Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the July 23rd select Board meeting. This meeting is being recorded by Pegasus and streamed, so thank you very much, Pegasus. At this time, I'd like to ask anyone in the room to turn off your cell phones, and I call this session of the select Board meeting to order at 6:04 PM I mean, yeah, 6:04 PM I'd like to invite everyone to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance and observe a moment of silence, Speaker 2: Pledge allegiance. Allegiance to the flag in the United States of America, to the Republic which isand All Nation under God, indivisible, Liberty, and Justice for all.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: First, we will do announcements and I'll turn it over to Mr. Sidney. Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. I have two announcements. Spark Kindness is celebrating Disability Pride Month, which is the month of July. Disability Pride Month is an annual observance in July that celebrates the important contributions by people with disabilities, encourages acceptance and inclusion and brings awareness to the fast challenges people with disabilities continue to face. This month also marks the anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act. A landmark civil rights law signed on July 26th, 1990
that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life. And from the Natick Police Department, they're doing Natick Police National Night Night Out on Tuesday, August 6th, 2020 4, 25, I assume from four to eight in over at Memorial Field by the High School. National Night Out is an annual community building campaign that promotes police community partnerships and neighborhood comradery to make our neighborhoods safer, more caring places to live
National Night Out enhances the relationship between neighbors and law enforcement. While bringing back a true sense of community. National Night Out provides a great opportunity to bring police and neighbors together. In 1994, the National Association of Town Watch introduced the National Night Out campaign. Community partners are invited to get together for a night of fun education demonstrations, and the opportunity to engage with our officers. They'll be showcasing various emergency response vehicles, a flyover of Massachusetts State police, air wing, motorcycle, and canine demonstrations, and their gonna be free food.
And so if I hope everybody shows up, it's a fun event. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Sidney. This time we will move to public speak. Any individual may raise an issue that is not included on tonight's agenda, and it will be taken under advisement by the board. There will be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law, this section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to address the board under public speak? Speak. Seeing none, we'll move
to Zoom. Speaker 4: You ask. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Nevermind. Speaker 1: Is there anyone on Zoom? Just you could raise your hand and we will unmute. Unmute you. Seeing none. Next item on the agenda is proclamations. Sean Ke Eagle Scout Proclamation. Madam Clerk? Speaker 5: Yes. This is a proclamation in honor of Sean Ketty and it reads, whereas Sean Ketty, a dedicated member of Troop seven in Natick, Massachusetts, began his scouting journey as a Cub Scout in first grade and earned the rank of Eagle Scout on April 24th, 2025
before the Mayflower Council Board of Review. And whereas Sean has demonstrated excellence in scouting, academics, athletics, and service earning 26 merit badges, and the 50 Miller, the 50 Miler award, standup paddle boarding award and election to the order of the arrow and participated in two high adventure trips. And whereas Sean served as assistant senior patrol leader and instructor providing guidance and mentorship to younger scouts while balancing his rigorous academic schedule, AP courses and commitment to football and wrestling.
And whereas Sean's Eagle Project supported a place to turn a local food pantry by designing and installing collection bins in grocery stores and coordinating ongoing donations, ensuring continued service through younger scouts. And whereas Sean graduated from Natick High School as a member of the National Honor Society and received the College Board National African American Recognition Award and the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship for Academic Excellence. Now, therefore, the Natick Select Board honors Sean Kedi
for his exceptional achievement, leadership, and dedication to his community and wishes him continued service as he begins his studies in engineering at the Worr Polytechnic Polytechnic Institute presented this day. Well, it is gonna be presented on the 27th day of July, 2025. Congratulations, Sean. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Speaker 4: So moved, Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney to accept the proclamation seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 5 0 0. Next item on the agenda is appointments.
Committee appointments. We are looking for two three year to appoint two people to three year terms expiring on June 30th, 2028 for the Natick net zero committee. At this time, I'll take the interviews in order. Is Ms Mora here or online? Okay, we'll come back to her. Priyanka, SIA, did I say that right? Roger Jarrett here. Could you come to the podium, introduce yourself, and we have your packet, but if you could just say a few words about why you wanna serve on the Natick net net zero committee and how you, how you
would add to the committee. Speaker 6: Certainly. Thank you for taking the time. My name is Roger Jarrett. I've been a Natick resident since 1990. I professionally, I'm a a principal software engineer at MathWorks, and what I bring is a first aid passion for an environment at my own house. I have solar panels, I have heat pumps, I drive an electric car, I have a house battery as well. And I've been very passionate demonstrating my passion about making a difference in the environment. What I bring to the committee is the ability to look at
and solve problems and to get a group of people together to look at what the problems are and sort of the, think of it as a pro. I've had, you know, 40 years experience as a project leader getting things done. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions for members of the board? Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Can you tell, oh, I'm sorry. Go Speaker 5: Ahead. I was gonna ask, thank you so much, Roger, for being here with us and being willing to serve on this committee. I wanted to know if you were familiar with the Net Zeros action plan at all? Yes.
Speaker 6: Okay. I, I've read through. I think that, I think it's a very good plan. I've seen it in action already. I think there's a couple of places, you know, that due to technology improvements, there are places that there could be just small tweaks to improve it. One example is bigger emphasis on the use of in, of, of batteries. House, house size. Batteries were larger for reducing the reducing load or it's actually called load shifting. Speaker 5: Thank you. Any other questions? No. Speaker 1: How comfortable are you leading efforts such as public outreach, outside meetings? Yeah,
Speaker 6: Very comfortable with it. I have 15 years experience at the AMSA board of trustees leading, helping to lead the school. Speaker 1: We, the net zero committee has five subject areas that it specializes in. Which one would you be able to contribute to most? Speaker 6: I think either the house focused on the residential aspect or the commercial aspect. Speaker 1: Okay. Are there any other questions for members of the public? Thank you so much. Thank Speaker 6: You.
Speaker 1: And John Ebel. Speaker 7: My name is John Ebel. I moved into Natick in 1988. I'm a professor of geophysics at Boston College where I have been my entire professional career. I am now getting ready to retire. I'll be retiring at the end of this coming academic year. And so I thought that this would be an opportunity for me to give some of my experience and expertise and some time to the native community where I've lived for a long time. I, my specialty is earthquake seismology,
and you may have seen me on television for that. I have taught many courses in environmental science and geophysics at Boston College, including a course that I taught for five years with a history professor called Powering America, where we looked at the history and the science of energy systems in the United States from 1790 to the present. I have broad expertise, especially in the geosciences, but my under degree is in physics, so I also understand the, the physical aspect of many of the environmental problems that are being faced. Speaker 1: Questions for members of the board.
Speaker 5: I'll keep with my same question. John, nice to meet you and great to have you here. Thank you for being willing to serve. My question is the same as I asked Roger, have you had an opportunity to look over the net zero action plan? Speaker 7: I haven't read it in detail. No. I did scan it very briefly. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 1: And the same question as I directed the previous candidate. How comfortable are you leading outreach efforts in outside of meetings, public outreach? Speaker 7: Extremely. I I'm extremely comfortable with that. I've been the chair of a music school, chair of the board
of a music school over in Framingham, the performing arts center of Metro West. I have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of television interviews, radio interviews, newspaper interviews, you name it, local, regional, national, international. I've done public speaking, local, regional, national and international groups, leading organizations, leading public relations outfit, public relations efforts and, and just promoting to the public what we need to do
for sustainability is something I'm very comfortable with. Speaker 1: Okay. What I'd like to do right now is just take a five minute break and reach out to the two candidate, the other two candidates to see if they're just running late. Thank you. And we'll come back in about five minutes. Thank you. So, and congratulations on your impending retirement. Oh, thank you. We're back. Ms. Mora is here on line. Ms. Mora, could you unmute yourself and we'll let you into the meeting? Speaker 8: Hello, I'm here. Hi Speaker 1: Kate. Ms. Mora, could you tell us a few just your, what your interest is with the Net zero committee?
Speaker 8: Sure, I'd be happy to, and I apologize I had the wrong time, so I apologize if I'm joining the conversation late. But my interest in joining the, the Net zero committee stems mostly from my interest in giving back to my community. I recently have had an opportunity to stay home with my kids and take care of my husband when he was having some serious medical conditions. And now I have the, the space and the time and I'd love to give back to the community that supported us through so much. And the Net zero committee specifically interests me
because my previous life was as a architect who designed net zero buildings mostly for educational clients, but lots of different types. And as a homeowner, I have done a lot at our home to get our home ready for net zero. We're almost there. We have heat pumps and solar panels and I have some personal experiences now that I'd like to, you know, be able to share and help the the town meet its net zero goals through both my personal experiences in my professional expertise that I bring to the table.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Ms. Mora questions or comments from members of the board? Speaker 5: Yes, hi Ms. Mora, thank you for your willingness to serve on the Net Zero committee. I'll ask you the question that I've asked the other candidates and that is, have you had an opportunity to read or take a look at the net zero action plan? Speaker 8: Yes, I have. In fact, I've been attending the net zero committee meetings for a few months now. I think I started in January or February. And I think their, their goals on the residential side of things and the commercial side of things
for the buildings in town are areas that I'm, I'm particularly interested in helping with. And I think I just generally am committed to the, the goals that they have laid out in their plan and would be happy to help with anything that they need. Speaker 1: Thank you. Other members, Mr. Evans? Speaker 9: Yeah, just a question. One of the things I read about in your bio or or application was an example collaboration with Natick public schools to reduce energy use and, and waste.
Can you give me an example of the conversation or what the con those conversations were? Speaker 8: Oh, sure. I was referencing the, the conversations I've had with the sustainability director and other members on the, on the school building committee in their efforts to launch the new Memorial school project, talk to a couple of them about some of the things that they're starting to look into there. And then I was hoping that there was a kind of an extension of that conversation that could happen in the future in terms of the existing school buildings
and the, the goals that they have for their schools and how they could lean into some of the net zero targets that the town has. Speaker 9: Good. Great. Thank you. Speaker 8: You're welcome. Speaker 1: Other members of the board, Ms. Mora, I just have one question. The net zero committee has five work streams. Which one do you think you, you would be able to contribute to most? Speaker 8: I think I would contribute most to the residential heat pump, or sorry, the residential energy goals and is focusing a little bit more on the, the heat pump coaching side of things.
I've started to do that training as well and have been working with Mark Ralston to get certified to help more formally on that front. You know, going beyond just my personal experience at my home, but to be able to lean into that one. So that's where I'm have the, the most experience. But I think both the commercial buildings as they kind of get into the more of the multifamily buildings that are kind of that in between zone between residential and commercial, that's something I'm interested in personally.
The transportation side of things or the waste reduction things, those are things I'm interested in. I'm certainly an advocate of, of use of bikes and pedestrian friendly streets and I do compost it myself at home and I would, you know, be happy to help on those, but they're not as necessarily the primary places I could think I could give most of my expertise to. Speaker 1: Thank you. Ms. Moore, are there any other questions for members of the board or members of the public? Mr. Scott? Speaker 10: Roger Scott 40 Water Street. A A question may be Ms. Morrow could answer with
this heat pump being in the hot in the Northeast and we experience cold weather. Is it more affordable for the the town to go with gas versus having u using heat pumps because they run up your electric bill and other times and is, isn't that what be the more affordable situation for the residents in their homes and in the town itself? Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Scott. Ms. Mora, it is outside of scope but because one of the questions that we're, we want to look
for is whether these candidates can be advocates. Speaker 8: I'm going a question. Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to answer it. I think in terms of the energy costs of, of gas versus the energy cost of electricity, there are some moving targets right now in terms of the energy rates. I've seen some proposals out there for energy companies to actually offer lower rates to homeowners that are using electricity to heat their whole home. So people who are using heat pumps to use the whole home. So that could level the playing field between gas
and electric in the very near future. But every home is unique and I think the work that I've done with the coaches right now has really helped me understand the kind of case by case situation and being able to look at each individual home and say whether or not it makes sense for that home to have a gas system or, or an electric heat source. So I would say that In the long term, I think long term I think things are gonna keep evolving.
Right now there definitely will be cases where it's more affordable from the dollar standpoint to, to go with gas in a, in a particular home, but there's also the long term impacts of the emissions that that, that is gonna bring on for, for the climate change and for the town in general to keep burning so much fossil fuel. So it's, it's a, it's a complex situation and I think with all the expertise around going to electric homes, I think it's something that we can, can really work through as a community
and get our emissions down in the, to meet our targets. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Mora. I'm just gonna allow the one question, Mr. Speaker 10: One more question. No, Speaker 1: I, I'm just allowing the one question because we're gonna go ahead and vote, but thank you so much Ms. Vickers. Speaker 11: Thank you very much. B Brinley Vickers. I don't actually have a question on this. More of a comment of someone who pays very close attention to schools and the school committee and the process with schools having anyone and the net zero committee express such an interest in terms
of collaboration with schools, I think is a real bonus and a real plus. They can definitely use that input and stuff and so I just thought I'd express that. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Members, each of you should have a ballot. If you could fill out your ballot, pass it over to Mr. Erickson and then after we vote, we will announce who we voted for so that it's in compliance with open meeting law. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you Speaker 12: Madam Chair. The results are, I'll just go and order Kate Mora with five votes,
Priyanka with zero votes. Roger Jarrett with four votes and John with one vote. Speaker 1: So the two first we'll say how we voted. Mr. Mr. Evans, Speaker 9: I voted for Ms. Mora and Mr. Jarret, Speaker 1: Mr. Sidney, Speaker 12: Ms. Mora and Mr. Jarret, Speaker 1: Ms. Salva, Ms. Speaker 3: Mora and Mr. Jarret. Speaker 1: I voted for Ms. Mora and Mr. Jarret. I voted for Ms. Moore and Mr. Ebel. Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for your energy and your excitement about energy matters and putting yourself forward for public service.
The town administrator's office will be in touch with you about next steps and getting signed in and what you need to do. And Mr. Evil, I would not discourage you from other activities and other boards that you might be interested in. Thank you so much for coming out. I appreciate it. It Speaker 4: And I'm sure the net zero committee could actually use your help anyway Speaker 13: And it was a really tough Speaker 1: Vote. Speaker 4: It was, it was. It was a very tough vote. Speaker 1: They're rarely easy. We Speaker 12: Moving just for a confirmation for everybody watching that, there's two seats. So the top two vote getters are the ones that will receive a letter regarding the next steps.
Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Next item on the agenda is discussion and decision monthly Johnson speak. For this item on the agenda, we will allow 20 minutes. Each person has two minutes to share their thoughts or ask questions of the board about process or whatever questions you have. Some of them might be answered in the quarterly update, which will be, which will follow. But for now I'd like to see if there are anyone in the room who would like to address the board regarding Johnson School. Yes ma'am. Please come to the podium and tell us your name and whether you're a Natick resident or business owner. Speaker 13: Hi, Jamie Bason,
Natick Resident Precinct eight town meeting member. I saw the report that the town sent out and I didn't really understand it because it's talking about selling the property, which if you look at the use, the preferred use case on page two of one of the reports they sent out, which refers to the flash vote results, the sale for development was only 10%. The open space ball fields parks, 73%
of people community recreation building, 69% of people town building, 37% people land lease, 14% nonprofit use 30%. So Ms. Speaker 1: Sen, could I just interrupt you for a minute, can you tell me where you're looking? Where it says that the town is interested in selling the property? Speaker 13: So in the recommendation part it gave three options of what they wanna focus on, which was selling the like one part the building, selling the playground, and then not,
and then you looking at it as a community. Speaker 1: One moment, Mr. Sydney. What? To answer that question. Why don't we wait till we get to, we're gonna have a presentation on this and that might be more clear. Speaker 13: Yeah, that Okay. So do you want me to wait till after? Yeah. Okay. If that's Speaker 4: Okay. And there are actually six options there in two columns. Speaker 13: I'm sorry, what? There's Speaker 1: Six options. There's six options in two columns. Yeah, it's not just those first three. Right next to them is open space and trails, field rehab and playground and then new scenarios via workshops. Speaker 13: Oh, so maybe my phone wasn't pulling it up so I'll wait till after. Okay, Speaker 1: Thank you. Is there anybody online who wishes to address the board
regarding Johnson School? Please raise your hand. Ms. Slager. Speaker 14: I think maybe we'll wait for the presentation. We've had an email with some questions, but I think we can wait till after the presentation for that. Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea. Thank you. Let me have one hand mine. Ms. Lather. Ms. Flas, could you unmute yourself? Speaker 15: Hi, I just wanna confirm so there will be time for questions and comments in the next agenda item? Yes. For public comments. Perfect. Then I'll just hold and wait to see what was presented. Thank Speaker 1: You. Thank you. Is there someone in the room who wishes to address the board regarding Johnson School? Okay, so we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is the Johnson quarterly update number one.
And I would invite, I would invite Mr. Po Pavich to come up to the podium. And Speaker 16: Jen, can you? Yep, I can bring it up. These are printouts if anyone needs print as well. Thank you. Speaker 17: While the presentation comes up, Jay Port Paddock Town Communications director, I am gonna walk through, I'm gonna grab a printout just in case. Speaker 3: Good plan. Speaker 17: So the topic is a quarterly update just to give a little bit of context as we get the presentation up. It's just a really simple one page summary of this project date.
We kicked it off in April and we committed to coming back every three months and giving an update. I'll probably speak less than five minutes and I'd also sent the board an email basically suggesting that I think this kicks off a conversation. The work to date has been a lot of town staff sharing information. I think there's a great opportunity for the board to kinda engage amongst themselves as well as the public to ask any clarifying questions. So just some context as I walk through. So first slide, there's three items in the body of the slide. Number one is just kinda looking back the previous 90 days as well as number two.
Looking forward or looking ahead, looking back there were five primary meetings and or reports that were delivered. If you've got a printout that's black and white, trust me, all the checks are actually green. If you look at the key, I would say they're all complete. We committed to doing a certain number of meetings and reports and all five of those items, I'm not gonna read through 'em line items, we would rank them as complete. Looking ahead, I think there's a couple different opportunities for those while I'm talking that wanna potentially look at slide four.
It kind of lays out a six month summary of meetings that we committed to. So this looking ahead scenario, there's the potential for us to think about workshops. The second item around Johnson office hours, I did just confirm that, that with the select board chair earlier today, we'll formally announce that. But off the top of my head, August 14th and October 11th, which is a Saturday and Thursday respectively. So we'll provide that to the public that's meant to be onsite at Johnson office hours where a given select board member, a single likely would show up in the,
and the community can show up as they see fit to ask any questions in a one-on-one or one to many. Setting the next two items, the workshop and public forum, I've gotta discuss against those. 'cause I think the potential for a workshop could, from a sequential standpoint prove to be beneficial. And I'll kind of walk through an appendix slide. So those are the four looking ahead items, which I would encourage the board asks myself any questions or the town administrator as well as the general public. A couple open items that we just wanted to make note of. So everyone's aware that they have not been dropped during the walking meeting that we held on June 25th.
There were a couple, well there were 25 questions that the AI engine was able to discern. I'd say about 15 of them are unique a lot. There's a little bit duplicity, but we town staff and the town administrator himself is preparing those responses. So I'd say in the coming weeks we'll publish those and reach out to all the registered attendees or anyone who subscribes to alerts for Johnson Flash vote as a whole. There's been a lot of, I mentioned this in a previous select board meeting, I think there's been a lot of discussion and potential confusion around what Flash vote is and is not. So I've committed myself to come back
and just do a broad educational session. It's not unique to Johnson, but it will certainly help the Johnson project. Lastly, there's been some interest from the general public around a building tour. What we are gonna commit to at this point is to make sure that the five select board members have a tour themselves, wanna make sure that everyone's got a good sense of what the current building is, TBD, whether or not the building is part of the future use. That's for the board to ultimately decide. But we did sense an opportunity just to make sure that everyone's familiar with the building of what it is and what it isn't. There's some additional resources that are all linked.
Those are very prominent on the webpage. So it's just kind of putting those in there on the bottom right of slide one. Then if you flip over to slide three, I'll just briefly talk to talk to what is labeled as town staff recommendations. So as we've done the two flash vote surveys, use cases and decision criteria, as well as just hearing the general public talk about an interest in financials, there's been a strong alignment across all the surveys work we've done and even the summary of the walking meeting.
So I think that allows the board as well as the public to comment to choose whether or not it's an advisory committee or potential potentially the item number one that the town staff is recommending. And this would be the idea opportunity for a workshop. So it's a little more interactive in like a public form or other meeting styles, but have it select board led and allow the select board to really think about potential scenarios that could be, have a financial assessment against it. A lot of the dialogue we've heard to date is, well it's hard to compare use case one verse two,
verse three without knowing how much they each cost. So the idea would be kind of like a modular line item cost assessment that would be done either by a consultant or town staff. But in order for us to clarify this scope, these are potential scenarios. We're not committing to doing anything. So there are five items listed here. The sixth one is a very, it's bolded and it's basically any new scenario we discover during that workshop. So we can have six, 10, ideally not 20 potential scenarios that we have line item costs. You can mix and match and figure out this,
but I think that would allow a little bit of teeth to all these potential use cases that we're having dialogue. So that workshop would ultimately be to hone the scope that would be handed to another consultant or staff to do the financial assessments against those. The advisory committee is certainly still an option if that's preferred. And that could be a combination of however the boards saw fit. We just to kind of refresh everyone's memory, we talked about a fork in the road early 2026, which is when we would decide advisor committee yes or no. So the opportunity here is we could do this work now
without an advisory committee still leaving the opportunity for the board to choose to issue a charge in composition for an advisory committee. But at this point I think there's, there's been some degree of we need an advisory committee. When we ask why and what that advisory committee would do, I think that's where the conversation is not as clear. So that's for the board to ultimately decide. But we think that this could be kind of a collaborative session. The last item on the public forums would basically just be to hold off on any public forms and then ultimately figure out if we're aligned on the workshop and advisory committee,
whether or not they play a role. And those public forms would be to imagine if those were to actually report out those financial assessment scenarios and then the public can be engaged in that kind of final outcome. So again, just going back to slide one, we've got, you know, looking back, looking ahead a couple open items, but I leave it to the board any questions and we can let the public Speaker 1: Thank you so much. At this time, I'd like to, since the board has not discussed use cases or really any of the materials that have been presented to us or the results of the walking tours, I'd like to open up discussion to the board about
what they see as obvious next steps or Mr. Evans. Speaker 9: Yeah, I've just had a clarifying question, which is one of the things that, that I heard loud and clear I wa was with Jay. So I, we heard the same thing, which is give us the cost of the various different options and we can't, because we can't make an an informed, we being the public can't make an informed decision about what can be done until we know the, the,
at least the ballpark financial piece of that. But my question is for Jay is you mentioned that we could do the financial sort of high level view and then decide to do a, an advisory committee that that drills down further. Did I hear that correctly? Speaker 17: Everything except the very last part. So yes, we could do the financial assessments of all the scenarios we could choose to do a advisory committee. That charge of the advisory committee, I'm not suggesting is limited to these financial scenarios or otherwise I would leave that to the board.
But I'm just simply suggesting that doing these financial assessment scenarios doesn't commit us yes or no to an advisory committee as to what that charge is. I don't really have a point of view. Thank Speaker 9: You. That was helpful Speaker 1: Mr. Sydney. Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. As I've been reading some of the emails that have been coming in and listening to some of the conversations around the community, what I've come to realize is that people are not, don't seem to be clear to me. And, and this could just be my perception, but people don't seem to be clear when we're talking about this project.
We haven't made any decisions regarding, you know, how we might, depending on what the uses are, we could consider What I see, you know, in my experience with the property is sort of three different sub parcels, which are the play areas, the building itself, and then the forested areas. And I think that when we start to break breakdown what we want to think about in terms of what this looks like, we want to keep in mind
that a lot of the conversations have been around the play areas. Not a lot of conversation around the wooded areas, although I think they're, I personally think they're important and, and confusion about what we would do with the building. So somehow I think we need to clarify our thinking around that and get more clear with the public about what we're thinking about relative to those things. And I think that's gonna take time. Speaker 1: Right. We've had no discussion. The, the board hasn't had any discussion, so it's almost impossible right now to be clear about what our thoughts are. Right. Ms. Wego, Speaker 14: I totally agree with Mr.
Sidney. I have no idea what to think about this property and what to do with it in terms of what the alternatives might be. And I mentioned this I think at, at a previous meeting I was very surprised not having toured the property before to see the topography and how different it was. And so to me that is a really, that might be a limiting factor in terms of what could be potentially done with it ledge Speaker 9: Geology. Speaker 14: So take a Speaker 1: Moment for a second. Just got a report that they can't hear the board on Zoom.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I'm not sure. I just saw that too. Speaker 14: I have my mic on Speaker 18: On Owen just went out. I dunno what Speaker 1: Happened. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Speaker 14: So should we wait for take Speaker 1: A Speaker 14: Break? Yeah, Speaker 9: Do a recess. Speaker 14: Recess till Matt says it comes back up. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 12: Back up. Speaker 1: Alright, Speaker 9: We Speaker 1: Just, so we're back in session recess. No time to go to the girls' room. Wow. Speaker 12: I think Pegasus has gotta get back on the zoom call. Yeah, I don't see Pegasus on here yet. Yeah, Speaker 1: For those of you watching via Zoom, the internet went out shortly so it's back up
and we are, they, Speaker 14: They can hear, I don't think Speaker 12: They can hear us. I thought the internet Speaker 1: Was up. Speaker 14: Yeah, they can't hear until Pega lot Speaker 9: Back in, gets logged back in Speaker 12: The sound. Speaker 1: But there are people watching it on Zoom. Right. And they can, Speaker 14: They Speaker 12: Won't, they're seeing the same thing we're seeing than they Speaker 9: Can hear they can air. Speaker 12: Okay. All, all they're seeing Is this Speaker 1: Okay? Yeah, that we wait until we get the all clear. Speaker 12: Pegasus is back on, but I need to make them co-host so they then can control the sound. Speaker 9: I think it said we should be good. Yes, Speaker 14: It says na sb up there. All right, I heard that from the, can everyone hear now? We had a temporary inner interruption to our internet thumbs.
Okay, great. There we go. Thank you. Speaker 9: Yeah, technology, it's great and it works. Speaker 14: Okay. Speaker 1: Go ahead Ms. Speaker 14: So I don't know where I cut off here, but I will just say that I think that there's, I would get a lot of clarity by workshopping some of these potential scenarios and, and I really have no idea what the best use of this property is at, at the moment. So I think attaching dollars, one of the things that we did here as a result of the survey is that we don't want the town to spend a lot of money on this.
So, you know, we'll have to decide if there, if one of these scenarios does come to be fairly expensive, what what we would do about that. So there's a lot of opportunity here and I hope that everyone will come with their ideas for what they would like their vision of this property if, if we do do the workshop, which I think is a great idea. So yeah, please be creative. You know, we're, we're five people here, we're, you know, we may vary in terms of the levels of our creativity, but would love to hear some ideas from everyone else.
Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Speaker 9: Thank you. I agree with my two colleagues. The other piece, which Rich just did as a a a side addition is geology. He talked about the ledge. We, we don't know how much, how many degrees of freedom I'll call them we have with that site. So, you know, is is it that it is interrelated? I think with the, the, the cost of this, the other piece that I'm really encouraged to see is the select board walkthrough, because some of you have been through that school.
I have not ever been inside that school. I've been around at all the time, but I've never been inside it that I know of. So I I I'm looking forward to, to seeing that because it's one thing to hear about it and to talk about it with others, but there's nothing like your own eyeballs to see either what, what it, what its issues might be, what it could be used for. I view my chance of going in that is like going into a house that you, that you know, needs work, but does it have good bones?
Is could it be used for something that, that might be appropriate. And just a comment, and this is my personal opinion, I don't see this as a single use property. You know, I see multiple uses on this property and I think as my colleague Linda has mentioned, come with your ideas, we don't have all the answers. We don't pretend to. So get creative. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Evans. Speaker 5: I really appreciate what my colleagues have said and, and, and I agree about the workshopping. I think I, I got really excited when I saw that on the, the,
the looking ahead, the workshopping and the fact that the public is gonna be involved in that. I think that really speaks to the level of engagement that this particular board wants to have with the community about what it, the Johnson property, how it should be best used. I also think about, you know, two of the top things that I think about are what the town needs, the specific needs of the town and then the character of the neighborhood. I think about the character of the neighborhood that's come up a lot. And I can imagine that considering this, the sentimental value that this building has,
that the school has, that the community has with it. I think thinking through, I think a lot of what you said Mr. Evans around, does this property have, you know, good bones like it re-imagining this, this property, but doing it in a way that speaks to the, the character of the community. I'd really love to see that. So I'll end there. Speaker 1: One, one of the things that a resident proposed was to ensure open space under chapter 97, which is the, the Public Lands Preservation Act
and the possibility of exchanging land that's elsewhere located, that's chapter 97 in town, to free that up for affordable housing rather than putting housing downtown. So that's an interesting idea. It's creative and it's something that I'd be interested in, in exploring and getting town council to talk about what that would look like. Speaker 12: A couple things, not, not to, I'm getting technical Article 97 is what you're referring to regarding the space. Oh, not Speaker 1: Chapter article 97. Yes.
Speaker 12: Just for anybody who might be watching from home and getting just any but a workshop. I think an opportunity for the board to really talk through things. 'cause similar to what has happened in the past when you've sought a lot of input and you haven't had opportunity for yourselves to talk through, there's already been a lot of feedback that you've received. And having regular times on the board can then talk through and digest what you've received is really what, when Jay and I were talking about this workshop is an opportunity, yes, public input as well during the same workshop, but it's different than like a more public facing workshop per se, or a public forum.
This is a little bit more of an opportunity for the board to also hash through some ideas while also still having public dialogue because I don't think the board takes that in some instances hasn't needs time to do that as well. So, Speaker 1: And one other thing when we were Speaker 12: Talking about that, Speaker 1: Sorry, one other thing I wanted to say was that there's a strong desire that the town not spend a lot of money on development. If that's the case, then what I would suggest is whatever we come up with, what I would like is for us to ensure that
we don't develop the property such that it precludes future uses when we do have money, if that makes any sense. Or we can raise money through grants or whatever. So as assuring that whatever we settle on two years down the road, if it is going to be driven by financial considerations in large part, then I wanna ensure that that doesn't preclude us from actually doing other things with the property in the future. Are there any other comments from members of the board or ideas about the process? Ms. Wilger, a question was posed from somebody who couldn't be here tonight. So I'm gonna ask you to, we
Speaker 14: Actually have two, I meant two questions. Yes. Two questions. The first one, and this was an email to the select board, is what do you as a select board, envision as the role and value of an advisory committee? What do you hope to gain from one? And I'll start off with that. I mean, we did touch on that. I think it's really premature to talk about that. I like the idea of, of waiting until after we've had our forums, after we've potentially had our workshop. I don't think we know what the role is at this point. I mean, the value I think is pretty clear. It would be to help the select board make a decision,
but the, I'm not sure, and I think it highly depends on what the outcome is of the things that we're gonna be having over the next few months. So that's my opinion on that Speaker 4: Chair. Yes. So I think there are two possible rules for an advisory committee, depending on where they slot, where the advisory committee slots in. If the, if if we use an advisory committee early, then it would be, you know, it's kind of amorphous at this point. We don't know because we don't know how we would charge them. But if we make a decision
and that decision is, for example, to dispose of the property in some way, then we could put an advisory committee to help us put an RFP together. And that would be significantly later in the process. So depends on, you know, what we, when we decide what we decide, how we decide. And part of it is, you know, is there, is there a committee we'd want to have to help us decide and then, you know, later we might need some help for other reasons. Speaker 14: Mr. Evans? Speaker 9: Yeah, I, I tend to agree with what Ms.
Weer pointed out is I want to see, we, we have said all along that we want a deliberative process that involves the community to each step of the way. I like the idea of the select board workshop that has a lot of involvement in sitting down and just brainstorm ideas, right then e everything's on the table. You know, we, we haven't ruled out anything. I think we've heard a strong opinion about open space,
but apart from that, I, I have heard numerous different opinions about what we should do with this. I think we should just continue down this process road getting check checkpoints with the residents of the town and figuring out, well, what's gonna work, what's gonna work financially, what's gonna work from a fit with the neighborhood? What, what, what are the possibilities and can we rank them at some point in the future, then we in the future should we decide? No, you know, great ideas, we've had some great brainstorming, let's form a committee
and, and, and figure out what the charter of that committee is to, to get us closer to that final decision. I don't know the answer yet. I I have to say, when I, when we first discussed this, I was diehard for a committee up front, but I've now come to the realization that that was, I, I'll leave out the first adjective that it was backwards. So I I I think if we go along this path, I think it's the right, right path to go and it'll, I think we'll yield a lot, a lot more productive answer. Speaker 1: Thank you for your thoughts Mr. Evans.
Are there any other comments from the public, I mean from the board? Speaker 4: Well, if I may, I just want to clarify that I don't know that I, I didn't want to imply, and I realize I might have, that I've made up my mind about disposal of the property. I was just using that as an example of why we might need an advisory committee later on. I have no idea what we're gonna do with this property at this point. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Sidney. Ms. Swogger, you have another question? Speaker 14: Yes. Second question is, could you please consider defining on the record and publicly the term mixed use? What does that mean? That was used in one
of our flashlight surveys and I think that led to a little bit of confusion about what that meant. And so specifically, does it refer to mixed land use, meaning cell part of the land and keep the rest? Or does it refer to building use, like they've said, apartments at the top, offices at the bottom? So that is the question, and, and again, I'll, I'll, I'll start on that and how I answered it. I think it's, we have a, a term for mixed use that applies to zoning, but I don't think that that was
what was meant in, in this example. We more meant, you know, having different uses on that property and not what we would from a planning definition defined as mixed use. So that, that's my take on it. And other people can weigh in. Speaker 1: Mr. Evans. Hello. Speaker 9: Thank you Madam Chair. That that was the reading that I had. Also mixed use developments are, are more on, on a retail corridor type situation. Usually within walking distance of public transportation. This, this is sort of on the outskirts of
that type of usage. Again, nothing's ruled out, but in my opinion, I agree with Ms. Slager, it, it's talking about multiple uses of the property, not necessarily in one, I'll call it structure. You're gonna have mixed uses retail on the ground floor and apartments above Speaker 1: Mr. Sydney. Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with both my colleagues and I, I just want to add that I think we should avoid that term in future surveys. Find another way to say what we mean, which is multi-use,
multiple, multiple uses on the property as opposed to mixed use is well known to be Yeah. You know, commercial, residential, yeah, Speaker 9: That's good. Speaker 1: Good. Mr. Erickson? Speaker 12: Well, I actually respectfully disagree. I would consider a yes and a yes to both those 'cause a mixed use, yes, in the traditional sense that you see in like a Natick center might be residential or commercial up top and ground floor retail. But on a non main street like that it could be residential with services in the building. It could be a nonprofit and a, and a town office in the same building.
It could be offices for a town and a nonprofit running a daycare facility. It could be a mix of uses. So I, if, if the board wants to narrowly define it, that's one thing. Zoning actually is not as narrowly defined as people may be think it is, but I would argue it's the broader definition, which is a mix of uses and mix use all in one. Speaker 1: I don't wanna preclude a use for the property. So I tend to agree with Mr. Erickson. If there's a groundswell of public opinion that says we wanna have on part of this property, the first floor to be retail, grocery store, you know,
pharmacy, whatever, and then, you know, housing condo or apartments above, then that's something I think we should consider. Speaker 12: But it could also be, I don't mean to interrupt, but it could also be an after school program run by a nonprofit and town offices or some other use that's, that is a mix of use in a building. It's a mixed use building. Yeah. Speaker 1: So let's use, Speaker 14: If I can just clarify, I don't think the mixed use applied to the building. I think in the survey it was about the site. So I think that's where the confusion comes in is it's, is
what is a mixed use on the Johnson property. Which Speaker 12: Could be, Speaker 14: It could be a building the above, but it could, but it could also be there's no building, you know, let's say we, right. Speaker 12: And it could be a mix of uses on the building, Speaker 14: Right? A mix of uses but not applying to a building. Speaker 1: So going forward in terms of terminology, why don't we say a mix of uses on the property when we're referring to multiple uses on the property. And if we're referring to mixed use development, we'll talk about mixed hyphen use development. Yep. Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that, Speaker 5: And can you clarify that that works Mr. Porter pad, can you clarify how was mixed use used in the survey?
Speaker 17: I mean everyone can see the verbatim, it was, the language was mixed use. But I think the context is important. We're all talking about it as we're defining a term. Well in fact you were going through a five question survey and off the top of my head, that was the third question. Yeah. So you were presented with 10 use cases and then we said a mix or a single use. Now I, there's more fourth graders in Natick than there are developers plus local government junkies. Mixed use I know has a zoning notion, but mixed use is just human language. It's the most simple term.
And so in the report that was given that I, while I didn't define it, it was just simply said, for example, for a later discussion, it could be a sell of a parcel for, you know, revenue and then a building on the backside. But to Mr. Erickson's point, all of the above. Yeah, Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. I, you know, I understand all of these, all of this discussion. My concern is what the public understands. Understood. And, and so if we, because a lot of the development downtown has been labeled mixed use,
the public seems to think that's what we mean and it's not what we understand it to mean. We understood that the surveys was okay, let's have several uses on the property, but I think we've gotta make sure that we use terms that the general public is gonna work right with, and this confusion came about I think because the term mixed use people associated with the downtown developments. Speaker 1: So then would it be, it's Speaker 4: Strictly the confusion, not that Speaker 1: I understand. So would it be okay to follow my suggestion that we saw talk about a mix of uses. Mix of uses, talking about multiple uses on the
property and then mixed use. Mixed hyphen use. Mixed use, which is the zoning term. If we're going to be talking about developing mixed use development, I agree. I don't see a groundswell coming from the public where they Speaker 13: Want that ask. Is there, was there a widespread confusion? Speaker 4: It was widespread. It was Speaker 13: Okay. Speaker 9: Yeah, I think between the developments downtown and the MBTA communities act, that term is bandied around frequently. Okay. And, and that's what people see in the paper and you know, but I like Ms. Coughlin's suggestion of mix of uses.
'cause that clarifies it. Speaker 1: Are there any comments or questions from the public? I'd like you to keep it to two minutes. So go ahead please. Ms Bason, if you could just reintroduce yourself please. Yep. Speaker 13: Amy Bason, Natick resident precinct eight town meeting member. I actually think mixed Speaker 4: Is, is the mic on? Speaker 9: I think so. Yeah, it's green. It's too high maybe. Speaker 13: Yep. Can you hear me? Speaker 9: Much better. Okay, Speaker 13: Thank you. So I actually think the mixed use would make, would be clearer if it was separated between one owner versus selling and, and keeping the land with the town.
Which kind of brings me back to the original flash vote of, you know, only 10% of the feedback says they wanna sell any part of the property. So, you know, I'm just kind of confused why we'd focus on that aspect at all really, because that doesn't seem to be what the community wants. Another thing is for the advisory committee, I actually came up with some examples such as review, reviewing the map in specs of the property, including all inspections and determine all permits that may be required to move forward with the park and community use. Develop a formal public survey for community members
to offer public input on park ideas or community concepts. Present multiple design concepts and cost options to the select board during public meetings. Investigate all sources of funding opportunities, grants, donations, funding partners and sponsorships. Recommend a project timeline including potential phases of development, construction design plan, and construct a public park and community space that will be an integral and essential part of the town of Natick downtown enjoyed today and for future generations.
And that those uses would reflect what the Flash boat survey said being in the 70 percentile for average. And lastly, I just happened to notice the Arsenal Park in Watertown, which seems like a really cool new park and I know you're looking for ideas, it's twice as big as Johnson, but it has multiple spaces and I think it would just get everyone sort of thinking about how to have a really multi-use area in a neighborhood. So thank you. Thank Speaker 1: You. Yes, please. Mr. Brunell, if you could introduce yourself.
Speaker 19: Good evening, Matt Brunell, precinct nine. Just three observations. One is I would, I would say that as a member of the Johnson community, that the term mixed use was a very confusing term. And I think if there was an opportunity by the town to solicit more public input on this question through another flash vote to really zero in on this idea of multiple uses, I think that the select board could gain in even more of an understanding as to where, where people really
feel about the, what they feel about the building and the the grounds. Second is that as again, another observation as, as you consider this, the potential of, of creating the select board workshop process, right? My hope is that you would really, again, dig into the financial considerations questions that would ask and, and potentially ask even more questions. I think the, from the standpoint of, of the folks who completed that survey, there was still a very significant number who want the board
to go through this deliberative process where they are thinking about the full range of financial costs and not enter into an en entering into it with say, a limiting view that, that we can only do this amount. And then the third, third observation I wanna make is that, as the previous speaker mentioned, that an advisory committee, so long as this, this workshop process and it sounds as though it's one that is going to try to surface a lot of ideas. An advisory committee could still have a, a real impact
in being able to advise that workshop, that workshop process. So even something that was being done in parallel to be able to surface ideas. 'cause it as on page three of the town staff recommendations in this big kind of all caps new scenarios via workshop. We are still very early in the process. This building was open for you have about 30 seconds. Thank you. This building was open for 70 plus years. Let's try to get as many ideas up on the whiteboard as we can before we, we make even
limiting decisions about what the future of that site could look like. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much Ms. Flas. Speaker 15: Hi. I'll keep my remarks very brief because I feel like Ms. Baston and Mr. Brunell have kind of covered it. I just, the two one question I wanna have is, is, and, and audio cut out for a little bit, but there were comments how the concern of not expending too much financially on the property has been raised. And I'm curious, that's my question of where, where has that information come forward? Obviously we have to be careful financially.
I think Jamie's points about going after grants, going after funding. Ms. Coughlin, what you were saying about being able to do land use, like those creative uses of the space is really worth pursuing and needs to be part of this. And I think there's some real experts out there that could help that in advisory capacity. So I'm curious, you know, why are we already prematurely thinking about how much it would cost? Comment, just to extend on the mixed use. There was a very clear messaging in the closure of Johnson that that building was not, the perception was that it was not able to be rehabilitated.
That it was, that it was kind of a lost cause to be able to be a DA compliant. It would never be worthwhile. So I think most people in the community would've been coming in with the idea that that building couldn't exist. And so community uses would not really be about that building. I've still been curious about whether that's actually true because a lot, a huge range of numbers came back and forth about what it would take and I, I, that's something I'd really like to know very clearly with external expert expertise on it. And then just finally, I just think be really, like I, I'm just mindful of the optics
of reducing short-term public input and having be an open process. I think there's a lot of fear and skepticism and I think, you know, it was a clear message from the community that we want, we don't wanna sell off the land. So for the first two scenarios listed in the slides to be partial sale for a million dollars, partial sale for 2 million, $3 million was a little concerning. And when I looked at the slides, I actually read it as partial sale for million dollars would fund open spaces and trails partial sale for lots, three to 5 million would fund field rehabilitation
and playground enhancements. So I think we just need, I, I just, I urge you to be mindful of getting as much community input as possible and the optics of how decisions may have already been made can be perceived by the community from constituents and neighbors that have, that have called me and talked to me about it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Flas. Ms. Ms. Vickers. Speaker 11: Thank you. Brenley Vickers Precinct eight. Also a town meeting member. I'll try to be quick with this. I wanna say that I was a part of the group in the walking tour
and might have been one of the most vocal people talking about the money and the finances first. And so I thought I would explain myself a little bit upfront what I was looking for in that. And what I was talking about in that is that there were some very grand, large ideas that were coming out like a swimming pool to use it as, because that was one of the largest options. And I feel like people were having a hard time saying, well I don't know how to give an idea when we don't understand where the select board stands. Is the select board in a position where they feel like,
yeah, if the use is right, they'll put a debt exclusion on the ballot. Right. I feel like that's where the question was trying to go in, in the sense of finances leading the conversation, not actually leading the options but leading the conversation. Because if the select board is in a place of not wanting to have any impetus for a debt exclusion, then that changes the options. Also, I feel like there's a difference
between an advisory committee and a workshop. It's kind of already been mentioned previously. Yes. But I feel compelled to say it right now. I feel like a lot of the options are relying solely on the surveys and that's the survey. Those questions aren't allowing an actual conversation back and forth. Ask a question, do the homework, come back and have another conversation with it. For instance, you brought up the building, we haven't had the conversation of whether or not there's a business out there that would be interested in doing some of the a DA compliance for a 25 year lease.
Like we haven't had those conversations yet. And so I feel like when we're discussing options, we are being limited because we haven't put together a brain source to have bigger picture. It's very easy for everybody to say we wanna keep the baseball field 'cause it's there and we see it Speaker 1: If 30 seconds. Speaker 11: Okay. Also, the wooded areas are play areas for those of us that live in the neighborhood. The fields are play areas, but so are the wooded areas. So I would hate for us to think that they're just woods. They are also play areas and walking areas
and hangout areas for people in the community. And just the one last thing, another thing that hasn't come up that I think is potential since we're talking about costs. Where does the select board stand in creating a Friends of meaning? The basketball court needs some help. The CPA has funds, but the CPA won't let the Speaker 1: Stickers. I need to stop you there. Speaker 11: Can I just get that one last thing out? The CPA won't let a group ask for funds to fix the property without approval from the people
who own the property, which would be the select board. So in order for us to do something like that, we'd need to be able to have a conversation about whether or not we can create a friends of or ask for those types of grants. Speaker 1: Or the select board can just ask for the grants that's from the CPC. In fact, an individual can do it if they own the property. Right? But since the select board owns it, I wanna address a couple things. You said the question about what the board is thinking. We're, we're think what you hear in, in an open meeting is what we're thinking. There are no discussions about what we're going to do. So to the extent that you've heard, not you specifically or the public has heard the select board is leaning this way
or that way, or they're unwilling to do X, y, z. If you haven't heard it in an open meeting, the select board has not discussed it. Period. I understand that there's some collective trauma in the neighborhood with regard to previous processes that is not this board. So I wanna be abundantly clear that this board is going to respect the open meeting process and we've laid out a very generous year and a half, two year thoughtful process to engage the public. And we are having those conversations with the public. We did that. People have been talking about all kinds of things with us. So we have been having these conversations on the walkthrough during, you know,
during office hours at the farmer's market. But the board is not talking has no, I'm not gonna let you speak again 'cause we're ending this topic, but thank you Ms. Vickers. The board is taking in as much information as we can, and this is the first night that we've had the opportunity to engage and even talk about what the terms mean. So again, if you haven't heard it in an open meeting and it's not in the minutes, then the board's not thinking it, they're not letting finances lead it. It's a consideration. It's been raised by residents. It's a consideration. It, it may be that the select board gets, applies to the CPA for money.
We can do that because we own the property. We don't need friends of necessarily. But there are lots of ideas and I encourage those of you at home who don't participate necessarily in the question answer or the monthly Johnson speak, send the ideas in. Those are all public record. It'll be posted on the agenda and they're available for everyone to look at. Ms. Slager, did you have something? Speaker 14: No, I just wanted to address the, the issue about, you know, the concept of the, the financing. And I just wanted to point to the result of the survey, which said the, the second flesh out survey, I believe,
which said the preferred financial approach is to work within existing funds. And that was supported by 48% of the responders, which was 37% higher than the second choice. So that's what the results that we're getting from the survey. But I do wanna say that that is not going to at least limit me. I mean, if we come up with a really fabulous idea that is going to cost money and it's something that everyone thinks is a great idea, then we will move forward with how the best way to finance it would be. So even though that was the survey result,
it's really gonna be dependent on, on, you know, what we come up with in our workshops and in our, our various forums and, and what we hear from you in the public as to what the use is gonna be. So just because the survey says doesn't mean that that's necessarily going to be the final outcome. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Schlager. Is there any other comment from a member of the board? I'd like to move on to Chief Fork's presentation. I'd like to thank all of you who participated in the Johnson speak and in the quarterly update. I'd also like to thank our communications director who's been working assiduously on this process to ensure
that there's the maximum amount of participation available by the public. So thank you very much. Chief Orke, could you come to the podium and introduce yourself? Speaker 20: Thank you Mr. Poi, Speaker 1: Very much. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 20: All right. Good evening. Jason Skee proudly serving as your fire chief. Mr. Erickson. I was hoping you could give me privilege to share my presentation. Speaker 16: Do you want me to run it? Do you wanna run it? Speaker 20: I'll try to run it from here if you don't mind. Speaker 16: You should be Speaker 20: All right. How does that look on your end? Speaker 5: Able to see it? I can't see it. I can't either. We don't, I don't have the proof. Could Speaker 14: We be sent the presentation so that we can follow along on our
Speaker 5: Computers? Oh, thank you. And then, because that's too far away from me. Yep. Mr. Eric said he's gonna send it. Yeah, Speaker 20: Sorry, I thought you guys were on Zoom as well, so I No, Speaker 14: We're not all, Speaker 20: All, Speaker 3: Your Honor. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 20: Give you a second to catch up. So while you're loading that up, thank you very much for having me here this evening. You wanted a brief update? Thank you. So when I first presented this to Mr. Erickson earlier today, he said, Bravo, great presentation, you hit the mark. You were very brief, but in reality this slide is to say thank you, thank you for the last three years for your support of my leadership
and confidence in my ability to lead the Natick Fire Department. I also thank Mr. Erickson, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Townsend for their support over the last three years. And then more, most importantly, I think the individuals of the department. So these are the faces of the department that are out there every day. Some of these are happy moments. Some of these, the middle picture with the big mustache and the smile that's at two o'clock in the morning at a fire alarm, they still managed to smile. We had a gentleman in the lower left run the marathon. And then one of my favorite pictures, it's kind of sandwiched in the middle, is the picture of the baby in the firetruck being held by a,
a, a then young man. And then there's a picture below that of a grown baby that recently joined their department and a father that is getting ready to retire the end of next month after close to 32 years of service. So pretty proud moment. Pretty, pretty neat to see that actually come to fruition. So we'll get right into it. We'll talk about data. Again, this is just a brief snapshot, it's just kinda give you a highlight of where we're at. So looking at the first six months of this year and comparing it to the first six months of last year, so we're at 3,239 calls this year for so far.
And last year we were at 29 75 calls for service. So we're up about 264 calls. We still maintain a ratio of about 65% EMS related and 35% fire related. Moving over to the upper right hand corner, that's a neat little map that our new software does. It shows us a heat map of most, where most of our incidents are. You can almost make out the, the image of the dog. And then the four crosses that are on there are symbolic of the four fire stations that we have in town. Moving down to the lower left, this is one of my favorite data points to track.
It's the number of simultaneous calls or multi occurrence of multiple calls going on at the same time. That is up over last year. Right now we're about 82% of the time. We have multiple calls going on in town. So when you look at the largest section that's blue, we, that means we have two calls going on. And then the next largest portion, the the red and the lower left is when we have three calls going on. So that number is creeping up as well. And then the interesting, you can barely see it because of the, the, the size of the pie chart, but we've actually had two occurrences this year where we've had 13 calls going on at the same time. So that is becoming more and more common.
It's more and more frequent and that's something that I expect to see at the end of this year. I expect it to be ahead of where we were last year. It's perfectly timed this part of the presentation. So the, looking at the lower right kind of keeping track of calls by day. Monday is our busiest day of the week. Right now in the first six months of the year. Friday's not too far behind it. The middle of the week tends to be about the middle of the road and the weekends we taper off a little bit doing a quick equipment update. So the ladder, and I am very happy to report to you that we are seeing progress. The photos that you see, the upper right is a, a picture
of the cab that was under underway under construction in the last month or so. And then the bottom two photos are more recent. Photos of a couple weeks ago we're slated to go down the end, the beginning of September to do a final inspection before it leaves the factory. So that's an exciting moment and I know that Phil on the finance committee is gonna be ecstatic because that is the single question he's asked me every single year at finance committee. So I'm happy to report that this time when I go to finance committee that will have a new ladder truck that's been, that was ordered in June of 22. So that's quite a long delay and kudos to Mr. Fisher
and the fleet crew for keeping our current fleet up and running. 'cause it is definitely past its expected service life ambulances. So we currently maintain a fleet of four ambulances. Two of 'em are primary, two of them are reserves. Our two reserve ambulances are tired. Our second primary ambulance is also on the tired side. We're we ordered an ambulance as quick as we could with the delivery date of November of this year is what we got. We also, in this year's town meeting, we had approval for another ambulance. I'm expecting to see that sometime in 27, probably towards the fourth quarter of 2027.
And that's important. The, our primary trucks work hard. Our reserve trucks aren't really reserved trucks because they spend a lot of time up on the front side of the fleet that allows for preventative maintenance but also routine breakdowns and maintenance issues. And as you're aware, this past two weekends ago, we had an incident where two of our spares were down and then another primary truck broke down. So we were actually left with one truck for a short period of time. Fortunately reached out through Mass Fire District th 14,
we had four of our neighbors offer to let us borrow a spare. So the, the town of Weston was nice enough to loan us an ambulance for about a day and a half before Mr. Fisher's crew could get the trucks back up and running. And then the other piece of equipment we have on order is an engine that's due in the spring of 26. And we ordered that, I believe it was the spring of 23 town meeting. One of the other areas that I concentrated on this past year was professional development. I'm proud to say that 92% of our offices attended a two hour supervisor liability training. So that was put on by the Department of Fire Services legal team and basically kind of identified,
clearly identified the liability that they have as supervisors and why it's important to do their job. 96% of our offices attended an eight hour company office training that was put on by a retired fire captain from the city of Worcester that was basically focusing on their basic job duties and responsibilities during fire ground operations. I'm actually in talks with him to bring him back sometime after the first of the year. We had three offices attend the eight hour Man versus Machine program. That's a really cool program. I'm jealous that I haven't got, had the opportunity to attend that program. It's a, it's an expensive program to run. One of our neighboring departments was nice enough to afford us three spots
and basically they take lifelike mannequins and put 'em into different difficult extrications like a meat grinder or rebar impalment, a lot of complicated complex extrications. So we have three officers that were able to attend that training. In the three years that I've been here, we've slowly increased the participation of the deputies to attend the the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts Professional Development Ceremony, excuse me, seminar. It's focusing on advanced leadership topics. This past year the theme was adapting to an inspiring change, kind of four
of the highlight speakers, Simon Sinek, if anybody doesn't know about him, great leadership topics. Really his presentation was talking all about the why and why we do the things we do. The Sussex fire chief gave us a quick presentation on the problems and challenges that she deals with over across the pond. Retired police commissioner Linsky from the city of Boston gave o gave an overview about the marathon bombings and basically when no one else is leading, you need to step up and lead. And that was a very touching and moving presentation. And then Bill O'Brien used to be with the Patriots now
with Boston College, gave a real inspirational leadership presentation. And then three of our offices attended the IFC New England Division Health and Wellness Symposium. And we've actually got a couple different benefits that we've, we'll talk about later on in the presentation from that. And then we've assisted with securing 12 spots in fire off at one and six spots in fire offs. At two training over the last year on the health and wellness side, we conducted skin cancer screenings. So the Department of Fire Service office free can skin cancer screenings to members of the fire service if they meet certain criteria.
We hosted that here in Natick. I believe it was three or four different opportunities. We had an esophageal cancer screening. That's probably the weirdest exam I've ever been through. You basically swallow a little pill on a string and they drag it up the back of your throat. It doesn't hurt, just feels really weird. But that was, and we had two members that they identified should do additional followup. So it's good, good use of early detection. And so far everybody has reported out with no adverse effects. The Firefighter Heart Health Initiative that was sponsored by the Newton Wellesley Hospitals Community Collaborative.
That was a great program. They did it over three months where they came in and spoke to each group. The first one was talking about the ben, the kind of benchmarks of your blood pressure, what the ratios means, body mass index and identified things to pay attention to. The next month they came back and did a strictly dietary program and then the third month they came back and did a fitness routine with everybody staffing. We delayed the filling of vacancies going into this calendar year due to the budget, the challenges with the override and the hiring freeze that was implemented
with that have, with that changing in the override passing, we're going forward with filling the vacancies that we have. We have four retirements this year of long-term employees. And by long-term employees, we're talking 30 to 32 years worth of service, still dealing. Dealing with the challenges of trying to fill vacancies in a more rapid pace. This month we were fortunate enough to, we have on the 27th of this month, we have a firefighter that is academy trained and a paramedic that'll be starting with us coming from another department. And then we'll also be interviewing the first week in August for an additional five candidates. And then an interesting data point that I pulled out
that I thought was pretty interesting, and I don't have an easy way to go back and figure out where we were, but the average years of service right now in the department is 12.7 years. I expect that that was probably closer to 14 or 15 years, a couple years ago. With the retirement out of a lot of our senior population, I expect that to drop a little bit more before we probably balance out and maintain that 12 to 15. Again, I wanna spend a little bit of time tonight talking about our fire operations. I think I spend a lot of time talking about EMS and I think it's only fair to spend a little bit
of time talking about the, the fire side. A very interesting statistic looking at the first six months of the year across the entire country, there's been 1042 F fire fatalities reported in the US And then when you zoom in, I know it's a little bit hard to see on the presentation, but Massachusetts alone, we've had 13 and the last week, week or so, we've actually almost doubled that number. So the chart on the right is also an interesting trend. I think it's the first time in a long time we're starting to trend in the opposite direction. Years ago we used to have a lot of people smoking in their homes.
So fire deaths were at a relatively high level. I think that tapered down. Now we're back on the up rise. So looking at a 10 year snapshot, we've actually had a 27% increase in the number of fire fatalities of across the country in the last 10 years. So that's when you kind of compare the apples and apples. That's a 5% increase in population, but it's resulted in almost a 30% increase in fire fatalities. So when we look at the next couple of slides, I got a couple little videos and I'm hoping that everything's gonna work well when I click to the next slide. But I'll put the caveat out there. And the first thing I'll say is, is
that this is not picking on lithium ion batteries. I'm not anti lithium ion batteries. This is just the reality of this is great video footage that shows how fast and how rapid the fires develop. And really at the end of the day, it's not the fire that's probably leading to a lot of these fatalities. It's the toxic products of combustion. It's the smoke that's getting to people long before the fire does. So this video, it's really quick and short. So it's a lithium ion scooter that's being charged in an apartment. This is a big problem that they're having in the city of New York.
He hears a pop and it really, what I want you to focus on is not that it's a lithium ion battery, but the fact of how quickly it goes from a normal situation to a pretty catastrophic event. So all of that smoke is toxic, it does have some nasty chemicals in the smoke. But also when you look at that, how rapid and how quick that grew and spread, you really don't have the time that you used to have. So growing up, you know Mr. Erickson probably being the oldest person in the room, it was the old legacy furniture
that was natural materials, right? That doesn't exist anymore. Everything is made out of polyurethane foam and plastics and and and stuff that burns very rapidly. But it produces a very toxic fme. And that's the stuff that's reaching out and grabbing people. So this one, I love that video because it's how I feel that I, whenever I'm out and we're doing something and this, the news media's around, they always gonna capture you at the weirdest time. And for whatever reason that video, it froze on that lady's face, which you had the weirdest look on her face. So this is another more recent incident that happened. I apologize if you can't hear the sound, but they hear a pop in the bathroom, they start yelling that there's fire.
Everybody's obviously panic stricken and within a few short seconds, again rapid fire growth, rapid progression of the fire and spread across the house. So again, not, not to pick on lithium ion batteries, but those are some of the challenges that we face. We are dealing with more and more incidents around them. But in general it just, these are great videos that show you how rapidly a fire goes from nothing to a very catastrophic event. Speaker 3: Oh, Speaker 20: So EMS operations, talk briefly about that. So we are running two ambulances. They're running pretty steady 24 7.
The split between the trucks roughly 50 50. One of the trucks is doing slightly more. But it's the luck of the draw. When we look at the lower left hand corner, that was calendar year 2024. We in the first six months, again just a snapshot of the beginning so that I can compare apples and apples. We only requested 97 times mutual aid from another community for EMS and we gave away two. And then this year we're on track, we're at 123 and we've given a little bit more mutual aid but still not nearly as much as we're taking. And then in the upper right with that chart, something
that we've been better able to quantify with our data set is when is this mutual aid request coming in? When do we need the help? And I think this is gonna gear some conversation down the road, excuse me. But majority of our time seems to be in that eight to four block and then four to midnight. So between eight and midnight is where majority of our requests for mutual aid come in. And then on the overnight it happens less frequently, but it still happens. So as we look to the future, so right now I'm currently working on a long-term strategic plan. When I first got here, I did an informal strategic plan.
So I sat down with you folks, town administration kind of got the direction that you expected. I sat down with all 90 members of the depart, 84 members of the department and gained their perspective on what we should do. And that was how I formed my strategic plan and my vision for that three years. As I switched to year four in February, I did a SWOT analysis theme with each of the individual groups. And I didn't do a whole lot of talking, I did a whole lot of listening and I gave them an opportunity to kind of give some guidance and some direction.
So that's one component. We're currently in the middle of finishing up what is called a focus exam with Drexel University. And this is one of those items that we gained by going to the health and Wellness symposium that I mentioned in the beginning. And that's a fire service organization culture of safety exam. I don't know how they got to focus out of that 'cause the acronym doesn't work out. But basically it's an anonymous study. We had close to 80% of participation, mid seventies, 80% participation in the study. Completely anonymous. So I don't know who answered what or how they answered, but it's gonna help us identify some
of our challenges and some of our issues. And then the hopes is that taking some of that information out of that, comparing that with the SWOT analysis and some of the other work we're gonna do with our strategic plan is gonna set some of our goals and objectives for the next several years. And I think one of the other neat things with this is that they've identified through this study, and this has been going on since 2012, has been several departments in Massachusetts that have participated in this. But one of the goals is to basically use that data to try to help reduce injuries in the department. So those are all good things that we have going on.
Our next steps is we gotta assess our path to increasing our staffing to meet the community growth and demand in the community. And I think that the best avenue to pursue with that is we identified that we have a growing need for a third ambulance. At the same time, we still have two pieces of equipment in the downtown station that are understaffed. And I think that working with Mr. Erickson and the finance team in the next budget cycle, trying to come up with a plan and a path forward to address both of those needs where they're gonna be complimentary and overlap. We're getting ready right now to go out with a station two study.
I, I'm kind of excited to see how this goes. So we broke this down into three phases. We're looking for a space needs analysis on what's an ideal station. So what's an ideal single engine four person firehouse. Then the second phase of that is, is take what that ideal model is, look at our existing building and how close can we get to making the two match. I don't think we're gonna get a hundred percent because of the challenges with that lot, but the reality is, is how much can we do to improve the existing building to meet that need well into the future. And then the last part is, is what do we have for options in
that area to evaluate and and review. And I think that when we look at how we're gonna deal with that, I'm, I'm pretty excited to see how that that comparison goes. And I think this is a good proactive move between facilities and the fire department and evaluating what can we do with the building. We have a lot of future capital items pending in that building, but is that the best idea to dump those items into that building when it may not be viable long to the future? We're working to identify risks and trends and strategies to reduce and I think where I'm really trying to target there is we do a lot of calls.
We seem to have a gravity problem with a lot of our population. So how can we identify and how can we get some community risk reduction out there to identify what's causing them to fall and try to break that cycle and limit that. And we do a large volume of lift assist too. We're always looking to increase our training and our training opportunities. I'm very excited about a program we have coming in October. There's a, a young lady up from New Hampshire, she works very closely with their CIS teams, which is their critical incident. Stress management widened across the state. She gave us a presentation at that health
and wellness symposium that I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. And there was six or seven of us at the sitting at the table. There was three from Natick, there was a couple from another department and then one or two from another department. And she talked for about an hour and a half. And at the end of the presentation we all looked and turned at each other and like she just described each and every one of us. So really what she does is she talks a lot about, and the neat thing about this program is as significant others are invited as well. So it's an effort to kind of improve communication and understanding for how first responders mentality works,
how they debrief, how they kind of unwind and, and with the goal of trying to overall wellness for our families and, and all of our members in the department. And then the other thing that we're working on in the fall, which will also be a cool transition. So the National Fire Academy has been working on this thing they call nearest. It's the National Emergency Response Information System. And what that is is, so we currently report to the National Fire Incident Reporting System, but that's, we report every month and then halfway into this calendar year, they release a bunch of data on last year's stuff and you can't get anything live.
This is gonna allow us real-time access to a lot of data points, not only in our own community but other communities as well. So we'll be able to watch emerging trends, emerging threats, and be able to track stuff in live time as opposed to a year and a half after the incidents happen. Questions. And again, that was a 30,000 foot elevation view I could have, I think you guys know by now that I love to talk about the department and so I could probably sit up here for another hour and, Speaker 1: And I love that you love data, so thank you so much. That was very impressive. I'd like to open the floor to questions for members of the board. Ms. Slager. Speaker 14: Oh, thank you Chief Ky I
not having seen this presentation in advance, I kept writing down some questions that I had and I kept crossing them off because you covered them all. So Yeah, very, very impressive. I just wanted to, speaking of data, do you have any sense of we get the third ambulance, what that might mean in terms of mutual aid requests, you know, how would that change the department and what would you see? And you know, and obviously we potentially get more revenue, so what are your thoughts on that? Speaker 20: Yeah, and I think if we go back to, it's gonna be,
when we go back to this slide Here, the bottom left corner, when we look at the multiple occurrences, I think that will have a positive impact. Do I think we'll a hundred percent eliminate the need for mutual aid and the amount of the, the significantly high amount of mutual aid? No, I think we're still gonna need mutual aid because there's still gonna be times that we can't handle our calls and as that number on the 3, 4, 5 continues to creep up, which is what it's doing, it's trending up, we're still not gonna be able to meet that demand. So if we put a third ambulance up today, yes,
we'll positively impact that. Will we erase it a hundred percent? No. Also, whatever we positively impact it by, yes there will be an increase in ambulance revenue that will capture, will it completely cover everything? Not likely. Speaker 14: Thank you. One more. Maybe one or two. So in looking at again, the data, because you know that's the things that, that I tend to focus on. Do you feel like we have the right distribution of resources? I know at one point I had seen some data from years back
that most of our EMS calls were in the West Natick area. I mean, do we feel like we, we've got our distribution of resources right to be able to minimize our response times throughout the town? Speaker 20: I think the simple answer to that is yes, I think that we're in a good spot. I think that, you know, if you gave me a blank slate and I was starting over from beginning, would it potentially look different? Yes. But unfortunately we're, you're kind of trapped with where stations are and where buildings are and you're limited on where you can move them to. If you, basically, if we were playing a video game
and I was able to move them anywhere that I could, that might be altered. But based on what we have, I think what they're best poised to serve the community the way that we're set up, I think our staffing could use a little bit of a boost. And I think you're starting to hear a lot of that, a lot of the problems that they have across the state and even on the national level, there are problems that we have as well. You know, a ladder company downtown, two person on that is not really sufficient for doing things. So how can we bolster that staffing while still increasing our ambulance coverage?
We could cross staff that at the, the third ambulance and put those additional per personnel on those trucks. So we get those trucks up, say 80% of the time they're operating at a much safer level and the other 20% they're covering the ambulance calls. And those are just rough numbers. Those, those aren't exact numbers. Speaker 14: Thank you. Just one more, one more. So it was interesting that you saw that that falls is something that you're looking into. Any other thoughts about reasons for calls? I, I know that you probably have worked with Natick 180
about, you know, potential substance abuse reduction. But are there other areas where we might engage our community services or other organizations to potentially re reduce calls? Speaker 20: We could stop with allowing urgent care facilities in the community? Those, those do contribute to a significant volume. We do have, one of the newer ones is a high volume facility. They see a lot of patients, they expect about 10% of their census goes out well when you see a lot of patients and 10% of that ends up being a fairly big number.
So I'm seeing that the, those facilities hit us a little hard. And then when I pull the data on some of our more stagnant populations, the, the like the healthcare facilities, the assisted living facilities that have 150 beds, 130 beds, I was expecting to see numbers at like 0.4, five, 0.67 units per calls per unit per year. And based on small snapshots of data I'm looking at, we're seeing closer to 0.9 calls per data. So some of those facilities are a little bit more taxing on us. And then as you look it, it's hard
to compare a facility like, I don't wanna say a facility, a set of apartments like Avalon that's getting us somewhere around 0.25 calls per unit per year. So we start having some facilities down here downtown that are starting to open up. I'm expecting to see a 0.25 calls per apartment a unit. So we have the ability to calculate some of these things. Unfortunately sometimes these things are in motion long before we have the ability to affect any sort of change. But at least I know that as these facilities come online,
I can say to you, yeah we're, we're up by 264 calls in the first six months of the year. I expect that we're probably gonna finish off another five or 600 calls by the end of the year. And I can attribute it that to these facilities coming online or some of these healthcare facilities that hit us at a little bit higher than what the expected rates are. Speaker 14: Thank you. And again, great presentation Ms Speaker 5: Po. I would agree. Chief, thank you for your presentation. My question is about regionalization. Thinking about I guess the regionalization of the calls
that we've talked about over the last year or so, how does that play into the work and the looking forward and, and just the bandwidth of the department? Speaker 20: So I think regionalization is one of those funny words, especially up in the northeast. Everybody's afraid of it. One of the things that I will say is that the Massachusetts Fire Service does a phenomenal job of moving resources and assets all across the state to help each other out. So when the city of Brockton had the fire in the hospital, we actually had a ladder and an ambulance that were on the way to the city to help out and support those, those operations.
So we move, I'm trying to think of the simplest way to explain it. So we're a member of fire district 14, there's 15 fire districts in the state where with 23 other cities and towns inside our district, we can move resources very quickly and very easily. That district can also go to other districts and support statewide. And then also when you start looking at some of the other resources that we've regionalized within the department, our dive team used to be a Natick specific dive team. We've moved to the district resource. It's good because it increases the frequency
of our divers getting quality training as well as incidents. They were activated for the, the incident in Framingham that happened over the weekend. Fortunately Framingham had divers on duty that were able to affect the rescue much sooner than the district team. We're also members of the District 14 technical rescue team. So when there's, you saw over the weekend that Southwick the sky ride broke down and they had the rescue of the people that were hanging over the alligators pits. They activated the district seven technical rescue team. Well, district 14 has one that we're a member of
state hazmat, which I'm also very passionate and, and a member of. We represent fire district seven and 14. So we cover from the mass Connecticut border, Oxbridge to Blackstone, up to Concord. So we do a lot of regional regionalization as it is. And I think the involvement in regional teams and regional opportunities is great for our personnel because it gives 'em training, it gives 'em exposure so that if we do have an incident in town, they're more well equipped and more prepared to handle. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Sydney. Mr. Evans. Speaker 9: Thank you Madam Chair. I just have a couple, I don't have the, I have the more qualitative ones,
not the quantitative 'cause those have already been answered on the PPAS turnout gear. Where, where do we stand on getting rid of our inventory of PFAS gear? Speaker 20: So I did have, I did have a bullet point in there that I probably glanced over in the presentation. So we are completely pfas free with the foam. We got rid of that a couple years ago. That's all gone. The pfas free turnout gear, I think the cart got put before the horse a little bit because there's drawbacks to the new gear that they're putting out. So part of our gear right now,
the PAS is in the moisture barrier. So our turnout gear is three components. One component of that contains PFAS. Unfortunately the new stuff that's out on the market that came out back in two years ago February, it was about, it was about coming up on about a year ago came up. One of the things that they didn't realize is that part of our, the success of our turnout gear is that it's gotta breathe so it offs lets us let heat go and the new gear doesn't do that as well. So we're starting to see a lot more heat related illness
in injuries and it's not, and it's also not holding up when it's laundered when we wash it. So I kind of pumped the brakes, we demoed some sets from our existing manufacturer and then we just placed an order for 10 sets of gear from a new manufacturer that came out with the newest addition. So before I go and expend all of the full capital item that we requested, we're doing a little bit of experiment to make sure that, that we're gonna buy the best gear, not just knee jerk and say, Hey, we got rid of pre-pass but the gear's junk. So we're, we're doing our due diligence
and the hopes is that one of the manufacturers had promised us, which the set we just ordered was gonna be an improvement over everything else. And so we're working through that process. Speaker 9: Great, great. Terrific answer. Another, the other question, and actually I've got two, well the first one was you talked about the four retirements of longtime employees and the five candidate interviews coming up. How many of those people have to go through the, well you have five candidates being interviewed. Are those people who've already been through the fire academy? Yeah. So they'd have what, six months to get through?
Speaker 20: Yeah, and that's part of the lag and that, that's the challenge where we're constantly hiring 'cause we're trying to train and educate and get them up to speed and it just, it it, it's a process. So we, the one candidate that I mentioned that we stole is a unicorn. He's already academy trained and he's a paramedic. So that's, that's the ideal way that we can recruit. But that's, especially in the confines of civil service can be hard to do. The other five candidates. So that was the only candidate that I got off the paramedic list. The other we're interviewing six candidates for the five spots. Those candidates are basic EMTs.
So we'll end up and we'll be doing the fire academy with them, which is a 10 week commitment and then paramedic school, which they'll be working during paramedic school, but there's still significant time that they're gone. And fortunately we have the tail end of a grant and we had some, some increased funding in the budget that we put in last year to the year before to account for knowing that this is gonna happen. Speaker 9: Okay, good. My, my last question is more a comment which is I'm really heartened by you talking about working with town administration both
to get the third ambulance purchased, you know, given the long lead times that we have and also adequately staffed. So kudos for looking ahead of that, getting ahead of that problem as best you can. Speaker 20: Thank you Speaker 4: Mr. Sidney. First of all, thank you for a really comprehensive and interesting presentation. I really appreciate all of the information you gave us given and I want to focus on ambulances. So you're proposing a third ambulance, which I think is a great idea. I, and you know, if you had, if, if we had unlimited money,
which we don't, how long do you think it would be before you'd want to try and bring a fourth an ambulance online? Speaker 20: So I don't think I'm prepared to answer that question 'cause I think that you, I think you understand that I always look at the data and see what supports it and although, you know, it'd be great to have, you know, if I had unlimited funding, you would have a ladder truck, an engine a, a deputy chief down here out in West Natick, you would have a fully staffed ladder truck, an ambulance, an engine, you'd have an engine and an engine staffed, fully staffed down there.
But the reality is, is that we don't have unlimited funding. So I think that if the data trends the way that it is, it'll probably be long after I'm retired. Speaker 4: So I wanna talk about time, you know, time and service because you know, and we've discussed this before, when we had an emergency room here in Natick, a typical call would be, you know, an hour or so, right? Something like that, going to Framingham or Newton Wellesley, that's increased significantly. And my understanding is that there's been some
rumblings about changes over at Metro West as at Framingham Union that may impact their ability to provide emergency services, which will send more trucks, more of our ambulances down to Newton Wellesley. How's that going to Im impact our response time Speaker 20: Negatively. I think that's the simplest answer. I I the, our healthcare system I think is a lot more fragile than we're willing to acknowledge. We're also spoiled in the northeast because we have a significant volume of hospitals. But I do would say that any closure
or any impact to an emergency room is going that's in our service zone, which is the two that you identified. If either one of those closed, it's gonna have a negative impact on what we're doing because we're gonna have to go to the next ring out, which is gonna be further into Boston or even potentially into Worcester, which is, and we all know how awful traffic is. Well, Speaker 4: Mar Marlborough just got taken over by UMass Medical, so that may, may or may not be a viable option. How long does it take to get an ambulance back in service once it goes down to Newton Wellesley? Speaker 20: It all depends on how quick we turn it around.
I would say that you're probably typically, if they immediately take the patient and allow transfer of patient care, they're probably at the hospital for 10, 15 minutes and then they're on their way back. So 20 minutes, half an hour back. So you're probably talking rough guess 45 minutes. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you very much. And I do really appreciate all the work you're doing to, to with our, with our fire service to and and EMS service to, to make it the most professional it could be. Speaker 20: Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Pope. Did you, Ms. Pope, did you have any questions? No,
Speaker 5: No, I, you answered my question. Speaker 1: Thank you. I just had two relatively quick questions. Who are mutual aid communities with whom do we have agreements? Speaker 20: Everybody? So our immediate mutual aids. So depending on what we're doing, we use Framingham and Wellesley as our two primary fire mutual aid. But we have an alarm, we have a 10 alarm run card that goes out further. So we go and that's something that I changed before. We were pretty heavily relying on district 14, but we have a Newton and we have a Needham pieces
of equipment that are like 10 minutes away. So instead of pulling a truck from seven, eight communities away, we're pulling from a community that's one away. So we, again, we have our, our immediate mutual aid. We do a lot of work with Framingham and Wellesley, we do a lot of work with Wayland, we do a lot of work on the turnpike with Weston Sherburn uses us a handful of times a year for mutual aid for an ambulance. Dover. This past, you've noticed that the uptick was a little bit on the mutual aid responses out of town. Dover was using us a little bit more this year
than they have in years past, but we pretty much will we do, we'll respond anywhere in the state and at the end of the day, we'll anybody around us, we'll come in. Speaker 1: And can you just briefly list the primary challenges that the department faces for staffing Speaker 20: Briefly? So I think one of the, one of the biggest challenges as I have right now is the, the, the speed with which we can hire and the available candidates, qualified candidates. It's getting harder and harder to find qualified candidates. So we're investing more and more in training those candidates to bring them up to where we're at. And then as far as staffing, I really, I think
that we're in better shape than some communities, but we still have some work to do to improve a few comparisons against the national standards. We are below national standards across the board, but our engine companies being staffed at three I think is a good start. And we have one that's staffed with two and then the ladder truck again staffed with two is not an effective company. So those are the two areas of my greatest concern is getting the two pieces of apparatus downtown. And when you look at our greatest fire hazards in the community, I'm less concerned with
the hazard of a building like the Avalon buildings up there because they're fully sprinkled buildings. They have multiple ways out. They have, they have a building that's current, it's modern, it's designed to protect them. So yeah, there's challenges that that could happen and there's definitely challenges and issues that can arise out of a facility like that. But the risk versus a fire in the downtown here, which can take out blocks because they're old construction, they're close to each other, they're wood, the streets are narrow. So trying to get to that district is definitely our
more challenging spot. Speaker 3: Okay, Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Thank you. Are there any other questions from members of the board? Thank you for a fantastic presentation. You have Speaker 20: A hand Speaker 4: Up on Zoom? Speaker 1: I wasn't planning on taking public comment. Okay, we're running the meeting behind Ms. Dorin, can you unmute your microphone? Speaker 21: Yes, can you hear me? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 21: I wanna thank Chief Skee not only for this presentation that I'm so glad I heard, but also for all that you and your firefighters do. Fire is my worst fear since I was a child.
I actually, I couldn't even light match until I was a grownup. I was so afraid of fire, a house next door burned down and so I, you all are my heroes. All first responders are, but especially firefighters and I happened to have placed one of the calls this year that led to the increase over last year's call numbers. I am still grateful for the service I received in the form of two firefighters in an ambulance and four in an engine. I did end up needing the ambulance to go to Newton Wellesley and really their level of professionalism and just kindness, it was top notch.
So thank them. I do have a question about the pie chart. In one of your earlier slides, the occurrence of multiple calls, the little pie section up with 13 calls is shocking. It seems unmanageable, but I'm wondering, can you give a sense just off the top of your head, what percentage of calls are fire related and 'cause those are more critical. Mine was not a fire related call, but that concerns me. I would hope we have enough, you know, of all vehicles and staff to address any and all fires in the town.
But do you have a sense of what percentage in that pie chart, can you speak to that just quickly? Speaker 20: I didn't actually pull that data point to look at, but I would say that a lot of times when we see a spike in call volume like that, the, the, the high numbers, when we, last year I think it was, we had a couple occurrences of 15 and a couple of 2122. Those are usually tied to weather related incidents that occur in town. More often than not they're probably skewed more towards the fireside in that particular case. But those two, those two episodes of 13,
I can't speak specifically if they were to which way they were a fire or EMS related. Speaker 1: Thank you Chief, we'll see you again in about a year. I'm not taking any more call. We're running behind. I'm sorry Mr. Scott. Next item on the agenda is a tax title update. Mr. Townsend, before we go to that, I would like to make an announcement, which I had meant, I had meant to make earlier in the meeting. If you're here for the hearing on Gab Gaab Gatsby's Chop House alcohol license. That's been continued to next week, seven 30, July 30 at 7:00 PM
and the hearing for relief alternative dispensary violation of adult use marijuana establishment license policy that has been moved to August 6th. So we won't be hearing those two matters. And Mr. Townsend, you're up. Speaker 22: Thank you Madam Chair, members of select board, John Townsend, deputy town Administrator and director of Finance, to give a quick update on the progress with the tax title as the memo of course center memo. I hope every everyone had a chance to take a look at that and I'm happy to report that the muni module
for tax title actually is working now. So we're fairly confident that we're gonna be, be able to move through the sequence of events with regards to the tax title issues coming up without any sort of problems with regards to the Muni module itself. Year to date collections, I apologize that paragraph is a little bit tortured, but what it's trying to say is that we, we've collected $1.403 million since our last report back in January. So our collections have continued to be strong
and the collector's treasurer office has been working with a number of residents to help them out with regards to paying off their tax title issues. So the outstanding receivable currently is about $3.5 million. Of course, this is a constantly changing number, but currently it stands that we're right around there about two 2,458 accounts. I'll make up that the two big segments of that number of course is First of all, the, the, the accounts
for prior years taxes, basically FY 19 to FY 24, 1 0.55 million. The, these are ones that we issued the demands on earlier, last or later last year. And we'll be going into the taking process in August for FY 25. We currently have 1.9 million outstanding. These demand notices will be issued in August as well. Deferrals balance of 3 380 $8,601 unfortunately. Whereas Munis has been behaving itself recently,
we still having problems with regards to the deferral module. So we are doing those by hand just to make sure it doesn't delay anything else. Also, these numbers, we have not backed out the subsequent taxes for people who are already in tax title. So there will be adjustment before we issue the demands and the takings to, to go to deal with that. So the calendar July 1st, we, we will be sending out the FY 25 demand notices August 14th. We do intend to, to start the intent to take,
that's the point where we actually publish the list of people that have outstanding taxes and that we intend to put into tax title. We publish that newspaper on the town website and also have the constables serve those particular individuals. And then August 28th is scheduled to be the actual taking where we actually take the taxpayer's properties and put them into tax title tax. Counsel will then put, put the notices on the registry of deeds within 30, within 60 days. Hopefully it'll be much quicker than that, but that's where we are With regards to the schedule,
we're currently on course to complete tax title by the end of August. Happy to answer any questions anybody has. Speaker 14: Mr. Evans? Speaker 9: Yeah, just a quick one, which is once it's in the tax taking status, I'll call it, what are the next steps to collect that? So could you walk us through that and remind me how that ensues? Speaker 22: Certainly. So once we actually take the property, there's basically a year's, a year's time to redeem
the property before we can go into land court and actually file suit to foreclose on the property. So during that, during that year's time, we'll try as much as possible to actually sit down with the individuals who are in tax title. And, you know, as you, you probably know and remember, we do have a, a, we do have a, a tax title program for agreements for payments. So let's try to get everybody in and get people into the agreement to get them started on payment programs to deal with the debt before we actually have to go and take their property.
Speaker 9: Okay. Thank you for the reminder Speaker 14: Ms. Wilner. Thank you. You may not have the answer to this, but if you have a, a sense of the $1.9 million that's outstanding from FY 25, is that more or less than we've had in the past? Speaker 22: So that, and I just, this is off the top of my head, so please don't quote me, but it's approximately a little over one 1%, about 1.1, 1.2%. So we're pretty much in line with what we've seen in previous years. Speaker 14: And just so I'm clear, again, I, I should know this
because I've looked at this a number of times, but the pe those people that are behind for FY 25, they have the next year or two before we put them in a tax title, is that correct? Speaker 22: No, we're gonna, we're gonna do the, the, they're gonna go along with the, all the rest of the folks in the previous years. So they'll be served with their demand notices on the 13th. And we have to wait 14 days before we do the intent to take, and they'll be included in that intent to take. Speaker 14: Alright. So on, on your schedule then, so it says August 28th is the proposal
for the tax taking. So that would include Yes. All of that $1.9 million? Speaker 22: Yes. That includes the, the would be the total of about 3.5 million. Probably a little lower by the time we get around to doing it, but yes, it'll be the entire, entire 3.5 million. Speaker 14: All right. So the idea would be that by the end of the month it says the FY 25 demand notice is issued. So you'd have a full list at that point of the, the people that have amounts outstanding. Speaker 22: Yes. We'll publish the list on August 14th. Speaker 14: So published the list of the intent to take,
Speaker 22: Yes. Speaker 14: Okay. So then people only have two weeks if they haven't somehow been notified of, you know, and, and I'm just trying to understand when they would be notified and how long they'd have to pay. Speaker 22: Well, they've already received their demand. Notice the people from FY 25, they'll get that on July 31st. And the folks that we served in the fall, they've already received their demand notice. So they'll all, they'll all having lease 14 days. In order to regards, before we sort of proceed,
Speaker 12: If I can also clarify this, is to get the parcels into tax title, which is also then filing at the registry of deeds. Once it's filed there, then they can still technically negotiate terms with the town to then still pay those taxes. It doesn't mean the town owns the property, it just means it's in the tax settle process. Speaker 14: No, and and, and I do understand that, and and there's advantages to actually having the property there can be go into tax title because then the interest can be waived, which it can't be unless it is correct. So I, I do understand. I just wanna make sure that the public understands you
that they get this notice and there's panic that they should probably be talking to the administration and understanding the process. Speaker 12: 100%, yes. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Schalka. Mr. Shago order. Thank you. Is there anyone else on the board who Ms. Ms. Pope? I do Speaker 5: Have one question. Thank you so much Mr. Townsend. I, my question was about the tax deferral module. Is it ever going? Is, is there an expectation that it will ever work or be reliable? Speaker 22: Well, un unfortunately there's a, about four
or five towns that are just it, it doesn't calculate the interest. Currently is is the main problem. So we're keeping it on Excel spreadsheet going manually and sort of monitoring what happens to the other towns. They try to work with us, hopefully they will get it up and running. So we will be able to use the module, but at the moment we just don't feel very confident that it's of, of any use. Understood. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 1: Any other questions from members of the board? I'll take questions from members of the public. Seeing none, I'd like to thank you very much Mr. Townsend, for hanging around so late
and for putting this together for us. Much appreciated. Speaker 22: Thank you. Speaker 12: Thank you John. Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Erickson for a update on five Auburn Street. Speaker 12: Certainly this, this will be a brief update, certainly happy to answer any questions. And it's really more, well, the board might already know some of the current processes for five Auburn in brief last time I think there was an update to the board, the, the pro the board, the project was still before the zoning board of appeals for the comprehensive permit, which is the permit that A 40 B or commonly referred to as a 40 B project, goes through
to receive decisions from the ZBA about moving forward, a commonly referred to as an affordable housing project. The ZBA rendered their decision. It was an approval for the project, the appeal period has since passed. And as of today there's been no appeals to the project, which means that it, it met a, a fairly significant hurdle when it comes to its pro process from a local permitting perspective. The comprehensive form has been issued in brief and there's been to date anyway, no appeals and we are past the appeal period.
So as far as where our knowledge is as of today, there is no appeals for the project and every has its comprehensive permit. There are still other permits that need to be comp be finalized such as any wetlands permits. Obviously building permits once if and once it goes for building permits. But that's a, that's a hurdle for the project from a permitting perspective. Next steps really are for the development team, which is not involved the town, it's the private developer that the board has a development agreement with to seek funding. A comprehensive permit's good for three years. Obviously it can be extended, I believe, through a process pending anything
that changes the state legislative process in the next couple years. But the project owner itself needs to now go and seek funding. A lot of what holds up the ability to seek funding are local permits and that it has the local permits, the project is more able to apply for various grants. Most of the funding for these types of projects comes through federal and state programs, some of which could be in flux, some of which are not. The state as, as I think has been reported at this board before and also is just in the news, has put many dollars
and borrowing dollars into creation of housing. So there's an expectation that some of those dollars could go into the programs that would then fund projects like this. They are competitive programs. It usually takes a little bit of time, sometimes multiple application rounds for a project like this to seek funding to then move forward with actually putting shovels in the ground. So from a transfer of ownership perspective, it's likely to be in the ownership of the town for a few more years until the developer can secure all the funding necessary for the project.
There are some local resources that the developer could apply for. The most likely one is the community preservation funding or Community Preservation Act funding. Doesn't mean that they're gonna get it, it just means they can apply for it. Just like any affordable housing or in the case of Community Preservation Act funding, there's three buckets of funding, historic preservation, affordable housing, and open space recreation. So there, that's an option for an application for this project as well. The project proponents, that's really where the project is right now. We, at the staff level continue to work with the developer
as we are obligated to under the development agreement to support any applications that they do have to various funding opportunities when they're at that time to seek funding. Some of the application rounds won't happen until its upcoming fall. So there's certain cycles for some of these state and federal affordable housing programs. And I believe they're also seeking tax credit programs, which is also a, a federal program, although I'm not sure if and how that's been AP impacted by some of the recent federal program changes. So really it's, it's a, it's a, it's a process
of seeking funding that the project proponents are gonna be starting to go through in the coming weeks, months, and then potentially a couple years ahead. The site itself, it's still secure. We do regular monitors. I believe we're out there at least on a weekly basis to check the interior of the building. Our Elephant R team through DPW, elephant R land facilities, natural resources, they do fairly regular site maintenance, although it's fairly limited because it's on active site. So it's not like it's a pristine site like town hall. It's, it's a, you know, it's, they do go out there
for regular mowings and what have you. We feel we've done most of the securing of the property, but if people see something, please say something. For example, we've removed old playground equipment, we've removed a dumpster that was there. Again, we encourage anybody who's out there on a daily basis, if you see something, please just send it into the office and we'll get somebody over there. And we know that there's also people parking in that area. We are actively looking at that as well. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson? Yes. Would you like to please? Thank you. If you could just introduce yourself and you don't have to give us your address, just
that you're a Nat resident. Speaker 2: Mark ton 32 L Street. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 2: 10. It, just a couple questions. Two minutes. Is that okay? Speaker 12: Just Speaker 2: Turn's complicated, which was right Speaker 12: Here. No, in the middle of course it says push. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 23: Thank you very much. Hope you can hear me now. So as it is now, as the board and Mr. Erickson have, has the town decided to just provide a few years for them to get the opportunities
to get the funding together? Is that, Speaker 12: So that's already, that's outlined in the development agreement that the board signed two a year and a half ago now that, that the developer has until they get their funding in place before the land transfer. So those were the terms of the development agreement from this select board Speaker 23: Is is, was that like a three year agreement once they got approval or how, how when's the deadline for the funding? Speaker 12: So the development agreement did not put a deadline for funding, but the comprehensive permit is a,
is for three years. Speaker 23: Okay. So, so this could take 3, 4, 5, 6 years or whatever. How long? Speaker 12: Potentially? Speaker 23: Potentially. Okay. I, I sat with a lot of envy this evening. Listened to the gentleman here giving the, talking about the proposal for the Johnson School. 'cause boy that didn't happen with us. There was some early stuff talked about and we had all kinds of things. It never went wide. There was the RFPI think we had four proposals and one was selected with the kind of a controversial vote.
I I just don't see the comparison of how we, and then, and then during the ZBA, I dunno if you've watched the video 'cause I didn't see you at the meetings. I got shot down a couple times. This will pass. I'm like, why am I here? Why did I been going to meetings for years if get rejected? I was just bringing up the density. The board. ZBA board did state, they think it's too dense. Yes. ZBA did state they think there should be more parking spaces yet it's approved. Is Speaker 1: I'd like a moment If, if and I want you to continue.
Yes. But I just wanna address while it's fresh in my mind, two of your comments. So you didn't see us at the meetings. 'cause that's inappropriate for Speaker 23: The No, I figured it was. Yeah, Speaker 1: I know that I've watched all of the meetings. Speaker 23: I I know you're very concerned. I think all you are. So I Speaker 1: And with regard to the robust process for Johnson versus five Auburn, nobody on this board was on the board when that process was designed. Correct. So I I would've loved to have seen that. I mean, Mr. Evans and I, that was our first year on the board for the vote. And Mr. Sidney was voted in shortly thereafter.
And so that was our first year on the board and we had absolutely no say over how the process was conducted. In fact, when I inquired of the board, could we send this out for another RFPI was told we're not doing that again. We've already done this. There was, there was a process, there was a committee. We're not doing that again Speaker 4: There. That was I think the fourth RFP that was issued for that. Speaker 1: I understand that. I just, I posed a question and that I'm just explaining what the answer was. Mr. Mr. Evans, just Speaker 9: One point of clarification, just a lot of the technology that we're now using
to evaluate Johnson School didn't exist at the time. We made this decision three plus years ago. Second thing is we didn't have the communications director who was shepherding this process through that. So Speaker 23: I I Speaker 1: Please go on. Speaker 9: I'm sorry. I think, you know, with the tools we have now, this, the only thing we can do is, is move forward with the tools that we have Speaker 4: And, and I think we learned something from the process that we're implementing now. We're this board is much more interested in public feedback
as we're constituted now than other boards that were able to be, frankly, Speaker 23: Well from my perspective, I don't think anybody who was on the board here now during that decision envisioned a hundred people in the scope of a project. When the proposals were sent out, the Natick affordable housing had 19 units, then they maybe expanded to 13 singles, still could have a little parking in the back, everything up front. Then it grew and then this, I think it was the path, the least resistance, it was done.
You have a professional group, they're good at what they do, but you know what, in the bottom line in the end, they're just absentee landlords no more, no less. They might have good intentions, but their absentee landlords coming in with 32 units without sufficient parking with increased density that people said is too much. And they agree that yet everything keeps getting pushed through. Why? Speaker 1: With reference to the NAT Affordable housing proposal. Yes. They proposed to put out an RFP and presented a
because it they weren't going to develop it. They got a developer to talk about this model. Correct. Yeah. And so the board was at that time, as it was stated in the meeting, reluctant to send it out for another RFP or to turn over care custody control to the Natick affordable housing trust. So that's what we were kind of left with. I'm not making excuses, I just wanna give you more information. Yeah. Speaker 23: But I have seen Metro West, I've looked on their websites, I've looked at their projects, I've visited a couple. They have mixed juices, mixed juice housing, some do market rates slash affordable
that could possibly bring down the density and available for increased parking. It seems like once this ball got rolling, even though you're saying, and I'm not being critical to any individual, but is it just too late? They get two years, four years, six years. This will get done with that scope of a project is there's no way to say that. Okay, we can treat Johnson this way. Fire got pushed through Mr. Sidney. You said at that meeting that if there was just a couple affordable housings with Trask and I'm not the hugest fan to Trask, believe me,
but I don't want, I prefer not a hundred people on a short dead end street going out to Route 16. It's gonna be not easy to get out. And Johnson is twice, three times the size of land or easy. They can have two or three entrances, but all of a sudden this gets pushed back. The ball got rolling, it's been rolling to the ZBA, even though they didn't say it was the ideal thing, it's gonna be there for a hundred years. The homes on the street have been there for 160 years. So is it too late to ever say we are not gonna give them extra funding.
This is not the ideal thing Mr. City. You said if there was just a couple units, you would've let some affordable housing and that could work. Maybe we could do a mix 8, 10, 12. This eight 10 for this have a smallest scale project. We can still keep some green space. All the stuff about the CPA, that's green space in the back. That border is the river. It connects the town to the south. Natick dam, it connect. It's all around there. So I just think why does it have to be too late? And I wouldn't wanna go out and give them any extra funding
because if they can't do it, are they really gonna be able to manage this effectively? Speaker 1: I'm sorry, could you I didn't understand that last part. Are they, Speaker 23: I mean, I'm just concerned about managing, if their budget's that tight and things that tight in the future, their track record of, of managing it, they don't have onsite everyday management. They acknowledge they won't have that. Speaker 1: Okay. So some properties do have, some of their properties do. Yes. When the, when the project is finished, it will be a for-profit entity. And the reason for that is because that's the way they qualify for, for they structure it that way.
Now, I don't know, you've said you've been on the website, but if you've visited any of their properties and I have visited a couple of them. A very large one in Speaker 23: Medway maybe? Yes. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah. Speaker 1: Really well maintained. Yeah. And so I I don't have that concern. What I will say is that three years from now, the development agreement talks about three years. Three years from now. If it's not built, then we ask them to come before us and tell us what their funding situation is. And in my opinion, that's an opportunity to readdress some of these concerns. But there's no opportunity between now and then because they have their permit and the developer agreement.
Speaker 23: CBA just follow through with your recommendations essentially. 'cause it was approved by the select board and they weren't gonna do anything to get in the way of it. Speaker 1: They did do a lot of hearings though. Speaker 23: I was at every one of 'em, believe Speaker 1: Me. I know, I know. I, Speaker 23: And, and I saw you speak and they said, this is, it's a done deal. It's late in the game, it's not gonna get stopped. That's was directed at me as I stood at this microphone saying we can make changes. I know there's tons of time went in, but we're talking a hundred years. This is the future. Maybe longer if it's well built. And I think we should do things with the not in a hasty way to get through.
And we should agreed. Go slow process. This was boom bang decided boom, bang, bang vote one vote controversial evening, had to come back again. It, it was not handled as well as it could have been. There could have been another RFP. We could have, it's maybe in 36 months if it's up to you folks, maybe we'll be back here talking again. But why do we have to have it, it got through the ZBA with flying colors. They made some changes with the back and the design. That's, I give credit,
but the bottom line, it was always about this number of people and the density. It was never about affordable housing. So I don't want get that off the table. I would rather see a half and a half and get the numbers down if that would help. Speaker 1: That's not their, they're a nonprofit. So they don't do that. They don't do that funding mechanism. The Speaker 23: The, they do have some different market rate and regular rate programs Speaker 1: And they testified before the ZBA and this board that the, the funding, if it weren't going to be 32 units, they could not make it financially work. And I do believe there was a meeting where they tried to find a consultant to work the numbers correct.
And they could not find one. Speaker 23: Correct. And I'm not disputing their numbers. Speaker 1: So what I would say is, I, I appreciate everything you're saying. I've given you about seven minutes to talk, which Speaker 23: Is, well, it's, I've been living there for 30 years. I underst understand that we've been, I've been going to meetings. I was a director of, I was chairperson of a board for one meeting back in the early two thousands. So I've been active in this for a long time. So seven minutes is not a very long time. Appreciate you not cutting me off. I do because I've been cut off here the last two times. I spoke well right in front of this board. Speaker 1: We, we really don't have the ability
to stay here till 11 o'clock at night. I'm ready Speaker 23: To leave in one minute and be done. Speaker 1: What, what I'm saying is seven minutes is a very long time for Speaker 23: Individual. I appreciate it. Believe me. Speaker 1: So you said you had one Speaker 23: Minute there people coming after me, but Speaker 1: I think there's at least one, but Right. If if you have a minute go, go ahead. If you just have one more minute. Speaker 23: Oh no, I I just wanna say it was just not equitable. What is going on at Johnson and what went on at five Robin? I wanna be on record for that and I don't see why it has to be too late. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Scott. Oh, Eddie, Speaker 10: Roger Scott 40 Water Street. I just wanna make a clarification here. We, I I was outta all of these hearings for
what we could do there with those four projects. And when the vote came down, we had the select board, which three members are still here that voted for the 32 units. The other two are opposed and no longer on the board. And I think it was a boondoggle, first of all, selling the property for a hundred dollars. And then now you have this thing where they're gonna get money from the CPA. I mean the CPA is nothing more than a tax on your real estate tax. It's foolishness. Absolutely. I think it actually is against the law
to override a proposition two and a half of the backdoor method. I mean, I think it's whole thing. Speaker 1: It's not against the law. It's enshrined in mass general law to have the CPA if a, if the town votes for it and the town did vote for it. So it's not against the law, but go ahead. Speaker 10: Well, the the point is not everyone is rich and, and you know, they're trying to survive and, and retire and in this town and, and, and making it harder for people to actually want to stay in Natick. You know, it's a, it's a great place. I lived here all, you know, since 1973. I've worked here for 30 years. I put things into the community. South Natick was very nice.
This thing here is gonna be a danger. It was, I wanted to address the fire chief there that, that he didn't get into this act where 20 foot wide street and axis, the, the next hydrant is down by the former Sacred Hot Church. So there's a safety factor. And I wanna say, when does a fire department get involved in the safety features of these? And so and so I'll, at the tail end of it, after everything's been decided, then all of a sudden this becomes how we do things in ick. I I I'm appalled at the whole thing.
I I I really is disre you disrespect Zaxby's is this town. You really do. And I I want you to know that. Speaker 1: Thank you for your comments. You've made abundantly clear that you find us to be inept and well that the entire process is not, has not been equitable. So thank you for your comments. Are there any other comments you have to make? Speaker 10: I don't know if I'm gonna call you inept, but Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 10: Maybe with a program in mind. And you know, when you get five people voting five, four on, on for somebody previously and this evening, and you have one person has an independent thought,
I think you work in cahoots. And that's all I wanna say. Speaker 1: I disagree. Thank you. So we'll move on to the next item, which is the Mr. Shago. Of course. I didn't see your hand up. Speaker 24: I'm sorry. Speaker 1: Take your time. There's Speaker 24: A reason for, don't say that. I've heard rumors that the affordable trust folks want to get rid of the, the contamination within that building. Is that just a crazy rumor I've heard because they don't own it. Speaker 1: Do you talk to Susan? Because I,
I had this conversation with her today. So the conversation I had with her, she asked me this, yeah, you two need to get together. So she asked me this Speaker 24: That's on me. Speaker 1: Goodness. She asked me this very question. They have discovered that there is hazmat remediation that needs to take place and it will cost $500,000. So they are, they have put in an application or a letter of intent to, with the Community Preservation Act group or the CPC to take some of the CPC money to fund that. So yes, that's true. It's not town money. It's money under care, custody and control of the community preservation. Speaker 24: But can they do that before they own the building?
Speaker 1: Yes. Yep. Speaker 24: Earmarked it. It's, that seems counterintuitive. If for instance, they don't get the money, Speaker 1: Mr. Erickson, would you speak to this? Speaker 12: So I think the question of logistics is what we're talking about here. So yes sir. They can certainly apply for the funds. There's no guarantee they'll get the funds. There's also no guarantee that because it's not, it's a cp it's the Community Preservation Committee decision. Actually it's ultimately town meetings decision to make the CPC only recommends funding to town meeting. And town meeting actually makes that vote of the c
of the use of the CPA funds Community Preservation Act funds. So Speaker 24: Arguably they would have to go before town meeting. Correct. In order to do this. Speaker 12: In order, in order if, if their application to the CPC Community Preservation Committee is advanced by the CPC town meeting ultimately has to vote. And that's for any Community Preservation Act fund expenditure appropriation. Now then the other part is can they do the remediation work in advance of the project? I mean, that would require an access agreement with the town
and we'd have to make sure that there's liability waivers. But yes, they could theoretically do that work in advance of the land transfer of the property transfer if they have funding to do it. I mean, it's not a negative on the town 'cause that's remediation of a building that, that somebody will pay for. So I don't see it being a negative on the town. If another entity wants to do remediation on one of our town buildings. Just for the record, we're I I I know there's, it's an older building. So in older buildings like that, there is the potential
and likelihood in this case for asbestos containing materials. There's no danger to the public, it's just in the building and as long as Speaker 1: It's, it's an art. Speaker 12: Correct. I'm just making that more for the public who might be watching at home. There's also the potential for lead paint that would need to be removed for a future project of the building. And there could be some other contaminants that we're just currently not even aware of. I don't believe there are any, for example, undergrad stores, tanks for oils. There are, were former oil tanks used there, but we've had them removed. Yes. So, but back to your initial point, can they,
they can absolutely apply for Community Preservation Act funding. Any recommendation from the community preservation committee goes to town meeting, town meeting ultimately renders that decision of the appropriation of CPA funds. Could they then do the work in advance? Yes, in theory they could do the work in advance. Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much Mr. Shago. Is there anyone online who has any questions or comments with regard to five Auburn Street? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is review of board and committee CH charges and the reports to the select board. This is just the beginning of a discussion. This is something we're not gonna finish tonight.
And I'd like to see us spend maybe a half hour on it and then move to the consent agenda if there are no objections. So what I did today was to go through the board charges as they currently are on the thank you as they currently are on the, the individual board and committee's webpage. What I tried to do is standardize, I had terms in there, but the board, it already says at the bottom whether there's, you know, what the term length is. So what I did was have the composition, the charge, something else, I don't remember.
And then the reporting authority is a select board. Minimum qualifications. Oh, minimum qualifications. 'cause some have some some don't. Yeah, some may wanna add some, I don't know. What I'd like to do is ask the chairs and the the committee, the ZBA and the con. I mean we have one from con com that talks about what is, what is really required to operate efficiently, ideally. Okay. I'd like to get one from the ZBA and from any other committee. That's well those two primarily I think, I think that's important.
And the one thing we do not have from them, and I'm not proposing this now, but would like to add this is the time commitment. So to have a category of time commitment so that when people look at these boards and think that they might be interested, they have a sense of what, what it does, how many people they are, how long the term is, whether there are term limits, because there are two that have term LI limits and what the time commitment is for some of it, some of the committees it's very minimal. For others it's very intensive. So for example, con con meets twice a month in addition to field visits or site visits.
And in addition to doing outside research, there are ones that just meet four times a year. So I wanted to put that before you so we had something to react to. I'm not wed to this model. I'm happy to redo undo, just looking for some guidance from the board about how you want to do this. Speaker 5: Well I I really appreciate the layout in looking at this to start. I like the idea of adding time commitments. Speaker 1: Okay. That's something that I think once we finish this process, sending out an email to the boards and committees and asking them to give us a short description, three
to four sentences about what the time commitments are and then add that. I think that would be really effective. Speaker 5: One other, one last thing I was gonna say is, and you you gave us that breakdown of like the monthly, the monthly calendar. I think if we come to terms with like maybe the cadence of report, whether it's whether we determine it's in person or, you know, however many times a month. I think that could be good to put in here too. Like, you know, this, this committee is required to report, you know, once a year, twice a year, whatever.
And typ and it typically happens Speaker 1: In these months Speaker 5: In right, in these months. And it typically happens either through in person or through like a memo or something like that to kind of give them a, a clue. Speaker 1: So one of the things we don't have here that I just wanna mention, and I actually had a chair of a board shocked and did not know that every one of these boards and committees are required to submit a written report of their annual activities by January 15th of the year for the previous year. So that really needs to be included as well. Speaker 5: And we do request that from all boards and committees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you do, but it's really important, I think that the select boards set it out. Correct. Yeah. And just, I, I don't know how this person did not know that having served as chair for three years, but in any event, Mr. Evans, I interrupted you. Speaker 9: Oh, that's okay. One of the things that I, that I was thinking about as Ms. Pope was speaking is there, there are committees that, that are appointed by us. There are some that are quasi judicial ones like the Affordable Housing Trust and the ZBA.
So I think we need to have different language for when those people come before us, for example, I would like, just off the top of my head, the Conservation commission, we, we have a lot of things that come under our purview that would be nice to know about ahead of time. And for them to give us like a, a twice yearly update, I think would be sufficient. I also think I'd like to see, you know, maybe that's, that's
what we do for ZBA and affordable housing trust there. They're just moving parts. You know, that, that, at least from, from my perspective, I don't have visibility to, and I, we, we have enough that we have to go search on. Speaker 1: Do you, do you mean the Affordable Housing Trust or the ZBA and con com? Speaker 9: I I would say six months e intervals for each of those would be good in Speaker 1: My opinion. All three of them. Yeah. Affordable housing trust con com and ZBA. Yeah. As long as it's understood by the board
that we cannot ask them about matters that are before them, that's inappropriate. Speaker 9: Yeah, I understand that. The, the other is probably the economic development committee. 'cause I, I really have zero visibility. Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about that committee tonight. Speaker 9: That's just my off the top, off the cuff Speaker 4: Reaction. Madam Chair. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 4: I would strongly recommend that we merge the cable advisory and IT advisory boards. My understanding is that they are the same makeup right now. They meet together, they do both kinds
of business when they meet. It seems to me that the way they've operated over the past several years, there's no reason to have two separate committees. Speaker 1: What would you call, so this is Information Systems and Cable Advisory. Yeah. What would you call it? Speaker 4: Well, frankly, I, Speaker 1: Cable and Information systems advisory boards. Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay. Probably And, and in some sense Cable Advisory is becoming more and more moot as people disconnect. Sure. So, you know, they go, you know, they unplug their TVs.
Speaker 14: The the only thing with that Rich is like the information advisory board is under the NA bylaws and it's defined there. So if, if that's a proposal, there might need to be some bylaw changes, Speaker 1: A change that could be a possible warrant article. Speaker 4: Yeah. It's a fairly minor one I Speaker 14: Think. No, no, I understand. But if, if this is something that you're proposing to do, we have a couple weeks to do a Speaker 12: Warrant and potentially sponsor a warrant article this Speaker 4: Fall. Speaker 14: That's what Speaker 4: I'm saying. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, let's do that. Yes. I I really think we've talked about that a couple of times already. Yep. Yep. And I want to really just surface it
as something to do. Yep. Speaker 14: And we got a couple weeks. Speaker 4: Yeah. How would you like to bring it a warrant article's really simple. It's the, it's the actual motion that gets difficult. Speaker 12: Well, one, one thing to consider from the warrant article's perspective is maybe removing it from the bylaws just completely, I don't know the context by which that was put into the bylaws, but is it as relevant now as it once was? I suspect it was put in when information systems was still becoming a thing. Speaker 4: It's now not only that, we also used to, we also used to have all, everything was, you know, hard servers on site.
Exactly. And that's no longer true. We're almost all cloud. Yeah, Speaker 12: Good point is the ease, the motion could become easier. Rich, to your point. Speaker 4: Well, yeah, the motion could become easier. So Speaker 1: I, what I would like to do is, yes, Ms Speaker 14: So this is a, a great first step, but my ask on this, what is the purpose of defining these charges? Is it something that's going to be internal to the board or is it gonna be publish on the website? On the website. Okay. Because if that's the case, there's also currently now the descriptions on the website
and in some cases the description and what we have here for these charges overlap. So I'm thinking, and I, I'd be, I'd be happy to do this. I think we need to look at both in one document. And so Speaker 1: They're actually here. I cut and pasted them. So where you see strikeout, that's where I've stricken what's on the website where you see red. That's what I've added. Okay. So for example, the audit advisory, but yeah, or you could just put 'em in one document. That's, that's totally fine. And Speaker 14: It isn't the same because like the Affordable Housing Trust says the Affordable Housing Trust was formed in
February, 2008 through Tommy. I'm just saying that I Speaker 1: Think, yeah. So why don't you do that? That would be great. I'd, I'd like to go through, since Ms. Pope brought up the reporting frequency and get everyone's feeling on. So I can just insert that in this document and then I'll send it to you, Ms. Slager. Speaker 14: All right. And then the, the other part is the minimum qualifications. I'm a little torn on that one un unless there's some real statutory requirement for that. Because I think I'd rather see something like preferred experience or preferred qualifications. That's good. Because it's, you know,
I don't wanna be screening people out. That might potentially Speaker 1: Be good. That sounds great. That I think that's a great idea. Speaker 9: What did, you could say desired, Speaker 14: Preferred, or des desired. Speaker 1: And if it's required by statute, say pursuant to, Speaker 14: Yeah, if there's something that is required by statute that is a requirement, fine. Put that in. I don't know that there are any, but Speaker 4: The Audit advisory committee Speaker 1: Commission on disability does Speaker 4: Are by bylaw Speaker 1: And Commission on Disability. Speaker 14: Does the Commission on disability does. That's right. Speaker 1: Con com articulated minimum qualifications or we can call them preferred backgrounds in a letter sent
to the board when we were making those appointments. Speaker 4: I do like the idea of, of including time commitments. The audit advisory committee, time committee commitment is about one meeting a month for about an hour. Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna get to that. Let's go through this and put in what the reporting frequency is. So there's, Mr. Evans said for Affordable Housing Trust, he thinks twice a year. What do you guys think about that? I agree with that. Okay. Any comments? I, Speaker 14: I, I don't know. So in, in some ways I think that given that all these boards are required to produce our annual report, that that almost serves as,
you know, we, we can all read these and we can make sure that we get distributed on those before it goes into the town report. 'cause you know, there's a, a lag time. Speaker 9: I'm Speaker 14: Sorry. So I wouldn't say two times a year. I would say make sure that we get all these reports that we can read them. And if we have, if we think that there's a need, you know, then maybe we can increase the frequency. But I would tend to default to once a year. Speaker 4: Yeah, Speaker 9: I I, I'm coming around to that view because if, if, if we insist,
you know, we, we haven't really enforced this and we haven't really asked people for this, you know, it's sort of been there and if we sort of socialize this and say we're expecting an annual report on this, if we're not getting that, that's when we can sort of make the adjustment and say, all right, you know, clearly that message was not received. Maybe we need to have, you know, twice a year for I'll, I, I'll, I won't, it's the wrong word, but it's the offending boards
and committees get the, get the twice a year. Speaker 4: Right? That's right. Speaker 9: So Speaker 1: Maybe we don't even talk about this. Maybe we just put reporting frequency as written report due to town administrator's office by January 15th for the on activities of the previous year. Speaker 9: All committees. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: And then when we get those reports in the end of February, which is when they come rolling in most of them. Alright. We can go through them and look at them and say whether we wanna schedule somebody to come before and talk. Okay, Speaker 14: Yeah, that's true. It's mid January that they're due. Right. January 15th.
Speaker 4: It's per bylaw. It's outlined on the bylaw. It's like January 15th, right? Yeah. Speaker 14: Yeah. And they come in at the, Speaker 4: Donna usually sends out a note saying, Hey, don't forget to write yours. I get it every year. Speaker 14: Not Speaker 5: Everyone does. I feel like as long as we can, you know, and when needed, say, you know, as needed, I don't know if this is a compelling people to come to the select board, but when I think about, you know, some of the issues that may be going on, we may need to hear from these boards more. Yeah. Yes. In just on the annual basis. Yeah. And, and we need to be able to do that in some fashion. Yeah.
Speaker 9: And you're, you're hitting the point where I'm sort of evolving to, which is that there are, there are gonna be committees where just an annual report is just fine. There are gonna be others where our interaction for as a board with that committee is more frequent and we need more information on it that we're not getting. But does that need to be a formal communication? It probably doesn't. Speaker 4: Well, and then there are some, some committees which are specifically advisory to the select board,
which we should be hearing from whenever they have advice Speaker 14: Or whenever we need advice. I mean Speaker 4: Around Speaker 14: Right. It, it could be that, you know, something is, is happening that involves a particular committee where, you know, like you said Kristen, that we might wanna hear from them more frequently. Speaker 9: Yeah, I I I think we're setting our ourselves up for failure if we just say, you know, do it twice a year. Okay. Speaker 14: Yeah. I mean we don't, I don't and we're gonna run out time. We don't have the time to do that. Not the Speaker 9: Time. And it might be the wrong interval. Right. Speaker 14: But I think if, if we formalize a process where we get all
of these committee reports at a certain time and maybe have an agenda item, who do we wanna have come before us and discuss that? And then we can say, yeah. Oh, we need to hear from the Affordable Housing Trust. Yeah. But you know, we don't need to hear from the Cultural Council. So, I mean, no offense, no offense, but maybe there's a, you know, that goes on our calendar that once a year we decide who we need to hear from. 'cause that may change from Ear Dear year. Yeah, Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. Well, and, and my policy, the, the audit advisory committee has a select board member. It happens to be me. My policy has been,
every time we meet I report the doings and if there's a specific recommendation, I'll come, I'll, I'll ask for a main agenda item to discuss that recommendation. And that way the board, the, the select board is always aware of what the going on and if there's this particular piece of advice that, that needs to be considered, I'll ask, I'll ask the chair to put it on an, on an agenda to discuss. And I think for some of the advisory boards, that's probably the appropriate way to do it. Speaker 14: Okay. Speaker 4: And, and when I send a memo out, it doesn't have
to be voted on, right. It just says to get to all the members and then, sorry, you know, maybe be put on the agenda under correspondence so the public can see it. Speaker 1: So what I wrote is just gimme some feedback on this language. And this isn't final, this is just a first draft of something that's gonna go on for several months. Written report due to town administrator's office by January 15th. And in-person reports as as requested. Speaker 9: That's good Speaker 1: Thoughts. Speaker 14: Yeah, that's good. Okay. But again, I think we need to formalize our process on that to make sure that, that we review them. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 4: Yeah. So put something on the calendar for the end
of February to review the, to to, to Speaker 9: That's Speaker 4: Discuss which boards we're going to ask to report Speaker 1: And then schedule 'em. Speaker 9: Yeah, that's good. Speaker 1: Okay. So we've, we've pretty much, Speaker 9: Excuse me, Speaker 1: Nail down the reporting frequency part. Do you guys wanna talk about actual charges or do you wanna wait until we have the current charge and the rewrite side by side? I'm open to either. Speaker 9: I prefer the latter. Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. Sounds good. Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so too. Speaker 1: Then what we'll do is
all of you have a copy of, actually I'll send a copy of this with the reporting frequency inserted. And Linda, when you have it done, just let me know and we'll get it on a calendar. Speaker 14: Yeah, I need the original so I can Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna send it to you. Word document. Thank Speaker 4: You. Can I suggest that as you guys go through it, I can give you the audit advisory time commitments, but like start to fill in time commitments. So we know we're gonna, Speaker 1: Why don't you give me the audit? I, I'm gonna write to the chairs and ask them. So since you're here, why don't you tell me the time commitment for the audit? Yeah. Speaker 4: Time commitment. It's approximately one meeting a month
for approximately an hour and sometimes more, sometimes less. Speaker 14: So I think the part that's missing about that, that's meeting time, but that doesn't, right. That doesn't cover any of the outside work time. There's Speaker 4: Very little outside work time for Speaker 9: Advisory. That, that's a good point is segment the two just say in-person meeting and outside research time. Speaker 14: Yeah. 'cause that, and, and that can be highly variable depending on what's going on with the committee. Speaker 5: Absolutely. I think. Well, and thank you Catherine for reaching out to the, I mean Madam Chair for reaching out to the chairs because that, I agree with that greater picture,
the holistic picture of what the time commitment is on, on the particular committee or board that is needed. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Sounds good. Great. So we have that front for audit and I just inserted that in this document. And just for the public's notice, I'm working very diligently with some of our boards and committees that are not fully accessible remotely or hybrid and hoping to change that. Also working to get email addresses that are ensuring that every member serving on a board or committee has a personal email address separate and apart from, that's only for their board
and committee work, which simplifies FOIAs and then making those available where it's appropriate. Speaker 5: Good. I know a lot of people are gonna be excited about Speaker 1: That. That's exciting. I mean it's, it's a process. This has taken months. This is not something that, that happens overnight given, given the amount of work that's before the board. Yeah. So thank you. It looks like we have done as much as we can with this. Any other comments on, on process or other information to, to bring on Speaker 9: That's good, good progress. Speaker 1: One thing I want to mention and would love feedback from the board on is there's been much discussion about term limits.
There are two committees that by statute have term limits. I think that's the cultural council and the Commission on disability or the council on agent one one or the No, it's the council. Council and Agent Aging. Aging and the Cultural Council. Okay. So I think for both of them, members can serve two terms consecutively. They have to step off and then they can reapply. What is the, what are the thoughts of the board on term limits for any of these boards? Speaker 4: Madam Chair? Speaker 1: Yes, Speaker 4: I am generally opposed to term limits
except in specific cases where there's some statutory need and primarily because the, we, we have a tough time finding volunteers. If we term limit people boards are going to not be able to find people. And as we reappoint people as the board, you know, for where the board is the appointing authority, you know, we can use our judgment to say, is this somebody that you know, do we want new blood on this,
on this border committee? And so in that sense, there is some control by an elected body on how often, how often, and how long people serve. Sometimes it makes sense for people to serve for a long time. Sometimes it makes sense to term limit. I think of the FIN com. Anybody who does a full 12 years in the Fin FinCon, which is the term limit, is a superhero. I thank you Richard. I could only do 10. I couldn't take it anymore Speaker 5: Only.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, in that case it's, there's a good reason for a term limit is you just can't, it's too much work. It's a lot of work. Yep. You know, in terms of boards that have specific qualifications, the audit advisory committee requires that people, at least two members have CPAs. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 4: And, you know, can't term limit those. In on other boards we have judgment, is this person sinking into this board as a power play or do they need new blood?
We, we can handle that as a board and other, you know, future makeups of the, of the select board can and should do the same. Speaker 1: Anyone else? Speaker 5: I do think term limits are not, they, I don't think they can be specific across the board or blanketed across the board. I, I want to just check into something you said, Mr. Sidney, you said if we do have term limits, we're not gonna get new people. Speaker 4: Well that's been our experience. It's been very hard to fill these boards.
Speaker 5: So are we, are we thinking, is it the same thing as like the boards we've been appointing over the last month or so and there have been contested seats for new appointments? Is that what you're referring to? Because it seems to me that even though these term limits, even though there's not term limits in particular places, we are having contested candidates to be appointed to these boards Speaker 4: On the consent agenda. We have five appointments uncontested, most of them
are already on these boards. It, when there are contested things, that's when we get to apply our judgment. And for example, when we appointed the ZBA, we put some new blood on the ZBA. Right. A co Speaker 1: Couple of comments about this. There may be a perception in the public that without term limits and the same person being on the board for 30 years, why should I apply? So that may discourage, I don't believe in term limits for all of these because some of them require a great deal of institutional knowledge and experience. But most of them, I think,
you know, most of them don't have necessarily requirements. I wanna point out though, there's about six boards that are not, don't have the full amount of people and we haven't gotten applications for them. So it's, we we can't figure out it's chicken or the egg or what causes what. Yeah. So what I think we should do is focus on specific boards and committees. If somebody believes there needs to be a term limit, that's what I wanna hear. We have no control over the Affordable Housing trust. That's an independent legal entity. So going forward, yes. Mr. Mr. Evans. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I just wanted to reiterate that. Putting out the information on the committee requirements, frequency of meeting and what the time commitments are, I think this goes a long way to getting more people interested in doing this. That coupled with the fact that we are giving people a fair shake if they're interested in that, we're giving them a fair shake in the interview process. We're looking at them closely. There is a lot to be said for institutional knowledge. There is also a, a lot to be said for,
for a new blood and energy. We appointed somebody to the ZBA who has new energy and showed a, a considerable interest in that. We appointed another person to the Affordable housing trust, who at least three of us believe brought something additional and new to the, the trust. You know, those to me just speak volumes because we're, we're not, you know, just going down a list and say, yeah, yeah, same, same, same.
We're just saying, show us your qualifications, show us your interest. What do you feel you can contribute through that board or committee. And I think we're being honest with ourselves by saying, you know, this person is willing to learn, has invested time and has the interest. You know, and one of the questions also in this processes that has come out that I I was not aware of is the, the ability to be an associate member on some of these committees. And I think that might be something that we want to add
to our description of the committees because there are some committees where there's a, you know, you look at the list of things we'd love to, for you to have and it's daunting. But if we say, Hey, yeah, the, if you're interested in this, Speaker 4: Go learn the ropes. Speaker 9: Go learn, learn from the experts. And you know, nobody wants to do these things forever. You know, we all have lives get on with, but Speaker 4: Yeah, I also, I also want to say, unless there's a statutory term limit, I don't really think it's wise for us as a board to bind future makeups of the board.
Yeah. To, you know, reapp to, to stop reappointing somebody who might be really terribly qualified on some of these boards, Speaker 1: Ms. Wilger. Speaker 14: Yeah. I, I think I'd love to have the problem where we have too many applicants and we might want to, you know, prioritize getting new blood. I think that we're doing a really a, a much better job about publicizing some of these openings. You know, we're, we're, we've got them not only listed on the website, but, you know, we have things that can go out.
We announce them at meetings. So, you know, I'm hopeful that maybe we will get more applicants, but I think that the term limits is maybe a problem that we don't have to address just yet. That I, I would really hope that we can increase our, our pool of candidates. And I would love to be able to say we don't have any of these on the, on the consent agenda, but agreed. I don't think we're there yet. Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Wiler. Anyone else for term limits with regard to the, the comment that Mr. Evans made about the board appointing
somebody to the ZBA? I don't think it for, from, from my vote. The reason I voted for that person is because she had attended two years of ZBA meetings. She had come before the board in public speak to, to talk about what her concerns were. She had a, a relatively good sense of what she needed to know and what she didn't know. And so that's a board where it's a steep climb. I've served on that board. If you don't know land use law, it is a steep climb. That first year was painful for me. Yes. Speaker 14: I'm wondering if there's a way that, maybe it's not preferred qualifications,
but a way to say that these, some of these boards are accessible to people that are new, that don't have prior experience that, you know, like you said, some of these you really do need to, to understand, and it's unlikely that you're gonna be appointed if you haven't done your homework, if you haven't attended the meetings before. If there's a way to, to, you know, color code it in terms of, you know, level of expertise required. I don't know. I mean, maybe that's what we were getting at toward minimum qualifications, but there's, there's other boards where anyone is,
is welcome to apply and it's, it really, you know, there's no prerequisites in terms of prior involvement or familiarity with certain things. Well, Speaker 4: I think, I think what Mr. Evans pointed out about associate membership gets to some of what you're talking about. So if we put something on the, Speaker 1: Some of them have them, but the only one that, so ZBA has associate members, but they're not allowed to, that's already in their, their charge. And the description, the Affordable Housing trust, since it's independent of the town, they just created this, they suddenly had more people applying, which would never happened in the 18 years that's existed.
And they said, let's find roles for these people. So I don't think any of the others have that great sort of whatever with regard to, you know, with Speaker 9: Yeah, Speaker 1: With regard to, you know, fresh thinking and neat ideas and, and creative thinking. If you're on a quasi judicial board whose decisions are appealable and are gonna cost the town legal fees, you don't want creativity. You want somebody who understands what the requirements are, making sure, you know, 40 chapter 40, make sure you,
you understand that the zoning regulations. But yeah, I would welcome that on things like Speaker 4: Con Con would be a great place to have associate membership and Speaker 9: They, that's what they said there in their interview. Speaker 1: We'll have a a, a meeting with Mr. Gardner tomorrow. So I'll I'll bring that up. Speaker 9: Yeah, no, it was, it was Speaker 4: Definitely, and then if we put, if we can put, you know, if, if on any of these boards where the learning curve is steep, if we can get those boards to agree to, you know, have people be associate members to learn the ropes, that gives us, you know, A-A-A-A-A-A, what do you call it?
A, a back, a Speaker 9: Back developing bench. Speaker 4: A back, yeah. A bench to a point from Speaker 9: Maybe the avenue to go with this is, it is not a hard and fast requirement to say, you know, thou shalt have associate members, but we can plant the seed with, with some that, that might be appropriate to say, you know, what do you think about having associate members to get more people involved and get them to understand, you know, at the very least,
you're gonna have a more informed group of people in the public and, and whether, whether that they end up becoming associate members or not. You know, we had an example tonight of somebody on the Net zero committee who said, you know, we've been listening to the meetings in the last, since the beginning of the year, and, you know, the same thing that Catherine was talking about in the ZBA is, you know, getting involved, seeing what's what, seeing how that they might fit into that position.
And you can have almost a, a, I hesitate to say a training, but it kind of is to, to attend the meetings, to, to garner whether you're interested in, in, in doing this is the requirements of the time commitment requirements specify. So you kind of, you're on training wheels and you say, all right, this is how long the meetings go and this, these are kind of the report outs that they're, that they have to investigate and yeah, I'd be game for that. Or, you know, the others might run screaming, you know. Just
Speaker 1: So we've hit a half hour for this. I'd like to go to the consent agenda. I'll send out this amended document to everyone. And Linda, if you could, I, I didn't change the minimum qualifications to like a preferred experience. If you can change that, and I'm not even sure if all of the categories are in order the same order for each one. I'm not even sure it's, but I will send that to everyone. Thank you for the next time it's on the agenda. And Madam chair, Madam Clerk, if you could read the consent agenda. Yes. Speaker 5: The consent agenda reads Item a approve request
to occupy a public way for the 26 annual flu D 5K for autism on October 26th, 2025. Item B, appoint Abigail Shims to the Design Review Board as the Natick Center Associates representative for a team for a term ending June 30th, 2028. Item C, appoint Michael R to the historical commission for a term ending June 30th, 2028. Item D, appoint Michael r Fette to the Design Review Board
as the historical Commission's representative for a term ending June 30th, 2028. Item E approve Request to occupy a public way for the Jimmy Fun Walk on October 5th, 2025. Item F, nominate Corin, ISRA Isra and Catherine Condon. Grace to the Leonard Morris Grants panel for terms expiring May 31st, 2028. Item G approved North Main Street. Banner request for the Natick 180 for recovery month. September 25th, 2025 to September 21st, 2025,
Morris Institute for Band Books Week October 5th to 2025 to October 11th, 2025. The Natick Art Association for Open Studios Week, October 13th, 2025 to October 20th, 2025. The Natick Community Organic Farm for Harvest Dinner on September the eighth, 2025 to September the 14th, 2025. Item H approve, request for exemption for town bylaws. Chapter 41, section four, Duncan McDonald.
Item I appoint Miriam Achenbach to the cultural counsel for a term ending June 30th, 2028. And item J, appoint Randy Johnson to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for a term expiring on June 30th, 2027. Speaker 9: I'd Speaker 4: Like to pull item G please and explain after we vote. Yeah, Speaker 14: It's the same thing, right? Yeah, Speaker 4: I Speaker 1: Got it. Madam Clerk, do you, do you move items A through J without the, except with the exception of G? Speaker 5: Would we pull something from misspelling? Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 5: Okay, item B, Natick Center Associate Associate is misspelled.
Speaker 1: Okay. Pulling Item B And item G, which has a typo and move. Speaker 5: Move, yes, I move the item A through J, excluding B and G. Speaker 14: Second. Speaker 1: Moved by Ms. Pope, seconded by Ms. Wilger. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. A. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 5 0 0. Ms. Mr. Sidney, could you speak to item G? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. There's a typo on the, on the agenda for the Natick 180 schedule. It's September 15th through the 21st.
So I move item G with that correction. Speaker 14: Second Speaker 1: Move by Mr. Sidney, seconded by Ms. Slager. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And any opposed? Item G passes 5, 0, 0. Speaker 5: And so for item BI move, we approve it with the correction to associate Speaker 1: Move by Ms. Pope. Seconded by Mr. Bruce. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I passes 5 0 0 town administrator updates. Speaker 12: Not tonight. You've had a lot to do. Thank you. I'll provide updates via email to the board
and then we can, anything that needs to go in the public record, we'll get there. Thank you. At the next meeting, Speaker 1: Select board updates. Speaker 4: I just wanna note that I'm heading to the advocacy day up at the Y on Friday. So if anybody else is going, I'd be happy to give 'em a give 'em a ride. Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you. Do you mean that for the general public or just the board? Speaker 4: No, what's Speaker 1: I just want point of clarification. I, yeah, no, Speaker 4: If somebody from the board is going, oh, because we specifically got, Speaker 12: Should meet you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 5: Oh, one small update. I, I have office hours tomorrow at the community senior center from 9:00 AM
to 10:00 AM So I look forward to talking with you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So Speaker 14: Move second. Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Is there any other business? Speaker 14: Just a question about the correspondence, since that's a new item for me. Do we do anything about that or, Speaker 1: Nope. It's just for the public to see it. Speaker 14: Just for the public to see it. Okay. Speaker 1: And we respond. You know, the chair responds to correspondence on behalf of the board and copies the board. Speaker 14: Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you, Linda. I'm sorry I didn't hear moved. Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I moved. He seconded. Speaker 1: Moved by Mr. Sydney. Seconded by Mr. Evans. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Call the meeting. Speaker 4: You're opposed? You can stay here nine 19.