It is Wednesday, 10/29/2025. This is the meeting of the NATIC Select Board. Would all those who are able to rise stand for the pledge of allegiance in a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay. So, tonight we're going to have open session and announcements and, but we are going to have exec session at the end of our meeting,
and then we will exit from that point on. So first up are announcements and the first introduction of the newly promoted firefighters and I'll hand it over to Chief Fursky. I first wanted to say it's always nice to see all the firefighters here to support their their colleagues and that this is always the best best part of our job here so take it away chief. Good evening. Thank you to the board for allowing us this opportunity to recognize the promotion of
these four individuals in our organization. As we continue to advance the mission of the Natick Fire Department forward, these four individuals truly embody the core values of our organization. Vincent Van Gogh once said, great things are done by a series of small things brought together. A strong leader inspires trust, fosters growth, and shapes a team's legacy. Today, we have the distinct privilege of honoring four leaders from our department. Their collective careers illustrate a deep commitment to excellence, innovation, and unwavering service to this community. The first gentleman I'll introduce is deputy Kenneth Levy.
This is the first gentleman to my left. Ken Levy was appointed to the Natick Fire Department in 1995 and is the last of only a handful of employees who have ever worked in the Summer Street Fire Station. Deputy Levy was the first paramedic hired by the Natick Fire Department and played a pivotal role in transitioning the department to the advanced life support level in 2001. Deputy Levy was promoted to Lieutenant in 2004 and was assigned to engine two in South Natick. In 2016, Levy was promoted to the rank of captain where he was assigned to engine one downtown and if I'm true,
Ken, I think you spent your entire career on shift two. So his entire career he has spent assigned to one shift. Deputy Levy is a fire officer one, fire officer two certified and he's currently in the process of completing fire officer three. Deputy Levy is also very passionate about fire investigation where he holds several certifications and is currently assigned to the Fire District fourteen Regional Fire Investigation Team. Deputy Levy is currently assigned as our administrative deputy. Immediately to his left is Captain Douglas Bouvier. Bouvier has been a member of the Natick Fire Department since 2013.
Bouvier was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in 2022 where he spent time assigned to Engine one and Engine four. Bouvier is a paramedic who has a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, and is Fire Officer one certified. Captain Bouvier is also a TECC affiliate faculty member who co leads our rescue task force which is responsible for keeping our members ready to respond to active shooter and hostile, event response types of incidents. Bouvier was the recipient of the Jay Lavoie Leadership Award while attending the MassBay Paramedic
Program and was also the class nominated speaker for the pinning ceremony. He actually has a long speech prepared for this. Captain Bouvier is currently assigned to engine two, shift two engine one. Immediately to his left is Lieutenant Jacques Vilsen. Vilsen has been a member of the Natick Fire Department since 2017. Lieutenant Vilsen is a certified paramedic, has a certificate in exercise science, is fire instructor one certified and in the process of completing officer certification. Lieutenant Vilsen was recognized with the student of the year award at his pro EMS graduation. This distinguished award was chosen by the instructors and given to the student who rises
above their classmates and is deemed to be the one that they would most likely want to work with. As a firefighter, he spent time assigned to engine three in East Natick and more recently engine four in West Natick. Lieutenant Wilson is currently assigned to shift three engine one. And the last gentleman on the left is Lieutenant Allen Gentile. Gentile has been a member of the Natick Fire Department since 2013. Prior to coming to Natick, Gentile worked for the town of Westford Fire Department where he was a firefighter paramedic and held the role of clinical coordinator. Lieutenant Gentile is a certified paramedic,
fire instructor one, fire officer one, an advanced cardiac life support and basic life support instructor. In addition, he's the team coordinator for the Native Fire Department's CPR team. Notable awards by Gentile include the Doctor. Harry Portman Award and the Action Ambulance Star of Life. The Portman Award represents recognition for outstanding performance in clinical skills, people skills, leadership and being part of a team, attributes which all would agree Al continues to represent. Within a Gentile is currently assigned to Shift One, Engine Three. Again,
I thank you for this organization, but also seeing it is a challenging opportunity and as exciting as this is, it's equally as disappointing that I have to tell somebody else that they didn't have the opportunity to be promoted, but I am very pleased and happy with the progress of the organization And these four gentlemen are definitely cream of the crop. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you very much, Chief. You guys want to say anything? Any comments? No? Yeah. Just a big hearty congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your service. Richard? Yeah, it's it's such a joy to see the growth of this organization over the years,
and the quality of the people that we're promoting into leadership. It's it's really the fire department is a major part of our public safety and we just heard somebody going by. It's you guys are an important part of keeping this community the way it is and I really appreciate it. I'm sure the rest of the Board does too. Just want to add on to my colleagues. We're very fortunate to have such distinguished gentlemen here. It was interesting to hear all of the awards that you have won and the
variety of awards. And that's a credit to our department and the breadth of experience and leadership that you have. And, I hope you stay with us for a long time in Natick and, find your job is fulfilling. And thank you for burning your families here tonight. They took all my topical things. Congratulations to you all. And to just echo what Linda just said, it really is impressive for all the things that you've, put in to not only your work, but to help others,
in the organization. And you've obviously demonstrated the leadership skills that are needed. So I'd like to congratulate you all and again thank you for all your families and your children for being here. They were participants. I heard a few earlier. So again, Oh, man. I know. Mister Chairman. Yes, please. I would be remiss if I didn't, thank the support that we're getting not only from the department members but also the families and, friends that have showed up this evening. It seems like our crowds continue to keep growing each time we do this, and I'm I'm very appreciative of that.
I also would love to just give a shout out to the gentleman in the back of the room who's very shy. Willie Abergini, he retired earlier this summer, thirty seven years of service. There's probably not a nice He loves attention, so I'm definitely not gonna follow him down the stairs because he'll hurt me. Thank you. Thank you, chief. Thank you, chief. Hey. You guys can certainly stay here or you guys Nope. We got we we have one more fire. Well, yes. Speaking of, retirements, we wanted to acknowledge, Glynis Lee, firefighter Glynis Lee. So, I don't know. I I didn't have the pleasure of meeting Gigi,
AKA Gigi, but I wanted to read what the the fire department shared about her. So, on October 17, the Natick Fire Department announced that firefighter Glynis Lee was retiring. Firefighter Lee was appointed to the Natick Fire Department on 04/05/2001. She was a part of the original group of paramedics that were hired to bring the department to the ALS paramedic level. And additionally, firefighter Lee was the first female hired in the Natick Fire Department. During her tenure, firefighter Lee had worked on the A-one and across all stations before spending the last
several years assigned to Engine two and South Natick. And, you all thanked her for her service. We thank her for her service. I, I feel especially, kindred to a woman pioneer. I heard that she's moved to Florida, and, we wish her well in this next chapter of her life. So, please give our thanks in regards to her. Thank you, Ms. Pope. Thank you. Now as riveting as our next topics are, you're free to leave. Why don't we take a brief recess for that? We'll have about a five minute break. Sorry, I thought I pressed it. Thank you. Go back with more announcements.
Ms. Walschleager. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As many of you may know, as of November 1, SNAP benefits are due to end, federally. And we're obviously, as a select, we're concerned about this. And I just wanted people to know that there are avenues of support in our town. And I reached out to the Natick Service Council and a place to turn, and here's what they had to say. The service council will be adding more November appointments to cover additional inquiries from their existing clients, but they will also be preparing emergency food packages for new requests and we'll also
expand their number of appointments. So I would encourage you, if you know anyone who might need help, to reach out to the service council. And also, there is a place to turn, and they plan on adding an additional 40 appointments per week starting next week. And both of these organizations will be monitoring the situation and gauging what help is available. But I would encourage you, if you know your neighbors or someone that might have issues with getting food next month,
to reach out to our organizations in town. And there are other efforts underway as well at the state level and I'm sure through other organizations, but these are two of our, best nonprofits in town, and they're here to help. And just, if you're not in food insecurity and you have resources to share, they both take donations very gladly and can always use them. There for the service council, there are usually bins at the grocery store where you can buy something and put it in for them to distribute.
So, for those of us who don't need this help but can help, these are good ways to share. Thank you, Richard. And I just wanted to talk about the food pantry hours for the Native Service Council. They accept non expired pantry items, non perishable food, shelf stable items, also accept unused cleaning products that have not expired, unopened diapers and wipes and things like that. They can't accept, obviously, expired food. They're currently their needs list and this is all on naticservicecouncil.org.
Cleaning products, personal care products, toilet paper, diapers and wipes, pasta and pasta sauce, plant oh, boy. Plant placed shelf stable milk. Wow. I don't know who chose this color, but it's really hard to read. Canned soup and low sodium soup, albacore tuna and canned meat, cereal, flour and sugar, coffee, tea. So if you can, please, as my colleague said find a drop off spot. The food pantry is located off Webster Street and their hours are Tuesday ten to
two, Wednesday one to four, Thursday excuse me three to 6PM. And you can also call them at (508) 655-1791. That's I'm sorry. Just that's the appointment schedule. I read the wrong thing here. So, please give them a call. Drop off anything that you can to help. They had already expanded their food, operations, probably a month or two ago, maybe even longer. But they, they're going to need it. A lot of people that are going to need some help,
over the next three months, that we've as as our federal government figures out what they want to do. So please help. And a place to turn is at 99 Hartford Street next to the, Hartford Street Presbyterian Church. I don't know what their hours are, but, they can use the help too, and they do gladly accept donations. Thank you, Richard. Okay. Moving on to a second annual Veterans Story Walk. Do you have information on that, Jamie? I don't. I got it if you don't. Yeah. If you would. Yeah. I don't know. So the StoryWalk ribbon cutting is Wednesday,
November 5 from one to 01:30, right across the street at the common. This is, the second annual, story walk. They put up, placards of all the veterans that have, spoken to the oral history project, to celebrate all of the service people in our town have done over the years and, preserve the history of our veterans. Thank you, Richard. Next item up is, select board office hours at the farmers market. I will be at that according to what I saw in my calendar. I think it's me this time, but I'll check again unless anybody else has it.
If it's me, I'd like somebody to take it. I've done a couple recently. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Next up is end of year select board meeting, updates. So let's see. This is just to note the difference in the schedule because, due to holidays and, just various things that are occurring with the board, the calendar that was published this time last year for the for the year shifted a bit. So the next several meetings, are November 12, November 19, then December. Those are slightly different than what was published,
so we just wanna make sure that the public was aware of that. Yes. And we will not be having a New Year's Eve party? Correct. Okay. Okay. We could still get out of the rail trail. Okay. Next up is public speak. Any individual may raise an issue not included on tonight's agenda and it will be taken under advisement by the Board. There's no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law. This section of the agenda is limited to ten minutes and any one individual, is limited to three minutes. Is there anyone who wants to speak?
Lady in the blue. If you could please introduce yourself. Hello. My name is Caroline. Let's speak to the mic. Is that better? There you go. Yes, sorry. Hello. My name is Caroline Donahue. I live at 30 Constituent Street. I want to give you a little bit of background of why I'm here today. We my husband and I moved into 30 Constituent Street twenty six years ago and brought up our family there. And there is a stream that comes from the train tracks and just happens to go into residences' yards before it goes down at Colvert into Payden Cove down to
Lake Cotituut. Don't know why that was even there in the beginning, but that's how it is. That stream, floods from Natick's runoff water. Therefore, our yards flood. And for twenty six years, whenever it rains, a heavy rain, our yard become our yards become a lake. Miss Celia Biagetti is here from No. 32 Cotituent. Deb Sayer is here from No. 28 Cotituent. But our house, being the last house before it goes into the culvert, gets the most damage. So yes, we have a lake, a swimmable lake in our backyards. Now Matt Gardner can attest to that.
He came down a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago in person with his child in heavy rain to actually see see it. And it was great for him to see it because someone finally saw it and we were so happy. And I've been working with Claire and Deli to try and get something done, some kind of funding or whatever kind of funding. Nothing so far has been done and it's been six years since working with her. Now before that in the very very beginning I worked with a man called Bob Boire or something in store management. He suggested that the inmates at the local jail who come and pick up the
trash on the train tracks pick up more trash. That's all all that he said. Didn't do anything. And I kept going and talking to people, talking to people. I finally gave up. I mean, after ten, fifteen years, you're like, what's going to happen? We're just losing our walls, we're losing everything. We have to clean up all the trash. The culvert's not big enough. The flooding has caused erosion of the walls of the stream. Large rocks are going into the stream making it more difficult for it to flow. We can't just go in there and dig it up. That's not going to solve the problem. Let's see.
I'm sorry. We have a large foundation wall that holds up our deck and our driveway probably, that's going to go. That's why I started this with Claire Rundelli to see what could be done because our yard is so wet all the time. We've lost two massive oak trees, one of which fell on Miss Celia Piageti's summer house that her dad built. And it was really sad to see that. I never thought that after this time, we'd be still waiting after twenty six years for something to be done. I met Rich last week at the Community Centre and he said why haven't you
been to us before? I said I didn't know I was able to come. I didn't know I thought I was going through the right channels. I believe I've even emailed with you, Mr. Ericsson. And no one's people have moved on and not done anything about it. They've forgotten us. They don't know. We've tried to bring it to their attention. There's supposed to be a Town Meeting Warrant article for the development of revolving fund that allows us to use stormwater permit filing fees towards this type of work. We don't know if that's been done. We haven't been told. I know there was a town meeting last night, and I was looking at all the information about the $750,000
of CPA funds going towards 5 Auburn Street for future residents. How about helping current residents with their environmental problems? We've been living there for so long, we're tired of it. I I'm trying not to get upset. We ask you to please look at this, come and see it, talk to Claire and Deli. Come when it's raining, come down and see. I gave you some pictures. I believe I emailed some videos. We want to be on the agenda. We want whatever we can do to save our homes and backyards. We want to be involved in every meeting and discussions moving forward.
We really had wished this had been done with the train station. That stream could have been easily diverted along the tracks just past one resident's yard and into Pagan Cove to the constituent. That is the most sensible and reasonable thing to do and cheapest thing to do. If you have to dig up this Washington Avenue and put a new culvert in there, that might work, it might not. But the easiest thing is to divert that stream just a little bit down the train tracks. I know there's no decision tonight. Thank you very much. And I think Deb wants to speak as well.
Sorry. Before you go up, Deb, let me just comment that we will follow-up with you. I will discuss it with the TAN administrator. Thank you. And we'll get you a status of what we where we are now and, we'll take it from there. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm so glad that David Linsky told me to come to the Select Board because I called him. And for the people watching at home, I just want to point out that it's important that you know that you can always send,
any, issue that you have to select board at natickma.org. That gets it on all of our radar, including the Town Administrator. But also at every meeting, we meet twice a month. Sometimes we have even more fun and do it more frequently. But every time we have a meeting, we have this public speak. So if there is something that's unresolved, that you want to bring to our attention and bubble to the top, that's the place to do it because Mr. Erickson is busy,
we're busy, things drop. That's what happens. So I just want to be clear that this door is always open. Thank you. Deborah? I am Deb Sayer. I am Caroline's neighbor on Cochinchuit. We live at 28 Cochinchuit Street and I just will follow-up to say we have not lived there as long. My family, has lived in our house for just over a year. When we purchased it, we didn't know that the backyard is flooded like this, but when she says it's swimmable, it really is. My girl's trampoline is out in our backyard,
and it is not usable every time it rains. It would be dangerous to go back there. We can't plant back there. We were recipient of the free trees this year. One of our trees is doing beautifully up on the hill, but the other died because of the amount of flooding we experienced. And it really does look like a lake back there. And I am worried about our foundation, our garage, the retaining walls, and just my kids' safety with what washes into the yard. It's really made our backyard, which is quite a yard large yard,
not usable for my daughters or their friends, because we never know what's going to have washed up back there. So I just will co sign what, Caroline has said and I'm glad that it's on your radar and, it's a big concern to us. So thank you for your time. Yes. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak? All right, Jamie, right? Yes. Sorry, I don't have my glasses. That's okay. At a disadvantage. That's all right. Jamie Bastiansen, 6 Heavey Way. I attended the town meeting, yesterday, and I heard the chief of the Pering Indians speak. And I was curious,
has the tribe ever approached the select board or town administration about, obtaining five Auburn property? The answer to that question is not to this board. I cannot say They reached out he reached out to me two weeks ago. Okay. Which, But we're this is also not on the agenda, so we can't speak too too much about it. Okay. Well, I would just like to say that, you know, living here in Natick, being born here, I mean, obviously, we learn about native Americans, in general and especially the praying Indians, growing up here. I was just so moved hearing him.
And if, you know, I just think what a historic, like, moment and thing we could do if there was a way for his tribe to, to have that land again and that access to the Charles River, especially what his tribe and his descendants have gone through in Natick. And, you know, I I don't know if there's a way to pause. I do know that the town of Natick currently owns that property. I know there's a lot of back and forth with that with the current deal. But I was very moved. And I think if there was a way to work it out with the tribe, I I just think it would be such a historic,
thing to do culturally and for the town. So thank you. And the tribe, thanks. Miss McDonough. Julie McDonough, 3 Surrey Lane. I know there was discussion, at town meeting last week about the formation of a subcommittee to study our fields, and I think the board is considering that. So I just wanted to come tonight to urge you to do that, and I think to do that sooner rather than later so that we can start to make some progress, and hopefully, maybe it can be on one of your agendas coming up.
I think there's a real need not only to this whole conversation started with the field at the high school, but there's also an interest from the community. I read today, the, I well, I read the meeting materials for the Johnson, the meeting that was held last week, and there seemed to be interest in athletic fields and recreation facilities at that site. That's the feedback from the community. I also, read the CPA report, their strategic plan, their five year plan, and a survey that was done to inform that plan. There were, like, 51% of residents said recreational and parks and fields are are a priority for the
town. So I think there's real interest in doing this work, and I know you've started to formulate the plan, but I just wanted to, come tonight. I also think there's gonna be a lot of upcoming projects that are really could impact our field. So one is Johnson, the old Johnson School, but there's also Memorial School coming online and and what the building committee does and where that school is located and what the impact is to those fields because those fields, those are big fields at Memorial that are used by youth sports and schools.
And so I just wanted to say that I hope that you will consider, moving that forward, with some urgency. The last thing I would say, it was interesting to hear mister Marshall talk at town meeting, with the passing of the one item that's gonna be done related to parks and fields, this year, which was the, like, the laser ring of a baseball field to relevel it. And it was just like that one thing. And so I really hope that we can, as a town, start to move this issue forward starting with this subcommittee and,
getting all the necessary people in the room to really make some progress. So thank you for for I know that you will do that. So thank you for moving that forward. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Is anyone online? Is your mic on? Yes. I was whispering. That's my stage whisper. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on then to Discussion and Decision and, quarterly update number two. I guess we're combining the two, aren't we, Jay? Johnson, future use. So we're combining A and B.
Jay, take it away. Mister Erickson, you project You don't mind project it? Yeah. You're ready? Okay. So Jay Port Paddock, town communications director. As far as the topics in order, the first one is the quarterly, update number two. There's an attachment in the agenda. I don't necessarily need to project or speak to that. It's rather sparse, and I think the second topic is gonna hit on all the same pieces. The only thing I would call out to the board, and you can feel free to flash up the single slide on quarterly update number two. I gave it just a looking back three months and then looking forward three months.
The only thing I would mention for the board's decision is, Johnson office hours that are hosted at Johnson. Amongst that was kind of a creative idea. It's, a little bit different than what, the chair mentioned about the farmers market and the built in audience that you guys have access to. This is asking people to get up and come to a single site. It's been relatively modest numbers. So I would consider, you know, either, removing that option going forward as opposed to something like the Johnson speak that remains a cadence in this meeting. There's no resources or a high lift, and it gives, I think, the general public a chance,
in case there's not an agenda topic. So they can actually ask a question and go back and forth with the board. So that is a low lift. I'd encourage that to maintain, but consider removing the idea of a Johnson office hours. Let me pause you there, Jay. Look, let's discuss that. Is do we agree that we want to? Because I know I had one person at the last, the last time that I did it. And, we're getting updates at least every two weeks. And to me, that that's enough for us to move on. So does everybody agree?
Yeah. I agree. Okay. So we're we're no longer going to do this. Okay. Awesome. I'll just bake that into the blank going forward. Okay. So now if we move on and, apologies, but you're gonna you are projecting potentially? No. Not that one. This is what you sent me in email. It's is it a 19 slide document? Seven. Yep. Oh, okay. So I'm moving on I'm moving on to the post The quarterly update number two. That was what we just kinda voiced over. And then so to go into the post workshop, report that you have projected up there,
I'm just gonna walk through 19 slides. I'm gonna aim, the board was I can maneuver this. I believe that you're looking to maneuver. Thanks, Jerry. It's kind of better, but I'd also say that, I'll speak to the slide numbers for the folks in the room, and I handed printouts to everyone in the room. So the chair was pretty generous to give me roughly a one hour slot. I'm gonna try to be under that amount. What what I'm gonna aim to do is speak to these 19 slides in about twenty minutes or so. Try to allow as much time as possible for the board to discuss and deliberate amongst themselves and allow the public,
whether they be in the room or online, to comment and ask questions. But again, I'll try to be relatively efficient. So if you flip over to slide two, the quick agenda, we'll cover the workshop reports from the ten point seven workshop that was hosted at Kennedy Middle. Then we'll move into a component survey that was issued and live, October 9 through October 17, and I'll give you guys a report on a six question survey. Then we are gonna talk about the scope of financial assessments that could occur. And I'm gonna give you a sense of which components as well as what that
final output could look like, and get some feedback. And then hopefully anchor on slide 18, just a good set of discussion topics. Slide three, brief reminder, we're, you know, you can see the start. You are here in the back half of 2025. There's a number of years and kind of categories of engagement planned. I would call out on the bottom of this slide just a language shift that we've been talking about. Two and a half years is an arbitrary number of amount of time that we thought this could take, but I'd encourage the idea of it's an iterative process, whether it happens shorter,
that exact amount, or slightly longer. But I do think that setting these expectations of a certain fixed time, I just think we're constantly iterating and I think hopefully that'll come across as we talk about the workshop and some of the changes. So moving into the workshop just to set the stage on slide four. So we held this workshop on October 7. It was hosted over at Kennedy. For those that recall, we had a couple issues trying to host it at Johnson earlier in September. It did not work out. It was a three hour meeting, so we were asking people to give up their, I believe it was a Wednesday evening for three hours.
So a rather big ask, and we had a workshop flow that's detailed here. We were able to get 60 individuals to show up which I think is a great number. That's roughly the total the largest turnout we had for an override where we were impacting, quite a bit of monies in the wallets of our taxpayers. So for 60 individuals to show up and give us three hours was a pretty impressive feat by the residents. When we asked people, with the sign up sheet whether or not you live in the Johnson neighborhood, just a data point, that roughly three quarters of them do in fact live in the neighborhood. I'll just mention the idea that we we promised the public,
that we would give more access to the Johnson neighborhood. So we tried to host it there. We were still able to get, you know, three out of every four people from the Johnson neighborhood while also respecting that we want the same influence from all of, NADIC. If you can move into the next slide, I'm now going to go over a couple of reports. The first one is gonna be a note taker report. We, asked residents. We had two brave willing residents who showed up as note takers. We backfilled with three staff members. And during the breakout sessions, these note takers were responsible for making some shorthand notes and then typing up a one page report and submitting to myself.
I then shoved it into the cloud into AI and was able to come up with this report that you're looking at left to right themes verbatims and open questions. Five key themes. The idea of maintaining Johnson as a community hub, our final walking school as Natick at one time had many walking schools, was certainly a theme that came across the strong opposition. I'm using that word because in fact that was it around selling land. So that came through loud from the individuals that attended. There was a discussion around balancing open space and indoor activity.
I think this will really start to, you know, be an interesting conversation because those 7.3 acres for a walking school with about 25 parking spaces for largely teachers, by the time you got to that blacktop as a parent of Johnson, those spaces were filled. So if we start adding, buildings or other active uses that need parking that'll have to potentially eat into open space. So that rub is going to start to occur over time and the idea was to balance it, but I think it's an important thing for the board to think about as we determine uses. Creative and transparent funding needs.
We're not at the funding stage, but residents made it clear that they're looking there was references to CPA, going for grants, public private partnerships, a lot of those comments came across. I'd say the largest theme was number five. These are not in a direct order. But this idea of having some confusion and lacking clarity around the scenarios. So you'll notice when we move into the survey post workshop, we shift away from combining components into a given scenario and we kind of decouple those into the individual components, hopefully adding some clarity. And you'll see the feedback from, the survey as to whether or not people felt like they were heard at this
workshop. The verbatims, I think they're powerful just to read them. I'm not gonna go over each one, but I encourage anyone listening, in the room or watching on demand at some point. I'd also call out this deck was sent around for the general public on Friday. We're trying to get this as quickly as we can if the board remembers we came back about running better meetings. So we want the twenty minutes for the general public to ask questions and comments to be well informed and not hoping to get an attachment hours before the meeting. Open questions, items 11 through 15. Can the town identify creative funding?
Potentially. It's probably early for us to say yesno. How can the site balance the open space noise and active use? So we hear you on that one and that's kind of hearkening to that first theme I was talking about where you're gonna balance potentially whether it's active use, a building, open space, but it is going to be a challenge in a 7.3 acre property. Is it feasible to preserve the existing structure? That actually became a survey question. So we'll go through people's preference. But as to the viability of maintaining that building, that'll also be on slide 18 to have a discussion whether or not at this
early stage you want to do a building study not knowing what the final use is and in understanding what the cost could be for code compliance and other salvageable pieces. But I would say that's that's a discussion for the board to have. Partners or programs that could sustain year round. Again, I would say some of that gets into TBD as we start to think about public, private, programming in a building, but that is certainly an open question that the public has asked. The next slide, this goes into another three buckets of feedback on the q and a summary.
So the final third hour of the workshop was a panel style with the five board members, at the front, and the general public were asking questions. Pegasus and mister Randy gave me the transcript, shoved them into AI, and were able to understand themes, concerns, and questions. Items one through three, this is a little redundant on ChatGPT's part. I would say all three of the first three are saying give us components instead of scenarios, and that that is a fair critique and we pivot it towards the post workshop survey because of what we heard. This idea of a number four avoiding duplicate parks courts or fields.
Some of this came out with examples like the dog park. A lot of individuals felt like that was redundant. When it moves into fields or parks, I think that maybe hearkens to a previous speaker saying whether or not we need more parks, more fields. So redundancy of something like a nice to have of a dog park versus potentially the idea of a field or a park that has a more crucial need. But we're certainly taking that theme back from this Q and A summary. Article 97, which is a land swap that was discussed by the Natick affordable housing trust,
that is something where the chair was present and spoke at the meeting. I spoke with the select board chair and that's something that was flagged. I've had personal, coffees with the, Native Affordable Housing Trust prior to this workshop, going back in the summer about what an amazing opportunity this is. It doesn't have a direct impact per se into the 7.3 acres. It's a designation that would allow, housing affordable housing to be built in another location. And again, that is something that the residents and the attendees, voiced. And I think it's a great thing, and it comes with a host of challenges.
Just wanted to point out what an article 97 swap is for people at home. It basically designates a bit of property as, open space in perpetuity, and you'd have to petition the state legislature to get it out of article 97 status. So it's not something that's ever easy to do. So once you designate it as Article 97, you're making a commitment to use it as open space. Thank you. I stopped my timer, so I wasn't counting that against my 20.
But here we are. Concerns. So there were some concerns around the overlap of the components. Again, some some issues with the scenarios. Number seven and number 14, this idea of needing broader outreach. I am the communications director. I'm serving as the de facto project manager, so I certainly take the feedback. The discussion was interesting at the workshop. It was it was suggested that we consider items like a reverse nine-one-one which I retorted back that's really public safety that's where you get a phone call. I co manage that with our police chief. But then there's mailers.
We actually did a physical mailer for this project which in my three years on the job is the first time for a given project. So that's about a $7,000 investment, to hit 15,000 households in Natick. So I'm open to feedback. One of the residents in the workshop said, what if we came with a great idea? And I think that was a great question. My answer is absolutely. Bring them. I have all of the communication channels we use as a town up on the department web page. It's a constant challenge. It's it's job security, but it's something where I need to constantly get 2% better 5% better each year
to reach more people. But that is something where I would say this is when we show a timeline of communications and outreach during this project at the tail end, I feel pretty confident that it will stand up pretty tall, versus some other projects. Budget limits and debt timing constraints. Certainly, we're not at funding, but this is harkening towards the memorial MSBA project, other potential looming overrides or debt exclusions. So that's something where the board thinks back to that flash vote survey where the preference was work within existing budgets.
Now that's not to say that if we wanted to go after, you know, a shiny object like the pool or something that's gonna come with an expense. But this right now there's the idea of just some concerns associated with budgets. There was a great comment and this was caught in the Q and A around, the operating and maintenance expense and feeling though, yes, we have a new, executive director of DPW in facilities and that particular part of our town is getting stronger but there were still some concerns that we're not always considering that. So when we see the final output design that I'll show for the financial scope
I believe it does address that concern. The consultant spend before the input feels early. This was another great comment by an attendee. We'll talk about this idea of getting board and committee reports from about, it's 10 boards that the chair has been working with as well as the human services study. So that'll be a decision to potentially delay the financial consultant work until we get some additional inputs on the needs. Questions. So exact path from 10/29 to hiring, that's our discussion on slide 18. The funding mix, I would say too early. Town wide needs and how they will shape the options,
that's a TBD and we'll discuss that on slide 18. And then, number 15, it gets back to the Natick affordable housing trust in article 97 that the chair explained. So again, that is an option. It's difficult, but it's absolutely possible. We just have to commit. So now we're gonna get into a six question post workshop survey. These will be a little bit more graphical and less fast talking. So if you go to slide eight, we were able to get three eighty six responses. It's an arbitrary is that good or bad? I would just remind us that it's hard to get, you know, 10 people in the room,
some of which are for other agenda items or the people in the group. We had a town governance study that had 88 responses for us to talk about how to define our town government structure. So three eighty six beat our expectations. When we ask people did you attend the select board workshop? 13%, so 50 of them said yes. We then asked a follow-up question conditionally to that group on the next slide, and you'll see on this slide we asked people to say ultimately do you did you feel heard? So the question was do you feel that the surveys components reflect the overall feedback
themes from the 10.7 workshop? Seventy two percent of people were over in the fours and fives. Yes. It was a weighted average of 3.98 so I would say we asked and if people felt heard and I believe the scores back that up so that's a positive sign for the workshops value. Now moving into the categories of components. The first one on slide 10 gives us a sense of what building preferences the respondents had. So there was a if you look at the yellow box at the top,
those are the force first four options. They're all very community centric with a recreation center being kind of the clear runaway winner. Anything in yellow will end up showing up in the financial assessment scope that we'll be doing, and so we'll talk about that again on slide 18. There was a modest level of support 36 individuals about 9% saying no building so that most preferred a building. And then when we gave people the option for other so fill in a blank or none there was again a pretty limited deviation. So most people were content with the named options that were in the list.
So I think that should give the board some level of confidence that we're heading in somewhat the right direction. The next slide gets into field and features. Again this is the second category. We're gonna go through three categories. So field and features, we have a bucketed set of opportunities here. Everything in yellow I'm deeming the winning group, but you can see it's really an upgraded field and an upgraded accessible playground, towards the top, then water features, two different iterations of a pool and a splash pad. Unchanged playground, meaning the same as it currently is,
as well as an unchanged athletic fields, receive slightly less support. You know at the end of the day that makes sense people that we're asking people for wants at this point, but once we put financials against these that will give the board as well as the residents a chance to weigh in to see the financials. The only other call out I just want to mention open meadow was a selection here. This was an error on my part in the actual survey I grouped it into the next category open space. It's a modest error in my opinion. It's because we're not gonna do a financial assessment on an open meadow.
But I do want you to take that feed feedback and results with a grain of salt because the way I presented it in the survey was it was grouped into what I'm going to show you on the next slide, which was titled open space. So some of this is subjective, but I just want to be upfront about that. So moving to slide 12. Open space, it was dominated by this idea of, you know, conservation land and open space itself, but we still are gonna, you know, have some degree of pricing around tiny forest interpretive trails and off road bike trails as nice nice components that could be featured on the acreage but not take up an immense
amount of space but still be of interest by residents. So that's again just to give you a sense of that final piece. Then if we move on to slide 14, I might have a I might have a repetitive slide. So 13, you can nix from your memory, but that is a repetitive slide. Slide 14 is your open ended feedback. This is the final and sixth question. So people were able to give an open ended response. We received 146, which is about thirty eight percent of the respondents. The concerns first and foremost no housing or land sales.
You can see that the sample of individuals who had a mention of that was 42. There was some concerns around the financials, the process and transparency, folks talked about. The neighborhood impact in overcrowding, I just call it the character. Those tend to be the concerns that were most glaring in that feedback. The neutral pieces, reuse with caution. I looked back into the chat GBT prompt. This was a reference in most instances around building. So we'll talk about that. And then, mixed use and phased planning, financial clarity,
and then open to town leadership. You can see I have three quotes. Again, I'm not gonna read, but I picked a single quote to give you guys an essence of what these, AI summaries are actually pulling from. Opportunities, community recreation continues to be a strong interest. The pools and the water features, had strong interests. And then youth programming and ultimately nature and open space of, an opportunity that people see. Did we we well, did I lose, the individual one about the building piece? I wanna say. Do you mind, for the town administrator pulling up from the agenda?
Because I think the attendees that have the you're looking at a Google slide version. The PDF from the agenda topic will have an additional slide that, unfortunately was somehow deleted in this, Google Slides. But anyone in the general public, they can check my work. I believe question five will have a question about preserving, or demolishing. I would like to address that with the board. I'm eighteen minutes and counting for those playing at home. So I I definitely Okay. I I might have read. I can't see the full slide. So, yeah, if you go to slide 13. I just have it in the printouts that the folks in the room have,
and I know it's on the PDF that's visible for anyone online. Okay. So what you're looking at here is a question we asked as question five. How important do you feel it is to preserve the current existing Johnson Building? This was a question we decided to add just to get a sort of a temperature check on how the attendees or sorry. The survey respondents felt about the current building. Granted, we haven't done a a study to figure out what's salvageable or how much code compliance would need to be invested, but there was what I would call a slight preference towards on the demolish side
versus the preserve. If you combine the two yellow pieces, so items one and two versus items three and four, I'm kind of eliminating three as a neutral audience, there was about a 37% higher number of individuals leaning towards demolition. Granted the information is rather sparse. This is just a in your heart of hearts. How do you feel? But I think that gives the board at least a temperature check as to how people are feeling about a sentimental school and the building itself. And then we'll talk about the building study and feasibility, decision that could occur now or later.
So now skipping back ahead towards slide 16. So this is a rather simple slide of what we just discussed. Three categories: buildings, fields, features, and open space. These would be the 17 components that we would look to get financials against, and I'll walk through what the sample output could be for the financials in the next slide. The way to read the yellow items, so items one through nine, is that we would work with a consultant to give us different scales. Imagine small, medium, large of these individual buildings.
You know, there's some contractors, architects, developers who will have some model plans from other municipalities or they might pull out some custom ones that were done in a small handful of communities. But I think as opposed to giving them full spec sheets on square footage number of rooms, it gets overly precise. And this was a discussion we've had internally and feel like this is a viable option that consultants can give us a sense of what the financials would be for different scale options for items one through nine. But then all items one through 17 would be considered.
In the bottom right, you have a section that's referred to as project development costs. These are various design, permitting, and other studies that are put against the project. They tend to be about a 12 to 20% markup, so we would account for that in this next slide that I'm going to show you. So the output that you're looking at here could in fact be, if you read from left to right, category one with components one, two, three, and potentially beyond. And then we would be able to understand what the financials of each component would
be in year zero. So that would be before, any sort of, any work is actually done or you have an operable, you know, property that's fully functioning. And we would look at the component only costs as well as a, rather a static markup, if you will, for the project development costs. So that would be the all in costs associated with permitting design etc. And then we would also look at a bucket of years one through five and six through 10. I mean you could go beyond years 10, but I think this gives you a good proxy as the board to understand not
just what it's gonna cost to stand up a building and fields and features, but what would it look like in the first ten years over that spread of time. So again, this would be a consultant. The town staff would certainly be involved with some experts and that this would be the what the output could likely look like as we receive it. Final slide. I'm two minutes and counting over. But, this is where I just I'll stop and pause. I'm not going to read this verbatim, but the idea of this discussion is to get any sort of workshop report feedback and reactions from the board and then eventually the public as well as some staff
notes. When it comes to the workshop reports, we feel like the attendees felt heard from the workshop. There's still a need to balance needs and wants and I think that was what I was mentioning with some of the different pieces. The financial scope any any feedback we can certainly take that. We removed that sale of three lots which was certainly a piece of feedback from the residents but if we don't have that dollar value that's a revenue source that we could consider doing at a different stage but that was removed at the request of residents and just general consensus But that would be an opportunity to not only
stand potentially the revenue but the location of the lots and other details on the viability of selling off a portion of. The building study and the base costs, that that is again an area where until we know what the actual use of the building is, it's probably somewhat premature, but there could be a directional analysis. The last two items I mentioned to the right, you'll notice we said there is an option to work pro bono with developers that we know, and ensure that we have the right legalities and contracts. It's not a promissory note for future work, but this is a fairly common place and we've done it as a town.
There's residents who have these skill sets that we could also work with as well. So that's an opportunity to think about can you just get some directional data without any costs associated. The board and committee reports, I'll just kind of loop this into section three. So if the the chair anyone has some updates but we've reached out now to 10 boards or committees. You can click on that link and see the individual boards and committees. They're due to send those reports by 12:30 '1. So we have the option to engage with a financial assessment consultant now. Or if we want to have that as an input to shift the scope of
work we can certainly wait till you know 2026 and that early in that year. Last comment is the advisory committee. We know that we put the fork in the road to decide yes or no in early twenty twenty six. One idea and an opportunity for the board and the public to give feedback, the public input has certainly been, yes, I want a board committee. I don't know if there's always been a clear why. So one sort of off script atypical idea would be to hold a public meeting form style, allow the public, whether it be in a written format with two simple slides or just a verbal,
then what is the exact charge? Meaning, what do you want the advisory committee to potentially do? As well as well who would it be comprised of, so the composition. And I think that could surface interesting ideas for the board, that may not be considered right now, but it would also give the public an opportunity to maybe just sharpen the pencil and give some clear input on that. I included some open items below. I'm happy to discuss them. I just have some base status notes, and that is all the time I have. Excellent. Thank you, Jay. That was quite comprehensive,
I appreciate you getting it out ahead of, well ahead of it, so people could digest it and develop questions that they might have. So thank you. I also think that it's, I like your framework of the scope and the components and the financial assessment. That's pretty sound. Comments from the Board. Mr. Sidney? Yes. As I was listening to Mr. Porpatic talk, I realized one of the questions that was raised at the Forum was whether or not this is a designated historic property.
I don't believe it is, but I don't think we know for sure. And that's going to affect a number of decisions. If it's actually designated historic, a demolition is going to be a problem. So I think we ought to just get that figured that out, because that's going to change some of the scope of some of these things. Is that something, do you mean, that we could ask the historic commission, historical commission? Yeah, probably if it's designated historic, I'm assuming you mean like on a national register or historic district or a state? Because I don't believe there's been any designation by our local historic district or board.
It's not on any of our historic district maps or anything along those lines. Yeah, and I don't believe it has been, unlike 5 Auburn, but one resident did say he thought it already had been, so I think it's an open question. I don't know either way. I haven't covered that. I mean there there is some considerations with regards to a project, but it's not a, it's not a major issue. It's just a couple of additional steps that somebody would have to go through depending on the, on the project if it was to be designated. Okay. And, question. I do wanna say, thank you,
Jay, for distilling all this information. This is a big, big project, and it's a lot to kind of, distill down and make, digestible for everybody as we go through this process. I think it's really great to have preferences from the town while we determine how that lines up with, I think, what the community wants, what the community needs, and how to financially support that. So, I feel like we've made some progress, especially the pieces about decoupling a number of these issues that the community seems to
have, you know, take real issue with putting together. I think that's really helpful. So, yeah. Thank you. Small sparker. Yes. Thank you, Jay. I know a lot of work went into this, and I think it very accurately summarizes what we talked about at our meeting and what I think what people are feeling at this point. I do have to wonder, though, ultimately, when we do get some scope of financial implications for this about if things might
change. And at this point, it's just people's wants, but their preferences might be different once we get some costs associated with this. So and we might come up with other ideas. It could be that all of these top priorities are just too much money. And then we're back to the drawing board, so to speak. So I'm just caution us. I think this has been a wonderful process so far in terms of getting feedback from people, but I want that to continue because I think that there is more discussion that's
going to come about when we have more information. Thank you, Mr. Walschleager. I'll just briefly add, I agree with what Ms. Walschleager said. This is great work. I love the idea that you decoupled from scenarios to components. I think that makes it a little clearer for people to understand. And I agree with Ms. Walschleiger that once we can assign financial, not details, that's the wrong word, financial sketching of that, then that puts a price, at least a ballpark price tag on it that may or may not shift things,
but at least we'll have that data to move forward on. And I think from when we from the seventh to now, I think you've assimilated a great deal of data and distilled it into something that's easily understandable. And I thank you for all that work. If you don't mind, can I just nail these two questions? Okay. So this idea of a financial assessment scope, we talked about engaging immediately at this point with because we're kind of just waiting
to do that amongst staff. But I think it was a fair push by an attendee to wait until we have these board and committee reports and have a clear sense of the needs. I mean, that would just be something I would encourage the board to give some direction right now. Maybe you want to wait till the public weighs in prior, but that is question one. And then question two is this advisory committee. Are you intrigued? Are you in favor of this idea of holding a meeting? You know, November, December, yes, have a busy season. But we can't we can't say it's busy summer. It's busy winter. It's at some point, I think we just hold a single meeting and potentially allow the general public to
weigh in and I think would add clarity to this dialogue because I'd hate to get to a fork in the road in early twenty twenty six and say yes or no and not have an opportunity for the public to give firm input. Jay, thank you for those, two questions. So let's take them one at a time, which is the financial assessment scope. Do you have a comment? Well, I sort of I want to answer kind of both of the questions. I think that All right. Let's do them concurrently. I think that the sooner we can get the Board and Committee reports and also preferably
at least some high level analysis by the administration of what the town's needs are that might be met by this property. It's certainly Parks and Fields is one of those. That's pretty clear, both the survey and several other things. But is there a clear need for building space that is that the town has that we haven't figured out yet rather than like demolishing or otherwise getting rid of the building. And we need it's it's,
you know, that's two sets of reports that will feed that. Once we understand that, if there is a need for the building, then we can go and say well what's it going to take to make the building usable as a public space? Which means getting rid of asbestos, right, other environmental remediation, ADA compliance, etc. Etc. Etc. We need to understand what that's going to cost to see if it's even feasible to use the building as a public space. And that includes some of these things like a community center or youth programming. So,
you know, renovation or replacement and some of that depends on the historic state of the building, which I hope doesn't get in the way. But, you know, we need to know the needs. We've got the wants. We clearly got the wants. I think every survey has come down to the same thing on the wants, in my opinion. We need to know the needs and then we need to know what the cost of meeting those needs is and if it's even feasible to do it there. So I'm wondering if there's a way to get some kind of a high level assessment done without going into detail that we
could start on now before we do get detailed feedback from these boards and committees. I don't know if this makes sense or not. But there's some big questions that I think we don't know the answer to, like, let's say, for example, a pool. Is there room for a pool on that space? I've looked at Google Maps and looked at some of our other surrounding, communities that have pools. They're on larger acreages. And given the topography of this space, is it even feasible? So something, you know, that's a very unique space. And it,
I don't even Ideological issues. Yeah. Right. And there's issues with it. So what is even feasible on the space? I think that's a high level question that I don't know the answer to. And then I think Sydney brought up some of the other issues about the building, a high level building, like what potentially might it take to renovate it if that's desirable. Those are big questions or well, replacing it depends on would depend on the usage, what kind of building we would want. But at least renovating this building, what's involved. And I think going into the detailed
usages here or what we might hear from some of these other committees could be later. Now again, I don't know if that's feasible to ask a couple of higher level questions to at least get the ball rolling. I have reached out to all the Chairs of those committees. Four of them have responded, and of course, I don't have the list right in front of me, but it's the Open Space Parks and Rec, and two other ones, Conservation Commission and one other. School Committee, thank you. So,
they've all they've all said that they would have something by the end of the year, but I take your point that maybe what I need to do is reach out to those chairs and just do a one on one and just see where they're at on this. And I think we can take what Jay has put together here and guide that discussion and say, here's the feedback that we're getting after numerous meetings. How does that play into what your committee is looking at? So I will take that action item to do that.
Jay has a list of these. There is 10 of them. They are linked from his presentation. Yes. I knew it was in there, but I am not on that slide. So yes. And I have reached out to all of them, but some of them, well, only the four have responded. So I need to follow-up with the ones who haven't and schedule time with the ones who have. So yeah. Bye. Miss Pope? Yeah. I I tend to agree a lot with mister Sydney about the needs, and I've said that before, like, deciphering the wants from the needs. I think what we're gathering from the community is the want,
and we have to determine what the town needs and what the scope of that is. And I agree. If this is if this building is feasible, for those types of things. Some of the things that we had talked about were whether or not excuse me it was it's less expensive to build something new than it is to remediate what is currently there. I think that's an interesting exploration. But it also goes back to what Ms. Wolfswager said, which is about it depends upon the usage of that building. Because one thing could be really expensive, and something else could be
not so expensive, or not as expensive. Yeah. I mean, I agree with Ms. Wolfslider. There's a lot of I feel like now we're to the point where we have the needs and we need to I mean, the ones we need to answer some, some big questions. I also have a question about the consultant piece. Like we've mentioned that the consultant piece was too early. Is that right? Do we say that it's a bit early to engage the consultant right now or a consultant? Well, I think the question one is whether or not we can engage now with the
information we have or wait until after we have the needs from the boards, committees, and the human services study from town staff. And so that's kind of the, and I know member Wolschwager said, well, maybe we do some high level questions prior to that. Well, I mean, just as that's November, December. So at this point, I start to look at my boss and say whether or not town staff has the capacity and can deliver on that in that eight week period with some holidays stretched over. So I I tend to believe that it'd be probably tough for some high level
responses from staff, but you can confirm. Otherwise, we have that information from the boards, committees. I do believe staff could summarize the human services study into some tangible pieces. And then to answer your question, that's where we could engage January, February, a consultant with us and the 17 items that are outlined in the previous slide, as well as the needs that we would layer in. And then we might rejigger which of those 17 match the needs and wants. And then we have a refined scope for a consultant to lead that have on
the sample. So I think the core question, question one is engaged now. But I guess option two would be, member Wolchlager's point of around maybe these interim questions or option three, wait until early twenty twenty six with both needs and wants. Thank you. If I may, I think Hold on one second. My sense is that we need to do the second option of just this gets back to your point of iterative process. I think we need to kind of move from where we are now to the high level answers.
I think we need to have an upgrade or updated information on the status of the building. And I know when it was closed, we had an assessment of what it would take to, keep it as a vehicle building, but that was I forget how many years ago, but certainly probably over five. No. I don't believe we ever did an assessment. The school committee might have done The school committee did an assessment to to do something regarding That's high level. ADA compliance for school Okay. Purpose, but nothing nothing nothing since that time.
K. I thought I I may be mistaken then. It, I thought they'd done a a study of things like windows and, lead paint and things like that, but maybe that was another building. I don't know. But what would it take School committee may have done that, but again, the town administration did not do that. Okay. Maybe what we could do is ask the school committee for what they have and sort of build off that? Well, I guess the question for so the building is the building. Mhmm. You know, in in our converse in my conversations with various
developers in the development community, regardless of sort of the end use, it's more expensive now to renovate than it is to build new. So let's say it's re re again, it obviously depends on use, but by and large, if you're gonna have an active use in the building, you likely need to bring the entire building up to code. You need to do the remediation of whatever you need to remediate and just all the requirements of energy code of weatherization of, of of, making sure it's, you know, compliant with all the different code requirements, which includes structural integrity and the things. It's actually more expensive now to renovate a building Much more.
Than it is to construct, tear down and construct new. So anecdotally we can tell you that, we can certainly do an analysis, but just that's likely going to be what you hear. It's certainly not gonna be a cost savings. It might, or at least not a, not a significant cost savings. When it comes to some of the other questions with regards to kind of pool fit on this property, can we renovate fields? I mean theoretically anything is possible. It all depends on that balance of needs and wants. So if we put a pool at where we renovate fields, you then have to figure out are you are you how much of the ledge are you working into, how much are you willing to pay for blasting costs,
how much of the field is, a site's gonna need to go for parking, how much of the site's gonna need to go for all the other uses that accommodate that. So, we can certainly put pen to paper on those high level items, but it'd be great before we start putting pen to paper on every single possible scenario to have some direction from the board on what do you want us to look at. Is it these 17 items? Is it other items? Is it a sub hiring a consultant, and we can just overall just have a better sense as to which direction we're going in. Okay. Thank you for that on the building. That made sense to me given what we've seen in 5 Auburn Street as an
example. It's much more expensive to bring it up to code and do that. So I saw Ms. Walschager first then. So I just want to remind everyone, this is the first conversation that the board has had about this project amongst ourselves. We've had a lot of dialogue with people from the public, but we have not really had conversation internally. And I think the elephant in the room is the call center. Yes. Because it seems like a lot of the things that are popular are things that
are currently either part of the call center or could be part of a renovated call center. So I think it's really important to understand what the plan is for that as well in conjunction with this space. I don't think we can consider the Johnson property In isolation. In isolation. Yeah. So, you know, that's something that we haven't really discussed. But given that what the feedback that we're hearing from people is that there really is this community aspect to, some of the more popular uses,
that I think we do need to bring that in. And, you know, I don't want this necessarily to delay things, but I think that, we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we weren't looking at it from an overall big picture for the whole town. And it's got to be a holistic view. Thank you. Mr. Sidney? So I've got a couple of unrelated things to talk about. One is I had a conversation with a couple of different people at Town Meeting saying, did we ever look and I'll get to the point did we ever look at administrative use for five O'Byrne?
Now I don't know if we did or not. It was way before my time. By the time the decision was in front of us, obviously we had limited choices. But I think that's a good question to ask for Johnson. Is there a need the town has that can be met there, that would save us money in other in other ways? So I think that's one thing that we really ought to be looking at, aside from all these wants, which could you know, keeping the fields where they are, if there's a use for the building that would meet town needs and keep the
fields, I think that would address a lot of the issues that we've been hearing. But the other thing is, in terms of the advisory committee, this is the second unrelated thing, Mr. Poropatic, when I talked to him offline one day, said we really need if we're going to have an advisory committee, we really need to understand the why that they're going to try and answer the charge. The same is true in my mind for a consultant we hire. We really need to understand why we're hiring them. And I don't think we know enough yet to make that decision.
I really think, and I'm going to bear down hard on this, I really think we need to look at the needs really carefully. And that means those committee reports that we've asked for, and it also means the administration taking a hard look at what spaces we have and whether we need space somewhere that we don't already have. We that we whether it's space for the school department or space for administration or space for parks and rec or space for the DPW, whatever. Right?
We just don't know. And we need that answer too before we say, okay, well maybe we meet some of these community wants, but we also have to consider these, town needs. Mister Chair. Yes. Please. I want to tie back into what Ms. Wolfshlocker was saying about, the call center. I fully agree and I hope I've stated that we need to when I think about town wants, I'm thinking about, like, overall town wants. The one thing I want to take into consideration when we think about the Kohl's Center, and this is something that came up when we were in the workshop,
was that, was what this property has meant culturally to that part of town. The fact that it's kind of like a watering hole, a meeting place, a congregational space, you know, an, a new neighbor introduction space. And so one of the things I think we're also balancing is what does, what does that part of the community say and want in relation to what the whole town needs? That this is on some level, it's integrated. On another level, it's a subset, and so on and so forth. So I but I think it's important when we think about the call center because
what what they consider this community to be and what they you know, what they're hoping to to to gain, I think, is kind of like a subset inside of, like, what the whole what we're thinking about for the whole town. Because I agree with you. I don't think we can make that decision separate from coal. But then there's this idea that there's we're one Natick, but you got that part of Natick that's going to con, you know, commune over there. And then this part of Natick that's communing over here and,
and meeting those meeting needs where we're right where people are in their pocket and what have you. So I just think that's something for us to consider, you know, as we're thinking about it, that that is a part of Natick that, you know, maybe has its own makeup. And I'm sure that it does just like West Natick, South South Natick, and so on and so forth. Sure. If I can just briefly, I'd like to say a few things. There was a question about five Auburn. We absolutely did a full analysis of five Auburn as an administration. We, looked at it from a school department perspective, from an administration perspective. We worked with the school department as well as YMCA and other nonprofit partners to
see if it could work. And in all cases, it just was not feasible just given the upfront cost. So I just want the board to be assured that we did look at that. I know because it was my project. So so, we actually had some intent and we walked through it even with some consultants. We ended up not hiring a consultant because even just the feedback on the walkthrough was enough to give us a sense as to, nope, this wasn't feasible, which is why then the select board at that time chose to put together a, a, a committee that then worked on that RFP that ultimately led to, to, that process. Call center and the the Johnson, that's great feedback.
We we this is the type of dialogue that we need from the board to make sure that we're understanding where our next steps can go. So far we've have been heavily focused on the Johnson for for good reasons. It's the the intent of the project, but understanding and seeing what the board feels you need before you can make a next step of decisions is helpful to have. I can say that that the the Kohl Center has also been looked at, but just not to that level of detail yet, partially because we just had turnover in the Rec and Parks facility team and the community services team. Another component of this,
which is a little bit less, timely or critical is 90. That also happened to be my project for the last ten years when I served at the town. One of the first things the TA at the time ten years ago handed to me was study this and figure out what we can do here. Is it an East School? Former East School. Yep. Yep. Connor Heffler Park East School. And currently, it's housing a component of the preschool program for the school department as well as the ASAP offices for the school department as well as a YMCA after school program. So it's a heavily youth centered look. Those are temporary,
meaning four or five years, so not like six months, but temporary in the sense that we are also looking at that. But this is helpful feedback to have from the board as we look at at next steps, for for the Johnson. I do think it's important though to to still try to hone in on some of these potential components to, I think, to what Linda mentioned, if if a component or two is just not viable for whatever purpose, too large, too costly, too what have you, it's just good for us to to think through that more deeply.
So I do think there might be some, maybe not right now, but in the coming, you know, post, December 31, an ability to do some work on this property with not property, but some work on this analysis, even if we don't have a full understanding of the coal yet because it just that that's still going to be good information for the board to be aware of and understand. I also wonder and just keep this in your thinking cap, I think, but I wonder if there's, I don't know how big the coal property is. It feels bigger than Johnson. It is. So I wonder if we've got a lot of wants here,
but I wonder if there's a swap possible with some of these wants, put them at coal and then the Johnson property gets something different. So I want to I really want to think I think Ms. Wolflogger had it right. I think we want to really be holistic about this. And, you brought up eSchool, the 90 Oak Street. I think we should include that since those uses are temporary. We should be considering, you know, what's going to happen there as these whether these uses should become more permanent or, whether, you know, that should be part of, you know,
if we're thinking holistically between these three properties, some of these wants that have been raised might be able to be met, maybe just not at Johnson. I also want to make sure that we don't think we have to do everything all at once. Yeah. That it's in you know, that some of these things could be phased in over time. And, you know, we do have the CPA. Maybe from the funding perspective, that might make sense. But, you know, we don't have to have everything, all the component parts. So I think when we look at that, that we need to make sure that that's understood, that we can phase things in.
Yes. A long term plan that incorporates all of this across the three properties, I think, is the right way to go. And so That's a good segue, for what I was going to to it's not proposed, it's float as an idea, which Use study or something. Study of properties that we know we need to redevelop. Obviously, a catchy title, but we need to, I think at a minimum, have an idea about call center and Johnson.
90 East Oak is five it's more of a longer term five year plan, but I think looking at the list of wants, a lot of those could be handled at either rebuilt or renovated call center. It's again going back to Ms. Wolschleager's point, the topography is a lot different there. It's level. It already has some fields there. It already has parking. So I think Big enough. Yes. I think expanding the scope of that discussion beyond just the Johnson property,
I think is the right thing to do and to get us a better picture. And to Ms. Welschleager's point, we could do it. We don't have to do it all tomorrow, next year or the year after. It could be five years. We do a five year capital plan all the time. We can figure out what we do when, what funding sources we might have or could tap into. But I think expanding that gives us a clearer picture of what's needed in the neighborhood.
And I think also the responsiveness of the boards and committees to that question, if we expand the scope of the definition or the scope of our analysis, they're going to have some good ideas. And they can bring them to us and we can incorporate them. But I think we need to have those, even if it's something I don't expect, we don't have the bandwidth, our town administration doesn't have the bandwidth before January to do any detail on this, but if we could do They're going to be doing budgets.
A high level, right. I mean, there's always going to be something, but it's we have to find some cycles to at least get move this further along and give us at least a glimpse of a picture of what can be done at either of those sites. Yes. I mean, I know that administration time is hard to get. And we have very busy people. And I'm amazed, like, how much Jay manages to get done on a weekly basis. So I'm wondering if there's some way that we can get,
consultants to support staff. Yep. I would leave that up to to you, Jamie, and and, you know, is there a way that you envision that consultants could help you, and maybe take some time off, you know, replace staff time? Yeah. I mean, based on this conversation, I'm we need to digest and debrief with with Jay and debrief even with like the the, you know, the the team because there's others now that we'd be pulling into something like this if it's if it's if it's Johnson hand, the, you know, there are, there are,
we, we can certainly work on a potential updated or concept of a scope, kind of what we have here, but, bringing in some other components that can then be used to, to do some type of, of a little bit higher level, for lack of a better term master plan, so to speak like a facilities master plan, but not a facilities master plan, but like a facilities and use planning process that can then, you know, we have quite a bit of community engagement. I, I would argue we have direction of the wants, not just at Johnson, but these could be arguably community wide wants,
and work with a consultant, likely a team, to help then formulate what that plan would look like. Before we do that though, I'd wanna come back probably to this board a couple more times or at least one more time to make sure we hone in on what that that scope could be probably after that December 31 time frame and still confirm the the, you know, because Johnson is sort of the the heart of what we're talking about now, making sure that we understand how how just that that the interplay there. Jay, do you have no. I'm hearing after January 1,
come back, and maybe iterating. The advisory committee is is the of interest to do a shark tank like pitch? I mean, I I my last company, we were on shark tank, so I'm trying to pull forward my startup into local government. But, like, are are you looking favorable towards that or do we hold off on that idea? I personally have been, favored the advisory committee since day one. So I'm on board with that. I think my only question for the board is if we're this concept of advisory committee is, I think, very specific to Johnson.
Mhmm. Yeah. I think With that said, this type of Shark Tank approach could help suss out some some I think it's a good idea, but I think until we understand the administration's needs, you know, the boards and committees and so forth, I think that, you know, we got to mix those in. So if we do a Shark Tank advisory too soon, it's gonna be about all these wants. It's gonna be Yeah. And not it's not gonna incorporate, oh, gee. We need space to store all the all the recreation stuff when coal gets torn
down, you know, whatever. We need those needs. So maybe that doing that after we get those reports and so forth, I think would be and also start, you know, start to merge the needs in with the wants. I think that might be the time to do that. Yes. And I think more and more the more and more that we discuss this, it's pointing towards trying to do this sometime early next year to do an advisory type thing. So I think that aligned with what Jay was talking about earlier.
Any other thoughts? Well, and that's still, you know, based on whether or not that's, you know, is to be determined. Because that question has come up a lot, and I think we need to be clear that we haven't decided on an advisory. Committee, but that's something that we're considering. And if that were to happen, we would be looking in that timeframe. Yes. I think to Mr. Erickson's point, we need to know what we're asking a consultant before we Yeah. We need to really define the scope of what it is we're asking.
And I think we're just in this discussion tonight, we've kind of expanded the scope pretty broadly. So we need to figure out in the next, I would say, between now and the end of the year, we as a Board have to figure out where we want to be in January. Yes. And I want to make sure that we try to keep an aggressive timeline. I mean, we have been talking about this being a two and a half year process, and now it's an iterative process. But you know, I want to make sure that the Johnson community
feels good that, you know, we are making progress and addressing some of their needs, too. I don't want to be seen as, oh, well, we're just going to put everything off because we're throwing coal into the mix. I don't think that has to be the case. And, you know, I would encourage our consultants and and and our town staff to to look at maybe some things that that once we can get a plan to to address Johnson first. Yeah. That's good. Okay. And and a good message to to people here. Okay. Any other further comments before I open it up to the public?
We've patiently waited, to comment. So anyone from the public want to speak? Donna, go over and ahead. Donna McKenzie, Tom, meeting member, Precinct 8. And thanks, Jay, for all of your hard work. This is not an easy project. And I am into I'm surprised I can shop or do anything, but I like exhaustive and thoroughly researched options. And I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking of the dire need we have for playing fields in the town. And I'm thinking, well, if we tear down Johnson School,
how much square footage is there? Because you talk about updating the playing fields. Is it possible to add another playing field? Because what we have there is a baseball field, which I think I don't know the sizes of my fields. I don't remember field hockey field, for example. But it's small. Right? Little league. And the field we have behind, the old hockey rink is also really small. It's like dodgeball size or something like that. And no bleachers. Yeah. But is there a possibility to evaluate, would there be the opportunity to install new fields or at least one more new
field in that space? And I know that topography and the geology is a challenge, given the ledge and everything there. But I think it's worth looking into and bearing in mind that much of that neighborhood has the old 10 foot property lines, which is less than two of me because I have one in my neighborhood. And so this as a public playground is not a want, it's a need. The community there, I think, needs a gathering space.
So I just I just urge, like, thorough evaluation of all the options as you go through this. And I'd love a pool too, but where's this money coming from? And as you think about fields too, also think about funds for maintenance. I was a little bit taken aback to realize that baseball fields are supposed to be leveled once a year, and we're leveling them once every five years. And we need to do better. We need to do better by our children, by our athletic resources. And as you think about a task force for field,
maybe there could be some overlap with Johnson and what happens with Johnson. Thank you. Thank you. Let me just briefly comment on that. I think the more discussions we have on this, the more we realize that there's an interplay between a lot of these things, the fields, the, Johnson, the the the building is, is, there's open space. There's, the the status of the the buildings that I'll that I'll call aging buildings and what we do with them.
They we know they need attention, and we have to figure out what, the priorities are. I agree with miss Walschlagger, though, that the first priority that we have to solve is is Johnson. Secondarily, it's kind of a weird situation because it's secondary and concurrent at the same time. So we need the answers at a high level on those three properties. But I think to Ms. Welfiler's point, we need to focus on delivering what we promised the Johnson neighborhood,
which was a rapid, well thought out but not procrastinating process. We need to move inexorably towards a solution. So we need to keep that in mind and I appreciate all the discussion. Ms. Rickers, you had your hand up. Brindley Vickers, Precinct 8, Johnson Community Member. I want to say I spent a lot of time talking to members in the community. I have a ton of notes. Most of them I wrote before the meeting tonight, and I can say that a lot of what you guys covered tonight is exactly
the conversation that the community has been waiting for you to have. So, I don't think that the community needs for you to be in a hurry. I think they needed to hear this conversation. I think that there are questions, It's not about speed. It's about quality of conversation. So I don't think that there is a need to necessarily hurry the decision. I think there is a need to know that the progress isn't just listening to our ideas and then and then not moving forward. I think this conversation tonight is exactly what most people are looking for.
That being said, in the notes, I just wanna say because of so much of what you said tonight is literally what we've been listening for and waiting for, it seems to me that what's been missing is this conversation about priority on-site. You guys talked about it a lot already, but I just want to say it in my own words. It seems to me that the priority on-site is the building and not the grounds. The field was just recently redone. They're playing on it. It's serving its purpose right now as needed. It's wonderful.
The, field at the bottom of the sledding hill is small, but kids are still playing on it. It's also not in need of anything right now except regular mowing that we do already. The hockey rink and the basketball court don't get used as much because they're in need. But again, it's not something that we need to tear down down right this second or renovate right this second in terms of spending money. It seems like the building is what really needs to be addressed the most because that's what the community is concerned about with safety,
right, and what happens with the building. The conversation about looking at the Kohl's Center and the Johnson property as a team and how the properties work together is something that the community I feel certain in saying welcomes 100%. I've been seeing it for a while. I think that, it really does open up the list of opportunities better because the call center is much more likely to be able to hold a pool or a splash pad or some of those options. So I certainly welcome that conversation of looking at them together.
In terms of the hiring a consultant right now, I was really glad to hear the conversation shift towards being later. I think one of the conversations that I have with people in the community is that we're looking what we would love to see is not advisory, because advisory seems to have a term of you have to listen to this, you have to take this advice, but more of something that's called, a study. And this, sorry, I need to read my thoughts on that one better. A study group is the best option. It's a group that can ask questions,
brainstorm, and have time to go away and get the answers, think about the conversations, and then come back and talk about it. There are a lot of people in town who can give a range of costs and a list of actions and questions that need to be asked before creating a list of what, creating a list of what each option means before spending money, figuring out if that's what we want. For example, the whether or not we really want bike paths on that property, because can that property actually hold it? Right. Do we really want this on there? Because, if we tear down this part of the building, what is that going to do to the forests? If we renovate it,
what's that going to do? Having those types of conversations where you have a whiteboard, you can write your list down, and then you can present your list so that, it helps to, potentially relieve some of town administration time, some of your public meeting open public meeting time because you can't converse if it's not a stated open meeting. So putting together a group of people in the room, there's a lot of people in town with expertise who can look at these, help to create some of the lists and some of the things and take care of some of that. First, I think it can even have a high level master plan.
We have a 2030 plan. We have a lot of, there was a parks and rec study already. That's very, very detailed. There's a lot of that that could come out of that, already. Another example is definitions. What is a community center? What is a recreation center? What is, an art center? Like, do they all work together? So those top three things on that list, can they be combined together? So like answering some of those kinds of questions in a study group. I really, as a community member, very happy to hear this conversation this evening. It is literally what we've all been waiting.
For. And I thank you so much for the time in it. Thank you. Sure. You're welcome. Anyone else have a comment? Mr. Kauffman? John Kaufman. 97 South Main Street. Johnson's 99. I'm, you know, a property abutta there and, you know, if if you were to light off a dynamite cap at Johnson to build a swimming pool, my house would cave into the ground. Not that, you know, mister Evans wouldn't like to push the plunger sometimes, but, I, I I, you know, I I came in here and I I, you know, I had a good idea because I read this last week and what we were
gonna do and what the plan was, but then you just threw us all a curve ball because you added Cole School, you added Oak Street. Now do we have a you know, are we gonna have a workshop on all three neighborhoods now? Or I you know, I'm not sure what's going on at Johnson. Jay, you did a great job. I you know, there was a lot of good points here. And, you know, housing wasn't mentioned much. I'm for it. You know, some some reasonable, you know, affordable housing up at Johnson, you know, I I'm not against it. And I'm gonna I'm gonna butter.
You know, for administration building, I think, you know, the town's needs comes first. You know? You know? And as far as the open space, that's just self explanatory. You know, we we want the field. That baseball field is a tee ball field. It's used constantly in the spring. It's there's no room for a little league field or a farm league field. We had men's softball once. I had softballs raining in my yard. And we had to kick them out. So, you know, you know, you know the layout of the the land there.
You know, Jamie and, you know, I I've you know, you you people know what how I feel about the property and the playground and, you know, parking is a problem there. If you were to build some kind of swimming pool there, there's gotta be 200 cars at a swim swimming meter. You know, you'd take down all the trees unless you were to build some kind of a garage, and we can't afford that anyways. But, you know, this this I don't know. It seems to me tonight set us back six months, you know, with with the addition of, you know,
again, Oak Street and call center. You know, I don't I've I've never been to the call center. Maybe they might need stuff up there too. And I agree, you know, why duplicate things that cost millions of dollars? But open space is a key word at Johnson. Conservation. You know, we just want a pack to walk our dogs and stuff or walk around, you know. You know, I don't bring that dog pack thing into there, but, you know, they do. But people pick up after themselves. You know, Johnson is a neighborhood open space. It's the most densely populated space with the knockdown of the single family houses.
And, you know, building duplexes is on every lot over there. And I'm sure that's been the argument before the planning board. But, you know, we need that open space. We we we don't walk over to Coolidge Field. You know, Johnson's different. The kids are there. There's kids at Johnson right now riding their bikes. I'll guarantee it. You know, that's how densely populated we are. Because the mothers and fathers say, get up. You know, you know, on Friday night or whatever. But, you know, again, I'm a little confused now.
And if we didn't bring in the call center or Oak Street into the conversation, you know, I'd be, you know, pleased that we're moving forward. As far as an advisory committee, you know, there's nothing planned, so what are we gonna advise you on, you know? But, you know, everybody's doing a good job and I'll keep my mouth shut now. Let me just comment on one aspect of it, which was the call center part. What I think we're trying to convey there is that we there are a lot of wants that could be accommodated at the call center.
And so we need to have an idea of what is possible at call centers that we can say, okay, it's off the list for Johnson, but we'll consider it for a call. So that's all we're doing there. We're going to proceed full speed ahead on Johnson. Jamie? Hi, Jamie Bastienstine again. Thank you all so much for your time and your attention and your attention to detail and Jay all your work towards this. I really appreciate it. I did have one question or a concern I suppose about Page 12 or Slide
12, on the preferences. It says Tiny Forest as far as the survey. And I think we need some clarification about that when it comes through for surveys because I think a lot of people are for the tree coverage, which I think a lot of us are. Especially there with the desire for conservation and open space and tree coverage. And so they read tiny forest and they're thinking, oh, the woods there, we want to protect the woods. I don't think they realize what it's referring to is creating a new tiny forest similar,
I'm assuming, to the one that was created in front of the high school, which I think they got a grant for, like, 50 something thousand dollars. I don't think necessarily all of that money went to that. But it's probably like a 20 by 20 new growth area. It's very small. And I just I don't think it's necessary at Johnson. We have woods. We have mature woods. Where would we put a tiny forest? Would we put it in the middle of this letting field or in the baseball field? So I think it's just a it's confusing to people. There's a lot of people voting for it. But I think what they're voting for is the current woods,
the current mature trees there. I don't think it's clear to them what that means. So, I just hope in the future it could be a little more clear, and let people say they want the tree coverage, but not necessarily the new tiny forest. Thank you. Hi, my name is Carol Sakala. I live at 4 Madison Street, which makes me a Johnson neighbor. And as we move toward consultants, I wanted to ask for some guidance. I submitted a new scenario showing how the site could be used for many popular
components and could be an eco restore hub. And I think that was submitted around to some of you. It would demonstrate bringing back native species and pollinators and support interest to land stewards in town to do the same. The site presents opportunities for us to do our part at scale to address the urgent matter of climate change. So the proposal garnered quite a bit of support among those who reviewed it. And some mentioned their support in open ended comments to the last survey.
The component voted on was open space conservation land, which of course is open to quite a bit of interpretation. And I note, looking toward the consultants that my proposal offers the potential for funding sources that may not be otherwise available, as well as many partnerships and engagement with entities and organizations in town and beyond. So my question is, what role, if any, do some of us have in moving these ideas forward during this process,
looking more to the short term or the longer term? I would say that as we thank you for the reminder and really what we need to do is more carefully define what's subsumed within open space because it's not it's there are a lot of different possibilities in that. It means different things to different people. So I would say, you know, give it give us the opportunity to go through your suggestions. And, you know, we we haven't deliberated as a body on some of the details of of a
lot of these things. This is really our first night of doing that. So let let's move forward with the idea of, let's get a better handle on the possible, open space. I don't know. Descriptions is not the right word of possibilities that exists, and then we can have a firmer handle on on both. The need and how feasible it is and what the funding sources might be as you suggest. Thank you. And Mr. Chair, it would also be possible, you know, if we did get a consultant and,
I'm certain we would give them all of these suggestions in detail to consider. So that would factor in, like if there's a cost proposal on a certain level of open space and their funding sources that helps the consultant rather than the consultant isn't going to work in isolation. I agree that that should be fed into that process. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Ms. McDonough. I'm sorry, and then you. Julie McDonough, three earlier about, the neighborhoods and thinking about the gathering spaces because I think,
if you do decide to consider the call center, and certainly you would because maybe you don't need two parks and recs departments or buildings. But I don't think they're really interchangeable because what you put at the Johnson site matters to the abutters and the neighbors. So what they're saying that they need in that space matters. In that, I don't think you could say, well, you want open space. We'll just put that over at the call center, and we're gonna put something else here. You know? So I just think, like, it's not totally interchangeable.
It matters what the neighbors say. I and I understand you have to think about that, but just, like, a cautionary note about, you know, thinking about the neighborhood like you were talking about in these gathering spaces and and what that looks like too as you do consider the needs of the town overall. Just thanks. I think all of us have the view of this as a gathering place, and that's that's, you know, we've talked to enough people in that neighborhood to understand, how important that is.
So thank you so much. Yes. I just, I am also a Johnson parent and I'm very cognizant of the gathering space that it was when it was a school. It's critically important for neighborhood development and and neighbors meeting neighbors to have those kinds of gathering places, and it's true all over town. And I agree with that's with Ms. McDonough. We can't swap open space with coal, but we could swap a swimming pool with coal. Absolutely. So it's not a swap anything,
it's a swap sensible things that we're thinking. And that's why we want to keep coal in the conversation because some of these things that were raised are community needs not Johnson needs. And so if we're looking at communities, we need to look community wide. Gathering space, we need them in every community, in every sub community in the town. Thank you. And this is going to be our last speaker because alright. You have one minute, you have one minute because we are well way behind on our agenda.
We've got a lot to get through. So this is a starting point not the end point. Okay. Laura Forker, 22 School Street Extension. I'll make my comments really brief. I support a lot of what other speakers have come up and talked about and I just wanted to emphasize, the fact that, not only is Johnson a tight knit neighborhood but it's also a very condensed neighborhood. So if you look around all of Natick, the smallest plots the houses are on are are in the Johnson School area. And so that is all the more reason to have an open space area where
people can gather. Because as I've lived here over the last thirty one years, I've seen individual lots, at least the grass part of it, get smaller and smaller and smaller as houses are torn down and they're filled up with a house that takes up practically the entire lot or a duplex, same thing. So we really do need open space in the downtown area. And then the other thing I was going to say is I think that if there were a cost attached to these various scenarios, people might have voted differently on what they wanted. So in other words, if it's going to require for example to put in a pool,
if it's going to require an increase in property taxes people might have thought differently. Yes. Thank you. Hi, my name is Michael Wernaz. I live in the Johnson community and was privileged to be able to serve on the PTO in Johnson's final year. I was one of the co presidents. And so I got firsthand account of how people were feeling at the time. We celebrated the seventy five years that the school was in operation. Two boys who went there, one of whom worked on the legacy project,
which talked about the history of Johnson. And I think it's important. One thing I didn't hear this evening, I've been listening even though I haven't been present here, I've been listening on the phone. So I've heard all everything that you all have said. I didn't hear anything about the fact that the building itself is really two buildings. There's a front building, which is quaint and pleasant and I think has a lot of history and meaning to the Johnson community. And then there's the back of the building,
which was added on at some point. And outside of the mural by the back door, I don't think has nearly as much attachment as the front of the building with the blacktop, the tree and such. So when considering future use cases for the building itself and whether renovating or building anew, I think it's important for us to consider how we might be able to honor the history of Johnson and the quaint sort of front part of the building and maybe add to the back
like we've done with the library here, where you have a historic piece as well as a back piece. I'd also say that Johnson is considering it in the context of Coal And East is wonderful because it's holistic in its thinking. But I think it's important to remember the unique characteristics that the Johnson property has in particular its location, proximity to downtown as well as the surrounding neighborhoods. And lastly, I would just say that the neighboring gentleman here who said that there are likely kids riding bikes up at
Johnson right now, I can attest to that because my boys head up there quite a bit. And I think that even though it's an iterative process trying to think about what the future use would be, I would say that there is an opportunity to have an interim use whether it be the T ball field or the blacktop. I think a small investment would go a long ways, whether it be a net in the basketball hoop or making certain that the basketball hoop is not leaning over.
And I think in the time that it's going to take us to be thoughtful and intentional about the future use, I think we can consider that maybe a little investment in the meantime would go a long ways for the community. Thanks very much. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say thank you for talking about the two halves of the building. It's those are things I've been talking about privately for a couple of years now. I love the front half of the building. I hate the back half. I think there's a lot of people who have an emotional attachment to the
part of the site that is the blacktop, that is that oak tree that stands in the middle of it. To the woman's point who said the environmental solution for it or use for it. The neighborhood that part of town was I believe Oak Hill was the name of that area. And so that Oak Tree I I think and the small library and the multi use cafetorium, cafagematorium, I think that has a lot of meaning to a lot of folks. Well the library with the fireplace It used to be the It used to be
the kindergarten. Thanks very much. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all for coming tonight and expressing your views. So I appreciate all the feedback and we'll continue moving forward on that. So next up, we have a public hearing. Actually, we're going to combine C and D, Kristen. Alright. So we got the public hearing for, T market for the S 15 all alcohol beverages off premise license and a public hearing for wine and malt beverages on premise license and that includes the common Victrola license and non live entertainment license.
Do you have a preference on, well, let me see here. If we're gonna, are we gonna combine the two? Yeah. Let's open them both open both hearings and then we can discuss whatever issues we need. Okay. The select board will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, 10/29/2025, at 06:30PM, upon the application of T Market, LLC, DBA T Market, Zhiang Zhiang, proposed manager of record for a new South fifteen all alcohol packaged store off premise license. T Market will be located at 1245 Worcester Street,
Suite. T premise, consists of a 75,000 square foot supermarket on the Second Floor of the Natick Mall. The alcohol display includes one twenty four foot refrigerated case and four section is open and not enclosed. The hearing will be held in the Edward Lott room, Meeting Room 13 East Central Street, as well as remotely. Anyone wishing to be heard in this matter can participate in person or through Zoom. Login instructions will be published on 10/29/2025 on the select board agenda. All persons interested in this application may appear and be heard at the time and place mentioned above or may submit written comments to the select board at 13 East
Central Street, Natick MA, 1760, selectboardnatickma dot org by 10/29/2025. Move to open that public hearing. Second. Second. Okay. Opened by Mr. Sydney and seconded by Ms. Welschwager. Yes. Go right ahead. Should we vote? Yeah, we should vote. Oh, yes, sorry. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. And for the second, the select board will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, 10/29/2025, at 06:30 p. M. Upon the application of Tea Market LLC DBA Tea Market Zhuang Zhuang,
proposed manager of record for a new South-twelve Market, a new, S-twelve Market and malt with cordials on premise license. T Market will be located at 1245 Worcester Street, Suite T, Suite T premises consist of the Noodle Bar located within T Market on the Second Floor of Natick Mall at Worcester Street, Unit T, Natick MA 01760. The premises include approximately 113 dining seats,
kitchen and storage space, storage areas. Alcohol will be restricted to the noodle bar dining area. The hearing will be held in the Edward Dillard Meeting Room 13 East Central Street as well as remotely. Anyone wishing to be heard in this matter can participate in person or through Zoom. Log in instructions will be published on 10/29/2025, select board agenda. All persons interested in this application may appear and be heard at this at that time and place mentioned above, or may submit written comments to the Select Board at 13 East Central Street, Natick MA 1760,
Select BoardnatickMA dot org by 10/29/2025. Move to open the public hearing. Second. Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Alright. Any discussion? We did get, I'm sorry. Would you please introduce yourself and Yes. A brief overview. Hello, everyone. My name is Theresa Liao. I'm here representing, Waleya Yang, who is my family member, also the owner of T Market, and also, Zhong Zhuang, the manager and also the manager of the T Market. So I'm here to represent for them for any questions and then to speak.
Okay. Thank you. Questions from the Board. Ms. Balschager? First of all, thank you for your patience and waiting for us to get to you. I know there's a lot of interest locally about this market opening. So if you can just give a brief description of what the market is all about. Oh, yes. So T Market is a special Asian grocery store that we focus on offering the high quality for produce seafood prepared meals and also some, like, specialty Asian foods to the local community.
We think for this area, we don't really have like a grocery store like focus to the Asian community, that's why we are really excited to open one in this location. And on the meantime, we heard from a lot of the feedback from our previous customer that they want to have like a convenient one stop shopping experience to not only buy grocery store, store, but also purchase some like beer, one, sake soju together. So we are also
interesting to provide those options to our customers. Awesome. Great question. Mr. Sidney? Yes. One of the things I'm interested in is when it was JCPenney and Wegmans, there were stairs between these floors. Are those stairs going to remain? Are they going to be accessible to the public? Yes. So I think you're mentioning the escalator in the middle. So those going to be took off. For our grocery store is only going to be on the Second Floor. So we they cannot remove the escalator, so no customer can have access to the First Floor and all of the like
the existing wall is going to be blocked, so no one can like really reach to, like, the middle area. Okay. So there's not gonna be, like, somebody, wanting dinner and going upstairs and buying some some booze and bringing it back down to the restaurant or whichever direction it goes. I don't know which is which floor each is on. Great question. So we still going to have, elevator on the side, of the building, which is they they already had elevated in the future. We're going to keep those for no matter, like, emergency, purposes or, like, the convenient purposes, they can still use out the elevator to go to the First Floor to shopping.
However, the only thing they're gonna remove is the the one in the middle, like, the super middle escalator. They're gonna remove that. But all of the stairs on the side, all of the elevator on the side, all of those kind of remain. And then they can still like go out of the grocery store, they have like the mall escalator, they can still use that escalator to go to the First Floor to shop. So have you got a plan to manage, because because you're looking for, beer and wine for the restaurant? Yes. Have you got a plan to manage so that people don't bring in liquor from
the other half of your business, to the restaurant? Because, that's kind of what we're looking at here. I just want to like touch all the bases here. Yeah. So for the restaurant itself, we're going to have a host in the like in the entrance. So she's he he or she is gonna be the person who is guiding the customer to have a seat. So, we're also gonna train our staff to not allow our customers either take the alcohol out or bring the alcohol inside. And also for the grocery store, we have a,
dedicated the retail section, which is they're gonna have their own checkout station. So all of our liquor is only gonna be display and sell in that area, which means for like I think for more better management purposes, we can have monitors and then we can train our staff to check IDs to make sure like not customers are hiding the alcohol or bring alcohol out in for your question. Yes. And I really appreciate that. I just wanted to like get that out because this is kind of an unusual
business where you've got two businesses sort of connected. We haven't seen that before. So I wanted to like Yeah. Wegmans did. No. They had a burger bar. Right. Did they? Yeah. I never went into Wegmans. No, they didn't. A couple of restaurants. Okay. So but it's It's still unique to your point. Yeah. It's kind of a unique situation. So I just wanted to cover those bases. So thank you for your patience. Yes, sir. Yes. There is a lot of excitement, so thank you. Thank you for choosing Natick. You mentioned that Natick doesn't really have an Asian, specific grocery store.
I'm sure that you're going just square foot alone, there's going to be lots of options. Would you not consider the Wellcome Asian market a grocery store? I'm sorry, which one you are referring to? The Wellcome Asian market. It's, kind of off of Sub Weathersville? Yeah. In the Weathersville. It's a smaller, smaller, much smaller. It's a great time. Store. Think of it as Wegmans versus Tilly's. Mhmm. That would be a good I get the I get the comparison. Yeah. But Mhmm. Yes. Is is it not targeted towards Asian the Asian community?
It is, but it doesn't have probably, like, a full range of groceries. And it doesn't have an alcohol license. Right. Yes. So I think our target is going to be like more broad internationally to the Asian. I've been we've been like visiting for some of the local smaller Asian grocery store in this area. But, what we are hoping to provide is to targeting like more like Asian countries or area that people who have more options. We are so because for
a lot of options from our previous customer, they have to go to, like, all different area just to collect all of the items they want. Like, for example, they go to this store to buy some of the, meats, go to another area such as Quincy to buy some of other prepared meal. But for us, we want to have them to just do one stop shopping and they can get all of the the stuff they want in the same time. And we just I know that's not actually why we're talking, but we're talking about, Welcome to Natick. As my colleagues have said,
it's great to have you in town. We're looking forward to the opening. Do you have an opening date assuming all goes well here? Opening date? Great question. So right now, our plan is to open, I think, around next year, May. So we still can have five months plus more like seven months to go, yes. I have a question and this may be for you or for Mr. Erickson. I see for the all alcohol license we don't have an approval from the police. We Yeah. We do. Well, no.
We we do for the beer and wine. Yeah. But we we don't for the all alcohol. So I wasn't sure if Yes, we do. What? Where are you looking at that? So this is the I downloaded this today. From where? From peak. I'm looking at Okay. Yeah. I thought I saw that as well. I just see the public hearing notice in the application. Yeah, it's part of the application. Okay. I didn't get that far. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Never mind. So this is completed by Brandon Leesung. Okay. Alright. It's actually a long conversation. So we do have approval. Yes.
Alright. Thank you. Okay. We're ready to vote. Mr. Chairman, you have to open this public hearing you have to solicit for the from the public. Yes. Any comments, Mr. Jacobs? Thank you, Richard. As you know from a previous Cody Jacobs, precinct two. As you know from a previous meeting, I am a mall power user, so I have to ask I have a couple of questions just about the overall mall ecosystem. One is the, is the is the pedestrian bridge that goes over the that connects to the parking garage from that location gonna be reopened when you guys are open? That would be one question that I have,
and then my I can just sit back down after this. And then, I forgot what my other question is. I guess that's my only question. I'm very excited. I'm disappointed it's not till May, but excited. Thank you so much for the question. To answer the question, I think there's two bridges connected to the Second Floor. One is to, the previous parking, parking lot. That one one we're going to open. So, for all of our customer who is parking in the, like, Third, Second Floor, they can use the bridges just walking to our store, which is going to be more convenient. So they don't have to go to First Floor and then use the elevator goes
to Second. So, yes, for your question, we're going to open the bridge. That's awesome. That's great. Okay. Any further comments? Nope. Anybody online? I don't see anybody. You see anybody? There's no hands raised that I'm seeing. Okay. Alright. Let's vote. Move move approval of the s 15. Else, do you have a second? Second. Second. Moved by miss Sydney, seconded by miss Walsh Lugar. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Do I have a further motion? Approve the, S-twelve. Second. And Just to confirm, that includes the common VICCI and the non Well,
I was gonna do this separately. They're all part of one. They're all part of the motion. Okay. So approve them all. Yep. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Who seconded that one? Sorry. Rich. So you did. A second. Move to close the public hearing. The s 15 public hearing. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Next. Move to close the s 12 Public hearing. K. Second. Thank you. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Alright. We're we're done. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you. Appreciate you for waiting so long.
My dad used to drive to Chinatown for his food. Yeah. Me too. Right now I'm leaving Framingham. I have to drive all the way to Chinatown, which is not really a convenience to the community. So thank you guys so much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Annie. Look forward to your opening. Yes. All right. Next up, we've got a continued hearing. Thank you. For Gatsby's Chophouse, we're going to continue that to we have a choice of November 12 or November 19. So Bruce, do you just wanna confirm anybody online who might Anyone online?
Who might want to talk about Gatsby's? It's not a public hearing, so. No, it's just a hearing. I would suggest I want to keep the pressure on them. Let's continue it to the next meeting and, you know, we'll just keep continuing it until they don't have a license anymore because we don't renew it. Okay. So we'll continue to the ninth I'm sorry, the twelfth. Yep. On, so it's motion by Rich. Do I have a second? Second. We need a motion for that. No, we can just decide. Just continue. That's what I thought. I got halfway through. I thought, wait a minute, I don't need a motion.
All right. So we continued Gatsby's to the November 12. All right. Bowdoin Lane layout. I'll just briefly talk about circuit. Just to interrupt, I mean, are someone waiting for us in executive session? Yeah. No. I've been texting them. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we I was I was I gave my heads up Okay. A half hour ago letting them know that. Thank you, mister Erickson. I was I was It's Sarah Spadafore and, Chief Hicks. Okay. Yeah. And I assumed you were on top of it. Yeah. I did. I I have to say. I admit. Okay. Bowden Lane.
Thank you. So Bowden Lane, and you have have seen the plans. This is just a more of a housekeeping measure. We talked about this back in, I want to say August, early September, when you voted to sponsor, actually might have been early August, when you voted to sponsor a town meeting warrant article. In in brief, the Bowdoin Lane right of way, which dates back to town accepting it in the seventeen hundreds, the plans from that time are not necessarily the same standards we have now as required plans. So therefore what the board, reviewed and voted on is essentially an updated version of the right of way plans.
What's unique in this case is that we have we actually created those plans by looking at and I do see Bill McDowell online if you have any more specific questions, and I I'll make him co host real quick in case I misspeak. He can chime in and, and, and unmute himself and, and shoot me down if I, if I do something, if I speak out of turn. But essentially the plans were created by looking at all the abiding properties, because they have plans, some of them even registered plans that are in, from like a land, court perspective, that then built the right of way that we have today as Bowdoin Lane.
And it's really just for that stretch that's over the MBTA tracks. So what's, what's important for the board to do and what, you've largely done is just endorse those plans, because that will help us with the Bowdoin Lane Bridge Replacement project that MassDOT and MBTA are working on. They just need that to and to ensure that there is truly a set of plans that are the right of way plans. So And would those go to the, would those go to the registry of deeds? They will eventually, yes. That's why they're on Mylar. So if you can just do a confirmatory vote,
so to speak, to confirm the plans, which I believe you've already seen, just for the record, just say, Yep, we've endorsed these plans. Move to endorse the plan. Thank you. Second. I'll give it to Kristen. I can't let Linda have all the fun. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm so excited about plans for this bridge. Finally. It's a long time coming. Yeah. Just just for folks watching, the intent is just to sort of bring it back functionally the same as before. Yep. But it'll be updated with regards to modern standards.
So it'll have the widths for pedestrian and bike lanes and travel lanes and structural integrity. Twenty seven years ago I used to walk over that bridge to get to the train. Yes. All right. Let's move on. Reviewing Select Board policy, a town administrator oversight of Select Board appointments. I assume everybody's had a chance to review this. From my perspective, it looked fine. Just a lot of updates of nomenclature that were all all seemed to be true. I looked at the Queen copy and it looked fine to me, but others? Yes. I emailed Jamie about this yesterday about,
you know, is the position called veteran service officer or veterans? That's what you're, I missed the s. Sorry. Yes. We'll make it consistent with whatever the law. Yeah. I think the law has the s. Has the s, okay. Yeah. But they're inconsistent about the apostrophe. So sometimes they say s and sometimes they say s apostrophe. Which is probably why we get confused as well. Yeah, it should be without the apostrophe, I would think. Well, you know But there's also multiple veterans. It depends on how you, you know, whether or not veterans And and then the federal government service officer refers to that other service. Yeah.
Well, and then the federal government's trying to get rid of all apostrophes everywhere. Like, the Commonwealth had to get special permission to leave the apostrophe in Martha's Vineyard. So if it's okay, I'll I'll work with Angela. I I had an issue. Oh. The signatures on the clean copy haven't been updated. Yes. Correct. In my email, I noted that pending this, we're gonna put on the updated template and apply the updated signatures. Awesome. So I I just wanna make sure that you there were no bigger arching questions that you had and because that would have changed how it looked and and felt, but we're doing that with all of the policies at some point. So I just figured,
Donna has that template and we'll just with the updated wording, we can then copy and paste to the template with the proper signatures. Thank you. Alright. Move approval of with Scrivener's fixes. Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Alright. If If I can ask for just two quick things on that, not necessarily on the policy, but just for the board. It'll be at a future meeting. We'd like to, or I'd like to bring back a conversation to the board that started probably during the pandemic, but it was an open dialogue about a couple things more related to the police
department and the, and the police and fire chief hiring processes, but also the police department and, delegation of authority as well beyond just the chief. So a couple things on that front. One, when we're going through the process of hiring the new fire chief, there's a lot of doubt about, wow, this is, this process outlined in article 24 is quite, specific and sometimes restrictive depending on on what you have, for candidates for the process or what have you. It's almost mirrored for the police chief, and since we're gonna be coming to the point where in the next handful of
years we're gonna be needing to do some type of police chief process. The board at that time, back in 2020, 2021, said, Oh, we should look at this and see if we wanna make any changes. And there was a couple of reasons for that. One, succession planning. It's really challenging to train up someone if you have that process that isn't flexible enough to allow for somebody that might be in training to be able to get into the to a role. It did also come up during the town administrator process, but less so, just given how that process worked. So I wanted the board to start thinking about that a little bit, look at article 24.
It's at the end of the article. They're almost mirrors, but, you know, if you do want, you might as well do both at the same time, in my opinion. And just, that can be a future conversation. It's not on the agenda tonight, but I wanted to bring it up because it's about the process. And then delegation, which speaks to almost like a broader version of what this is, but specific to the police department. There was dialogue in the past about, everything from, you know, keeping as is, which it's the appointment authority is the select board, but that also means you're the promotion and disciplinary authority, which has its benefits,
but also has its drawbacks with regards to the ability to be flexible and quick with timing of things and, you know, being that way, but then everything all the way to, iterations of that all the way to potential strong chief like we have for the fire department, and everything in between. So I just wanna get the board thinking about that a little bit. If I may, I remember, we were having this very conversation with the CBRC, in the first year of, and we as a board went back and forth on whether we wanted to,
delegate that authority or keep it, and I think we've landed at the time on keeping it, but it's certainly something worth considering. And there could be a hybrid version that could be delegation of certain things under certain circumstances, which speaks to the policy, which is why I'm bringing it back to the agenda item. Yeah. It's maybe not an expansion of this particular policy, but it could be another policy that talks about delegation of responsibilities without having to change the bylaw. But I just want I wanted to remind the board that that we did start
this conversation with the CBRC and, as in, some of it's in the in the discussions of the charter that ended up going to the legislature. Is it back? It's not back yet, but I know it's been advanced through some process. At least I haven't seen it come back yet. Okay. So we should remember that and also probably look at the updated charter around that. Mhmm. Just to remind the board. So if it's okay with the board, I'd like to maybe work with Bruce to have maybe one of you assigned to just have that dialogue with us,
us meaning like me and the chief, just because it's it's helpful for the two of us to provide context, and then we can sort of map out a process moving forward. If we're talking about bylaw changes, I'd be happy to step up for that. So let me know. Thank you, Rich. I'm pretty familiar with You are. It could be bylaw a large policy. We'll have to see. Yeah. Any objection to me selecting Rich tonight? Or does anybody else How long do you think this will take? Both Rich is appointed? Just kidding. I don't know. Thanks, Jamie. Oh, harsh. I'm glad we have that relationship,
Rich. Honestly, it was a, it was on the agenda tonight. The chief and I talked about it briefly this afternoon. I think we can have a series of conversations just to see where we go from here. And then that can determine how long the next steps will take. Which is a short timer. So Fair. Fair. That's that was Yeah. I mean, I think the overall conversation honestly could take a couple months of the board talking through it, because I think there's like to your point, Rich, there's a lot to consider as part of it. But I think timeliness is important because we do have,
a chief and a deputy chief that are are aging out, and there's a lot of considerations that are part of that. Well and That need that the board needs to start having those conversations. If we're going to have bylaw changes, you know, getting them into the spring would be useful if possible. Yep. And some other dialogues that could be necessary for springtime meeting. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Next up is, closing of Rhode Island Avenue sale. Yep. So so this is, just a vote and then you have some forms to fill out. This is the final step, finally, of the Rhode Island Avenue sale.
This has been a long saga. A lot of the, a lot of what's been the cause for, it taking so long was less the town and more the buyer going through its due diligence process. Which we were happy to give them, and it was always a good relationship, but it just took this time. So a vote of the board to say, yep, final, execute the sale. And there's three documents, I believe three. Let me just go back into the agenda item. Because I do believe one of them also requires it authorized the town administrator to, to sign. So it sounds like two votes. One, to approve the sale and second,
to authorize town administrator. Yeah, there's a deed that the board will have to sign. They'll have to have wet signatures. There's, there's a utility easement, again, that the board will have to sign with what signatures because those both of those get filed the registry of deeds. And then an authorization of, I believe authorize the time administrator to sign the seller closing certificate. And the reason for that is I believe it's something that's still being there's some components that just need to be finalized. Or it's a it's a When do you need these by? My name is misspelled on them.
Oh, we can fix that, and get the signatures on that. Okay. I didn't And I don't know that it matters, but maybe it does. Yeah. Move to approve the sale? If you can at least approve them, then we can get signatures. Some other time. Okay. And that was on the, which document, which? Sale and signature of the quick lane deed and the easement? Mhmm. Yes. Okay. Oh, the easements part of that? There's two. There's two documents that need to be signed. Okay. But it's it's one motion. Okay. If that's okay? Yeah. That's fine. I just wanna make sure I'm trying to keep the Fair.
Fair. Yeah. Procedural stuff. Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Alright. Moving on to the consent Send vote authorized Move to authorize the time administrator to sign it out Yes. Thank you. Second. Give it a pass. I've given the question. You're a generous woman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Now we'll move on to the consent agenda. Okay. I didn't even look at the I didn't even look at the The consent agenda reads, approve meeting minutes for 10:15 twenty five. B, certifying NYDIC's FY25 green communities report.
And C appoint John P. Haswell as a special police officer. Does anyone want to pull anything from the consent agenda? Motion to approve items A through C on the consent agenda. Second. I got to get one in. Here you go. Kale. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Bruce usually be saying that. Right. You did a good job. The consent agenda is approved. Alright. Select board updates. Anyone have anything? Alright. It's okay. I have a couple updates just very briefly. Three things. One, you mentioned snap before.
I just want the board to be aware and anybody else watching. I see Billy on there. So, thanks, Billy. We are also working with the community services division, the school department, police and fire, and, and all of our other divisions to also monitor the situation with regards to the, the now actual impact of loss of, or the closing of the federal government. We don't know what the impact is gonna be yet, but we're monitoring it. And we know our partners are doing a great job on the nonprofit side, but we're also trying to follow it on the on the non non nonprofit side, the the public side.
I know our community senior center has already been working with their case managers internally to just figure out where we might have some some vulnerabilities or vulnerable populations. And the school department has also been doing that as well. So we're just gonna keep talking and figure out, okay, where do we need to put resources? And we've talked about a couple creative ways of trying to provide meals, for example, if need be, if this continues through different programs and, and, and the like. We also are contemplating, but I know the state's doing what they can, just reaching out to our delegation to see what's happening there as well.
Thank you. Two, the free cash number came through today. I believe you all received the email. So it was a very healthy number, almost 14,000,000. There's a lot of reasons for that. It's not, it's not gonna be a consistent number moving forward. We had at least about $6,000,000 of that was one time items, including the work with tax title, a very large building permit, or two, that came in that are not gonna be coming in in future years because there's just a sizable project. Our COVID funds finally came through from FEMA. No. About a million dollars. And we closed out about a million and a half dollars worth of capital projects,
and that falls to free cash, among other things. We also had, for example, higher than typical, turnbacks from departments because of the override dialogue. You know, we put a hiring freeze in place for a number of months, so we had openings that stayed open that led to turnbacks. So that's not likely to continue, but it does mean that we have some more thinking to do about how best to utilize this resource to sustain us through these next handful of months, years ahead. We heard a lot about the need for fields, we heard a lot about the needs for other capital demand,
so there might be we just have to think through that. We're not gonna have that for the board, like, next meeting, but we are thinking about how to do that heading into the budgeting process. Do the chair, may I ask one question? Is the is the first time that number, other than like right now, like a publishable document or something on the website, is that the first time that like the public will have access to that at the budgeting process? This number, this free cash number? It's pub- it's published today. It's public today. The free cash number is public today. It's, it's on the DLSS website. Yeah. Yeah. And they sent us an email. As soon as they send us an email, it's public. Which is why we followed up right away with an email from RE explaining So
I wanna make sure people understood the context of it. Right. Which is what I was thinking about. It's extremely important. And there's also, you know, the override got us so far, but it didn't fix our structural deficit. So we still have to plan on at least 3,500,000.0 of that every year going towards operations, if not, you know, more. Mister Erickson, may I suggest that you, prepare a memo to town meeting, about the reasons for this number? Because town meeting members are gonna be all over it. Yeah. I I'm not sure I'll be able to provide the memo though, so I will have the speaking points if it comes up.
Okay. I just know Jeff has typically said no. It's not something you can put at the table unless he approves it beforehand. Yeah. Well, I, you understand my point though. Yep. We've also dis like what you got also went to the fin comm chair also went to the school department also went to department heads. So we, we were trying trying to stay ahead of it and that's why I wanted to make sure that email and Aria wanted to make sure that email went out. Yeah. And that's fine. But, you know, there are gonna be people that are gonna see that number and say, why did we do an override? And, you know, but fortunately the three items on the agenda,
maybe they'll be ruled out of scope if they bring it up during those three items. Yeah. But to to Richard's So Maybe But yes. A little longer term, we we have something. Yeah, our intent is in November on the nineteenth, they're gonna have their tax rate setting hearing. We should have a we'll have a presentation prepared for that night that'll include free cash along with an updated forecast. And a couple other items. I'm just gonna still be brief, maybe six slides or so. Sure. But at least then you'll have that information. If we can do it on the twelfth, we will, but that might be a bit, for us to we're we're seeing which night we can do it.
So if if we can't get anything to town meeting, is there a way that we could, have something like, you know, Ari's email that went out that could be distributed through Facebook or other means? Because I I think that there's going to be discussion. I mean, I'd like to have something official from the town. Sure. We can maybe put together Let me talk to Ari tomorrow. Yep. And Jay, maybe we can do like a not necessarily a press release, but like a statement or something like that. Yeah. Something that can be public. But public can have a Yeah. They have all those reasons that are one time.
Yeah. I mean, I'll certainly have be prepared to speak to it at time. I just know given Right. And this isn't this topic, but when we brought stuff to Jeff the day of he's typically said, Nope, sorry. You know, forty hours in advance. We honestly didn't I mean, you got the email as soon as we did. So it was like, what, 02:00 this afternoon or 01:00 this afternoon. So only scan few hours ago. Right. The final thing is just, and we'll have more announcements on the next couple of agendas, but the announcement of the New York New Year's Eve event for the, the rail, the Cathedral Rail Trail,
just getting the word out. If people wanna have a, sponsor a fire pit, I know the the Friends of Native Trails are asking for sponsors and and seeking us to go to their website. I forget off the top of my head, but you can just Google search Native, Friends of Native Trails and you can find their website and they have a sign up form there. We'll have more information on the next meeting, but it's New Year's Eve. It's a fun event. It's modeled after the one actually from Holliston, where I live, which they've been doing for years, which is great. And I think it's exciting because it's it is a lot of fun. You just get to walk the trail Great. Night time, dark out, but you get these fire pits and it's really, really,
it's really fun. Hopefully the weather will stay dry and cool and crisp and maybe even a little bit of snow. I love snow. It's just me. Okay. Alright. That was it. Alright. Thank you. Alright. We are now going to close the regular scheduling of our program and go into executive session, but we're gonna take a five minute break before that. And Mr. Chair, may I suggest you read the reasons to get the vote and then do the five minute break? That is an excellent idea, mister. Okay. So executive session, Item A pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A,
Section 21A3, to discuss strategy with respect to litigation, if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares, and I do, DeClemente v. Natick et al, CA number 2481CV 02401 in Middlesex Superior. Move to open the Exec session. Second. Thank you. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. We're now in exec session. Just for the public's knowledge, you're intending to adjourn from executive session?
We will not be coming back. This is and That has to be announced. Thank you for the reminder. I thought I'd said that, but I guess I didn't. Okay. So yes, we're in executive session and we'll exit following that.