well the April 7th meeting of the finance committee to order uh present we have Paul Brandon Zach Paul Bonnie um Bill looks like he's online i don't think anyone else is online and Mike who do we have first southeast
Regional southeastern Regional let me uh share my screen people that are interested in trying late thank you good evening i am Holly Mlan i'm the superintendent at
South Eastern Regional School District and I do want to acknowledge that Mark Morris my assistant superintendent of finance is here in the audience as well as Barbara Kaplan who is the uh school committee member representing um the town of Norton um on the Southeastern
School Committee so um we are here to talk about the assessment to Norton for FY26 and for the second year in a row your assessment is lower versus the previous school year despite the fact that Southeastern's overall budget is up
um so on the first page you will see that our foundation budget for this year is $ 38,734,575 the um foundation budget is driven primarily by enrollment the inflation factor that the Commonwealth sets and in
addition Southeastern receives some additional funding through the Student Opportunity Act because we have such a high percentage of high need students in our school district the foundation budget is made up of chapter 78 which this year is
24,546,392 and the remainder is local assessment which is assessed out to our nine communities in addition to that we are required to provide regional transportation at no cost to our students um and we are supposed to be in
reimbursed and the towns and the city of Brockton are supposed to be reimbursed 100% of regional transportation under statute that has not happened in the 11 years that I've been at Southeastern um but this year we are hearing the
governor's proposal is 95% reimbursement let's hope that that sticks because that would be the best reimbursement rate we've seen in many years the good news is is that last year when we presented our budget we were in the middle of of um going out to bid for our
transportation contract and we had estimated about $2.3 million as the cost last year um it actually came in at a lower cost and so the actual cost this year is $2.3 million the reimbursement
we received last year was higher than anticipated and so our total local assessment for transportation of $779,013 is about $300,000 less than it was last year um to those um the foundation budget and transportation we
also have capital costs and for many many years at least 15 years we have been committed to keeping that assessment at a total of $192,000 um this year we are using tuition receipts from our um South
Eastern Technical Institute which is our postsecondary institute to offset those costs to keep that total local assessment at $192,000 um outside of the budget we carry our bond payments of $493,875 in addition our school
committee has been committed over the last few years to uh funding our OPED liability again that is with no additional assessment to the communities um and is being paid for out of adult receipts so we have a total 5.3%
increase to our budget versus last year are there any um questions on that piece all right can we go to the next slide so you will see that um our total enrollment at Southeastern this year is
up by 25 students however Norton is down by nine students and that's really what drives um the local assessment is your enrollment um and you can see over the last 10 years how your enrollment's kind of gone up and down a little bit um over
the years so it's not unusual for us to see um you know some dips and then some some increases next page so Norton's assessment is based on having 5.1% of the um total enrollment
um and so from there you have a $1.5 million contribution to the foundation aid there's um $25,000 in the net bond payment $39,829 for transportation cost and just
under $10,000 for the net capital cost for a total assessment this year of about $1.63 million and that is a decrease of $61,000 versus last year next slide and the next few slides are
just for your information and this slide is just to show you that Southeastern is committed to operating our school at net school spending or minimum aid so it's what the state tells us that we have to spend to educate our students we recognize the many pressures on our
ascending communities um particularly on our local schools and their budgets and we take our obligation to spend the minimum very seriously so again this year and for many many years going back um we are not asking you to supplement
net school spending we are operating at net school spending the minimum that the state requires us to spend and we're committed to doing that going forward the additional slides after this are really for your information um and are more specific to the town of Norton um
and does anyone have any questions on the budget uh Madam Chair yes ma'am can you talk around uh the enrollment numbers um we're negative five and I know um of a few students that applied
and were not we were just talking about that before yeah all right and how do you come up with how many students come from Norton and why would we be down five students i think you're actually down nine students this year um so I'm
glad you asked that because it leads to an a different conversation so this for the incoming class of that will be coming in in September these are the numbers I have most clearly in my head we received,280 applications we can enroll
420 students so we have 860 students who are being placed on a wait list right now we use five criteria attendance grades discipline but I want to make very clear it is very serious discipline
that excludes students not kids being kids um we're talking about you've been suspended more than 10 days or you've committed a felony that will keep kids out okay regular kids being kids will not keep kids out um even with grades
we're looking primarily at kids with a C average or better who get maximum points that does not mean a student who has C's and D's doesn't get points or can't come to Southeastern we also have a guidance counselor recommendation or a teacher
recommendation um and an interview with students so those are the criteria that we use right now um there is a proposal before um the board of elementary and secondary education to impose a blind lottery on um vocational schools for
admission when we have run simulations with our actual school data admissions data to see what would happen in a blind admissions lottery in every case the number of students admitted from Brockton goes down and the number of students from Brockton and Foxboro I
mean Stoen and Foxboro goes up and in every other scenario the number of students from Norton goes up what's concerning to us is that the number of students that could go up in a in Stoton in particular and Foxboro is huge and as
you know the the city of Brockton pays about $5,000 per student for their students to come to Southeastern a student from Stoton and the towns like Norton pay 10 12 13 $15,000 it's concerning to us that we
would rely on chance to admit students um from a merit standpoint from what's best for kids standpoint but it's also concerning for us on what that could do to our eight towns and their budgets if there are no guard rails on how many
students get in and so I ask you to look at those regulations to read them carefully the comment period um for um these proposed regulations ends on April 18th and whether you support the lottery
or don't support the lottery I just really ask you to read through those regulations and think about what that could mean for our towns and in particular the town of Norton um so we want to have good enrollment from our
towns we want to have steady enrollment from our towns what we don't want is for one year to you to have this many students and the next year you have this many and you're now in a really bad place with your assessment so um we're
concerned about the level of volatility that uh a lottery could have right now with our selective criteria about 30% of kids who apply from Norton get in about 30% of kids who apply from Brockton who
get in about 30% of kids who apply from Sharon get in if you go to a pure chance lottery we're concerned about what that could mean for the town so um again I just ask you to be informed about that and weigh in at the uh state
level madam Chair Madam Chair I still didn't give an answer to the question why did your enrollment go down yeah why well how do you And how do you come up with how many currently how do you come up with how many why we admit 420 what's that are you asking why we admit 420
versus a different number how do you come up with the number of students you're going to you're going to enroll from north so we do not aortion seats by community it's an atlarge so we have a metric that we use based on attendance grades discipline guidance counselor
recommendation and an interview all towns are in the pool all towns are in the pool including Sorry yes i I didn't answer your question you're right including Brockton including Brock uh you Madam Chair so you mentioned the
spread of 10 to 15,000 per student what drives that it's um relative community wealth in in the same way that like if you know you have 10 people living in Norton and some people live in a home that has a property value that's higher
than others everyone gets the same services from the town but some people pay more in taxes than others it's the same principle um when it comes to the local assessment so like this the town of Foxboro pays a lot more than the city
of Brockton norton is somewhere in between those two so thank you yeah any other questions great well we appreciate the town of Norton and your support of our school district and uh thank you for having us
this evening thank you yes um next we have uh on is Samantha Stone from Bristol County Agricultural samantha do you want to um share your own screen or you just want to have me
scroll through the slides good morning good evening everybody thank you for having me um and I do apologize that I am not there in person i appreciate you allowing me to do this virtually um so I'm just going to touch
Can you all hear me okay yep okay perfect i'm just going to touch briefly on our budget as a whole and then I did do a little slideshow presentation specifically for the town of Norton um so overall for our chapter 70 and regional transportation
numbers foundation budget increased 4.65% um going from 10,653 to 11,148 um we did have an increase of students overall this year we went from uh let me just get the numbers i
apologize we went from 511 inount students to 531 inount students and then out of county students we went a little bit high with increase by 20 so overall we had a 43 student increase um to our
student population we have 635 currently our acceptance rate for the entire school or trade in for 640 um accepted freshmen is 160 per class um so looking at uh Norton for the town
of Norton um I am looking at you guys have had 14 students enrolled in our October 1 SIMS numbers we do bill in a rears um so it be the students that are currently attending that are budgeted for the fiscal year 26 we're projecting
a $400 increase per student for tuition um I do have this to be voted by my board next Tuesday so I'll have final numbers for you all next week um once the official vote has been done so the total is going to be going from $4,17 per student to
$4,417 per student um with the decrease of the one student in Norton this year the increase overall for Norton it only increased $1,583 uh so the total tuition that's projected to be due for Norton in fiscal
26 is $61,838 um and then as far as the debt service we are projected to keep that the same that is how I'm currently budgeting um the debt service per student is $5,979.66 um so with the decrease in the
one student you're decreasing that for next year so your total amount for the debt service is projected to be $83,71524 um so overall for Norton with the in county and the debt service combined you're actually going to be owing a little bit less in fiscal year
26 than you do in 25 you're decreasing $4,3966 um the total would be $145,000 $5553 uh I'm sorry 145,55324 the debt service um does anybody have any questions on that part of the
budget i think we're good okay um and then just moving on similar to um superintendent from Southeastern Regional I do just want to talk briefly about the proposed admission lottery that is currently before the state um
we're a little bit different than Southeastern Regional when it comes to the lottery proposal because part of the lottery proposal is that if you have students from in county and out of county that apply the incount students would get preference over the out ofount
students um when it comes to agricultural high school education in Massachusetts there's Northolk Abbey and there's Bristol Abby um so that would mean that students from Flint County or uh any other county besides Bristol Agie or Bristol County and Norfolk County
would essentially not be allotted the opportunity to have an agricultural high school education um Bristol AI specifically we receive over 700 applications this year alone for our 160 student applicants um 550 of them were
in county the remaining were out of county so if this lottery were to go into place all of those out ofount students wouldn't even have a chance to get in until the weight list was completely null and void of any incount students um our current out ofount students makes up 20% of our student
body and about 2.4 million of our revenue um so that would be something that would we would have to adjust um and similar to what the superintendent from South Eastern Regional spoke to with the body it's going to be very difficult for our 22 cities and towns in
Bristol County to be able to figure out how many students are going to be able to budget for because for Norton specifically we had 15 applicants this year 11 applicants the previous year if we got more applicants next year all of
those students would get put into the lottery and it would be a much higher it could be much lower so um it's just something we really need to think about and similar to um the Southeastern Regional Superintendent um I would recommend please read the legislature um
and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me um I'm happy to answer any of them as a superintendent Costa um and any staff that we're still hiding um the public comment period is April 18th so if you do have any questions any concerns or anything of that sort um please let me know but that
is about all I have for Crystal Ivy if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to take that madam Chair um it says we urge support for HD 4510 is that a secondary bill that stops the first bill so it's a bill that um is
going to essentially cause the changes and create a vocational like emissions task force to really dig into the issues and try to figure out a way that would make it feasible and uh fair for everybody involved and also kind of to Zach's for
Southeastern if looking at your um weight listed in 24 you took didn't take any students from Norton and 11 were weight listed and then last year only four students were taken from Norton what's the criteria to use that um would
allow us to have zero freshmen coming in so similar to South Eastern Regional we do have a set of criteria um we look at attendance conduct um grades we do have an interview and then a guidance counselor recommendation um the majority
I can give you the point breakdown is out of 100 points uh attendance is worth 15 the conduct is worth 10 grades is 25 and interview is five and the recommendation is five points um I do I can get more information as to why the
students were not accepted from Lauren previously but that is what we look at for our criteria for all students um and similar to Southeast there's no specific number of students per town or per county they all just get put into a pool and um the ones with the best scores get
in thank you Madam Chair brandon uh the number you the numbers you gave uh don't add up to 100 let me see i may not be 100 but I could have misspoke give me one second please i think it was 50 60 yeah 15 10 25
15 10 25 45 and five the interview is worth 45 points oh thank you i didn't either Madam Chair questions here um Samantha the um lottery uh that they're
talking about the proposed lottery that's not legislation that's that's an act of the elementary and secondary education correct oh okay question yeah am I right um in saying
that that the lottery is not legislation it's it's what the board of elementary secondary education wants to do correct there yes it's there the board of elementary and secondary education it's been going back and forth between like the legislation and the desi I'm not
desi the board of elementary and second education um but now it is with the board correct and that's the one who are trying to get the they're trying to make the task force um and pause the um pause it from going through so that's
already been approved then the task force no the uh the lottery that that hasn't nothing has gone through has been approved um they're trying to the vote from my understanding
for the bill to be passed was going to be in May but they're trying to get it paused to get the task force created so there hasn't been an official vote on the lottery as of yet any other questions all right thank you Samantha thanks for
coming in tonight thank you thank you thank you thank you the hotel want to do one of the special time meeting articles sure um so uh article one is uh for prior
year bills and um municipal building this is for encore fire protection and monitoring fees $630 and this would come from precache anyone have any questions on that article
oh it's not [Applause] Madam Chair yes Mike this just the ma matter of the work being done in June and not getting the bills in in time for the Madam Chair yes mike how the the the
monitoring double from 80 to from 90 to 180 say that again look at the first bill like uh uh it's $90 a month or quarterly it's $90 quarterly the pro
rate is Oh okay all right i'm sorry i can see the appropriate madam Chair yes i make a motion we approve the payment of the prior year bill for $630 for account number 001-192-570 municipal building i have a
motion do I have a second second all right yes brandon yes jack yes sorry just a a thing procedure thing should we save from free cash in the motion um then my motion include debt to be
paid from free cash yes yes bonnie yes and Bill's still with us bill you with us aging Bill Ratundi all right that's good we have We have uh
Yeah we'll take it at six Mike and then uh on the annual town meeting the MK no um we'll wait on that till next uh week for the MK on um the painting of the Everett Leonard
Park um recreation commission is looking for $5,000 from free cash payment uh that's article 16 on the annual town meeting madam Chair it's fine did we get
an explanation as to I feel like we did but I don't remember the answer as to why this wasn't on the capital or requested through capital um it it wasn't on capital because a couple reasons capital we try and target to
items of 10,000 or more or that last um 10 years or more thank you this is more maintenance what was the figure Mike 5,000 even yes
madam Chair yes mike do you know how often this has to be done she told me the other uh last week she thinks probably every five years any other questions everybody good all right Madam Chair yes
make a motion that we approve the article 16 with a cost of $5,000 to be taken out of free cash i have a motion i have a second second great yes
yes zack yes paula yes bonnie yes and I have a guess so six yes can you go back to the screen and show us how many participants are here is it still okay he is i'm texting him see
Bill you're not hearing us page Billi there he is he's up there can't hear him page Billi we can't hear you Bill where's Bill all right a little bit louder bill
you just post something in the chat what's in the chat back to the chat okay I'm on now yeah Bill all right Bill i'm a yes for the previous one and the
one you just did all right excellent but the sound does go in and out all right thanks Bill start from 7:00 and the only other thing tonight I don't know if you want to vote on some massive
budgets yes um all the massive this uh miscellaneous town offices boards and expenses um finance committee zoning board of appeals tree warden historical commission memorial
and vets don't we generally wait until we have that in front of us with your recommendations you can let's do that okay it's not It's not a fine that's fine all right is that all you had Mike that's it do we Oh did I did I see um I
thought I saw on the agenda minutes but maybe that's that was just I do have minutes that have been sent that I haven't reviewed i apologize okay that's okay all right she has been sending them to me every week so Oh great okay all right and then the other um question of
the can we get an updated um revenue expenditure sheet i've gotten that with the updated uh fix and share and then next are we next week going to take a look at your recommendations we will the budgets themselves can we show the year
to date maybe to March 31st Mike or the period um you well it will be in the report that you we'll get you an upto-date report so you can see what the expenditures are anybody have any other questions
um did every Sorry go ahead um are we going to have a meeting the week of um Patriots Day that week of the 20th because the 20th is a holiday 21st 21st a holiday 20th is also a holiday true
it's up to you I think so it depends we've had meetings on the Wednesday of that week it depends on how much left we have on our agenda and how much we have to get through do they want to wait and see how far we get and if
we popular week for people to be able No one can go on vacation sorry Paul that's if if the town manager is very reasonable with this recommendation you should go pretty easy all right so it's never easy it's never easy that's no
shade to just I did want I just did want to mention did everybody get um Paul's email about the the looking for input on for our input on the um MBTA so if anybody has you know I think it's I think it's only fair we they've included
us throughout the whole process because I'm sure they don't want to um they don't think it's like to know where everybody stands um whether it's you're not going to support it any no matter what you think we should be um opposed to the whole thing if there's a specific zone that that you think um you would
support over another one I think that's important to to get that feedback to them just you know they may or may not um be able to take that but I think that's important for them to to hear so that they can make sure that we all involved yeah i feel like our um joint
meeting kind of got away from the purpose i think we were all supposed to share our um you know our thoughts on that and try to help them make a decision and I don't think everyone had the chance to do that so yeah it was nice to send that email hopefully people can share
so are we supposed to reply to him directly or you can you can send an open meeting law violation no sent to him directly as long as you don't reply to all your committee if you want to say it here
Madam Chair could I have a synopsis and I apologize I couldn't be there what were the I heard something like Red Mill was one of them uh only like three and a half hours paul I heard that i heard you tonight we'll send you the information paul go home tonight put you on YouTube
search train derailments 3 hours you'll just make sure you three hours of your time three hours you never get back paul they probably have it from last week i've got it tomorrow that has been about the different
options that they were considering so I think they're voting tomorrow tomorrow so should be interesting yeah so again if you have any input and you know I'm sure they don't want to hear afterwards well I would have voted for this if it had been in this area and you know nobody gave that input so if if people
have any strong feelings about which zone um it goes in and I think that's important to know you could also come to their meeting tomorrow night if you wanted to oh if you want four or five hours something to do on a Tuesday paul you could also go to their meeting tomorrow night if you wanted to right here in
this i love you should I get caught do you need a ride she'll drop you off by iron so Madam Chair we have a straw vote on what we would support i think it I mean it's just an individual thing i mean I don't know what the best course
forward is right yeah i think I mean I guess if you're completely opposed to anything it doesn't matter right if you're if you're I think Paul at the last meeting had said she would you would support whatever they recommend um I don't have a strong preference i think
they're in a really hard spot because I don't think anything they I think no matter what they choose they're going to have opposition yes for sure it's going to be Yeah it's going to be a I think something they have to think about politically too like what's going to pass um and I don't think that's an easy
thing right i think no matter what you do what they do they're going to have opposition to that specific zone as well as to the overall thing so um personally I'm glad it's their job and not mine so I'm I'm in the camp of like I've always
you know I kind of when I joined this this board I was it was the the idea was um as I always understood it is that if it's a planning board issue in general um we go with planning board recommendation um you know it's not certainly not my area of expertise and
not the the area I spent six million hours working on like they have um so that's my feeling but I think you know for sure everybody has their own opinion and and should just make sure that that opinion is heard um because I know that they were trying to include us in a
process from the very very beginning madam Chair yes I would say yes but we do typically wait to see what their decision is before they are asking for our input prior to like you said so like you said it's it's helpful to give it if it's not just I don't support any of it
but I do think that you know one of the reasons why we're asked to to review everything is that or anything that goes on in the warrant is that we're asked to consider the financial implications to the individual taxpayer to the town whatever um so that we can discuss it I
guess from that point of view when we take our vote um taking into consideration what was recommended by the planning board because they don't necessarily vote based on that right i guess so um giving your input I think is
important based on how you feel it impacts Norton or individual taxpayers financially madam Chair maybe somebody could refresh my memory i believe the first time around last spring this committee did not support it is that the way I
remember correct which I think is why they were trying to get our input ahead of time rather than after the fact when everyone was saying they would have supported it if it hadn't been on a empty lot or XY or Z whatever their and that was pretty much just a TPC chunk of I believe
go ahead Bonnie tell us how you feel no I'm just It's like four no before the members are here i want all the mic time no I'm kidding um no I just think that they anybody who's going before town meeting wants to have the support of the finance committee because typically
people will say "What how did the finance committee vote or why didn't the finance committee recommend this?" because somebody has to move it from the floor if we don't recommend it that will definitely happen if we don't recommend it but it becomes much more messy um and I appreciate them asking ahead of time
to garner the support now that they've gone through this for over a year um so any way that we can let them know what the majority of us feel or individually what we feel so that they know how the majority of us feel I think is really helpful to them
to garner support for whatever they do to put forth on the town floor so is that something we should be discussing now or should we just send them an email if you want to discuss now we can if you want to give my two cents I hear it i'd love to hear it Zach just my two cents not that it means anything
take that with a grain of salt is I personally have not spoken to anyone uh that wants any more apartments in town i mean I don't think anybody came to Norton to see uh uh uh you know apartment buildings
um stacked up everywhere um to be perfectly honest with you I I don't think that uh that gentleman that presented last week those numbers hold water i mean it's simple you have one child who's with disabilities everybody
knows what that costs a six figure amount um so for me um I would like to like I told them and I told this to them in person at their meeting as a citizen when I attended early on uh come up with a place where
it's the least likely to be developed which is what most communities are doing no different than New Smart Fox or open it over Gillette Stadium because they know it's never going to be developed this is you know an unfunded mandate that's you know being forced down our
throats by the state uh you know I grew up I mean I grew up in Brockton uh you know and in the 70s and ' 80s the state had very good idea to come in and and uh uh stack up apartments everywhere i think you know they would call them projects those days and how did that
turn out i mean cities like uh Taton LOL Lawrence Springfield New Bedford Fall River they put these things up everywhere they forced it down these communities throats and these you know all the working-class people moved out and that's you know another reason why
I'm in Newton i didn't come to Norton to create another Brockton and I don't think it's going to do a it's a hill of beans you know that it's going to solve the states uh housing crisis seeing there is no mandate for affordable housing i mean $3,500 uh a month
apartments i don't think it's helping anybody but that's my two cents on it anyway so Zach I think that was certainly you know part of the Red Mill discussion right yes so is that the one that you would support i would support the Redm Mill i don't think to be honest with
you I heard their arguments i don't think it affects them whatsoever that is never going to be developed if they put that those apartments are brand new up there that are adjacent to them there's nothing going to happen with that that Red Mill project i think is is I I know that the the residents there don't want
it for whatever reasons and uh they have their reasons but uh I think that has the least impact to our uh community and to our tax base and to our schools and to our uh public safety so if they chose the Glenn and the what was the Glen
paired with Mansfield A combination would you be opposed to that i guess there's no question uh yeah because I think Mansfield A has got sewage and it's probably the only area left that you know we could do industrial development in this town i mean there's
not very else we could put you could put anything like that there um and Mansville would be developed i mean I those ro apartments that are there are many years old and I think uh last time I looked there was one owner for five of
them five of those buildings that you know somebody's going to offer him a big check to to walk away so for me probably not i would not support that is the Glenn is a Glenn not enough acreage is that why it came ac year they said it was uh that
contract was up for public housing there 31 31 or something so in five or six years those are olds that somebody could come in there and tear them all down and create massive density i mean right right now I mean it's it's a public housing project it's not that they
they'll tear those down and you'll see them stacked in there like cordwood the number increase though was not was not huge for for Glenn if they did tear it down and rebuild um you know there's obviously already apartments there so it
would just be an increase of I don't remember the number i don't have enough hand so that's that was 25 yeah um 25 units Paul 25 acres at Oh that is okay so that's not enough by itself that's why they're trying to pair it with the
Madam Chair yes um just to add to Zach's point where he brought up that there's what one owner that owns five units five I believe last time I looked um I guess more for Paul at the meeting last week I
had asked and each um occupant at Redm Mill owns their building so you know if someone comes in they each have to agree to sell so it's much harder for a developer to come in and they can't just write one big check right i had heard
that there's almost no way it would be a feasible project because of that so right i'm not sure the devaluation i thought I read that somewhere in the newspaper or something they're wondering about that but I think that to back to what I had said earlier the reason why I think it's a tough decision is because we know if people we've all been to town
meetings we know that the um red mill contingent is not one to be underestimated um no it's a problem and so if they Yeah they come in a block right so I think they that um if they're concerned and if their
their concerns can't be mitigated in any way I think that will be a tough thing to get past so I think you know all of those things are for sure things that that the planning board is going to have to consider what's you know what's going to get passed and and the one hand
you're saying you know people want something that's not going to be built on um and that's what's going to get passed but not if you have you know 100 or so people from that you know area coming and voting against it madam Chair I I did um get the vibe that the
planning board has gone full circle though instead of looking for places that absolutely potentially could be built to at least give us some options that maybe not but I think that is the pulse of the town i think from the beginning that's what they've been trying to do is is from the beginning of this process once it failed the first
time they went and they had the um the different you know input sessions I think if I remember correctly if you remember this um was the I think the Glenn was the top choice of residents when they gave feedback
correctly and that could only be tied up with school dad they couldn't pickle that with street or something they They had thought of that you know the barrerows the corner of the barrerows with that old building there yeah the old y um that was an option to pair with
each of these but um that comes with its own issues and I think it's zoned industrial right like it could potentially end up being something there someday yeah and also I think people Yeah i think there was I think there was a lot of opposition to that one as well so but I'm almost surprised that they
didn't go full circle life walks but we did with the Gillette and do our Blue Star Park down off of Letter Street right right that wouldn't be changed in any day of time i don't know that that ever that ever
came up i never heard that but again if you look at Nobody ever gave us input right so um I think they were very receptive to any input of any any lots that anybody suggested they looked at every single lot they could so um you know they certainly were trying to to get the people's input and try to find
something that's going to pass and um I think to their point too the other point they brought up was it's not really the planning board's job to to fight the state right that's if the select board wanted to to say "No we're not going to follow this and and and as you know um take on that fight with the state." I
think that would be their position or that their right to do that but not really the planning board's position or or job to do that well I'm I'm certainly in favor of passing something so we don't give up grant opportunities but I'm certainly not looking to try to
stuff the schools for uh new new students that we can't afford oh and I did send I did forward just right before the meeting so he probably didn't see it um Paul I asked Paul to send me the there were four towns I think that had done independent studies um I asked if he could send them to me he found three
of them so he sent the three to me i haven't even looked at them myself but that's I Mansfield or Milton is that on the impact of the Yeah they had outside independent middle people come in to um see what the impact would be financially for those um
Did you get to read it i didn't get to read it but they they the the the um what they said at the meeting was that all of those towns found that it was not it was a a net game if you look at um for example they they pointed to
uh East Main apartments and how we bring in how much do we bring in Mike from that do you know off the top of your head or is anybody else remember was it 500,000 i was going to say okay so 500,000 we bring in from from East Main apartments we had something like 20
students or correct me if I'm wrong these numbers so that if you if you do the math on that it's it's still in that gain because they said that for the multif family um dwellings you don't tend to get as as heavy uh density of students the one seriously special needs
for sure,000 yeah madam chair yes and I that's only the financial aspect is one part of it it's you know what do you want the town to look like i mean do you want it stacked you want a country style living or do you want a city type atmosphere where there's traffic and beat you know that's right but I think
people live here for a reason I think for me though Zach you know I I try to separate the two if I'm here on as a finance committee member right and so if if this if a town meeting doesn't doesn't support it then so be it but from a financial perspective I feel like
that's what you should be looking at right and the idea of potentially going into a lawsuit with the state and that's none of those towns event that have you know they've all had to pay some money and unless they've you know negotiated pretty quickly um the loss of grants all
of those financial implications I think are something that we need to at least take into consideration madam chair yes I don't remember the exact number I think it was just over 5 million in grants over
um 10 I think it was since 2017 or something like that i want to say 4.5 million so that's what I think half of it was for the Elm Street so that still has an act so it would be half of that
but again just the idea of the would we be in a lawsuit right if we if you turn this down if this doesn't pass um you know the cost of that alone to me I'm not uh I'm not saying I'm I'm just
you know people keep saying the grants but but that's why I'm mad chair I'm in favor of something passing that's not going to get built for a long time in my lifetime so again like I would look at all the the the options that they put forward that they narrowed it down to
that's pretty shock yeah they would look at the options they narrowed it down to and again if there's one in particular that you would say I only support it if you put this you know in there and I think they need to know that because um you know they need they want to decision
madam Chair is it a three/4er vote or a majority vote tell me 2/3 two/3 to change yeah two3 you know I'm going to go out on Olympia and say no matter what they pick I don't think anything can get improved i just
think there's just too many I I don't know that's the joy of town meeting that's the joy of town meeting and uh Middleboro came with I just was reading it i didn't read the whole article but Middleboro reached an out of court settlement with them where they did not
have to do the overlay but they put in some more author do you know anything about that Mike was in a paper just recently uh where they they said well what I whatever it was it should be looked into because they they're not doing the overlay but they
agreed on some other terms with the state and they approved it i don't know yeah so they they I think they had their own zone and then they increased the size and that was kind of the settlement
yeah theirs theirs was um I mean obviously they're in they're not an adjacent community they're you know community theirs was pretty significant in terms of their requirements so um I think you know every situation is going to be different and I think yeah as you said I don't
know that we can we we we can't control town meeting but we can at least maybe try to get it to move forward and allow town mike hold that picture there for me would you explain the blue behind who owns that right here all the blue area
behind those are the gunnels well it's green to me but anyways that's uh What color is that look behind you it's green to me green there okay look over there yeah that's all conservation land it is that's not buildable is it no
that's town conservation land and that can't be added in or is it added in nope can't count no can't there is um if you if you look at the green property and then you come up to the end at the top that property right
there is town property that's the house we bought yeah new boat ramp the boat ramp yeah yep that's right up the street from where I live so
will we not include a noise in this no why not i I think by itself this wasn't really a huge amount it had to be paired with something else and then people proved it like this with the 25 with the GL which you had so was this and the client kind of pair together to make the magic
number of and one of those parcels up there already has a 40B proved on it this parcel right here which one like this one it's where the cross fit was oh yeah what's being built there or not what's
that what's going to be built they they've got a 40B improvement there to Madam Chair yes i just want to throw something out in the mix so it has been mentioned that um I'm just going to put
it out there i am for this um proposal i think that more housing does need to be built i'm fine with having apartments in my town i grew up in New Bedford it really doesn't phase me um so with more housing in the town and
more families or singles or whoever these people are commuters um you know it's potential that they could be spending more money in our businesses in our town also having you know these commuters it could attract new and other businesses so at the end of the day you
know things could end up being a wash if you think about it if you know these units end up being built um there's a potential yeah we could have some more children in our school system we're getting more money from the state for those children and it could be also bringing our median income down so we
might get more money from the state um for these children and then again you know more business being done in town and hopefully attracting more business so I'm just going to throw that out there as a possibility of what could happen from this um I'm supporting the
Glenn and the Mansfield A um you know I I think that more housing needs to be built i work in the nonprofit world and I see what is happening right now with the rents just skyrocketing and people not being able to afford rent and hoping that more housing would lower rents but
that's my two cents we saw somewhere and I think it might have been Lucas Ray that counteracted it but that it's a shame that we don't have more of the buildings going into the straight two three bedroom straight ranches on the small you know that's that's what we need you need real affordable but when
you have that buildable lot you're always doing the two twotory colonials now and all that that uh it's money for money for the Yeah yeah madam Chair yes um just I I know everyone has a fear of all this new population the town's going
to explode in the last census we virtually had no increase at all i live in a town that's seven square miles with at the time 10,000 people we now have 11 our population increased more than
Norton's and you know Norton was 19,000 people and 28 square miles and Little Hull Brook increased more than Norton last time in the last census so there hasn't been a lot of population growth in the town yeah and Mike what I was
looking for was the slide that was um the Norton climb is the 343 additional or total because they obviously have um existing apartments there now i can't
remember what it looks like that's the total i thought it was total so 343 is total 25 acres yeah so what is there right now um does he 150 okay so that sounds my other question Mike is why isn't like the Mainsfield Avenue side
paired down and keep it at the 750 instead of going all the way to eat something for the increased fee off you should email planning board and ask them that well I don't know if that came up that came up or not but that was one of the the reasons that um people didn't like
the original um TPC was because it was double the state requirement if you're going to have something forced down your throat eat what you after don't have anything extra i think it's it's just the my understanding was just Yeah exactly and it just how it how it worked out that um one wasn't enough and then
they're trying to you know and madam chair I did send this to all think members you can refresh your memories fun times ahead yes and we'll we'll get to talk about this again when we actually vote so the fun continues but
like I said if you have strong feelings on a specific you know decision before they vote this is the time speak now on purp um I want to thank them for all the work they did they didn't want this yeah they didn't want to have to do all this work
it got forced upon them and it you know I just hope people don't look at look what the planning board's trying to do i mean they're trying to meet a requirement that that was forced on them and they're all volunteers and they're listening to 6,000 different
opinions that don't get paid the same as us Bonnie that's true they are elected so they do have to answer for their opinions and decisions so Bill any comments you know I didn't suffer through the three hours last week i left after like
an hour and a half um I I I kind kind of would add just to what Paula said in that you know we do need more affordable
housing or we we need more options I guess is the best way to put it whether they build them and they're affordable that's that's yet to be determined um I wasn't really opposed to any of the sites i I kind of like the
Norton Glenn and the Red Red Mill but that puts it all on one school if there are kids um but you know I I I I'd rather say yes to
it than be sitting here next year asking Mike's replacement why did our legal bill like quadrupled and you know I I don't think it's worth trying to fight the state if
they're going to ram it down our fruit anyways so you know pick the pick the least disruptive areas and just go with it so I didn't see that as a pair the Redm Mill and the uh No I think Redm Mill by
itself was enough so yeah oh I see yeah okay yeah i mean the idea with the Glenn is is is not just you know that that there's something already not just whether it's buildable or not but that there's already apartments back there it's already you know it's already an apartment area um it's not going to
change the you know whatever the overall um aesthetic thank you for the aesthetic of of the area so I think that was that was the advantage there um Madam Chair just to just comment on what Bill said because he didn't sit through that
three-hour meeting and I did um they did say um that it was a possibility i can't remember who said it might have been I don't think Jen Gman spoke but anyway someone said that there could be the poss actually Nick Schlinker was on the meeting I think he said there's a possibility of redistricting or
rechanging the lines of which school if there happened to be like a big boom in population that did in in fact impact how many children went to each school and let's say the LG could not accommodate because of how the overlay
impacted that area at any point in the future then they would just reddraw the lines and so some kids that are currently LG would become uh JCS is the assumption since JCS is a bigger school thank you for allowing the discussion
yeah I mean like I said I think it's important that they the to Mike's point they were they you know they've done a ton of work they've really tried to get everybody's opinion um they're not you know you're never going to make everybody happy um especially not town
meeting so I think um they have a tough decision and and I I I agree with Paul that I do like the the idea of the blend um and the Mansfield Avenue but I would also support um the other options i feel like uh at this point I just want to see
something passed i just hope that they could truly be affordable that's the the next can I just talk on that yeah sure so that that's one place I think where people were getting confused the other night there's no affordable component to
these apartments the idea is that if there's more apartments built in the state things will become more affordable but there's no affordable requirement i think the demand is always going to outpace the supply
places baby got I got to be here forever how many years I got left madam Chair yes sir even Even Mike knows very well even when they do these 40bs and they say "Well it's going to be affordable." They they they meet all the requirements they supersede all the
zoning laws and then they say "Okay you still want to town uh this was $3,500 a month and we have 10% affordable units they're $3,200 a month well if you consider that affordable like I don't know what to tell you i mean that's a a
scam in itself that that's even allowed to you know you take $100 off a month or $200 off a month and all of a sudden now it's deemed unaffordable unit which is what's going on you know by McDonald's and everywhere else oh yeah look at the rents where they're trying to charge for affordable units there that that
apartment building is already 80% rented out yeah but I mean they can they can charge whatever they want because there's no housing right that's that's correct i look at where my daughter is in Florida and Orlando she's ready college and her rent has just gone up and up and up
because the housing has just gotten tighter and tighter and tighter and they literally will just you know just it goes up at a whim so imagine Yeah so it's it's been you know if if they if even in within this area if you build more housing um this area maybe not the
whole state but this area could become more affordable um at least have some options for the future generation like to have my my kids come back i don't know if they will but they certainly can't afford to at this point right so I'm not even sure Mike how big the
buildings could be along for that there's not a very deep lot where those condos are with the conservation behind um well just use next to McDonald's as a judge was in there 105 I believe
somewhere around there it supersedes the zoning laws i mean it supersedes the zoning laws they can cram them in like that just like that and I think Paul sent us something else too has he said something else about that different models of no today yeah
maybe not maybe I maybe I heard about that response anyone else questions or comments madam Chair yes motion to journ motion to second second you're right paul yes
yes yes paula yes bonnie yes steve I'm sorry bill take this off whoever's online usually Steve's online he goes by Steve sometimes hi Bill