Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the July 22nd meeting of the Natick Select Board. I call us meeting to order at 6:04 PM We have an announcement and then I'll ask the board members if you have announcements. Natick Nights was moved from last week because of weather, so it'll be tomorrow night, Thursday on the common from five o'clock till eight o'clock. Does any member of the board have Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 2: Yeah, just really quickly, I just wanted to recognize that this week is T Shaba, which is an important time of remembrance and reflection for many members of the Jewish community. And I'd like to just wish all
who are observing a meaningful observance. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. Ms. Fgo, Speaker 3: I had just like to announce that the next Natick night out is on August 4th from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM and that is sponsored by the police department. It is a wonderful night. There'll be games, free food and more. You'll meet your local first responders, explore emergency vehicles and equipment, enjoy family friendly activities, and connect with community organizations. And that's in the Memorial High School memorial practice
field from four to 8:00 PM on Tuesday, August 4th. Speaker 1: Thanks, Ms. Slager. At this time, we'll enter into public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that's not on tonight's agenda and it'll be taken under advisement by the board. There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law, this section of the agenda shall be limited to 10 minutes and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to speak to the address the board? Mr. Scott, if you could come to the podium and introduce yourself. Speaker 4: Right. Roger Scott 40 Water Street.
I hope everyone including the members of this select board, has taken the opportunity to go down and observe the dam removal as is happening in South Natick. It was by a four to one select board vote that this was approved. Four. Voting for removal were Mr. Sidney, Mr. Joseph, Mr. Evans and Ms. Coughlin. The one vote to save the damn was Mr. Hickey. This is an environmental disaster and a financially costly one as well. Millions will be spent on attempted remedial solutions. One can see the dry beds, but cannot see the chemical
and waste products within the growing of the invasive Japanese knotweed will occur, which will require the use of Roundup to control. Since we have passed the point of no return damage done, it is essential that both Mr. Evans and Ms. Coughlin resign from the board and a special election be held to bring back the board back to five members. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Scott. Is there anyone else in the room who wishes to address the board in public speak? Is there anyone online? Seeing none. We'll move into discussion and decision.
Mr. Erickson, could I ask you to change that screen so it's the one behind me? Yep. Thank you. Speaker 5: Gimme one second. Speaker 1: First item on the agenda is low income community shared solar contracts better? Yes. Thank you so much. And I will yield to Jillian Wilson. Martin, Speaker 6: Good evening chair and select board. Thank you for having me tonight and including me on your agenda. I've included in your packet a memo describing the projects that we're working on. But in summary, I'm really excited to be here tonight before the board to share an opportunity to reduce low-income residents electricity costs
by participating in a state program that allows the town of Natick to use our electricity aggregation as a way to share the benefits of solar with low-income customers. What you have included are three agreements that I'm asking the board to authorize the chair to execute. They've been app reviewed by town council and they're with a organization called Blue Wave, which is a solar developer. Blue Wave has three projects that they are at substantial completion at in
Grandville, Massachusetts. And they're eligible for low-income community solar benefits, which would result in a discount on low-income customer bills in Natick. The customers that this would apply to are customers that are enrolled in the Eversource R two rate, which is a designated rate for low income customers and we anticipate it will reduce the average low income customer's bill by about $400 a year. So it's a pretty substantial savings. As noted in the memo, pursuing this means that we will need to authorize a revolving fund at town meeting
to allow the town to accept revenue from Blue Wave and then pass it through the revolving fund to our low income customers via our electricity supplier for the aggregation. And the memo also explains that should the town in the future choose not to continue having electricity aggregation for an unknown reason, we have the ability and we have the ability to end this contract and at no risk or cost to the town. So I'm happy to answer any questions you have, but I'm also just very excited to bring this forward.
It's something that we've been aware of for the past year or so. I've actually talked to the board about this before, but this is finally a chance for us to have projects that are built and ready to go and that we can bring forward to Natick. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Wilson. Martin, I'm opening up to the board for questions. Ms. Slager, Speaker 3: No questions, but I just wanna thank Ms. Wilson Martin for me offering to meet with all the select board members to get our questions answered. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how we're really a a, I don't know what the right word is. One of the first, I didn't wanna say Guinea pig
'cause that isn't what's happening here. But we're one of the first towns leading community leading communities. Thank you. Thank you for the wordsmithing, Mr. Evans. And talk a little bit about how, you know it came to be that Natick was chosen for this. Speaker 6: Sure. Yeah. So we're not the first, but I think we will be one of the, one of the first to start receiving these benefits and delivering them to our low-income customers. I should add also that there's no money that the town, the town won't make any money on this program. Just like how we don't make any money on the electricity aggregation program. All the funds from the solar projects will be given
to the low-income customers in Natick, the ones that the town receives. We were able to be part of this program because we were on the lookout for it in the first place. We have a great partner in our aggregation program provider or administrator Peregrine. Paul Gomer is on the call with us if we have any questions for him. And he helped bring this opportunity forward. Part of the reason that this project makes sense for Natick and that Blue Wave was interested in Natick is because of the size of our low income customer base.
So the number of households that are eligible to participate, it will year yield a meaningful discount for those customers versus if they were to partner with a larger community, it would be a more di minimis discount for those customers. So we're right sized. We have a long standing aggregation we've had for more than 12 years and we were ready to go. So we did need to move somewhat quickly on these agreements based on timing and we were able to be nimble for that because we had been prepared. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Any other comments
or questions from members of the board? I just wanted to point out to the public in the memo that was prepared for us, this program will save income eligible Natick residents about $300,000 a year. Were the average user roughly about $400 a year. So the discounts will equate to approximately 20% of their monthly elect electricity bill. So I'm really excited about bringing this forward. Mi Ms. Pope and then Mr. Evans? Speaker 7: Yes. At the risk of droning on, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you Ms. Wilson Martin, because this has been an issue that's come to the table. Several, I mean a lot, not several times,
but a lot about how we can help, what help can we provide our community with your electric bills cost savings. And this is a wonderful way to do that. So thank you so much for putting this before us and seeing this through Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Speaker 8: First I'm gonna chime in with the ditto on on all the hard work on doing it. And it's not just this particular program, it's things like the heat pump program, which resulted in if if you have a heat pump, you know that you've gotten a discount on your
Eversource electrical rate. So that that happens because of programs that were put in place by Ms. Wilson Martin among others. So thank you for that. My question, however, is on the income eligibility and what, what income level would you need to be to qualify? Speaker 6: Sure, I'm happy to answer that. So it's customers who are eligible for the R two rate, which is the name of the discount rate for low income customers that Eversource manages. And to qualify for that, you need to qualify for
some state and federal programs like heating assistance. There's a long list of programs that you, if you are in, you also qualify for the R two rate. And all that information is available on ever source's website. I will say that right now we have about 1200 residents in natick or customers, I should say households that are enrolled in the R two rate. And not all of them are also in the aggregation program. So this program will be for people who are in the R two rate and the aggregation program.
Unfortunately we're not able to just give it to everyone. We have to use the tool that we have available, which is the aggregation. So as part of our partnership with Blue Wave, they're giving us some additional funds to do outreach, to enroll folks who are not in the aggregation, in the aggregation so they can get this additional discount. And we also think that there's quite a few people out there between 30 and 50% more people are eligible to be on the RRY rate than those that are currently enrolled. And we would be doing the outreach to those customers as well.
Speaker 8: Excellent. Great answer. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. So at this time I'd like to ask for a motion. Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 2: Yeah, I move that we authorize the chair to sign these agreements that are linked in the meeting materials on behalf of the town Speaker 9: Kin Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Jacobs. Seconded by Mr. Evans. A roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a, yes, I do see a hand up. I'll go ahead and take this comment
or question if it's about the low income community shared solar contracts. Ms. Dr. Mackenzie? Speaker 5: Sorry, Speaker 10: Can you hear me okay? I just have a couple quick questions. I think this is great Jillian, thank you so much for sharing it. And these questions stem from my ignorance. Totally. So does this mean that solar panels are installed on people who are low income or are they sharing lower rates because of the town's aggregation? Speaker 6: They would be sharing lower rates because of the town's aggregation and our participation in solar projects
that are not on low income customers households in Natick. It's projects that are in another community but in our utility zone. Speaker 10: I think this is so exciting and thank you for your work on this and thank you select board for just approving it. That Speaker 1: It? Thank you Dr. Mackenzie. I'm going to take an item out of order. So we're gonna do next is agenda item for F scoff law, parking tickets, discussion and vote. So Speaker 9: Thank you madam. So thank you Madam Chair, members of the board for the record.
Chief James six, chief of Police and Natick. I'm gonna be sharing this with chief. Speaker 5: Is that mic? I Speaker 9: Don't think it's, it has a, the light's on. Speaker 5: You might wanna bring it down a little or up or up a little. I can hear that. Speaker 9: How about that? There we go. Sounds the same to me. Okay, thank you. Good evening and thank you for, for having us here. I'm, I'm here with deputy town, town administrator for finance, Ari Sky to present. This is this evening. So you, you may wonder why
and where this came from out of the blue. So a little bit of a quick history. We've been, we, we've been working with electronic systems for, for citations for almost eight years now. So we have a system in place where we issue electronic parking tickets and citations. Recently, I think a few months ago I teamed up with Ari and myself to start reviewing the, the, the process of ticketing within the town in which we started to dig into
all the data that is available through the system that we hadn't looked at before. We were trying to look at patterns such as where citations with parking tickets were being issued, how many were being issued. And we came across an interesting phenomenon 'cause we were also looking at appeals and what was being used and, and what was the reasons for appeals and that was being used. So we can look at signage. That's one thing that we discovered. We're gonna talk about that probably in a few months. We were gonna improve some signage, locations of parking meters, meters of type.
All these things we were looking at. What we came across, which was very interesting to us is the number of individuals who had a number. I mean a lot of parking tickets that were unpaid. There was still, there's still many in that same phenomena who have a lot of tickets that have been paid. So there's some out there who are getting many tickets in are paying them. But we realized that there's a lot and, and I put that into the memo and in brief is is it's, if we identify and we call scarf laws under parking guidelines
and terminology, there was over 24 and this was a couple weeks ago when I ran it, 24 violators. So 24 separate vehicles or individuals who account for 252 unpaid parking tickets owing a total of about $12,225 in fines. And we found that to be unfair to those who are following the rules and thought that what can we do to address it. So under the guidelines there are still motor vehicle and r
and v holds what we talk about. And that includes that if you have citations that are unpaid over 21 days, you get an r and v hold. Meaning if you go to reregister your vehicle, you're not gonna be able to re-register until it's they're paid. But what we saw that was unusual was that there was several outof state individuals who were getting in consistently. So they are still getting tickets up until this day outta state places. A plates are a little bit difficult 'cause we can't put r and v holds on outstate plates
'cause we aren't gonna collect that. The commonwealth is not gonna collect it. So we are proposing and coming in front of you as, as the board and and managers of the parking is to present a way of dealing with scarf laws in other communities you have different ways such as the boot, the infamous boot. We don't recommend that. We don't think that's proper for, for the town of Natick. What we're recommending is a toe and hold. And what that would be is that we are able, if approved, we're able to those who who are scarf laws
and are defined as scarf laws if discovered on town property meaning on a public way or in a public lot can be told. And that, and they held at the tow company until such times as their fines are paid and it's verified. We think this is the best way of, of handling it at this moment in order for us to to, to be able to address it. Some of the questions I know is asked, and I'll put it out there 'cause it's fair to ask, is that what does to and hold means? It means that if they're discovered on the roadway, as I explained, they are eligible to be told. But doesn't mean we're gonna have to be judicious about it.
I mean, we're not gonna know. Sometimes it's hard to tow depending on where they parked. So if it's reasonable and and simple to to tow 'em, we'll do so. We'll also give 'em an opportunity. Anybody who watched some of the reality shows know what when parking, some people get very, very passionate if someone comes out and says, okay, why you towing? We say that you have the opportunity. 'cause they can pay online and they can pay online on site. And once that's paid we will release and we'll not tow it. So we have options and we, and tend to be very, very considerate.
But at the same time, when you got some of these numbers that you're looking at, we we're talking about some with over $800 worth of fines in individuals, we feel that they're sending a message to us. And that's our proposal here tonight for you as members to see if you would approve such a program. And I have Ari here. If you have any, any questions or anything to add, Speaker 1: I'll open it up to the board. Mr. Jacobs? Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you Chief. This is very helpful. Just a couple of questions. One is, I was curious in your, in your analysis of this, like you said you kind of looked at the locations where this was happening. Is, are most of these tickets issued in in
around parking in Natick Center or is it other, other places in town? They're Speaker 9: They're all Speaker 2: Nat center. They're all Natick Center. That's what I figured. 'cause that's where the most, but I, I just wanted to clarify and then my other question is just about the, the, how this would actually work with the towing. Like would we have to have a con an ongoing contract with a tow company or would it be just on an, on a case by case basis that we'd be kind of individually paying to have cars towed? We Speaker 9: We have a contract now. Speaker 2: We have a contract now. Yes. So we would just be using that. Yeah, Speaker 9: Order use a no, Speaker 2: Do this. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then when they, when they come
to like redeem the car or whatever, like after it's sold, then they have to, you know, pay us back for the cost of the towing and, and holding it. Speaker 9: Not pay us. They would have to pay for the Speaker 2: Cost. Pay the tow company. Pay the tow company. Yeah. Pay the tow company back. Right, right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Other members of the board? Ms. Slager, Speaker 3: Just a quick question about the 14 days. Is is that defined under state law or is that that, is that us? Speaker 9: That's Speaker 3: Us. All right. I'm just wondering if that's enough time to, for to mail something potentially outta state somewhere
for them to respond. Will we have some potential leeway there if they come back again? You, Speaker 9: You have the leeway. We're recommending 14 days, if you like more, we can make it 21 days. Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that's Speaker 1: Chief Speaker 8: One. Speaker 9: Sorry, one useful caveat to point out context for all this is that these will be situations where they've received a ticket, they haven't paid that ticket. They've, they've gone to triple fines and there's a large accumulation of tickets. So by that point they've received notice. Many, many notices. So,
Speaker 3: So all of those have been mailed. Speaker 9: The emailed are email, they're mailed right? Emailed, well emailed for the finding and then mailed for the late. Speaker 11: Many of them are are snail mail. Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 11: Who I, I've experienced this and I've gotten the snail mail, like pay it now. Fine. Speaker 3: All right. So, so there is, there's a potential. I would think that if we have been mailing it in the past and they haven't responded, maybe the address is wrong, maybe things have changed, but we will give them the opportunity to pay on site. Right. Speaker 9: The thing that, that the, that the town needs to do is to be prompt in terms of adjudicating these various appeals.
And we are now, so that, that, that's, that's a, that's a change that we've, that we've made at this point that we were caught up on all those appeals. Great. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans, Speaker 8: Just a quick question. Is it worth sending, at least to out-of-state, addresses it, sending it as a registered mail? Is that worthwhile? Speaker 9: Again, we have some flexibility and how we do it. If that's, that's the request, we can do that. Yeah. One of the things that we also talked about is as we start doing this program, I mean, when, at the end of the day, all we want them to do is pay their fines. Know, and it's, it's not that we want to get into the, the
practice of just dragging cars off the, off the street. That's not the case. Yeah. Now we can even, and we even intend that if we see a vehicle there, we will have a brochure that the, the parking enforcement can hand out and put onto the windshield itself and notify them. We're trying to give as much leeway, but we have to start with some somewhere. Yeah. So we intend to do whatever need to be and, and yes, we can consider out out-of-state place during registered mail. Speaker 8: Yeah, I i i, I don't think I, I'm prepared to add that expense now, but just something to consider if we have continued scoff laws.
Okay, thank you Chief. Speaker 1: Other members of the board? Ms. Pop? Speaker 7: Yes. Thank you so much. Chief Hicks. I I think this kind of ties into Bruce's question. Will there be maybe like a six month review of how this is going to determine, you know, if 21 days is better or, you know, registered mail makes more sense, what's kind, what's gonna be the review process to, to see that this is either going well or needs some adjustment? Speaker 9: I I think it's fair that we will continue to monitor,
as Ari had stated very briefly, we're caught up on a, the adjudication is a key component to this. So we do the adjudication, that means any reviews of, of appeals or anything in a, in a timely manner. And because we are now deeper into the system and we know what data the system can do it, we can do reviews monthly, 90 days. And, and, and again, at the end of the day, we're hoping that we reduce that number and send a message that the expectation is they are to pay. So to your question, yeah, we can do a 60 day, 66 month review, but I would think that we'll be doing it constantly
as we do our adjudication. Speaker 1: But I would say to that, maybe we put that on the calendar for January or February for a check back and seeing how, how, how it's working. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Any other comments or questions from the board? So I think the ask is for Speaker 8: This to Speaker 1: Approve. A motion to approve. This is a select board parking policy Speaker 8: Move to approve the select board parking policy and sending of the scoff law notices to the scoff laws. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Second. Ms. Slager seconded. Roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms.
Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Speaker 7: Yes. Speaker 1: And I'm a yes. Thank you chief. Thank you Mr. Skye. Thank Speaker 5: You. Speaker 1: Next item up is the main street improvement project. Just a few words update to the community on, on process. We will not begin, the board will not begin decision or deliberation, deliberation or decision until midgut because of a number of agenda items that are time sensitive and pressing. So tonight what we will do is set aside about 30 to 45 minutes for questions.
I'd like to accept questions from people who have not first. So asking people to be kind to their neighbor and allow their neighbors to ask questions. And then afterwards we will not, this will not be on the August 5th agenda, but it'll be either heard on August 18th or 19th. We're still trying to figure out the, the, the calendar on that. That's a Tuesday or a regularly scheduled August meeting. So if I can, Mr. Erickson, if you could bring up that slide. Sure. So what I would also say is the decision
before us is not to finally adopt a plan. I'm throwing up the concept comparison so that when there are questions about how these compare, we have a a visual. So the, the, the decision before the board is not to adopt a final plan. The decision before the board is to move from the concept process to whether or not to approve an additional 25% of design. And so that will be the decision whether or not to approve moving forward with one of the concepts of design change or the, or accepting the mill and overlay option.
So at this time, I'd like to invite someone in the room who has not, who has a question, who has not asked a question to come before the board and then we'll go to online. Speaker 5: And Speaker 1: Jamie could, could you monitor online for me? I'll, yes. Thank you. Is there someone in the room who would like to ask the board a question? Who has already asked a question and looking to online? Speaker 5: There's one person. Ms. Do Speaker 1: Ms. Doran. Speaker 12: Hi. Thank you. I just have a quick comment. I happened to notice something when I was looking at the, I think the most recent diagram illustration for the plan, proposed plan.
And I realized obviously it's, it's not written in stone, but so the block of the common well of South Main Street alongside the common in this diagram, there is a crosswalk at the corner near where the hardware store was and it's moved slightly and then there's another crosswalk up, you know, at the corner of 1 35. And I don't understand in the middle there, right where the bagel table is, there's a large bump out on the ba bagel table curve
that kind of like, almost looks like a bagel. It's round and across from that, a jagged narrow diagonal one. And I don't understand why you would put bump outs there if there's no crosswalk there because it seems like it's going to encourage people to cross since it's a, you know, shorter distance when there's not actually a crosswalk there. So I just want to reflect that maybe somebody can make a note of it and look into it. That's all. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Doran. Ms. Doran, are you referring to the, the artist rendering looking north from court
street of the hybrid concept? Speaker 12: Well, I was looking, I was looking at like the plan, no Pond Street really. I'm talking about Pond Street, you know, the corner where the bagel table is. I see. So there's a, there's a crosswalk at 1 35 obviously, and there's one at the far end of the common, which has moved slightly up, up in this diagram, but there's not one at the bagel table corner at Pond Street. However, there are bumpouts there and I don't really understand what the point of bumpouts there. Also, I think the bumpouts are gonna create a bottleneck. I know that to be true because coming down Pond Street you
wanna take a right and there cars coming, you know, you want three lanes of traffic, but it, there won't be three lanes of traffic if they're those silly bumpouts. But if you're putting bumpouts by the bagel table without a crosswalk, that doesn't make sense to me. So you might wanna rethink that or explain it or not. That's all. Speaker 1: Thank you. That's a very good question. One of the, one of the advantages of hearing from the public and from the working group is drawing our attention to a number of issues that if, if the board decides to proceed in design, that we can present the,
to the consultants and say, here's an, here's an issue. So whether it's deliveries or bump outs or snow removal, we can ask them to address those or to see if it's possible to move forward with them. So I appreciate you bringing that to our attention. I've made a note of it. I can't find that right now in the 47 page document of questions that, that Morgan has put together for us. You can see Speaker 12: It here. Well I can, I can send you, I can shoot you a screenshot of it if Speaker 1: You want for everybody else Speaker 11: Though. That'd be great. Yeah. Via email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If you can send it via email, that would be really helpful. I've been, Speaker 12: I'll do that right now. Okay, thank you. Speaker 1: It's on the website. Speaker 11: Well, on the website, yes. I have the presentation. It Speaker 1: Might be, but I'm not sharing my screen. So Speaker 2: If you click on that document where it says hybrid layout Yeah. Then it'll take you to this, the first page of the thing that it takes you to when you click on that is the diagram that shows what I think she's referring to. Speaker 11: Yep. Yeah, I I see, I see where you're talking. Yeah, I Speaker 2: Don't know if that, you know, whatever it's, Speaker 1: If we, I yeah, I see it on the, on the website. Yeah, Speaker 11: Yeah, it is on the website.
It's hard for me to yeah. Switch share screen, but people can certainly look at it on the website. I can just briefly try to answer it, but I do think this is something we'll take back and bring back to the consultant. Yeah, absolutely. Depending on obviously considerations of the board, but in brief, my impression of that bump out is it's in part of traffic comm measure, not necessarily a crosswalk measure, but your, your point about it might still encourage people to cross at that location is a very valid one. It is also a bump out for the crosswalk across Pond Street, not across 1 35, but I can see where it does also bump
further west. It looks south on the diagram, but it's technically west, I mean east. And there's also a bit of a traffic calming measure on the other side as well that, that I can see where it could look like it's a shorter distance to cross. So that's a valid, that's a valid point. Thank you. Speaker 1: Anyone in the room who would like to ask a question of the board, since it looks like everyone in the room has already addressed the board, we'll just go ahead and ask you to come forward. So Ms. Sebastian, ask Jensen. Speaker 13: Hi Jamie Bason town meeting member precinct eight. I was just curious when the sidewalks were last widened.
I remember they were an narrower and then they, it had to have been, I don't know, 10 ish years ago. I don't know if Speaker 11: You know, my, my understanding is it was at least 20 years ago. Okay, feels like 10, that that was the last time this section of Main Street was touched if not longer. Speaker 13: Yeah. And I, I don't know if you know the reasons, but I feel like it had to do with handicap accessibility. So I feel like, I don't know if you have any information about, you know, decreasing the sizes, how that will impact that Speaker 11: Valid point. I don't know the reasons why they were widened at the time.
I'd have to go back through our records. Speaker 13: Yeah, I remember something about handicap accessibility. So I feel like that's an important thing to remember when we're talking about width of sidewalks. Also, I'm just wondering what the town's plan is for parking. If we are decreasing our parking, where, where are people gonna park when I drive through the common, the lanes are very narrow, it's only like one car wide. So I'm just curious, like where do you expect people to go? Speaker 1: So two things. One is whatever plan is adopted one through four, all of them will be a DA compliant. In fact, options two through four will have enhanced
a DA compliant features. So that's the first thing. The second thing is on the concept comparison, if you look at options two through four, only number four has a decrease of parking spots. So there's no change if we do the mill and overlay, we increase six spots with the limited bike option and we increase two spots with the hybrid option. Speaker 13: Yeah, because I, I just wanna reiterate how important parking is for downtown. So Speaker 1: Thank Speaker 13: You. Thank you. Thanks Speaker 1: Ms. Young and then the gentleman in front of her Speaker 14: Diane Young Precinct eight, I, can someone explain the sidewalks in front
of like the Debon building that block? Are they, I can't remember, are they gonna be, is one of the plans to narrow them to share a bike lane with them? Is that correct? Speaker 11: So I'll say a couple things. With any of the design work, these are all very conceptual. So until we get direction on which direction to go, it's gonna be hard for us to say definitively whether in any of the concepts things are getting narrowed, widened, what have you. The, the one that's on the screen now, which is part of the presentation that, that we've been looking at,
which is the hybrid concept does appear to have a, if I just go from existing, which is here to what an artist rendering would look like with a hybrid bike lane and the angled parking, it does appear the walking area for the sidewalk narrows where the area where the cars are parked to the building appears to get wider. So from edge of curb to building, it appears to get wider. Speaker 14: So what fills that space that makes it wider, Speaker 11: That's where the bike accommodations come into play.
Speaker 14: Okay. So the sidewalk gets narrower to allow for the bike lane next to it? Is that Speaker 11: Right? Well, I'd say the overall area where bikes and pedestrians go gets wider and then the area for bikes is a, is a portion of it gets designated and then the area for sidewalk gets a little bit narrower. Speaker 14: So I've been noticing a lot of the stores are starting to put things out in front of their stores. The bookstore has like a bookcase out there with books that are on sale and Bailey's has a clothes rack
and lots of flowers and I noticed another place had a little table and chairs the other day. So my, I'm questioning how will they still be able to put that out on their sidewalks and allow for people to walk and bike lanes. I don't see where that's how you're gonna have all that space. Speaker 1: So there is, on the project website, there's a, a document of, it's called compiled select board question and answer document on page 14 or question 14 breaks out a graph. Unfortunately I can't share, it breaks out a graph of where,
and I can share this with you now in the meeting, but I couldn't share it. Everybody won't see it. But if you, if you click on that for those of you are at home or who are following the meeting, it talks about where the limited bike lane, each segment of the street, the existing sidewalk, the proposed one, and the net increase and decrease of the width. So all of that's been laid out in a table on the website. Speaker 14: So not seeing that. Can you, could you just let me, will we have room for all those things to come out on the sidewalks? Speaker 1: I'll, I'll just say one thing and I'll turn it over to Ms.
Slager. Okay. The select board actually adopted provisions that allow for that. So that's a priority of the select board to ensure that businesses have access to sidewalk for and, and and at the same time incur ensuring a DA compliance. So this is something we'll be looking at closely, Ms. Slager. Speaker 3: So just looking at some of the materials that are on the website and the area that I believe you're talking about is called segment five, which is Route 1 35 to Middlesex Avenue. Speaker 14: Yep. Speaker 3: And actually on the, then they have a nice little diagram that shows, again, this is all, all conceptual on the debon side,
they would extend the sidewalk by two feet and they would actually reduce the sidewalk by four feet on the other side of the road. The other side, the bigger, yeah, the, the other side has a, a big sidewalk currently. So that's, that is the proposal that it would actually make the sidewalk larger two feet if you two feet wider. Speaker 14: So where does that space come from? Do you take the trees down that area where it's kind of, the trees are and the meters? Does that all disappear and you're right, then you're right at the, where the people are parking, where do you gain
that space plus a bike lane? There are a lot of trees in that rendering. If you're looking at the screen, Mr. Jacobs, Speaker 2: I'm just, and you and you and you're getting, you're getting four feet from the other side too, right? So like that, 'cause like you said, like four feet is being reduced from the other side. So that's four feet right there. And then, so two of two of the feet. So two of the feet alone could come from that. And then, you know, that's, that's two additional feet left over. So just the shift of reducing the side, the size on the other side is, is providing some of that space. But I think, yeah, I mean this, the best visualization of it is definitely on this.
Like if you, if you look at the, the concept one, and I mean there's a lot of ways to get to it, but you click on it and it gets the specific segment and it shows like on each, like on each part of it, like, you know, how much is the sidewalk, how much is the, the bike lane, how much is this? And so like you can see like where, where the shift is, where the shift is happening. I know in some places that the, it's not a hundred percent clear on this, but I know in some places that the, the, the street width is slightly narrower too. Yes. I don't know if that's one of, but maybe. Okay. Yeah. So that could be where some of it's coming from too. Like Speaker 14: Where the cars are, that's where some of the space, Speaker 2: Some of the space could be. To
Speaker 14: Your question you're getting from the street being now or? Yes, exactly. Yeah. And travel Speaker 3: Lanes today, yeah, they're, Speaker 11: They're, they're very wide travel lanes today in a typical for an environment like na, for like next Natick center, a travel lane, the travel lanes today are probably 13, 14 feet wide variable. It variate typical in a more, in a setting like, like DIC center, it's maybe 11, 10 and a half 11, 11 and a half. And that's Speaker 2: What this would be Speaker 14: 11. So if a firetruck needs to come down and both sides need to pull over people going this way
and this way, are they gonna be able to pull over enough for a firetruck to go through that middle part safely? Speaker 11: Again, these are all conceptual designs and, and that will be reviewed as part of any full design process. But that is, I mean the intent is to ensure that there's still all public safety accommodations. Speaker 14: Okay. And just one other question. When people get out of their cars, let's say they park in front of Debon and they get outta their car and they walk to the sidewalk, are they, is there something that tells them that there's a bike lane right there coming to there? Correct, yes. What will be there?
Speaker 11: Well there'll be a number of things. One typically that the, and again this is still conceptual design, so it hasn't been discussed yet or designed yet, but typically the pavement treatment will be will variate. So you might go from a certain type of concrete to a certain type of asphalt to back to a certain type of concrete with appropriate striping and and lines. And then again, this is where the full design comes into play. There could be not necessarily fencing, but you could do other landscape treatments that would ensure that people understand their entering different zones of where people are gonna be entering.
Speaker 14: And if there's snow on the ground, how do I know a lot of bikers still say they bike in the winter. Those things will be covered up. Speaker 11: Now the intent with a hybrid or enhanced bike is that we would increase snow operations in Natick Center so that they would be real time removed from the areas. Speaker 14: And that will be raising our, I mean that'll be more expense for the town payers, correct? Speaker 1: That's correct. Right. It's a quarter of a million dollars a year, which is, but right now what I'd like to do, okay, thank Ms. Young is well thank because your neighbors have Speaker 14: Questions. No, I'm fine. Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate Speaker 1: That. Next question, gentlemen in the dark shirt. Speaker 15: Hi, I am Patrick Forner.
I just moved, I'm not sure what the new precinct is, but it's downtown. How much, what was your last question that you had? I'm sorry? How much would it increase the town on the snow? Yeah. Speaker 5: Snow removal, Speaker 15: How much it'll Speaker 1: Cost $250,000 a year is the estimate at this time? Speaker 15: It's Speaker 11: Estimate. It's right there. It's on the, it's on the table in the presentation. Speaker 15: My question is the 14 spaces. I know that we have a lot of small businesses downtown, this turnover downtown. If you've lived in Natick, there's new stores coming in all the time. You go downtown, you spend some time there, they're very nice people and you worry about them not being able to meet, you know,
their rent. So rent keeps going up and they're not gonna have a lot of spaces. So if that struggling businesses have more turnover, new businesses coming in might say, how many spaces do I have? So it would almost even deter any new businesses from coming to fill in. So it would really, it would really be sad if we had a beautiful downtown like this with four or five empty spaces up and down main street right. In that area. So I think that that's a big concern. And also I know that there are towns where the bike pass path looks great and it really works well,
but there are other towns where people get hit by cars now. And there are towns where people get hit by bikes. So when I see the model where you can get outta your car, then you have to look, if you go left outta your car, crossing the street, you have to worry about the traffic. And then if you got a little kid hopping outta his car, he might get taken out by a bike right in front of him. I, I've seen it, I've been out, I've been there and I've had to come out and help. It wasn't in this town. But I think there's a big concerns about safety and kids and the reality that a 5-year-old might not look both ways every single time
or jump outta the car and jump into a bike path because they don't know it's a bike path. You know, you're coming out of the bank, you know, you're, you're a dad or a mom and you got your bank slip in your hand and yet your phone, you put it in your pocket and then your kid gets taken out by a bike. I've, I've seen it. So that's just the only reason why I came here today with my own eyes getting out of the car call being the one calling nine one one. And it was day two of that town having the bike path. So that's why I wanted to come in here when I saw the rendering. 'cause I just don't understand how people are gonna be going to and fro when there are bikes coming.
Another question I have is, let's just say the argument is, well people can take their bikes to downtown so you don't have to worry about the parking spots. Maybe people ride their bikes and then they go to the stores. Where do they put the bikes? So maybe these bike people on their bikes, their destination is downtown. Where are the bike racks? Do they lean against the building? Do they lean against the windows? Are they in people's way? Does Speaker 1: It limit the space? Could we answer some of your questions before you get too far? So some of your questions Yeah. Are, so on the concept comparison, there's one where there's a decrease of spots, right? 14 spots. Yeah.
At Clark's Block, Debon and Mutual one where those parking spots are, there's a deeded easement from the owners to the town between the town and the the owners. For every one spot we take away, we have to provide two spots within 500 feet of that building. So if there's a net loss of 14, we're gonna be providing 28. If we, if, if the board were to choose to go to the design concept for number four, the, all of the concepts except for number one provide for additional bike racks downtown. So there would be bike racks Speaker 15: And they wouldn't take up space on the sidewalks. I
Speaker 1: Don't know that they'd be on the sidewalk. 'cause we're still in the concept phase. And then where we're not in the design phase, where Speaker 15: Would these parking spots go? Speaker 1: We don't know parking spots. We don't know. That's a question that what we have to take into consideration. If we're looking at any of those in two through four, if we're looking at two through four in adopting them, that's one of the things we'd need to answer in addition to emergency vehicles in addition to, you know, with the sidewalk safety. So there's a lot of, Speaker 15: Because we're all people, right? Trader Joe's in Framingham wonderful store. Wish we could go every day. We don't because of the parking.
So for a salon, you know, like, oh, you know, I'd really love to go there, but I just can't do it anymore. Right? So they lose a customer. Just we're all people. We only have so much time. So I was just, just wow, that new Middle Eastern store right down there with the fresh buzz ma rice. You know what though? You know, maybe I'll go Sunday maybe. So I was just thinking of them. Speaker 1: Appreciate that. All right. Thank, thank you so much Ms. Jacob. I mean Ms. Pope I believe has, has had her hand up, Kristen.
Speaker 7: I did. But it was in line with what you were saying Madam Chair about, these are great questions and they're questions that we plan to take into consideration. You know, if we move forward with the design, the, the questions on safety, the questions on, I think a big one came up tonight was this education, educating the public on, you know, differences in the road, differences in signage, things along those lines. But all those would be handled, you know, all of those are being taken into consideration to hand to
the team to evaluate those things. That this is not, the conceptual design is not what's moving forward. It's, it's really the questions honestly that are, that are moving forward more than anything right now. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Pope. Ms. Deo. Speaker 16: Thank you Madam Chair. Patricia Deo, precinct six. I was just reviewing a Pegasus video on, I think it was the last select board meeting and a town employee stated, made a statement that we do not have bike lanes going
through the center of Natick. But could, could you go over the, how that statement contradicts the mass general law on bike lanes? Speaker 1: Yes. You've raised that before. Speaker 16: There are bike lanes through the center of town. Speaker 1: So Mass general law says that bikes haven't have the right to be in the roadway anywhere, but that's not the same as a bike lane. Bike lane is one of three different definitions and one of those definitions is a protected bike lane or a sheros. So the fact that a bike can share a roadway doesn't make the roadway a bike lane.
Does that make sense? Speaker 16: I I think the, the, the law states bike lane in it, if I'm not mistaken, Speaker 1: That's not my reading of mass General law. We've, we've talked about this, we've talked about this in a meeting and in a meeting you and I had. So I appreciate what you're saying. You're saying, I, I hear, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying we don't need bike lanes because bikes can traverse in the street and that is correct, but that doesn't mean No, I'm not, you're not saying that. Okay. Speaker 16: No, what I'm saying is, I think it was an incorrect statement that downtown Natick doesn't have bike lanes
for mass general law we do. And the bike lane is the same lane that, that the car travels in. That, that was my point. Speaker 11: I think, I think I was the one that maybe had noted that there are no bike lanes in Natick Center right now. And a bike lane is a very different thing than a car travel lane. Even though bikes might have the right to travel in a car travel lane that's not the same as a bike lane. And if you see on the, the, even just the sketch being shown right now, you have a car travel lane and then you have a separate and,
and separate, in the case of this, it's actually a separated bike lane. It doesn't always have to be separated. It can also be in the same area as the car travel lane. But that's when, when we're discussing bike lanes, we're talking about an actually separated designated area for bikes as opposed to within the travel lane that cars are in. Speaker 16: Right. And, and, and just my last thank you and, and just my last point is you, you drive through any towns and you see the bike with the arrow right in the middle of the car lane. Speaker 11: That's called a shero, which is also not a bike lane.
Speaker 16: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Mayo. We have about 15 more minutes on this subject tonight. I do wanna stress though, this is not the only forum by which you can be addressing the select board. Mr. Jacobs will be at nine o'clock tomorrow at the community senior center for OA select board office hours. We are still accepting emails. We are also happy to meet with anyone I've met with, I don't know, 50 people in the last six or eight months for coffee. Very happy to do that. So this is not the end of public input or public comment. So Mr. Ardi, if you could come to the podium.
You question I need to Well, no, I, I we're taking questions, but why don't, why are Speaker 17: You taking comments? Speaker 1: Why don't you come to the podium? Okay. Introduce yourself to everybody who doesn't know you. Sure. Speaker 17: Michael Bardy NA Mass, former town meeting member Precinct 10. Last time I came you were taking questions and I asked the question about if this project passes and it fails, what do we plan on doing? I just checked out the town of Newton had bike lanes and on Elliot Street and Mechanic Street Street, they just decided
to remove him at the town of Newton's expense because it was a failed project. Several years ago, the town of Wellesley had two fatal accidents, bicycle accidents, and that was on Western Road and Lynden Street. And just in the beginning of July 2nd, there was a fatal accident in Framingham. Right in Framingham Center. If you look at the picture of this new plan, when these cars back out of their parking space, can you Speaker 1: Bring up the plan Speaker 17: When these cars back out of their parking space, they're not just backing out into
the lane they're supposed to be in. They're gonna be backing out, blocking two lanes, going both ways because it's so narrow. We have to, we're talking about safety, we're talking about handicap, we're talking about elderly. You know what, very few people are gonna go back out and stay in that lane. So now they're not blocking one lane, they're blocking two lanes. Kids that are riding bikes, e-bikes, electronic bikes, those kids do not have a license. They're going what's ever open? They may not even stay in the bike lanes, they're just gonna go. I've seen 'em. They go wherever is open, there's no cars. They just dash out wherever they want.
I've looked at the bike racks in front of the Natick outdoor store. There has not been more than two bikes locked up in that bike rack that people from Natick or wherever take their bike. They lock it up at the bike rack. The bike rack will hold 10 bikes and there's only one or two a day at that bike rack. How many people are riding their bikes? And keep in mind, I said it last time, people in the cyclists, they're coming from Sherman Medfield, Holliston, Hawkinton, wall Pole. They're not gonna spend a dime in the town of Natick.
They're using up our spaces. And every one of these Natick residents that I've talked to, hundreds of them, and they're not here tonight because they work all day, they get home, they wanna be with their families, they kids have evening sports and that's the only reason why hundreds of them are not even here tonight. And they feel that this is going to, anytime people come downtown from all four sides, people are gonna go around Natick now they're not gonna go to Natick Center, they're gonna take every single Backstreet off of Pond Street, off of East Central, off of Walnut.
And every single resident and all around town will avoid this because of the congestion. So now again, that hurts even more of the stores. Wellesley turned down bike lanes and they have a way busier downtown than Natick does. They've got two main streets in Wellesley that are busier. They're Main Street 16 and the Linden Street, their backside is way busier than what we have and they've turned them down. Needham has also turned down bike lanes. You've also heard from the fire department,
the DPW and the police. You know where they're coming from. I have two gas stations on Route 27, 1 on South Main and one on North Main. We average between a hundred and 150 cars a day that go in and outta those two gas stations for gas repairs. They're gonna be backing out a hundred, 150 cars a day are gonna be backing out to 27 South Main and North Maine. And yet bikers are gonna be cruising right down because they have the right, they have their bike lane guaranteed 150 cars a day at each one of my locations.
Nevermind. The rest are Natick. This is, this is gonna be a problem. And when someone gets killed, whose fault is it? Is it the bike lanes, is it the state? Is it the town of Natick? Whose fault when? When someone does get killed because of the amount of this, I've also talked to nine different stores in downtown and I've asked them to come here. The reason they're not here is they feel this board has already made their mind up. And I know you haven't and you said you haven't, but that's how they feel. Your minds are already made up. I could go on and on
Speaker 1: Mr. Ardi, if you would like to send me the names of those businesses, I'd be happy to meet with them. I've been meeting with own business owners downtown for two to three months. I had a three and a half hour dinner with Gary Stuckey, who is on the working group. So I've been reaching out to the business and talking to them. I'd be happy to hear directly from them. So if you'd love, Speaker 17: I will. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'd appreciate that. That Speaker 17: Gary, is he the one that owns the jewelry store? Speaker 1: That is Speaker 17: Correct. And he's the one that spoke at the last meeting? Yes. And he was opposed it in every direction? Speaker 1: That is correct. Speaker 17: Alright. I don't mind giving you them. I don't mind them talking to you. I'm just trying to say that these people feel you.
This board has already made the decision. I can tell you about that parking right there. I can tell you about Newton Elliot Street, mechanic Street. I don't know how many different ways to tell you. This is not good phone. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you Mr. Lombardi. We've got about eight more minutes on this agenda. Is there anyone else in the room or online that would wishes to address the board going Once. Okay, we're gonna close this agenda. Item 7 0 3. We're gonna take a five minute recess order at 7 0 6 and we're taking another agenda item out of order. Point Special counsel for cable licensing agreement. Mr. Erickson. Speaker 11: Thank you Madam Chair. And I do have Bill Soloman online,
who is the attorney that we're looking at here for, for this item. I have not muted him or, or made him co-host yet, so you won't see him until I do that. But I just wanna just sort of give some background and then we can, if there's any questions, we can pull 'em in. So in brief, we, the select board, anytime we use anybody but town council. So Murphy, Hessey, Tubman, Hane, you have to authorize town administration to use anybody but town council. And so that's why this agenda item is before you tonight, among other reasons. But that's the primary reason. The specific reason why, why the request is before you tonight.
In addition to that technical reason by the bylaws is because we are within about a year, year and a half of the expiration of our cable license with Verizon. And this is the cable license that leads to essentially the revenue that comes into the town, but then eventually gets passed to Nega, NTIC Pegasus. So this is the subscriber licenses we're obligated and the cable companies that operate in communities of Massachusetts are obligated under, under MGL to negotiate these licenses with the municipalities.
Typically, they're up to 10 years. And the, we have three licenses in town. We have RCN, Comcast and Verizon. We negotiated all three about three, four years ago, Comcast and RCN were 10 year licenses. Verizon wanted a five year license. So that's why we're only negotiating or proposing to negotiate with Verizon at this time. Bill Solomon has been the attorney that has been special counsel for the town for the last couple rounds of two rounds of leave, of, of negotiations. We used him three, four years ago, five years ago now. When we were negotiating the all three contracts that came
before the board for, for signatories and approval we're asking that the board authorized 10 administration to execute a contract with Bill, essentially for this upcoming round with Verizon. The contract has been, what is on the agenda is the prior contract. We've since updated it for the purposes of just Verizon and updated rates. So for example, I believe the current, the the last contract was like $200 an hour up to two 20 an hour, which is a fairly recent, which is an extremely reasonable value for the town
and not to exceed of I think $6,000 or, or 6,500. And that's, that's like an upset limit 'cause that's the time and expense contract. But we have to put some type of upset limit on there. And Kara has reviewed that contract and gave the green light. So we're ready to go forward with that. We'll forward it to the board. We only just got that CS reviewed this afternoon, so we'll forward that to the board so that you see it in final form. But essentially we're seeking the board's approval tonight to execute into, or enter into that contract so that we can, in the coming months, start renegotiating
or negotiating a successor contract with Verizon for the cable subscriptions. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Erickson. Mr. Solomon, Speaker 11: Let me just, all right. He should be able to, to unmute and on video now. Speaker 18: Let's see. Speaker 11: There you go. We can hear you, bill. Good. Speaker 18: Thank you. Hello. Speaker 11: Hi, bill. Good, Speaker 18: Good. Hi there. Hear me. See you. Hi. Well, well, nice to be before the board. Great summary. Last round, we worked as a team, Hank and Todd, Gil Water, Jamie, myself,
to negotiate the RCN license. Then the Comcast license that is, is, is noted. Those are both 10 year licenses, cable licenses, and the Verizon license because they prefer a shorter license, as in the rest of Massachusetts was five years. It had a three year out. And that has not been exercised to date. I don't expect that to be their licensing again elsewhere. So I, I know we can do this cost effectively and most importantly, really work to continue
what is a great series of licenses for Natick. You know, you're really at the top of quality with respect to both the financial benefits that Natick and your Access corporation receive for peg access programming and operations. And the licenses have strong legal protections and we'll, we'll, what we'll do is we'll figure out the needs going forward. We'll speak to the peg access folks. As we did before. We, the attorneys for Verizon are a
small boutique firm out of Boston, which I think is advantageous since they're close and over the years, you, you get to know the styles, they know the license that I like and which is the license we have here. So I think going ahead will be great on our side. The only challenges are, as you know, the cable field and the video environment, competitive environment has, has changed and is changing. But that said, cable continues to be a strong option
for people, particularly when other companies start raising their rates for streaming. And as you know, better than I, that the Access corporation is invaluable to the, the town as a government connecting community groups and part of the local economy. So I'd be happy to answer any questions, but I think we can get started running the licenses noted is not up until 2028, but the goal here would be to try to sit down with Verizon and see if we can get a license set
sooner rather than later. And that's what we'll work to toward together. Speaker 11: Mr. Evans. Yeah, Speaker 8: Just a quick question. Since the peg access is driven by subscriber revenue and subscriber revenue is decreasing for these ISPs, what is their, I guess, approach to, to that issue? And, and, you know, we don't, we obviously the peg access is the, their cost is not decreasing. So if there is a decreasing subscriber pool,
how will the Verizons and, and RCN, whatever they're called now, astound, I think, fund that? Yes, Speaker 18: Great question. Well, two things. One is, right now there's a bill that is gonna be voted on, I think as early as tomorrow that the mass access folks, the folks who the directors like yours are members of a, of, of a, of a statewide organization, does a great job in helping each other and also in working on legislation.
And the bill, as you may know before the House and Mass House and Senate, is to have a fee that's placed on video streamers that use the public way. Now that'll be less than the 5% of gross revenues that come to the town and the Access corporation. But it'll still be very helpful. So if that bill passes, there'll be a new source of revenue for, for, for peg access. Apart from that Exactly right. The number of subscribers has gone down significantly in the state.
I, I, I did look at your numbers and I, I'd have to take a look to remind myself. But what's also of note, and this you, you implicitly and explicitly mentioned this, is that the revenues have not decreased in the same proportion as the subscribers. That's because they sell, companies sell more services and they raise their prices. So while the revenue, the subscribers have been decreasing, the, the revenue has not decreased significantly at this point.
That could change. So there may be a point, and there are already a few towns that have more financial wherewithal than very few towns that where the town helps support the, the peg access entity to provide those services. 'cause they're so crucial to making a community connected and, and to connecting government to the residents. And that's something going forward that if needed, there could be a discussion and the access folks might approach the town.
But at this point, and I'll, I'll, I'll know more and when I, I I sit down and very quickly look at all the, the gross revenue statements and speak to the access folks. But I I, I don't think that they're there now. And the goal here is to get a good license, not only respect, with respect to the 5% of gross revenues, which will be a given, but for the operating, but to get a strong peg capital number for the facilities and equipment. And that was the real, a real strength
of the three current licenses. And we would work hard, develop a capital plan and, and, and, and, and speak to Verizon about why a strong program of community television in Natick is in, is in all Camp s interests, including Verizon. Speaker 11: Thank you. Great answer. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Solomon. Other member, other members of the board have any questions, comments? Ms. Slager? Speaker 3: Just, just a question given that we don't have the agreement yet and what's posted online. Presumably it's gonna be fairly similar,
but we haven't seen the actual agreement yet with Verizon, Speaker 11: The groom's with Bill, not with Verizon. Speaker 3: No, I know, but okay. Sorry, what, what is on, what is on the website refers to Comcast not Verizon. Speaker 11: Correct. With the agreement is with Bill about Oh no, I Speaker 3: Okay. I'm just saying. Sorry. Yes, I know it's with them. Yeah. Sorry, maybe I wasn't being very clear, but since we haven't seen the actual agreement yet, is, is there a, is there any urgency in, in voting on this tonight? Speaker 11: You know, I know I would like to get Bill under contract as soon as possible just so
that we can start these conversations. If it's helpful for the board while you're on the next agenda item, I can forward the final version of the draft contract. 'cause we just got that word back from care and then we can review it later on the agenda. I don't wanna keep Bill around. I, I'd let him go. Yeah. So that you can potentially vote on it tonight. Sounds does that work for the board members? Sounds, thank you. Yes, Speaker 1: Thank Speaker 11: You. Yeah. 'cause this will take a little bit of time. Yep. I know how loquacious the chief is and, Speaker 1: And how many questions are Speaker 11: Getting hot in there.
And then, and then you can preferably vote on it tonight if possible. Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 18: And what I, I'll be able to do is I speak to the Verizon council, I'll let them know I've been brought on and make sure that they have natick at, on the front of their list for, for moving ahead when they get past the two, 2026 licenses. So thank you and I to do that. I I would want to be able to have an agreement that I represent you. Speaker 11: Understood. Thanks Bill. Speaker 18: Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Solomon. Speaker 18: Thank you. Okay, we'll move on. Thank you very much, much.
I look forward hopefully to working with the team again and the board. Thank you. Speaker 1: Have a good night. Alright, care. Next item up is Chief Fury's Fire Department update. Speaker 2: Right. Good evening. I'm a little bit nervous with all the technology changes as the first presentation I've done with it. We did a trial run this morning, so hopefully everything will work well. Speaker 5: There you go. All Speaker 2: Righty. Good evening. Jason Ky proudly serving as your fire chief and tonight for his first primetime presentation experience. I have Assistant Fire Chief Christopher Hampton with me. So we started doing this into, shortly after I came here in 2022.
We've been doing an annual update. So Mr. Erickson said that I should do nothing less than an hour and a half. We negotiated it back and forth. So my goal, as you know, I I love to talk about urinated fire department and, and what we're doing and on a daily basis. So I will try to be brief, but if I get too far into the weeds, feel free to give me the hook. This works. This is gonna be awesome. If it doesn't, then I'm gonna have to, Speaker 1: You'll have to wing it. Speaker 2: I'll have to get creative. Speaker 19: My name is Ashley Al and I'm our federal paramedic here at Native Fire Department. I've been with the department for maybe 13 years. If I could describe this department in short, it would be
that this is my second. Speaker 20: My name is now Jen, and I'm lieutenant. I've been in the department for 13 years. Some I feel like I know more about my career. Speaker 21: My name is Firefighter Valona Francois. I've been with the Native Fire Department now for almost three and a half years. My favorite part of this job are my coworkers for sure. I get to work with a group of people who love coming to work every day, who love engaging with each other and are passionate about this job. Speaker 2: So just a, a quick snapshot of, of kind of some of the sentiments that members of the department feel. And, and we actually had quite a few members that stepped up
to do the videos or to do the audio, but unfortunately we're limited to 49 seconds on the video, so we were cut a little bit short. So we're really proud of the work that these folks are doing on a daily basis. They're doing a great job at delivering high quality, top-notch service to the citizens and visitors of, of Natick. So we're very proud of the work that they're doing. We're also not naive to think that it's just just us. It does take a village to do our job and, and to, to have the resources that we do. So the strong support from town administration, the select board folks like Kenny Fisher
and his team over in the fleet maintenance Ari and the finance department, Michelle and a who are awesome to work with in the comptroller's office, it the Natick Police Department. So we really recognize that it, it's not just the Natick Fire Department, it's truly the en entire Natick community. So the good stuff getting into the data. So we've been keeping very strong data sets since 2022, improving what we're recording, how we're recording, and how we're reporting data out. So as you can see, looking at the top left, last year was a, another record setting year. We've reached just, just over 6,500 emergency calls.
That's actual 9 1 1 responses in within the community. And if that was three or four pieces of apparatus responding on the incident that we only count that as one. So our do our numbers are true raw data of, of actual calls EMS calls continue to uptick. 4,235 was what we did last year. And then fire calls were back up 2322. So overall, we're seeing an increase. It's about a 36% increase prior to the pandemic to where we are now based on those numbers.
And when we calculated out, we were gonna probably average out about four to 4.5% increase each year. So by 20 28, 20 30, we're breaching 7,000 emergency calls within the community. A a weird statistic that we keep is the, the busiest days of the week. And it always seems to fluctuate a little bit. This past year, Friday was our busy day kind of fluctuated between Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and this year, Friday ended up being our busiest. Looking at the bottom left hand corner, that's our heat signature. So it's one thing if we just plot the emergency calls on a map, you, you really wouldn't see much
what the heat map shows you, the frequency to which we're viewing. So as would be expected, our downtown area, which is kind of in the center of that map is our, is is a, is a high frequency area. It's our, one of our densely populated areas. And then up in West Natick up in the golden triangle. That's also a very significant hotspot for us. And I think the cool thing with this map, with this graphic that you can see is you can kind of see the, the, the telltale, you know, boxer head shape of, of the community and it really kind of shows that we go pretty much all corners of the, the community on a regular basis.
And then another neat statistic that we're we tracked was we were able to pinpoint down kind of our busiest eight hour block. And based on the data that we ran for last year, prior years, it's been a little bit scattered, but it seems to be kind of honing in on that eight to six, eight to four o'clock in the afternoon for the, the busiest periods. About 56% of our run volume was during that period of time. So kind of starts to talk about some of the things that we gotta start planning for with when we start looking at that third ambulance and, and how to best kind of utilize and different approaches that we can take to staffing that. And then for the first six months of this year,
we're already 104 calls ahead of where we are. So last, as of last year. So it's looking like that four and a half, 5% is where we'll end up. This is a newer data point that we're able to capture with our newest software. So we started tracking this in about 2023, but we talk about simultaneous incidents and that means that we have two or more calls in progress at the same time. So if all of our calls came neatly staggered, we'd probably be in very good shape. But unfortunately, and it happens a ton, is that we get multiple emergencies all at the same time. And it's, if you're sitting, if you're ever sitting with us
and you hear our phone just going ding, ding, ding, that's our CAD going off on all usually multiple emergency calls. And it seems like whenever one goes off, there's two or three and the data supports that. So this past year we had about a 36% increase in the number of times that we had two simultaneous calls going on. The stark increase, which actually starts to talk about the importance of having that third ambulance available, is the increase in three and four calls in progress at the same time. And those have just skyrocketed at 66 and 50% over the last couple years.
So upper left hand corner was 2020 five's data. And then the chart on the right shows you the 23 and 24 data. So we can see that the, those numbers continue to increase. And what does that impact, that impacts our mutual aid. The chart on the bottom was the chart that was published with the annual town report. When we were diving back in and doing some additional data analysis, we made a conversion to the way that the, the state used to require us to report to them all of our incident data. We switched over to the federal system and like most federal things they decided to build to kind
of release it and build it as they go. They encouraged us to switch over prior to January 2nd because January 2nd was a weekend, on a holiday weekend and we would have no support if there was a failure. So we just made the decision to, to swap over on December 1st. But when we did that, it knocked out some of our data collection points in the backside that we didn't realize in the beginning. So the number that we had originally reported was 255 ish mutual aid calls that we had reached out for assistance and brought in additional support. The number was actually a little bit higher at 276.
So it's averaging about a 12% a year increase on mutual aid utilization. So we're reaching that point where it's less mutual and more one way staffing. Staffing continues to be a challenge with us to fill vacancies. It is an industry-wide problem. We have some other challenges that make it a little bit more complicating. 2025 was a big retirement year for us. We had a lot of folks with a lot of experience go out the door. We exceeded 150 years worth of experience that retired out. They were our 30 and 32 year employees
that dropped our average department seniority or years of time with the department to about 10.6. And that was a number we had predicted that would drop a little bit further. Anticipate that that's probably about where that's gonna bottom out for a little bit. I don't anticipate that to drop much more based on kind of what our staffing is right now. And currently we're working to fill seven vacancies. It's a little bit of a challenge to bring in vacancies. A lot of the folks that we're recruiting have no experience, so it's very difficult to place them into the rotation. We have limited capacity to accept folks
that have zero experience with that. The Bass Fire Academy has, their backlog is prepped up a little bit to a five month period. So it kind of creates a little bit of a challenge for us where we can only bring so many folks in the door. And really the, the, the hallmark is as we try to time it so that as we're shipping a couple of folks off to the fire academy, we're bringing a couple new ones in and trying to keep that rotation going. So it's working. 'cause we've, we've come down from about 1415 vacancies of about seven, eight months ago. So it's a work in progress and it's definitely something that occupies a lot of time.
Speaker 22: Yep. So thank you for having me. Excited to be here. The chief mentioned, you know, the uptick in EMS, so this is the kind of the behind the scenes stuff that we're doing as well as all those calls going out at the same time. So OMS runs a pretty rigorous annual inspection, which we passed in May. Relatively no issues. We recently placed a new ambulance into service that's out in West Natick. So we have two new ambulances, newer ambulances, a one and a two, and we have two backup that are tired. Kenny Fisher does a great job keeping him in service as much as he can.
And we do have one on order, which is about a year and a half to two years out. We also started, we partnered with MGH at Newton Wellesley and we hosted a fellow for a fellowship program this year. What he brought was just that much more knowledge and capacity to help our training division and EMS led trainings. Definitely a big asset. And we look for that to continue to grow, get new fellows and really bolster our EMS education that we can provide our medics and EMTs.
Another thing we added was a new advanced airway technique. So we, you can see in the picture there, they're working on, it's called a surgical cri or needle crike, which is where they can get a, an advanced airway if they can't go through the mouth. So just one more tool in the toolbox for the people in Natick in case we need it. And then we had a field delivery of a healthy baby boy at your station four this year. Wow. That was pretty exciting. Crew did great Mom and baby also. Well, Speaker 8: Wow, that's Speaker 22: Amazing. So that was EMS on fire operations.
We received our new ladder this year, got it into service, got training on it, you'll see it around town now. We also just received our new engine one, the guys and girls in the department trained up on that this week. It's got a few more things to do with the DPW and then we'll train on that and get that into service. So fleet's looking good in that regards. We also ordered a new engine two, what, 3, 3, 4. We're about three or four years out, unfortunately. That's the build time now. So the, the, the pre-planning there is important
and we got that pre-built done about three weeks ago. As the chief touched on. We did convert from an old system called Nfer to nearest. The idea with Nearest is it's, it's gonna give us a lot more data we can use. We capture a lot of that already in our operations, but it'll be good to to bounce ours off that and, and, and pull from that. So as you said, it's a work in progress, but it does have potential for being an asset. We're seeing an increase industry-wide in lithium ion batteries involve fires.
Last two weeks ago we responded to a relatively large energy storage system. Fire. The crews did a great job knocking down it was in a shed. They, they prevented it from spreading to the house. But that is in our, in our profession right now, kind of the hot button topic. And we're staying on training and, and seeing what we can do to, to combat that. Unfortunately, they come out with advice and six months later they say that that's the wrong advice and this is the new advice. So it is a, a work in progress. We also have active members in all
these specialty teams you see. So we have the district four dive team, which is actually activated on Monday. Made a a very quick, unfortunately recovery, but very active dive team, tech rescue team, fire investigation team, critical incident trust management team, which we'll use when we have a significant calls to bring in for mental health for the, the fire department incident management assistant team and our hazmat team as well, which has been busy as well. So a little bit more into operations training specific.
So logged company level training. We have over 68,000 hours, which is a lot. The guys and girls are outside of, you know, these 1520 call shifts. They are getting about four hours a day in training, which can be tough to navigate through those calls. Train captain does a great job, but we are training on a lot. So fire, we've been proactive about reaching out to task, for example, to use houses that they plan to tear down, which really gives us real life scenarios.
I mean we can talk about cutting a hole on a roof, but to actually get up there and cut a hole on a roof is, is different. So those are, are are huge for us. So anytime we, we get those, we, we make tweaks in our schedule and, and we get in there. We also had every source come in both gas and electric just to refresh the members on gas emergencies, electrical emergencies. We reached out, I believe it was through, was it through Tesla? Do you know? We we had them come in. They brought in four or five different model electric cars and went through with each shift on the best practices for
vehicle fires and, and electric vehicle emergencies keeping up, especially in this season with the MO water emergency training, hazmat training. And like I touched on the new ladder and equipment with that ladder came new equipment which we've all trained up on and in service for the town, EMS side of things, six of our EMTs upgraded to paramedic, which is a significant increase in skill. We have one expected to graduate this September, and then two just started in May. So we're altering those numbers as well. And like I I touched on,
we did the advanced airway training, the surgical airway. So new certifications, I, I won't sit here and read them all, but the chief fire officer is about 107 hour in class program. The rest are somewhere around 70 hours. And I, I wish we could show you how many it is not like one person got these, a fire officer one I would guess 15 people got, which has set a 72 hour class. And that's all outside of work on their own time to better themselves in the department and their service to the town. So that just speaks on the commitment level of our members
and their profession and staying up to date with everything that changes, which happens often. Advanced degrees. We, we, we, people did submit these. So we do know that we have associates in fire science in this last year, fire science and ba, bachelor's of fire science, emergency management, and then master's in nursing, public administration, fire science and public health. So the members are serious about their training and education. So one thing that's I'm, I'm relatively excited about is we, we restarted our safe team, renamed it community risk reduction.
Their intent really is to get out there with the, the schools and the, the community center and the, the elderly population talking about fire safety and, and things like that. I can speak 'cause I, I, the, the two people that lead the team, captain Moy and Lieutenant Libby spent significant amount of time making the curriculum not dry, engaging. And as you see on the right, this was feedback that the chief received in an email. And I'm gonna read it because it's, it's, it's, it's a pretty good compliment.
I've seen similar presentations over the years and they're always good. But this one was different in the best way. The firefighters were passionate, engaging, and genuinely invested in the students. They took time to connect with the kids one-on-one, making sure everyone felt included and learned something valuable. My students walked away excited, informed, and calling it the best field trip ever. So getting feedback like that is huge. Knowing, knowing that some of our initiatives are, are really making a difference out there. I credit that to the entire team. So excited that we have that look, look for us more, we're looking for opportunities. We did receive grant funding that's funding
that entire program and it's been successful thus far. Hopefully that grant funding will continue and we can get it again and see how we can expand getting to the schools more, put on different type of classes. But look for that. Thank you. Speaker 2: So I wanna say thank you to Chris. It is probably the best thing that's happened to me in 2026. That position is really, has, has really been critical in, in addressing a lot of needs and it's actually giving me some opportunity to look long term. Before I get into the next slide, I just wanna talk about that better energy storage system fire that we had earlier.
Mm. And really just encourage people to do their homework. Do a lot of research on those. 'cause there are companies that have emergency response. Unfortunately this company didn't have an emergency response plan, which kind of left the homeowner high and dry. They, they didn't sleep for about 48 hours until we finally, I think we were on page page 12 of deps removal before we found someone that would actually come in and dismantle and remove the system. So there are some significant hazards with those. Those are a little bit unique. They were about the size of a dishwasher and there was four of them.
So created some complexities, but it's definitely one of those things that I'm definitely not speaking anti-green, but there are some challenges and some, some things that you should be aware of as a, as a consumer. So again, one of the things that we're now forward focused, when I first got here, the first thing I did was I took kind of the input from the board, input from town administration. I had my ideas of what I wanted to do with the department. And then I really spent some time with the department to try to figure out what we had to do to advance kind of a, a collective group of initiatives that kind of carried us through the first couple of years.
Last year, about February-ish, we sat down with the department and we did kind of an internal foundations of a SWOT analysis and kind of creating some strategic initiatives that I can focus on long term. We're now switching gears a little bit and we're starting to focus to our external customers. So there's an opportunity for folks to engage if they scan that it should pop up as a QR code. I also want to give a shout out and thank you to Jay was huge in helping us refine our survey, get all everything correct and up and running. And this is also up on the, the town's webpage too.
So really looking forward to seeing what folks have to say, talks about experiences with the department, what their expectations are of the department and, and where we could be heading in the future. So kept it fairly, fairly brief. And that's again, that's the same survey link. I just left it up there so that it was accessible longer than one slide. Speaker 1: Appreciate that. Thank you Chief questions and comments from members of the board. And can you watch Kristen for me since I can't see? Oh yeah. Thank you Ms. Slader. Speaker 3: Thank you both as always a very enlightening presentation. And I especially wanna thank you for the culture
that you have developed within the department. I'm, I'm very impressed with the, the amount of training that people have done that. You know, it seems like they are very committed to the profession and wanna learn and understanding that so much of this is taking place on their own time outside of work when we know that they, you know, they work very hard. So I'm just very impressed with that. But I of course am very interested in with your new system, what kind of data can we expect in your next presentation? What kinds of things are you now able to track? It doesn't have to be specific, but just the kinds of things that you're,
that you're gonna be looking at. Speaker 2: So just, they're, they're kind of promising us a whole bunch of different things. So the answer is, I don't fully know yet because they're building it and then every time the government shuts down, it slows 'em down a little bit. So we're, they're kind of behind where they, where we expected them to be and we're still trying to navigate, there's pros and cons to it. I think our existing system probably already captures 80%, 90% of, of what they're, they're offering us. So we can pretty close to report on just about anything data wise. Sometimes it's just a matter of trying to figure out how
to build the report out to capture that data. But we do monitor a bunch of different data points. Some of 'em are pertinent to daily discussions. Some of 'em are probably less pertinent. Speaker 3: And this is just an open-ended question. I mean, if there's something that you could tell members of the community, if there are things that you would like them to know, what might they be? I mean, are there things that they should be paying attention to that they're not? Or something about the fire department that maybe they don't know that they should? And I hate to put you on the spot, but I just did
Speaker 2: Love that about you. I think the video at the very beginning sums it up. You have a class act fire department, you've got a lot of great people that are doing a lot of great things on a daily basis. That video only showed you three people. But there's so many great things going on on a daily basis and they're handling some pretty significant calls. Sometimes it's hard for us to post some of the stuff that they're doing in responding to, because of privacy laws and just some of the other rules that govern how we operate. But the reality is, is that we're not, they're experiencing serious calls on a regular basis. We're doing significant calls.
I think we're also being situated the way we are, the way that we're staffed, the way that we're deployed, we're able to handle and mitigate a lot of incidents before you start seeing those really big fires. So the homeowner down the, this, this call with the battery energy storage systems we're talking about was in South Natick. Engine two is right around the corner from where this incident was. And the homeowner basically said that as soon as like, as he hung up the phone, the engine was arriving and, and they did a phenomenal job of the shed was 10 feet from his house. And those, those units give off a tremendous amount of heat
to the point where his siding was melted, but his house is intact. Shed not so much, but they did a phenomenal job of making that stop. And that's your, your Natick fire department's doing that every day. Speaker 3: Thank you so much. And, and thank you for and all of the, all the members in their commitment to the town. Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to Kristen first. Ms. Pope and then Mr. Evans. Speaker 7: Thank you Madam Chair. Chief Ky thank you for this presentation. Kudos to you and the entire fire department. I have a couple of questions. The first one is related to the increase of calls. Where, is there a way that you can share where a lot of
that is coming from or where most of that's coming from Speaker 2: Everywhere. That's the, the problem. Speaker 7: It might be better to say the type of calls, like are there, could they be bucketed in any way categorized? Speaker 2: So the, the healthcare system is under a significant strain. So we have a tremendous amount of urgent care facilities in town. We have an aging population. So all of those factors are driving the increase in, in medical calls. You know, I think urgent care is a great, but it's, it's, I think we still have a better education component to do on what's appropriate for urgent care and what's not appropriate.
So we have a lot of people that report to the urgent care that have significant health issues that would be better served by the ERs. But with that also being said, we have some work to do in our ERs to clear out some of the, the, the population that's slowing down that process. So all of that trickles down and creates a drain on EMS. Speaker 7: Thank you. I feel like there, there, this was kind of a two part question, but I feel like the first part could be somewhat obvious in that what's the risk to having this, you know, seven people or, or,
or not having a full staff. I know you have openings, like what's the risk of that? But I think we could figure that out. So my next question is, you know, what is it hard to find to fill these spaces and, and, and what are the ways that the, the fire department is going about doing that? And I guess maybe what, what ways do you need support? Speaker 2: I think we're doing a great job at supporting the initiative. I don't think there's a, a lack of support issue. I think part of the challenge is, you know, it's, it's a difficult job, both aspects of it, both the fire
and the EMS side of it. And I think that if you look at the shift that we've had in the, the modern workforce, we basically told you you could, you know, you could, you could potentially be diagnosed with PTSD, you could probably get cancer and you know, the job's, the, the job's very dangerous. Or you could work at home on Zoom in your pajamas and be comfortable inside your house and not have to go out in the pouring rain or any of that stuff. So I think across, across the, the entire industry we're, we're feeling that crunch and that that challenge. So we're, we're, we're trying to work at different ways to draw people in and we're starting to,
to reach out and engage. We've been engaged with pro EMS with their career day, trying to grab these students as they're coming out. Some of, some of it gets complicated because of the way that our hiring process works and, and how we navigate through that. But we're, we're trying to do as much recruitment and involvement as we can. We have two different paramedic programs where their students are riding with us. Again, we're kind of limited with having new employees and, and, and, you know, employees that are in training plus trying to bring in students. So we're trying to, trying to balance a lot. But we're, we're managing.
Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 8: Thank you Madam Chair and thank you chief and assistant chief. This is as usual, quite thorough and Linda raised many of the things that I wanted to talk about. So I won't repeat those. What, what I wanted to give you kudos on is the reduction from 14 to seven in, in recruiting people. And not only not the number, it is the, the quality of the people you're able to recruit. Because there's a saying in, in,
in sports game recognizes game. And I think when you re re recruit top-notch people, they become known in their, I I'm sure the firefighting community is a close-knit community and more it gets out that Natick is a place that people want to go. So the more people we can get in like that, you know, the, the, I I I personally, I've been on the board now for something years it seems like forever. I, but I can sense the such a, a building momentum.
You've overcome the obstacles of people's retirements, you know, that was a, a big hiccup, but I, I get the sense that, that you're on the path to really making this a real robust department. So good job. Speaker 2: Thank you. I I I truly agree with you and, and bringing in nothing but quality. And not only do I owe it to the citizens and, and, and the, our external customers, our, our everyday interactions. But I owe it to the people inside the department to be doing nothing but the best and giving them nothing but the best. Speaker 8: Yeah, it's evident. Speaker 1: Thank you Chief. Mr. Jacobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so di ditto to basically everything that my colleagues have said. A great, great presentation, very informative. I also really liked the video. I thought that was a nice touch. It was cool to like, hear the voices of Yeah, I like that. And I think that was cool. I appreciate it. It was nice hearing from, from people and you know, just hearing it as, as Ms. Wolf said, I think very important that the culture is the way that it is, I think is, is great. And so that's all good. The, my only, I just have one small question and you might have actually said this and I just missed it, but on the strategic plan, after you do the public engagement process, what is the timeline for finishing that, for doing that?
So I'm hoping that give it about June of this year, June of next year, that we'll have it done. So we actually had a really excellent meeting with a, with an outside trainer yesterday to discuss how to put some of this stuff together. So I think we, I already have a, a draft going, but really what I want to do is put together a small group, small committee to start talking about how we make these into our strategic initiatives, goals and, and, and moving forward. So that'll take some time probably
through the beginning of the year. So I hope to present you a draft in June. Sounds great. I look forward to seeing it. Thank you Speaker 1: Chief, I had a, a couple of questions downtown. Well first of all, I echo all of the kudos that has been mentioned here and say ditto and thank you very much for creating a culture of excellence, the calls downtown. What types of calls if you, if you could generalize, what types of calls do you general, do you respond to downtown? Speaker 2: It, it's everything. The entire, the entire MGA board, fire alarms, accidents,
medical emergencies. We've had fires in the downtown. It really runs the full gamut. Speaker 1: Your truck build line or build time is, you said 24 months out Speaker 2: For the ambulance? Speaker 1: Yes, for for the ambulance Speaker 2: It's Speaker 1: Three to four years, years for the fire. I'm three, the firetruck is three to four years. Who's the manufacturer, do you know off the top of your head? Speaker 2: E one, same. We all of our, our entire fleet is E one Speaker 1: And they're owned by the pipe private equity firm that's buying up the fire. I mean I was reading about the Speaker 2: They're owned by Rev group. Yes, yes. Speaker 1: So they've left about 20% of the market for fire trucks available to independent.
So you really are stuck with them in their, in their timeline. Speaker 2: Yeah, there's, everybody's dealing with the same timeline issues. Understood. They offer you some different options, but they don't, they're pretty much limited on what you can do with the apparatus and you don't, before you used to save a significant amount of money, which made 'em appealing, but now they're the same. Yep. The same cost. So there's no real, there's no savings. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Thank you. That's, that's all I had. I see a member of the community who has her name up a resident. Ms. Doran. Speaker 12: Yes. Thank you. I love this annual update.
I'm so glad I got to hear it again this year. I am a huge fan. I'm very grateful for you all being there. I have not needed your services this year. I did last year. And I wanna say, I think it's interesting that your busiest day is Friday when I got a trip in your ambulance to the Newton Wellsey er last year. It was on a Monday. I was there for five hours. Four and a half hours was a wait. And they said do not come to the ER on a Monday. So I think maybe everyone got the memo and that's a good thing. There's not much I can do to express my gratitude to you all. But I do wanna tell you that while you were talking,
I scanned your QR code and I'm in the process of completing your survey and it's the least I can do and I'm really grateful. So thank you for being there. Speaker 2: Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you Ms. Doran for being such an active member of our community and being so responsive. I, I speak on behalf of the board deeply appreciate it and thank you for filling out that survey. Are there any other members online or or community members in the room who would have a comment or a question? Well I'm glad we've made this a standing anniversary event and we'll see you before next year, but we'll have you again for us
and look forward to more data. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very Speaker 5: Much. Great job. Speaker 1: Our next agenda item is select board office hours update. Mr. Poor Paddock. Speaker 20: Hello Jay Ock, town communications director. I can attest to the fire department. My wife's a third grade defendant teacher honor Speaker 23: Jay, poor Paddock town communications director. We're just loading up and I'm sure that Mr. Erickson's gonna, you already let me in. You Speaker 5: Should be a co-host. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 23: I was just mentioning my wife is a third grade teacher at Benham in the fire department. Did their field trip to her classroom number one field trip
that her classes experienced in Natick. So that is a very accurate presentation that y'all just had. Let me just get some host Speaker 5: And then I'll Speaker 23: Share the screen. Right. So the topic that we're gonna discuss, and I should be about less than 10 minutes and I'll let the board decide where to go after a quick presentation. One page document. What we're talking about is select board office hours. This is an ability for select board members to host informal one-on-one conversations with community members. The current state right now is really two particular
locations, primarily the farmer's market and that's the second Saturday monthly. I saw the select board members out there recently as I was doing a tabling event as well as the community senior center, which is the fourth Thursday monthly. As I walk through this presentation, just pretty brief, I would give you one quick thought exercise to think about. When you think about the opportunity to engage informally one-on-one, you almost have to think like which particular groups or residents who, or that's who's your core customer? Who's your core audience. And you could almost think about, just say, think of a number in the top of your head.
How many residents do you think would say they know what the select board is, whatever that percentage is. And it doesn't, everyone's got a different number. And then you ask the follow up question, can you confidently make a one sentence statement on what the select board does and what percentage of that first group you're probably gonna get whittled down to a relatively low percentage point. And that's where I would encourage the select board to think about residents who might necessarily, not necessarily actually view this presentation beyond this call. It's your new customers if you will.
I used to work in acquisition marketing for the 20 years I did before this. And I think there's a huge opportunity to have some really informative, informal conversations and figure out the communications director on how to make sure those new, you know, less engaged residents have access. But I think it's an interesting way to look through it because you, a lot of great engaged residents show up for a lot of standard select board meetings or office hours. But the more that we can pull in more community members, I think it's an interesting lens for the select board to consider. In order to make this an informed discussion, we gave a select board survey
and I'm gonna walk you through the first section. The idea was there was the problem statement WA in currently is that select board office hours are not producing material engagement largely kind of judged by modest attendance at select board office hours. And I'll talk individually about the farmer's market and community senior center. So what we did was, this was a, let's just call it a few months back that we did a survey to all the members. You'll see that Mr. Sidney is on the slide. Mr. Jacobs, our newer member in March is not. But we, I did a Google form
and asked each of the select board members to give some feedback on what they thought was and was not working. I'll speak to the overall themes. You can see the summaries of the individual members up on the slide. But at a really high level thematic view, everyone seemed to agree that current office hours are not working. We, they were generally supportive of some town staff recommendations that were included in the Google form. And ultimately one of the larger actions was this idea of creating a new webpage. There's, at the end of the day, current state, there's a PDF page that tells you the days
and the locations of select board office hours, but not much more, you know, and again, if you think back to those individuals who may or may not know about the select board, what do they perceive that office hours is? So I think a ton of context is needed, even just putting a face to the name. So when you're at that, you know, organic, the farmer's market or the community senior center, it becomes a more recognizable face, especially for those newer individuals getting engaged. There were some split opinions about keeping the current community senior center, the farmer's market, it's kind
of being tagged on. It's an existing audience that comes, it's one of the best farmer's market in Massachusetts. I'm extremely biased. And so you already have an audience built in as opposed to a community senior center. You're asking someone either who happens to be there by chance or potentially you're asking someone to get in a car and drive down and meet for a conversation. So the staff recommendations that we put in front of the board for you guys to think about tonight is the idea of, you know, keep suspend or optimize Corporate America.
They call it keep kill, optimize. I went with suspend instead of kill farmer's Market is again, it's a community staple. I think keeping that in place is a great opportunity. I've, I've witnessed quite a few residents coming up to the select board at my table, which is relatively uninteresting. I actually refer a lot of people to the select boards table over at the farmer's market. 'cause you guys ultimately are decision makers on a lot of policies. As far as the recommendation about the community senior center, it is to suspend it now. And that's largely based on the LI Limited engagement. Now certainly that is not only just many seniors that tend
to frequent that building and that's a group that we do not want to, you know, create any sort of disenfranchised or lack of engagement. So a conversation could be had, there was a split kind of preference if you look up above at individual members. But I think as we talk about some of the optimizations, they can actually replace what the community senior center intended to do. You guys put, you know, how many hours on a weekly, monthly basis, you're relatively underpaid for your positions. So how do we give you access to the community and ultimately allow the community to have conversations
with you guys and make it more human, you know, informal, approachable. So the optimizations that are in front of you is the idea that first and foremost relatively simple idea, let's create a webpage that actually has more context headshots. I think that would just do, you know, quite a bit. And that gives ultimately a platform for me to do some external communications and send email and SMS and social media and talk about the office hours. Right now I'd be linking to a relatively dry PDF Calendly is a really interesting opportunity in my opinion.
It'll allow people to actually schedule ad hoc meetings. It would require the select board to be available for such meetings. I currently have it on my communications department page. I have an ability for any resident every Thursday. I have two time slots. I will tell you I don't get a ton of inquiries. But that's because very similar to yourselves. You're not just doing office hours. I mean, chair Coughlin mentioned she was already doing coffees and individual meetings and as are the other select board members. But this gives a mechanism for maybe that newer resident to figure out how can they, you know, click a button
and maybe the five members just take a rot, rotate rotation through every fifth item. And it could just be a quick little zoom or Google meet. It could be a meetup, it could be a phone conversation. So that's a relatively simple mechanism I think for residents, especially those who want the more private, intimate conversations. And sometimes even the, the community senior center or the farmer's market doesn't really allow you to have that. So I think that adds a interesting opportunity. Another opportunity. The third and last one is the idea of just having some casual single topic meetings.
I have a couple examples and you're gonna lose the resolution when I zoom in too much. But imagine if, you know, the select board is already does this. On occasion, the my 360, which is our water tracking app, we held a meeting at the convenience senior center. I happened to do it with the water and sewer team. We had multiple select board members there. We had a NATO 1 0 1 series that was more active in prior years. Selectable rumors would show up. But this allows the select board potentially to kind of be the primary lead in these meetings. It's time and energy.
So I don't wanna, you know, immediately have yourselves sign up for an infinite, you know, amount of time. But I think being really selective about those opportunities and bringing them. And the last example I have listed is the idea of maybe thinking about groups of community members though. 'cause they could be seniors, they could be young families, newer residents, working professionals. What are those one or two topics that those people care about? And can you just put together one or two simple slides and figure out how to get those individuals? And I think sometimes, you know, I'll come home,
my wife will say, you did that community meeting, how many people showed up? Sometimes I state a rather unimpressive number, but I don't think the volume matters as much. We're already talking about potentially replacing community senior center hours where we have some modest numbers show up. So getting 3, 4, 10 individuals to show up and have a really interesting nuanced conversation could be powerful. So that's it. That's what I have to share. And I turn it back to the board Speaker 1: Board members. Mr. Jacobs, Speaker 2: Thank you for this. This is really interesting. I mean, I don't have as much experience obviously with the office hours
as my, my colleagues do. So I, you know, kind of defer to them on what their experience has been like. But I do think I, I would really, I, I really, I'm really excited about the Calendly idea though. I, I use that myself like in my, in my professional life. And it's, it's a really great tool. Like there's a lot, I think it could work really well for us because it, you know, it allows us to set, like we could set a avail some available time or something like that and, you know, every week or every other week or whatever, and just, you know, it'd be, it would work kind of the same as office hours where it'd just be like, okay, you know, this is Cody's week to do whatever Calendly appointments show up.
And then we could, you know, put them on there. And I mean, I don't know if people would use it or not, but it would be interesting to, to do the other thing. I just, there's just sort of a thought, I don't know if it's really like a question necessarily, but I think for me, like one of the groups that I feel like is Underengaged is definitely parents, you know, especially of younger kids. And it feels like, I mean, it's people who, you know, maybe, you know, to your question, like kind of know what the select board is maybe, but they don't really know what we're doing. Or like, you know, and I, I, I feel like, I don't know,
this is, like I said, this isn't really a question, but it's just like, when I think about something like Office Hour, like I'm wondering if there's a, you know, type of regular events or something like that, that where, that we could tap into from, from the school side or something that would allow us to have more of a open door to that population. I don't know what that is. So it's not really the most helpful thought, but just a, a brainstorm that, that came to me when I was looking at this before the meeting. So Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. Ms. Wilger, Speaker 3: Thank you, Jay, thank you for putting all this together.
I'm hoping that we'll agree to, to make these, some of these changes tonight and Yes. And move and move forward with it. But I really like the idea of, you know, the webpage and, and we can enhance that over time, because like you said, that's a way that we can point people, you know, maybe we, you know, put a QR code on our future business cards or something like that so that, so that people can, can know how to con contact us. And then also, you know, maybe like for events as well,
you know, we'd have something so that, you know, you can publicize with that. And I, I think that'd be a, a really great foundation for increasing our awareness. And, and I totally hear what you say. I mean, I'm sure that most people, and I'll say most people by like a lot of people in town have no idea what the select board is. And, and anytime we can go and attend events, you know, that's something that we as a board have talked about that we know we would like to have a presence in the community, but this'll just give us another way for, for people to connect. And I think it's real, it'll be really helpful.
I love the Calendly idea. I think, I think that can replace what we've done at the community senior center and be better because we could have, you know, we could still meet people at the community senior center if, if that's convenient for them or, you know, maybe there's a lot of people that, that want the privacy that doesn't exist there. I think at the farmer's market, I think you can have a private conversation because there's enough other outside noise that's going on, but you can't at the community senior center. And, you know, I think that's a problem for anyone that might wanna talk about something sensitive.
So I think that this is a really good idea and I, and I hope that everyone can, can go along with this. I also like the idea of the, the concept of having these single purpose public meetings. Yeah, I, we, we, we need to do more of that. And I, and I like the, the, the first word that you put there, casual. I think that, you know, we need a way to be connecting with people. Yeah. I mean, we are community members just like you are, you know, we're not, you know, sitting in front of a camera. So the, the more that we can do those kinds of things, I, I think that, you know, more like,
we seem like we're approachable, which we all, we all are, but not everyone probably thinks that. So I, I love this and I, I like everything that you, you've proposed here and thank you, Speaker 1: Ms. Pope. Speaker 7: Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Jay, for condensing and, you know, making this information really clear and concise for us. You know, one of the things I, I like the idea of both and which is, you know, the idea of adding something like Calendly or a new webpage, which broadens our, you know,
broadens our ability and even our reach to some degree. Because when you're at a single location, you don't, you're, you're confined to that location. One of the things that we brought up earlier, and I don't, I don't think we can address this in its totality here, is meeting people where they are. And I think that is the key to the farmer's market is that we are going to where there's a mass amount of people. And so I think we have to keep that as well at the forefront. And I think to, to Mr. Jacob's point about, you know, what, what audiences
or populations in Natick may be less served in terms of our connection to them. I think that's, IM, that's going to be an important point to look at. It's like what audiences may we find that we're not touching that we should, we should touch more often, we should be in connection with more often and how can we get to them? And I know Madam Chair brought that up, you know, a few meetings ago, thinking about the places where we can, I think it was during a retreat meeting about the places where we can go and, and meet them where they are versus people.
I think one of, one of the ways that people will better understand and know who the select board is, is through building awareness. And that's not necessarily telling a person come to me that's going to them, or finding, you know, multi-channel purposes to, to get to them. And so here are some of the ways, but I, I think it's important for us to keep to the forefront of our mind that we need to go where the people are. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans? Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't really have much to add, but my colleagues have done an excellent job. I, I would thank Jay for pull pulling this together
because I, I think this gets us to my colleagues' point of, out in front of people. I, I do think we have difficulty with the community on them understanding what the select board does other than, you know, budget and water and sewer rates and things like that. They, that one of the things that, that struck me when I first got on the board was the breadth of things that the select board does. Yeah. I was on the finance committee before that, so I had a vague idea,
but really didn't until I was actually on the board and dealing with the agenda day to day. And the, the variety of different things that the select board gets involved in is a 10 x factor from what I thought it would be. So to the extent that we can reach people where they are, as Ms. Pope said, I think it's all good. So thank you Chair. Speaker 1: So I had, I had a couple of thoughts. I endorsed the webpage. I think it's a great idea. I think the webpage, when you're talking about the webpage
though, you mean that for office hours, right? Speaker 23: Correct. A a dedicated webpage. Like that's Speaker 1: As opposed to a pdf. So the, a couple of things that I would want on something like that, and we don't have to hammer this out tonight or wrote on specifics, but ideas are explaining what office hours are. So that's one. I think, you know, we talked about Cal, the Calendly I think is a brilliant idea because I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the senior center for an hour. So I'm driving down, I get dressed, I drive down there, I wait for an hour and nobody comes in. If we could schedule instead of, maybe it's two days,
two two days a month where we schedule that p that period of time for one of us to pick up and we assign it to somebody, I think that's a great idea. Casual, single topic public meetings. I think that's brilliant. And, and we can talk about some of the, you know, one might be what we do. So, you know, one of the things that Bruce was talking about is the breadth of things. So we're road commissioners, we're water and sewer commissioners, we're the cemetery commissioners for, for non-private cemeteries. We, we have a whole breadth of things we do, but we also have a lot of things we do not do.
So we have office hours with people who say, I really need to have, I'd like to talk to you about the staff member at the, at the DP at DPW who was rude to me. Yeah, we don't get involved in the day-to-day operations and trying to, or somebody was fired and that wasn't fair. It wasn't this, and it wasn't that you need to look into these, these people. That's not what we do. So it's twofold as one is explaining the breadth of what we do, but also all the things we don't do. Yeah, one of the ideas I had when we were talking about reaching out to groups is there are group organizations in town that deal with
different sectors of marginalized groups. So they would be a great conduit. There's also some of the local churches and communicating through them saying, this is something we're going to do and we're gonna be talking about affirming and belonging, or we're going to talk about, let's explain what's happening with your water rates. Let's pull up that DPW 55 year plan and explain, I know you just got your bill and I know you didn't, you didn't see this 55 year plan, but let's go through it so you have an understanding of what it's we're doing. So the last thing is, I think this would be an excellent opportunity for us to partner with our school committee
and design a mailer that goes home to families in elementary schools at one point and say, Hey families, this is what we do. Do you wanna come and talk to us about town, government? Middle school parents are gonna have different issues, high schools, kids are gonna have different issues or parents of those. And so I think that's a, that's a really good idea. I think what I would ask the board tonight is if we could endorse, would everybody be on board? And feel free to, to not, I mean, I'm not suggesting that this needs to be a five zero vote, but a new website with context headshots, et cetera,
and explaining what office hours are adopting Calendly and perhaps having two, two slots for the community senior center. Just to start off, just to get us started, and then in a future meeting, let's come together with ideas at the end of the meeting where we have select board updates or something for casual single topic public meetings and whether we're gonna, whether we're gonna do a general open house for, for targeted communities. Speaker 8: Just a clarifying question, Speaker 1: Bruce, and then Cody, Speaker 8: Which is for the two dates on the community senior
center, would that be something governed by Calendly? Yes. Okay. Speaker 3: And, and I'm not sure what you mean by that. By community senior center. Are you talking about in person meetings? No, Speaker 1: I'm saying instead of, instead of that. Speaker 3: Okay. I thought instead of, yeah. Okay. Alright. Yeah, Speaker 1: That's Have a slot. Have a slot where right now, you know, Cody Jacobs, July 23rd, community senior center, that's gonna be a link. If somebody wants to talk to him during that hour, they can sign up. Okay. Speaker 3: So yeah, I like that. I'm, I think that's great, but I don't know why we would necessarily, I mean, we could start like that,
but I don't think we have to limit ourselves by that. I mean we, we only are doing it two hours a month this way through this. I mean, we could have, not that we'll have the demand, but I think that each person could say, you know, I could meet, you know, once a week or once a month. Define Speaker 8: Your Speaker 3: Own. Yeah, we would be able to define our own. I mean, right now it's only twice a month. But Speaker 1: It's a good point. We could all, we could, we could give Jay a list of the times we're available in the month of August and have him sign up. Is I, I haven't used Calendly.
So I'm wondering is this, am I, am I on the right ballpark or the Speaker 23: Yes, everything you're, you guys are all saying is entirely feasible. And I guess just to build off that is, if you had some dedicated slots and you designed them for the senior center, one comment on that, that could be hybrid. So the user on Calendly could choose Sure. As to do it remote or in person. And what I could also do with each of the five members is have a unique link to actually book the individual members. And you yourselves could control it with your email address. Choose the days and times that worked for you personally. And the resident, the end user would click on your name
and see your available times. And so that's the beauty is Calendly is your personal assistant booking you, your choosing the days and times and the residents are seeing those readily available on the same page. Speaker 1: Mr. Jacobs Speaker 2: Two, two things. So I I like all that. I think that makes sense. One is just as far as if we do it like the individual way, I mean, I guess we could just see what happens. I suppose I, so I I was gonna say like there's a risk that it could become like, like I don't know if you know more people would sign up for, you know, you for example, 'cause you're the chair, right? Like if they're like getting to choose where
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have one hour on that calendar, so, so that won't be a Speaker 2: Problem. Well, fair enough. Then Speaker 1: That won't be a Speaker 2: Problem then maybe that, that the problem all yourself. Speaker 1: I, I know that members, I know that members of the public are hearing that, but I am one of the most accessible people in this town. No, Speaker 2: I know you are. That's what I'm saying. I don't wanna add that's what I'm saying. But the, the other thing I was gonna say though is just in terms of like the logistics of the timing. So if we decided to, to go to this system, like, you know, we have on the right now it says that we're gonna be at the community senior center on certain days and between now and the end of the year. So at what point would we kind of be, would we, you know,
like how would we time out the switch over, I guess would be a question? Speaker 1: August? Speaker 23: Yeah, it's a, it's a relatively modest effort on my side. So a clean switch. I can absolutely commit to that. No. Speaker 5: Great. Speaker 1: Good question. So any other comments from, from members of the board? Speaker 2: I'm still gonna be there tomorrow though, so come see me if you're there. Speaker 1: This is great. Thank you so much Jay. I really appreciate your, your work on this and your creativity and your passion for making sure that we are in touch with all 36,700 residents.
Speaker 23: Thank you. Speaker 1: Next agenda item, authorize the chair to submit a letter to mass DOT requesting safety modifications of the Cotuit Rail Trail and Route nine. Sure. Mr. Ostroff. Speaker 11: Hi there. Josh Ostroff here is president and Friends of Natick Trails. We get a lot of questions about the rail trail frequently, they're things for us to handle. Sometimes they're, they're for staff and we'll refer them. One that came up was concerned about where the, there's an access path from Route nine westbound right next
to Camp Arrowhead that goes up to the trail. The design was a little problematic and during the construction phase in 20 20, 20 21 town staff and members of the CRT advisory committee and MAs dot and Beta and the construction company got together and rework the geometry a little bit. But it's still a concern for some folks coming down the trail because once you get onto the sidewalk, there's really nothing pre preventing you from, you know, tumbling into Route nine. Have not heard of that happening, but it, but it is a concern. So we got a request that was shared with town staff
to try to, you know, address this. And in talking to HNTB, who is the outreach firm for the 9 27 project, it was suggested we could communicate with MAs dot or the town could and see whether some of the upcoming improvements on the route nearby sidewalk on Route nine westbound could be extended a little bit further westbound past the driveway where Camp Arrowhead enters in order to provide a comparable safety measures.
And those would be a wider sidewalk and a barrier that would be on the sidewalk next to the roadway. So you'd have the roadway and the barrier and then the sidewalk. And that would help provide, you know, give more safety for people who might be coming down the pathway to at a high rate of speed. This was discussed at a staff working group a few weeks ago. So after the CRT advisory committee went away a couple, three years ago, there's been about quarterly meetings. It's usually one or two representatives of the Friends of data trails, public Works, community development,
you know, Morgan and, and the transportation planner and Claire Relli. John Marshall is typically there. So we just hash out like operational type issues or, or projects. And so the consensus was ask the board to send a letter, which you've seen and it's my understanding from talking to HNTB mast would be agreeable to moving this forward. So you have this draft letter for your consideration. And then what would happen if they, if they agree is they would work with their contractor. This is a state project, so it's not town funding we're talking about,
but there might be some engagement with staff on this and there's no town property involved. It's all within the state highway layout. So that's the long-winded background. I hope, I'm glad to answer any questions and thank you for your consideration. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Ostroff. Oh, Speaker 11: Sorry, could I just get one shout out? So I, I think you really, that last discussion was great and kudos to, to Jay and you all for like, finding ways to get outreach. I made sure to let this resident know Elisa Strauss like Yep, great idea. Thank you. It's on the radar, the board's talking about it
and I just sort of a signal to reinforce what we just said. When people do reach out, you know, to the town, I feel like people do tend to follow that up if it's feasible. So wanted to just add that. Speaker 1: Correct. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Ostroff. Do any members of the board have questions for either Mr. Erickson or Mr. Ostroff? Speaker 8: No. Motion. Speaker 1: Just checking Kristen out. Yes. I'll take a motion. Speaker 8: Move to authorize the chair to submit a letter to the mass DOT requesting safety modifications at the constituent rail trail in route nine second
Speaker 1: Move by Mr. Bruce, seconded by Ms. Slager. A roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a yes Mr. Erickson, could you ask Mr. Walsh to finalize the letter and letterhead and send it out and just use my electronic signature? That's thank, thank you. So we're, we're gonna go back to appoint special counsel for cable licensing agreement. Speaker 8: Yep. I got a motion. Speaker 1: Well can we have like a few minutes to look at it? Yeah, why don't we take a five minute recess to look at it and we'll come back and take a vote on that.
Can I, Mr. Erickson, did you wanna expound on just reiterate what we're looking at? Speaker 11: Absolutely, yes. Thank you Madam Chair. So the contract that's attached to the agenda is the executed contract from about roughly five years ago. My mic's on, sorry. So the contract that's on the Novus or not Novus peak agenda was the executed contract from about five years ago. I think it was executed technically in 2021. So I guess that that's actually five years ago. Yeah. And the what was sent to the board and will be uploaded to peak after this meeting, assuming the board approves it and,
and authorizes town administration to sign it and execute it, is the proposed new contract. So a couple things from the prior one to this one that are materially different. This is the new ones with Verizon, the old ones with Comcast and RC n all contracts are with Bill Solomon, but the purpose was to negotiate with Verizon in this case. Whereas the prior one was Comcast and RC n we had a another contract at that time for Verizon as well. So keep that in mind. We actually had a couple contracts last time. The rate of pay is adjusted slightly. It was $200 in the prior contract.
It's $220 per hour now, which after five years we felt was a reasonable adjustment. The not to exceed amount, I always like to have not to exceed so that we can limit our liability when it comes to contracts is $6,600 in the proposed new one. The prior one it was actually 12,000. And if you think about it, negotiating two contracts, the last one, this is just one factor in the adjustment to the rate. It's actually the same expecta expectation amount of time. And there were some other things that we felt were relatively minor
or not substantially different. Ms. Wal, you mentioned for example, some of the, the not to not included in the cap in the $66 cap. There's some legal services and, and a lot of those legal services in our opinion, really are either things that are not likely or highly unlikely to come up or are typically not included in something like a cap. So like travel expenses, those are, those are considered outside of some caps 'cause those are more billed either directly or, or close to directly. In this case, miss Mr. S Solomon actually does most of his work via Zoom anyway,
so I don't see, see a lot of, I don't think I've actually met him in person. Speaker 1: No flights to Geneva. Speaker 11: Exactly. Exactly. And then a lot of the rest of the, the, the contract terms are the same or similar to, to the prior contract. We did also have this reviewed by Carris and she gave the, the clean bill of health to, for, for execution from a legal perspective, from her perspective. Speaker 1: Questions, comments, or motion? Speaker 8: Okay. Motion. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans has a motion ready? Speaker 8: Sure. Move to authorize the town administrator to appoint William H. Solomon as special counsel for
the Verizon cable cable licensing agreement. Speaker 2: Second Speaker 1: Move by Mr. Bruce. Seconded by Mr. Jacobs. Roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yep. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a yes. That's 5 0 0 at this time. Madam Clerk, would you like to read the consent agenda? Could I ask for someone else to do that? Of course. Mr. Jacobs, thank you. As the, as the most junior person on the board. I'm gonna ask you if you could read the consent agenda. Oh, Speaker 8: Oh, sure.
Okay. This is like the fight song. All Speaker 2: Right. So thank Speaker 1: You Mr. Jacobs. Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm gonna read the consent agenda. Is, is there a little thing she says at the beginning or you just, no, Nope, nope. Okay. You just read it. Okay. Okay. All right. So on the consent agenda, we have item A approve request to occupy a public way. Weathersfield block Party 9, 12 20 26. Item B approve one day junk dealers license force roadshow concepts LLC doing business as Partland roadshow. August 4th through eighth, October 19th through 23rd.
November 16th through 20th. Item C, accept Susan Gottlieb's resignation as the select board's liaison to the commission on disability. Item D. Appoint Oliver Rick to the Recreation and Parks commission for a term expiring 6 30 20 29. And item E except Katie love's resignation from the economic development Committee. Speaker 1: Does anyone wanna pull something off the agenda? Mr. Evans? Speaker 8: Yeah, I just wanted to pull E off to explain to the public what that means. Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 8: If you wouldn't mind, Madam Chair,
Speaker 1: I'll take a motion for items A through D. Speaker 2: I actually, I actually wanted to, I actually wanted to pull item D, Speaker 1: D as in dog. Yes. Okay. Motion for to approve items A through C. So Speaker 2: Moved. Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Slager, seconded by Mr. Jacobs. Roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a Yes. Those three things. So let's start with item D as in dog. Bruce. Speaker 8: Oh, that's Cody. Speaker 1: Oh, I'm Speaker 2: Sorry. Yeah, that was me. That was on DI. My question about D is I thought, I thought that, I thought
that this spot there was another applicant for this spot. Speaker 1: There was, Speaker 2: But did he with withdraw? Speaker 1: No. Billy sent, Mr. Welsh sent out an email asking if they would be available for interviews tonight. And the other applicant did not respond. And since two weeks had elapsed, he, he did have a, a pretty significant personal emergency, which occurred during the original night. So my, my plan on my list of things to do is to reach out to him to see other ways he might be involved. Speaker 2: That's great. Okay. Well thank I'm, I'm glad I got to learn that. Thank you. Yes.
So can, can I move then to appoint Oliver Rick to the Recreation and Parks commission for a term expiring June 30th, 2029? I'm Speaker 1: Gonna hold the motion to take a friendly amendment after we dispatch with E. E, yep. Mr. Evans? Speaker 8: Yeah, I just wanted to, Speaker 1: You want me to explain if you would, thank you. So the Economic Development Committee, we had a, a number of interviews. I people were accepted, including Katie Love and a, a gentleman who the chair of the committee reached out
and said that the, that one of the candidates would really be a great addition to the EDC and so could he be an associate member. And the answer to that is we would need to take up boarding committee, we would need to revise the board and committee charge and composition. And we're not getting that on an agenda. Before September, Katie love approached the chair and since she works for the NCCD and the NC, the Na ick Center cultural District District already has a seat. That seat is held by Heather Rockwood
since they already have a seat. She offered to resign so that that opened up a seat that would make it available for someone else. And Katie and Heather will take turns alternating or covering each other. So that spot is taken care of. Now we have an open spot. So what we're doing now is, what we will be doing is advertising that there's an opening for the EDC. And if there's more than one applicant, then we will do interviews. If there's not, it'll go on a consent agenda. And I expect that to be one of the three August meetings. Speaker 8: Thank you Madam Chair. Thank Speaker 1: You.
Yes, thank you Mr. Evans. I'm glad you pointed that out. So I'll take a friendly amendment to add E to D. Speaker 8: So move or That's Cody's. Yeah. So accepted. So moved. Yeah. Second Speaker 1: Roll call vote. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Did we have a second on on this one? It was, we had a hand. Okay, good. Moved by Mr. Jacobs. Seconded by Mr. Evans. Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. And I'm a yes. So those pass town admin administrator updates. Speaker 11: Just briefly, we are soon to be starting interviews
for the collector treasure position. So that's been posted. Very exciting. We are also looking, we have not a ton of openings, but we have an opening or two in, in this, in the finance division that we're also looking to ensure that we either fill and we're also looking at the demands of the collector treasure office to see what adjustments we might be able to use with that opening in that department. So that's, that's still in the works. I just wanted the board to be aware of that. 'cause I might be at a future meeting explaining what we're doing. And I also need to go to the personnel board with some of that work. And I apologize one more thing, but I'm totally blanking on it right
now, so I will stop there. Speaker 1: Did you wanna announce that they, Verizon is started to install the double pulls? Speaker 11: I did not, but I can. So the double pull project, the infamous double pull project has started. I actually drove by some of the work this morning on the side street and we're just gonna see a lot more double pulls. So I want the public to be aware of, we're aware of this. We, we pushed hard to try to ensure those effective communication. We're gonna be doing what we can over the upcoming months, years ahead to ensure that those double pulls do not stay double pulls for the least amount of time as possible.
A lot of it just in full openness is out of our control. So, but I have, I, you know, yes, the project has started and we're doing the best we can. There is, like I mentioned at the last meeting, there's a town website that we're doing in collaboration with, with Eversource to try to provide whatever updates we can that they give us. Obviously we're dependent on them to give us updates, but we're trying to do as much as we can on that front to, to make sure that there's effective communication with members of the community, especially those in this neighborhood that are gonna be most affected. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Select board updates.
Speaker 8: No, Speaker 1: At this time we will move into executive session item, a approve executive session, minutes for November 20th, 2023, exec executive session pursuant to mass general law Chapter 30 a section 21 subsection. A subsection one to discuss the reputation, character, physical condition or mental health rather than the professional competence of an individual or to discuss the discipline or dismissal of or complaints or charges brought against a public officer, employee, staff member or an individual and POA civil service hearing.
Item number two, approve executive session minutes for March 11th, 2024 pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 38, section 21, subsection a, subsection three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares and I do Andrew Watkins versus the town of Natick. Case number three two dash 23 dash 70 Civil Service Commission. Item item number C, approve executive session minutes for September 4th, 2024 pursuant to Mass General Law,
chapter 38, section 21 A three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining, where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect in the bargaining position of the public body and the chair. So declares public employees, local union 1 1 1 6. Library New England Police Benevolent Association, Inc. Local one A two dispatchers. Deputy Chief Deputy Fire Chiefs Association, local 1 7 0 7 International Association of Firefighters. A-A-F-L-C-I-O, new England Police Bene Benevolent Association,
local 82 Natick Police Officers Association, local 4 9 6 Massachusetts Coalition of the police, public employees, local union 1 1 1 6 Clerical pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 38, section 21 A three to discuss strategy with respect to litigation where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares and I do Andrew Watkins versus Town Natick. Case number G 2 23 1 7. Civil Service Commission. Approve executive session minutes
for September 18th, 2024 Pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 31 a Section 21 A three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair. So declares and I do public employee, local public employees, local union 1 1 1 6. Library New England Police Bene Benevolent Association, Inc. Local 1 8 2 dispatchers. Deputy Fire Chiefs Association, local 1 7 0 7. International Association of Firefighters, A-F-L-C-I-O,
new England Police Benevolent Association, local 82 Natick Police Officers Association, local 4 9 6 Massachusetts Coalition of the police, public employees, local union 1 1 1 6 clerical pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 30 a section 21, subsection a subsection three to discuss strategy with respect to litigation where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares Andrew Watkins versus town of na. Case number G 2 23 1 70. Civil Service Commission.
Approve executive session minutes for October 1st, 2023 Pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter TH 30 a section 21 A three to discuss strategy with respect to litigation, we're an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares Andrew Watkins v. Town of Natick. Case number G 2 2 3 1 70 Civil Service Commission F. Approve Executive session minutes for December 11th, 2024 Pursuant to Mass General Law, chapter 38, section 21 A three to discuss strategy with respect to litigation
where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and the chair. So declares Andrew Watkins versus Town of Natick. Case number G 2 23 1 70 Civil Service Commission pursuant to master general Law. Chapter 30 a Section 21, subsection a subsection three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining where an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair. So declares an I do. New England Police Benevolent Association, Inc. Local 180 2 dispatchers. Deputy Fire Chiefs Association, local 1 7 0 7 International Association Firefighters,
A-F-L-C-I-O, new England Police Benevolent Association, local 82 Native Patrol Officers Association, local 4 9 6 Massachusetts Coalition of the police, public employees, local union 1 1 1 6, clerical and approve executive session meeting minutes for October 9th, 2024. Do I have a motion to go into executive session? So second, move by Mr. Bruce. Seconded by Ms. Slager. All in favor Mr. Jacobs? Yes. Ms. Ms. Evans? Yes. Ms. Slager? Yes. And Ms. Pope? Yes. And Emma? Yes.
So for members of the public who are still with us, we will be exiting. We will not be returning to open session and we will exit from executive SE session to end the meeting. Thank you and good night.