Recording in progress. I'm used to saying good evening everybody, but good day everybody and welcome to the Yarmouth Select Board meeting of May 20th, 2026. If you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the
republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. We are doing a kind of a special meeting today and with that we are trying to limit it
because it's during our work day, so we're not having any public comment during this. Our 11:00 a.m. item is a deed acceptance vote for land acquisition and approval of conservation restriction for map 142 parcel I'm not sure what parcel. 17 Nottingham
Drive, Yarmouth Port. And I see Brittany here if you'd like to give a brief discussion of Sure. So, in special town meeting in the fall, the the town approved acquisition of this parcel of land directly adjacent to
Taylor Bray Farm. It's about 3.14 acres. And with we're moving forward in the process and so we have two votes tonight. We just need a motion to accept You have a written motion outlined from council to
to purchase the property and then also to grant and approve the conservation restriction that's required on the property to be eligible for our our land grant from the mass division of conservation services. You said there's two motions, Brittany?
Yeah, there's one motion. The town of Yarmouth Select Board certificate certificate of vote. And the second one would just be to grant and approve the conservation restriction. That one's not outlined. >> There's only There's only one motion here. But, um Do you have a copy of
>> I hereby move that the select board purchase approximately 3.14 acres off Nottingham Drive and Hockanum Road shown as lot 99 on plan prepared by Merrill Engineers and land land surveyors for the sum of 600,000 pursuant
to Article 11 of the November 17, 2025 annual town meeting and to further authorize the chair, Tracy Post, to execute and enter into any and all documents necessary to effectuate the acquisition of said property.
I second that motion. Is there any discussion on the motion? All's in favor? I. >> I. Any opposed? Um I don't I don't have the second one, Brittany. I'm sorry. Do you have the second one, Brittany? Yeah, so it's just the Okay. Grant and approve So, on a
That's not a motion, though. That's what they that that's This is the undersigned being the majority of the Conservation Commission of the Town of Yarmouth has to sign. >> [laughter] >> Okay. All right, perfect. All right. We, the undersigned, being the majority
of the select board of the Town of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, hereby certify that the public meeting duly held on May 20th, 2026, the select board voted to approve in the public interest and grant and approve
the foregoing conservation restriction to the Trustees of the Yarmouth Conservation Trust pursuant to Section 32, chapter 184, section 12 of chapter 44B of the Mass General Laws and pursuant to the town of Yarmouth Town Meeting vote attached herein
as exhibit C and hereby approve in the public interest and grant the foregoing conservation restriction. I'll second that motion. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, um everybody please make sure that they sign the original
document in the red folder here for Britney. Is there anything else you need from us, Britney? Thank you very much for your work on that. to accept a deed for the property. Yeah, that was the first motion. >> That was the first thing there. Okay, good. Thank you, Britney. Thank you. So, there
should be two documents in there for you to sign and I'll stick around. Thank you. Thank you. >> Also, for the public record, to thank the Board of Selectmen for entertaining this item on a special meeting and the reason for the special meeting is that um this action
is contingent upon the town receiving a $347,000 land grant, which we successfully had and now um if we close prior to the end of the fiscal year, um we're able to get that grant and with all of the work that we had to do with the land court, for a
while we thought everything hung in the balance and I really want to um recognize and and thank Britney D'Rienzo, our conservation administrator, for all of her her work to just keep this hammer down on this project and bring it to the end. So, very nice
job. Thank you, Britney. Thank you. Excellent. We'll have to get Liz to sign this at a later time. Should be signed by everybody else. Okay, our next item is a review of a special town meeting warrant. Um
we have it here in the packet. I assume that the Article 1 that is here is exactly as the petition was submitted. Yes. Okay. I see Mary coming to the Hi Mary, are you tired, Mary? I'm I'm here. Have
you gone to bed yet? I've had my coffee. It might not have sunken yet. Well, we appreciate it. We appreciate all you do. I know that was a Can you give us a percentage of people was it 11? I haven't done the math on it yet. We had but it was 57 3757 out of 23,052
registered voters. Oh. It normally calculates disappointing. normally calculates on my on my phone and >> I didn't see it. All right. Okay, so if you want to just I want to say we're probably close to about 20. Yeah, which we haven't had in a long
time in a local election. >> what I'm saying. We were we were busy for us for a local election yesterday. It was a it was a steady turnout. >> 16.29% We were yeah, we were about at 14 and by about Well, it's better than it was 5:00.
Yeah. Great. You know, again locals, so and we without in-person early voting and without you know, without vote by mail that was driven by state applications that come in the mail. Were there any glitches at the since we're I had
I just had to with one of the precincts I had to correct the numbers on my spreadsheet last night. But no glitches other than >> everything went relatively smoothly even with >> smoothly, yeah. the larger than normal >> No. Yeah. Yeah, no no glitches, no issues really.
Um pretty steady all day yesterday. You know, a couple of couple of poll pads and >> your volunteers. Everybody did a great job. Thank you to everyone that worked the polls. And thank you to everybody that supported us throughout it, all of our colleagues from administration to you folks all the way
down the line. We We need all the assist to make it happen and make it work, so. All right. At the Station Avenue um stickers were a really nice touch. So, we did uh we had offered that to the third grade classes at both Station Avenue and M.E.
Small. Station Avenue took took us up on it. Uh so, we printed one winner from each classroom. It's wonderful. >> And we did a mock election with them actually um the first week in May. And our our election uh company was actually uh
super kind and donated the programming of a tabulator and donated the uh printing of the ballots. So, the mock election didn't cost us anything. So, we had um a mock election with them the morning of the 5th.
They each came in. They checked in just like uh our regular voters would um on a paper list. They received a ballot. They voted a ballot. They put the ballot through a a tabulator and we printed a results tape for them at the end of the election and uh
and they got to get some stickers and a little bit of swag. So, Wow. uh It was uh it was a it was a fun a fun morning with them. I like it. You should do that more. I love civic engagement. >> We're hop- We're hoping it will be an annual event. It'd be awesome. Okay, so our agenda item is um special
town meeting warrant review. Is there anything that we need to know? We have called the meeting uh for June 24th, 2026 6:00 p.m. at D-Y Intermediate School uh Station Avenue, South Yarmouth. We had a deadline of Friday
for other articles. Were there any any other Nothing that came in in my office. Okay. And we were open until 5:00. Okay, so what what is it that you need from us? We need to close the warrant. Move to post >> Approve and execute. Approve and execute the warrant. Is there an Is there a motion?
>> I move to approve and execute the warrant. Second. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Um and then um, as far as that goes, we need to
make a recommendation for the warrant. I move that we not recommend the article. Yeah, and I would recommend that we support indefinite postponement. Can we do that from here? We can do that now. Yes, and um, you can make the motion at at town meeting as well.
So, that will be our motion? That should be our motion, Madam Chair. >> Not recommend and to move to indefinite postponement. Is there a second to that? Second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, who would like to Who would like to um,
make that motion? I nominate the chair. I think that's a good idea. Any discussion on that? All those in favor? >> Aye. All right. Sign in a motion, article, execution. Anything else you need from us, Mary? Nothing else I need. We'll We will get the signed copy and we'll get
it posted in and advertised in accordance with the bylaws and state law, so. Okay, wonderful. And we have the timing is um, and I know that, you know, as far as yesterday's vote, um, so for the public to understand when
and I know the town did a really good job before of kind of outlining it for people, uh, since it changed since our last town meeting, the petition came in. Once the petition comes in and certified, from my understanding from Mary, is it's no longer the petitioners. It belongs to the people. So, a lot of
people are saying, "Why can't they uh, take the petition back or not not have the town meeting?" Once it's certified, we um, have to move forward with the town meeting. >> You're correct. And um, it still holds true that it has to pass both the town meeting and the ballot, and it failed at
the ballot yesterday. So, um, just so that the public understands moving forward, this vote is um, mechanical um, to to to uphold our part of the law. Right. >> And uh, at the end of the day, unfortunately, it's um
it's not really meaningful. I mean, it would be meaningful if people don't want to indefinitely postpone have a discussion, but it's it's still didn't pass at the ballot. So, um and I know there are people here from the petition um that wanted to speak. We didn't have a
public portion on our meeting for today because, you know, we're in the middle of the work day and we all have to get back to work, but I want to thank them for for um their civic involvement. And um it's unfortunate. It's really hard as I said to them before for for me
personally, I know I was in the minority of the board that didn't support the article, but it's still um is something that is makes you feel bad because a lot of people put their heart and soul and spent a lot of time to get it to that point. So, um I just want to thank
everybody from, you know, the people on the committee, the library people, um the state for that matter for um for accepting us into the program. Uh it's it's unfortunate that the way that it it ended up, but it is what it is and we take our direction from
both town meeting and the election. So, um that's just my two cents. I don't know if anybody else has anything they want to add on that. Nothing? All right. >> I just echo what you say, Madam Chair. Yeah. And a lot of work has been spent. I feel bad for the folks. We all we all
know we need to improve the libraries. We know that and uh this is just the path that uh was laid out for us. Uh we don't need to go in all the details, but the reality is here we are. And at some point we'll have discussions about where we go from here, but now's
not that time. But, I think for the folks that worked on this, again, I would agree with you. A lot of work, a lot of time in uh it's very much appreciated. And I and I also want to thank the voters. The voters that showed up at town meeting and the voters that voted at the polls yesterday. And again,
that's that's who we work for and um as Mark said, we will have further discussions in the future. But here we are. Hopefully um Does that mean we only work for the percentage of them that actually showed up and voted? That's the
>> It's the way democracy works. Yep. Those who show up and participate are the ones that get to decide. That's right. So And again, it was a it was a larger turnout than our normal town election turnout. >> That's all. Um you know It happens. It was nice to see It was
nice to have a busier election yesterday, even if it wasn't, you know uh the turnout of a presidential. Right? No, I always I always find that backwards. I think you have more of a say in a local, so you'd think they'd have a higher percentage than something that's so far away. But
I'm uh I'm happy that it was an improved percentage from before, but we have a a long way to go. And um I think although you know, 16% I think a good uh sample of the town, so you know they spoke.
And we move forward. And we're appreciative for everybody. Anybody else have anything else? Take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor? I. >> I. Okay, great. Thank you. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you.