedule that flattens out those that was that appropriation.
So you can see that appropriation holds steady at 15.76 million for the first three years and then drops ever so slightly to $15.3 million. So we've level funded the appropriation. We remove, remove those 4% increases. But you know, you know, it's kind of pay me now or pay me later because those contributions aren't increasing quite as much then the fiscal 2030 payment is higher than it was on the, on the prior schedule. But it's still relatively a, a flat schedule. 15 seven with a slightly smaller payment in the last year.
Speaker 10: And that is what we voted today. And, and that is one of the levers I refer to for, for, you know, responsible easing of of the appropriations. It was everything we could do. The state basically won't allow a reduction before you're fully funded. But we were allowed to level it and we felt all things being equal that was better than rising the next couple of years. Speaker 11: The two schedules that we looked at, I think of as cliff funding schedules. 'cause when you get to that magic full funding date in 2030, you see that drop down to the normal cost payment down
to about $4 million. That's dangerous when you drop the, your contribution like that because any employer, any volatility and there will be vol, there will be fluctuations even if we de-risk the portfolio, that will hopefully minimize the volatility. But we know that the returns aren't going to be a flat, you know, six, six and a half, six and a quarter percent each and every year there's going to be years where we exceed that. There are year years when it, then it will fall short of that six and a quarter percent. Not to mention the other sort of normal volatility that occurs in a small retirement system such as yours
with retirement pattern salary increases and all that. So on page six we summarize the first two schedules and I call 'em cliffs, you know, label them cliff funding schedule one and two. These are the contributions we looked at before. And you can see the contributions dropping after fiscal 2030 down to that almost $4 million in normal cost payment. And then normal cost continues at, you know, modest increases growing with total payroll growth thereafter. But again, these are the schedules. If all assumptions are met, exactly met and there are no changes in the assumptions
on a going forward basis. One of the things the board will like look at is changing the investment return assumption to reduce risk further and possibly to change the asset allocation to eliminate some volatility. You change the asset allocation, you have to reduce the investment return assumption or you can just reduce it, you know, pro proactively and increase the likelihood of making it. So what I showed in the last column here is what I'm calling a glide path funding schedule. It's an illustration of a glide path schedule. This schedule is like, okay, well what happens if we lower the investment return assumption
by 25 basis points? That's likely to require an extra fif extra year of that $15 million contribution. And then the recommendation would be well to consider some sort of pattern of gliding down closer and closer to normal cost to keep these contributions in your budget so that you don't find yourself short. Once you move to normal cost. It's really, really hard to get those contributions back in. These numbers are an illustration of one set of numbers that may play out The real takeaway, hopefully what you really hear from this discussion is that this has
to be monitored on an annual basis and reset and just, you just need to reset your expectations of what these contributions are gonna look like on a going forward basis. Yeah, Speaker 10: It's very important to note that with a, with a every other year funding evaluation, you really only can rely on the first two numbers, the first two rows after that they're very unreliable. So while this is a depiction of the light at the end of the tunnel, that light is going to be further away than the than it looks. And it's just gonna be natural.
It's, and, and we're gonna be working towards keeping it closer, but it's still gonna move away from us ever so slowly. So we're gonna do everything in our power to reduce the likelihood of a 2008 or a 2022 event. And don't forget if, if the market's up 3% next year, that's a loss of 4% for us. We need to be at seven or above or six and a half wherever we end up. So that is, that's something, you know, if you think, oh well yeah, at least we made 3%. No we didn't, we lost 4%.
So it's, it's a, it's an ongoing battle and there's a lot of variables. And again, the underlying goal for us, all things being equal is to, to kind of provide this relief. But we also want to do so in a responsible manner. There were opportunities to take the easy way out in the past and then when the way passed the town even skipped some of its appropriations and that really hurt that, that's, that's a really bad imagine if you skip paying your mortgage for a year, what that adds to the back end. So we did do that as a town way well before my tenure
and probably anybody that's on the board right now. But yeah, so, and, and Kathy's recommendation will continue to work with and hopefully act comes out with some guidance. 'cause right now they don't have guidance on, on where you ultimately want to be. So we'll be keeping probably closer contact with you all and the finance committee to keep, keep you abreast of what's going on. Speaker 1: Thank you. I wanted to open up for the board for questions, questions
or comments from members of the board, Ms. Ver and then Mr. Evans, Speaker 8: Thank you so much for coming here and congratulations on the wonderful job that you've done over the past 10 years. It's exciting to, to know that our money is, is being well taken care of. I just wanted to understand a little bit more about what the contributions will be like after 2030. Is that something that Parrack will still determine or is it up to the board or is it a negotiation between the retirement board and the town?
How is that amount will, how will that amount be determined? Speaker 10: You wanna take the parrack angle and take Speaker 11: The rest? So yeah, it's, it's based on the value on the, on the valuation that's done. And so the board selects the assumptions that are used. You know, we make recommendations and the board select approves the recommendation or selects the assumptions that are used in the valuation. So it's experience, it's assumption driven. Once put a funding schedule together and the board approves the funding schedule, it has to be paid. But you realize there's, you know, representation of from the town on the board. So there's usually a discussion about
how those contributions are made. That's my experience. Yeah, Speaker 10: The, one of the most difficult things to manage in the investment business and I've been in the investment business for 37 years, is de-risking. And as, as Kathy said, you can do everything right and you can still get a little bit whipsawed in those last couple years. Imagine the situation where we thought we were out of the woods and then this time of year when you, you set you're about to set your budget for next, the next fiscal year, we tell you that no, no
you're not 3.9 million, you're 13.9. That would not be good. Right? So, you know, first order of businesses do no harm, right? For in a lot of professions. You know, the good news here is our investment firm is an expert in de-risking. I worked there for 12 years up until about four years ago. And they're one of the foremost experts on that. They advise Fortune 100 companies on how to de-risk and get out of their liability cleanly. So I felt like that was,
and the board felt like that was the best course of action on the investment side. 'cause these numbers mean we'll all go out the window if, if we have an adverse event. Okay? So that's, that's what we're trying to avoid. We don't have a whole lot of control over where this goes. The actuarial numbers are what they are. We need to lower the risk, which means the rate will follow us down and that will increase the liability and keep us a little bit further away from fully funded in the next few years. So that is an unavoidable consequence of de-risking.
So I think my main message to you all is don't get too excited about the first two schedules because that's not gonna happen. It's going to be better than it is now and it's gonna slowly get down to a very manageable number. But it's not gonna be in four years unless we have crazy good investment years. You know, if we, if we make 25, 30% a year for the next three years, we'll be singing a different tune. But there's gonna be a bad year in here somewhere. It, it happens, it's gonna happen oh 8 22,
there's a couple of flat ones in there too, which would be negative seven for us. So it's just gonna happen and we are at the high point. So my personal opinion, and I wanna scare anybody, but I just wanna be realistic that we're gonna do everything in our power and already have started to de-risk without even, you know, without even having the rate go down a lot. So that's, I hope that answers your question. Speaker 8: It does. Another one. And then, and I do agree, I think that re reducing your rate was, was probably a smart idea to do that. Now, as you probably are aware, one of the things that
has been a a a common saying at town meeting for a very long time is that our pension liability will be fully funded in 2030 and then, then we can start taking some of that money and applying it to our ope liability. Do you still feel like that's a realistic possibility given what you're thinking about potential Speaker 10: Risks? Yeah, no, it's, it's a great goal. And when I was at the state pension fund from oh three to oh eight, I was on a kind of a task force to go talk
to other states about opep. And nobody was talking about opep back then. We eventually took over this tobacco fund and turned it into an opep fund because the state had nothing. They had nothing. They squandered 2 billion in tobacco money and had 300 million left and made that the OPE fund. I don't know where it is today, but it's probably over a billion. And, and I have talked about that over time. I think it's the responsible thing to do. And, and we were talking about that in the meeting earlier with with Todd. I think you will be able to do that. How much and how soon? I couldn't possibly say,
but it is, it is a personal, you know, I, one of my pet projects is to make sure that that is, you're able to do that, which we will just have to see. We really will. But it, but it's, it's a great idea. The bigger question also is where are you gonna keep that money? You, when it's smaller, I would have it at the state 'cause they have scale. I would get it out of in-house as soon as possible. Some states have the retirement or you know, municipalities have the retirement board do it. It's probably too small for us. We won't be able to get that scale. You can't commingle 'em.
So you have to keep them separate. There's usually a mirroring process and it would probably be too small. We could do it for sure, but I would recommend sending it to the state for a, you know, a decade at least. And if it gets to a point where you feel like you can do a better job, bring it back. Speaker 3: That's good to know. Yep. Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Speaker 3: Thank you Madam Chair. Couple things, first of all, thank you Mike and Kathy, nice to meet you, Mike, except beyond the telephone calls that we've had. So thank you for being here. I just have comments.
Linda asked two questions that I was going to ask so I won't belabor those. It is very helpful to me for you spelling out not only where we're at today, but to, to spell out the, the pitfalls and and realism that we're, we need to look at and, and not allow us to look at this as, for lack of a better term, taking a victory lap when it, when there's a, a great deal of uncertainty. Yeah. Still in the pipeline. I, I noted your comment about de-risking
and I think that that is of extremely important thing to focus on. So I appreciate your, your, your focus on that. And I think, you know, the one figure that jumped out was the decision not to take the extension to 2040 and saving the town $75 million in the process. And, and when you think about that, you know, that that number just jumps out and I hope people at home heard that number. If not, I'm repeating it for that reason.
That was a huge savings to the town and the basis for it was sound experienced decision making. So thank you for that. And just the last point is, excuse me, allergies is, is the proactive things that you're doing to, to, you know, let us un help us understand that at each point we're gonna have a shifting landscape and let's figure, let's reconvene and figure out, you know, what's changed, what's different, what's, what assumptions have to change
and all those sorts of things. So in my mind, this was a half hour or so, maybe a little more with the pre-work, but certainly more for you. But for me it was extremely helpful to give, give me a good picture of where we're at today and where we need to be in the future and what's, what are our reasonable expectations and what they should be in the future. So thank you. You're welcome Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 10: Yeah, well di ditto to all that as far as the, the commentary. I really appreciate it. It's a very helpful presentation helping me understand it.
And it's nice to meet, although I think maybe, maybe I saw you at before, I don't know. Anyway, I actually just have one question that's actually more for administration I think, which is just, I was just curious in when we see the five-year forecast that you guys present to us, what assumption is that based on in terms of looking at like these different funding, these different funding plans in here? Like, you know, there's like schedule one, schedule two, like, or is it based on like an earlier iteration of, of this? Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll look to thank you for the question. I'll look to Aria a little bit, but in reality
this is my first time. We haven't really seen much of these schedules right. Are to date, Speaker 3: Not this Speaker 7: Version, not this version. So we've been using prior versions of the schedules. We have been keeping largely what the prior versions were indicating up until about 2030, which was largely similar numbers. I wouldn't say they're the same because this is updated of course. Yeah. Very similar numbers. And then we were reflecting a, the cliff but with the understanding that we would be shifting those resources to Opep and that's where in the next several months we wanna have the, the conversation with the board about that policy decision. Yeah. You know, 'cause there's different approaches you can
take there and, and not knowing because as indicated, you really have to wait until the year or two before the actual year that you're, you're looking at to know what the, what the true outcome will be. You know, taking a more conservative approach to some of this from a policy perspective would be helpful as we look at forecasting out five years, which we do multiple times a year. Right, Speaker 10: Okay. It's not gonna sneak up on you. Speaker 7: No, no. Speaker 10: You'll have Speaker 7: Plenty of time. Couple Speaker 10: Years warning when in that money. Speaker 7: But to the point, it's not as if we're gonna have a panacea of $10 million in our pockets overnight. Right. That's just not the realistic expectation that we,
I know we, the town administration are not expecting, but we do need to make sure that we can plan accordingly and build some risk tolerance into whatever the portfolio or program or policy is that we have going forward. You know, one approach for example is you just keep it relatively speaking level funding, but you have the delta between what you need in retirement to go to OPE and then that can fluctuate annually depending on what you need in retirement. That's a, that's an approach we would need to model that out based on what we get from the actuarial study coming up in the coming years. Okay. But it'll definitely be, we'll we'll have several years before,
before that for us to really understand what the true numbers are gonna be. Speaker 10: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I mean I do understand the thing about it being every two years and that, you know, I just wanted to to kind of see how that, if this dramatic, like does this dramatically change anything within that five year? And it sounds like the answer is, is no, even though it might slightly change that in the Yeah. Speaker 7: Dramatically. No, it still goes back to that policy decision Yeah. Around because there will be some reduction. Yeah. So what does the town choose to do with that reduction
from the pension liability? The policy has always been to shift it over to Opep as noted. That can still be the policy. I just wanna make sure that, that that policy is, is still the policy and it sounds so that when we do our modeling for future years, it's, it's consistent with the policy. Okay. Speaker 10: Thank, thank you very much and thank you guys again Speaker 1: Ms. Pope, did you have any questions? No, I, Speaker 12: What stopped you Speaker 1: Mr. Rearden? Yes. A resident sent a question in around noon today. I didn't see it until I was preparing for this meeting and I'll, I'll make it concise. Can the board and the finance committee receive a detailed
listing of portfolio holdings? Would be interested in reviewing the actual portfolio and looking at some basic risk analysis and market sensitivity projections, especially in light of the recommendation to review de-risking strategies to lower risk and manage contribution volatility. And then the follow-up question is what data does Natick Select board regularly receive and has there been previous discussion or re regarding previous discussion regarding receiving the detailed holdings on a regular schedule? I don't think we've had that conversation. Speaker 10: No, but the fiduciary report is quite detailed
and I think that would be more than anybody in the community would be capable of digesting in a meaningful way. Okay. List of holdings certainly, although I think state law prohibits dissemination of some private holdings. I'm not sure if that's still in place but I'd have to Speaker 1: Check. Could you repeat or explain the last part of that? I didn't understand. Speaker 10: I think private equity has slightly different disclosure rules. Ah, a protected Speaker 1: Right. Understood. Speaker 10: From my, my days at prim now that was many years ago, so, no, I think Speaker 1: You're correct.
Speaker 10: So yeah. And so that was always a bit of a fight. It's, it's a two hour advantage to keep those under our, under our hat. But yeah, no it's, there's nothing that's secret or in fact like, you know, as you kind of went through my numbers, I'm more than happy to show what we're doing. There's a couple of things in there that we're doing that not many other towns are doing it that have already created less risk and a more, more better risk adjusted return, let's just say less reliance on the stock market. Speaker 1: Appreciate that. At this point I'll open it to questions from people in the room.
Mr. Sidney, if you could come to the podium and Speaker 13: Good to see you again. So I, Richard Sydney precinct eight town meeting member and chair of the audit advisory committee. I have three questions that I wanted to ask you guys. And the first one, and I I just want to kind of be cautious if some member of the public like me wanted to know who the board members were, how do we find out? Because I can't see it on the website. Speaker 10: Yeah, the website, the website is being rebuilt. There have been some instances in public retirement
land where cybersecurity has been a major issue and there are some, some precautions being taken there. I can, I don't have a full answer for you, but I can get back to you on Okay. When you could do that. Alright. You can just call me and ask me. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. Speaker 13: The second, the second question I have is if I wanted to see the meeting minutes of your meetings, where are they posted? Speaker 10: Again? I'd have to get back to you on that 'cause I think the website's the answer but, or you could request them from the office. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 13: Thank you. And my last question is, I understand you had a
site visit from parrack this week and I was wondering if there were any findings or action items that came out of that? Speaker 5: Anything about that? Speaker 11: I don't know anything about it, but when Parex Parex audits are always public. So when they're finished their audit, it will be on their website. Speaker 10: If it was, if it was this week, I'm sure we, I'm sure the staff doesn't even know the results yet. They better wr write 'em up and usually have a follow up period. Okay. Thank you. But I can, I can get, I can take that away too. Speaker 1: Mr. Reardon, could I ask you to have the retirement board send any findings or para or recommendations or action items to the board when you do have an outcome from para
Speaker 10: Rec? Sure. Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions from members of the board? I mean from members of the members of the public in the room? Speaker 5: I online. Any online? No. Nope. Speaker 10: Nobody's got their hand raised. Speaker 1: Okay. I hope this is the first of maybe annual updates. I think this is really helpful for the board and for the public to know the great work you're doing in terms of the return on investment, looking forward to having a productive, transparent and good working relationship between the board, the finance committee, and the
contributory retirement board going forward. Speaker 10: Yep, of course. And thank you for having us. We have always done these annually, but got away from it and COVID COVID kind of yeah. Screwed us all up and probably could have come back to the habit faster, so my apologies. But that's okay. We will absolutely make this a, a more regular and as I I pledge to Todd, we we're gonna stay in better communication with the FIN com as well. Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Is this a good time of the year? If you were to pick, if we were to put this on our calendars Speaker 10: In, in terms of knowing what the valuations are for you For sure. Is this, is this even a little early, but Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay. So we'll, we'll kind of shoot for the end June, beginning of July. Yeah. Speaker 10: June's better. Speaker 1: June's better. Yes. Everybody's traveling. Well thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Good Speaker 10: To see everyone. Thank Speaker 11: You. Speaker 1: Next item on the agenda is the water and sewer abatement appeal. Arthur Arvin, if you're in the room, could you, Mrs. Arvin, if you could come to the podium. So for the public's benefit, this is a continuation of a water and sewer abatement appeal. That was, that was heard early in the year and we asked for additional information and since then the app appeal,
the abatement appeal has included a third billing cycle. Yes. So I will turn it over to you if you could. Okay. The, the only problem is I need to speak into the mic please. Oh, okay. I've been there for, I Speaker 14: Mean for a long time I never had this problem before and I already got a diploma. They checked everything. I don't have no leaks or anything and it's just amazing because for my, sometimes I used to pay three, like last May was 360 6 and, and now it's, they gave me a bill for $202,325
and for me it's 1080. It's something wrong. And they say it's nothing wrong with the mirror. I don't understand that. From 400 to five six or whatever it was before all the times the water and it became $2,325 and then the other bill was 2080. I mean it's too much. And it's the same thing. We don't do anything different. Speaker 1: So this is a, a a two family rental property. Yeah. So you do not reside on on site. Speaker 14: It's, it's two. It's, they've been there forever.
Speaker 1: They've been there forever. Yeah. Okay. So you have tenants, I'll open it up to the board for questions located in your packet is a, you'll see the note from the plumber and some other things. Mr. Mr. Evans. Speaker 3: Yeah, I just wanted to verify that one of the things when we asked for more information was a receipt from a plumber that certified that the work that that everything had been checked in both apartments or, or are parts of the two family. And it wasn't clear to me,
we had a blanket statement that from the plumber that said everything's okay. But did that include both apartments? Did he check both apartments? Speaker 14: Yes. Yes. Okay. Speaker 3: Alright. That was my big question, Speaker 1: Ms. Pope. And then Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 9: Thank you Madam Chair. I'm sorry. So on the bill, there are two very specific areas of spike and did your, have your tenants said that anything has changed? Speaker 14: No. Speaker 9: Did you ask them about
these two specific times? 'cause there's one, it's, Speaker 14: I asked them, they, they haven't done anything different. They haven't seen anything different. I don't know. Speaker 9: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 14: And they've been there for years, you know, but the, it's, the amount is big, big difference from 2,300 something, you know what I mean? Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 10: So if, if I'm, if I'm reading it correctly, including the, the third bill that we got the, the email about Yeah. Like it, it, it looks to me like it did go back down
mostly to, it Speaker 14: Did went down a little bit, but it's still high. I never paid that much over. Speaker 10: Yeah, well the Speaker 14: 12,000, Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah. It's still high, but it's okay. Well I guess my question is sort of if, you know, if it, if it's gone up and then it's gone kind of back down, you know, and I guess this is really a question maybe for John or somebody, but like if, you know, have you seen that kind of pattern before without a, Speaker 14: That Speaker 10: Never happened without anything being identified? That never happened before? Well, I meant like in general like another, yeah, no.
So you see what I'm asking? Yeah. Yeah. So typically, and you can actually see the, I don't know if it's in the packet, but staff in the office went through and they looked at the daily usage and you could see spikes on daily usage over that period of time when it was high. Yeah. And then it stopped and it went away. So in those instances, and I don't know specifically 'cause we're not in the house, we don't know what happened. Yeah. But sometimes that could be a, a leak in a spigot outside that has water that's running. It could be a running toilet based on I think
what we saw on the hourly usage that was in there. Likely something was turning on, maybe not shutting off and then that was potentially the issue. I can't say for sure 'cause I don't know, but that could be a possibility. Speaker 7: And that's indicative of past, not in this particular property. Yeah. But in other examples that we've seen where we've seen these types of spikes, it's usually attributed to like a leaky fo to toilet or a faucet or something that the homeowner is aware of and is able to fix. They just fixed it. You know, maybe it was they were away for a weekend
and it happened over the weekend and it was a toilet that was running over the weekend or something like that. But usually they can at least identify what it was. Yeah. And usually it's one of those things that John mentioned, it's a leaky toilet, it's a leaky faucet, it's an outdoor spigot. It's something like that that can be identifiable and then be fixed. Speaker 10: Yeah, I guess that's kind of my con I mean, going into just talking about it, like, I guess that's kind of my concern with this one is just that in, you know, and I don't have as much experience with the, these abatement appeals as you guys, but you know, in, in seeing these, usually they're, it's like that where they're like, oh, there was a leaky toilet or whatever
and it caused this and now it's fixed. And here, I mean, it did go back down. So that, that kind of maybe means it's been fixed, but I, I just, I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm not sure about it In a situation where there's not a clearly identified Cause Speaker 14: It was nothing there that you leak. I keep checking with my tenants and it was, it's nothing wrong. Speaker 10: Yeah. I'm not, I'm not debating with you. Speaker 14: Right. And I even, I didn't trust them and that's why I, I get a diploma to go check everything. Yeah. Speaker 10: So I appreciate that. Yeah. Speaker 14: And he told me, I know that's why it's, he couldn't find nothing. So Yeah. How can that happen? I mean, it's not a little
Speaker 10: That's my question. That's my question. I, well, yeah, I mean the, yeah. And I assume we've, we've checked like the meters and stuff on our end, right? That sort check. Yeah. Correct. Speaker 1: Ms. Pope, do you have any questions or comments? I'll go last Speaker 14: And the biggest one is like on January, I mean the last three months on the year 25, the biggest one. Speaker 1: So here, here's my concern. The bill is in January, the plumbers, the submission from the plumber is really incomplete. The plumber went out five months later. There's not a bill for his services.
So I don't know that this is, Speaker 14: Well this, I met him here and he went over and, and check and he says to me, it's okay. He says to me, when you need something, I'll come over. And then he didn't charge me anything. Speaker 1: I, I find the, the, the plumbing documentation not to be adequate for me to be able to support a vote, to sustain an appeal. Speaker 14: He checked everything Speaker 1: That he did. I, I understand he said that. What I'm saying to you is the documentation is not such that I can rely on it to, for me personally, I'm not speaking for the board, for me to rely on this, to Grant, it says that he went to nine Florence.
The, the first, it's a bid memo. So it's, it's not, it's not a bill. I'm glad he didn't charge you, but it should say no charge. This individual's billing or his plumbing business is run out of his home, which is fine, it's a home-based business, but it's an incomplete assessment of what I'm looking for it. The water went somewhere. He said that he, he went to both apartments. He found no leak in the plumbing system. But when we look at daily usage and we see water that's discharging from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM on a particular day,
and just, this was on one day. I don't remember what the day it was. We don't know because we're not there. But what makes sense is somebody not taking a six hour shower. What makes sense is that somebody went to the bathroom at two o'clock and the, the plunger at the bottom that sits there was probably loose and it direct, it leaked water until eight o'clock when somebody got up and flushed the toilet again. That's very, very common. I don't know that that happened. And those, those, those plumbing, you know, I've replaced mine. I've had a leak, I've had high water bills because of that. But the problem was in, in January you came here before the board for an appeal.
This individual was in the audience and said, he'll come over and take a look at it. He went over and took a look at it and said, wrote what it is that he wrote. I find the, the documentation to be incomplete to support for me an appeal. And I would ask, please, the audience members to not have conversations. It's very distracting up here. It's also picked up on, on the microphones and that means people at home may not be hearing us properly. So I would just ask to show just a bit of respect to the board and your neighbors. Mr. Evans. Speaker 3: I just wanna follow up on your point on the documentation from the, the plumber.
What we really need this person to do and is to, to go to each of the apartments, you know, however many number of toilets there are. If there, if he sees a potential problem of a flapper getting stuck, as an example, fix it. If he sees, if he goes outside and sees a spigot that is old and possibly prone to not being shut off, completely fix it. Right? That is gonna save you money in the long
term, number one. Number two, when we grant an appeal, if we grant a, an abatement, that's a one time thing. If it recurs, we can't grant you an debate that's, that's, that's what our restrictions are. That's the fairness to other rate payers. So we need to be very, very sure that this problem is not gonna recur. And it's in your interest to make sure that this will not recur. Speaker 14: Well, like I said, I've been there for too many years
and I never had any problem like that. Speaker 3: Well, the problem is occurring now. I'm not being argumentative. The problem, the facts are that the problem is recurring. Now, that is why you're seeing elevated bills. Your plumber has no explanation for this. I don't know if he just, you know, maybe he, he got there on a good day. What I would suggest that he do is take the tank off. Take a look. Speaker 14: What do you mean by good day? He went in, he checked everything. Speaker 3: No, he did not check everything. I guarantee you, if you are having a leak somewhere,
it's unlikely that he, that he checked everything. Speaker 14: I was there when he checked everything, he checked the bottle. Speaker 3: Did he take off the Speaker 1: Tanks? I, I, I, I'd like to restrictive. Now, did Speaker 14: He open the thing and he checked, you know, Speaker 3: I'm not buying it. Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs, Speaker 10: To, to, to, to Mr. Evans' point, and, and kind of to your point as well, would it be an option? I, I realize this is very dragged out already, but would it be an option for us to continue this further and allow the applicant an opportunity to go back to that plumber or another plumber
and get a more thorough writeup that says to Mr. Evans point, checked every toilet, or replaced the plungers in every toilet or some, you know, something to that effect. Would that, would that be an option? Speaker 1: It's an option. I'd like to know what date so that we can watch the water flow from that date on those bills onward over a period of three weeks and see if there is a change Speaker 10: On what date the, the plumber comes. Speaker 1: Yeah. So the plumber comes on on July 8th. Yeah. The plumber does a thorough inspection. So for example, Speaker 10: This one is dated, but yeah, it's, Speaker 1: It's it's date. Right. But the, yeah, the appeal, the,
the problem started in January, right. So five months we have somebody who comes out and takes a look at it. I had a really high water bill when my plumber came out. He did a dye test that's standard. Yeah. Did a dye test, you know, wrote it up. I did not file an appeal or an abatement, because that would be really tacky Sure. For the select board. I'm not gonna come, I'm not coming before this board. Oh no. I'm not gonna come before this board and ask you to. So, yeah. But, but, so I'm relying on my experience of having gone through this and what my plumber of 15 years did was he wrote up exactly what he did
and said the die test, I checked the plunger, this is what needed to be replaced. There's still an issue that we can't narrow down, but that's, Speaker 10: Yeah. Well, and yeah, so Speaker 1: We can do that. We can, we can put it out again, it's been on an agenda four or five times. I, I'll take a motion either way, but I think we're at the point now where we need to take a motion. Okay, well, or a series of motions. Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I would, I mean, I would make that motion. I would just say that, you know, from my perspective, like I kind of agree that it would be a bad idea to grant the abatement. Now I, however, I think I, I think denying it given,
you know, this is, this is it, it, you know, it's, it's, it's thousands of, I mean it's, I I, I'm trying to add up, but yeah, it would be like, it would be like, you know, it's over a thousand dollars. It's a very significant sum to someone and you know, I think she's not a plumbing expert. So it's, you know, the fact that she, from her perspective, she did get a plumber and, you know, it didn't, the documentation's not great and I understand that. But I would, I would be inclined to give it another, you know, another chance to get, to get what we're, what we're looking for. So I guess on that note, I would, I would make a motion to
continue the, this hearing until, and I guess we could figure out a date for what that would, what would make sense for that. I would Speaker 1: Suggest July 22nd, Mr. Speaker 7: It is not a hearing one. You can choose to just, not just make a decision tonight and then it can come back whenever, whenever, whenever they're ready. But Speaker 1: I'd like to have it for a date certain, Speaker 7: But you can certainly do that as well. Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason for that is because I, I want, I don't want this on the agenda in September and we're looking at thousands more dollars Yeah. Of things that haven't Speaker 10: Been. Yeah, that's fair. Well then I guess I would just, I mean, not to continue the hearing 'cause it's not a,
to your point, not a hearing, but I would, I would make a motion that we take no action tonight, but hear this again on July. I'm sorry, what was the date that you said? July 22nd. July 22nd. Speaker 1: Because that gives us an opportunity for, for a month's worth of having a plumber come out promptly and then looking at usage over two to three weeks Yeah. Afterwards to see if there is something. Speaker 10: Yeah. And with the plumber having the duct, you want me to Speaker 14: Bring the plumber again? Speaker 1: I do not want you to bring the plumber to the house. Yes. Speaker 10: To the house. Yeah. So the idea would be to bring a plumber to the house and have them write up kind of the steps
that they took in terms of looking, you know, to, to Mr. Evans' point. And Mr, do you Speaker 14: Wanna write everything down so I can give it to Speaker 9: That was what I was gonna say. To give her directives on what this plumber needs to come back with this plumber is, that's fair. He's a native based business, says that he lives here, says that he has certificates with the town. So I think there needs to be a directive as to what we're looking for before she goes back and does this again. Speaker 3: Can I just, just interject hypothetical, which is, we've had abatements where we've had plumbers
invoice that, that spells out in detail. Would it be useful to provide an example, maybe a redacted example of what that looks like 'cause to, to Ms. Pope's point that might show what, what we're looking for, Speaker 1: Ms. Walsha, Speaker 8: I, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna take a little contrary approach here. I feel like as somebody who's a landlord, the minute you knew that there was a problem, you should have had somebody come in and, and actively look at your units. I mean, it's having someone
that you just met at a meeting come by and, and say it was okay. I I am having a hard time feeling like you, you're taking care of this problem properly. I am usually incredibly sympathetic when it comes to these rebates because anyone can have a mistake and something can happen and we don't wanna penalize people for that. But this is a little different situation because you are the landlord and, and I, and I feel, Speaker 14: And I check when I Speaker 8: Get the, excuse me, please, please don't interrupt. And, and I just feel like you haven't really done your job
as a steward of the property. And, and so, you know, my, if my colleagues agree to go ahead and, and give you another chance to have a plumber, that's fine. But I'm not so inclined. Speaker 14: Like I say, when I got that, I went and I checked with my tenants and I checked everything myself and I, I didn't see anything wrong. Speaker 1: So, Speaker 14: And then I went to the water department, they told 'em to, Speaker 1: I understand the understand what, what I'm going to do because we have a very, very busy agenda. I'm just gonna, right now leave this for board discussion. I'm sympathetic to what both Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Pope have said.
I think that a professional plumber is going to know. And I'm reluctant to ask staff to go back and look at past, I mean, go back through past appeals and find a bill and mark it up and, and send it off and send it by email and bring this to somebody and this is what we want. So I, that's kind of where I am, but I'm happy to vote. Cody's motion. Yeah. Yes. Mr. Speaker 3: Before the motion, can I ask a question? Is there an email that you can be reached at? Because I, I know Yes sir. This is all handwritten, so Yes sir.
The, the reason I'm asking is there's a app, a free app from Natick that monitors your water usage on a daily basis. I think it's, I always forget, I'm back on, is it Water 360 now? Speaker 1: It's my 360. Speaker 3: My 360 Thank you. Water smart. My 360. Okay. You can register to that and that will give you information on the daily usage of each of those properties. Right. It'll send you, if you have a cell phone, you can get an alert.
If you have a email address, you can get an alert. You can do both if you want. Right. It monitors your usage and if you see a spike then you know that something is still wrong. Right. I think that might, so Speaker 14: If I give them my, they're gonna send me how much it, it's every Speaker 3: Day. Send send me an email. My name is in, in na bEvans@natickma.org. But Speaker 14: I don't know how to do all Speaker 1: That stuff that that's okay. But Billy Walsh can do that. Speaker 14: I'm not that smart stuff. Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah. Bill
Speaker 1: Walsh has, Billy Walsh has some contact information, has notified her of the meetings. This has been on two agendas that we've had to move forward. So least I'll ask Billy Walsh to get in touch with you for the information from the water department can help set you up with my 360 so that you get alerts. Yep. I get alerts about every other day that I've gone over my usage. So it's very, Speaker 3: It works 'cause if I do a, a bunch of laundry, I get it over a alert. Okay. So, 'cause I have it set left. Speaker 1: So we have a motion, the motion is to, to continue this matter until July 22nd.
And in the interim you'll get in touch, you'll get in touch with Billy Walsh, he'll set you up on my 360 and you'll get in touch with a plumber. And a plumber should be able to document exactly what he's done. And I'd also like him to say that this was at no cost because normally a plumber charges and I would like to know that this was at no cost. Speaker 3: I'll be good. I'll second. Speaker 1: So that was, I, I restated Mr. Jacob's motion. Yeah, I think you're accurate please. Okay. And it was seconded by Mr. Bruce. It is early for Mr. Bruce, but it is seconded by Mr. Bruce.
14. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm opposed. It's 4 1 1. No. Yeah, three. Okay. So three two. Linda and I are opposed. And it was a three, two motion. Thank you. Speaker 5: Next Speaker 1: Item on the agenda is the main street improvement project report. So to set expectations, what we're going to be doing is hearing from Mr. Morgan who is going to introduce members of the main street improvement working group and they, the chair of the working group will present the report and tonight's discussion by the board and by members of the public will be limited tonight
to the report if we could kind of focus on what the report says and then if we have time we'll take additional comments from members. And this is not the last time we're going to be discussing this, so I don't want someone to feel like I didn't get to talk, but I did write three emails and I have other questions. There are go. There is going to be another meeting where this is going to be on, on, on the agenda. Mr. Mor. Mr. Griffiths. Speaker 15: Thank you Madam Chair. I just wanted to ask, is it possible for me to share my screen? Yeah, Speaker 5: I'll make you close in a second. Morgan, you gotta do it from here.
Speaker 15: All right, so I guess I'll go ahead and get started and then share my screen once that comes up. So my name is Morgan Griffiths. I am the Transportation and Economic Development Planner for the Town of Natick Tonight. I'm very pleased to introduce the main street working group. Should look down Morgan. Oh great. Okay. I'll just go ahead Speaker 5: And Speaker 15: There we go. So I specifically want to recognize the members of the working group who are here with us tonight and who volunteered to speak on their perspective. So we have Jason Mancuso, the working group chair and COO
and CFO of Scape and main summer LLC and co-owner of Planted Collective. We have Gary Stookey, owner of Ooky Jewelers. We have Heather Rockwood, executive director of the Natick Center Cultural District and the Natick Center Associates. We have Nancy North Graves a resident. We have Kevin Keen, a resident, and we have Maria McMorran a residence. So over the past few months, the entire committee has put in an immense amount of time and care into evaluating the proposed hybrid concept for the main street corridor. Tonight they will walk you through the process they followed
and present the final vote they took on the hybrid concept as well as some commentary on that vote. So with that I'll hand things over to Jason to walk us through the working group process and votes and we'll be happy to take your questions and feedback afterwards. Thank you. Speaker 5: Alright, Speaker 13: Good evening, I'm Jason Mancuso. So for the agenda, if you want to go to the next slide, I'm going to review the working groups. Basically what we were asked to look at, we're gonna go over the report on the hybrid concept and then add a little bit of color as to what
that vote means. So the working group was asked to review the main street improvement project's, hybrid concept, share our feedback and vote on whether or not to endorse that concept or revised version of that, and ultimately provide a report along with the results of that vote. And then there's a link to what that, the full written version of the report. In total, there were 15 members of the working group, nine of which were residents. You can see their names up on on the screen
In terms of the process. Oh yeah. We've met on several occasions including a public forum that was held on April 16th. Several members did attend that public forum and then the outcome of that process resulted in some design refinements, a formal vote, and then there's also member commentary for the board consideration as as part of that vote. And then you can follow the hyperlink to the, to the minutes. Overall over the course of all of those meetings, there was a couple of key themes that kept on coming up.
First was funding pathways. There's obvious some considerations around whether or not to include components would allow either TIP funding or mass works. We did learn that Mass Works funding gives the town more flexibility, but at a lower funding cap compared to tip. We also went through bicycle infrastructure and safety where we went through, you know, where conflict points are, where it might be a little dangerous for bikes to cross as well as for pedestrians to get from parking spaces into businesses. We focused on operations
and snow removal learning from the town that there could be potentially a big impact from a budgetary standpoint for snow removal and maintenance depending on which version moves forward. And then there was a concern from the businesses around deliveries where does, you know, where do trucks turn as well as emergency access in case there was, you know, an emergency emergency in one of the buildings along Main Street. Ultimately though, the biggest theme that came across during all of our discussions is that even when we disagreed on the overall hybrid concept,
there was broad agreement around Main Street needing meaningful investment and that just simply repaving and milling should not be the answer going forward. Our feedback was taken into account, so there were changing changes made to parking. Originally there was, I believe it was called reverse angled parking. That has since been reverted back to how the parking is now. We changed the direction of the proposal for Court Street, basically reversing the one way, so it would be easier for
delivery trucks to be able to actually navigate and make the turns. We eliminated a crosswalk on Pond Street to kind of help keep that flow of traffic going. And then also kind of simplified the bike navigation. These changes were made, but they didn't resolve all the concerns that we had in the group based off of where it was in the overall design process. Some of those answers just couldn't be made yet, was our understanding. The motion is up on the screen.
Ultimately the vote was eight in favor and seven opposed. Ultimately, the vote to endorse the hybrid concept really should be viewed as a recommendation to continue the process and not as a full agreement with every element in that design plan as it stands currently. To add a little bit more color to that, we have members both online and in the room representing the opposing viewpoints. At this point, I'll turn it over to Kevin to go first and then we'll move to Nancy and kind of go back
and forth as, as needed. Kevin? Speaker 16: Yes. Hello. I can hear you. Greetings. Great, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity and I, and thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. It was, I I really appreciate the really vigorous democratic process that occurred in, in sort of in the vigorous debate that that did occur here. And, and, and I'll emphasize my, my yes vote as a, as a, as a NAIC resident and as a frequent person who does actually I'm a, I'm a lifelong cyclist and I commute year round by bicycle.
So I'm, I'm very experienced in, in bike lanes and using bicycles as transportation. And, and, and I voted yes because the current design of the downtown, the main street downtown corridor is in no way up to, up to standards of, of the, of of modern urban planning and engineering, which, which uses the concept of the complete street high philosophy where you have three distinct lanes of travel, a lane for pedestrians, a lane for cyclists, and a lane for cars. What we currently have is a, is a, is a, a distinct lane
for pedestrians and then we have bikes that have to and cars, but then the bikes have to sort of choose and half of them go on the pedestrian lane and half of them go on the car lane. And, and that's a substandard design and that's something that, that we can, and the, the engineering techniques and, and the, and the plan does try to fix that. We, we think that there are going, we agree that there are going to be some pain points there. They're mentioning here on snow removal and deliveries and, and, and you know, emergency trucks, et cetera. But we think those are fixable. Those are, we, I'm gonna ask the, the select board
to think long term and to think beyond the short term pain points and the long term. This is, this is considered to be a 25 year project between now and the next time we might do a meaningful upgrade to Main Street. And, and, and the goal is to bring it up to standards of where modern urban planning would have it. And and we appreciate your consideration on that. So thank you very much. Speaker 5: Thank you Mr. Keen. I'll turn it over to Nancy. She, one line she's also on line. Alright. Speaker 17: Okay. I got unmuted.
I dunno if you wanna on camera me 'cause I can go on video if possible, but she can do herself. I am Nancy. I am Nancy North Graves. I am a resident of, let me see if I can do that. Nope, can't on video. Speaker 5: You should be able to. Yep, there you go. She's the cohos. Speaker 17: Am I there? Hi guys. All right, now I gotta find my script. Sorry. So I'm Nancy North Grace. I'm a resident of Natick and I was pleased to be selected as a resident representing the residents and taxpayers on the Main Street working project,
the working group committee during our re meetings. So I had the opportunity to share my perspectives and concerns throughout the entire process as a resident and taxpayer of Natick. I actually voted no to move forward with the hybrid design concept as it was presented for the following reasons. I believe it'll have a, a negative impact on the downtown businesses during construction in many of the public meetings and forums and by email to the select board, many business owners in down Main Street had expressed significant opposition to the scope
of the proposed project due to construction disruptions to daily operations, which could possibly negatively impact their revenue. And that there was no evidence shown that the completed project would effectively address any of their primary concerns when they were met with back in October of 2023 or contribute to any increased economic activity to their businesses. I, I find with the proposed hybrid project with the bike lanes situated between parked cars
and the sidewalks and segments four and five, which are already heavily congested, the plan would force families with children, seniors, disabled persons, and other pedestrians from exiting their cars. They would have to cross a five foot bike lane and a couple of feet of buffer on either side to reach the safety of the sidewalk. I think that could increase the potential of many bike versus pedestrian incidents. And this als this project actually has a major financial impact on the town and the taxpayers. While it's expected to be funded by grants,
it remains unclear whether the tip grant will fully or only partially cover the estimated $11 million costs, leaving the towns responsible for any unknown amounts. And we do know through many discussions with the different departments that the requirement to this plan requires that utility lines get buried underground segments one, two, and possibly three, I forgot. And which would bring on an additional quo additional cost, which I quote from the select board questions document could easily cost a few million dollars.
The DPW also express that cost could be up to $250,000 per year for ongoing maintenance and snow removal. And this actually, this two 50 would be on top of any unknown or underestimated DP W expenses that would be associated with snow removal and maintenance of the 9 27 Rose Kennedy Greenway project. Once that construction is complete, all these added costs fall on the taxpayers and they produce place a heavier burden on residents,
particularly seniors and low those with lower incomes. Given the town's fi current financial, I believe now's not the time Speaker 2: I want tell her she's frozen a couple times. Speaker 1: Nancy, you're freezing a couple times and I wanna turn off her. You may wanna turn off your video. And the last thing we heard was referenced to the town's financial financial situation. I didn't touch her. She's still there. That's not Nancy. She's still there. You can text her. Speaker 7: She's still co-host. She can, Speaker 17: I'm here. Oh, what happened? Speaker 18: You disappeared. You froze. Speaker 17: I's just gonna text you. Crappy, crappy,
sorry, wifi. Alright, let me go back. I'm gonna jump back to during the working group meetings, I would've preferred a smaller scale approach that would accommodate all users of Natick Center and be less expensive to implement and maintain. I thought maybe that this limited bike accommodation plan might be a good compromise cost-wise and to possibly minimize disruption to businesses and residents. But the total construction of costs still appear to be just as high. The $11 million and the same additional costs I outlined above still remain.
And not to mention just disruption to daily life with the reintroduction of the reverse angle parking. I also wanna mention that given that after the override, the select board outlined in a memo dated March 25th, 2025, their commitment to review financial policies and to to seek cost savings and better manage the town's budget. I urge the select board members of the select board to proceed with a plan that meets the immediate needs of Main Street and consider other options when
the town actually has the budget to fund them properly. Thank you. Speaker 19: Thank you. Ms. North Groves. Speaker 17: You said I was a co-host. Do I have to take that? Give that back? Nope, Speaker 7: I'll take it back when, when due. Speaker 17: Thank you. Appreciate it. Speaker 19: Good evening. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Could you pull the mic a little closer? Okay. Thank you. Is that good? Yeah. Okay. So good evening. My name is Maria McMorran. I am a resident of Natick and I'm also recently had the pleasure of serving on this working group and also the net zero committee here in town
and the Memorial School Building Committee. I'm an architect as well, and so I have a strong interest in things related to design and the town. I'd like to leave you with three main thoughts regarding why I supported the hybrid plan. First is, I think we all want to think long term about this project, main Street needs repair. We know that this is an opportunity for us to go beyond just a simple milling and repair of, of the main street of the downtown corridor
and do something that will enhance this place as it already is. So think about this as a place for people and what we can do to support that. So I think the fact that there are potentially outside resources available to help support the development of this place and the amenities that can support the various residents and businesses that use Main Street and downtown is an important consideration. The second thing is, this is one piece in a larger puzzle in terms of the town planning.
So the town has adopted the master plan, the 2030 plus master plan as, as well as the net zero action plan, both of which promote the, the support and the development of multiple modes of transportation. So we have the recent improvements to the transit station here in downtown. It's an important heart of the community and the, the way the hybrid plan is, is being developed. It's supporting multiple modes of transit, cars,
pedestrians, intersection with the, the transit that's already here, and then also bicycles. So I think being able to remember that we have already adopted those goals and that this is a way to further support that is important. Related to that, I, I know that sometimes all of us have our own perspectives on what's the most important thing in terms of transportation. It's something that affects all of us and we rely individually on cars
and other forms of transportation no matter who we are. I think it's also worth thinking about folks who don't always have access to a car and their mobility and access needs. And so developing a design that will support people in different stages of their lives and different access to kinds of, of transportation is important. And then the last point I wanna leave you with is that this plan represents a beginning, not a conclusion. So it's still very, very early days for this design
and supporting it means supporting a process that is iterative. We will succeed, I think with this approach and this design, if we allow the iterative process of design to play out, which means continuing this listening, getting feedback, testing ideas, responding and changing the design as, as that sort of feedback loop happens. So I support it because I think it's important that we look at this
as a beginning and, and not an end. And I encourage you to do the same. So thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next is Mr. Stokey. Speaker 20: Hi, good evening, Madam Chair and members of select board and fellow community members. So first I wanna say thank you for this opportunity to, to serve on the main Street working group. It really has been a privilege to participate. It's an important process. And I'd also like to thank Morgan Griffith for his tremendous hard work, his leadership coordinating this. I mean, I always amazed
by the way he pulled everything together and the information he brought to us, it was really full, it was really complete. And, and also the options that he gave us. He gave us all the options and all the things to look at. So I'm Gary Stookey. I voted no in the hybrid plan as a member of the working group. I've also, I've owned and operated Stooky Jewelers in, you know, Natick Center for over 35 years. Although I no longer live in Natick now I am, I was a resident for 25 years. So I want to be also be clear about who I, I'm representing, I'm a founding member of the Natick Center Associates. And also too, I've been a part of the culture district for many years. But I want to also state that I'm, that I'm speaking today
as a business owner and a longtime community member. And basically I'm not representing Nat Center Associates. So while I, I support improving Natick Center and I agree that overall vision of the Nat 23, Speaker 1: Mr. Stuy, excuse me, excuse me for just one second. Some people in the back can't hear. So can you pull the mic a little bit closer? Speaker 20: Sure. I'm sorry. Is that better? Speaker 1: I think so. Project. Speaker 20: Can you hear me? Yeah. Is it, is it off? Is Hello Speaker 1: Project? Speaker 20: I think it's Speaker 1: On. I can hear. I just think you need to project a bit. Speaker 20: Okay. I'll project. Okay. So, so again, so while I'm supporting improving Natick
Center, you know, the overall view of this plan I think is a great idea. And you know, I I I wanted to vote yes, but I voted no because I think that the hybrid plan actually conflicts with the 2030 plan. The mandatory bike lanes that are required by the TIP funding are basically driving design instead of what is truly best for downtown. So also with so many other different funding mechanisms available, I strongly recommend
that these alternatives be seriously looked at before continuing committing to the actual TIP funding. So my problem in, in why kind of I got stuck on the no vote was because I feel like if we approve the hybrid plan, the hybrid plan is including the tip funding, which locks us into the bike lane scenario. So let me just go through some of the concerns that I have with the hybrid plan. So my main concern is that emergency vehicles don't have a place to stage in the event of emergency. So what does that mean? So the, the road will be narrowed enough for cars to get by enough for bikes to get by enough for pedestrians to get by.
But if an emergency vehicle has to stop in the center of town, an ambulance, a fire truck, a police car, that is going to completely stop all traffic and maybe create a bad scenario. So, and this was also echoed by the deputy chief as well, who was also a no vote. The other thing is the loading zone. So the, the, the center is an ecosystem. It, it functions many different ways. If you, if you don't have places for, for loading zones, UPS, FedEx, multiple FedEx cars a day, trucks a day, Amazon restaurant deliveries, there's no place in the current plan
for the, for, for the current way that the delivery system is working to happen. It's basically gonna eliminate those. And that's, that's a major problem. Basically just on those two, those two things alone, the project fails in, in my opinion, being someone who's in downtown all the time. And also too, I, I think that the pedestrian bike conflict is also something that doesn't make sense to me. Because when you have to park on the street and then cross the bike lane to get to the sidewalk, it's a conflict and it's a potential for, for things to go wrong. So if you take the average person, consider a person and the average biker who's considerate
and paying attention, that's all good. If you have an elderly person, you have a mom with kids and strollers trying to get from the car, from the car to the sidewalk, with the advent of e-bikes and people flying down the street, it's not a good situation. And I think that even that in itself kind of outweighs the potential for safety versus practicality. So, and then the other thing is, which is meant is a snow removal. I've been, I've been in the center for a long time and snow removal has always been a problem. And I'm not blaming the DPW who also
who voted no in the project, but it's more of a, a situation of budget, of manpower. And it's never been one of those situations where the snow hits and the snow is removed and we can get back to business. It's always been an issue and it is what it is. We've lived with it, I've lived with it for 35 years. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's really, really bad. It actually halts business people who park in the street can't get to the sidewalk. They have to walk behind their car into traffic down the end of the sidewalk to cross and then, and then also traverse a sidewalk that isn't totally clear.
So when you add the bike lanes, the, the way it's laid out, and you add that bike lane, which can't be cleared by normal means, you would have to hire a subcontractor, which is creatures the budget, which I have no problem with doing, I think that should be done. But in past history, that never really kind of happens that way. So again, you're increasing the complexity and the mobility, especially for elderly people. Again, you know, you have a 25-year-old person who can jump over a sidewalk, that's cool. But again, moms are strollers, elderly people, walkers, they just, they can't do it as is. Adding the bike lane is a whole nother thing.
So if the town does commit to that, and if they have to hire a contractor and the budget gets approved, okay, that's a good thing. But that would have to definitely happen. So, but more broadly, the project also too, that I can see doesn't actually address some key issues. There's lack of, of pedestrian data. We don't know the pedestrian data. There's no meaningful bike users numbers. We don't know how many bikes are going through town. The also too, if you look at the, the state of the center as it is, there's a lot of vacancies. When those businesses are completely open and functioning, there's gonna be a greater need
and it's gonna be a, it's gonna be even more traffic flow, a greater parking need. If you actually solve the problems of loading zones and emergency vehicles, you would have to reduce the parking. So I think the way the plan states now is an increase of two. I think if you actually allowed for those things that you would see a major decrease in the parking, which I don't think anybody wants. And so at the end of the day, you know, the majority of the local businesses feel that the hardships that the plan would create simply do not justify putting bike lanes through the heart of our downtown. So given the complexity of this project and its long-term impact to NAIC Center,
I respectfully urge the board to keep the dialogue open. We welcome the opportunity to continue working together with the board town staff, other stakeholders to resolve these issues, to develop a workable plan. I think I would love to see the, the town renewed, revitalized in that way. But as it stands now with the hybrid concept tied to the tip funding, that's a solid no for me. And I think it's a big mistake. So thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Ooky. Mr. Rockwood. Speaker 21: Hi, my name is Heather Rockwood. I am a resident and also the executive director
of the Natick Center Associates. We run the Natick Center Cultural District. And I'd like to say that yes, this yes was actually a difficult yes to come to. I think you can all see that in the vote of eight to seven that we are split right down the middle. And I do wanna say that in preparation for the vote, I went through and read every constituent email that was sent to the select board and was sent to the, the email that we set up for this. And the one that was sent to Morgan, I read every single one of them. And they were all split right down the middle. There were across all lines of having a family,
being single, elderly, young cyclists, non cyclists, even some cyclists don't want the, the bike lanes. It was a very difficult yes to come to for us. But the way that I am looking at this, and especially as somebody who is working with the vision of Natick Center, is that I believe Natick Center is really great as it is. But if we need to have road work done, that the next step is something that needs to improve Natick Center and the way forward is with this idea, this concept,
which is not a final design, something that we can work on, that we can improve and that can come to a better conclusion than what we have right now. There is a lot of flaws in the concept as it stands at the moment, but I think working together with more constituent input and more working groups and things like that, that we can come to all having a yes for a final design plan. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Rockwood. Speaker 13: Thank you everyone. Other member perspectives can also be found at the end of the working group report, including my own
statement in the next slide. As was mentioned before, the motion passed eight seven, but there were caveats to that up on the screen you'll see as what was, you know, just kind of addressed with the others. There still needs to be resolution around pedestrian and cyclist conflicts, the loading deliveries, curb usage, emergency response staging, snow removal and maintenance, as well as the parking usability. And then obviously being able to mitigate the construction
impacts to local businesses that are on Main Street. Ultimately though, as I said when it, when we went over the vote, is that it was a vote to endorse that it's a recommendation to continue this process, not to just leave Main Street as is and improve the downtown. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I think we're gonna open it with questions from members of the board about the working group report. I'd like to start with the board,
Mr. Evans. Speaker 3: Thank you Madam Chair. Got a few things I'd like to say. I'm glad to hear that. First of all, thank you to the working group for all the work that went into putting this report together. It's clear that, excuse me, a lot of thought, thoughtful discussion took place and, and the process wa wa was very good. However, I, I'm hearing things both tonight and in conversations with members of the working group where people who voted yes, voted yes
to further the discussion, but not the concept of the hybrid bike. They clearly have reservations about it. They want to, I understand that the working group and, and CED is trying to move forward on this process, but to my, in my mind that that there's a lot more questions than answers. And I've heard tonight that the hybrid concept is something that can be worked and, and, and modified and, and figured out.
But to me there are some fundamental hurdles that, that massaging the design is not going to solve. Let me go through some of them. Even those who quoted against the hybrid concept or, or of those who voted against the hybrid concept, many of them were town employees. It'd be they police be they DPW be they engineering as well as local business owners and citizens. In one case. I think the
objective, and I I think Ms. Rockwood pointed it out very well. We want, we want to think about what we want Naix Main Street to look like and be vibrant and move ahead into the future. But we have to also recognize the reality of it. It was not, it was built in the 18 hundreds. It is not a wide street, it is not a main thoroughfare, it is already a titan space adding bike lanes in the current design, at least further constricts it.
There are three major north south thoroughfares through Naty, speed Street, Oak Street and Main Street, main Street. If you, I haven't seen or recently a, a report that goes through how many cars go through Main Street on a given day. But I would say the volume of of that is increasing exponentially. It's not, it's not a slow growth rate, it is a high growth rate. So I have concerns about that.
And adding bike lane increases the density without improving throughput and safety. I agree with the assertion that simply doing a a milling and repaving is not the answer. There are, there are things that we can do to make this more attractive in the future. I'm not convinced that bike lanes on Main Street are the answer. I see a point was made earlier about bikes versus pedestrians and residents crossing to get
to the sidewalk to go to a shop. I just today almost got run over by an e-bike and I'm a, I'm a fairly large person and I, you know, they clearly either weren't interested or weren't paying attention, but I had to sidestep, right? And I, I won't characterize myself as either the older population or the younger. I'm certainly not the younger, but that's a concern. I mean, people, someone with a baby carriage, you know, gets their baby all ready to go into the store and gets broadsided.
I know of people who have had neurological injuries from being broadsided by bicyclists. So I have that very serious concern. I also heard a, a comment about this is, this approach is best practices for urban planning. Well, again, I go back to this is not urban and urban environment. It is downtown Natick. It is a historic district. I just don't see it that urban planning is necessarily the, the driving force between
what we end up doing here. So to, to come to a conclusion or to conclude my remarks, I just see too many open issues that the working group is expecting, the select board to, to give a a go ahead on this. And I'm not prepared to do that. I'm not even close to being prepared to do that. I don't think a design that is that open-ended and says, oh, we'll fix it when we get to the design. I don't buy that. I just don't, I'd love
to be proven wrong, but I just don't buy it right now. Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 10: I have a couple of brief questions and then, then then some comments. So my first question is, can you, can, can someone just take me through to the, to the point that Mr. Evans made about urban planning? You know, when you say this is the, this is best practices, like, is, is that a term of art in, you know, in the planning world? What does, what does that mean by urban planning? Does it mean it's only for cities or what does that mean? Speaker 15: So as a planner, my understanding is
that it is a general term for planning in areas that have like higher densities. I think Natick Center classifies as one of those areas. I think urban planning is, is a general term that encompasses all kinds of planning. I think some of the standards that this design is based on is are from nato, which is the National Association of, I think, transportation for cities. And something that NTO does call out is that even though it has city in the title, these standards apply everywhere. In fact, car dependent suburbs are an excellent
place for these, these standards to be applied as well, at least according to nto. And I, I will point out that there are many member municipalities in the NTA organization. Some of them are larger cities like Boston, some of them are smaller municipalities with populations less than nex. So it, it really runs the gamut. Speaker 10: Thank you. And then my, my next question is, you know, this idea of having the bike lanes be adjacent to the sidewalk and sort of in between the parking and the sidewalk. Is that a unusual design
or is that something that has, has been tried in other places? Speaker 15: This is something that has been tried in other places? I think it is one of, it is a, a newer concept, but it is not brand new. I think you can see examples of, of, of these designs in places like Boston, things like that. So it, it, it has been tried and tested other places as well. Speaker 10: Thank you. So just a few comments. First of all, ditto on thanking the working group. I know this was a huge, huge lift. You know, those of you online, those of you in person, those of you not here, thank you for, for doing it.
You know, definitely appreciate the engagement and the process and all the time that was put into it, and both from the working group and the many town staff who were not on the working groups supporting it, you know, really appreciate it and answering so many questions. So my perspective is a little bit different than, than my colleague here. I I think that the, the hybrid design, you know, I think there are, there are some things that I could say that I wish were different about it. You know, for example, it maintains angled parking, which is one of the reasons that the roadway has to be so narrow because they're trying to fit angled parking,
the bike lane and the street and the sidewalk. You know, I wish we could get rid of that. Unfortunately, if we do that, it'll lead to some other problems with reductions in parking spaces and things that, you know, people don't want. But overall, I think if you, you know, it's, it's always about balance and compromise and any, any approach including the ex keeping the existing design comes with downsides. And I think that the upsides of this, of the hybrid approach do outweigh the downsides. I think it, I think it's a good, I think it would be a good thing for us for, for one thing,
you know, as mentioned, we have goals as a town that we've set through public engagement processes over many years. We have the Natick 2030 plan, we have our net zero goals, you know, these have already been mentioned, but, you know, are those just documents or are those things that we actually rely on when we have to make a difficult decision that, you know, if if we, we can't just do it when it's easy, right? We gotta do it when it's, when it's difficult and, you know, this is difficult and it presents trade-offs, but it's an opportunity for us, it's a real opportunity for, you know, to make a 25 year improvement in our downtown.
Now there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of talk about how well it's, it, it'll be very dangerous to have bikes, there could be conflicts, things like that. But as I see it, this takes bikes into a dedicated space that does not exist right now. A speaker said it well that, you know, right now if a bike is coming down in Natick Center, they can either go in the street, which, you know, as, as presents potential conflicts, especially with people coming out of the parking spaces or they can go onto the sidewalk, you know, and, and that creates, creates huge, huge conflicts as,
as we know this takes that out. This puts, you know, this gives a dedicated space for bikes that is safe and that is out of the way of other riders. When we hear, you know, and this was in one of the other slideshows that was shown in our last meeting on this, but you know, when we hear, oh, it's a shared path, it's the same pathway as the, it's next to the sidewalk. I think we're picturing it kind of side by side, but that's not really how these are designed. Like it's, you know, usually there's, there's clear separation in terms of the, the pavement type. And in terms of the, you know, there's like,
there's like trees and other things that like, you know, they've shown in the, in some of the slides that create a clear separation there. And it's not as scary as it sounds. And again, we're not the first community to have this, these exist in other places. And you know, the, the idea that you know this, it's already a dense area. There's already traffic. I, you know, I I haven't really seen anything that explains why bike lanes would create more traffic. It's, it's a, it's, it's a two-lane road both ways now. It'll be a two-lane road after they, they did, if they were to do this, this concept, and there are opportunities here to improve traffic flow.
One of the things that's included in this design is, you know, for example is a, a signal reconstruction. So reconstructing the signal at main and main and, and, and 1 35 like doing the, doing that signal reconstruction will help have a more modern intersection that has better timing and that is better able to monitor that traffic flow that, as my colleague correctly said, is likely to keep increasing. Not to mention whatever benefit is, is derived from making it easier for people to use alternative modes of transportation
to get through Natick Center. Which is again, one of the whole ideas behind the net zero goal. And, and you know, Natick 2030 was, hey, like we have this problem where we're a suburb that's extremely reliant on cars. What can we do to, to reduce that? And this is a step in that direction and that brings, now you might say, well wait, couldn't we just reconstruct that signal without, you know, without doing the bike lanes? Well that brings me to the, the, the financial piece of this, which has been mentioned by a couple of people. The, the design, you know, if that, that include the hybrid design, you know, it costs, it,
it it's estimated cost of $11 million and that would be a hundred percent covered by the tip grant. If we were to, if we were to go with that, with that, with that option, if we go with the high, with the, you know, a different option that doesn't include bike lanes that routes it around in other places or whatever, then we would have to pay for that ourselves. And Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs, could I just, yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you 'cause I know you're on spiel and I, I had given Bruce a lot of Yeah, leeway. I really want us to stick to questions about the working group and not enter into debate
because we still have not heard from, we haven't finished listening to residents. We haven't finished getting all of our impact and I don't want us to be enter into debate or deliberation before we've done that. We have that scheduled for our next meeting. So I, I apologize. I I know I let Bruce, I jump in talk for a quite Speaker 10: A bit. Yeah, sorry. That's why I mean I was ready to just ask questions. I thought we were doing Speaker 1: Can you Yeah, that's not debate because of that. That's, that was on me. Okay. So I Speaker 10: Should well that's, that's fine. Then let's gonna focus Speaker 1: On some questions. Speaker 10: That's fine. Then we can focus on questions in that case.
I think, I think the only, the only other question I had right now is around the, the roadways, just about the narrowing of the roadways specifically. I'm wondering what the trade-offs are that the working group considered in that aspect of the design where the roadways will be narrower. Are there, are there, you know, kind of what are the, the positives and negatives of having narrower roadways in certain it's not, I know it's not everywhere the same, but in certain places in the design. Speaker 15: So I can speak a little bit to the potential benefits of narrow, narrow roadways writ large.
I think narrow, narrow, oh my gosh, I can't say that word. Narrower roadways help slow traffic down. So if in areas where, you know, there may be a lot of pedestrians, a lot of cyclists, a lot of things like that, narrower, narrower roads can calm traffic, reducing speeds and decreased crashes. And when crashes do occur because they're at lower speeds, they can be a little bit less severe. So that is something that like smaller travel
lanes can help with. Speaker 10: Thank you Speaker 8: Ms. Wil. Thank you. Just a a, a quick question on the report, I was a little confused about in some of the yes and no votes about what exactly they were asked to endorse or not. It, it seems like some of the yes votes had some great qualifications. So it, what exactly was the directive in, in terms of, you know, voting yes or no or was there not one?
Speaker 13: So the, the motion for the vote was the main street improvement project working group formally endorses the hybrid concept footprint as currently proposed and recommends that the select board advance this concept into the formal design stage with the questions and caveats provided in the report. Again, this kind of goes back to, you know, and I tried to sum it up in the, in the chair's statement, which we all kinda worked on where it's improvements need to be made and just in the scope of what we were able to do
and where it sounded like in the design process, the outstanding questions that we had that you see listed out just had no shot of getting really any answer unless it moves forward. You know, it goes, you know, we talked about, I believe it's called mountable curbs for the staging for emergency vehicles without certain studies you just don't know if that's even feasible. So there was a lot of discussion around we, no improvements need to be made. How best can we as a working group say
that or not? But that's kind of what we were trying to do. Speaker 8: Thank you. If that makes sense. That, that does make sense. W was, so the caveats that were part of the report, were those voted on specifically or were they just taken from people that comments that people have made? Speaker 13: So what you see on the screen in the slide deck are, is a summary from the minutes of the caveats that we had and then we also encouraged all of the members to provide their own statements. We didn't make any edits to those outside of, you know,
if there were grammatical errors or spelling issues, basically just copied and put that right into the report. The feeling was that, you know, the individual can speak better to that than trying to summarize. Thank Speaker 1: You. That, that helps clarify things. Thank you. Great question Ms. Pope. Yes, Speaker 9: Thank you. Thank you. Also ditto to the work of the working group as well as Mr. Griffin's leadership. Thank you so much. My question is about, you know, the split it, that's, you know, really, I mean be, there's an odd number,
but it's really split down the middle, you know, do you see, I I mean the, the, the concerns are absolutely valid. Do you see a world in which those concerns are resolved amongst this group to come to a more decisive vote Speaker 13: As again, kind of as what was talked about? I'm trying to speak as you know, for the, for the whole group rather than just me personally, from what it sounded like, and again, it goes in the chair statement where we are in the design process before the 25% mark.
The concerns that we had just weren't, we want this process to continue is basically what I'm trying to, what we're trying to say. We think that they can get resolved, that's our hope, but we also expect kind of further engagement from the community as the process continues. Yeah, and Speaker 9: I, so Speaker 13: This is more of like a beginning rather than a end is is kind of where we were trying to get at, Speaker 9: And I wanna clarify my question. I'm not, there may have been bias in my question that that is alluding to like get to a yes, which is not what I'm saying. Like it's not definitive really either way.
So you know, it's, there's, there's not this, we wanna shut it down, but there's also not a resounding yes. So that's kind of what I was exploring, but thank you. Yep. Speaker 1: I had a couple of questions. Is, is Mr. Doherty here in the room or online? No. So in his comments he said he referenced police public safety that bike lanes may increase enforcement costs. What does that mean? Speaker 13: I don't wanna speak on, on his behalf, I do know that we were talking, there was discussion
in some of the meetings. Again, I would have to refer back to the minutes, but the issue with the e-bike for example, you know, those can go up to 40 miles an hour. It, what are the options on, you know, is there a way to prevent that or mitigate that? In order to do that there might be additional costs from an Speaker 1: Enforcement, Mr. Griffiths. Yep. Speaker 15: So to paraphrase what I, deputy Chief Loon, and of course he can speak better to this than I can, but from what I understand, talking to him in the working group and also conversations we've had
about the project outside of the working group, that one of the things he's concerned about, and I believe a working group member had referenced this earlier, is currently they use some of the painted space, like right by the church at Main and Central as a, a police staging area. So when they need to, you know, do enforcement or they need to use that area, that's where they go on, on Main Street. And so one of his concerns is, you know, in the hybrid concept
and actually in, in all of the concepts we're proposing, that area becomes a bump out. And so one of the things he said was, you know, well where's the, where are the police gonna go? And so that's a comment that the project team noted. I know McCrell and Johnson, the engineer that we're working with has said, you know, we can, during the design process we can be a little bit creative. We can explore maybe a mountable bump out there, we can explore maybe having some of that cut away. We could potentially explore keeping that area painted. So that's, I believe what Ed was referring to.
Speaker 1: Another question, street marking in, in, in his comments, department of public works, street markings are expensive to maintain and bike lanes increase snow removal and plowing, plowing costs. We've covered elsewhere the second part of that. But street markings are expensive to maintain. Don't we already maintain street markings? We have crosswalks, we have, I I'm just trying to figure out where the big jump in expense would be in terms of street markings being expensive to maintain. Speaker 7: Yeah, we certainly do. And if, if I speak, I know Bill Ra,
our director of public works facilities here as well, but we do do a, a street marking plan every year, which includes crosswalks and, and pavement markings for, for parking areas. Obviously the devil's in the details of the final design because with any design you might have an increase in need for additional street markings or a decrease depending on that final design. I suspect in this case there might be a net increase. But it's, it's, I don't know if we have the final understanding as to how much more because that's all in the,
that'll that'll have to come out in the final design. And net increase would be if you have bike lanes and if you have additional or even same parking areas. But some are striped differently for, for various reasons. You have, you actually add to the amount of street markings that you have to do, which then adds to our street marking demands. And you know, that's part of our annual budgeting process within the DPW budget. We, we do, we budget that every year. Speaker 1: So one of the questions I have, and this may be for you Mr. Erickson, has there been discussion in Natick either in the
the parking committee or the, any of the research we're doing about safety in in town center reducing the speed limit in the downtown area, this report references speeds, higher vehicle speeds potentially approaching 40 miles an hour. Is that something that the select board can send to the safety committee or is that something that's already under review in some other fashion? Speaker 7: Sure. So to the first question of has there been discussions like in the past about this? No, no concrete discussions? Not that I'm aware of. At least in my time with the town, we did not do,
when I was in the CED director position, for example, even though we were looking from the native 2030 master plan perspective at some concept ideas for Main Street, we did not explore speed limits just in general in the main street area. It is certainly something to your, to your point about can this be something the board can certainly have reviewed? Absolutely. This could be an even regardless of what you choose, regardless Speaker 1: Of this Speaker 7: Choose this, right? You could, you could ask the safety committee to review that or just town staff. But me town staff, we would have, obviously we would go through our typical process of reviewing
the speeds in NA center and then figure out what would the right speed be. The town also six, seven years ago adopted the master law, I'm blanking on the, on the actual number, but the master law that allows for a 25 mile an hour speed limit on designated roads or a blanket if you choose to take that approach. So that is also a potential option that can be explored for this stretch of roadway. Speaker 1: Another conversation about public safety. So our neighboring towns, Wellesley and Framingham have implemented traffic, I'll just call 'em laws, traffic laws
that essentially routes traffic, truck traffic through Natick because they can't go through parts of Wellesley and they can't go through parts of Framingham and they also can't go through parts of Sherborn. Is this something that we've looked at as a town and saying, oh, maybe we don't want trucks and heavy trucks going down 27 and and having to be routed. I don't have a solution. I'm not looking at a map. I don't know where we would route them, but it seems that I I yeah, I'm not making a, i this is something we should do. I'm just wondering is, is this something that we've explored? Speaker 7: I can't speak for the legality or the extent to which other towns have actually
legitimately done their rerouting of trucks, but I can say that anytime there's a discussion around like a no truck zone or a no truck there, there's extensive process that one, that a community needs to go through with the state to make that a legal Speaker 1: Understood Speaker 7: Enforceable item. And in my time with Natick, we have not explored those in any sort of way that actually extend it to actually submitting anything to the state, just given the complexities of it and how, what the criteria, it's, it's extremely, extremely, probably by design, by mass DOT in the state. It's, it's an extremely challenging
and and comprehensive process. Speaker 1: I do understand that we have a number of other dealerships and they have trucks and I, I know that we need trucks to move things. I know that they're necessary. It's just, it's kind of interesting to me that we're here and three of the communities around us has have taken some steps, legal or not enforceable or not to put up signs to prohibit driving truck traffic through our downtown. So we do know, we do have a number Bruce, I think it's 10 to 12,000 vehicles go through that intersection every single day. So I'm not suggesting that be part of this process,
but I think that's something that we need to look at when we get through with whatever it is we're doing here and whatever decisions we make and however we decide to proceed. I think that's something that would be wise for us to consider looking town wide in terms of traffic, those are basically my main questions about the report, the 16 page report that's currently what we're talking about right now. So at this time I'd like to open it to members of the public and I'd ask that you stick on the report 'cause we're gonna have opportunities for public input on the design and questions about what that looks like.
But for purposes of this meeting with this agenda, I'd like us to stick to the report. So members in the room, I see your hand, could you come to the podium and introduce yourself And then the next one I'll take online. Ms Doran. Speaker 9: Hi everybody. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Can you pull it? Oh sorry. Speaker 1: That's okay. Thank you. Speaker 9: Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Kim Ricard and I own 10 trees books on Main Street. I'm also a resident of the town, so I thought it was appropriate for me to speak. I did apply to be on the committee, but I wasn't selected. I think I give a unique perspective
because I have a family run business that's only been open for two years and while I really appreciate everybody's hard work and I love Natick and I want Natick to thrive and I want it to grow, I have concerns about this plan in particular. I'll say I have concerns about the report. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 9: You know, any time that my business is closed will be a hardship for my family and for my business and the employees that work there, all
of whom are Natick residents. So I would like to con ask you to please vote no so that we can start over and come up with a plan that doesn't destroy Main Street for any period of time without there being accommodations for people, customers to park and get in and out. That's my number one concern. Speaker 5: Thank you. And could you, could you give me your last name Speaker 9: Again? Rick Hard. R-I-C-K-A-R-D. Thank you Speaker 5: Ms. Doran. Speaker 22: Yes, thank you. I have three brief comments and now I'm a little confused as to whether two of them have
to do with this report 'cause it's late and I, I'm not sure. But the first one has to do with page six of the document that I found online under the agenda. The working group formally endorsing the hybrid concept and I looked at the vote tally. I was really interested in that as has been pointed out, it was eight to seven very close. But I'm looking specifically at those who voted no. And there are three very heavy hitters, very important people who work for the town who we've charged with taking care of life on our streets.
Brian Casey, highway and sanitation supervisor, deputy Chief Loong, and then the town engineer, John de Giacomo. And they all voted no. And in my heart I feel like I like their votes to count more because I think they just have a certain perspective and responsibility. And I know all votes are equal in a committee, but you know, I think it's really important. Interesting that there were, they all voted no to this plan. So, but a lot has been commented. I, I also wanna mention I was pleased that Mr.
Stookey mentioned data. Where's the data? Because I was looking at, and I don't know if it's in this particular report, chair Kaufman, but I, looking at the plan, there's a bump out curve in the plan for the southwest corner of the common. And I'm in that place a lot. I do wanna say, in my opinion, that is like the safest place to cross in town. I have never seen a car not stop when someone's wanted to cross there. And to the point of data, 40 something years ago I had a friend working as a traffic engineer for Sasaki Associates, which then was based in Watertown Square. Sasaki had been hired to assess the situation
that was then a rotary in Watertown Square. The rotary is gone in part because of my work. My friend hired me and I recruited my sister to stand on the Galen Street Bridge with a clipboard in hand. It was pre-cell phones, pre-computers and write down the license plate numbers of every single car that passed, cross that bridge. And I did that. And then I was the lucky one to be able to do the data, data entry and they use that data to make their decision to get rid of the rotary. I would like to know that there's similar kinds of data being tracked that are driving these plans
and I'm not sure based on what Mr. Stookey said, that that data exists. I would like to see more hard fast data. And thirdly, I'm just gonna make an analogy and this has to do with bike lanes. So bear with me. It's an analogy. I am vegan and I happen to think the world would be a better place if everyone were vegan. It would be better for the environment, use of land water, better for the atmosphere 'cause cattle are destructive and better for both our health and better for animals. I also think that Natick would be be better served if all downtown restaurants were vegan.
But clearly I'm in the minority, vegans are the minority and it's unfair of me to impose my opinions about what's best for other people in downtown. The majority who don't share my belief system. I feel the same about bike PAs NA center. It seems that it's the desire of a minority, however well intentioned. And I have a question. How many cyclists have you all seen biking on that dangerous stretch of 27 coming from Sherburne just before West Street heading our way, because I really can't recall seeing any, I,
it's not a safe place to travel and I don't think putting in bike paths and Natick Center will make that route any more safe. I don't think there'll be any more cyclists traveling that route. So, you know, I, I just think that the greater good should lean towards serving the majority. And those were my three comments. So thank you for this time. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Doran. Yes. Could you come to the thank you. Speaker 21: Thank you. My admin staff is getting restless out there in the lobby, their ages nine and six.
My name is Kat Monahan. I am a precinct two resident and I wanna thank you all for the work that you did. The working group committee, the town staff that's not eligible for paid leave through the state. I wanna thank them for their efforts. I'm a cyclist, I'm a mom of two elementary aged kids. I think I'm responding to the report. I'm definitely responding to things that I've heard said here tonight. So I, I think if that wasn't out of order, I'd feel careful enough to proceed. An average day of cycling for my family looks like about 15 to 20 miles. Most trips that most people take are under three miles.
So that means that we take about six trips a day. We go from home to school, then I go to my office, then I probably have to go to the bank for work and then I probably have to make another stop at the pharmacy or something. And then I go to school and then we go to softball and then we go home. So that's like our whole day of biking and it's on 27, it's in Natick. It's, it's all the places that you claim that you haven't seen cyclists be and you can bike with me anytime. This project and the design of which won't be implemented, assuming you go forward with it for let's say another five years will work really well
with the Hartford two Constituit Rail trail extension that's being built and coming online in that timeframe. Also, the 9 27 project will have a multi-use path that's going to create more cycling demand and infrastructure in Natick. Whether this project goes forward or not, I think it would be great to have Natick Center click into those two existing projects along with the rail trail that we already have. Because you're going to get more cyclists whether you are planning for it in this intersection or not, it's going to happen. So I think building those two without meaningful improvement
at this intersection is a disservice to Natick and its residents for the next 30 years. Let me just make sure I hit all my points. I really think that temporary business revenue, which would be impacted whether we put bike lanes or just regrade the pavement, should not be the priority over people's lives. That's the end of that sentence. You assume that children, the elderly and disabled road users are exclusively moving between cars and sidewalks, but you're ignoring the fact that cars will be driving through a bike lane if you don't protect it with the parked cars.
So you're saying coming up with like a one in a million scenario of a distracted cyclist mowing down someone with a walker in the bike lane instead of the very real situation that I encounter daily, which is someone trying to park and trying to drive through me and my children. That's happened, that's happened here. I've been in the crosswalk at Eastern Bank, not on a bicycle just with my child wearing like bright purple clothing and then had to walk up to a motorist after they park and say like, are you unable to see people in the crosswalk? Is there a reason you wanted to go 40 miles an hour
and scare my child? Like, explain it to me like I'm a child. Explain why you think that you are more important in that way. I think that the motorists are more dangerous in this situation. Are there cyclists that don't behave? Sure. Are they propelling a vehicle that weighs 4,000 pounds? Not usually. So I just want you to think every time that you think I almost got hit by an e-bike, try and remember how many times you were almost hit by a car. And it's probably gonna be about a 10 to one ratio. I think I got all of it and it's almost bedtime. I hope that you support this plan.
I think that, you know, I'm glad that another member of the select board was allowed to explain that. Yes, we do have an idea of how many cars come through this intersection. It's in the 10 ish thousand range. It's probably not growing exponentially. Just seems unlikely. It's probably growing by a few percent a year. I don't think we're getting twice as many motorists every single year, but love to see the studies. It's almost bedtime. I wanna thank you for your work and please consider that when this intersection came into existence, whatever, 250 years ago, it was built for people. And I need you to make Natick Center safe for people,
not businesses, although we'll love that the businesses will be there, not trucks. It'll be great if they have somewhere to load. It doesn't need to be the entire Natick center and not motorists, but people, the humans that live here. So please Speaker 1: Remember, please miss Monahan, be careful on your ride home in the red sweater. Please if you could come to the podium and introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Victoria Grafflin and I live in Precinct five. So I wanted to speak in support
of the report and the working group's recommendation. And a couple of reasons why it's not, I don't think it's perfect. Frankly, there's an existing safety issue with, honestly the angled parking is really the biggest safety issue in that area. But it seems that there's no appetite in this town to get rid of that angled parking. And so to accommodate that absolute, you know, it's almost like a sacred cow. You know, we have to figure something else out. I feel that the process YY You have to start planning for the future now, right?
And if we wanna break ground, and I heard a decade is really when we're thinking this might break ground if we continue on the path with the hybrid approach, you've gotta start thinking about that. And we also have to start thinking about the realities of what has changed in transportation and how people get around, what will be changing. And I believe that the working group did their job and they looks like everybody really read and considered everything. The arguments that people who voted against it have seemed to be the same arguments that, you know, they had
actually earlier concerns about safety are legitimate, but we already have an unsafe situation with that whole area. In fact, on my way down here at that Eastern bank crosswalk area, there was a gentleman crossing. So I stopped and a man behind me started going around me on the right because it's very wide there and they can't see. And so he literally, he shouldn't have done that of course, but, so there's already an unsafe situation. My eldest child spent two years in a summer job biking from
North Natick to their job down Cottage Street. And every day was terrifying because of the cars backing out and not necessarily seeing there's a young woman on a bicycle there and she has to go around and then a car coming the other way has to, you know, there's just, there really are people who use that. And when you look at how transportation has changed even in the past decade, I feel like we need to continue the process. I don't think it's perfect, frankly, but I do feel like it's an opportunity for us to
embrace the realities of how people have changed, how they get around. And honestly, I do think it's an opportunity for downtown Natick to become an attractive destination for people who are, you know, all kinds of users of the area. So that's all I wanna say. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Lin. Mr. Erickson, do you have a, do you have handy the slide or Mr. Griffiths, the slide that has the four options? Can you bring that up and put that up on a screen? I'm gonna do something I probably should have done a half hour ago. What I'm gonna ask, since we're moving off the, the study and we still have, we have staff members
who have been here since earliest morning that are here for later agenda items. What I'm going to do is ask everyone to take a look at the four hybrid models and I'm gonna ask by show of hands online, Mr. Lewis, I'll take your comment after this. Show of hands, who's in favor of option one, option two, option three, and the option four is just milling. Then I'm gonna ask if there's anyone in the room that has not written a letter to the select board about this topic and has not spoken at a meeting about this topic to allow those people to speak for two to three minutes so
that we can move on to the agenda. This is going to be scheduled again, there'll be more opportunity for involvement, but I do want to be thoughtful of the people who are here for agenda items that are going to be very involved and And for the residents who are sitting here waiting for those. So if Morgan, are you pulling up the, yeah, sorry. Okay. That's okay. That's okay. We'll just, why don't we take a two minute recess, us calling the meeting back to order. Hey, for those of you in the back, we've already started. Hello, we've started. So I'm calling the meeting back to order at 8:40 PM And
so now you have a concept comparison on the screen where you can see, and people at home should be able to see there are four concepts there. What I'd like to do is start with the very first one, mill and overlay. What that means is the town would find $2 million and just pave the street in this room right now, based on the information, I'm not gonna hold you to it, but in this room, based on the information you have and you've received and you've reviewed, how many people in this room and online are in favor of the mill and overlay approach? I see three. Put your hands up 'cause I can't see 'em. Four in the room Speaker 23: Over.
Speaker 1: Okay. How many of you do not understand the instructions? Speaker 23: Yeah, can you explain, Speaker 1: Let me explain the instructions. And then none of you have to talk to your neighbors to explain them. These are the instructions on the screen you see four concepts. These are four concepts that the working committee and the board have looked at. The very first concept is called mill and overlay. There would be no bike facilities, no improvement of safety, no sidewalk space change, no net parking change. It's gonna cost $2 million. The town would have to find the money. No long-term maintenance. Char change in long-term maintenance costs. How many in this room with the information you have,
I'm not gonna hold you to this show of hands and put them up high. Are in favor of just paving Main Street. So I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in the room. Speaker 24: And Speaker 1: Mr. Lewis, is your hand still up because you want to talk or is it up because you're in favor of Speaker 24: That process? I'm just gonna say Speaker 1: You are. So that's three. So three and what? Seven in the room. Put his hand down. So that's nine. So that's nine in the room for concept one. Concept two has limited bike, read it across, I'm just gonna say it.
Partial improvement to safety. No bike facilities, increased sidewalk space, six extra parking spots. It will cost $11 million. Majority would be underwritten by the town. There would be some grants and increased snow removal costs on the limited bike plan. Based on the information you know and that you've received and that you've heard so far, how many people are in favor of the limited bike concept in the room? Show of hands. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and a half. Speaker 24: And online? Speaker 1: That's seven.
Seven total. I mean concept three hybrid. So the hybrid is yes. Improved safety, yes. Bike facilities. Segmented impact on sidewalk space, meaning that some parts of the sidewalk will be narrowed. It will result in a net parking increase of two spots. It will cost $11 million. That will be paid by outside funding. Yes, Mr. Foss, it is public monies, but it is a grant that would not come out of the tax levy. The high, this would have the highest snow and removal costs at about a quarter of a million dollars a year in addition to
what we already pay for snow and removal costs in this room. How many people are in favor of this concept? I see 1, 2, 3 Speaker 24: And online Speaker 1: Four. Then the enhanced bike. Very, very similar, but you lose 14 parking spots, $11 million covered by the grant and higher snow removal costs. So in this room with the enhanced bike as it's laid out on the cons concept comparison, how many people in this room are in favor of this concept two
Speaker 24: And online Speaker 1: One? So that's three. So that gives us a really good sense in addition to all of the letters and the emails and the conversations at farmer's markets and the public forum and the reports and the conversations we have in meetings. So I think one thing I'd like to make clear that does, that I think bears repeating is that this board, when it makes decisions, it takes information from a wide variety of sources. Professional staff reports, research, looking at what other towns have done, doing benchmarking with peer communities, also letters, also the opinions
of residents, opinions of business owners, opinions of employees, opinion, opinions of staff. It's not the case that we're just gonna add up all the people who are for and against and go, this is two hundred fifty four, a hundred fifty against seven for hybrid. And then that's how we make a decision. So in the room, are there people who have not written a letter to the select board who have not participated in in the public forums or in, in these conversations we've had, who would like to address the board with a discussion about the concept? Ms. Ser, you first, Mr. Joseph next and the gentleman in the back with the blue shirt.
First take, I'm sorry, we're gonna start with Matt Lewis and then Ms. Sarah. Speaker 24: Mr. Lewis, could you un unmute yourself? Speaker 25: Yes. Thank you. I just have three questions I wanted to ask. Keep it it to the questions. So one is logistical, the other two are more, I guess, philosophical from what the committee talked about. The first question is, if I remember correctly, some of the plans entailed reducing the sidewalk to five feet as far as I know. And my question is, what is it today? Is it actually, would it be a reduction to five feet?
Because five feet feels like it's almost tight for two people that walk side by side or even passing each other. So that's a logistical question. And then the other two are around, it sounded like a lot of the com, the the working group that voted yes, talked about this being sort of a first step and that they want this to be a path to, you know, more towards that net zero policy and, and Natick 2030 and all and all of that. And I guess my question is, so what did the people in
that working group see as the next steps? Because you know, there wouldn't with this plan be any bike lanes to the library. I live on the other side of Route nine and I know there's the Route nine project right now, but it's not necessarily particularly safe for biking to downtown. Yes, I understand what we would get to downtown, that could help. But what else sort of, did this group wanna see if that is the intention? And the last thing, and I think a couple people talked about this from data, but I wanna approach it from a slightly different perspective, is what would be the, you know, impact of all of these changes?
Will it bring in more businesses? Will it make downtown natick more desirable for businesses and residents? You know, I think some of the plans talk about making sidewalks space increase and that might mean more outdoor seating, more sidewalk sales. How do those options and opportunities for business compare to some of the other options? So those are my three questions. Speaker 1: So the, the first question with regard to decreasing the,
the width of the sidewalks, the hybrid method and the enhanced bike method would have some sections of the, of the sidewalks in the main street corridor from Cottage Street to McCann North Avenue. Some of those would be affected if either of those two concepts are adopted. And as for the next steps of the working group, I wanna turn that over to Mr. Griffiths. Speaker 15: I apologize. Can you repeat the question? The, the second question. Speaker 1: So the second question has to do with, for these concepts, are you able to predict that there were, what are, well,
I I'm going to rephrase it and feel free to correct me, Mr. Lewis, if that's incorrect. I understand that there are four goals that the working group sought. So there was safety enhanced downtown safety traffic controls, and a fourth one. The question is, will any of these enhance business? Will they, how will they impact, what are their downstream impacts of these four different concepts? Speaker 15: Sure. I think it's a little difficult to say with absolute certainty because the no one can a hundred percent predict the future.
The town has goals, you know, they are out outlined in Natick 2030 plus. That is, you know, to increase economic vitality of downtown, to maintain Natick Center as a sort of a bustling exciting hub to improve mobility for all types of, of users on roadway, be they vehicular, bicycle pedestrian. I think the important thing to emphasize is that these, these four options that you see are different
approaches that try to achieve those goals, but they do so in different ways by making different trade-offs. I think the really important thing to emphasize here is that this is really all about trade-offs. I think we have those common goals, but how we get there I think depends on what the town, what the board, what the town, what the community sees as acceptable trade-offs. You know, so some concepts like the hybrid concepts is fully compatible with tip funding. That would be huge funding win for us.
It does decrease some sidewalk space. It does have those snow removal costs, but it does provide space for all roadway users. Similarly, if you think about like the mill and overlay, it is kind of upfront the, like the, the $2 million cost. That is the, the sort of upfront, less expensive cost, but the town would have to cover it and it would not necessarily make any of the changes that the other concepts propose. So I would argue that we have common goals,
these concepts are trying to get there, but they propose essentially different trade-offs and the town has to decide which trade-offs it, which trade-offs it wants to make. Speaker 1: Thank you for that, Mr. Griffiths, Ms. Sarah, Speaker 26: I'm one of those old folks that are downtown, so I need you to put it way down. Okay, thank you. So as one of the senior members of the town and somebody who works downtown on the more difficult block, because it's, it seems to be more narrow
because of the angled parking. Anything that makes that parking more difficult shortens my life. Trying to pull out of that is literally the adventure for the day for me. I don't think I'm, I'm trying to take all the pieces that I've been listening to and I think the first thing that actually came to mind is we don't have to please everybody. I think we have walkers, we have bikers, we have cars. What's the purpose of downtown? The purpose of downtown is emotional, atmospheric, business,
community, everything. But that doesn't mean we have to make it easy for everybody to be involved. I think I have been almost run over by bikers downtown. You put a bike lane in, you're gonna get more kids coming from school biking downtown who may or may not pay attention. I know that I don't always pay attention because something else is, is diverting what I'm doing. I think unless you're gonna go to parallel parking that a bike lane is on that block anyway, which is the block from mutual one to Debon
is death trap is inappropriate and unsafe. I don't know if worrying, I think right now paying attention to bikers needs is a trend. It doesn't mean it's not a consideration. But communities and societies have trends where this is important or that's important. We have walking trails now. We have bike lanes, we have single family, we have multi, I think that the bike situation is not as important and I'm sorry if I'm insulting anybody,
but I think in the center of a town, I think a bike lane is not as important. If you're going to bike to work, come around Washington Street or come around the block, you're exercising another block is only gonna be good for you. I, I think we have to stop and figure out whether the problem we're trying to solve is really a problem or really an issue. I just being downtown all the time, seeing what happens, adding another component I just don't think is an advantage for the town.
Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. I'm sorry Mr. Joseph. We're only gonna spend about another 10 minutes on this because again, we have several items that residents are still waiting to have heard. And we will have this again on the agenda on July 8th. So if you're not heard tonight, you'll be heard then. Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. Paul Joseph, chair of the economic development committee, downtown business owner. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I'll keep 'em short tonight. I definitely will be participating in future conversations. Quick couple of questions for the working group. In the spirit of how this conversation started, my understanding of this process is if the select board
votes for a hybrid, if it's moving in that direction, adoption, the next step is to do a 25% design. At which point in time we have the opportunity as a community to say, not right for us right now, but in order to access funds that can help us develop this, we have to make a decision. Is that correct in terms of the process? Speaker 1: Erickson Speaker 7: In a, in a, in a way, yes. This would allow, this would provide direction to town staff on how to utilize some, well we have existing grant funds
that we're, we'd be utilizing to advance the design. The, the direction provided though would then determine to what level we would get the design. So the hybrid or enhanced bike option, that's more of a next, the, the grant funding that could potentially cover construction is tip funding or transportation improvement program funding, which the next round, the next phase of that would be like a 25% design. If that's not the option, we would have to see if we can use the grant funds from a design perspective to advance some type of design.
We don't know if we can do that because we applied with a certain assumption of a design concept. So we'd have to go back to the state to see what we could use that funding for. But really we need that direction from the board in order to even just advance any design at this point. But at 25% design, sorry, I'll, I'll continue at 25% design. You're not necessarily locked into the concept, but you're, you're going down a, a path and if you deviate from that path, it's, it's a, it's a bigger decision than it is at this point. Speaker 4: Conceivably, if the design is a hybrid hybrid where you choose to do four of the five segments
and leave Main Street itself off the table, would that preclude us from the $11 million? Because it's not connecting point data point B in terms of what exists in north and Speaker 7: South. Yeah. Yes, I understand your question. I didn't say yes because I, that's the answer in all. We'd have to have a conversation with the folks that, that, that operate the tip. The tip is operated through the Metropolitan Planning Organization or MPO. There's a lot of acronyms in the state. In all likelihood this would score lower and perhaps not preclude,
but likely make it a less highly scored project, which would make it less likely to receive funding in any given year. 'cause the tip, it's a competitive process for the entire Boston region. So it usually has four times the amount of projects that they can actually fund. And so you wanna score highly, so likely score less highly and therefore the likelihood of getting funding would be less. Speaker 4: And what's the cycle for applying for tip funding? Is there, is it annual? Is it five years? Speaker 7: They keep, well they keep a five year running program or four year running program
with the fifth year that they add out there. We first need to get on that four year, five year program. And then you work through the process and to get on that, you have a concept design, then you do a 25%. There's, there's various steps that you do, you know, at any given year they can move projects up and down. It's kind of like a capital program in a way. But there are several projects that can also just chronically be in the fourth year because they don't advance or they just don't score highly or they don't. So there's an annual review, but it doesn't mean if if you score highly, you're gonna move up in the process.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Just quickly in commenting, I'm a big fan of accessing state money when we can in a competitive process, use quote other people's money, meaning outside of Natick taxpayers, in addition to Natick taxpayers, I'm not a fan of locking options and when I've advocated a town meeting for local options, taxes or any kind of investments in this community, I've always advocated for our ability to control our future based on the game on the field in the moment. We have failed miserably as a community to put measurable outcomes on 2030 that can drive very difficult planning decisions about
downtown, including a garage, including specialized zoning, including if we want restaurants, where are we gonna put board of health, properly placed trash facilities that need to be fenced in. We have a lot of grandfathered properties that are trying to make do right now. And we have a lot of new properties that are actually setting a new standard for us by new codes. So we're living in a bipolar reality downtown. And this is a very important, but not necessarily the most important area to focus because I think there's a domino effect in how we do this.
I've never been a fan at the angle parking, but I also believe shopping habits are changing. How people are picking up or you know, having food and pro products delivered is changing. The modes of retail are changing. We need to focus on brows ability and bringing populations back to Natick Center. We need to have predictable hours. We need stores that can open regularly and regular stretches of time to bring the density of commercial vitality back to Natick Center. To do that, we need certain types of amenities to honor what the spirit of the answers in the master plan are.
I know from our EDC meetings, environmental stretch codes that were very good and intention to focus on sustainability goals are putting Massachusetts at a competitive disadvantage and will continue to do so for the next two to three years. So when we talk about what's right for us in long-term planning, I'm all for it. I think we do need bike lanes. Many of you know my personal attachment to issues of bike accidents. That said, I've also had to close a business on South Main Street that was right in front of that intersection that a speaker online spoke about. I will tell you, I don't think
there's a need for a bump out there. I think there's a need for people to push the button. Mm. The near misses I've seen of accidents are pedestrians that think they could just walk out in the street and a car will see them and stop. And I've had more, I've observed over two and a half years of owning the property at that intersection. Kids and parents almost getting killed by just walking out there. We have issues of behavior, we have issues of infra infrastructure, we have financial issues. There's a lot of issues here. Sadly, I'm seeing this play out politically on Facebook and in different forums and people are vilifying people's choices.
And the previous speaker just talked about the fact we all have choices to make. Everyone has a subjective opinion. Everyone has an anecdote. I am so happy to not be sitting in your five seats right now on this decision. I'm gonna stick around for the damn decision 'cause I was sitting in your seats for that. We can't have all the data, we can't have all the answers, but I do know this, we have not accounted for what we want in Natick and design a plan to hit the target. And until we do that, this is an important decision, but it's not the most important decision. I encourage you, I I support the hybrid vote as long
as we're not locked into anything. And I wholly encourage you to think about bringing those bike lanes that already exist on South Main Street and North Main Street closer. But until we really unlock what we want and need, including a business improvement district, including parking garages, including other integrated intermodal transit hubs, maybe designated parking spots for food trucks, may be designated areas for buskers. All the things we want for the vitality. This is a piece of a much more complicated puzzle that we have not addressed and I very much look forward to presenting the economic development plan to this committee next month. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Joseph. Gentlemen in
the back with a blue shirt. If you could come and this will be the last comment we'll take tonight. Speaker 3: My name is Steven Howard and I'm looking at this idea of the changes to downtown through different eyes. I have seen that with the existing two lanes in each direction, the streets are full, the traffic is not lessening. And if we impact one of those lanes with a bike lane, you're gonna create a serious backup. Right now you have places for the trucks
to go down SP Street, you have car haulers down there all the time. And you know, basically no trucks want to get near Natick Center. And if you take away capacity from the two lanes that you have, the town trucks won't be able to get through with the 10 wheel dump trucks. The fire department won't be able to get through with the fire trucks and a minority of people would be affected, which on any given rainy day or snowy day, you never see a bicycle. So to go
and give up a lane to increase the ability of bicycles, to raise havoc. When I go through the two lanes that are there, I never have seen a bicycle stop for a red light. They always blow down on the right or they split lanes on the left and they do not obey the traffic laws. And if you think that will change by adding a bike lane, you're diluted because the, the number of people that want a bike lane is nowhere near the volume
of people that drive cars. Maybe in the future, in some wonderful time, there won't be any cars and everybody will be on bicycles, but it's unrealistic to do something that will affect law enforcement. And you talked earlier about painting the lines on the streets and stuff. If you add a bike lane now you have basically doubled the amount of painting that you're gonna need to create that lane. Not to, not to say that the bikes will even ride in that lane. Even if you give them a bike lane, they're gonna do what they do now, which is to cut around cars
and blow through red lights and turn corners where there's not supposed to be people turning the corner. It just, it just doesn't make any sense to give up capacity for automobiles for the small amount of bicycles. The bicycles are not having a problem now, other than you got crazy people in cars and you're still gonna have crazy people in cars, even if you have a bike lane. But the people on bikes are equally crazy. They don't follow the laws and they don't stop for red lights. And until that changes, I can't see
adding a bicycle lane and losing a car lane. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'd like to encourage everyone to, when you have an opportunity to look at the agenda, the meeting materials on the subject there is, there are 50 or 43 questions that the select board submitted to the working group with many of the questions I'm sure that residents have, business owners have, and they have very detailed answers that Mr. Griffiths and the working group put together, Mr. Sprat, the consultants. So I'd encourage you to read those before our next meeting at which will be July 8th when we
bring the subject up again. Next item on the agenda is a South Natick DAM update. Mr. Sprat, Speaker 27: Good evening. I'm Bill Sprat, director of DPW and project lead for the spillway removal. I'm here tonight to provide a brief update on the project. I did so a few weeks ago. Just an update. Before I do that, I'd just like to take a few minutes to remind the board what has been completed up to this point. After years of analyzing alternatives to mitigate natick's liability of owning a high hazard DAM in poor condition, the select board voted to remove the spillway in 2022.
In 2023, the town was awarded a quarter million dollar grant from the state's DAM and seawall program and GZA was hired to perform that work in 2024 and extensive permitting process began. Process permitting was spanned almost two years, no less than 10 local, state and federal regulatory bodies. Each permit had a public comment period. It was open and transparent. The last public comment period ended sometime in the fall of 2025. Last year, Natick was awarded a million dollars
by the Damon Sea Wall grant with a 90% match that will allow the town to pay about $150,000 total for everything. As of this week, the current status of the project is all permittings in place. The DAM contract contractor has a notice to proceed, has mobilized to the site and has started work. So this project right now has passed the no the go no go point. Any delays to this project will jeopardize a million dollars in grants. While I appreciate the board's willingness to continue
to listen to comments from the public, I'm highly confident in the process that we have followed and the team that's assembled. So I've asked our consulting engineers to provide you a memo that's about a 25 page report. I'm here to answer any questions on that. GZA is here, but at the end of the day, my intention tonight is to give you confidence in the work that has been done to date and to continue to move forward as planned. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sprat. So members of the, the board, I'd like to know if you have questions for the consultant or for Mr.
Spprt with regard to the 25 page GCA report that addressed concerns that were brought before the board or, and a question brought before the board for us to consider. So if you have questions about that, I'd like you to direct them to Mr. Sprat or Adrian. His name I just dunk. Sorry, Ms. Dunk. Ms. Slager, Speaker 8: I don't have questions. I just wanna say I am very impressed at how this was put together so quickly and so thoroughly. The report was very well done. I thought it addressed all the concerns
that we had received from the public effectively and comprehensively. And I just wanna say thank you to Ms. Dunk and, and the team for that. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Slager. Mr. Bruce, Speaker 3: Very quickly a lot of data on that one. It was very clear in reading the response to the questions from the public that there was some misinformation or jumping to the erroneous conclusions. And in my mind that those misconceptions have been corrected through this memo.
And I think we've done all the due diligence and gone through all the permitting that's required. And no one has raised an objection. I think it's time to move forward. We've made this decision with the interest in reducing the liability to the town and to move forward and there's a cascade effect of this. And we already have funded through the community preservation funding the ability to develop a park on both sides
of the Charles River. Whereas we only had a park on one side that will all be preserved. There are a lot of pluses to, to moving forward at this time. And to Mr. Sprats point, putting the jeopardy putting into jeopardy a million dollar grant is just not on my radar. Speaker 1: Ms. Pope, Speaker 9: Thank you Mr. Sprat. I, and I know some of my other colleagues were not a part of that process in 2022, but one of the things that I continue to hear about is the public engagement
that surrounded that process. And similarly here, even though a decision has been made, you know, there's still been a, a willingness to receive public engagement, civic engagement. And I feel like this process has been really thorough and I appreciate the fact that public engagement has, has been, you know, received even up until this process to go back and get answers for people. Which, you know, to I, I feel like is our responsibility. And so I I know it has taken extra time and extra work even after a decision has been made, but I appreciate the effort to go get these answers
and to bring them back to the public so that hopefully there is, you know, there's resolve around that. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Pope. Mr. Jacobs, do you have any questions or comments? No, I did owe my colleague's comments about the thoroughness of the GZA report, the response, the time that Mr. Sprat has put into, I think the board was responsible in ensuring that staff and our consultants responded to the queries that were brought up by members of the public in, in good faith. I think they were in good faith, just not necessarily based
on the same data that, that our consultants and our professional staff used. So if there are no other questions from members of the board with regard to this request to submit a, a request to submit an application to the Office of DAM safety for reclassification, if all of your concerns have been answered, are you ready to, to present a motion for the five of us to vote on that matter Mr. Evans? Speaker 3: Sure. I I will move to not move forward with the request
to reclassify the South Natick Dam as anything other than a high hazard dam. Speaker 1: May I give you a friendly amendment? Yes, you may. So I would say that we will not be submitting a request to do a study that would, we would need to contract a study to submit a study to the Office of DAM safety. The study would take 30 days. The Office of DAM Safety takes 30 days and high ha hazard is not the concern. The concern is the size of the dam. Okay. So we would not be removing it. So the vote is we'll be not asking the Office of DAM safety to take the dam out of jurisdictional Okay.
Status. We accept that as a friendly, Speaker 3: That was a lengthy correction. I, I appreciate it. Speaker 1: Thank you. I just wanted to be very specific. Ms. Wils, Speaker 28: Excuse me. Can you explain why you're not doing Speaker 1: That? It's in the documents that are attached to the agenda. There's a 25 page memo from GZA and we're not taking comments from the public right now. So it is attached, there's a letter from me to the, the applicants that explains that 25 page memo. There's a 25 page memo and the original application is also attached to the agenda. Ms. Wil, Speaker 8: I just wanna be clear on, on what it is we're actually voting
and what the request specifically is and, and does your motion, potential motion address what we were asked to do? That's all. Speaker 1: I'm okay. So we, we were asked that's gonna encapsulate the board was asked to conduct a a, the board was asked to have our town engineer who is not capable of doing this type of analysis. So we'd have to engage an outside agency to do a study that would ask the, and submit the data to the office of DAM Safety to ask them to reclassify the dam.
We are under their jurisdiction, not because it's a high hazard dam. So it's irrelevant whether they came back and said, this is not a high hazard dam. That's not the standard. So that 25 page memo sets it out, my email to the parties that submitted that very succinctly hits on every single one of those points. And so the ma the, the matter before the board is to formally respond and take a vote to say we will not be asking the Office of DAM safety to re to reassess the jurisdictional nature of the Natick Dam. So that was the motion as our second, second seconded by Ms.
Jacob. Ms. Ms. Jacobs slate. It's, it's gonna be Mr. Cody pretty soon. It's all good. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. Next to item on the agendas, the Safety Committee recommendations and I see Chief Hicks as arrived just on time And members of the board I will be taking with your permission off the, off the consent agenda, one of the safety Committee recommendations after we discharge the first one. Speaker 3: Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Good evening, chief Chief of Police.
I do come for you with recommendations from the Safety Committee from our last meeting on June 4th. The first one I will go to talk about Constituent Street and there's a, there's a history here that I think the board should be aware of this history goes back many years. And the concern on the street itself is based on traffic, not only traffic flow, but also the type of traffic on this particular roadway. Just from a perspective of the roadway itself. Constitu Street is unique
and in many ways is also problematic. First of all, it is, well, almost, it's mixed use. So it's not only residential, but it's also commercial with several types of businesses on there, including car dealerships, repair shops, tow companies. There's several areas that, that operate on that same street as well as residential. So now it's a combination of both on that roadway. Some other issues that are, are very problematic is the size of the roadway. So in most cases, at the widest area,
when we talk about pavement, it's about 20 to 21 feet and width. So when you talk about the type of vehicles go now, not only passenger vehicles, but you're talking about large trucks, including car carriers and long trucks and big trucks that go down there that use that roadway. So it's a challenge. It, it truly is a challenge. What makes it even more challenging is the oversight that we as a, a town have, specifically that the roadway from North Ave, from no North Main Street
to Harrison Street is an accept way for the town. And I think that many of members here knows what it means to be an unaccepted way in, in many ways. But just to reemphasize from the standpoint of traffic safety and traffic enforcement an accept way based on an opinion by town council for another issue we had back in 2017 says, any restrictions put on that roadway is unenforceable by the Natick Police Department. And that's in that area that is from North Main Street to Harrison.
So it becomes more problematic because we can't enforce any kind of restrictions that may be put on that area, which again, causes that conflict that occurs between large trucks. And also the fact that the roadway's not very wide. And also you have residential needs for parking on the roadway. It's like a, it is, it's really a, a combination of a lot of different areas and concerns. It's been cyclical and a little bit, because I can remember 10 years ago talking about these very same issues and trying to resolve 'em. Sometimes we, in most cases, we try to get the,
the business owners to work with the residents, and it's one of those that is okay for months, and then it comes back again. And then there's the wintertime and then there's delivery trucks, and then there's different types of things that come up. So we do feel for the residents who, who live down there, but at the same time, the businesses also have by Right. The ability to also use that same way. So it becomes a concern. I know some of the concerns is why isn't the, the, the police enforcing certain aspects is because, as I said earlier, we can't fight law.
So a couple things that we want, there's several steps that we're gonna recommend at least to start off with, to try to address it. We're going to continue to try to work with the businesses that are there to, to see if they can assist in any way. Again, it would have to be voluntarily because we don't have the authority to tell 'em they can't use the roadway with restrictions. But we, what also is problematic is we go back to an earlier event after council informed us that by the town instituting restrictions, specifically parking restrictions would be illegal
on a previous street. We are recommending that we, that this board rescind its vote. The last time we saw it was a vote in 1976 to restrict the parking on both sides of constituent Street the entire length. Well, now we know you can't do that. So the first thing we're gonna ask is that you rescind that vote. This is a matter of process and procedure. The second thing we're gonna ask is that we, there is one section of Constitu Street, which has the bridge that goes over Constitu Street that's in, that's owned by the state.
The interesting thing is that's in the area that is unaccepted. However, based on regulations within the Commonwealth, and we check with Department of Transportation, DOT Mass, DOT, because it's a state owned bridge, the select board as the road commissioners can restrict parking on the bridge. So what we wanna do is be able to at least put in regulations that are enforceable. And by this, we are recommended the board do, do take a vote to determine there be no parking
on the bridge on constituent to start us off with. Now. So two things are gonna happen. By rescinding that original vote, you will be rescinding those restrictions that are in place and become confusing because back when that vote was taken in 1976, there's a whole lot of traffic signs up there that says no parking based on the original vote, which then there has been unable to enforce, which sends a mixed message and the wrong message. So we want to clean that up. So if the vote is taken, we would take down those signs that are now illegal,
and then we would put up signs specifically on the bridge. That's the first step. And that's what we can do now based on those guidelines and the rules. Some of the other things we are gonna do, but it doesn't take a vote from this, from this board, is to start cleaning up some of the parking that is happening on those streets that are accepted now, including Harrison and Spring, especially 20 feet within the intersection. And we could do that with signage so we can make that clear. So there's things we can do that doesn't require the, the action this void because there's already rules and regulations to that. But the two we recommend now is gonna help us
to at least hopefully get to a scenario that we can help address some of these needs on this very, very tight street. We do have, we have to wait for another safety committee to come back with some other recommendations as far as parking restrictions in those areas that are the accepted way from Harrison to Washington. And we'll do that at our next safety committee meeting. Speaker 1: Thank you. Chief questions for members of the board, Mr. Evans and Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 3: Yep. Thank you Madam Chair. Very quickly, chief on the recommendation to restrict parking on both sides of the bridge.
Could we not phrase that to be prohibit? Restrict to be just doesn't seem powerful enough. In fact, I'd like to see prohibit with a towing provision or something like that that's violate those two provisors will be towed or those are two separate provisions Yep. That has to be made. We recommend at this time just, just stay with the parking. Let's, okay. And I, I agree. If you want prohibit that makes sense. If you wanna make that as part of the motion. Yeah. Okay. I will. Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs, welcome. Speaker 10: Thank you. Mr. Evans asked one
of the questions I was gonna ask, but can you just backing up on the, the town council's opinion about this, when you say that, you know, like restriction, any restrictions can't be enforced on an unaccepted road. Like what is, what does that entail? 'cause I mean, I I, I know there are some things we can enforce on an unaccepted road, like, you know, the speed limit, we can still enforce that. Like is it just parking or, you know, for example, like is if they were in such a way that they were actually obstructing the right of way, could we stop them from doing that? Yes. Like what can and can't we do? So
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked that. I meant to put that into my original presentation. Yes, we can, if they, if they leave an un obstructed way that obstructs safety vehicles passing, we can, we can enforce that. If they park it at a fire hydrant, we can enforce that. Those are all areas that although it's unaccepted, we can, 'cause we still have responsibility to make sure that there's a clear pathway. But the way it works is that if, if we go down there and see that there is a, a blocking of the roadway, you know, obviously we'll ask them to move. If they're parked as opposed to standing, then we could take action to have them removed and towed.
Speaker 10: Good. And then kind of just a, a follow up on that, when you say like we, we can ensure that there's a clear pathway, does that apply to like if a vehicle is parked on a, on a sidewalk? Speaker 3: So parking on a side, like is a, is a local regulation. Speaker 10: So we couldn't enforce that. We couldn't Speaker 3: Enforce it. Not in an accept way. Speaker 10: Okay. 'cause yeah, I went, I, so I, I went, I went down there myself to look at this, to look at this road. I walked the whole road both ways to see it. And one of the things I did notice was several cars that were parked on what appears to be a si it's very dilapidated, but appears to be a sidewalk Speaker 3: On the, towards North Main. Yes, Speaker 10: Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. At that, at that exact spot. So that's why I asked. But that's, but you're selling me, we can't, we can't do anything about that apparently. Okay. And then my other question is, oh wait, that's the one that Bruce already asked. Yeah. Did the, did the committee consider in making the recommendation about the, the bridge, did the committee consider any potential unintended consequences of that? And, and I ask, because it looked to me like the bridge was primarily being used by that business, the euro, I forgot the name of the business, but the Eurotech Eurotech, thank you. And you know, they had parked a, a significant number of cars.
If we tell 'em they can't park them there, presumably they're gonna park them somewhere else. And I'm wondering if that was considered and thinking about the fact that, you know, we can't enforce anywhere else. Like where, where would that be pushed to? Speaker 3: I, I think that's a good question. And this is why we're taking a, a, a walk before we run. So we were looking at what can we restrict at this point? And we feel that that's the first step. I think that last time down there, they pike parking pretty tight. You probably got maybe four, maybe five vehicles that they put in that area. Yeah. So eventually they're gonna, it's, it's like this is the, the problem we have is that there's,
it's, it's mixed use, you know, so those businesses also have a right to use that roadway and use, use that way. And they are gonna go somewhere. But we're gonna have to address that somehow, you know, and see where that goes. We hope there's gonna be voluntary compliance, but given what we can do now, legally, we feel that if we start there and work and continue to work with both the residents and the businesses there, maybe we can resolve that and, and hopefully prevent that. Now we have 'em on another roadway or they move up to the north main end, which even now, there's not much room for them to park up there.
Right. Because that's packed. Because we're also concerned about some, some commuter parking up there also. Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah. And then my, my last question is just, you know, I I, I'm curious about how this intersects with the street acceptance process and like, you know, because normally in a street acceptance situation, what it is, is it's residents along the street that want their street accepted and they're, you know, they, they work to do it and they, they put it through that process. But here it, it's, it's a little unusual because it seems like the part where many of the residents live is accepted the part on the other side of Harrison.
And then the part where this problem is, it's unaccepted. So is is there any pathway to making that accepted or, or not? Because you, you, do you get what I'm asking? Like, oh yeah. Speaker 3: It's not my area of expertise. No. I think that we have some DPW in the town ministry, I may know, but yeah, I'm sure there's a path for acceptance. But I think that based on a roadway that may be problematic from what I hear it sitting in the meetings, because first of all, you don't have the width that we usually have. Like I said, it's 21 feet and 20 feet will usually look somewhere between 10 and 12 feet of passage on each
direction to create that pathway. I don't know if it's wide enough, I'm just guessing. So I'm not an expert at it at all. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 1: I, I think that any, any road acceptance process for that street would entail taking a big chunk of those front yards. It would really cut into that because of the width and because we're a complete streets, then we're looking at also adding sidewalks. Right. And then curbs some Speaker 7: Parts, poten pot, some parts potentially. Speaker 1: Yeah, potentially, potentially. Speaker 7: We, we just, 'cause the paved road doesn't, pave road doesn't necessarily always equate to the right of way or what's laid out. Yeah. So we can explore, we'll explore that regardless of
what the board chooses tonight, just to see what, what do we have on file from an engineering perspective for that area. And we can, we'll, I, I can certainly get that to the board at some point in the coming, coming days or weeks. So I have to check with our engineering division. But yeah, I just, I mean I'm, I'm not even, I'm not saying it's a good idea or something. I just wanna make sure we do the sees full picture. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3: I think it's fair to say we, we have to look at all the options. Yeah. Because it is, it is problematic. There's no doubt about it. Speaker 1: Ms. Poe. Speaker 9: Ha. Thank you. Chief, had there been any interaction with these businesses before? Speaker 3: Oh yes, Speaker 9: There has. Yes.
Because it, I'm hearing you say you're hoping that it will be a friendly situation, but I'm wondering what the relationship has been like before that creates this level of optimism. I, Speaker 3: I think that when we had that discussion with them, they have, they're willing to be compliant for a period of time, but then there may be like, I'll take a Bernardi for instance, that, that they have car carriers. So for a while there, when we said, okay, can you be considered not using that roadway? 'cause car carriers going down constituent and then trying to make that turn at Washington is a tight turn. And then they're not gonna, they're gonna make that turn,
but it's also gonna be up on curbing, which was just redone, which is something else we don't want. So what we found is for a while there is that Bernardi would, would drop off their cars on North Main Street, which is not optimal either. So it becomes a problem. So now we say to 'em, you gotta move off North Main Street. So what do they do? They go back on con. So we have a dilemma about how to resolve it. Is is is something we have to continue to look at options, Speaker 9: What's the penalties towards them for the parts? We're able to enforce Speaker 3: The penalties for Speaker 9: Like the things that you're able to enforce. Yeah. If they don't comply with those,
what are the penalties for those things? Because likely that would be an incentive to stop if stop Speaker 3: If parking, it's a parking ticket, it's a $20 parking ticket. If they are restricting, Speaker 9: So that's not really Speaker 3: The pathway, then it's a toll. Speaker 9: Okay. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: I'd like to re reiterate that while we're doing our parking study and looking long term that we move past the one ticket a day. 'cause $20 a day for parking is not a dis persuasion for somebody who wants to park all day for a business. Speaker 3: We, we've gotten past that. We are, Speaker 1: We're doing that. I mean, I'm, I'm really, really happy to have the escalation to have up to three a day towing,
towing it to another county. So yeah, that was Speaker 3: Stand standby. Speaker 1: My You could, you could hide them in my backyard at this point. That was, yes, exactly. So, so my question was, what does enforcement look like? And I I appreciate that question, Ms. Pope. So at this time, I'm going to ask the board for the, the first step for a motion to rescind the no parking restrictions on Coit Road. Read it right from the recommendation, if I could have that motion. But before, Speaker 8: Before we go, I just would like to acknowledge the lawn suffering neighbors on constituent
street for all, you know, the efforts that they have put in. And it's been a very difficult situation for you all. And I, and I just wanted to acknowledge that and Speaker 1: It's, thank you. Speaker 10: Do we? Yeah, Speaker 1: Well, we'll do our best. We're taking short steps, concrete steps, baby steps with the idea that we will continue to find ways to ameliorate the problems. Like, so, so these motions tonight, this isn't it. And it's, you know, put it to bed and we'll come back in five years and see how it's working. It's gonna be a process. Mr. Jacobs shoot. Speaker 10: Can, should we, or can we hear from them before we vote?
Or I, I just, you know, they brought a whole diorama and everything. I don't know. I mean it's, you know, I know it's late though, so it's obviously up to you as the chair, but I just asking the question. Speaker 1: So thank you for putting the chair in a very awkward position. What, what I wanted to say, sorry, is that we can look at this at a future meeting. We have seen almost all of those pictures, I'm guessing in email and multiple emails. We probably have that's and many, many emails all day every day. So what I'm going to suggest is, in the interest of time, and we still have another staff member and another contentious subject, what I'd like
to do is move through the motions. Okay. And I will put this on my select board chair, revisit to look and see one second. So to look and see where we are in three months and see what other steps we can take. And, and, and I'm, I'm assuming that part of, part of the next steps is going to be that Bonnie and Pete are gonna make that part of their circle of going and writing tickets when they're on the bridge. That's gonna be a normal part of their whatever is their loop, their walk loop. So you have a question? Somebody has a question. Could you come to the mic please real quick?
Speaker 23: It's for Chief Hicks. Speaker 21: Thank you. I'm not here for the flooding, I'm here for the other side of the street. Just a question for Chief Hicks. Is the no parking on a state bridge include the approaches to the bridge? Speaker 8: Good question. Speaker 3: Good question. It would be the bridge owning. So we, by doing this and taking the vote, if voters taken, we can actually post it, but it'll be the bridge owning 'cause the approach is, is in the accept way Speaker 1: Point of clarification on both sides. Yes, Speaker 3: They're both sides. Okay. The entire bridge is on an is in an unaccepted way. Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, I walked it, I looked at it, I just, okay,
so c can I, can I have the motion from the, from the Speaker 3: Recommendation? Speaker 1: Yes, please Speaker 3: Move to rescind no parking restrictions on Constitu Street on both sides from North Main Street to Washington Ave. Which that was previously voted by select board in 1976. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Evans. Second. Second by Ms. Slager. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. So that, that takes care of the procedural Mr Speaker 3: Door number two, move to recommend
to, what's the right word? Prohibit. Prohibit. Thank you. Parking on both sides of, of the constituent constituent street bridge. Second. Speaker 1: Moved in. Seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. A opposed? And I would just ask to instruct town administration to work with public safety to ensure that those signs get made and put up. There's another, I'm sorry, I just did. Speaker 3: Wow. Real time. Speaker 1: So there, there is another safety committee recommendation that's on. Yeah. Thank you. On the consent agenda that with permission
of the board, I'd like to pull off so that while the ch chief is here, if we have any questions. And this is the one regarding Elliot. Is it Elliot? Elliot Everett. Everett, Elliot Street at Speaker 3: Street Elliot Street. And Robert Spro. And Spro. Yep. Speaker 1: So the committee voted to recommend to the select board to refer to the engineering department to look into dangerous intersections. The minutes from that meeting as presented by somebody who was there. I don't think these are the official meetings, instruct us or say that we should be referring it to Brian Casey
for cutting down vegetation to look into cutting down visitation and Officer Moran to continue directed patrols to reduce speed. So do we include all of that in our recommendation or, so Speaker 3: If I, if I could Sure. Because this has been on, this is another area that's been on our agenda numerous times. Yep. What, what safety committee has finally determined after doing all the things you've talked about, so doing, cutting down a brush, doing traffic studies and speed studies, is that that intersection is, is problematic. Is, is, is it's a dangerous intersection now. It has to be.
We have to go, this is beyond safety. So we're saying as a safety committee, it's a safety concern, especially the angle of coming off of, of, of Elliot Street there. And, and we feel that it needs to be escalated to town engineer in order, but in order to do that, somebody has to make it a priority. It's not the safety committee. We don't have that authority. Got it. So that's what we're bringing forward to, to, to this board to determine and, and, and give direction to town administration and also to DPW to look at this from an engineering standpoint. Thank Speaker 1: You Mr. Evans.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Very quickly, when, when five Auburn Street was discussed, you know what I'm trying to understand is what I know what the don't block the box will do, but the, you can do a right turn or a left turn if I could ma'am. So we are not talking about two different things. Speaker 1: We're not talking about the block, the box one. Yeah, we're just talking about Elliot and Everett. Yeah. Right now. And then, and then we'll, we might as well just go right to the 16 pound block. Okay. Block the box. Sorry. That's okay. There. Any questions about the referring it
to the engineering department for Elliot and Everett? No, no, no question Mr. Speaker 10: I just have want, my question is just what the timeline would be on recommendations coming from that if, you know, assuming we, we vote for this, Speaker 3: I think that from, from our perspective, from the safety committee, it would fall on the engineering department and DPW what that timeline would look like. But as we say, it was time to elevate it. Okay. It was time for someone to say put this on your, your radar to evaluate. Speaker 7: Just, just from that, from the engineering division perspective, they're going through a bit of transition right now with the retirement of our town engineer and hiring of a new engineer.
So, right. It probably have some, some type of continued dialogue in the next three to six months. But it really depends. I, I, I can't speak, I can't say that we're gonna have anything definitive be before then though. This, this will be a little bit, little bit out just given the, the, the, the limitations and the capacities of the division right now. Yeah, Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 3: So very quickly question, no, mistaking that it's a dangerous intersection, but what is the outcome of declaring it a dangerous intersection?
What, what exactly happens other than putting a dangerous intersection sign? Like, beware. What, what does this, what accomplish? So from the safety committee perspective, it's not a matter, it is, it is a dangerous intersection based on its engineering. Okay. In and of itself. And what we've seen is, is a lot of near misses and almost some very serious crashes. We feel this now needs to be evaluated as a total analysis of the intersection. Does it need to be straightened? Does it need to be a t intersection? Doesn't mean there's land taken. There's a whole lot of things that go into it.
So I think going back to the original question, this is not overnight, but it's one that if we can at least elevate and have it put on the list Got it. To consider that I think they'll come up with, with solutions to what the problem is. Good. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Take motion. Speaker 3: Move, move to approve. Now that I know the right motion, move to approve. Recommend that we ask the engineering department to look into the Everett and Elliot Street intersection as a dangerous intersection. Speaker 1: Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Any opposed? That passes. And since we're there, do you wanna go ahead and do the Speaker 3: Absolutely. Speaker 1: Block the box? Speaker 3: Absolutely. Don't block out. See, it's going back to basketball. Sorry. So I move to recommend that the select board paint don't block the box at the intersection of Elliot and Robert Spro way to include a mutt e approved signage. Speaker 1: I'll second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? 5 0 0. Thank you so much, chief. Really appreciate it. Boden Lane Bridge Construction
and the Public Shade Tree Act. You're up Mr. Art? Speaker 7: Sure. While, while art goes up, I'll just give a brief Yes. If you could please history of, of just what, why, why we're here today. And art, please correct me on anything that I say. Speaker 1: Always. Speaker 7: Well always you do that just now. Just had to but in brief, just for, for members of the public who, who may be still watching. I'm not sure how many are still watching. Oh, there's still, there's still some people. Great. Speaker 3: There's still, I wanna say fell asleep. Speaker 7: So the Bowden Lane Bridge, which has been a bridge for a long time in, in this part of West Natick back in OC
actually on Halloween in 2019, was damaged accidentally by MBTA crews. They had a, a sort of like a work train that was going by causing it to pretty much immediately be closed down because of severe structural compromise. They inspected it soon after and they, they confirmed that in fact it was compromised and they had to actually remove the entire bridge at that time. In February of 2020, they installed a temporary pedestrian bridge, which is there today, but it was always intended to be temporary. And soon after that they shifted focus to designing a comprehensive replacement, which was in essence
to, and if you recall February 21, it was right before the pandemic hit. So it took about a year for that to actually start in earnest just because of, obviously we were in various forms of, of dealing with, with the pandemic, which was in essence to replace the bridge functionally similar to the prior structure. The bridge is necessary for a number of reasons, not, not the lease, which there's a town water main that actually goes over this bridge. We had to do a very quick reconnection, I guess when we put the pedestrian bridge in. In addition, it provides access
to the west native commute rail station for, for, for users. That station has been a topic of reconstruction, or at least renovation by the MBTA for a number of years, which includes they would like to eventually extend the platform and right now actually it's a cross over the bridge to get to the outbound side. That is an unsafe condition and they're trying to get rid of those in their network. So there's other improvements that are also part of that station project that actually a new bridge is builds into it because they, they would try to put some, likely some a DA compliant like elevators
and this new bridge structure would actually be able to accommodate that in the future. So it doesn't preclude anything. They're also doing a third rail or third track project. I don't, I think it's been a little bit stalled, but that is also something that all along the, the Worcester line, they're trying to widen the span of bridges and this would accommodate that as well. And then from sort of a public safety perspective, it provides a relief for that section from north to south and and south to north on 1 35 more north to south. 'cause functionally similar is one lane of traffic
and ped bike access. Now functionally similar also means that they need to bring the entire bridge up to modern design standards, which then naturally leads to a wider bridge. There's been a number of public meetings and public hearings, both the town and the mass DOT level. Just to briefly highlight the, the primary ones for mass DOT, there was one in November of 2022 and one in June of 2024. The one in June, 2024 was their sort of large scale design public hearing. At that engaged the public sought feedback and advance the product design. They're now at a point, and this is where I'll pass it over to art.
And we do have the landscape architect with us as well from the team working with mass COT who can answer any of the questions. But in essence, they're at the point where they're soon to hope to, to advertise or bid the project and they have sought input and in incorporate input from the public. But the big reason for tonight is really about the shade trees that are in the existing public way, public right of way. And the existing shade trees. Really regardless of any bridge project here, it's not just this bridge project, any bridge project here, 'cause of the right of way and the way bridges need to be constructed
to modern standards. Any bridge at this location would impact the shade trees. So pass over to art to, to talk through exactly what you're voted on tonight. 'cause it's really about the trees, but art, take it away if you could. Speaker 29: Alright, that sounds great. Arthur Goodine, public work supervisor in tree warden. Oh. So just here tonight to ask the board to consider your powers and duties under Massachusetts general law chapter 87 87, section five of the Public Shatri Act regarding my notification from mass DOT and their engineer, that the bridge reconstruction does
require the removals removal of public shade trees in the right of way. And consider that those public shade trees to obstruct the project and therefore and commode the traveling public as it relates to the bridge reconstruction. So really the consideration under section five, Speaker 5: Mr. Jacobs, Speaker 10: Thank you. I have a question about the, the diagram that was included. The planting plan, the, it, i I might just be totally misreading it, so please, please correct me. I mean that's why I'm asking the question.
Is there, it looks to me from, from looking at it like the replanting is very concentrated on the east side of the bridge on both, on both, on both sides, on both the north and the south side of the bridge. The, the east side has a lot of replanting there, but I, I don't see, I, I see very little on the, on the north side. This's planned to be, I mean, I'm sorry on the, on the west side this plan to be replanted. I'm, I'm wondering if, if I'm misreading it, but if not, sort of why that is it.
If it's helpful, we could also introduce Keith with chapel engineering and I know he has a couple of members online as well, as well as someone from MAs dot. So Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 13: Thank you. My name is Keith Lincoln, I'm the project manager for chapel engineering, the design consultant that was hired to do the design of this bridge project. And first off, you are correctly reading the plan. The primary area of planting is on the east side and particularly the northeast side where we were trying to,
you know, protect that slope or to landscape that slope because it's the more residential side. On the southwest quadrant, we're very limited for space because we're right up against the sidewalk and parking area Yeah. For the MBTA rail train station. So that really limited what we could do on that side. And also any plantings really would've been below the grade of the walls that are, that are necessary Okay. To build up the roadway to make the clearance over the tracks as required
by the bridge design. And then on the northwest quadrant, that area there was reserved for a future improvement that the town had planned to provide access from the Tamarack Lane to the northwest to the outbound MBTA station platform. Oh yeah. So the outset of the project, those, those two areas were kind of reserved as, you know, for those reasons or the, the intent was to hold the edge of pavement on the east side of the road
and try to provide landscaping on that slope and then do all of our widening to the west where that would then also lend itself to the future improvements that the M-B-A-M-B-T-A station upgrade had intended. Speaker 10: So, sorry, I'm, it's late so I'm sorry, but I, I'm, I'm not sure I'm completely understanding why because like, so, so right now there's a lot of trees on both sides, right? Like on the, on the, on the north, on the north side of the, the, the talking about just the north side of the track now, the residential side, there's lots of trees on both,
on both the south, on both the east and on the west. And so it, it looks like if, if I'm, if I'm reading this right, that, and, and once this is is done there will be, there'll be no trees on the, the northwest side of the bridge anymore. And I'm trying to, is is that, are you saying that that's just because of the design? Like the bridge just goes out like so far in that direction that there's no more space to there there, the space that exists now for the trees will, there won't be any that space, so there wouldn't be anywhere to replant, is that what you're saying? That's
Speaker 13: Partially the reason. And then the, then furthermore that that is up against that the, there's a sliver of land that's reserved for that future path that was to be constructed from Tamarack down to the, the MBTA platform. Speaker 7: So if I may, that sliver of land, which it's, you can see it on the plans I'm trying to highlight here with my arrow. It's actually a conservation commission controlled land. It's owned by the town. Yeah. And so when working with Claire Relli, the thinking was that that had, there's more opportunity for the town to do something with that sliver of land.
So PR that that's already PR providing a, a sort of a, an area that we can improve. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 7: Okay. And there was an intent at one point with the, my understanding years ago when that was transferred to ComCom from by through town meeting action, which is, it's like 15, 20 years ago I think was that that could provide an avenue for pedestrian access to the platform. We're also in this limbo because we don't know how the MBTA is gonna redesign their platform Yeah. If it's gonna be usable. So there hasn't been plans completed, but that is an opportunity area to work
with the conservation commission to do some, you know, revegetation in that area as well. Speaker 10: Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you then. Well I think that answers the, the sec Oh just my only other question is just sort of a procedural one, like if we vote to, to do this, like are we voting to do it subject to this plan that we have in front of us or would they be free to sort of change the plan after we've, you know, once we give permission to remove the trees, you know what I'm saying? Like are we voting, can we, are we or can we vote it subject to this replanting plan?
Or is it just kind of we vote to, you know, allow them to remove the existing trees and then just, you know, it's, it's up to them from there. Alright. Speaker 7: I mean typically these votes are really just about the removal of the trees. Yeah. With that said, you know, we have a strong relationship with mass DOT and on this project there's no intent of planting less. If anything we'd like to work with them to plant more. Yeah. And maybe even, you know, as the, as the project advances, utilize our own resources to augment some
of the plantings on, you know, non right of way property. So not part of the DOT project because they have limitations on where they can, they can do their work as well. Yeah. Speaker 10: Okay. Alright, that's, that's all my questions for now. That's Speaker 7: A great question Speaker 30: Ms. Wilger. Speaker 8: So first question is to town administration, were the abutters notified? Speaker 7: Yes. We did a flyering of abutters and Abutters two abutters on Monday. Okay. Speaker 8: And I Speaker 7: Already, there are some, there are some Speaker 8: On here as Speaker 7: Well. Speaker 8: Good. Alright. So my question, and I don't know if anyone here can address this, is, is
about the trees and the choice of not planning anything that is greater than, than six feet. After seeing the, the layout of the property, it's really clear that with the utilities going, being relocated to the east side, that you know that's gonna be the area where there's going to be the greatest impact. And you're taking something that, you know, we have current trees now that are, you know, I don't know how tall they're 30, 40 feet and replacing them with something that's only gonna be six feet tall.
What's, I understand that utilities are concerned, but was there any thought to putting in something that might be more of a visual barrier because it's gonna look so different after the trees are gone. Speaker 13: So for that one I would defer to Kathleen, can you respond to that question please? Kathleen Passer is with, is our landscape architect excuse. Speaker 30: Thanks Keith and thank you all. So I'm Kathleen Vaser, I'm senior principal Landscape Architectural Tools design. We're responsible for the planting plans
and we work closely with mass DOT to develop the plant list of the approach as Keith was describing, each side we're discussing now the east side, but each side of the bridge in its approaches from both directions has a tall retaining wall. The residences are at the low end and the roadway obviously is at the high end of the wall. So the plantings are primarily being planted or they are being planted at the bottom of the wall in
most of the locations to plant trees. They, they would grow too wide to be next to the wall, right? So there's not enough space. And as the wall gets shorter, then there are times when there isn't enough horizontal space as opposed to an a, a physical piece that would stop 'em from being able to grow. So there's, there's physical restrictions, there's the need to grade, that was the restriction. There is the, trying
to look at all my notes here, all the utilities, there are overhead lines as well that were restriction. So we worked within all of the different moving parts and with the space remain, we found that we were most able to put understory trees, the lanker as well as more kilometer evergreen trees. And in general, our approach to planting along this, now we're at the bottom of the wall from a residential perspective, we felt that softening the wall,
so focusing on low level plantings was more important than a, a shade tree in that you'd see more of the wall. So between all of those different aspects of trying to plant this area, this was the approach that we came. So a mix of some understory, flowering trees, some kilometer evergreen trees, they're native and a mix of shrubs were very limited in being able to put new shade trees back in these areas, unfortunately. Speaker 8: All right, thank you. My next question is,
who's responsible for maintaining this area? Speaker 7: It, it would likely be the town. 'cause it's, it's within the town right of way. The bridge itself is DOT. But the, in all likelihood, the the right of way would be the town, like the stuff in the right of way. Speaker 8: So would there be any plans, you know, this, this sounds nice to have the shrubs, but let's say we have volunteers like Tree of Heaven, which seems to pop up everywhere. Would, would we then have to take those down
or would we just let nature take its course and whatever grows there over time is, is what grows there? 'cause there's a, there's a lot of stuff there right now that there's some really nice oak trees, but there's also some other trees that probably aren't as, as desirable. So is this an area given the, that it be disturbed that would be actively managed for a few years? Speaker 7: For a few years? I'm sure we'd be act, there would be some active management, but I, I, I'm not like long term we obviously, it's hard
to predict what, what we do. 'cause we probably have to see like what grows up and see how it, how it grows. And I'll, I'll turn it over to art, who is our, you know, tree specialists. So, Speaker 29: Alright, so I would say this area would be treated no differently than any other roadside. I think that based on the picture, there's probably an opportunity to have volunteer help from the abutters if they want to maintain the beautification. But from this perspective it would be, you know, form follows function for that. We wouldn't be like actively landscaping that area like we would the front of town hall.
Speaker 8: So it could look very different in a few years. It may, I mean it's a nice planting plan, but it, it might be whatever nature decides is the best. Speaker 29: That's always a risk. Speaker 8: Okay, thank you. Speaker 7: We're an opportunity. Speaker 31: Oh, Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Ms. Pope, do you have any questions? No. About this? I do not. All my questions were answered on my walk. I will, is there someone online that has a question? I saw a hand up Speaker 31: Thought they're all there. Speaker 1: Okay, so I will Speaker 31: Somebody did Chris. Speaker 7: Yeah, Speaker 31: Then they went back. Speaker 7: Oh, Speaker 1: Ms. Theron, could you unmute yourself?
Speaker 31: I can't do that. Speaker 7: We're working on this. Sorry. Speaker 32: Hi there. I am the butter at Tamarack. My name is Chris Nian and I'm curious from the designs and the plans that were submitted for review. I can't tell from that if every single tree from the current bridge all the way down to my fence is gonna be wiped out Speaker 31: The fence because the ComCom lands in between. So it's knocked down to the fence. Most of it is, but not down to the fence because the Con Kong land Speaker 7: Is correct.
Yeah, the conservation commission land does not have significant disturbance, but I'd have to be in the field to be able to tell you if every single tree that, that's hard to, to, to distinguish from like a two dimensional, you know, plan. Look, I don't know if, if the, Keith do you have any thoughts on that? We Speaker 31: Have additional Speaker 7: Plans. You have to go to the, you have to go to the mic though. Nobody. Yeah, Speaker 13: We do have additional plans that are, are part of our overall contract set that identify which trees are to be removed versus those are that are to be retained
and those that are to be planted. This set here, Kathleen, correct me if I'm wrong, that does this, this set is simply the, the new plantings. We can provide an update on that. Okay. Which identifies the trees. They're not all, you know, it's, it's only to the limits of disturbance on that side. Speaker 7: Right. And, and I don't believe the limits of the disturbance go onto the conservation commission land, which is Speaker 13: No it just Speaker 7: Variable width, but it's about maybe 10 to 15, 20 feet wide. I'm just saying it doesn't go onto that area. Yeah. Speaker 13: And that's part of the reason for the walls.
So that the, the embankment wouldn't then go in and essentially render that, that space, you know, a slope that couldn't be developed at the future plan. Speaker 32: So it's my understanding then that the current embankment is going to just be a wall and that wall's not actually moving closer to my property line. Speaker 13: That wall is moving closer to your property. That I think if we go to the next page there, 'cause you're, you're right on the corner. Speaker 32: Yes, Speaker 13: Correct. So that wall that is being, I'm trying to give you a point of reference
that you can go by. Speaker 30: If I, if I may, I think if I'm understanding your question, Chris, is that you're wondering if the wall is closer than your stockade fence. And the answer to that is no, the stockade fence is, is closer to you than the wall will be. And you had asked about some trees whether they would remain, there are, there's a little bit of the wood, the wooded area that might remain. And then there's a, a couple of trees right under where you see two HV existing trees that will,
that are slated to be protected right at that corner. Does that answer your questions? Speaker 32: Well, I just wanna make sure we're clear here. That stockade fence is my property line. That's my fence. Speaker 30: So Right. There's no work to your beyond it's the work ends before the stockade fence. Speaker 32: Well, I certainly hope so. Speaker 30: Yes indeed. Speaker 32: So I guess, Right. So I'm, my, the issue we have now is that we have a lot of trees that block the people from staring in our dining room
window while they come home from the train. And so this is going to change that. So we're going to see lots and lots of people watching us eat dinner, watching us at our pool in the backyard because you're taking down all of the privacy that has existed in the entire 14 years I've lived here and the 30 years this pool has been here. So I, I'm really disappointed to hear that you're not gonna put any shade trees in. I have a few trees in the yard, but this is gonna dramatically impact my land. And I realize that most of this is all set in stone,
but it really would be great to put in something that's taller than six feet because it sounds like this wall is gonna be well over that. So I'm just having people staring into my yard and into my house and they love to do it. Speaker 30: So a couple of clarifications, the sizes that the plants go in as they will grow over time. So they are planted at smaller sizes because they are healthier than if you plant them large, they tend to not do as well. The lanker will get to 15 or 20 feet tall.
The junipers will get absolutely 20 feet tall. So those will grow and grow taller as the years go on. There are limitations to shade trees because their canopies get so large that there is a space that can be accommodated between let's say your stockade fence and the wall itself. So that, that is one of the limitations of to planting. Speaker 32: So can you tell me the distance from the stockade fence to the wall?
Speaker 30: I don't, hold on. That's, I might be able to measure it on my desktop. Do you have the distance, Keith? Speaker 13: I it's, it's roughly about 20 feet. It's the width of the, that easement, that article 97 easement because it, it terminates right at the, at the end of the, you know, just, just a little bit south of Tamarack and then you have the entire width of the easement. If you have the ability to measure that, Kathleen, that you can verify that. Speaker 30: So at the very end here, the very end of the wall
there is nine feet between the wall and the stockade fence. And then near the tracks at the end of the wall near the tracks. I'm not sure, I'm finding your stockade fence here. Oh, I see it now. Excuse me. While I take a measurement that's about 20 feet 19. Speaker 32: And how high will the wall, I know it's gonna start out pretty low where it's nine feet. How high will the wall get? Speaker 30: It'll leave that to Keith. Speaker 13: Yeah, the, the wall at the bridge gets up to about 20 feet, but down back by your property it actually tapers down
to existing grade. So it kind of follows the profile of the roadway. And at, at the point where it terminates it's, it's at the existing ground. Speaker 32: Okay. Speaker 13: It's a gradual increase as you get move south towards the bridge. Speaker 32: Okay, thank you. Speaker 1: Are there any other questions members of the public? Christopher Cameron? Speaker 33: Hi. Yeah, I just wanted to chime in. I'm the Maop project manager for this project. So thank you guys for hosting us here and happy to answer any, any questions. But I did wanna say we're not clearing all the way
to the property line on that northwest side. We're just clearing as far as necessary in order to construct that wall and then do the appropriate slope grading down to it to the existing grades. So with the manageable slope. And I think there were some challenges with the slopes that also kind of limited what could be planted. I don't think that was mentioned, but that was one of the constraints was whether trees can physically be planted on these slopes and be actually able to survive.
So, sorry about the background noise. Speaker 1: That's okay. So since there are no other questions from members of the board and since we need to take a vote to remove the public shade trees so that this project can go out to bid, I'm asking for a motion Mr. Bruce Speaker 3: Move to remove the public shade tree as governed by Mass General Law 87 section five as required by mass DOT submitted plan Speaker 1: Discussion? Never. We have a motion,
but we don't need a second yet in discussion. Ms. Pope, Speaker 9: I just wanted to say that in doing this, I hope that whatever is the least disturbance to these shade trees, to this per to my darien's property can be addressed because the fact that they cannot be put back is challenging, like this particular tree that is very challenging. So I, you know, we're making the motion we're gonna, you know, we're gonna vote this, but I, I would like for there to be the least amount of disturbance as possible
towards the property. Thank you. Thanks Speaker 1: Ms. Pope. Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 10: Yeah, ditto to that. And I, yeah, same thing. And I also think like we as, as the town, we should follow up and see what we can do on the, you know, small part of town on land that we have plus on the rest of the right of way, which we have the ability to, my understanding is we still have the ability to improve to the extent that it's not physically impossible. So I hope that Yeah, it does. That they, you know, you guys will do everything you can. Obviously this place I live at 16 Tamarack actually, so
I I I've, I've been to this many, many times. Walked there with my kids, you know, they've played in the extremely dirty leaves on there in the fall. So very familiar with these trees is very sad. You know, we gotta do what we gotta do, but you know, hopefully we can, we can, you know, make the best of it. So. Speaker 7: Yep. Just for the board's knowledge and then also for those listening, one thing that we've talked about already and we'll continue to talk about is, you know, the town does budget for replacement shade trees, both within the right of way and on occasion and on private property. We'll explore what we can do here and maybe we can even do that as soon as this,
you have planting seasons, you don't wanna do it like right now, right? For the dry season. But we can explore what we can do to augment what mass DOT is already doing. They have limitations on where they can physically go, but we have a little bit more flexibility, so we'll, we'll definitely explore that as much as possible as we can. We'd have obviously to work with con com and the property owners. Yeah, Chris and others, but we'll definitely we've, we'll we've already talked about that and so we can commit to that for sure. Thank you. Awesome. Speaker 1: That good Ms. Wil? Speaker 8: Just to, to comment, this makes me very sad to have to take this, this vote and,
and I hope that when the trees are removed that we, we don't leave a, a stump forest for, for the neighbors to have to, to look on that. You know, I recognize you're not necessarily gonna take them, take the stumps out, but I'm hoping that there can be something to make, to make the area at least not unattractive with all the, with all the trees and, and you know, they're very large trees and there'll be very large stumps. So I'm, I'm hoping that whatever can be done to
make this area as attractive as possible would be done. And, and it's gonna be a big loss to the people that are walking there. It's a very, Speaker 1: Including me. Yes, Speaker 8: It's a very pleasant walk. Yep, it's beautiful with, with the shade and that's gonna be gone and it's not coming back because no matter what we plant here, it's not ever gonna look like it does now. So just hope everyone's mindful of that and, and can do whatever we can to, to make it still be, be nice. Speaker 1: Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.
Any opposed? I'd like to take a moment and acknowledge the staff who came in early this morning at their DPW jobs and are here at quarter after 10 at night. I, I want, sorry buddy. It's that late. Yes, art, you're gonna be grounded when you get home, You're way past. So I do want to, to recognize the, the sheer amount of work that they've put in on this and on the dam and on the, the drainage. And I see Mr. Sprat in meetings so often. I don't know when he actually gets to work. So I do wanna acknowledge the amount of work the DPW workers
and facilities have put into all of the decision making and the questions that we've asked. I think Morgan was able to slip out but that's goes for him as well. Mme. Clark, I think we're at the consent agenda. Speaker 9: Yes. Item A approved meeting minutes for June 10th, 2026. Item B, appointment of special police officer Lieutenant Kevin j Deonte. Item C approve amended rules and regulations governing alcoholic beverages. Section 9.2, add hours of operation
for off-premise licenses. Item D rescind policy statement of issuance of licenses MGLC 1 38 S 15 off-premise retail wine and malt beverages and MGLC 1 38 S 15 off-premises retail, all alcohol beverages. Item E, affordable housing trust fund appointments for five terms expiring June 30th, 2028. David Fishman, Glenn Kramer, Kaitlyn Hughes, Patrick Kavanaugh, item F, transportation advisory Committee appointments
for two terms expiring June 30th, 2029. Abigail Brown, Joanna Carey, item G approve Natick. Pegasus. Contract renewal. Item H, approve safety committee. Recommendations, request to address safety concerns for motorist traveling south on Union Street. Attempting to access access Route 16 eastbound. Item I approve request to occupy a public way. Scoop of palooza parking. June 26th, 2026. I'm sorry, June 27. 2026.
And Jay approved requests for exemption from town. Bylaws. Chapter 41 S four Samuel, DIA, SCR Corp, Raja, Michael Smith, Ben Cast, inbound Speaker 1: Clerk. I'd like to remove item H and item E. Speaker 9: Okay, so I move to approve items A through G and I. Speaker 1: No, J oh INJ did you say? I thought you
Speaker 9: Said Speaker 1: J through, you said E FG what? H. So H we've already and then EI just, there's a SCR error. So everything on the consent agenda except for EN, H, Speaker 3: ENH. Speaker 9: Okay. Speaker 1: Not so yeah, Speaker 9: I move to approve A through D, F, G and I. IJ and IJ. Speaker 3: Second. Speaker 1: Moved and seconded. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All passes for item number E, justice Scrivener's error four terms expiring 6 30 20 28.
There was a name that a person withdrew her name, so that just needed to be corrected. Okay. And then we've already voted on H so all we need is a motion and a second and a vote on E. Speaker 3: Move to approve. E as amended. Second. Second. Speaker 1: All in favor? Please say aye. A. Speaker 9: Aye. Speaker 1: Any opposed? Passes 5 0 0. Mr. Erickson, Speaker 7: I just, there's a note on here. I made a, a, a reappointment of Marty Macquarie to the golf course of oversight committee. I'll have a couple more appointments on the next item.
It's also my time of here to do Reappointments. So I, I think, I believe it's a bylaw that I have to notify you of appointments. Speaker 3: I, we notified Speaker 7: And this is my notification, so Speaker 3: Notified Speaker 7: Otherwise, you know, we're heading into the, the summer months, so just be safe with the summer months and, and happy fourth. And you'll see on probably the next agenda, the agenda after that. We're also heading into town meeting season for the fall. Yeah. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 7: So sorry to brush. Just prepping you for that. Speaker 1: Wait, it's on the agenda for the 22nd. Just Speaker 7: Put, yeah, it's on the agenda soon,
so we'll be worried about that. Speaker 1: Any select board updates? Speaker 3: Nope. Speaker 1: No need for stink. Aye. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Speaker 3: Move to Ajour. Second. Second. Speaker 1: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And we are adjourned at 10:18 PM.