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the meeting dur the meeting start the meeting sorry would be fun take it I'll take it thank you I little slip of the tongue there so we have public comment we have our Leon reports We Are Tonight We Are honoring the M Restaurant for raising over $100,000 for reading causes public hearing
ony clapping later um we have a public hearing on some traffic amendments going to read them off right now and then we have uh a discussion on the MBTA uh turn back track and then we have an update from the center of active living and then we have a parking kiosk discussion potential vote discuss and vote on new Council on Aging Lees on future agendas and mean
minutes so typically we don't have this many people in the room which is nice and um public comment is limited to two minutes typically so how many people in this room planning to give public comment well in the other room can Angela can you me a favor can you go in the other room see how many people want spe public comment thank you did you
two in the other room two so about 12 here all right so again online on yeah probably some on Zoom so I assume most of you are in the room about the tracks we've all gotten your emails we share your concerns and your frustration a lot of great information was provided to us
I've been multiple residents so that's great but tonight is not a hearing when we have our agenda item so for public comment because there's so many of you I'm going to limit two minutes I'm going to time you and we're going to move on to the next Resident so I can't just let people speak for five 10 minutes that will affect the whole agenda and then when we get to that portion of the agenda the board will ask all its questions after the te presents and if there's any
questions that we didn't answer most likely I will allow one of you to be representative of the neighborhood to ask a question that we didn't ask just to be fair because I know a lot of you here for that and we want to hear from you so right now I'm going to take the sheet I'm going to go in order if you don't want to speak I'm just going to read off names you don't have to speak going be easier manage
so read off names whether you want to speak or not just come up to the podium if you want to speak uh name and address if you don't want to speak just say speak Cara no comment okay Linda hi my name is l derusso I've lived
at 55 hanck Street for the majority of my life um the over 180 homeowners on Hancock Vine and a budding streets we all knew that we purchased property next to the tracks and we never complained about it it was part of you know where we purchased but we have with we've accepted the trains going back and forth no complaints everything's fine but none of
us purchased this property next to a train staging area or to a railroad yard where trains idle the majority of the day and I want the town to know that this is not just a neighborhood issue it's a townwide issue half of the public school children in Reading will be subject to the fumes and noise while they attend par Middle School the townwide children um Sports programs practice many different sports at the park ofield
and then the other thing to make it really short is I'm concerned about the foundations of my of the houses many of these houses are over a hundred years old how are they going to stand up to that constant vibration there's a lot of other things that people need to say but that was just a few that I wanted to hit on thank you thank you uh S no Sal Russo no okay um I'm good James
Tracy James could be going need some help Karen James Tracy you could be the other room he in the other ask if he wants to speak please Dan Lisa no no no comment Lisa Tracy yeah
couple people are coming I don't know exactly are okay all right thanks the names again uhuh oh James
Tracy James Tracy want to speak hopefully you guys can hear me on Zoom next door so I'm just going off the signing sheet you don't have to speak if I call your name I'm just trying to go in order Lisa said no uh Vanessa you're next yeah oh okay all Rado Mount buron Street um so I'm actually here to talk about parking kiosks so um I'll start this by saying I did not vote for the parking kiosk s uh
to be funded as a town meeting member I didn't like them I spoke against them um that said um Mr Haley uh I believe you were chair of the committee that recommended the parking kiosks um right you were on it you were the sou board representative on that on that committee town meeting did vote to support and fund the kiosks um those have now been installed um I have no comment on the roll out I thought it was fine
this body I know is going to vote on next steps for the kiosks however it is not this body's job nor right to overrule what town meeting has funded and authorized to be deployed in town so I would just caution you on the choices you make for that vote because by voting against the use of the kiosks even though I don't want them you are overruling the entire town meeting B's vote so I would ask you to try to
carefully there um I am curious about the MBTA presentation I will hold questions and hopefully all of that will be answered thank you thanks Laura Ryan no comment comment Stuart May Stuart do you want to speak we once if he comes in jawiin
trara manaa in the other room all right you can come in still but I'm just keep on going Nancy simac good evening my name is Nancy zlac I live in Precinct 5 and I'm a town
meeting member as well as chair of the um reading Council on Aging um at 9:00 tonight you are going to hear an update on the reading Center for active living project and the Council on Aging board has been working collaboratively since 2022 first with the reading Center for active living committee and now with recap to ensure
that the current needs of reading 60 plus residents will be met as well as the growing population of this age group including Recreation and veteran services strengthens the programming and Staffing Resources that will benefit all age groups here in town I encourage everyone to go go to
the recal website reading ma.gov recal we'll give you a lot of details as well as allow you to send comments that's it Ed momic okay uh something moscarello may moscarello no comment okay thank you
Susan Savage I think no comment okay Angela binda yeah thank you Angela binda Precinct Five uh town meeting is coming up in April and is a longtime town meeting member I will look I will look at Financial requests from the select board with a new skepticism if the select board does not vote to restart the parking kiosk program the select board
asked town meeting for $110,000 for kiosk and town meeting was told that the kiosk would generate income to pay part of the money back yet after two weeks and barely hardly any hard data to make a decision you voted to shut down the kiosks and revisit the issue in January so now I'm asking that you start the program again I heard Deputy M mola's CH deputy chief M mola's presentation on January 21st and her recommendation to turn the kios back on
and a few things that she said seemed especially important she said that it might be difficult to adjust it first but that it would help customers in the long run she presented data not just from Park but recent data from January 6 to 15 2025 so our comments were based on new not old data and she stated that there were more violations with a 4-Hour parking and Miss Murphy asked her about this and she stated the problem is likely with employees who are more able to legally parked with the 4-Hour limit
so she anticipates the pro the problem to increase she also stated that the initial issues have been worked out and that they have they have a video education plan to help people to uh get adjusted to the kxs but again the deputy chief said the kiosk would help customers in the long run no one wants to see businesses suffer we all want a thriving downtown and positive parking experiences I was discussing this matter with a group of people today
and it was suggested by one person that the kios should be put back into place as recommended by Park and Deputy Chief and town meeting but perhaps a holiday period from Thanksgiving to the New Year could be enacted where the kiosk would be turned off for the winter winter holiday season for the benefit of the businesses who count on the holiday sales sales that seems to me uh that it could be a workable compromise so um I
hope you consider that compromised but I do hope the select board votes tonight to restart uh the chios program as recommended by Park town meeting and Deputy Chief of Mandola thank you thank you uh JY zany I think z g z h what Z I think this is cursive so I'm struggling here so yeah okay here say yeah of course okay
my name is j I have here wait you want to speak yeah or the podium please I have to do it because of Zoom yes because of Zoom you otherwise M um I have to write it but I forgot to write it down so it's okay so I just write it right now my name is Jin uh I live here reading for 14 years um I live in uh the ging road so uh my comment is short I just request uh MBTA to consider more options for for uh TRN projects which can uh minimize the harms
and increase the benefits for the for the town people I also suggest to improve the bus structure which related to a train service because no uh not many stops for for bus so people uh it's very hard for people to to access the the train actually um there only like a couple of stops over there near the Town Center I think it's not convenient people cannot take the uh advantage of the the train that much uh except I I suggest um add more bus bus stop too um
so this is all related to the to the train projects because I want people consider uh with a more bigger picture not just the one reason uh they should consider more uh related the SC uh when you do the do the the project so don't do it Rush can can we just delay the vote and um um consider more things and make things more perfect before we we we start a project don't rush project okay that's just my comments okay thank you
we agree where were we Pat Crowley I forgot P Ry 71 Vine Street and um Kaden had spoken before for the Youth and now Tommy luer is here to speak for the Youth and they made a poster so if you want to come up in the front so the zoom
people can see it and you can explain it nice and loud so this is the uh train and so this is the train and this is air pollutions one of the main thing is the air pollution air pollution can't cause headaches um sickness and bad ecosystems um this is like all the noise like B like when it's coming in at like 5 or some or some time it could like wake me
up or it could like give um this is like Parker School um this is the map we don't want this to be our system this is before and then this is after this is after water and people maybe go down to the um conservation of land for pie and by and that would be stopped if there there is
trains running and there dudes and smokes flu in there why put this turn back a track here in a neighborhood with tons of kids and an elderly hous in community with other over 60 units that's presentation thank thank you
Jim Riley good after good afternoon good evening I've been here before I'm going to make this quick this fine woman over here brought up Alternatives right now we're working with the Conservation Commission explaining a variety of things and it's up to them to either accept or reject this I believe that the turnback track Alternatives that we have submitted
are either not being listened to or not understood by the MBTA if they were then some of the Alternatives we suggested may have may be used instead of the turn back track last night I sat with Andrew McNichol and his steering committee on the Eastgate development project and there was minimal or no discussion until I stood up to talk about
that area is one of the Alternatives that we suggested that the reading Depot goes down there and become part of the Eastgate development but we didn't know how far along this project was there are there was some architects in this meeting last night on the video that when I explained to them that some of the this alternative by moving the depot down there would it increase commuter access more bus service
a variety of things that should be talked about not just the turnback track the turnback track doesn't benefit our town of reading residents something like the Eastgate project with the reading deep will move there very costly but not to humans thank youas PR
Hi D thanks for having us um Lucas fro 85 Hancock Street um I want to thank you board and other committees that we've already reached out Matt Town manager um thank you for listening to us and helping give us a voice and supporting us um special thanks to Chris for videoing our meeting the other day and thanks to the residents that are here today A lot of you I think were at that meeting at the library and I thank you for showing up in force today to show your support on your feelings on this and ultimately for me it's my family of five that I am protecting first and
foremost I will not stop regardless of the outcome of the Conservation Commission I will not stop until this project is stopped blatantly say that um but just also too I would really appreciate Alistair who is here tonight from the MBTA his document that he put together in June 23rd of 2022 underneath a title that says no regrets project is reading I would like him to explain what no regrets means to
the town of Fred thank you Cameron Rose Gillis hi Karen RH Gillis 69 Lyon Street um I was a member of Park and I'm I'm
really just want to incorporate what's already been said so I can move this along and have others speak um I think it's really important to consider when we had our negotiations it was during and right after covid so the train our discussions really involved we weren't sure if train service was going to come back full swing and I think it was estimated that it would not because a lot of people work remotely and that seems to be changing so our decisions we stand behind the K or I stand behind the kiosks and I think we're going to need the Kos even more
moving forward because I think the entire downtown train situation is going to completely change depending on what happens with this project that's being presented to thank you very much GNA
hi folks uh GNA Bowski 3 Harman Avenue so I'm with the reading climate advisory committee but I'm speaking as a as a resident tonight um I I would I know this board doesn't have direct say in what MBTA does and doesn't do I'm speaking more towards the MBTA Representatives here I would ask that you folks pump the breaks on this effort for a little bit
um Let It idle uh due good due to the lack of communication that's been happening with the residents in this town so over the course of the last week or so I've heard over three hours of folks talk about this uh subject and that's a fraction of the time that a lot of the residents have spent on this effort there's absurd amount there's absurd amounts of questions that haven't really been answered and the lack of dialogue uh has
been kind of detrimental turning this into an unnecessary unnecessarily hostile and resentful uh effort uh from the mpta I know there's a meeting coming up I'm not going to take your thunder you'll let folks know in the moment uh but I would I would Advocate to just hold off for a little bit and have a dialogue with the residents in this town thank you
I think it's Ryan assar something no comment okay there uh Bryce cheny chny I have some comments I mean I probably project from back there but um any case uh my name is Bryce sheni I'm a resident at 15 Hunt Street I've been here about a decade um
I also have a family there and a six-year-old and three-year-old so um first and foremost I'm concerned about the the environmental impact I'm concerned about the pollution air pollution um I'm concerned about the necessity of having this project there especially right next to um the conservation land that I think is about $5 million to rehab that project in particular um but I'm also most concerned that to Echo the gentleman um before me's comments that that uh first
heard about this I think in December January December um been to a couple me one of the selectboard as well as one over this past weekend I'm I'm really think that there's a lot of opposition to this particular project and I think there needs to be as mentioned before it be great to just pump the brakes on this a bit uh also I know we have a chance to be at the selectboard here but have a little bit more comment from the town of the Town residents because it seems like there is a ton of opposition and there's only so many people that can be in this room I think you need to biger room I think you need to be able to explain it
and also I think you need to be able to listen to some of the Alternatives before you start putting a shovel in the ground anytime soon so my concern is that if this is something that's going to still push forward get more feedback from the town and listen to Alternatives about where this could be other than you know right next to a conservation land that you spend that time money to invest in thank you John Trick comment okay
staff here Amy staff here 16 Hunt Street I wasn't going to speak but my daughter put our name on so I said I'm going to speak um so I live across from Bryce uh and behind me are the train uh moved in in 2002 I am an advid outdoor enthusiast uh didn't have that conservation land
wished I had and now love to go down there the animals that come out and the birds from the bird sanctuary that like to flock onto that side um I fear this will be destroyed from what I'm hearing is the idling will be happening right there and from what I'm hearing it will happen until pretty late at night um additionally I love the trains and I remember being pregnant not long after moving in and we would yell out rain as
soon as you heard the train go by so totally love that and have been a fan of the tea grew up in Belmont took the tea into work into Cambridge when I moved to Everett took the um bus um in and have taken um the subway and all of that I work at Simmons in Boston uh my daughter actually goes to school there and one time took the B the Train the bus um around to get here and it took a really long time but that particular route for
us isn't convenient um and I don't know you know depending on where you live um it matters whether or not that's actually a convenient option being someone who had a sick child when I went back to work and used to take the tea and I parked my parents house it became something that I couldn't do anymore because I needed to be home quickly um and now unfortunately because I'd like to be able to utilize um I don't like sitting in traffic um but it's really not all that convenient but the um the idoling late right behind our house and the
effects to um this beautiful land uh where um there's a lot of animals that are really um making their home there I think is unfortunate Charlotte you're up Denise camito no comment David no comment okay Duncan
could someone please go into the next room and ask if anybody wants to speak name and address please uh my name is Mark agamy at 23 Lee Street uh lifelong reading resident uh I live uh 640 ft away from the proposed MP MBTA uh turnback project I was informed of the proposed MBTA turn back tracked last week by a
neighbor I never received a letter from the town notifying me of such a project the idea of increasing throughput of mostly empty trains to Boston by adding almost a mile of track so more empty trains can idle from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. belching diesel fumes in a densely populated residential neighborhood through a Zone 2 Wellhead protection Zone adjacent to a bird sanctuary and right conservation Wetlands that state and federal
governments each funded $2 million each to build a new Scenic Park is absolutely asinine I've read through the turn back track notice of intent and have some comments first the name of the river where trains are proposed to idle all day is called the abona it is misspelled as abiona no less than 12 times in the noi
second I reviewed the certified certified ABS list in the noi during a meeting coordinated by concerned residents last weekend many abds stated they did not receive any notification sure enough the certified a Butters list in the noi does not include any houses on Vine Street nor Hancock Street confirming that the project has violated chapter 131 section 40 of Massachusetts General general laws and
local rules about notification to project abutters this constitutes legal non-compliance and grounds for legal action as this train track is a linear-shaped project site longer than 1,000 ft in length notification is required by Massachusetts general laws to all the butters within 1,000 ft of the proposed site thus the noi failed to notify hundreds of hom hes that would be
subjected to increased carcinogenic diesel exhaust incessant noise and vibration penalties incurred would be for each violation the benefit of reducing a 45 minute frequency to 30 minutes for an underc capacity system is dubious compared to the adverse impact to this community if necessary the second track should be built at the train depot where proper electronic equipment to reduce
diesel exhaust belongs rather than through a high impact area consisting of dense residential neighborhoods and conservation land this proposed project in the process to obtain its approval has violated state and local laws is illc conceived and will not stand
anyone on Zoom Caitlyn I asked um if anyone wanted to speak for them to raise their hand and I got no raised hands all right okay we're moving on all right um what oh is it okay
thank chair Vanessa M bernon Street um one of the things that might be helpful for those for me and for I'm assuming a lot of people in the audience is that what is the process and maybe the MBTA will be going through this but select board has no Authority on this project that is that correct as far as a vote goes correct but we correct there's conversations that happen right so um it would be helpful if someone could explain um what the process is for this project and maybe that's the MBTA Representatives
thank you for being here um and what Avenues have the residents have if they choose to engage further either with this board with elected with state level elected officials um because right now I'm a little fuzzy on on what that looks like so that's just my request thank you yeah that's why we're here tonight thank you um okay Leon reports give you a minute Mark thanks Carlo so um ncy zimac talked a little bit about the Council on Aging
which has been meeting very regularly permanent building committee has also been meeting U very regularly um we had a public meeting last week trying to remember when the pizza was from last like Tuesday um and I've been talking more about how the project is progressing um the design update activities which this board is going to hear about tonight uh from representatives of the ERS project manager so that's the main um activity there's um a pretty quick Cadence going going on on the project right now that
will result in um cost estimates coming to this board in two weeks time um and then the goal would be after that for the board to consider see if it has any other questions and then this board to be able to vote I believe March 4th on the proposal uh going to fincom on the 5th of March yes following that up um which has everything lined up and ready to to get to town meeting and then to take the process forward um there is a ton of work going on um the permanent
building committee is an amazing group of folks I um am impressed with with all that they're able to do all the knowledge that they bring um to the project to the activities um you'll see when we get to cost estimates not only we had the the architected one there's a third party that did one um and now we're getting kind of a second opinion I guess You' call it so all those will be able to come together for our next meeting the information is kind of being crunched through right now so tonight is design updates two weeks will be the cost estimates and
then board questions and then two weeks which is our next meeting will come to U request for a vote to take it forward from there so that's it thank you very much thanks Melissa um I don't have much uh select uh I'm sorry school committee met last week and they approved their FY 26 budget and they also did a video highlighting their new dyslexia program which was a great video if anyone wants to watch it it will be on YouTube
Chris thanks Carla um well not a le as On Assignment I did attend the um residence Community Forum on the MBTA thing um and uh I brought it up then and I'll bring it up now I've never seen a more organized group in so little amount of time when I walk down the stairs typically to all of these meetings that we go to um I expected to turn the corner and have like a dozen people there or something half of them being
staff and you know calling it a day and I walked around and saw uh close to 100 people um so in that little a time I just got to say I mean kudos to them for for getting through and um letting their voices be heard um and obviously we'll go over everything else uh later on um and then the kilum school uh building committee met yesterday the total project budget is estimated at 130
million so it was originally around 135 so you know 5 million is 5 million uh and the estimated Town share is roughly um 88 million so the msba is reimbursing roughly 42 million-ish they have to do another calculation it's going up um by a couple Grand or something like that cuz it's 5182 reimbursable instead of 514 um but in any event the total project
budget is 130 million and our share will be roughly 88 um and that includes solar was also voted on um last night as part of that equation and that's all thank you um a week or so ago I attended um the MMA conference for two days um joined with um our town manager assistant Town manager and a number of other folks um so um at that annual meeting we heard
from Governor Hy we heard from lieutenant governor Kim Driscoll twice Senator Warren Senator Mary um the hottest topic is always what money are we sending back to communities what money are we grabbing from the federal government and you know are we doing the best to take advantage of every single opportunity attended some breakout sessions on topical legal challenges that communities are facing Innovative affordable housing solutions that our peers are are um tracking down and
implementing and um in the trade show area I also have the opportunity to see these amazing electric passenger vans which go Way Beyond ad ADA compliance which I hear a lot from the senior community and and and the craziest part is they cost less than their gas powerered equivalents and they're just so much nicer and um they things they do are um shrink down so that folks don't have to climb up high to get in them
they are automated in the back to facilitate you know wheelchair access um they're just amazing and there being electric vehicles they're also um so I think the sticker price was about 40,000 and of course they're eligible for the credits 7500 per I'm kind of surprised because a van costs a lot more than $40,000 but um so these are things that we can start thinking about as we're looking at our um Center for of living and micro you
know Transportation opportunities to get our residents around town safely so that was um exciting um I also started my term as a member of the women elected Municipal officials um that group will be hosting Katherine Clark for all um MMA members um later this spring um and um I represented reading at the annual business meeting to send re resolutions to the governor on a number of topics like past remediation um making hybrid and zoom meetings
permanent which came into being during covid but under the oaces of making local government more effici and there are always Financial resolutions you know we need more money for RO roads we need more money for public buildings all of that so the MMA every year sends a strong message to the governor and um we have a lieutenant governor reminding us that she served many many years in municipal government and she's working on our behalf um I can tell you the governor is proposing her budget a 50% increase in chapter 90 money for towns
based on road miles so the question comes up you know how are we going to pay for our manyi roads well this is another year of increased funding coming in um and the 100 million doll increase which I understand may be the largest ever um it not only includes money for roads but also Culvert maintenance under those roads um and also incentives for microt transportation um as I mentioned earlier and the other great um program
that got a lot of um publicity was Mass Housing Works which we know about the mass Works Grant um we've been very successful in applying and bringing funds to renting so the Housing Works infrastructure program um is another grant program and you know the name is housing but one of the key components of this that relates to us is support for the infrastructure as as more housing gets built we we all know it it puts
some pressure on our infrastructure our roads our sewer our water lines so this is a grant program to help with that and um help us um make I like this is a separate check critical upgrades to outdated water sewer and other infrastructure to support the housing but I think that we could like make that just just support our community in general there is no end to the number of sewer lines and water lines that probably need upgrading in this town it's just it's a big town we've been around for a couple hundred
years so it's a it's a um a fact of light so I'm really excited about this infrastructure grant program um and that's it thanks thanks I have nothing to report I've had a lot of conflicts past couple of weeks so I apologize for that and hand it off to Matt thank you so I wanted to recognize Captain maret who retired last week after 39 years of dedicated service to the town of reading at the fire department um he will be greatly Miss there's a lot of big shoes to fill over the fire
department these days including uh Chief burs who will be retiring in May so but good luck to Captain maete he served the town very well I just wanted to mention that publicly um last meeting uh an issue was brought up about the Austin prep parking down on Bine Street if you remember you had dealt with this at an earlier meeting um I checked and there was no vote on this um so you don't have to vote to do anything differently and Austin prep has not ended up parking the students down there anyway so it's kind
of a little bit of a moot point right now Vine Street is open but I wanted to clear that up because it came up at the last meeting thought it was aadia excuse me that I thought it was aadia that's where the issue was that's where the issue issue was on aadia but Vine Street is what we had okay yes thank you um the NBTA obviously is here tonight and I've been informed that there will be another meeting Tuesday February 25th at 700 p.m. this time at the Pleasant Street Center which is a little bigger room for us and that was a meeting that the MBTA requested um as an
offshoot to the meeting that I had with them in the legislative delegation so this will be an ongoing conversation not just here tonight but I wanted to get that meeting out on the record I put it in my town manager minute and will be publicizing it as well so that's in a couple weeks um Karen covered it well many of us went to the MMA conference uh last week um very um very informative as usual one of the highlights is the governor will be refiling the municipal empowerment act which he filed last year
and I guess didn't have the legs to to go anywhere last year but this year we have more hope um one of the one of the key parts of that is to enable the remote hybrid meetings to continue um because if that is not enabled those will end I believe the end of March so in another month or so um so we're going to keep a really close eye on that because we do utilize that quite a bit there's other things in there about reform of procurement uh laws and rules um um and also the whole issue of double
polls that always comes up um some relief from municipalities there so that that's very helpful and and I continue to work on the budget on annual town meeting warrant on special town meeting warrant um it's coming together very nicely I've been working with Town Council with Bond council with staff um and I think we're right on track with that I'll be sending some more updates regarding specific dates but wanted to let you and everybody know that we're really on track for for April in May so so that's my report thank you Jan do you have anything you want um
I I went to the MMA conference as well I went to um sessions on um legal issues Communications and um and communities that are uh looking to do debt exclusion projects things like that so uh I didn't get to go to the trade show because there was so much walking it was fantastic but I I missed that so um it was a really informative and um and useful uh exercise and a lot of our staff went and and got quite a bit out
of it so um we appreciate being able to do that my work continues on uh supporting a number of projects as Matt said recal uh killum um pickle ball project which will be coming forward on the uh warrant we should be getting costs back on that um in the next few weeks um and um and continuing to listen to Residents and um be responsive to some of the questions we get as on this thank you all right next on the agenda is uh we are recognizing the Lee family
and manderin restaurant here in reading and uh Chris brought this forward uh even though we know this has been going on for quite some time but I'm gonna hand it off to Chris to make some comments so just put on the end the packet yeah um uh Robert's here tonight I know everybody came here to see Robert and and uh commend everything
I think that you could uh fill a gymnasium with the amount of people that you've helped over the last decade or so I see the the unity for the entire community so it's all the support coming from the community yeah yeah so truly an honor to stand before the board tonight to receive uh such uh recognitions but more than anything this recognition should be belong to our entire Community all right and certainly uh our uh our planning team behind Brian assarian okay
we know they on W support dedication and collaborations I will be standing here tonight so um for the past 12 year we start this benefit program we build a strong caring and cheerful Community uh one that comes together hands in hands and to make every event every uh initiative success uh is this Unity uh spirit of unity that help us surpass our
$100,000 uh Benchmark in 2024 all right so the same spirit that will drive us forward for another 10 years and Beyond um we remain committed to doing our best strengthening our collaborations and working together to continue making difference so thank you very much for all the support your trust and your shared passions to our community thank you can I speak of course of
course I have you written down here by the way you have no idea what's on this paper um well Robert congratulations thank you for everything that you're doing in our community um I just wanted to take a few minutes just to talk about how much that this man is so dedicated to our town of say your name please oh I'm sorry Ryan aaran I live 30 Countryside Lane and I've worked for Robert Lee for 10 years this April so um
it's truly an amazing and remarkable accomplishment that we're gathered here in town hall again seven years ago I stood before the town manager and the select committee and asked a simple question is there anything the town can do to recognize Mr Lee for his outstanding dedication to the reading Community back then I spoke about the importance of how one person can make a difference and today as I stand before you I'd like to expand on that thought yes one person can make a difference but it takes all of us to create the kind of
community we're proud to call home and I know that's especially important tonight maybe when we're a little divisive and there's a lot going on Mr Lee has been a staple in reading for now almost 30 years a man whose Journey embodies the very essence of what we learn in school as the American dream a Chinese immigrant he arrived in this country with hopes Ambitions and the determination to build something meaningful not just for himself but for his family his business and all of us
here in town over the years Robert has weathered the storm of the 2008 economic downturns navigated the challenges of the global pandemic and faced the everchanging landscape of running a small business through it all he's remained a Pillar of Strength resilience and generosity his contributions go far beyond the walls of his restaurants with now over $100,000 donated to organizations that benefit our direct Community that's what
it's all about Robert hasn't just given back but he's invested in the future of this town the future of reading but Robert's True Legacy isn't just measured in dollars it's in the countless lives he's touched the lessons he's taught and the example that he's set I've had the privilege of working alongside him like I said for almost 10 years and I can say without hesitation it's been one of the greatest honors of my my life the lessons I've learned from Robert aren't
found in textbooks and they're certainly not taught in college Business Schools they're found in simple everyday acts of kindness hard work and integrity as someone who started as a cashier at the Mandarin over almost over a decade ago I've seen the firsthand the ripple effect of Robert's values showing up for one another treating people with respect and never underestimating the power of a small act of
kindness in a world that often feels divided Robert Lee reminds us what truly matters Community Connection and the unwavering belief that we are stronger together so tonight as we celebrate this Monumental achievement let's not just honor Robert for what he's done not just giving back money is just money but what he's really done for this community let's thank him for who he is a leader a mentor a friend and a shining example of
the best of reading when we come together so Robert I say to you and I really mean it from the bottom of my heart congratulations and the town this town is better because of you thank you thank you Ryan um uh what I was going to say uh uh you
said back in 2018 that I've worked at the restaurant for more than three years now and I can say without a doubt Robert is one of the nicest most hardworking restaurant managers if not workers I have ever met and it's a privilege and joy to work with him Robert has created relationships with his customers that are unmatched in any other business he truly cares for his customers and will go out of his way to help this dedication and love he expresses can be
seen on any given day at the restaurant as customers will always ask for Robert just to talk and have conversations almost every Patron that leaves the establishment won't go without giving Robert a handshake or a hug and compassionately saying thank you uh so Robert thank you I appreciate there is a coolage French trip fundraiser at Mandarin on Friday we
r a fundraiser almost every weekend uh but coolage is coming up they did the friends of reading um uh seniors last Friday I believe um so just thank you Robert for everything that you've done everyone else can ask some questions and then we can yeah so you I appreciate everything that you've done for the community we've attended many many of the events that you've held
there so I really appreciate it and thank you very much thank you yeah I uh when when people ask me if if it's friends or family or you know get some takeout there's many options in town and it doesn't have to be a fundraising night but Mandarin is always top of mind uh in my household so I I really appreciate what you've done and uh how much you've done and and just as Chris said you do this on the
weekends most people would do it on a Monday night to try to get people in the door you do it on one of your busiest nights I know that's twofold right but most people will try to get it on a Monday or Tuesday night when it's the slower night to get more people inure but you go out of your way to do it on a busier night which benefits even more people and raises even more money so I I tip my hat I give you a lot of credit uh I've been in your world and and and couldn't even match uh come close to
what you've done in all these years so thank you very much thank you once again so we have a plaque here for you I think Bob would like to see a nice picture of us with Mr Lee right Bob sure do a bunch ofing
thank you so much you forel next beautiful directly for Robert and his
family so wonderful thank you over here on theend
turn the heat off all right next uh public hearing Chris you have a a notice
read the notice first read the notice and then we'll get into the hearing the inhabitants of the town of Reading Please take notice that the select Board of the town of reading will hold a public hearing on February 4th 202 5 at 7:00 p.m. in the select board meeting room at Town Hall 16 L Street
Reading MA or available remotely on Zoom to act on proposed changes to the following traffic and parking regulations amendment number 20251 enact article 54413 no person shall Park a vehicle between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays or Fridays from August 25th through June 30th on any of the streets or parts of streets to which this article has been applied as listed under article 12
amendment number 20252 article 12.1 to enact pursuant to article 54413 no person shall Park a vehicle between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 3: p.m. on Monday Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays or Fridays from August 25th through June 30th on the southernly side of Arcadia Avenue starting at West Street to edgman amendment number 20 25-3 article 12.1 to enact pursuant to article 5.3 parking shall be prohibited on Green
Street along the southernly side starting at Main Street heading in the Westerly Direction on Green Street extending 90 ft ending prior to 59 Green Street copy of the proposed documents regarding this topic will be in the selectboard packet on the website at www.red am.gov all interested parties are invited to attend the hearing in person or remotely via Zoom or may submit their comments and writing or by email to town manager at ci. ring. ma. us by order of Matthew a cornellis town
manager thank you was awful all right good evening um thank you for letting me speak tonight um so these are two complaints that came in um through pttf um the first obviously we've been dealing with for about a year now um with excessive parking on Arcadia um so the Austin Prep students the Overflow parking has um been choosing to park on
Arcadia um since probably last school year and that's when became a problem um so this year um starting in September we put up temporary no parking signs on the southerly side of the street um that's been working uh we have less complaints um and um so the amendment is to the first one is to enact time restrictions and the second one is to to put those time restrictions in place on
Arcadia and the third one and the third is for um Green Street just in from Maine um there are a few um photos so this is Arcadia that's the stretch where the temporal parking signs are so that's where we want to put the um permanent ones just that stretch just that stretch from west to Edgemont okay and just that side yes yeah so um so right now there's about 20
to 30 cars daily that park there um so the issues last year was they were parking on both sides so it was difficult to um for residents to get get through and then concerns if um emergency vehicles could get through so having the the one side has worked out so far so that that's that was a couple days ago that's that's what it looks like okay and you that's been going on yes yeah and generally it picked up last
year in the spring so we expect as well because it's the um as new as students uh get older at Austin obviously get their licenses get cars so that's where they're overflow tends to tends to park okay um there is um hopefully coming something coming down the line within the next few years um in Austin as I said before about putting in um an additional parking lot but it's not anytime anytime soon right um and then
the next slide is Green Street um so this is just in from Main Street um kayn do you have the Green Street slide please y I'm pulling it up okay so just in for main um at 475 Main Street just going for a stretch because there's the exit for the 475 Main um parking garage so there's a little
stretch um right in from Main Street where people aren't supposed to park anyways because it's within 20t of the intersection and then there's also the um exit uh where it stretches so we just go to where the uh you can see the break within the concrete um house right there on the left right it just causes a uh a ball neck right where people are turning into to Green Street people or ex okay yeah couple of question one um if you could
include these for us in advance it would just be really helpful I know in the past you have I looked at this they wer in the P yeah I didn't see no they weren't they weren so it's just a little bit harder um what's article 12 the whole first thing says yada y y the First Amendment yeah so that's to um the time restrictions have their a separate um article so all the time restriction are listed in there so it's just a
clerical the amendment is just clerical because we didn't have something for parking um for no parking 7 to3 Monday through F Friday it was basically the ones we had were for around the depot um or turning uh like around schools like do not enter um certain days and times so um if you're asking for us to do this what's in place now right now just it's just no parking signs on the side temporarily what this will do is
get uh input back from some of the residents so it won't affect them like during the summer when school's not in session when when the parking isn't an issue and also after after school time so in the evening if someone wants to parking for their residence they specific school hours um so I'm I'm following the intent I'm just I'm not understanding so article 12 right now has a list of streets so article uh
5.4.4 on my head 54443 yeah that that's where all the um time restrictions are um but on what street in other that's not townwide no no so it when we at the end of the regulations has the list of all the streets in each Street if they has a regulation it's listed on there so the first amendment is just to clarify the um what the regulations
just last sence 12 looks like it's just like school day parking morning hour parking afternoon hours List locations um not really no the locations are listed in the streets at the end of the traffic rules ranks got it so this is just adding another uh listing for different times correct for that specific Street right uh
broader just adding another list of times that they can use in the other article then the W of street right because we didn't we didn't have these time restrictions weren't currently in place on any other street so we had to create these restrictions and then put them in place for aadia so they they're not in place any anywhere else in town sorry I I understand the Second Amendment and it sounds like that accomplishes that so I'm I'm struggling with but the second amendment has to have that regulation in place so the
first one creates the reg the time restriction the second one puts that restriction in place but the first one doesn't apply to any other streets correct so it doesn't apply to any streets until you have a specific amendment that says it's this street right so it's it's because right now there are time restrictions around like the depot like uh like the the streets around there to stop people from parking on on the streets near the depot from like 6:00 a.m. to 10: a.m. right so that's listed
there but then those streets have to have that restriction in it there wasn't anything for like the school time that was trying to put in for Arcadia so we had to create that time and then put it into a regulation so that's why the first one for Aradia is two separate amendments so if um if there are other streets that were to have these same school hour then we could go back and put the we could put that new time that new restriction in there and are there any that exists right now no that's why we this is the only one that we're we're
setting okay and is this like a new that's nope it's always it's always been there just go under article 12 and the other lists times you go back to so these are what are listed in article 12 like school days those these are probably used all around town so they categories a school day category there morning hours definition of each
thing there isn't one for this the first one has the dates I wonder if it could just go under General parking restrictions with the lose times and days Monday through Friday with the time and the dates does Town Council ever get a peek at these no they come over from Police Department um and they V them there we look at them they seemed in order so we
could have time C actually look it AI pulled this up now um they call it as just summer hours it wouldn't really be summer it should be school hours but look at they actually put it in that's that's kind of what I'm wondering is wouldn't it make sense to say school hours or something like that categorize it I don't know that's really you want to amend the like add a work I I am hesitant to do that because I don't know how it fits um but yeah I'm just I'm
always worried when you just say it refer to article 12 article 12 is a list of streets um and I I I get it this is creating a category but I think if we didn't have the second part if we didn't have the the middle paragraph then I would agree with you 100% but I I know what Lieutenant Jones is saying is that the second part refers to the first part but specifically for Arcadia but I I know where you're I know where you're going now you want to make sure this is done right yeah yeah and I
I wouldn't want other people to get restricted in their parking because Suddenly It's on the books as a so this is this is actually the article from our website and the way it works is they actually just list the street right and then put the information it's not their intention I can't imagine they just go out road so like Arington Street Monday through Friday from 6:00 to 9:30 west east side between Ming and Prescott you're not allowed to par so what is the effect of doing amendment number one
which says there wasn't the was wasn't there before school hours these hours weren't there before I'm I'm I'm following that but the way this is written it looks to me like anybody that's on that list now can't park between 7:00 a.m. and 3 p p.m. Monday through Friday it says because the last part it says on any of the streets or parts of streets which this article has been applied as listed under article 12 right so each each individual street is listed at the end and every article that applies to that street is listed under
that street got it so 12 lists of Street okay so if the street is there it would list the times and the restrictions yes every street has their own got information on it got it so and then it goes back to the article that it was WR okay so Had It reversed that's why we were confused it was reversed in what I was looking at yep okay yeah I did it wrong yeah um never happens um okay now I'm
following okay so the structure is that it's a street it has a restriction there so if I live on Street next to Parker there's a restriction already here right or not right so on Parker like for instance dur um on Temple Street do not enter only specific times so that's listed that right there is this Temple Street okay now what we're saying is it's going to be kind of a a new category of the 7 to3 Monday through Friday Friday during these N9 months and that can be used for any of the if it
would you could take that and say okay we want to add it to right and then applies to street right so then that's the first one and then the second one is actually applying it to Arcadia I follow now thank you any other board uh comments or questions no anyone from the audience no anyone on Zoom Caitlyn for the uh hearing no one raising their hand nope
anyone in the other room three seconds okay close the public hearing move to close a hearing regarding the proposed amendments to the parking traffic regulations second second any discussion see none all those in favor thank you okay move to approve approve amendment number 2025-the
amendment number 2025 D2 to the parking and traffic regulations second thank you uh discussion seeing none all those in favor zero uh move to approve amendment number 20253 the parking and traffic regulations second second thanks uh any discussion seeing none all
those in favor 5 Z thank you thank you thank you very much pass a good next I can hang in there for an hour we're staying on schedule right yeah yeah well well we got folks want to speak at 9 to yeah yeah so I'd say take a break after yeah yeah right okay next uh we've all
been waiting for is NBTA turn back track discussion and we'll have a representative from the tea come up to the podium well thank you everybody so I'm alist s I'm the head of rail modernization for the MBTA so that title already kind of gives it away so I'm I have to first thing I have to do to you basically is apologize
I've failed in my main job which is to Electrify this is always been and always has been just an early step and I noted one of the commentators uh earlier already referred to this this was meant as a at the time we called it no regrets but early action projects to get going with electrification and improving service so that's what this Project's about I tried to put that in this cont text because you know short term it's diesel it's noisy you know it is
actually moving something we already do somewhere else so it affects people so we totally totally recognize that and as part of that process we're proposing to have a public meeting uh which was mentioned on uh Tuesday February 25th 7 to 8:30 in the uh Pleasant Street Center so can you go to the slides please the slides up for the
m and next slide please so this is a very quick giving everybody the context of why we're doing this it's not just some thing we came up with just to make other people's lives miserable or anything like that this is trying to actually help everybody in this Corridor on this line and in fact around Boston it's supposed to be a joined up plan for all the suburbs around Bost um so the concept is to
increase frequency on all of the Lines within Route 128 roughly so you can understand why reading is the chosen point for this uh for the ha line uh to 30 minute headways uh first step and then later uh actually to go higher than that so that's the a um part of that is to get the benefit out of the electric trains once we get them um so that is to reduce emissions
so irony shortterm yes we are adding more Diesel Service um but I would just ask you to consider who are those people getting on that train what is their other choice if their other choice is driving it's very well known but that actually lowers overall emissions now I know that's cold comfort to people who are right by the I appreciate that and I hear you on that I I'm going to upset somebody doing this I'm afraid um but I'm just trying to
speak to you as a honestly and give you why we're doing this and what the intent is and then we're trying to help people who some people as well who do have cars all the other uh sort of uh you know reasons for travel um I give you a bit more background on this uh so this was actually put together before Co um but Co has actually changed this a lot and I think somebody addressed this ear and uh you know making comments about empty trains
part of the reason for moving to an all day service is to actually serve people who the commuter rail did not serve before so it's different people it's people who travel during the day people who are on different shifts uh now we have means tested fairs people with different income backgrounds which traditionally would not use the commuter so there is a lot of this um and I know again Cole comfort those people sitting right next to an ID train there is a we're we're trying to do good for
everybody along this line and yes we do understand that people are right next to it will get an impact so I want to make that very Qui can I get the next slide please so we started this as I mentioned a minute ago this was pre-co we did a visioning exercise we did stakeholder Outreach on all of this um a core part of this was decarbonizing and still is uh we're actually looking at battery electric technology so we don't have to build as much so we can
make the electrification quicker because the original version of this was to build wires everywhere which people don't particularly like either and that cost uh an insane amount of money and it took us till the mid 2050s so we are now looking an approach that accelerates this significantly by using trains and use existing electric uh you know wires and power uh and then run on battery elsewhere so this service can come relatively quickly it still isn't quick you know in between the
construction of this turn track and that electrification we don't know what the timetable is but it's not forever so this is all part of a long-term plan an action um as I say there first action was to introduce all day service so that's why there are more of these empty trains but it's to give the other people opportunity to ride and as it was happened during Co or just after Co lots of people were traveling off peak anyway people were traveling different days of the week and we also added weekend
service that we hadn't had before wasn't consistent so we've been expanding time and there was a lot of push actually to go later in the night to be clear we don't go actually that late we reduce frequencies of the so I just want to make that very CTIC um so in that context that's the intent of this turn track it's to provide 30 minute service to reading and all station in between all eight stations um and everybody along that
line and give them a much more convenient uh approach um and I would call out the fact we've already done this on several lines and the closest analogy is the it's only an analogy so I can't guarantee it's going to happen on this line is the Fairmont line and the Fairmont line went from 45 to 30 and within 3 months it had 20% more ration so there is potential it may be different here and I totally accept that but we've certainly done some
modeling that indicates it could be the same and also apologize to the existing Riders because we've had to go through a lot of rail replacement and uh Improvement along the line that's men people and I am one of those Riders who had to suffer bad service on the H line as we've been doing constructions or so next slide please and that's just kind of amplifying graphics around what we were doing and what we intend to do so and I believe this is in the packet um I'll
make sure it's available on the website so next slide please so here's Just A visual representation so we've already uh built one at Beverly um and this is yeah here at reading next one and then we're looking at Anderson wuben but we're also actually looking at uh making the whole line 30 minutes because that line is actually fairly uh modernized up to l um so you can actually probably run that 30 minutes of this uh and then there'll
be other initiatives on the south side too going down um you don't care I'm sure you don't but anyway we are adding high frequency so go the next slide please so here's the operational concept which I think is the bit that's caused a bit of confusion um to be able to turn the train um an engineer has to move from one end to the
other um to do that safely uh currently they do that in the station so to say we're effectively moving that process from the station to the turn track we don't do it as frequently because we're running a a less frequent service but that happens today uh between six and eight times so it's we make that very clear so people are being affected and I apologize to you but that's unfortunately the problem with
the train station where we're turning a train so it is idling at that train station um this is a different thing this is a turn track so this is now looking at a way of adding the extra frequency by using behavioral through trains and mixing those with the turn trains on the turn track so it's only every other train it will never be more than 30 minutes just CU physically it can't be more than 30 minutes within that 30 minutes how long it is we're not sure yet and we'll be discussing you
know that's part of the discussion is coming up how we structure that um within that 30 minutes the initial stop is to stop at readying station which is single track so that's part of the problem you can't just run the H train through a St the train that's in the station obviously um move it on to the turn track once you've unloaded checked everybody's off done the basic cleaning you move it up onto the turn track um rest slowly so take some time go to the
far end of the turn track engineer moves from the locomotive having put it in that mode to the other end of the train and does all the safety checks preparing for the return then when the time is ready for the return the hail has moved through uh the direct train from hail goes back into the station and then loads and weights and lights so yes there is itly it is not a lay over there will be nobody there overnight it is less frequent in the evenings uh in fact it may be very limited in the evenings
uh but that is term track does so that is what we need to produce a 30 minute service so other comments are being made about could we do this at the station uh the answer is we'd have to rebuild the station uh and as I think some of you may know with Ada we'd have to build out a full high level station so it would take years sorry it would it it would take um many years to to build a new station as part of the plan so as you
saw the long-term plan is to reduce to all stations to accessible boarding uh that is a very long-term plan but we are there and reading is clearly going to be one of those uh especially because it's this key station now where there's going to be a turning service so at that point we would no longer need the turn track so this is a short-term thing but nothing is shortterm in the te we acknowledge that because of funding and because of time I think everybody's heard that um but this is meant as a step on the way to this longterm Vision
as was uh for a much higher frequency service and then we'll need to do that to get to the 15 minutes we want to get to just to be clear did you say four level train so level four level boarding no not four levels of training so that that's the long-term aspiration but for the moment this is the term track to deliver the higher frequency of 30 minutes on line um so there I think other comments to be made about whether we could do
that uh to the south of the station uh that doesn't work CU you actually have to turn the track turn the train first you then have to turn the train again on the Southern tracks and then turn it yet again once you go back in the station all that doesn't fit in 30 minutes so you couldn't run 30 minute service you'd have to skip ring it that and we' be doing 30 minute service out way so that those three tracks south of the station don't work for this concept so there's no point doing it um so just be clear
um having trouble hearing you sorry yeah I'm trying to talk to everybody so uh and it is complicated better place to anyway so is that the microphone right there it's not in our budget we can't afford it yeah okay so can we be serious here for a moment if he speaks closer to that a little dis that's only for in the room
they they speak up sorry just for sorry so it's hard to speak to both you guys and try and make sure they can hear me take a step back can address the yeah I think that works better so next slide please so we wanted to talk about the construction concept I think a lot of people know this used to be a two TR track line so the the bridges are already built for two track this is just replacing the existing second track it
goes out 4,500 ft towards the correctly spelled River um the intent is actually to take it out soundwise further from buildings than it currently is in terms of the point of turn currently in the station it's very close to a lot of buildings so that's that's the ter track itself is basically a switch and a series of track panels that are put together approximately takes 12 months it will
then require some signal B so that's the construction phase next slid please so this is the approximate location um it's not precise but this is the approximate location of the locomotive when a train is being turned locomotive is always on the far side of the equipment on the outbound end so it is the furthest from houses it is sorry the trains where show
the dotted line where the purple element is the dotted line is showing the uh uh construction erosion control and how long is the train compared to that by the line half that length it varies it is about 2ir of that length maybe so the train itself doesn't make noise it's a locomotive that sour of noise and missions so that is the approximate concept and then next slide
please this gives you a satellite view of where it is in relation to where it currently sits uh the Depot and then there's a second shot which shows uh this is better online I'm afraid but shows where it is pretty much equidistant between the houses on the North End and the South May I not right now and then the next slide yeah I just want to next one
please so I just want to give a quick bit of history there is the old Depot the old yard and the old double track so you can just get a context of where it fits within the corridor so it's just replace and that's it thank youing yeah that's reading Islands def Canada can no Bridge track bed still there and that is actually where the senior
C so this idling point will be a lot further from the senior center and the school um than the current idling that goes on after the station not ideal but it is what it is understand understand a propane tank excuse me excuse me excuse me thank you oh I'll set in the presentation yes um I just have one quick question question then I'm going to open up to the board on the Kay then go back to the purple train map three
back all right so this is where I've been kind of fuzzy on so the dotted line the purple train then the black line is all the new track correct so the you so I understand the dusted line is the erosion control boundary the dock track is the new track the new track and then the grayed out base layer is the existing train okay and and the purple
train is an approximate correct or exact approximate location of where the diesel so it will stop but of course it won't always stop in the same place because of track condition and weather doesn't it need to for the erosion thingy uh yeah if there's a if there's a if we site a and oh for the erosion control no that that's covers the entire length it's that it that covers the entire length yeah so it covers the you see the dotted yeah okay all right and then so this map is accurate as far as where the streets
are and the wetlands and correct so that is it so okay it's between fine okay anyone Mark Chris Chris y I got a question I have questions yeah we all do yeah thanks Carlo and uh and thank for that uh real quick did did you mention you were
attempting to skirt ADA requirements in the presentation no because it's our whole point is it has to meet ADA requirements that's why New Station would take several years and cost in the order of40 to $60 million okay so that's why we can't otherwise I mean the preferred option would be to double track if I had all the money in the world double track Electrify and put in a new station so just let's let's be clear about that this is to deliver service with the amount of money
we have right now expand his Serv I mean to that I would say I I don't think the MBTA has had money in the last 25 years since the cigarette tax got uh removed but it is what it is I guess um so I uh before I have questions that I to ask uh I just want to make a comment um so a
resident ended up sending me a message that they saw somebody post on Facebook and uh I just wanted to repeat what it says because uh it expresses my feelings uh as well I'll read a snippet of it we already went over the amount of trains that were going on there so it says I take the train and I live near the tracks this plane is going to drown residential areas near the depot with commuters from surrounding towns and even New Hampshire I love the idea of more frequent trains but the MBTA and C culis can barely
manage to keep trains running on time delays cancellations it's a mess and you never know when you're going to uh get home they don't have the staff and infrastructure problems or disaster that is me and I think it is inappropriate that a member of the select board is quoting a resident without their permission I realized this was on Facebook but I don't appreciate that I those are not your words I don't care if they're your feelings you didn't say who the name was I know but I know it's me and if you have your opinions you are welcome to State them please don't quote
me without attributions thank you uh I was I was going to say that it's it's it's very rare uh in Reading uh because I didn't think this was a political issue for me to uh agree with Vanessa um it's inappropriate it's really inappropriate I don't understand what's inappropriate is the reason we're here in the first that's what's inappropri you question I'm not off topic at all Ken thank you um so uh uh for me to uh
agree wholeheartedly like I said with uh with uh the resident that was in here is uh in the best interest of reading what's not in the uh in the best interest unfortunately is for the MBTA to actually do this um because for me I'm not going to sit here and jeopardize the safety and well-being of our residents because uh this project that you're proposing 15 uh to 20 million um is uh a
want not a need for the MBTA it's it's Crystal Clear you don't want to have uh uh uh people move from one end of the track to the other but today I saw the 12:30 train pull up to the depot and 1248 it was going back the other direction but you want to spend $5 to20 million to have a nice Banner headline that it's 30 minutes into Boston and that's what it is not 29 minutes not 32 minutes it has to be 30
and I agree with it that it's super convenient but you're running trains with nobody on them I was going to take pictures today of of the the the platform Etc there's nobody there at certain times and over here it's highlighted that you want to have more midday things for me it does not make Financial sense at all um but once again it's it's I know it's not you maybe it is but I highly doubt it um that wants to go go through with this
but this does not seem like a financial decision a great financial decision at all um we have the Ash Street stuff that is just sitting over there unused it was probably a great idea back then too and nothing's happening with it so um I will say that the one thing I appreciate uh with the safety with the NBTA is uh we're not on the news like some other things in other states Etc regarding the the the MBTA so uh safety and and
security I believe is Paramount with you guys as well um so hopefully that this can be taken into account because Massachusetts is supposed to be the climate leader that's all I ever hear everything non-stop climate climate climate climate Aster except when it's the MBTA in this case because it's going to be diesel is running this whole time like so um question yes I I I had a bunch of questions for the residents I asked them to send them over uh I'll just take five so I don't monopolize the time I sent the rest over to Melissa she
can ask um whatever uh is remaining um so one of the first questions that they had was has a study been performed on the substantial increase of gate closings at wubin Street of potentially 60 to 80 closings um uh grade level train closing from the Reading Station to North Station if the uh train service is increase has there been any study on the increase of gate closings no it has
not typically no no so no no so it is it is an operational issue um can you speak up please I'm just saying it's an operational issue um so frequency is an operational issue it isn't entirely predictable but that is not you know we are a railroad that is unfortunate what happens I guess I guess to that I would just say that it's going to increase obviously The Crossings throughout the whole
increase traffic especially with um uh police and fire because now now when the train is is passing you know it's like a minute or two and you can't get over to the other side this is going to increase it by what 33% I think cuz 30 to 45 45 minutes to 30 I think it's 33% in any event it's going to increase so I think that m ta should have done some sort of a study so we typically work with uh uh
police and fire and safety if there are any issues with delays caused to response times and there are various mitigation measures but this is not the planor next this is not part of the plan what the excuse me excuse me the board is asking questions right now thank you so what are the reasons for having passengers at the reading station in the extreme winter and summer conditions while the train is parked 4,500 ft away
in the conservation land uh Andor or behind residents not allowing the passengers The Refuge of the train is to let the haal train pass and if the haval trains passing they'll get picked up so the point of the higher frequency is that they AR waiting and then they can also have a predictable number of minutes past the hours and then when the trains come was a healthenvironmental study of the adverse effects the slow moving and idling trains has on people in the
environment because there's obviously tannerville reading housing authority over there um Parker Middle School Etc I would refer you to my previous answer which is actually this is further away and to your original question no a study has not been done uh what is the mbta's 2-year 5year and 10-year plan for the hail line in um how does the proposed turn back trck fit into it so as I said at the beginning of my presentation this is the
core to the two five and 10e plans for the hav line so it's the core to the first step 2year and five years to move to 30 minute headways sorry 30- minute frequency in terms of trains up to reading and hourly to Hil and then uh the probably at the back end of that time Horizon the intent is to switch to electric and then move to a higher frequency which is at least 20 minutes reading and probably still hourly to to
we double track through b and why in the mbta's response to documents to the conservation committee do they say TR will idle for likely uh one hour I pointed this out in a previous meeting that was an initial mistake which we corrected so it is indeed going to be 30 minutes or less correct it can't be more than 30 minutes because as you can work out there's an alternate otherwise you're not providing the alternate service blocking it so
only it would be 30 minutes in fact it'll always be less than 30 minutes because you need to get back into the station and one that I didn't see on the list is um a resident mentioned that there's going to be a propane tank installed over behind the hoses over there or what is the need for that the switch uh has a heater in the winter so that's the reason for that so to stop it freezing is that going to be Underground above ground I I'm afraid I'm not that kind of engineer so I don't know the exact details of that one it was in the
I believe it's in the filing okay um like I said I don't want to monopolize my time SOA has the mark you next thanks thanks so um so a couple thoughts one I think that the the the vision is marvelous getting down to Shorter times I think that's spoton the question is how we get there um I've heard that you you're talking about kind of putting tracks in place first while there's still Diesel and then hopefully
someday getting to Electric why couldn't this be an example of where you test the electric first uh so we are testing the electric on the Fairmont line because we already have access to the Amtrak electrification there so that's why it's starting but North Side both havil and um we call it e genine but anyway we probably shouldn't use that that term anymore the New Port Rock Port line is is the first focus on the North side
because there's a very neat double Branch so haal is actually connected to it as you may well know on the bottom end so we'll be next so is it is there an opportunity to try to move the test of electrification on this line as well correct yeah yeah there is when is a good question yeah so we we are procuring a a small Fleet uh uh for the for the Fairmont line itself we're oversizing it so we'll
have a couple of train sets to come up here and test on different lines we'll have to do that as a plugin and that will only be a demonstration but we'll be looking at how feasible it is how far the battery can run based on their charges and look at the lines each line can someone salad that please than so um if the ey this 30 minutes of idling what obviously you're hearing concerns about sounds and fumes and things coming
from that what can be done to mitigate that um not a hell of a lot one of the things we are working on is a pilot on renewable Diesel and I don't know if you've heard of that one that has a lower partic emissions actually I think I don't know if you want to talk more to the sound yeah um hey folks good uh good evening my name is Adam kimon I work for the general manager of the MTA in external
Affairs so thank you for having me folks I do want to address the crowd that's here tonight so with all due respect to the select board uh I want to acknowledge the time that you're taking to be here tonight actually EXC me you guys are here to talk to us so we can so don't for for a moment just a moment I want to acknowledge and thank you for the time that you're taking here tonight uh to listen to our presentation and thank you slore for having us and letting us here uh to talk about the presentation and and our proposed changes one I want to thank the children
that took the time I don't I wouldn't want to be here when I was your age so um thank you for taking the time one we want to acknowledge that our Outreach is come up short right we can do be a better job of talking to the people and the residents of this town um and one step is pay being here and two uh recognizing that and having a public meeting later this month I want to thank the town manager uh for advocating for the people of this town I want to thank the uh the delegation for doing so as
well um and and for you folks for giving us uh the space to do so um there's some things that we can work on a explaining what the project is a lot better um I don't think we've done a really good job of kind of explaining uh you know the mitigation efforts that we want to undertake uh some of the things that we want to do in terms of providing better service uh what exists there today uh is a conversation that we also need to have so the idling that exists today compared to the idling that we're proposing uh
overall is the same amount if not less um it's just that the frequency of the trains is actually increasing so that's something that we want to U point out and get across we're not doing a good job and alistair's fancy voice from England it's one thing uh I'm a kid from East Boston grew up next to Logan Airport so I know what it's like to grow up uh next to something that gives fumes we have the highest asthma rates in the country growing up in East Boston uh so I I understand the concerns and why
you're here for your children today um so we will engage with folks better I think we uh will come back on the 25th to to reading and engage with folks a lot better with better answers um but we also don't want that to be the end of the conversation as well uh we we also want to continue having the conversation until folks feel not necessarily comfortable uh 100% but having a conversation and being more and upfront with uh with what we're doing and what we intend on doing um I don't think the answers have been amazing and and I
don't I don't want it to be the end of the conversation uh I want us to be a lot more candid and open and upfront uh with the people of this town because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there um and we haven't been the most accessible in terms of providing that information so I take that back and and making the general manager uh very much aware of that uh directly uh I think the rail modernization office for being here um and and my project engineer for being here as well but um
you know I I will make I'll take back these comments to the general manager we're meeting with him uh to flag these comments that people have finding here tonight uh and I just want to thank you for your time at least and thank you uh to the town manager again and the select board for having me and giving me the platform to do so so um just wanted to acknowledge that uh right now and I'm sorry for taking up any time so sorry I thought you were going to address my question on mitigation mitigation sorry um I I don't have the the engineering aspects of the of the mitigation I know
we're ackn we're taking a look at the location um I don't know if there's uh we are also looking at um addressing directly those alternative locations that folks were proposing I think um directly but I don't have any answers on the mitigation front we have better uh better answers at the public meeting later this month as well so how do we best equip you to be more responsive to the concerns that we're sharing because you've received a lot of letters see people in
the room you see this board very concerned that as you acknowledged you kind of tried to steam right through our town so how we going to deal with that so that we're going to need some much better information before we're able to consider what you just asked no I appreciate that and I don't think we provided uh the appropriate Avenue for for giving us feedback right we're using using a Conservation Commission we're using the select board uh as proxies for for giving us that feedback and I think
getting some of the answers that were given to us one way or another either through your select board members through your uh members of your state delegation through your town manager I think we need to address those a lot better we'll do so uh on the 25th and that's not the only conversation we in to be having with the town of writing I think we need to have a continued conversation and addressing some of these may I attend the meeting with your manager with my manager excuse me excuse me I'm sorry don't do don't have to answer that let's just keep on so another question one of the
audience one of the audience members brought up was um how how do we more effectively Advocate other than basically you know I don't want to say blocking the track but how do we advocate so that you you acknowledge that you really didn't listen to the alternative so far so that's problematic right we're asking very specific questions on mitigation on study on a variety of other things will you be prepared to address all of those at this next meeting yeah I I I want to think I
think I saw some of the alternative um proposals I want to more fully flesh out why we can't do that in some of these cases but also give a full consideration to them I don't think we've actually properly explained ourselves as to why these while these Alternatives don't work for the MBTA and for the service that we want to provide but we want to give it the the proper consideration the proper you know scien ific and also engineering look uh and explain that to the public and be upfront and honest uh when we do so that would include the
potential of moving the station right or down toward moving the turn track the south side yeah the turn track yeah I think uh some folks uh raised the commercial locationing station station station sorry sorry if I didn't station I me station sorry we could support that but again I mean I guess can I make a suggestion I don't think you folks are prepared answer it tonight so instead of answering it tonight think you'll be better off kind of taking notes and making sure that that next meeting you
are able to address it and I I would ask not if you really have looked at all of these Alternatives already and you're just very poor communicating it that's a problem yeah but I think it may be that you haven't fully gone through these no to some others and I think it's important to the town that this is exactly what you do you take a look at those things if there are some reasons why certain ones can't work I think people people need to understand that also but folks generated a whole series of different ideas you know let's let's see what's
going on what you're hearing is concerned about that area you're hearing concerns about sound the wildlife uh the fumes pollution things like that it it would seem to me you folks should be very capable of coming back and saying here are the things that we can do simple as as you know does everything always sit on full power all the time no and and that's an excellent piece of feedback I think I think it goes to the point that we have a trust issue right now between the MBT and the town U we need to consider and flush out all of
the Alternatives and come back to the folks in this community and tell them what can work what cannot work and properly explain that as opposed to being dismissive um I don't want my team to come off as dismissive I think I think we want to be receptive to to a lot of the um proposals that were raised and explain them thoroughly um whe and back by science or back by uh studies or whatever it may be and come back to folks with legitimate like to stand on and say this what can work this what
cannot work before moving forward with that I ask one more thing and then you for so um there sometimes there's a difference between the simplest and the best it feels like the simplest is what we see so far might not be the best so I guess it would be worth flushing out some other Alternatives even ones we haven't thought of just to talk about what could happen where and how and once impact right you're hearing a lot of impact concerns I'm sure you have impact concerns on what we can't get to 30 minutes and 15 minutes if we do that
okay let's let's talk about that the the biggest concern I have is that what I think I'm hearing is that the turnaround track um pulls things offline so that the conductor can walk from one TR one side of the train to the other net safely that's the net impact of what's going on without blocking the main l so actually that's probably more critical okay so you can have alternate service the line can come through right and there was some discussion I think one of the Alternatives and sorry if I
get it wrong but there is um actually a connection a potential connection between the haval line and where the L line I guess the Wildcat Branch it is to the the north of reading yeah yeah moment correct yeah and just considering how that might factor into a different solution but nonetheless a solution sor we can explain all the reasons why that actually would make things worse not better but we could explain that and that's we we understand not everything
is is in fact better y but what you're hearing is a lot of concern and I think being able to to address it clearly um and and you just said it very nicely so the community wants to understand what's going on and why have you look at different Alternatives um if it turns out that you know hey this is quote unquote the best what can you do to mitigate the problems that you're hearing about so for example if it turned out that there was a way to power down during that period I'm not proposing that
that's it I know nothing about trains other than I get on it three days a week um what is it that can have an impact on sound on fumes on you know other issues that are being brought up even coming back to us and saying this one we can't deal with this one we can I think Chris you brought up something or someone brought up that um in a station there are ways of mitigating things I thought it was the fumes but maybe I'm wrong about that is that something that can be in another
location I don't know I don't ask you for no but they're all questions that I think our team has to do a better job of answering when we come back to the community again later this month and and have those properly fleshed out I think and that's going to go a long way in terms of gaining back that trust I think we're we did we we miss we missed step when we did the Outreach initially uh and the method of communic has come up short and I think we want to start correcting that um first by uh by coming here tonight and thank you again for
having me Caren I'm so sorry I didn't mean to be dismissive uh uh of the board I just want to address the the crowd uh directly really quickly um but also coming back with the public meeting and that's the direct result of of the advocacy that we've seen from the from the residents and also your elected officials and town manager um and then continuing the conversation in a proper way fully answering the questions um so that folks can truly understand what's going on um and and helpful or compromising where we can um but
actually answering the questions and and being there for folks so I I want to thank my team but I think I think we have a lot of work to do thank you um Melissa yes I have some questions from residents I read but I have two questions of my own um mainly on um process here so uh the two questions I have and maybe you can answer them together as a resident mentioned that because the tracks over a th000 ft that under Mass general laws that the residents that bought that area should have been notified and they were not
that's my first question my second question is what is the process that I know that the select board doesn't vote but what is the process that the MBTA goes through is my understanding and it may be incorrect so that's why I'm asking is that the MBTA can do track work and stuff like that when it's need but this is really a want and not a need and I find it um which I
think you've admitted it was in poor decision that the MBTA went about this the way they did um the town manager wasn't even aware of this it went to conservation first um so what is that process that the MBTA needs to go through is there are are there steps that they should have taken with the town and again back to the question about should those residents have been uh if you want is there somebody on Zoom that can answer that yeah I was about to say can
refer that to Jeremy please Jeremy you're up Jeremy you're on mute K is that him or you Jeremy you're still on mute he may not be able to which one is Jeremy I can unmute him but I don't have anyone J Fontaine he has his hand
raised oh hi everyone thank you I'm Jeremy Fontaine NB environmental so for the Conservation Commission uh when we submitted the noi we gathered a 100 foot of butter list and that's what we received from the uh Town assessor um so that's what uh when we put the package together that was the information that provided to us but we can go back and look if there was a misstep with the thousand foot of butter but um to our to
the way we did it we did 100 foot of butter notification So you you're not aware of any Mass General law that if you're putting in a th000 fet of track that you should be notifying the residents that of bought that area no I am aware but in in communication and we also have William Doyle um who put together at the noi he was in communication with the Conservation Commission and to my knowledge that was the direction uh given um for who to send a butter notifications
to and then again back to my other question so what is the process that the MBTA goes through to do projects like this can they do them without any Town approval or is there a difference between wants and needs for this one we since we our work was proposed within buffer zone that's why we went to the Conservation Commission that's regulated under W's protection act so that was the step that we did for the uh for our component for this component of the project I understand that yeah but I'm asking beyond that say there was no conservation could you have just come in
and started this project without any Town approval so for we did look at other regulatory um agencies in the area and to our knowledge with the information we have we did not trigger any other regulatory processes that would have put us into other types of involvement or notifications or permitting but that's something we can look more into U and we will be looking more into but to our knowledge at this current point it does not look like we trigger any other regulatory requirements I I I just want
to supplement that I think the fact of the matter is legally we're okay but that doesn't make it okay that we didn't do the Outreach on this right so ultimately in terms of regulatory uh approvals we did everything that we were supposed to but clearly if if if this many people are here tonight and this many people are upset about the lack of notification if the town manager's re uh receiving something through the conom uh we could have done a better job of of
communicating in general about this project and we did communicate back in 2022 and back in 2018 or 2019 when we were developing the regional wh plan uh but just because we said something three four five years ago uh doesn't mean that folks are are aware of it today um and I think that's a mistake that we've made and I'm I'm happy to admit it um because just you know where was I three four five years ago uh where other folks a lot of things have changed the entire world's changed this Co um so not um
acknowledging the shortcomings there is one step um but trying to Ram it through the the concom process or something like that uh technically we are okay but that doesn't matter for the residents or or or the folks that live in that area so um I do want to acknowledge that yes we did some previous Outreach um was it sufficient no can I ask who you did that Outreach with so we did yeah the regional rail uh was was uh Statewide so uh even then you
might have received something four or five years ago but to have it truly spelled out and what it means for you as residents and as as a Butters you probably didn't understand something that was a regional rail email that was sent a long time ago so all right what are your questions so I do have some questions that were submitted by residents I'd like to read and get some answers from from you guys if you can answer them um is the MBTA aware of the Mass state law title 310 CMR
7.0 Air Pollution Control section 7.11 U Transportation media and then two is diesel trains um it looks like uh no person only are operating a diesel power powered locomotive shall cause suffer allow or permit said locomotive to be operated in a manner such as to cause or contribute to a condition of air pollution B no person shall cause suffer allow or permit the unnecessary for foreseeable idling of a diesel locomotive for a continuous period of
time longer than 30 minutes 310 CMR 7.0 shall not apply to diesel locomotives being service service provided that idoling is essential to the proper repair of set locomotive is that something you guys are aware of it is okay cuz it sounds like you may be um going against that law today with the amount of idling time and reading but I don't know um so not only do we have these but we
also are under uh EPA guidance as well so we do follow their regulations as well okay large state funded projects are subject to a public review process under the um or Massachusetts Environ Environmental Policy Act has the npta proposed reading's term back track project or any other NBTA plans for reading have have they been reviewed by that Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act so that's what I would uh said earlier to our um to currently what we
know of the project we did not trigger any thresholds uh for meepa I I I and I I appreciate Jeremy and and my team but again it doesn't make it okay that we didn't do the Outreach necessary okay next um what is the relationship between Headway time and scheduled route duration there isn't a direct relationship um so it's about the amount of equipment you're running it's complicated and you
have to do a track model to work out how many trains you need how long they going to take whether they can get through from one end to the other in sufficient time to be used to the next service and then will the roads stop will the traffic um I'm sorry the train arm come down on Willow Street every time a train goes up to that turn track yes crosses the great Crossing not it crosses it just goes up to it because it won't cross Willow Street Street
Beyond it will not um it says context your question the reading Highlands urban service turn back track first appeared as a no regrets project and a regional rail transformation project presentation from Alistar in June of 2022 was the NBTA aware of the Mallette SS and Morgan conservation land project um when that article came out no we were
not context for this question is that the regional rail transformation project presentation from Alis from June of 2022 also states that electrification and proposed decarbonization timeline for the behal line is anticipated between 2031 and 2040 the footnotes explicit State the illustrative and financially unrestrained nature of this proposed transformation it' be safe to assume that the ha line will be running diesel
locomotives for the next 20 years please describe the Technologies currently installed on mbta's rosing ruling diesel locomotive stock as of 2025 are planned for the next 15 to 20 years that would assist with any intrm decarbonization and air quality safety goals prior to electrification so we're currently running a pilot on uh renewable diesel uh which I mentioned a minute ago um and that is the interim step and I would
also point out that is not a 20-year Horizon it's going short so we're actually already working on building a Depo on the North side to start moving this prices next question is it's wiely reported that the FY 2024 operating budgets for the MBTA have fallen significantly short by hundreds of millions of dollars does BTA and colus have the guaranteed operational budget and ridership projections for the increased service on the haal line upon
completion of this project or is the construction of the ter backt trck in this specific location a use it or lose it capital investment by the MBTA I'm not sure I understand the question but I'll will try and answer the basics are this is an no funed project what no it's a metropolitan planning organization funded project it was using specific actually Highway funds that are allocated to mitigation projects that are meant to get people
out of cars um this is that source of funding it is to some degree use it or Lo lose it eventually um but the commitment and the policy objective is the key Point um to achieving 30 minute service so with the increased service this is not one of their questions I'm add living here with the increased service in this funding I mean current day there's constant breakdowns of trains and you know disruptions in service will the funds support that with
all the increased trains that you're going to have so I can you talked a bit more about the ongoing funding but the this will be part of the network it is part of our long-term planning it is part of our planning with kis for the future cost of the service so yes we have allowed for it in all our operational budgets those are relatively short term but for the foreseeable future those are funded and the last question was why has the MBTA been unwilling to develop a relationship well I guess I'm going to
read uh residents because we are going to at least do the meeting but I hope at that meeting that not only will you come with answers to the questions we brought here tonight but also a way for residents to reach out and um get answers to maybe additional question I have a few questions from resent um uh just let's see let some of them might be quick and just confirming what I've
heard tonight um and I do appreciate you being here tonight and I did attend the initial Conservation Commission and and my impression is that you have been willing to listen and I appreciate the tone I really do so again I'm sorry for no it's okay no no it's okay I mean you know this is a select board agenda item this is for the select board but and and Matt will be publishing the additional community meeting was I mistaken or was there a community meeting on Saturday that was the residents ran their own
meeting on Saturday oh okay we needed a voice yeah no that's great um that's what we need community space for okay okay so good so then and I appreciate the followup but so um one of the questions is about the scenario of using the Wakefield station as the last stop for more frequency service and using it for the turnaround what I heard you say earlier is that it doesn't meet the objective of improving the service to reading is that correct
correct y um if thei if the turn around must be in Reading why can't there simply be two tracks side by side in the Reading Station because because fact actually that was we talk about the options we went through something like 10 options to get to this one that was one of those options the problem as I mentioned earlier is to unload uh you'd have to unload and still turn the train so you'd actually need two platforms the minute you need two
platforms you trigger all the ADA requirements and it becomes a long and slow project we are not standing back from that that is still our long-term aim we want very clear that that solves a lot of problems as does electrification both of which we're trying to do money is short the challenge we have here tonight and and and after tonight is what you will elude one of you alluded to is the the misinformation going around the community so I mean this is recorded but not everybody can go and watch every
single meeting over again so so I guess on the the 25th um you're gonna it would be wonderful to have the MBA and BTA get some um help like we're looking for the whiffs like it could be really thank you for acknowledging like the downsides of this but in right the positives I think I heard tonight less idling overall if that's if that's a fact should be in writing it should be
presented on the 25th if all of the idling will be in fact further away from all of the houses it's near now because I think I heard you say you won't need to idle at the station anymore correct yeah so that's great to say it but you know we got to sometimes you need to see it in writing too so if you could bring that back and that those kind of whiff thems why is this a good thing there's pain in this process hopefully there's good at the end we need to know it'll
help us understand better um but we need help communicating it as select word members as we're getting hit with these questions I don't want to be giving out misinformation so that would be super helpful um so the other thing I'd like to add is we've we've also have engaged a community consultant as part of the oh Wonder so you will have a resource to work with I can tell by a presentation you guys Engineers so you're just trying to get this done you the message is deliver better service and everybody in this room wants better service including me because we have people going to
wubber because the trains are shorter and more reliable and that's why our trains are empty for example so thank you okay so we all and it and it supports our property values having this train station here is one of the reasons that people want to come to reading and in downturns we don't see the downturn that a West Boxford will see so I just want to be really clear how important this is to our community and our local economy um okay so all right there was a question about
doing the electrification first and installing the turn back second which would be lovely You Heard lots of lots of questions and concerns about all the extra diesel fumes and and uh and I'm on board with that we got to protect the environment so um one more question from a resident um will any non- MBA trains be using this turn back any tracks that are part of this project uh nothing okay thank you that's nice easy one um i s on
your project slide this is one of my questions so bikes on trains so that's awesome except if you look at the trains leaving from Reading like none of them are flagged online on your website is accepting bikes so nobody can bring bikes on there so so I guess what I would love to see in this is as a resident because it's aect what I can't tell you what to do so I'm just asking we I would love to see you guys put your money where your mouth is and and have more trains that allow bikes out of running to facilitate more better usage
um and having people bike down to the train because there are bike racks now and and people are using them I've seen that um and then I did want to clarify so right along Vine Street um we have an environmental justice area and I and I would really like to see on the 25th that that you you guys have said yep we've looked at it and and we're not making things worse and we're not violing violating any regulations around that and by not idoling in that area you
may be upet I don't really know but that that's we want to make sure we're not making things worse in our environmental um Justice area um let's see oh could you could you bring on the 25th I don't even data data how many how many train TRS and specific data how many trains will be added what times of day will be added because I heard residents concerned about late
night Stu everybody understands that this is more daytime and and we understand that service gets later at night but you could bring specific so that you know I hear rumors that it's one per hour and I I see your goals up there about turning around every 30 minutes but another way to communicate it is to specifically say here's how many trains we're going to add and just put it in black and white that's all because we leave the room and people aren't sure what we heard and and more
trains is a good thing but one train an hour sounds different than like 25 trains coming by my house and potentially ID idling until 2 am. which that's not what I heard tonight so I can quickly answer that one the 30 minute service is two trains an hour so that's that's the key point one for haal and one a Readington in both directions so that's why you need to fall yeah small I guess yeah so to to your point Karen uh two things I want to highlight one the question about bikes and two the uh and
the data one the MBTA doesn't really do a good job of continuous Community engagement we serve 176 cities and towns and we might come to you or talk to you once in a decade right so we have we have an issue with continuous public engagement we've just launched a community engagement Division and team um that's my sister uh department at external Affairs um so having this be not the only time we ever talked to you right and if you have that question
about about bikes folks need to have a place for them to go and ask that question uh two the data speaks to all the things that we really need to get our act together before the 25th and answer so that folks are very clear and even in our answer to your point um it's confusing we're not we we we're assuming people are understanding and engineering talk or engineer or railroad operations talk we just need to spell out in in plain terms how many trains yeah uh how
frequent the trains are how long they are how does it compar to what we have I think that this spells a lot of it just goes to the work that we really need to do in terms of the community engagement in this process so okay appreciate the feedback um so I've already asked my delegation this question it got nowhere a couple years ago during covid so we're building capacity our businesses love people coming through town and deciding to shop on their way to the to and from the train can we can is can a is a bus going
to come from North ring down here or a bus come from stonum to get be here those communities are right next to they don't have train stations no I I I appreciate the question writing especially I appreciate the question because with all due respect to alist he wouldn't answer that he wouldn't know the answer to that well and I don't respect the answer tonight but absolutely but I'm I'm happy to report that we are um we are doing bus Network redesign as and as part of that we're actually improving bus service in in all
of our communities but especially neighboring communities looking at connections especially in stonum that doesn't have a cross Route and it's actually coming I think uh to read it's part of that connection is connecting the folks in stonum over to the commuter rail lines um so there's a cross Route coming I'm happy to send more information Along on that nor spring has nothing yeah nothing those poor guys okay yeah I appreciate the question all right um when we did the Mallet SS project I understand that your easan area has invasive species it's a big
problem for a lot of communities I'm hoping we can count on you guys as we walk through this project and you're going to be out there that we can work together to get the invasive species under control because we did just spend millions of dollars of Massachusetts and federal Monies to make a beautiful area and we can't fight back your invasives alone but we didn't get any help we didn't get any help in this project so we'd like to partner with you to do that so I can I can comment on that uh for
this project um the new B there'll be new balls that's brought in so there wouldn't be any worries of like invasive seeds or anything that new B and the top layer of current ball would be removed as well so and we do have the vegetation management PL so and within our right away we do treat uh vegetation in that area and a lot of it which is uh so can can I actually build on that Jeremy when I was out on the track work walk with with the concom they're
actually were markers for invasive species we are acting on them so they're already what's the stuff called that you can't get rid of unless you go out there thank you not weed so so your weed whackers and I know you we we have that come before us every year your your management system but that's what that won't take the not weed so that's really another level so for because of that area dur and proximity to the conservation land we can't use um herbicide in that area so everything is mechanically removed so we
do our best to remove everything by hand and it's disposed properly off site well we're doing it in our town Forest which is also a sensitive area and we're doing it in some other areas of town but I I just like to keep that on the table let's figure out a way to work together on this but and your point is well taken I I understand that um okay okay and just to clarify so after this project the service to Boston will be faster from writing it will be more frequent okay so it's not going to be
faster this is part of the misinformation so you won't be able to increase the speed of travel to get people we working on that as well but that's not anything to do with this project so it's no that's good I'm clear I'm clear okay great we're going to have more trains they're not going to go any faster so you got to choose okay hopefully we'll get there um I think I'm almost done um I am done thank you all right can I just ask one question
parents so you said that there's four trains every hour effectively yeah two up two down okay so just another thing to have for the 25th that's three railroad crossings in a very small area and you're going to have four trains go through every hour that's going to be a major traffic issue for the plus the return trip over W Street and I'm not even counting Willow actually I'm not counting Willow I'm just counting wubber as Washington and Ash and those are
within less than a mile of each other that's going to be a major traffic issue for the town so we need you need to come up with some Traffic Engineers with you on that meeting because that's going to be a headache it's a major safety issue yeah if we can't and I would actually ask that that the MBTA does this reach out to our fire department and police department on that because that could prevent any you know if there's something on the other
side of the tracks all three of those well not all three but two of them go down at once and then the other one's separate so I would ask that you reach out to police department and DEP thank you sorry all right back to data for me just it would be really helpful and maybe for these guys maybe not I would love to get preo ridership ridership during Co hard Co then coming out of Co and then ridership
more more recent because when I heard you say earlier you saw a 20% increase in ridership my first CR is based on what if your ridership was Zero who cares if it's 20% more so for me the te has had a horrible reputation my whole life right and I can a lot of this going to attest that when it works it works great when it breaks down it breaks down things breaks down but as to
some of the comments either from my colleagues or some of the questions you're running more trains you're going to have more breakdowns you're just going to cause more problems down the line I love the idea of electrication for uh you know 15 to 25 years from now 15 10 to 15 years from now but so for me that that data would be helpful for the 25th I'm hoping you get it because ridership to me is is
the key component here right if if you don't get the writers ship up this is all for nothing so that is Paramount um I get the cost thank you for explaining to me how you're funding this this particular project but the cost of Maintenance in the future uh I'm guessing this is going to require more staff as well or no no more staff from that 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. existing staff existing staff okay um and a lot
of the questions have been asked but the ridership is a big one because there's always a cost benefit right it's I know you guys are looking long term right we have the oldest Network in the country um if not the world so it's very old and it breaks down I don't know why kis took this on you know good luck to them but the tea is very important to the state um and like Karen said for our property
values in particular for this for this community but for these guys in the room the property value might be a different subject right depending how this all pans out so in general for the whole Community great for our prop events that we can say we have a stop on the community our town but this impact here it there's no way it's not going to be detrimental in my opinion to the environment noise pollution Health all those concerns I I know uh the board's
been getting all the emails from the residents and I'm reading all of them me personally uh Board of Health has been contacted Board of Health has asked for some studies to be done so the Board of Health is on this now as well in addition of uh conservation I see Chuck is here which is nice Chuck is listening he's the conservation director um very involved tune with this so as far as the board goes yes guys we don't have a vote but we have a say and we're going
to advocate for you and we're going to listen and we're going to do as much as we can I'm speaking for myself and I think my colleagues would agree so um this was very helpful for me I'm still unclear on a lot of stuff and I think we all are in this room was still unclear on a lot of things um I would urge you uh hope and these guys they're doing their job right I would urge you we're going to take a break we're going to end this agenda item feel free to talk to them in private out in the hallway out
in the street get some fresh air as hot as heck in the air but we're going to take a break we're going to end this agenda item I'm not going to allow any questions I think we covered a lot if the 25th wasn't happening I would address this much differently but will be posted so hopefully most of us if not all of us will attend to see how these guys perform on the 25th and if they don't have all the answers they're going to have to come back so there is nobody no way near over so thank you for all
your hard work and your effort I've never seen a neighborhood galvanized like this I really commend it in my five years doing this so I really commend it and thank you one quick question Pat okay real quick please I will be quick it's the safety issue we've been con concentrating on everything for two months now about pollution and everything else the safety question I meeting with the state with the police
and the fire chief because we are now going to be looking at the gates at wuber going up and going down 98 times in a day that is a huge and then every train gate all the way to Boston is going to be increased and the fact that they haven't talked about the gate closing and all those other towns this is a safety issue for school buses regular buses children ambulance cars
ambulances fire trucks this to me is a real safety issue and that should be at the very top of the no thank you I think I wrote down my notes a study of gate closing I fully agree just had two real quick two we're done done thank you chrs questions it's more that the mvta does allow bikes on trains it's 15 out of 21 stops on reading allow
bikes so I'm not sure where the going take a 5 minute recess guys let's say 7 minutes
e
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back up I just I just set off
you're knock on the door I'll set all right guys woo it's got cool on here already man M all right so next is rent Reading Center for
active living recal design update half hour behind not too bad where are all the 30% of our population where are they they're at home watching where it's comfy I get it this is on you just uh just I'm a quick introduction you're not going to get a big presentation thank you as you know Pat Tomkins chair of the permanent building committee and the um the recal building committee I know it's late um I'll try to be brief
um just want to give a quick we want to give a quick update on the project since it's been handed over to the PBC last summer um since that time we've we've hired our owner project manager uh Turner in towns and Harry we've gone through a site selection that's been presented to the select board um we've gotten through schematic design and we're currently in the throws of cost estimating and uh budgeting uh our OPM will talk a little more about that but little spoiler alert preliminary estimates have come in and we're
tracking we're basically tracking towards the the numbers that were in the feasibility study um so before I turn it over I just wanted to touch base on a couple things um when we got handed the project um I just wanted to say the recal committee really did a great job they put together a lot of information um a lot of information very well organized they hired um BH plusa who's done a great job as our architect and they really allowed us to hit the ground running we got the project um Turner and
towns and Harry our OPM they they've done a ton of work um over the and Brian's going to cover that over really they've been on board since November so just over two months um they've done a great job we really those two Consultants we have two really good partners uh for the Town um Town staff has been absolutely fantastic um working on the project this this stuff always becomes like extracurricular activities
for them and uh Town staff has been fantastic building committee is fully engaged and if the project goes through um through town meeting and passes a town vote um I'm extremely confident that we're going to have a successful project for the uh for the town so I think Brian should be online Brian Radka from Turner and towns in here and he's got a little presentation and we've also got Joel bargman from BH plusa who's going to do a little design presentation thank you thank
you anything everyone can you hear me okay yep excellent so as Pat mentioned you know I've met many of you before I'm Brian dermont Turner in Townson Hy uh serving as the owner's project manager for the recal project so I'm going to give you an update on what's been happening on the project since we last met I did want to be there in person but unfortunately there was a highway traffic accident luckily it wasn't me uh and I had to turn around so I'm joining remotely although I guess with the timing of that last meeting maybe I
would have been there can we make him larger anything he's doing a presentation okay well we can make them large okay I'm sorry I was hoping we could see you larger before you started doing slides okay um well how about I uh I'll stop sharing at the end of the presentation and then we can more thanks y okay so let's get started so as you may
recall the project started about 10 years ago with Studies by the metropolitan area of planning Council and also the University of Massachusetts um these studies showed a growing shift in reading's population and it focused on the larger portions of the senior residents the study's also identified the needs of this demographic and how the community might address them so with this information uh reading established the recal committee which looked at how these suggestions could be
applied to the town of reading uh that committee established Outreach programs that surveyed residents and they also reached out to a number of other communities to see what worked for them with that information then uh the town moved forward with the feasibility study that developed a formal building programmed and studied potential sites to provide the resources necessary to address these changes in the community Fabric and that's kind of where we left
off with our last meeting where uh we had a site that was selected that's the Simon Way location to construct a new center for active living so since then we've been working on the schematic design phase um we've been looking at potential cost we've been getting feedback on the design and working towards establishing an appropriate project budget the process has really been very iterative
with input and feedback being provided by the PBC as well as other community groups working with the PBC so we just really started that project right after uh the site selection we established working groups to review the various design aspects um to look at sustainability goals and to make sure that the information was flowing freely to the community we also had meetings with the
um Council on Aging we had two public forums as well as an additional lunch and learn to ensure that the project was being shared with various groups within the community um in addition to those meetings we met with the town leadership and town operations as well as various departments uh with within the town to get feedback on the design and prioritize the needs and goals of the entire Community we also reached out to meet with the Butters and other relevant
parties to the project so all in all we've had uh 50 design schematic design meetings to date and 13 of those were open to the public the communications working group of the permanent building committee has really done an incredible job in Sharing project information with the public and encouraging feedback uh we've been meeting on a weekly basis uh we established a dedicated project page with all relevant project data and
executed numerous Outreach programs as you can see here on the slide the team has been responding to public feedback including creating an FAQ section on the website to address frequent project questions and we've also set up suggestion boxes for those who don't frequently use computers that was something that came from our first public forum where it was raised by certain members of the senior population that had difficulty providing feedback being via email so this is really an
ongoing effort and one that's going to continue as we move closer to town meeting and town vote um there'll be continuous messages that are sent out through newsletters um through flyers and news flashes on the website you can see kind of all those various means there on the slide so as part of the design and Communications efforts we've worked to
create a project vision mission and project goals and these have been used to guide the design process and communicate with the public about what the center for active living will actually accomplish for the community and as you can see here on the slide it's going to combine the Elder and Human Services the veteran services and the recreation to create a center that Fosters health and wellness by promoting social interaction
strengthening the community and providing a point of access to programs and services for all ages so this is meant to be an inclusive welcoming and create a supportive space that meets the interests and needs of the growing 60 plus population and those were the needs that were identified with those earlier studies that I mentioned now almost 10 years ago we also created a project goals and as you can see here um the
goal is to create a senior Hub within the facility with designated spaces while also promoting social equality and maximizing access to programs and services for all members of the community the idea is to create an environment L conscious facility that thoughtfully Bridges reading's generations and provides the needs of the growing 60 plus part of the community so as we were going through
the schematic design process a reference was made to this 2023 advisory from the US Surgeon General and this document was really interesting because it clearly points out the significant importance of social connections within the community as well as the devastating impacts that loneliness has on the population so it states here that the lack of social connection can have significant economic cost to individuals
communities and the society noting that social isolation um accounts for an estimated 6.7 billion in Medicare anually so it's also tied though to lower academic achievement and lower work performance so it's really a problem that not only affects the individuals but really the community um as a whole so this report even pointed out
that lack of social connection is as dangerous as heavy smoking heavy drinking or obesity and the recal project seeks to address this issue with social connections by improving access to the programs for the elderly including those who current Who currently can't participate due to space constraints because we have um long waiting lists for a number of the programs as well as
those parts of the population who don't engage because the programs that are of interest to them or that meet their needs are not currently offered so it will help to build a center really for all generations to improve the social connections within the community and strengthen the fabric and support and understanding I think also within the town so one of the things that uh stood out about the advisory was that it had these six pillars that were listed for addressing the lack of social connection and the
number one pillar was to design the built environment to promote social connection so in our last public forum we had a great presentation from Community Services um Jenna was there as well as the the heads of elderly and Human Services uh Recreation and the veterans department and they each outline the current programs being offered as well
as identified the facility shortcomings that were impacting their Outreach and shared a vision of working together in a shared facility in which they were able to address the needs of the reading community and what's interesting is from the research that was done um initially by the recal facility as well as members of the team that really have continued through this day the team identified that the new centers that are being
constructed not only are much more successful in better addressing the community needs but they typically see a massive increase in the number of users that engage with that new facility so that's really important as we look at you know the size of the facility and design so I'm not sure if Joel is here that wants to go through this or or I can walk through these are our latest design renderings and site plans for the
project I'm here okay I'm Joel bman BH say good evening um I wish I had a bigger picture of the site because it shows the ball fields and some of the other activities here and I think in addition to talking about recal we're talking about pickle ball but with Burbank Arena and the plane Fields I think you have a very enviable recreation facility for a community in Massachusetts is an opportunity here
you're seeing on the left is recal on the right is pickle ball pickle ball is not part of the recal project but we identified in the feasibility study that there was an opportunity to fit pickle ball courts in there the pickle ball Community picked up on that there's a pickle ball project going ahead in the opportunity is to gather the two projects together from perming from storm water management from the road access there's a lot of synergy in the two projects lot of efficiencies same
engineer can do both projects so that's why you're seeing both on the screen but from the gray parking lot to the left recal is tonight's uh presentation it's a 28,000 foot building next this is a picture coming into the parking lot from what is called Range Road which takes you down um to the far end where the Nike missile site used to be it's about another quarter of a mile
down the road you come in there's a drop off Main entry is in the Middle where the the glass is on the building the picture and the that's next shows you the idea of the building um next a center for active living is a building that focuses on senior or Council on agent programs but takes advantage of the fact that there's a certain hour that those programs are used and that the community can also benefit from those spaces and if you put
certain programs in with the center for active living such as a gym or a track an adequate multi-purpose room the seniors also benefit from programs that may be more Community Centric the center for active living's been around Massachusetts for 10 years we have five current Senior Center projects four of them are Center for active living it's a very popular project um and I'll show you why that's it's sort of very
efficient and very programmatically rich next this is the far end of the building um the point of showing you this is the one end of the building has a multi-purpose room this is the senior center of centric end of the building has a nice outdoor patio space leads right into the building leads to outdoor activity spaces so there's two really different ends of the building that are are great next I'm not showing this for architecture but we do have a solar study in
process that mentioned that we're working on budgets the reason that the full budget isn't presented tonight is one of the things we're looking at is solar roofs and what the return on investment would be on that we're looking at enhancing the envelope and other portions that might be more energy efficient and whether the town would get a return on investment on those so that's just to show you some of the areas that are under uh design study at the moment cost analysis so as I mentioned the senior the center for
active living is senior Centric the bottom side of the screen that's very dense that's the senior Council on Aging Center on the right side is the first floor and on the lower section is your program rooms the Senior Center Council on Aging offices and then activity spaces on the lower right hand corner C Game Area outdoor patio lounge space active program spaces Fitness spaces on the top side of the program um
separated by a lobi space is the gym and the multi-purpose room that I mentioned are those rooms that come with the community use and are beneficial for for both groups in fact that Community room be a great room for meetings like you had just before that will have 120 people easily at tables and set up for TV audio visual the second floor is on the left basically similar programs
but Recreation offices and Veterans so it's not just Senior Center but we have the veterans the veterans have a suite um a office in a conference room the recreation department is there with two staff people we have a visiting office for people that may come in and offer programs on a pro DM basis lawyers accountants Etc there's a py of programs in that lower green corner of the second floor next just walking you through the
building quickly um you come in very simple but you can see the front desk you can see where you sign in you can see the multi-purpose room on your right and you can see upstairs where the veterans and the recreation department peel off before you go deeper into the senior Center space the seniors wanted dedicated senior space that was identifiable separate could be shared with other spaces in the building
and that's what this image is showing the public spaces that are shared are up front the senior center is a little bit to the back picture on the right just shows the circulation you come in the lobby see where you supposed to go on a monitor on the right and in a very simple circulation very economical very clear next Lounge spaces different senior Cafe is also a senior co-working space many of our senior
centers are operating weekends evenings last night we had permanent building committee meeting 6:45 there was line dancing for Council on agent came into the building having that activity calendar and then these spaces where seniors can come in after work because a lot of us are working next on the left we have a game room five tables 20 people really active they're really popular and they're very noisy
because people are excited to play mayang and Bridge and other things and they really have it take on character of their own the right is a multi-purpose room it has a door that comes down out of the ceiling that can divide it into two um seats 125 people in the room um next and then last is the gym a lot of people say why do you need a gym in a senior center happens to be one of the most popular spaces folks from all other senior centers are going to Pembrook to
sandwich to sedbury places that we've just finished that have either a walking Track above the gym or as part of the gym on these cold January February March days hugely popular and as I point out go to one of these you never see somebody walking alone they're all always in a group when they talk when Brian is talking about the social aspects of the building pickle ball walking those are social things that are also exercise programs
so the Gym's not there just for the kids or for the adult basketball league but it's also a really integral component to the senior piece I can talk about the schedule and and any budget issues later if they have questions thank you thanks thank you Joel so throughout the schematic design phase we've been working uh through the anticipated project costs and we've been doing this not only for the budget
development but also to help the community understand you know what costs go into these projects and you know why a project uh cost you know what it cost so in our last public forum we went into depth on how construction project costs are derived and what variables must be considered When comparing costs from one Community to another so this this slide here shows the primary cost components of the building and the site and it points out that you know what people
actually notice is really only a small percentage of the actual cost um this next slide shows how the overhead costs of the general contractor add another layer of costs but something that's really very important to the cost of the construction process in order to make sure that all the parties are able to work together and that they have the resources um available for them on the site uh finally it's also important to
know that when we discuss construction costs now we're actually talking about the cost we expect to encounter in the future and this is to this is due to design decisions that still need to be made as well as uh inflationary pressure that are constantly pushing prices higher so when we work to put together these cost estimates we have these factors already already built in
um see so in addition to the construction cost uh we really want to focus on what the total project cost is which also includes the fees for design uh management as well as uh contingency funds and contingencies are really important line item because they help to protect the public tax dollars by establishing some tolerance for
unforeseeable changes whether it's in the site you know maybe something that's underground uh something that comes up in the design or maybe it's even the town's needs that change between today and when we're actually constructing the facility so as part of this uh explanation we also went over what other communities were spending on similar facilities noticing noticing that um there really
are many variables that affect the actual project costs and how costs can really very easily be communicated in ways that don't fully address the variables that would make for an Apples to Apples comparison so you can see a number of these listed here you know you might hear a community talk about a project that they built 10 years ago and you know what it cost for the total project cost maybe they're they're listing what the bids came in and that doesn't include the soft cost of the project so
it's important when we compare what happens with other communities that we take these factors into consideration and we try to streamline them into more of an Apples to Apples comparison so we did that uh we studied about a dozen similar area projects to develop a benchmark cost of what reading's new center would likely cost naturally you know people are excited about having a new facility but they want to know you know what's going
to cost them to determine if it's something that they can support so you can see here the variables that we went through um to create this Apples to Apples comparison and come up with a benchmark of what we believed this reading s for active living project would cost based not specifically on the current design and the cost estimates but based on what other communities are paying for
comparable projects leveling it out to constructing it at the same time so when we did that uh we derived the total project cost of somewhere between 26.8 to 34.4 million and that seemed to align with the anticipation it cost and I think it shows that reading's project is really in line with what other communities are spending for similar facilities when the variables are evened out uh to make an
apples apples comparison so just to make things a little clear uh we also looked at what's been changing since Co because it really wasn't all that long ago and a lot of these projects were constructed for that so you can see here you know with this graph that since Co U inflation prices have really surged quite a bit and that is impacting the current pricing of
projects uh we also looked at um both uh Global and Regional Trends to see how those further impact uh project costs and we shared all this information with the public again just to help to educate the the general public who doesn't maybe typically deal with construction costs and design costs and understand all these different factors so that when they're making the decision about whether they want to spend a
certain amount of money in a project they have that background information to to contextualize it and determine whether it's a good decision for for them so this just shows you that this is something that we do keep tabs on and if you're interested in diving in more um we have a lot of construction cost information available on our website that you can dig into if you're interested so where does all of this
leave us now well as you heard already um you know we've been going through the estimating process so as of last Friday we completed the initial cost estimates for this phase we had two different two independent estimators and we're now going through through the reconciliation process we had a meeting on that uh this afternoon and the reconciliation process is basically to flush out the discrepancies between the different cost
estimates because it's really you know especially at this stage it's really more of an art than a science to determine what the anticipated uh construction costs are going to be for a project so we expect to get um the reconciled estim back later this week but as you as you heard you know we we are seeing that the costs do appear to be lining up with our hopes of keeping the project below that $30
million threshold um the PBC is very committed to working hard to provide the most affordable project for the town without sacrificing the necessary programs that are needed to support you know the citizens of R re reading sorry and enhance um social services and in addition to the cost estimates we've also been completing uh schematic design review we've had nearly a dozen individuals provide feedback I
think we had over 250 comments that were sent to the design team and BH plusa is now reviewing these comments and will be providing feedback to the PBC along than with the estimated cost and so with this data the PBC will sharpen their pencils work through the decisions to arrive at a responsible and appropriate project budget for the recal facility so we expect to have that
budget complete as early as the 18th but we have kind of built in a buffer week if needed and our plan is to return to you on the 18th with project budget and then have you vote on it at your March 4th meeting so after that it'll go to the finance committee for their support and then to town meeting and to town
vote so as I mentioned uh we've completed two public forum so far as well as a lunch and learn and we do have more scheduled in the coming months um it's important to get all of these messages out to the public keep them informed about what's happening on the project and what it's going to cost and as we look ahead to the coming forms we plan to have also the tax impacts available to the public um so that they'll have a
clear understanding of not just what the project costs are but actually how will impact them personally so that's pretty much it um I'm happy to answer any questions and you know Joel and Pat are also here um so all right who wants to go first not Chris he Chris thanks Carlo my five questions was
a lot less T than other people okay very expedient let's go expedient uh so I guess my first question I meant to ask it at the public forum last week but the first time that I heard about um veterans um Recreation Etc moving over to the new center was during that last public forum maybe I haven't been paying attention and it's been in there the whole time but my followup to that would
be what are we going to do with the area that is currently in this building for them is there a plan for that so I don't know who's going to answer that or if it's been brought up I I don't think there's a I mean we we need space in this building there's a lot of people that are in cramped offices as they are um we can always use that space downstairs and repurpose it I think it would probably be a combination of office space and maybe for some storage um it's not a it's not a very big area
down there if you're talking about the space in this building um but we could definitely use it so so how many people would that P or offices I should say um well there's there's two two downstairs there's two offices Plus a wide open area where we have about four or five cubicles so all of that would go technically it probably stay and then other people that St all that staff would one one position would stay one
position would stay right which one would stay it's um it's a finance related position that's sitting downstairs right but we are hiring somebody else for finance and we need a place for that person so that might be some place down astion as well I guess on the budgeting aspect I know it's between 28 and 34 35 34 I think was just mentioned I think for um the best chance of this passing
it has to be under the 30 number because people have been hearing 30 the whole time I think if you end up going 34 35 or something like you're going to Spook even more people off I think you have to do whatever you can to keep it under the 30 number would be my recommendation I mean you see 29 29 is way different than 30 in my head at least when I'm going and and trying to buy something you know what I mean even if it's 295 it's still 29 you
know that's just my I clarify something yeah the um that cost range that I shared with you earlier that extended beyond beyond the3 million Mark that was a range that was based on what other communities would spend for similar projects so is based on comparing all those projects and then escalating the cost to when we're building them but with the data
that we're getting back um even this afternoon uh we see a very positive trend that we feel confident we can keep the number be below uh 30 million okay I guess from at least from me reading the packet Etc in just seeing a number like that thrown out there having you explain it is one thing but once you see it if you're skimming through the packet Etc you see 34 million you know what I mean like so that's kind of the impression at least
that I was on even through your presentation so just hopefully like you mentioned if it can be under that 30 number uh that would be the best case scenario I would say yeah yeah that was just a benchmark you know of how this project would compare but the the PBC you know we've we've had a number of uh discussions about the cost and the entire group is very committed to bringing this in as affordable as possible um even going through the
design review process we've been highlighting potential areas for Value engineering if needed and um in our conversations today I can say today very confidently that um we fully expect to be well below that that 30 Million number all right thanks Brian just so you know you got a Word document up on the screen too wasn't sure if that was your
intention that's where your taxes I any I didn't realize my screen is still on here it's still yeah you may want to stop sharing and then then uh Karen will get a good look at you too who's next um I don't I just have one quick question and I think I already know the answer to this and that it's probably something you don't have yet is um do we have any idea what the increase will be for services needed for the new
center operationally it is on the FAQ um that was mentioned earlier I was like verifying you know trust but verify so yeah they have numbers on there there's an answer in there it says like 11 staff and no anticipated need to increase staff but like okay there's an F you over there and I can speak to that a little bit if that's okay I don't know if someone can help me with this I didn't say stop
sharing I stopped it for you okay thank you um so uh the Jenna has hired um a consultant an operations consultant um that was recommended to us I think by Joel actually um and we had worked with him previously we had a meeting with him last week I think 50 meetings and it's it's a blur but you know there's a lot we've doing a lot of me so we met with this um operations consultant to come up with a plan it's being funded separately
from the project through um recreation department and um and it's and it's a it's not crazy money but it's a really good investment in looking at what we do operationally um in community services so Elder and Human Services and for um Recreation and for veterans and then mapping that to the space that we have and being able to scale right because when there's more space and there's more hours and Recreation can provide Staffing at night in in ways that you
know Elder and Human Services really hasn't been able to so I think you'll also be able to see better work life balance for some of our staff um and you know Recreation does hire a lot of um temporary staff particularly summertime that's part of how we normally do things so that operations plan is is going on now and that will be um a wonderful useful thing that we can scale over the next you know several two decades or so that'll be available at town meeting so
we can absorb that FAQ list is not bad like yeah no we have the stuff on there I don't know what's going on with kilum yet but like the FAQs for this project are looking pretty good but yeah yeah thank you um we spent a lot of time on fq so thank you for that um yes there's there's a lot of operational work that's been done already that you can see on the FAQs and that operational plan I think we're aiming for that to come in before April 20 before town meeting so
people will be able to see that and in that operational plan um other thoughts will they bring in thoughts of like renting the gym out after hours and stuff like that like how we can bring money in as well absolutely and if you if you talk to Jim Sullivan for five minutes he will be able to really elucidate how that can happen so that when the spaces they are primarily we have a designated senior Hub that is a commitment that we've made when that's
when other space is available you know we can program that and we can program that to you know men's basketball league you know youth programs and so forth that um isn't going to interfere with u the operations of our our Council on Aging and our Elder and Human Services commitments or our veterans Comm but we can program that space and we can um use that as a revenue generator for sure and I have another question that may my aunt may be mad that I even asked this so my aunt is a senior here in read and I know
one thing that was mentioned is that you get this huge influx in these new senior centers and I know some of that influx is because all the seniors from other communities go to those new senior centers to use all their new facilities do we charge non-residents to use our facilities or is that no you do not charge because I know for a fact that people senior center hop they do yes they definitely do um they definitely do and um and there's a culture sometimes around a
little bit of that as well I would I would defer to Chris if we charge any non-residents right now for our um services our Elder and Human Services administrator if you can come up here Chris that' be great sorry Chris put you on the spot I needan to put you on the spot I don't know to answer that question um great thank you all um right now we keep um the fees down um we have we don't yes
we have um a handful of out of town uh seniors that come to our center it's not as much as you would think right now the majority is reading residents um we we currently do not charge um reading or non- reading which is kind of nice because it allows everyone to be on the same playing field um you know we have a lot of seniors in town who cannot afford to come um but we can't really ask them what their income is or whatnot
um so we try to keep it on the Level Playing Field um so um the priority is always priority I call up it's like you got to be resident for us if it's you know yep I was just going to say that um priority is always writing residents especially for our bigger events um for our smaller events I kind of like to have um some people from out of town come you know try to get them in because we do have a lot of people who donate um and who support uh our services um you
know who who don't live in town and I respect that uh they've just you know they make our Center their home um which is really nice now with that said again uh top priority is writing residents um older adults and I wasn't saying that we charge residents for the use of the senior center I just didn't know how that worked we have been I have been talking with Jenna um and discussions will be picking up here here soon that we will be charging um thanks to arpa
we've been able to keep you know no feet um but soon we will be looking at um charging a small fee for things for activities to kind of offset some costs so that's something that we are going to be exploring here very soon thanks CHR thank you all thanks Chris yeah just a Qui comment Joel would you just talk for a minute about um as the gym came up the that side of the building just the the structure of that
in terms of it being um it's physically separated but also entrance and Division and things like that I went too quickly there thank you I I can I'll try to explain it without it but I mentioned there's this two-sided building that has the public the gym and the mult purpose room on one side and the senior Council on Aging on the other side the side on the right has its own entry on the far right of the building so at night kids or adult
basketball could come in get into the gym they don't even have to come in the main lobby of the building and there's its own separate restrooms down there if you had a meeting like tonight in the multi-purpose room again there's a set of restrooms that's for the gym and that multi-purpose room so they don't even have to go near the senior Centric spaces you don't have to worry about someone going into Chris's office you don't have to worry about use of the bathrooms or cleaning up there's a really two-sided and it's
not that it adds a huge amount it adds two stalls of toilets down at the bath at the at the gym area but it makes the building really much more usable question mark can't M you no I'm in pretty good shape on this thanks sure thanks um so so I'm listening to what residents are saying and um so so Town meetings coming up pretty quickly in two months is February
March yeah so no it's in so it's in April so less than 90 days but and we're going to be asking them to vote on both and yet we haven't like tied together the projects and presented them to town meeting and so um we definitely need to understand tax and Publications but the residents I you know what I what we don't want to you've always said these are both important projects and I agree with you so but people are worried and I
definitely don't want to see um groups and uh saying oh don't vote for this only vote for that one that would be bad for our community so I think so educating our town meeting members about to oversimplify the amount of Grant reimbursement that we are getting on kilum is more than the cost of this new Senior Center where you know compared to
other communities we we have a two for one opportunity to address like a wide spectrum of our residents and that would be one approach I you know I could be open to others but that's kind of the elephant in the room right now it's a big elephant we're we're we're like so close to town meeting and and if if town meeting prefers one solution over the other and maybe it's just a timing thing like I think we got
to talk about what's what's the fallback of one or the other doesn't get approved um so anyway that that's like one of my concerns presenting it to Tomy and I don't can I just say we do plan to do that bring both projects together four town meeting members so they understand it um we need a little more data before we do that but that's on the plan and it's similar to what we did for MBTA communities where we wanted to you know get town meeting members familiar with what that was what the vote would be so
we had meetings just for town meeting members anybody can come to these meetings but I'm not that's a great example no well s similar to that theend is really good not think we want to say MBT anything anymore right now I know it's not a bad it's not a good night to say it but it good um it did work out in terms of Tom meting got there we did get there it was a super painful process like yeah the the yeah no and it and and it did work It ultimately did work hopefully we could figure that out and
the only the other concern I have because I love this I'm so excited um who who was what who said earlier there's no place to go in this town in January February March nowhere um so okay this is so so accurate um so I already heard one long-term town meeting member stand up in a public forum I wasn't there people told me and say I can't vote for this because it's not a senior center and we
need a senior center and not a community center so but I see this it's called the center for active living it's targeted at adults that's that's a huge segment of the population and I see the vision and I see it very clearly is not being and hoping it's never going to be a place where adults are going to be uncomfortable because there are youth everywhere we can't let that happen and
and but that's I think part of the communication that we've still got to get out to the community you're I already oh the facts it already says what hour is it's going to be open it's going to be open on the weekends I'm like yeah I'm like sign me up so this is great this this community would so benefit from this and we are going to have so much more capacity and space than we have now as our population grows but but those are some of the the that's some of the feedback and concern I'm already hearing and before they even
know what the Bill's going to be so those are my general General concerns because I love this and wow the facts they're awesome the FAQ page is like really good I think that's a great question that you asked and um we can add that to the FAQ page sort of what the what's the plan for youth integration into the space most of our our Recreation programs are aimed at Youth and we rent space from the schools for most of those programs that aren't field based outside right but we do um
service a lot of adults uh through our Recreation program a lot of 60 plus folks and this will give us more capacity to um increase those programs so that is we're very mindful of that um and we want to be able to communicate that so we will add that to our FAQ is there a something in here about we can't get in after the into the schools until after 6 o' and perhaps I'm mistaken I still think that's all youth oriented I don't think that's really an adult culture and
there are people that in town that still say we were promised access to the high school we voted for that project we were going to get access to the Fieldhouse it didn't happen so people have long memories thank you for that yeah thanks for great work yeah good um this is not going to be an April tummy it's going to be a special tummy new May yes May 1st it's the same no maybe not explain so it's going to be a special
town meeting within town meeting so town meeting is going to start as usual end of April end of April April the first 20 the first Monday and then the plan is to have the special town meeting on the Thursday which is May 1st and that'll deal with just both of the projects and hopefully that there'll be one night um and we can close that town meeting and that puts us on track to have the election happen so that's legally that's what's happening can I talk about you talked a
little bit about well let me respond Karen to what you're talking about kind of you know thinking of a plan B I think what you're hearing about is the plan a first and how the town and schools are kind of coming together and saying look there are two big projects that are going to be in front of you and you need to learn all about both of them and they're the town side the school side are saying these are the priorities in terms of what to do and here's all the information that you want to digest here
are the opportunities to ask questions here are some Sessions videos and whatnot for town meeting members here are all the different things so that you're you'll you'll know that it's there um and if you don't you got all sorts of places to look and find out what's going on but I think the the community needs to also understand that these aren't two silos that are running separately theys like they are at the moment and we still can pull it we can still pull it together but kind of we're
like at that window where we got to make that call and do it right right we're one town and the priorities are here it's coming forward to town meeting this way we need to be working together to get them done and and when I say working together it's having all the information available for people to look having the chance to ask questions about what's going on the public for so it's 50 but there's there's more sorry it needs to be out there so people can they're going to absorb it the way they they want to including some not until the very last
second or even past the last second but that's I think the communication is doing that I think that this goal of talking about look folks big projects two take a look that's plan a I think that's that's the the the core planning for first turn uh Brian on the construction costs is that just a construction or
that's Furniture fixtures uh running internet stuff and security cameras and all that stuff so when we talk about the project cost that's the whole shebang it's the whole shebang yeah fixtures Furnishings Internet Security okay and I only have one more question if this passes in April May
town meeting a vote forget to tell me well both shovel in the ground these costs are based on shovel in the ground when we would expect that it would go out to bid in January and then the contract would be awarded shortly after that January of of 2026 okay and any delays in that would do what to the project as far as
costs add what I wouldn't go backwards I guess it would add to it right yeah it would add escalation costs but we do have some contingencies built in already for that um so some of that could be absorbed um it depends on how you know how much time you're talking um in terms of what it would cost right now we you know with the current reconciled estimates we're carrying three and a half% annually um so I'd have to do the math on that I answer it at the top of my
head no no I got you okay all right so you kind of wishful thinking we started on time and you know clear the land and start the foundation and it should line up with what we voted on yeah yeah I think it's doable you know um Joel and I talked about the schedule uh today and you know what's what's doable with with his team and what we can reach and I I think we we arrived at
a good date uh it's it's a date also that works very well for getting the bids in uh which will also help the project budget because you know the truth of any project is that the final costs aren't really known until after all these things happen we estimate you know yeah and we believe that these are absolutely reliable numbers uh to go on but if we can bid the project in a more favorable climate you know we might be able to incur additional cost
savings so that lines up nicely with the schedule um also with uh getting the initial site work done the area is pretty the soils are pretty wet so that was also something that we reviewed today that um having colder temperatures will make that early work um a little easier okay so within the I'm G to call it 29 million to so we can all breathe a little bit in that 29 million there's
the contingency yes right so January you put it out the bid everything comes in it 35 million what happens to the project we have to go back and ask for the money correct um there there there multiple things that can happen so first of all we wouldn't typically see that large of a spread I'm just G I'm it's a bad analogy but an increase yeah that's fine um so
so yeah there are a number of different things that can be done we do have contingency funds that are built in so we can draw off of that to overcome um overages at bid date um we can also look at um you know value engineering the project and we could look at rebidding so all of those could happen without going back to the town for more money okay why why wouldn't value engineering be considered already well it is being
considered for what we're doing right now we're looking to get the most um cost effective solution out there but if um push comes to shove and for some reason there's some big unexpected change in the construction Market that drives prices up sometimes you need to uh dig it a little deeper um in order to see a project realized okay that makes sense yeah I've been through that recently on another project um but yeah
you can still have successful outcomes no thank you that helps a lot I could just add a little color to that um as we go through the process right now there's probably Joel 10 like 10 alternates on on what we're estimating some of them are are to add some are to take away we're reviewing the drawings coming up with a list of things that we can reduce or change as we go through the process we get through design development there'll be another cost estimate we get through 60% construction documents there'll be another cost estimate 90%
construction documents a third cost estimate okay so so there's three more cracks at doing an estimate looking at where we are and and you know who knows what's going to happen in the next 12 months inflation you know is going to be flat is going to go up but there's those at those times we'll have an opportunity to reassess where we are and and pivot and if we have to reduce scope or we may see that things are more favorable and and we can increase scope and we'll set it up so there are multiple options to add or deduct way so so you're saying
after the vote we can always pivot and adjust if things right out of our control happen right so we should be we should be adjusting if if we go through those estimates and we see prices U bumping up against that called 30 million or 29 million goes up whatever yeah we see we see it um um we say the things bumping up against that we should adjust the scope to keep it within the budget um within within the budget so that when we get to bid day uh we don't have a big surprise like you're saying yeah just don't use
eggs okay is it good sorry one more um so t for transportation that was on the early part of this um concept and it's not on here now um what do you mean what aspect of Transportation Transportation getting people over to Simon's way Transportation even if we were going to keep the location downtown Transportation was supposed to be part of it um that will be an FAQ that you will
see very soon thank you working on it that sounds like a great idea thank you it's discuss okay good thank you because we're gonna get questions yeah thank you absolutely yeah you want that we good guys good yep all right thank you guys feel free to stay a lot of riveting stuff coming up thank you all right next on our next Council on aent next parking kiosk discussion
and potential vote excuse and I I guess I put potential vote not knowing the emails that we receive but that put potential in case you need more time so um we can have a quick discussion I think some of us you know have strong feelings about this both ways so whoever wants to start start okay yeah please my decision
or my thoughts on it haven't changed um I think Park did a good job with the information they had at the time I think um data and parking issues downtown have changed since they made the decision to to put the kiosk in um this was not Park's fault but also the the process of having these kios and having one hour free really isn't a great work with how the kiosks work they they're not meant to be used like that
um and that's not their fault I think it was kind of a jump at the gun of buying the kiosks um but I will not support reinstating them anyone else Mark um so I I think the parking situation has has changed a little bit but if anything I think it's even stronger in terms of the case for why we need to do these kiosks now um we unfortunately had the problem of a a tough launch at a tough
time with a lot of problems so I think we're colored by that and kind of stuck on it stuck on C right I think the reality of the situation and you know the the the data this come in I saw deputy chief amola was on the on the line a moment ago also is that we we are having issues um there are plenty of busy times this is done very effectively in lots of other communities um and over most recently in terms of my personal experience um as we are attracting more
and more people to the downtown which is very much our goal that should mean more people this ensures the flow of the traffic this ensures that people are moving along this is the control to do it um I don't think we need a a bigger solution I don't think that there is really a a better difference solution I think Park did a really nice job of going through it um I do see commuter rail parking lot being much Fuller um much more regularly um there are a lot more things
that that are going on um I can tell by where I have to park when I come in at if I'm taking the 7:30 or the 8:00 or occasionally when I go in at midday I can tell what the spots are in terms of what's happening at least on the inside spots that are there um this there are there are plenty of free spots there are choices in terms of how to get to them this gives us really good control over those two Central areas um I was supportive of it before do I love the idea of of of changing how parking is
working in some sense I really do because I think that's how we are able to accommodate more business in town um we initially did this because you know there was pressure coming from all sorts of people there was a lot of constru ruction going on um but the concern was we need people to be moving we need people to to turn over in the parking lots the kiosks are are the really the only way to do that we've tried the 4H hour we've tried encouraging uh
employees to to park outside to some extent it works to a large extent it doesn't this is how you're going to get parking this is how you're going to get growth I saw today an idea of different things we might be able to do at holiday times it was pretty intriguing also but for the regular flow of traffic this is the right solution the town invested based on our vote based on Town meeting's vote we invested a pile of money in these things it would be a shame to to not carry through particularly because the
situation still is problematic but would be even worse is is to kind of walk away then say we actually do have a problem and then be kind of saying well we just kind of did exactly the wrong thing in the wrong direction I think this is the thing I very much support uh kind of the and I don't want put all this on on to onto you Christine but the date is telling us that we're still having a lot of issues um we are encouraging more and more
business to come in we want people to to turn and come through there it's exactly what these kiosks are for the last piece I would say is that the the vendor we chose their performance was horrible at best um they are who they are at least for now they've made a lot of changes a lot of improvements we've learned a lot from that now let's do it the right way they're here let's go I'm very strongly in favor thank you Ken yeah um I would
just Echo an awful lot of your comments and um you know May 20th 2022 um it was reported in the paper that town meeting approved this the way our government works is town meeting we put the an article on um we agreed with Park's hard work um by a why which addressed a lot of um concerns and a lot of different um we all didn't agree well I'm not talking about the we
said we said we so I oh I'm sorry um as a community they heard from all these different voices that's what I mean it was a it was a very comprehensive and in a multi-year long process so um I I I would not want to um I'm I'm very concerned that the select board cannot refuse to um Implement what town meeting spent money on and and I think that's wasteful and that's on top of all Mark's comments and
the data that um Deputy CH amandola has presented and I think we can do a better job and I think it's time to turn these on again and make whatever tweaks we want whether it's holiday benefits or Senior Benefits I don't care care we spent them we installed them we need to use them thanks Chris thanks Carl um I'll preface this with there's two motions at the end and I will only be speaking pursuant to article 5.19 on the
traffing park relations at upper Haven Street uh which is the CBS parking lot um uh a couple things the the community at the time town meeting Etc did hear what was presented unfortunately uh the data then conflicts with the data that actually exists today which as I explained last time um uh I was going my vote Etc going back then was based off
that data once again I said I was wrong it's very difficult to sit up here and say that I was wrong to recommend something at the time with what we had it was the right decision it was an 81 vote I think uh only one person uh rejected it um so uh it it's it's one thing it's this is a a a flux kind of issue that we have we can't
sit here and and just approve 18 parking regulations in reading and then we're going to focus on the one that uh just didn't hit the bar in multiple metrics uh Park approved so much uh uh so much good stuff that ended up making this issue significantly better without the kios they improved it where um just having Bridget alone here as
well compared to not having an enforcement officer back then um we have to remember I know it's it's might be easy to forget but uh Park meetings were all held online for the majority because of covid still happening at the time so we're were going it was all a different time back then and it's hard to Envision nobody wants to go back um but things have to be put in context um I also meant to bring up at the MBTA thing the
Drone video if you actually look at the MBTA parking lot in that video uh you might think it's more full whatever the scenario it is like half empty I could not believe the amount of open spots that is like the one big takeaway that I wanted to point out but I forgot back then um so per perception from the ground it might look like one thing but the overhead view you could park buses over where um uh the communa rail actual communa rail parking is
um uh and the other example I want to bring up I'm not sure if I'm going to get yelled at for referencing a resident's comment uh made on Facebook where Karen Janowski is here and I believe she'll be very happy that I'm going to read what I am because she put the work in and I agree with once again everything that she said in this um so I just want to just put this into the record that um she randomly tracked the
CVS parking lot since the select board decision in October I'm not sure why you're grunting Karen this isn't scientific it's not objective and it's late that's why I'm sorry I didn't interrupt you ever and it just seems as if I just keep getting called out for ridiculous this isn't about you finish you to me I'm all done just keep going I got to put up with it so we're going to listen to it yes I know because uh we receive the email and people see this but other people watching online Etc
don't have the luxury of seeing what we see and my apologies for actually putting that out there um so she has 40 data points at random times from 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday 42.5% of the time there were over 21 spaces available uh today at 3:30 was a representative example meaning yesterday as 29 spots were available during all data points there was never less than one space 8% of the time there were two to five spaces the average number of spaces
available per month was 21 for October 18 for November 12 for December and 23 for January there's no need for the kios the issues in place when the parking committee was formed had been resolved down construction was an issue and is no longer an issue currently uh more spaces were made available for employees correcting the issues uh significantly more spots for employees I think 178 maybe even more than that I might be under selling the amount of spots that were done uh for employees and uh I
don't think uh uh Miss Janowski is uh embellishing any of these numbers because after multiple times of her going out there she would call me um and just uh mention you know hey I was over here today and I saw XYZ um so I appreciate her doing that also um back then Melissa and I did spend eight hours out there and listen to the uh all the various residents it was an overwhelming majority not just with the lack of spaces just the kiosk
themselves whether it's user friendly not I understand you never get a a a second chance to make a first impression we blew it we all agree with that um we're we're moving past that um but we heard loud and clear that nobody liked these at all and after our vote all we did was receed one or two emails I think back then um from eish Etc saying how business spiked and and pick back up and everything was great and we have not
received a single email until an hour before the board meeting uh tonight going one way or the other on I haven't had a spot uh spots have been wide open um any kind of feedback at all from the public uh at all on anything nobody complaining about lack of parking or that there was an abundance of parking so for me I don't see the reason to uh shake that up once again um the other
thing it's not in the packet but I did ask Jane to follow up on if we can sell the meters Etc she sent me an email maybe we get $35 that's never happening I think we can all agree on that we're not selling these for 35 bucks is um what's the word again not Salvage oh Surplus Surplus you can Surplus them yes that's not yeah just seeing that number like no in on planet Earth would I do that did you have something I did okay actually yes
um to so uh one of our staff members has been pressing IPS on you know they won't buy back the the kiosks and um so they've been you know kind of like is there a secondary Market do you blah blah blah and so um just before the meeting um Andrew mcle let me know that um IPS might know of another community that would be interested in purchasing them so again it's not going to be a full we're not going to recoup our costs our costs are a little under 10,000 per
kiosk um so hearing that I I would like to see what what happens with that I did see in there about the senior stickers Etc the example that I brought up last time um because that you know a good portion of the feedback that Melissa and I heard were seniors Etc uh running in or um running but going in just to pick up prescriptions and leave and I understand we might all think using the kiosk is easy Etc and it was an issue
for even us to do it in the beginning but some people don't want to do that um so perhaps doing the senior parking sticker scenario we have to explore more of that um to see not just here because it would be for any anywhere um and then the other four spot so behind CVS is currently 1 two 3 four parking spots plus a handicap spot I would think if I was ever to agree to for the kiosk to go back over here that those four spots
should be 15 minutes strictly enforced where Virg comes in to do whatever work she's doing for the kiosk anyway and if there's cars parked in those spots that's when she can time them and then by the time she's done with checking all the other kiosk people Etc if those people are still in there after the 15 minutes you get a ticket and then eventually people are going to realize they are really only 15 minute spots for those people running in the back door that's something else that I would like to see explored before um I would agree
with it and then lastly is uh I did see as well as the board um that there was no notice to uh the other businesses Etc that this was going to be um uh voted on EX potentially tonight um I know that it's because of Karen's post on on Facebook that that is the the reason that we even got those emails in the first place that people knew about them so I think even because of the lack of communication I know the businesses
are going to say they don't want them anyway I would push off the vote regardless because it's not fair to them that they didn't get to come here and say precisely what I just said for them but still we we can't just sit here and just keep doing uh uh not bad stuff over and over again but just repeating the same misgivings or whatever that word is for what we did back in October you know what I mean like the communication has to be there I know um you spoke with the businesses Etc maybe back then regarding
everything and I don't think that maybe you knew to do it now or maybe you did I don't know if you want to speak like how it was handled this time around was there feedback and people are telling us wrong uh no I I mean I have to take responsibility step up and say no I I did not reach out to the businesses I should have uh and so when I got a note from ish um overnight I realized yep she's absolutely right um given that I
had um pretty robustly communicated with them I mean I went door Todo many times uh with them I dropped all flyers and I emailed and I had lots of text conversations with several of the business owners who were most upset with it over the period and I backed off completely during the the holiday season because it's their busiest time we had uh you had already decided to pause it um so you know I have to follow my sword and say yeah I I dropped the ball on that and that's exactly what it said to eish today um I did go door Todo with
several of them today um and I did um I did uh I was on on the phone with Amy at goodhearts um and several of the others you know to try and say to them look um you know there's still a way to participate even if you can't make it face to face you know please please do come online on on um on Zoom um and uh and feel free to uh to to chime in again and I also said to them you know they were very strong in their communication
with the board um uh in the fall um and you know their position hadn't changed and that I and that I understood that you know you understood their position not to speak on your behalf but I think they were very clear um so that you would be assessing all of that feedback and having paused then reassessing what's going on so um yeah it's on me um I uh will be putting a process in place so that I don't so that there
aren't things that will affect the the stakeholders and the business community that uh I should make sure I stay in front of them on so I think I'll I'll do better than that in the future and Andrew do you have a timetable maybe when when we would know what whether or not we would could recoup some money if we were to sell them are we thinking like it's a week or like six months from now or I can reach out to poke IPS further it was a short response of maybe one community and there was no cost
detail there was no schedule of need there so I can try to probe them further on that um it's certainly not a promise that even that one or two Community is interested in a refurbished kiosk or used kiosk so but we can we can try lightly chos it doesn't seem to be much of a market for it based on our research asked them how many other communities have ever asked to do that I have it's been done it's okay we're unique I'm sure
there's some communities that their kios fail sometimes and they need rep yes there is failed kios Replacements but like in terms of that IPS communities who use ms4 kiosks that happen to need one or two extra lying around at a Val at a lower value I should say like it's a slim market so it's just trying I knew that I I just was wondering you know if you if they did say because oh hey so and so's looking for uh two kiosk yeah I'll push
him further on it and say hey there might be some real interest in that can we get their contact or can you just play middlemen and how can we kind of put some details here so thanks yeah that'd be helpful um I think I think what Mr chowski did is exactly what I did by accident um whm books has been saving their Packaging Supply packaging that comes with their uh orders for us for
years and uh this year was an exceptional year for them I don't know if they just buying more books or selling more books I'm guessing both so I was there once a week once a week for months in that at different times and never once was there not a place to park or at least 10 spots so to me that matters um random times morning afternoon 4:00 10 o'
whenever I could get there that's once a week for several months um and yeah it wasn't every hour on the hour but I I got a sense that what with the pause and just in in general moving the employees out and park let's not forget Park just wasn't tasked with the kiosks they were tasked with many things and many recommendations the kios was an aspect of it
so if we were voting today you know I'm the only board member that didn't support the kios uh when we did vote was 4 to1 um that would be the same vote today uh four to one I mean my vote would be still the uh in for no uh so if we were voting today I would not support reinstating the kiosk for a number of reasons that I'm not going to go into that we discussed here tonight um everyone's made good points but I just
don't see it I've never been supportive of paying a park in downtowns I know a lot of communities have it but reading we're as much as we're in the Forefront of a lot of things we're late to a lot of things you know we were Dry Town we one of the last dry towns in the state why I don't know but us and Belmont were like the two outliers for the longest time so change is not accepted that well to me here sometimes on certain things yes some things no this was a really
shock to the system and based on that I think we should postpone it for a couple weeks um I'm ready to vote but I think In fairness and thank you Kevin for you know speaking of about what didn't happen and you know that happens and we apologize and we move on uh and we try to fix it so I I would uh take a pulse of the board is to we can put this on the agenda for whatever the date is the 18th or we
can vote now yeah um so all right so just to be clear um we put on another agenda item it's to give iish an opportunity and come in and tell us everything you told us in the fall and to disregard and to ask the chief to come in deputy chief to come in again and I I don't see the point of that I think um yeah so you're ready to vote to take an a pulse to the board yeah I am
pretty sure well go ahead take the Pulse of the board and see where we are I'm pretty sure that the majority of this board is going to vote to disregard the wishes of town meeting in the park committee so so be it I don't think two weeks is going to make a difference okay Mark what's your opinion um so two things um one I think there seems to be um the unanimous belief that there is not a lack of parking in reading so that's a little bit of a
change from where we were last time we had the discussion at least last year when we had the discussion so maybe that's an important thing for us to all listen to um second is I would encourage us to be double ticketing now and and and going forward um why not we should be it's the right thing to do it's incentivizing the right stuff it's job uh security there's a bunch of things that come with it um I don't think there's any new information that that people are going
to be able to process the experience you had I've had very mixed so today there was one spot that I grabbed I was lucky I got it the lot was completely full at 3:00 CVS lot so it's it's not the case that it's always wide open I didn't say that but I'm just suggesting that if we're looking for individual experiences to Define what we're doing then that's got to be part of it also yeah yeah um how was there weekly you were there today at 3 yeah but I've been there
other times also and I can find spots more easily fair fair it is what it is I think you know I'm I'm I'm listening to kind of what's going on um anyway I I would kind of make that observation about there plenty of parking that we should be double ticketing to to kind of I guess encourage the right behavior um you know the my pulse would be no information is to come let's let's vote take it off and just uh and I appreciate
that I think that the whole goal of this dating back years even before Park was always parking management not Parking Solutions uh not so well parking Management Solutions add put the three words together we're never gonna fix parking for everybody discussion of a parking lot and a variety of other things I'm just saying being realistic we're never going to make everybody happy whatever we do agree that's kind of my point but we don't need a parking lot we need parking management yeah and
this was an aspect of that parking management among other things so given I'm getting a sense of what's going on here I totally get it let's have a motion we're going to have two motions because you can only yeah I'm going to leave vot on one I'm going to leave on the discussion and voting on the second okay so let's do a motion move to direct the town manager again to collect parking fees pursuant to article 5.19 of
the traffic and parking regulation in the upper Haven Street Municipal parking lot from X tox which means so it'll be the opposite of that from what you're voting on tonight so you did before is you you voted to have me refrain from collecting parking fre fees um from a from a date certain to a date certain so that's probably the same vote you would have tonight yeah um I I changed it both
I had it both ways because it wasn't sure which way you were so you want me to move to refrain the town manager yes is that and then if if that's the from today 24 to definitely definitely yeah definitely is fine not GNA put of dat on it it can you read it again please yep what was the word again Matt move to
move to director manager to refrain from collecting parking fees pursu to article 5.19 uh move to direct the town manager to refrain collecting parking fees pursuant to article 5.9 of the traffic and parking regulations in the upper Haven Street Municipal parking lot from uh February 4th let me just say need a start date though from February 4 4th 2025 uh to
indefinitely friendly on that are we good on that I said it okay so we're that motion says that we're refraining from conducting isn't that not collecting right yes right but we would be when we ticket people this is the kosk from the kiosk it's TI specific TI to the article yeah thank you sorry you seconded yes I second okay any further discussion yep y I'm just um I'm going to vote against
this and I just would like it reflected in the minutes I'm voting against this because I will not disregard the will of town meeting the um recommendation of the park committee and the recommendation of the Deputy l j f okay thanks any other discussion all right uh all those in favor can guys raise the hands three all those opposed two thank
you all right so move on to this one okay so I'm using the same language the same correct so on that language I think we have um to correct it I would just change it to reframe got it all right do we okay sorry do we want any further discussion on uh the lower hav lower Haven lot so there's an awkward spot what happens if you have a
Ty vot fails it fails fails to pass then more so it just stays the way we are yeah right staying the way we are is there's a is there a date certain on the the stop date there probably was I think there was I think there was I think it was actually I don't remember what it was but probably February or March yeah there was there was a a window well we so if it's either amend
it or vote it again and our next well if it's a split vote it stays the way it is now but we could through the date yeah through the date through the date right and then we can revote I it expires it expires but that that would also be potentially a 2 two vote too as well yep well if they if they're gone I mean how why would be if we vote now 22 they stay shut down
until whatever that date is like not far from yeah yeah not far from here so we get beyond that date Chris can't vote and then what are we voting on I guess do we need I don't think we need to vote I think the chios will start back up and the and if if there were a split Vote or it failed by majority vote oh well so we get a compromise one lot gets shut down and the other one stays
meter okay that works I can live at that I I have to look into it I think we can look into that but that might that that's might be where it is okay so we'll take to the task hand move to direct the town manager to refrain from collecting parking fees pursuing to article 5.19 of the tracking and parking regulations in the Brandy Court Street Municipal lot from February 4th
2025 indefinitely second second any discussion seeing none all those in favor shocking all those opposed shocking all right two two kayln all right more fun okay what's the next agenda item uh it's only it's only it's only 11 all
right yeah so this um I I spoke to Mark to get more clarity on this because it was a little foggy when he mentioned it for future agendas so the clarification is thank you the clarification is and Mark will correct me if I'm wrong is that Mark has a conflict a a new Conflict for when they regularly meet it's not because he's not reupping or anything like that so that's
the conflict so yeah so I have that correct so the discussion would be not much of a discussion but who would want to do be the liaison so we have two liaison I'm the second one we do have two so right right so we can we can ask for another one yeah or we can leave it and do nothing and just leave no vote right yeah so I guess I would ask the board other than Karen if anyone else has the band with to do that simply yes
or no would be nice I cannot at this time okay I'd like to but I cannot at this time gotta this would be till the next term till we reor again and when of meetings Monday nights 6 o' every Monday every two weeks it's roughly every two weeks right now I would say it depends on kind of what what key activi is going on but typically it's going to be once a month right now I'd say it's more frequent you talking about COA meetings yeah yeah second uh second Monday of each month oh
is the formal however the reality is been meeting quite a bit more than that at the moment because of the project and the activities going on but the regular will be second Monday yeah I just I I I'm unable to do classroom and can't get no worries no worries and are they on RCV all yes
63 um then I'll be fine to do with care okay so let's have a motion please move to a point Chris Haley is Council of Aging leis second second oh there favor 5 Z thank you we're almost done an hour behind um future agendas so I've laid out um I've been at the last meeting
with Matt and Jane I kind of laid out what we discussed on the 21st and um it's all in there in upcoming meetings so if anyone has any other future agenda items I think we can take parking kiosk discussion vote off would be e yeah thank you Captain lus thank you I'm just that's because I'm
proactive all right thank you Melissa for that wonderful recommendation anyone else thank I'm going far enough away for the backand I have one quick one oh sure for for the 18 specifically or just a future just in general is the double ticketing regardless of the situation should still happen anyway why is that a future agenda because we have to vote on it do we no I think so double ticketing yes I
don't I think it's policy I check on it to make sure I don't think it I thought sound but it's we still have to take a pulse of the board for you to go ahead and say to do it even though it seems as if no he can look into it and when I meet with him he'll give me he'll give me an answer yeah yeah thank you not an agenda item then then well not not yet not yet but I don't think so I don't think so anyone else one so one comment on closing the
warrant so I talked to IA so you have it as closing the warrant on the 18th it has to be definitely closed by the 4th she said we may want to discuss the warrant I could preview it with you but keep it open until the 4th because others could put things on the warrant either committees or petitions so rather them closing it then having to reopen it she suggests just you know that's what that's what we've done in the past so I like that so so I think that's what we'll do so we'll change that to discuss
right and then close it on the fourth and close it on the fourth yeah all right which is already on there okay good that reminded me of one other one all right Goode a real one a real one yeah um IFA sent me the executive session minutes from the contract negotiations regarding mat so she gave me the minutes for those and we will have to vote on those and whether or not to do things with them Etc okay there's no hurry she said at the next meeting which would have been
this one okay so for that next one it's a you know we just have to approve the minutes yeah kitlin so can you add that for the 18th please approve executive executive session minutes for blah Matt sure thank you anyone else last call yeah um I need your help Jane and Matt to accommodate schools
desire um to get their process moving as quickly as possible there's a deadline by which the select board would need to propose a warrant date excuse me propose an election speci elction right what is that date should just keep that in mind we have that I don't know they are on track they on track yeah no they're on track I absolutely that that means the uh the timing of a vote is an important thing right for us for us to exactly
right so I would say April 1st is when you would call the election for the special election because you have to do it by April 8th and there's no meeting between then so just put that on your April 1st yeah I already had Caitlyn add it to the to the look ahead but we'll go over with Carlo as well so so April 1st would be set election day yeah set the El for the special special special yeah good job okay and I see discussion here of two
specials is it two specials or is it one special one it's just one special I don't know what we were saying on that maybe at that one special election yeah one special election yeah it says in the here two it says two Logistics of two election but it's really just one discuss it next one one election two questions right right right yeah I not see that um under February 18th second last discussion on Logics Logistics probably process for
holding two special elections yeah we're not doing that on the 18th no so Logistics and process oh well that is going to be here to talk about in person voting yeah yeah okay gotcha April 1 okay noted anyone else last call last call last call all right on to minutes sure Ione s the changes to
Caitlyn didn't but I have one did not receive any in advance 2 six minutes anyone oh you got Mark do you
have on on the 121 minutes um on page two paragraph under the future the Pleasant Street Center building 12 121 121 122 January 22 it says 121 sorry the title is 121 it was 22 sorry the title of the dock is 121 but it's 122 on the Gen 22 minutes yeah uh page two future of the Pleasant Street Center building last sentence yeah yeah I would I think
that it's more accurate to say some board members mention the need for the building to generate Revenue if they're going to be running a new larger Senior Center elsewhere okay easy peasy anyone else either one just looking I have a comment so on the January 7th minutes I don't know who brought up $100,000 donation made to the trails committee does anyone was it you did you mention specifically the Diane
Avery wagle and Bob wagel by name because I think it should be in there if if they if you did I think I'm fine with that change I think it should it's $100,000 was there a name given that night though I don't think so I don't think so that's fine I think it's good to acknowledge that y I think that's fine right yeah okay it wasn't made anonymously no no no it was a press release mark it wasn't but that but that
night it was it was just mentioned of the so Kaitlyn the spelling of the names would be on the press release from uh 1220 24 if you needed but it's okay Diane Avery wgel and Bob weel I hope that's how you say their last name but thank you again to them your meeting was January 21st it says 22nd but it was the 21st oh yeah you're right yeah 21st is a Tuesday and the 28th
yeah yeah Caitlyn I think yeah yeah first Mark was actually right for once thanks joh going up with the bang it's good to be right not hold them back yeah 21st minutes so when we do the motion Sor typing them probably on the 20 second that's okay all right um so we got that okay thank you anyone
else no good Karen none no no they're very summary and abbreviated they're awesome all right they're very easy to read and very easy to approve I love it okay let's go move to approve the meeting minutes from January 7 2025 as amended second second any discussion see none all those in favor 5 Z and the motion is correct so move to approve the meeting minutes from January
21st 2025 is amended second second thank you any discussion seeing none all those in favor 5 Z motion motion to adour Second all those in favor 5 11113 all right good job guys everybody was
yeah
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