Speaker 1: Thank you all for contributing to what I'm sure based on our group experience. It was a lively discussion, so we'll try to summarize each of the group's findings and see what overlaps and commonalities they have. As I, as I said to our group, this is one more step towards trying to find the right mix of things. It's not perfect. It's, it's kind of like making sausage, right? It's, it's not gonna be pretty.
We're gonna have some fits and starts, but we're all gonna eventually get to a point where we, we both eliminate things that we don't think are feasible and get to more of, Hey, yeah, this is feasible and maybe if you combine it with this, we, we will have a winner. So thank you again for being here and, and being such great contributors. So with that, we'll start with group number one, which is I think Kristen, Speaker 2: Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Kristen Pope
and I had the pleasure of moderating and leading group one, affectionately known as the hub. And so the group was excellent and dynamic in their point of view and as well as their engagement with the options that are given. I wanna first say that my group acknowledged that while the board is not perfect and the options are not perfect, it's really hard to get to a place of, I would say, harmony at this juncture. And so I just wanna start there and kind of, you know, give that disclaimer
because we got to a point where configuration of the options was tough. The two options that my group, that the hub seemed to draw be most drawn to were number three about the, the community center nature space. And I'm not gonna remember the number Dina or somebody who is close to the board, if you can remember the art and imagination space Eight. Thank you. Thank you Matt. So those were the two that my group felt the closest to and the reasons being were
because they see this, this building and this area as an opportunity for to be a gathering space. So many remarked on how that is, how they met their neighbors. There were gathering spaces, there were dog parks, there were opportunities for neighbors to come and dwell and descend and congregate together. And some of those spaces have been lost. And so the hub kept coming up, a gathering space, a meeting space. And from all ages we had a great group where we had youth all the way into seasoned seniors.
So the next big takeaway was that most of my group at it seemed like most of my group who spoke are not in favor of the sale of land. And one of the things that I want to reiterate, and I think we could all reiterate, is that that's not a final configuration. It is, it's a potential option, but it's not a final configuration. And so that we definitely had nuance and notes to break that down into and to say, listen, we may like the community nature space,
but we don't want the sale of land. But there's more time to talk about that. Another big thing that came outta my group is that they're hoping that with the, with the notes from these scenarios, we come up with a option 11, 12 and 13. And what that means is we come up with some remixed version of the, an option and a new configuration to those options that is more palatable to the masses. One of the things that was brought up was afterschool activities is that that's something that parents and families or saying that is desperately needed and,
and not just in the Johnson area but just natick wide, that there's a lot of afterschool activities that are needed, not necessarily sport related and that this could be an opportunity to meet that need. Another big call out was the desire to unbundle some of these configurations, unbundle the fiscal components to them calling out that operating piece that if we do create a community center, is there money for programming? Is there money also budgeted for operating costs?
And to make sure that we are thinking of those as well. I will also share, let's see here, selling land. Okay. Oh, and then a really, really great perspective that was shared was about how this best services both the town as well as our businesses, because this area is downtown, some of the, the options that were chosen could not just only benefit the community but also benefit the businesses.
That means foot traffic, that people don't just come and leave, but they come and stay, they come and spend. And that would be a benefit to not just that area and the community, but also to the town as a whole and to our businesses. Again, we had a really dynamic, awesome conversation. Dina? My yes. Is there anything that I'm missing that you think I should call out? Speaker 3: I have not organized my tape, but I think we got a lot of the same themes that I have. Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: Thank you Kristen. And on behalf of group number two,
we didn't get a cool name, so we'll have to take a vote for that. So we had a very, very good discussion and I, I think to sum up in, in one sentence what the, the sentiment of the group was, there were a lot of things that people felt strongly about not doing. There were a lot of things that they feel felt had overlap between the choices. So a lot of our opinions from
that group we're based on that. It was almost universal. I think it was eight out of 10 people who said don't sell the properties for any reason whatsoever. They feeling was that it would be shortsighted. You get short money from the sale and it just wouldn't be worth doing. Their sentiment, and I think Kristen alluded to this, it is some of the scenarios overlapped and they could be combined into maybe three or four options.
So for example, you had young adult community center and a few others that could be subsumed within one overarching umbrella type thing. There was a lot of interest in maintaining the sports and recreation field, in particular, the baseball field that has recently, I think in the last two years been rehabilitated. There was also expressed a need for having a walkable space within this area of town that it's a very built up area of town
and it's a, I'll call it a refuge for the residents. And that feel is something that the residents want to see preserved. They described it as a park area for residents of all ages, which I think is an accurate one regarding a swimming pool. Everybody thought swimming pool's a great idea, but not a Johnson It was almost universal and it was pretty emphatically, no. So I think that was a good data point.
Another big point of emphasis was the need for after school and youth programs that there's a, we all know the, the situation with coal center is, is i'll, I'll be kind and say it's aging rapidly and we need to figure out what we do with that facility and we, we may need a new facility in the, in the area of Johnson School, one of the questions that was asked was, can you guarantee
that the property won't be demolished or the existing structure won't be demolished? And my answer to that question was, we don't know yet. We don't know the answer to that. You know, it was the classic answer of, it depends, it depends on what's reusable, it depends on what the town ultimately decides is needed. It depends on a lot of factors where we're nowhere near that answer. And I reminded the questionnaire that this is the front end of a two year process, already talked about the
keeping the feel of the neighborhood, talked about the arts, but it's not just arts for young adults, it's arts for residents of all ages. So that again, gets to the community center concept. And that was all from my group. Jamie didn't, did I miss huge swat of information? No, I Speaker 4: Think we covered it. That's pretty much what I had as Speaker 1: Well. Okay, thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you. So group three had some consistent themes. One observation was that most
of the suggested scenarios in one way or another involved community. And it was a commu community oriented spaces. There's an observation that whatever use case scenarios that we come up with that the town not duplicate what's available elsewhere. So we have a dog park, do we need another dog park? The community senior center has a gym and the schools have concert space. So in thinking about how to configure further uses, let's try to avoid duplication except where, for example,
the duplication is missing in Johnson and what in the Johnson neighborhood. And by that the observation was there are a number of parks throughout the town, but there isn't one park space and, and passive recreation place throughout places throughout the town, but there isn't one in the downtown area. So that would be an example of, even though those use cases exist in town, having passive recreation or even active recreation and open space was important. In talking about open space, we talked a little bit about what did open space mean to people
because that was a desire from everybody there. Open space, talking about passive recreation talk, talked about preserving the, the ballparks and the need for water recreation. So in talking about whether a pool was even possible, could a splash pad be possible? The context is the Johnson neighborhood is in a, in a heat map downtown, it's only gonna get hotter as climate warms up and there's more impervious surface.
So whatever's done at that location will probably require more impervious surface. So given that, and I'm just throwing that out there, that could be completely wrong. But if, if we're gonna have a community center there, there needs to be parking. So given that a splash pad would be something that would be really popular. One thing that we talked about that I was happy we covered are things like, whatever it is we choose for use cases, there are things that we need to be thinking about. So it's not just wants, if we have a pool, if we have a community center, if we have an art center,
if we have a pool, we're gonna need parking, we're gonna need to expand access so that people can drive onto the property. That means more traffic in a highly walkable neighborhood with lots of children. So thinking about these types of potential restrictions I thought was very constructive. And also the increase in noise. So if we were to, if the town were to adopt active recreation spaces like pickleball courts or tennis courts, that in, in a highly residential area, that increases noise. So these are things that residents wanted to make sure
that we thought about when we think about potential uses. There was a recognition that we need to be thinking about what's gonna happen at coal and at East School at the same time, they're both in need of renovation and they're both used for both town services and after school, before school and things like that. An art center seems really popular because it's both multi-generational. It could serve more people, there could be classes, it could be, you know, run by a nonprofit or it could be something that the town runs and,
and would be considered a multi generational use. A point that was made that I feel very strongly about is the need for arts and humanities as somebody who's trained as a humanist and we, we, we have some things in town, but it's not maybe as coordinated some activities, some resources, but maybe it's not as coordinated as it should be. Last, Our, our our our group also talked about a desire for reconfigurations that come out of the conversations that we had and the points that we made. There was not discussion in the group about
housing, but while people were putting their blue dots on, I had conversations with three people and there were three points made. If we thought creatively the town about having a first floor art center, first floor office for town offices or incorporating some of these wants and needs that a town has and then have affordable or otherwise apartments above it, that might be a possible use for, for incorporating housing into it without taking away from other uses. A second comment was don't sell property if you're going
to do anything, go into a long-term lease. I had raised that as a point that was a suggestion, but I had raised, you know, 99 year leases. You're not giving up the property, which then it's gone forever, but perhaps entering with maybe, you know, a nonprofit or somebody to manage that. And then a third person brought up something that I hadn't even thought of, which was tiny houses, do we need a 12,000 square foot lot? Could you cluster three tiny houses to allow for senior or retirement living or something like that that's affordable. So the, the overwhelming
sentiment in our group was don't sell the land and no housing afterwards. Those were three comments that were brought to my attention and I think that pretty much covers mo most of what we talked about. That's all. Speaker 6: Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, thank you Rich. Thank you everyone and thanks to everyone in group four. We had a, a really lively, a good discussion and to my surprise there was a lot of consensus on various things. So our initial and final choice,
which most people supported was number eight, the art and imagination zone. And some of the reasons why that was appealing was because one, we don't have any art space in town and we'd have the ability to keep the greenery on the space. We would potentially have a multi-use building that would have another gym which we are in need of town, maybe an afterschool program. The concept of the limited afterschool programs was, was brought up and the Johnson neighborhood has lost theirs.
So that was something that people would like to see in a building. So, and and po possibly including affordable housing in that building if it were a multipurpose building. Although what was also brought up was we do have a large concentration of affordable housing in that immediate neighborhood and wouldn't it be better to spread it out in other areas of town? It, one of the things that I I think was a I everyone agreed on is we, we don't wanna do something that's going to increase the density in that neighborhood,
no more traffic and if there is a new building, potentially have it be a same or similar footprint. They like the size of the current building, maybe not anything bigger, but they like the concept of having a lot of open space in that, in that area. Community garden also got support. Potentially it could be a multi-gene generational activity that was appealing to a lot of people. Let's see, so number eight was our first choice and second choice was number two. Again, echoing my colleagues so far,
I didn't hear anybody in favor of the sale of the lots. The concept of the pool. We discussed that a seasonal pool seemed like a good idea, especially because we have, we're having limited access to Lake Constituit. It seems that that Doug Pond is as for whatever reason, the seasons are being shortened year to year. So having something for the kids to do would be good. What didn't necessarily support the concept of a pool, everyone thought you'd be a nice idea, but it may not be affordable.
We didn't directly discuss whether or not it is appropriate at that space. But the concept of financial would not be fiscally responsible. And, but on the other hand it was brought up that there really is no affordable place to swim within 20 minutes of natick. So that is a need, whether it's a Johnson site or somewhere else, that is a consideration. Everyone agreed, no dog park. We already have one. A concern about the noise, about the environmental impact. Not no one wants that, but they would like to see something that is good
for all generations. So not just something that's dedicated to to kids, but something that can be used by all ages. Everyone liked the current playground, no one wants to see that go away, but the concept of potentially making it accessible and if not there then is there another playground in town that we could make accessible for less money? So the concept was let's get an accessible playground. We do not have one in town and what, where would that best fit Our, our second choice
was number two, the youth programming. That was something that we liked other than again the dog park aspect of that. And everyone agreed that we'd like to see a building on that site, not just pure open space, but something that can be used by the neighborhood in, in some way and, and maybe have that be a multipurpose building. No bike path either. That was again, something that they didn't feel really fit in that space. It wasn't really appropriate. One suggestion was to actually potentially move the softball field from
Coolidge over to the Johnson site and build a playground at Coolidge 'cause they do not have a program area. And that was something that we discussed a little bit about how there are areas in town that really aren't served by playgrounds. And not only that, but even if you are near a school and have a playground available, you're not able to use it after school until six o'clock. So that, that's something that concerned people about, you know, where do the kids go and where can they play? Let's see, we talked about the trees. A lot of people would like to see the trees stay on the
space, although we also had a discussion that maybe some of those trees aren't, aren't healthy or maybe are maybe not the right kind of species that we want. So if, if they need to be cold that would be fine. But don't clear cut. One thing that we talked about that was something that we liked at the beginning but didn't like at the end was number 10, the sports village. And the reason that people liked that one was because they wanted a place for the kids to play, but the concerns were noise too many cars
and potentially the traffic implications. And also if there's a field put there, no turf field that came out. A loud unclear and concerns about what is used on that space in terms of irrigation, fertilizer, things like that. They, there's some properties that have runoff issues so that are nearby. So we, we don't want chemicals and things like that going into the neighborhood. So our top choices changed a little bit after we had our discussion. So it still was the art and imagination zone as the top choice,
but number two then became the nature campus. And so people liked the idea of having potentially outdoor classrooms. A community garden was something that appealed to a lot of people. Again, potentially having that multi-generational impact. So that's all I have. Billy, did I miss anything? Where's Billy? You Speaker 7: Billy's headed at home. We can go to Speaker 8: Rich. Speaker 6: Well we just don't know then if I did miss anything. I think Speaker 8: That's pretty comprehensive. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 8: Thank
you to group five. Thank you everybody for showing up. I don't have extensive notes that I took. I relied on Mr. Erickson to take the notes for me. I was more concerned with interacting with people and, and so I'm gonna work off the top of my head and people can fill in. There were a couple of interesting ideas that came up. Somebody suggested creating some kind of a cafe or, or something that we could raise a little revenue from and act as a gathering spot. I thought that was something interesting
that I hadn't heard before. There was discussion of a, of a swimming pool. We didn't really dwell on it. There were a lot of questions about how we would move forward with this project and how we could separate some of the scenarios out. Most of the group was against selling lots for housing, although not, that was not universal. There was a great concern about maintaining open space and tree cover because this neighborhood, and frankly I'm part of it, is one
of the hotter neighborhoods in town. It's so maintaining tree cover is how you solve that. And so people didn't want to see the trees go away. In fact would like to see more trees. There was a pretty good desire to maintain play areas. And we noted that the trees deforested area is also a play area. There was a pretty lively discussion about accessible playgrounds and we should have one somewhere in town, preferably there 'cause it's central. The, we discussed the
ability to use the building in some way and one of the things that came up is that everybody really likes the oldest part of the building, which is the front half, which has got the old kindergarten slash library and the auditorium. Basically what's on front of Regina Parkway there where the big tree is in the middle of the driveway. And most people didn't really care much about the back half of the building, which is much newer and, and not in as good shape and not as charming.
But I miss Jamie Speaker 9: There was, you hit a lot of the good points. What I took as, as sort of talking points were things for with regards to something that can anchor the community like the school used to, you know, 'cause there's a void with within the community that the school, when the school closed down that's left the need for connect connection or connectivity within the community. And it's not just the Johnson community, but as a, as the Natick as a whole. Youth programming was talked about quite a bit after school program, preschool programming. There was discussion as you noted about conversion for affordable housing and, and preservation of the old part for some type of housing
or, or even just a component of it for that. But, but using a singular structure that can then serve multiple purposes or multiple uses and then just shifts, sorry, seeing a space that is useful. There was a strong desire just for the usefulness of the space. Speaker 8: Yeah, and I, I'm gonna fill in on that. They, there were a couple of people that, and, and some of this was in an after conversation with the closing of the school. We lost parent gathering space, which creates neighborhood. One of the things I've recognized is
that there are other ways we can solve that around town that doesn't require to have a school as the gathering point, but we have to get a concerted effort in the town to create those. It could be more congested bus stops for example. Just one idea. But that's how the way you create neighborhoods is you create places for people to gather. Johnson has historically been one of those very effectively and the neighborhood misses it. So I think that's about it. And so thank you all. I didn't actually look at the, where the dots went,
so I can't tell you what came up first. I'm gonna leave that to our data gathering people and thank you. I think it's what, QAQ and A now, I guess something like that. Speaker 7: Yeah, just a couple brief comments on the q and a. So it's 8 0 5, 8 0 6. So we still almost have a full hour. We try to keep it to two questions Max, myself, Jay Port Paddock and then our town administrator jar, Jamie Erickson will be passing mics, but it's a chance for you guys to ask the select board the scissor makers questions if they choose to defer to Jamie or myself.
We certainly will, but it's primarily a chance for you guys to open it up. I dunno. Bruce, did you wanna say anything else off the bat? Yeah, Speaker 1: Very, just very briefly, I just was curious how many people are from the immediate Johnson neighborhood, which I'll define as a half mile away or less. Okay. And how many are outside that? So it's about, looks to me like about two thirds, one third. So that, that, that's good because it, it gives us a, a better representation of, of the town when we are able to reach beyond that.
So thank you all for coming out here. So the floor is yours. This, this is your hour. We, we, we've sort of been guiding you along with Jay and our slide board members. This is, this is your time to ask us questions and nothing, if we don't know the answer, we'll we'll try to get you the answer, but no, no questions are, are barred. So Speaker 7: Maybe Bruce, wait for Mike. Yeah, we'll follow, we'll follow your cue maybe to each question.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Okay. You're gonna get the mics dark. Go Speaker 8: Ahead. Yeah. Should I, I'll bring it to you. This is like precursor town meeting make you work. I won't work that far. Since the majority of groups seemed to indicate that there were components from lots of different scenarios that they liked. What concrete steps, and maybe this goes back to some of Jay's stuff, but how do we construct one or more of those new combination scenarios in,
in time to meet your timetable of, of sending it off to the consultant for feasibility? Speaker 1: Jay, do you want to take that? Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, so there's a combination. We'll have the note takers from the first hour and then we'll have this, this current hour that we're in right now is being recorded by Pegasus. So that'll enable a very easy AI summary. And then tomorrow please sign up for Johnson alerts and notifications. I'll be standing here. Will you leave if you need some help signing up, I will do that. We'll issue a survey in the morning and then the next two plus weeks it's on myself
and other staff members to prep for the 10 29 meeting. In that moment we'll come in with some combination of these 10 or number 11, number 12. And we staff will bring options to the select board to comment on and allow for public comment, but feel pretty confident that on 10 29 we can have some combination of components and scenarios that you've already heard or 11, 12, 13, et cetera. Speaker 1: I just follow up just by a show of my, Speaker 10: No, your Honor, my wife wasn't
Speaker 1: Growing up. Okay. Can I, just by a show of hands, in evaluating the scenarios, did you feel that there was, that there were distinct enough at, or there wasn't any overlap, did you feel? No, no. No. Okay. The ones who say no, so you're saying there there was significant overlap? Yes, yes. Okay. All right. So that to me, just looking around looked like over half. Okay, that's a good data point. Question in the back, Ms. Sayer, I think it is.
We don't have my glasses. Speaker 11: I was curious. Oh, thank you. How does this process fit in with the overall asset evaluation of the town? The long-term planning of what we have, what we need, what we might be able to afford? How does this fit in a bigger plan? Because while it's wonderful to talk about what we would like to see and what we need to see, it can't be done in isolation. And I don't think the Johnson School is the only asset
that should be considered, although I know it's the primary, but it should be within a context of what services does the town need and how would that fit in. So I was just curious about the broader Speaker 1: That's that, that's an excellent question. I know that came up in our group as well, which is, you know, we've got a lot of things going on in town on the Horizon Memorial School. We've got call center, we've got east school, we've got a lot of buildings that we need to look at and figure out what we do with them and when
and how, how much is it going to cost for each of those? Obviously we don't have an unlimited budget, so we'll have to prioritize and figure out what we can afford to do and when. One of the things that we look at is our debt ratio. So one of the things that, that we've been trying to do as a town is to get our pension fund fully funded and we, we will have that done around 2030. We will also have around, I think it's 2032 and 2034, some significant long-term borrowings
that come off the books. So in the ideal scenario, some things go off the books, some things go on the books and, and hopefully interest rates are good at that time when we need them to be. And that's why it's important to have AAA bond rating. So I think you know, it, it is a moving target, but you're right there, there has to be an assessment of where, where are we today, where do we need to be? How does this fit within that overall, I'll call it
capital investment envelope. So I know Richard had some thoughts Speaker 8: Also. Yeah, one of the things that came up in our group was there was recently within, I don't remember how recent, but there was a pretty widespread need study done that has not been incorporated into any of this thinking. And one of the things Mr. Erickson did indicate to the, to our group is that that will be fold, that needs study will be folded in so that, you know, we're not like ignoring the needs of the whole town.
You know, we're not doing this in isolation. We are gonna be including o other information such as, you know, that larger survey. Speaker 1: Sarason, do you want to, do you want their comments on any of this or Jack? Speaker 9: Well, I thought, I thought the, the, the board did a good job. I think from a needs perspective or from a, a incorporation of a larger, per larger needs analysis, that's part of the reason why through the work of the communications director, all the boards and committees are, are 10 or 11 boards and committees have also been outreached to, to get an understanding of their needs that's due back at the end of the calendar year.
Again, these are all data points and this is just one part of that data point process. And those data points that also be coming in over the next couple months will be a part of this two year plus process to make sure that we do incorporate a full spectrum of, of look from really all stakeholders and all parties in town to ensure that we're taking into account the board is taking into account those various data points. You know, this being one of 'em, the needs from the various boards and committees. Another one, the surveys that have already been completed and to be completed are other ones. These are all part of this iterative process over the next two plus years.
Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Erickson. Dr. McKenzie Speaker 12: Is Donna McKenzie. I am Tami member precinct eight former school committee member. Aside from a debt exclusion, can you comment on what available funding is available for this project right now? Are you thinking grants a fully accessible playground can be funded totally by grants, for example? Or are you thinking community preservation funds? Are you thinking leftover funds from the Kennedy Building project or, I mean, 'cause it, it's nice to dream but it's also nice to be realistic about the finances
and I don't wanna sell the land either, but, and my next question is, some of these decisions wouldn't seem to preclude that the use changing, I mean there's only one thing certain about life and that it changes. So some choices could mean the choice could change further down the road if there was more money, right? Eight. Speaker 1: Yep. Let me just take that as two a two part question. One is the financing available now IJ just want to comment that it's, again, we're early
in the be beginning quadrant of the two year cycle. So how things will will look in two years is different. We did save, save being a relative term. We did not spend 4.9 million of Kennedy budget that we borrowed for now you have to do, you have to invest that $4.9 million into a similar length project so that a school is a 20 year project. So you'd have to find something that's a 20 year project
and that's one aspect. The other things that you brought up is CPC money. That's certainly a possibility. CPC is, yeah, for those who don't know, thank you Ms. BOLs for reminding me. Community Preservation Act money is the surcharge, the 1% surcharge on, on taxes and we've accumulated and I think a year, year and a half or something like that, roughly 2.6 to $2.8 million, seven projects are coming before town meeting to spend to allow town meeting
to weigh in on whether they wanted to spend that money or not on that. That is certainly an avenue that can be pursued with the right project, with the right money. And again, the community of preservation has to do, it has to be targeted at open space acquisition, affordable housing, recreation and parks. It can't be used for maintenance for example. They don't, you can't renovate a park or a field using CPC funds. You can create a new field
or a new park area. That's another avenue. It really depends on what we end up doing. You know, as we get further along in this process, we're gonna have to get more price tags on these or at least a range of estimates. The answer to your question is there's nothing. The sources are something we would need to identify and make clear how we're going to fund something and it's got to be
to make sense to go back to Ms. Sarah's point, it has to fit within the construct of other things that we need to do in the town. Carol, Speaker 13: I'm Carol Kremen. I live on Woodland Street, so I'm a little outside Johnson, but I go there all the time with my grandchildren to play and I just wanna get back to the scenarios and say that in our group, nobody liked any of them. I just wanna say that out front they, we felt like all of them had little pieces that we liked, but the way they're set up now,
were very not satisfying to everybody. The combinations of everything. And it was very, very strong in our group that we didn't wanna duplicate like a dog park and, and more fields and more tennis courts and all the stuff that already exists around town. So I feel strongly that we'd like to see new options that pull out the stuff that, that we're most interested in. And it was a little difficult to put the yellow dots when you had to put it on a scenario that had three things you liked and five things that you didn't like.
So I, I'd like to, I don't know how you can rearrange those scenarios, but that in our group we, we wanted to see other options like what you were saying, 12, 13 and 14 or something like that. Speaker 1: Thank you. Let me take a quick stab at answering that, but also you guys are being very quiet if you have answers just like kick my chair or, or pound on the table or something. Get my attention. Alright. Speaker 5: So what I would say is
Carol was in, in the group that I moderated and Donna took copious notes about elements of things that people talked about positively and things that people talked about negatively. And all of that is gonna go into Jay's hands so that he can come up with scenarios that we can critique. So, so for our group, you're absolutely right and I don't think our group is any different than any of them. It's pretty representative. There weren't, I haven't talked to a person since these scenarios came out who said,
oh I'm definitely sold on number one or two or three. So, you know, these notes will go into his hands with all the other note takers notes and the survey that people will respond to tomorrow because all of you are gonna get an email because all of you are signed up on the Johnson list serve. That's all I had. Speaker 1: Anyone else? I I would just reiterate what Catherine has just said that that was a common thread in ours that, that there was significant overlap and we felt that the way to address that was through the, the narrative that we'll provide
and hopefully that'll kick out common threads over there in the, if they had a black sweater or blue sweater. I'm colorblind here. Thank Speaker 14: You. My name's Beth Cheley. I will just say by disclosure, I am a Johnson abut my question has to do with how you're thinking about the methodology of gathering additional survey data. I hear lots of comments about emails going out. It sounds as though there was a postcard that went out to every residence. I did not receive that postcard. I only heard about it because of my neighbor down the street. Even for this meeting tonight, I reached out to 20 families
that I know that are all Johnson families and there's only two of us, well actually Dina three that that I know and you know, men, I'm, I'm fortunate I'm a new empty nester. I work full time, but I have the privilege of being able to work, you know, the hours that I wanna work so that I can get here. But I look around this room and I see 50 people who are wonderful to talk with and have interesting opinions, but there's so much else that's not being represented across town and I just don't know how you get that
through an email survey. Everybody's so bombarded by electronic communications. So I wonder if there are ways to think creatively about getting the word out. Those robocalls that we get about snowstorms grocery stores, handing out flyers, kids going home from school, you know, there's this topic coming up, there's this vote. I just, yeah, so I wonder if you could speak to that and then related to that as well, there was a little comment buried in here about data supporting and approach that gives the Johnson neighborhood access
to more input while allowing all residents to have the same influence. And so I'm curious what that actually means. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'll take the second question first. And what I think that is designed to emphasize is that it's not, this discussion is not just about the immediate Johnson neighborhood that is to reflect the community needs. Now obviously when we're not planning on trampling on the opinions of, of the abutters
and then their, their opinions matter, in my opinion, and I'm just one of the five, it matters more to me that what, what the abutters have to say than, than somebody across town. But having said that, if an abutter says, yeah, I'd like to have a dog park here and it's, you know, something that's already replicated in town, then I might have a a different opinion than that. I think in terms of outreach, your, your other question we're, we're always trying to do better
and improve our outreach. And I'll let Jay comment in a moment on that. I think we've come a long way from prior discussions that we've had on other topics where Mr I'll just say Jay 'cause I can never pronounce his name correctly on back end. Jay always has done a great job of outreach and reaching more people that we haven't heard from in prior years. Can we do better? Yeah, absolutely. I like your idea of the robocall.
There are certainly some avenues that we could pursue, but again, we're, we're two year or we're six months into a two year plus process. So we're learning as we go. And let me go back to Jay and see if he's got some comments. Speaker 7: I'm not sitting on two nuggets that I've been holding out on for communications and outreach to do it. It's a legit challenge. I too am in the Johnson neighborhood. I watched the Johnson School close with my two daughters. I didn't attend a single school committee meeting. I, I had access, I just chose not to do it.
My wife's over at, at the Spark Kindness right now and she's with all her friends. When I ask my neighbors right now in the Johnson neighborhood, they don't know this meeting's happening. That is unfortunately a reality as far as some of the tactics referenced, I don't want to go down a laundry list, but the, I would say the report that I just released as a flash vote was how to run better meetings. And then there's another dialogue I'm having with select board members come back about just broadly rethinking community engagement in re in kind of reaction to doing something out of the box before 10 29.
I mean a robocall, I manage it with Chief Hicks, that is a public safety announcement other than a voting election. We hold that back. There's a notion of crime wolf. And so there's, that's like we, that's, while it sounds great DPW sign boards tend to be traffic related or public safety seat belt checks or some other sort of matter there. It is a legit challenge. I appreciate that. I do think digital has gone course corrected too far post COVID. You know, there's, there's a legit challenge here. I don't know if there's something unique
to the Johnson project that we're gonna unlock in the coming weeks, but I appreciate the comment and I will say that, I mean, there's different comments. I mean, I, I worked in the private sector doing direct mail for 20 years. The, the, the recall rate of a direct mail postcard is about 60 to 40 percentage points. So saying I didn't receive it is totally legitimate, but saying was it sent is a different question. And so unfortunately when we all scan through our mail, there's that standalone flyer that, you know, we just tossed to the side unless it's the $10 off that widget
that we've always wondered how good it is. So it's a legit challenge. But I would say I've been in this job for three years. We've never done a project postcard other than Johnson. We did an override piece during the override that was just a broad piece about educating around the override because that was impacting all taxpayers. But I don't, I don't think the solution is gonna be investing, it's about $7,000 in expense to send a mailer to 15,000 households. So it's a legit challenge. I just don't, I'm not gonna have a immediate sort
of thing that I'm holding the back pocket. Would, would Speaker 3: You appreciate ideas from some folks in this group on what would be some good outreach that might actually, you know Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean broadly yes. Survey Speaker 3: Or something like that? Speaker 7: Yeah, that's, I I was hinting at this notion of doing a larger community engagement. It just matters, these ideas as far as executing in the next two or three weeks that might, it depends on what it is. If, but am I open to it a thousand percent? Will I put it, have a question in the survey that says please gimme additional comments or concerns or questions. Absolutely. And feel free to, you know, if there is
some amazing opportunity that we can't execute in the coming weeks, guaranteed we'll do it as long as we have the resources. Speaker 1: I, you Jay Tian back Speaker 15: T and Lum our house buts Johnson, and it's, it's great to hear the kids play there. I love it and I loved it when it was a school and we could hear the, the kids play. One of the big questions I have is about process and Jay had said that you guys were going to incorporate needs from the town into the scenarios that you're gonna present. So the consultant, so one was
if you guys could give us in, in broad strokes what those needs are. And because we don't have all the data from the, the human services survey are, are we gonna be stuck with the scenarios that come back from the consultant or is the under just not under understanding how the needs is gonna, is gonna filter into the scenarios? Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Great question. I'll take a stab at it and I may rely on Mr. Erickson for
clarification or refutation depending on how much, you know, my sense is that we will incorporate the needs study, we will incorporate the feedback that we're getting. I would say more the qualitative feedback that we're getting tonight is more valuable than the quantitative. As we said earlier, there was significant overlap between some of these choices. I would expect the intermingling of all that is going to yield. I'm hoping, and this is my personal opinion, I'm, I'm hoping
that we come out with four or five choices that include those, the elements that are in the 10. I know in my particular group we were starting to discuss the individual items or sub items on a choice 10 as an example, right? So we're going down, who likes this? Who likes this? And to me that's, that's too big. That was too big an ask, right? We need to make the ask simpler. We need to make the ask more comprehensive, which is,
it's kind of a, almost, almost at odds with each other. But I think we do need to simplify the choices but have them expanded in the sense of the content underlying them, if that makes sense. Ericson, thank you. Speaker 9: Sure. Just, just briefly to add, the intent is not necessarily to incorporate all the needs or, or the, or the the, the feedback that we get because some of this we're not even gonna get until the end of the calendar year when we hear from all the boards and committees about their needs and wants as well. For 10 29, 10 29 is a,
is another data point in this entire two plus year process that can help inform an ultimate decision at the end of the two years. The intent of 10 29 is to get a scenario or a few with really the components that we can then price out to help again, create another data point with regards to costs of some of the components that can then also incorporate the needs from the boards and committees, the needs from these other studies to eventually lead to an informed decision by the board. These are all data points that are all coming together. The 10 29 scenario is not the end all be all scenario.
It's just again, a scenario that allows us to hone in on some components that we can then work with a consultant or team to just start to help price out, order a magnitude pricing, you know, we don't want to go to them with all 10 scenarios or or 20 scenarios. We have to hone in on that because a consultant, if we gave them today what can you build on this Johnson School site, the response is gonna be like, how much money do you have? We need to give them some direction on what we want to understand from a cost perspective, which is why we need this community engagement to then help inform that dialogue with a consultant to then help bring back a data point financing
or not financing, but the cost of some of these components to then help also then feed in with the needs and the wants from the school committee, the parks and rec commission, the conservation commission, the, the study that we did with the community services work, the NAT 2030 master plan, which we did do a whole house mailer for that. I will say that, and again I did hear from a lot of people who said they did not get it as well, even though we did a whole $7,000 mailing for that one as well. These are all data points. I think that's really what's important for people to understand. Tonight's a data point, the scenarios from 10 20 nines data point, that financial study that
or some of the cost analysis that we'll get from the scenario build as data point. The feedback we get from boards of committees as a data point that is all part of this two plus year process that'll then inform a decision ultimately of the select board. Speaker 1: Thank Speaker 8: You. And Richard, if I could add this, this question actually came up during our discussion, our group discussion. And you know, the fact is we're gonna send some scenarios to a consultant. They're gonna put them together, they're gonna do some feasibility work and there's some costing and things like that. They're gonna incorporate whatever data we give them. It's quite possible that the answers they'll come back with,
none of them will be satisfactory and we'll be back to ground zero for new scenarios. That's a possibility. I'm hoping that doesn't happen because that would be really discouraging. But it's possible. Speaker 1: Yash, Speaker 16: Ganish, Ram, I live on Pond Street in the neighborhood and I'm also the chair of the Natick Affordable Housing Trust. Just to give you a little bit of context, in 2020, the, the trust was part of a design competition where we proposed a 45 unit Veterans housing just down the street, you know, mill Street and one Route 1 35.
It was a great proposal, you know, it won an award by the Federal Housing Loan Bank of Boston. You know, we did all the numbers, everything the catches. It's practically unbuildable because the, the site there is, it's called an Article 97 land. It's about 2.5 acres. It's, it's deeded as an open space. So you can't build anything, even veterans housing. However, if there is a land swap of some or part of the article 97 land with some other part of the town, then you can build your veterans
housing or affordable housing. So I just wanted to throw in as a part of a scenario, and this could be your open space scenario. If like an acre or an acre and a half of Johnson School property is deeded as an article 97 land, we could potentially use a site down the street, which, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's where the Henry Wilson Park is, who's a Civil War veteran himself. It's walkable from Brooch brothers, it's walkable to West Natick train station. It's a fantastic housing site. So it could actually be a win-win proposition
for both the neighbors. I mean like, and you don't have to like deed the entire Johnson school for Article 97. Of course this is a larger conversation. We need the conservation commission, we need like whole town bodies to talk to each other and ultimately you're gonna lead legislation to do it. But in my day job I work at DAM and like the state does legislation all the time for these kinds of things. So if there's a collective will for the town, I think we can make all of this happen. But I understand this is a long process. Thank you. Speaker 1: Lemme just quickly comment about that
because that, that precise scenario came up in our group and we talked about Article 97 and I sent myself or wrote myself a note that said Talk to ganache about Article 97 Shaw. And, but one thing I did want to add is that getting something out of Article 97 is a, a relatively long process and it requires legislative approval from the Senate and the House.
So that's something in the background is it's all I'm saying with that is that it's not a process state takes lightly, but if you're doing, again, the, the we, we keep using that phrase tonight, like for like if we can trade that area and on Mill Street for open space on and the Johnson area, that could be a win-win. So we, we can look into that support question. Speaker 17: I just wanted to first clarify, there's actually a few
of our community preservation committee members here. Just a couple points. One is that you can use community preservation funding to restore park. So it's not allowable be maintenance, but it doesn't have to be necessarily like something that didn't exist there before. So renovating a park is absolutely allowable. And the other allowable use that, forgive me if I'm wrong, what I think you didn't include was historic preservation, which the Johnson building does already qualify for because it's been recognized by our historic commission. I believe that's the case. Yeah, Speaker 18: Yeah. I mean I think it should be, but I don't think it has Speaker 17: Yet.
I, my understanding from looking at the historic commission master plan is that it has, but if it weren't, they would be able to, to do that. It would be up to the town, it wouldn't require state. So, but the, and the point is that historic preservation for buildings is allowed, but that does bring up a point that maintenance is, is not allowed by the CPC and generally we've spent a lot of time talking about how to fund this, like front loading this, the capital project and not so much about how to fund the ongoing costs of maintenance and of operating costs. And you know, one reason that the Johnson School was closed was because not enough funding was put into it.
And so, you know, we said, oh, it's in such bad shape now and we see the same thing with the Kohl Center. So I would like to know kind of what the process is, what the attitude is towards considering these ongoing costs, the maintenance costs and the operating costs of the town. Speaker 1: Okay, let me take a stab. That is, that is a great point. That is something that we do consider when we're looking at the buildings. That's why we're looking at The various buildings that that need. If you look at our capital budgets over the past few years,
places like town hall, the libraries and school buildings, they've all received some upgrades. There are some buildings that have been left behind. I will grant you that. I cannot comment on what happened with Johnson School since I was not involved in it, but I can talk about the call center. The call center. We have been looking, we, we have been examining what we could do with that facility and studying it for several years now. We've been taking a bandaid approach
of just fixing it. So we don't have buckets of water going into the school, but it, it, it, it's the, I'll call it the, we've reached the Fisher cut bait stage with coal and we have to, and one of the things we're looking to do over the next several years is figure out which of these buildings we renovate, some of them might be repurposed. I don't know the answer to that. That is something that, that the town administration is actively looking into.
So let me turn it over to Mr. Erickson, if he could come and, or first let me go to Linda. Speaker 6: Thank you. I think that's a really important point. When we build a new building or when we have an asset, it's really, it's something that we haven't done in the past, which is really understanding all the future costs going forward. We're much better at that now. I, I can, I, since I first got involved with the town many years ago, we didn't have planning. Now we do, we have a robust five-year capital plan,
but we also understand the facilities aspect of it. Our facilities director has done a great job really understanding with our physical assets what needs to be done and when. And we've gotten a lot of that in software. We have a much better plan for things to maintain our town assets, which is really important. So I would expect that whatever we do at the Johnson site or any future site, that we will take those costs into consideration. Speaker 1: Thank you, Linda. Just to follow up on that point,
I remember I was on the Kennedy Building Committee here and one of the, one of the key things that was involved there is making sure that the facilities, people understood all the systems involved, all the newer systems, they're not, you know, the same boilers they used years ago. They needed to get the training, they needed to have the time to be able to do this. They hired, I, I forget the exact number, but I think it was two plus janitor staff
because it was a bigger building, they needed to take care of it. So to, to Linda's point, we are doing a much better job. The, the first thing that the director of facilities management did when he, he came in was look at all the buildings and, and identify the gaps and, and coverage both in terms of maintenance and, you know, it's, it's again, you know, if we had limited limitless money to go after these things. We do them all in one year, but he developed the five year plan
and he is chipping away at each of these problems. And I think you're seeing the benefits of it, that preventive maintenance I is something that the town takes extremely seriously and when we invest in something new, particularly we wanna preserve that investment as best we can. Speaker 7: Do you mind if I say one? Go ahead Jay. Just one pointed comment on the Johnson future use and the capital expense beyond the initial and the operating expense for staff, subject to my boss's final approval.
But one of the conversations we've had, A consultant will add credibility on sort of their purview across many municipalities on what the initial capital expense will be. But the operating expense and additional capital beyond that is something I think staff can layer in. And so what we're talking about is on 10 29 we would present a series of scenarios, but that'll be about a three to four month engagement with a consultant. Hence the fork in the road if you can't see on the red poster up there. But in early 2026 we talk about this fork in the road
and that's where we potentially have closure on financial assessments as well as we can make future decisions. But that notion of operating expense and year two and beyond capital, I think it's something that we, the town already do and there's no reason we're making progress broadly speaking. But specifically for the Johnson, that's an exercise I think we can take on internally and have that alongside the consultant after a three or four month window. Speaker 1: Thank you Jay. Doug, the middle there. Speaker 8: So here we get to invoke the second and only two questions. Will the consultant engagement include potential sources
of funding where we've talked about a number of different potential sources here tonight or is that also something that just the town layers in afterwards? Speaker 9: Do you want me to take that Bruce? Speaker 1: Oh yours Mr. Speaker 9: Sure. In all likelihood it's more of a layering after the fact 'cause so much depends on the end use structure and, and how, what the uses are. We largely know what the funding sources are gonna be or, or can be, you know, we talked about a lot of them today. Grants, community preservation, debt, existing cash or existing funding. We, we largely know what those are unless it's a creative solution,
which we would appreciate if the consultant let us know, oh this was done here, they did, they used this creative way. Then in all likelihood we're gonna be looking at some of those costs and what the actual scenarios are and saying okay, we can fund this maybe with this we can fund this maybe with this where we're gonna probably need more support on the funding side down the road. Probably not at this juncture, but down the road is when we get to that sort of final scenario. Building that perform of the project and seeing. One thing that I'm also curious about, not only the municipal finance side 'cause we do need to do that work for any project, the debt analysis and then, and just the funding analysis.
But some of what I heard in the group that we had was potential for public private partnerships and how that might work. That's when we can bring in another round of maybe a, a legal consultant to help us understand a contract analysis that can fund it. But that's, that's like down the road. Yeah. Speaker 1: Jamie, Speaker 19: Hi. Thank you. I'm just curious, can you elaborate on the timeline with regards to the consultant? Are they showing up on the 29th and are they being hired then or are we waiting until the committees and the other boards sort of weigh their opinions on what they need and then hiring the consultants?
Speaker 9: Sure, I'll take that briefly Bruce if that's okay. So the intent on the 29th is to get the board and, and really the community but the board to lock in on alright, study these x number of of components of, of scenarios or these XX types of scenarios. Then the town staff will go and seek a consultant or, or or to, you know, we, we'll seek consultants. Part of it depends on what those scenarios are because there's certain consultants that might have certain expertise and we wanna make sure we get the right type of consultant on board. So that'll, that'll happen after the 29th. And then as Jay mentioned, it's, that's a multi month process.
Speaker 1: Alright, Brinley. Speaker 20: Hi. Thank you. So I feel a little confused about this because I feel like maybe it's a little bit putting the cart before the horse if we've asked the communities and the boards to give their feedback and yet we are spending money on a consultant for things that don't include their, we're starting before it even includes their field feedback. I don't know, that feels a little strange to me, like how much does this consultant cost? I understand that it's several months, I get that, but I'm, I'm curious why we're asking them if we're not
waiting to get their feedback. If we are talking about such a long timeframe, it seems to be to be more efficient with our money to wait until we have around with them as well so that they're included in that. And then I'm just, I just wanna bring it up. I, I still really feel like a study group would be great. A financial group is a consultant is fantastic but it's money and it's looking at preformed ideas and I feel like there's still really an opportunity being missed to actually have a whiteboard
and some people just having a another conversation where we do that and then we go back and forth. I didn't get to say a lot of the things I wanted to say in the group today and I am not sure if everybody else felt like that, but I feel like a study group would be a really good idea. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 5: Just with regard to a study group or an advisory group or an advisory committee, I misspoke several meetings, select board meetings ago because I had not looked at the timeline and so I had mentioned January and I think we're slating it for late March
or August, I mean April to make the decision as to whether to have one in the first place. So that decision won't even be made until the spring, Speaker 3: But why would we have consultant with financials before we've even had a study group? Speaker 21: Could you have Jay elaborate about process? Speaker 1: Jay, could you fill in the blanks on that process please? Speaker 7: Sorry, the question why would we have financial consultant before a study group? Correct. That's always been the plan is quite frankly the easiest answer on the first question about the one pagers.
It kind of hearkens to one of the resident's comments earlier about if we had a great idea, would you consider it? Well the one pagers are a great idea from someone sitting in this room who gave it to me. So that's why that's been slotted into this entire process. I think it's a very fair thought to say on the 29th, do we say let's hold off on the financial consultant and wait for the reports. That's a board's decision on a process delay. I think there's a viable argument on that side, but we've been planning that fork in the road was presented on April 9th
as when we would consider an advisory committee. So that's been fairly firm and so that's just, it hasn't been considered beyond that. Speaker 1: Thank you chair question down here. Speaker 22: So I'm Carol Sala and it seems to me that we have difficulty moving forward given the mi very mixed feelings about each scenario. So I don't know what is planned for the survey for tomorrow, but one possibility would be to say these components have arisen, vote yes or no on each of the components
and create new scenarios from the most popular components. Speaker 1: The survey designer applaud and let the record show That's Speaker 7: Perfect. That's literally yeah, what's sitting in Speaker 21: The Google form Speaker 22: Draft. Thank you very much. Great. Speaker 1: Yeah. Any further? Any further questions? I don't see anyone. Thank you so much for giving up your night. Three hours of it. I hope you found it useful. I know the board found it incredibly useful For as much getting the information from people as, as understanding what it is.
One thing to look at a survey and it's another thing to hear people talk about a topic. You get much more of a flavor of the intensity and the passion of, of some of these items and it's very, that's very important. That just doesn't jump out of a PowerPoint. So I appreciate the time you took tonight and I thank the chairs and the committees who came here on short notice to add their inputs and we very much value their contributions.
So thank you all and have a pleasant evening. What's left of it?