January 8, 2026 – 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee – Video & Transcript

January 8, 2026 - 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee

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Okay. Good evening, everybody. It's 6.30 p.m. on Thursday, January 8, 2026. We're called to order the meeting of the 212 Constituate Road Advisory Committee. This meeting is being recorded. People can watch online. They also can watch at a later date on WACAM. We'll invite people to give public comment if they like in a moment. Tonight's meeting is being attended online by Jean Milburn, Bill Whitney, Stephanie Lynch, Bill Adams, John Thomas, and myself, Tom Fay. I think I heard Brian Bosch's voice, but maybe not. But I suspect Brian will. There he is. Hi, Brian. How are you? So the gang's all here. Our agenda this evening will include discussion with Bill O'Hearn and Rita Gardner, who are associated with NOMARC, and their projects and their experience with housing adults with disabilities. We have no minutes to review tonight. We'll continue our discussion regarding the proposed report to the Select Board, and then we'll adjourn. So, at this time, I invite anyone who would like to give public comments to indicate with a hand raise. Seeing no one, we'll close the public comment and move on to Item 3 of the agenda. And welcome, Rita Gardner and Bill O'Hearn from NOMARC. Bill, you and I have communicated. I think you have a sense as to what our committee is exploring. The town meeting has authorized the Select Board in Weyland to develop four acres of land in Weyland for at least in part to house individuals with adults with disabilities. And we've been meeting since approximately August of this year, and we're working on a report to be submitted to the Select Board no later than February 15th that provides recommendations to them on best use of the land in this area. So, I know you're involved in a project north of the city, and I turn the floor over to you, and feel free to tell us about you and your background and the project that's ongoing or any other projects you like. You want me to take it away? Yeah. All right. I've done this. It's been a few times, yeah. So, John Thomas feels very familiar. Hey, Rita. How are you? Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Good to see you. So, first of all, my name is Rita Gardner, I'm the President and CEO of Melmark. We have programs in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Massachusetts for services with individuals with profound disabilities, primarily high-acuity autism. But across the states, we serve all the way up through the lifespan in Pennsylvania into their 80s. And our youngest is early intervention in the Carolinas. We just do school services. So, Bill's been with us now 20, almost 22 years. I've been with Melmark, 29 years, developing residential programs since 1982. So, I've been around the block a few times, and that's why I have white hair, because I do residential programs. But what we're doing right now in Massachusetts is a community, an intentional community. And, Thomas, I'm just going to ask a question about your plans, because it will kind of guide some of the policy stuff that I talk about. In your program that you're looking at developing or the land you're looking at developing, will the individuals receive DDS funding? Well, based on what we've heard, I think it's likely. I invite any others to chime in, but I think it's likely. Yeah, okay. Then it impacts what you can and cannot do in terms of your federal CMS rules around, Center for Medicaid rules around congregate care. So, the project we're doing right now, we run very large numbers of individuals with disabilities residential programs. We serve almost, I think, 270 individuals in residential programs across the states, and serve almost 1,000 individuals every day. But the project in Tewksbury is specifically for some of our highest acuity individuals who have more complex needs, both medical and behavioral. And so, what we are doing there is looking at basically replicating what are called CCRCs, which are continuing care communities, retirement communities, that really look at how to have someone age with the most optimal health through the lifespan. And so, we will actually have the residential programs. They're a day program, but also we'll have a healthcare suite in it that does medical services, so it can provide off-site medical care, as well as vocational opportunities, both a greenhouse as well as a retail coffee shop. And so, the four homes are each five-bedroom home, so everybody will have their own individual bedroom. A number of things in the homes are being planned for aging in place so that we need a lift later in the ceiling that that's something that's built into the home ahead of time. So, we're also doing some long-term aging. Most of the individuals in these projects will be in probably their late 20s, early 30s. And so, when we build homes, there's some special stuff Bill can walk through the steps in terms of walls and those kind of things. But we've learned over the years of what kind of capacity our homes take in terms of kind of physical abuse of a home because our guys are pretty active and it's mostly males. So, the project really looks at keeping individuals in the community. There's a bus stop right in front of the property. So, the guys, anybody that's staff would take the bus or the guys can take the bus. It's immediately associated with retail, a pharmacy, church. I mean, it's a hospital. Hospital. But it's important to note that we had an approval for this concept. Yeah. It's not a typically acceptable. No, it's a pretty difficult process to get accepted in Massachusetts because of the CMS ruling. CMS at the federal level does not say you can't have co-located homes. But the interpretation in most states is that you can't, but that's not what the regulations say. And so, it does require you to get what's called heightened scrutiny review. And that review has to basically prove that you're not recreating institutions. And so, what we've been trying to, particularly for this population, because we serve a very high behavioral population, is what we are trying to show is, in some ways, having a community home on a cul-de-sac in the community, in some ways is more isolating. Because if someone's having a difficult day, we can't go out of the house. Nobody can. Like, we have to have all the staff there because of the behavioral issues. So, by co-location, we're hoping that we could have some sharing of staff or someone who might be having a difficult day or a difficult medical event that we can actually kind of share staffing. As well as proximity to the retail and the other things that you're saying, where in a cul-de-sac, you need to be driven, you know, to those types of things by staff. And in this particular case, they can just get up and walk to those entities. Yeah. So, you're kind of bringing also the community in because we are going to have a coffee shop that is open to the public. So, you're hoping that individuals will come into our community and support that, as well as the greenhouse and landscaping stuff that we'll be doing. So, the idea is it's pretty traditional in terms of running each group home as a DDS group home. The difference is really the co-location as well as the healthcare services. So, we have nurse practitioners on site as well as medical personnel that come into the programs. And so, they would be available in those kind of situations as well as we have 24-hour on-call nursing. And so, we were successful pitching this to DDS, I think, two-fold. One, our own reputation running programs. But two, you know, the concept itself was appealing in the sense that what he was just saying in terms of proximity to services, walking. We convinced them that it was more integrative than probably perhaps their traditional thinking of the cul-de-sac community. Yeah, and the other part of it is we serve such a high-acuity population historically in Massachusetts many years, like in the 1980s. There's probably 20 to 25 agencies that serve a very high-acuity population. Those numbers have gone down dramatically. There's probably five providers now that I would tell you that serve very high-acuity individuals. And so, as those providers have kind of declined, I think the state wants to look at models that will get people back into the higher-acuity populations. But they can't get providers to serve the very, very difficult populations. What are you guys looking to put on the property? Just homes? Well, that seems to be where the discussion's going. Yeah. Likely two homes. But we're in the middle of discussing that very topic. Yeah. And is it a remote piece of property? Is it abutting anything? It's on a fairly busy street, 27, two-lane road, State Road. It's four acres set up on a slight incline. But it's a suburban setting. And is it zoned as something in particular? It's zoned residential. I mean, I think they've only had a couple of these that they're doing. I think it's where the second one, being very close to services and in the community, like really in the community made a big difference because it is right accessible. So that will be a discussion for DDS on whether or not they're definitely being more flexible because they really are struggling with, one, people doing adult services at all in Massachusetts because of the funding. But secondarily, if you also add the high acuity in terms of the population, it's been a very difficult process. There's many children who are turning 22 who are not finding or literally not getting adult services because there's no providers to do the services. I think the proximity is helpful for our pitch. But the other place that you were referring to that was approved does not have proximity to services. I think that was more of a political thing. Yeah, that was. We were told that was political. Not that we know anything about that. So you said you had an aerial view. Yeah. Do you want to share yours? If you look, if you could make me co-host, I can see if I can get it to run. I think I permitted people to share screen, so it should work. Okay. Can you see it? Not yet. You have to share again. Then go back. Oh, yeah. There it is. Sorry. Yeah. There you go. It looks good. Oh, it's not pixelated for you. It was looking good. And then it went all pixelated. Yeah. Okay. There's a last one. Okay. Do you want to watch your office and get the other one? So while we're watching, this is in which town again? Toogsbury. Toogsbury. Right on the border of Andover and Toogsbury. About a mile and a half down the road from where our Andover day school is. And how many acres? It's about three and a half. And on that three and a half, we fit four homes and a, let's say a 20,000 square foot commercial building, which we transitioned into an adult day program, the coffee shop, and some apartments for staff. Yeah. And how many residents who live there? Five in each home. Yeah. 20. And the adult day can handle about 50 adults. I'm sorry. Say that again? The adult day is 50? Yeah. That'll handle about 50 adults. Yeah. And those individuals came in from area towns? It's split. Yeah. So obviously the 20 in the homes, the budding homes will come over and then another 30, right, will come from, you know, approximate towns. Tom, we'll also send a link that will play clearer for you guys and you can share it with folks. Okay. So. Yeah. And the date program for many individuals, some of the individuals come in that's kind of like a hub for them and then they go back out to jobs. So it depends. Some there full time, but some are only there at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. So. Will the slides help them since this is so quick? I don't know. No, I don't think it's good. So. We're getting good. We're getting good pictures intermittently. It is. Oh, that's good. That's good. Yeah. So. Yeah. Would it be fair to characterize it as a campus? I mean, you could, you could definitely call it a campus, but I would say that it's Don't use that word. Don't ever. You're pitching yours. Don't ever use that word. Cause you'll get killed. Um, it's, you know, what we're calling it is an intentional plan community. Um, we also backup, which you can't see here, but you can definitely see on the, um, on our, well, maybe that's better. Um, is it, you can see it. There's a. That's better. Back up to like condos everywhere, like behind us as townhouses everywhere. So it's a very kind of dense community anyways, in terms of, um, the, the area, it's a pretty dense community. And so, um, I think, you know, the, the fact that we have multiple houses there to kind of, I said, you know, we're already in a dense community. You can't like make it like, you know, the neighbors are already there who are all we have 200 townhouses behind us. So. Tell us about the process with the town to spray. Right. So, you know, we just had to go in front of the planning committee, present the concept. Um, you know, they opened it up. We probably did, uh, two, two or three meetings with them and they were very supportive. Uh, and, uh, you know, they, uh, they pretty much stamped it without too many questions. Yeah. The, actually the planning committee was better than some of the neighbors. Some of the neighbors in the initial meeting were problematic, but we also, um, we did a town, we did, uh, um, here in our auditorium, we did, um, uh, a public session with folks and shut that sucker right down. Yeah. So we invited them all in and let them answer questions and sort of ease their minds a little bit. Some of them were some of the neighbors were a little concerned about what was happening. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Um, and they definitely thought they got a vote on whether or not we could go there. I'm like, no. So. Right. And so the zoning aspect was an important aspect for us because we were putting homes on the commercial plot, but we are able to utilize a tool called the Dover amendment. If you're not familiar, you were able to education, religious institutions to do such things. And once the planning board heard that, it was really, you know, just smooth from there on. Yeah. It also helped us when we explained that to the neighbors, um, uh, you know, thank you, John, um, to the neighbors in terms of your, like, this is the law. Like you're, you're, you're, you're not going to be able to, to do that. So then it was more, we got better questions to be honest than comments of what, that we shouldn't be there. So. John, did you want to bring up the, um, the link? Is it a better, uh, better view? I invite you to do that if you want to. You're, you're, you're muted, but, uh, you should be able to share your screen if you wanted to. And if you want, I can try to do that. So at the outset, Rita, you, you asked us about whether we're planning a DDS community. So to me, that has different definitions. But, um, in asking that question, were you basically asking us whether we anticipated that the residents who would be, uh, who lived. Yeah. DDS funded. Would be. Yeah. Would be placed there. If you will, by DDS, or they would control who would live there. Is that, that way you were. No, it's more the funding. So if they're going to be funded, if their staffing and those resources to support them is, uh, done by DDS, then you have to meet all the DDS requirements. So you would want to bring DDS into this conversation much earlier than later. Do you know what I mean? So if you think that you're going to, you know, they certainly, um, they like to make referrals and we're different because we're a provider. So, you know, we have folks that they're like, oh, we want so-and-so here. And we're like, well, we're actually not, we're moving our current facilities into this property. So we kind of had some, you know, uh, quid pro quo and a couple of guys they want us to take. What it really is, is that if you're receiving funding, then, uh, the development of the actual physical plan facility has to meet all the regulatory requirements. Um, the location has to meet their approval through their licensing process. Um, we found initially, I didn't think it was going to go through when the licenses came out, they were very difficult to us, but the regional and I went to the commissioner and assistant commissioner, and we have an exceptional relationship with the state, um, for provision of services. So I think that also helped move it. Do you know what I mean? Because we were the provider who was asking. Tell us about the process of placing residents there. For example, did you have a lottery? Did you limit it? No, we, we, we knew we currently have seven homes, adult homes. Um, and so what we looked at is of the individuals we have, we had to do a cohorting and made the decision to serve most of our higher acuity individuals at that location. And then, um, DDS was, gives us pretty full reign of how we do our services because of who we serve. Um, and then we have to then tell the families who was moving on the campus and who was not. Right. So we moved existing houses over there. And I think we took a couple of new, uh, referrals from, you know, they, they actually asked us to keep all the houses that we are currently vacated and create new homes. Uh, it's like, no, not right now. And not four houses. Cause there's a staffing crisis in adult services. So I said, if this process works and this alleviates some of our vacancies and staffing, then we would consider expanding. But we did, uh, through great pressure, take one more. We will keep one house. But the referral process is typically collaborative. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Part of it is we also have schools, uh, Tom. So our schools are graduating children. And if a child, a child is coming out of Melmark, it, uh, Melmark's residential program, it would be very hard for them to get a placement with another provider. Cause they're typically very high acuity. And did you give any preference to individuals who live in Tewsbury or near Tewsbury? Nope. Is that because it's a, it's a DDS facility? No, because the, the project wasn't around geographic location. The project is really around the acuity of care, the acuity of that population. And so it was really designed to try to alleviate some of the issues in serving that population. Do you know what I mean? So, um, certainly like we have a bunch of them are from Andover. So, you know, the families are from Andover. Um, and funny enough, a couple of Andover families don't want their kid moved. They want them to stay at the house they're at. So that was fine too. And the town of Tewsbury wasn't like necessarily interested in, you know, there was no discussion of them sending their, you know, their residents that are at needs there. I mean, we do serve quite a few Tewsbury folks already. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it wasn't part of the equation. Yeah. And if we had to do it again and we were doing it from scratch and it wasn't current individuals, uh, we probably would have done a, we will probably would have done a lottery. Like if we would have, the problem is we have such a wait list. It's, it would be very difficult. So for adult services. So you were looking when you house individuals, um, you were looking more at the extent of their disability and the nature of the disability? We look at the clinical perspective and the nature of their disability and what they might need and who's, you know, we have some very high risk individuals who have, uh, very difficult seizures. Or we have a couple of individuals with degenerative, neurodegenerative diseases, who will have mentioned in fully accessible homes. And we've learned a lot about aging because in our Pennsylvania campus, we have many individuals who are in their seventies and eighties. And so we really wanted to get ahead of that. So people could age in place and really have a quality of life through the lifespan and not have to move them. Um, and our Pennsylvania programs, you know, we have facilities that are not accessible and we've had to move people at the end of life. And it's just really difficult, um, because we want to be able to serve people. So they're all those considered. So it's a lot. Yes. It's profile, age, everything, medical needs, gender. Obviously we try to keep female homes and we try to keep people together who like each other. You know, sometimes with the high acuity population, behaviors can conflict and you find out over time that these two don't like each other and both their behaviors go up. And so we really try to, you know, make sure. So you use the term highest acuity. Could you further define that? Children, young adults or adults with self-injury that could risk, um, you know, blindness from self-injury, um, uh, or set or significant tissue damage to the body. Um, it could aggressive behavior towards themselves, towards their others or property destruction, um, at rates that are very, very high. Most of our guys, the behavior stays down now when we got them. We typically get kids residentially around 12 to 14 years old. They've failed, failed. I call it failing up to no mark. They've failed four or five other providers often. So if you get to us, it is not because you've had great success because you've failed up to us. I think John knows kind of, I, comparatively, I would say we serve individuals in the range as similar to Judge Rotenberg that uses electric shock. So we serve a very high acuity population. And DDS funds various acuities at different levels of ratios of staff, right? So it's not all like that. No, and what happens for us if the children go to another provider sometimes as they turn 22, um, many of them fail. And so then the state is like trying to get them back to us. And so we have significant issues where, you know, individuals who self-injury has been under control for seven or eight years with us. Communication is good. You know, all really enjoying their lives. They go to another provider and then it falls apart. And then they end up at Tewsbury State Hospital or up at Hogan Regional in locked settings. And we, you know, they want us to reopen more homes to take them back. And so that has been some of the negotiations, which make it very hard for us because they were like, at the time, like, no, no, no, we have a placement for this individual. We don't want you to open another house. And then, you know, they're circling back to us 18 months later, two years later saying, oh, we were only kidding. Can you take them now? So how would DDS see their situation? If I'm hearing you correct, Tom, and saying you would like to have these homes and you would like to have the opportunity to populate them with some of your town residents. How would DDS work with them on that? They'd say you've got to get a provider to do it. You have to get a provider to run it. So I'm going to turn over to other people, but does your company primarily focus on individuals with the highest acuity issues or that just happens to be just this site? Well, I think what happened, no. In the beginning, we had a pretty good bell curve of individuals we served. I think the problem is, is that we took some very difficult individuals and we still serve a bell curve. I have kids who, we have students who are going to graduate with a degree, but that's not many, that's not many of our kids. But what happens is when you're really good with this population, you tend to get this population. It is a very hard population to place. It is a very hard population to serve. And so, and as DDS says, when a student goes to you, no one, they, we never hear from the parents again. They're so happy. So they like, you know, it's the issue of you get success, breed success. I would love to have a more bell curve of the individuals we serve sometimes, but we're very, very, very good at the population we serve. And the kids who are much milder do fabulous with us. You know, they do amazing. But it's, unfortunately, there's less and less providers who serve the higher populations and complex care. And so, and it's, there's reliability to it. This, you know, we have a lot of turnover, you turn over staff sometimes because you can burn out with this population. And so, and you said kids, but it's the same with the adults. Like we have adults that are served at one to three ratio with staff and adults that are served at one to one. So there was a, there is a bit of a range. Yeah. And we may have an adult who's six foot five and 220 pounds. When he has an incident, it requires five staff period, you know? And so one of the things is the safety. I would say that this generation of staff and tell my staff, I said this, but this generation of staff, since there was, early on when we were deinstitutionalized in the institutions, there was a real mission field to that work of creating an opportunity for individuals to live in the community and really making a difference. And it was part mission, you know, a lot of people are like very mission driven, but there is a much more fragileness to staff around the behaviors that has been a generational change. And so, you know, it's hard work, really hard work. And so, and very physical work at times. And, and you can, you can get her, you know. Is there any interaction with the community or the residents in the town? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. So we're hoping that the neighbors are excited about the coffee shop and coming over and I'm hoping we'll get to know our neighbors. And we have some very, very good neighbors in all of our locations. And we have one very bad neighbor. So out of all the locations, but the most part we have a good mix. Yeah. So let me permit others to ask questions or comment to Jean Milburn. Anything? Sure. Um, so I'm wondering about your business model here, um, with so many other providers, uh, deciding to step away from, uh, being in this business sphere. Um, what, what keeps you doing this particular segment of work? Um, certainly not the behaviors. It's a success. Like we, I would tell you that I think what most staff who do this work, it's because we see such outcomes. And so, um, we are often referred the most difficult students across 14 states. We serve 14 states. Um, and we see tremendous outcomes. So the clinicians that work for us, um, we've kind of gotten to the point. I think we've set up and understand how to build facilities. We understand curriculums. We understand teaching methodologies, um, that we see tremendous outcomes that sometimes I don't think. You could even imagine. And so that really motivates people to, to work, you know, to do that kind of work. I mean, it's no different than being maybe a surgeon or somebody who does something that really is life changing for an individual. It's pretty motivating to do it as a business model. Um, uh, we're pretty economically protected because this is a population that you can't stop serving. Yeah. And the, and the mix is important. Like we have, like Rita said, we serve children and adults. And I think that's an important distinction. Right. And we need that balance, uh, to remain viable. Yeah. There are, when Rita says there are some organizations getting out of this business, you'll see that some of them are just getting out of the adult portion of the business. Um, that's the funding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other part of that is from a business model. We are, um, very committed to building an endowment for our organization. We're not a small organization, uh, across the state. We're about $160 million in terms of services. Um, but we've built an endowment. It's almost a hundred million. We're hoping to get it to a hundred million, if not, 160 a dollar for dollar. So that if we have a need, for example, in our facilities that would, you know, would be something DDS wouldn't pay for. We pay for it. You know, we just, we do it. You know, um, we've at times gone ahead and staff salaries where we pay more than the state reimburses us when we take it out of the endowment, because we need that quality of staff to serve this population. And that's a luxury that many providers do not have. They have not had the capacity to build an endowment. Um, and you know, we're very committed to making sure that philanthropy helps close the gaps in terms of expertise. And then, um, we're also a very research based organization. So we've published 25 to 30 peer reviewed articles every single year on quality of life outcomes and medical outcomes and you name it, we publish on it. And so we actually, from an infrastructure standpoint, are, we work on designing a system of care that's replicable in terms of clinical practice. And so we kind of tested that in the Carolinas, but I think that, uh, we've been able to see when you have standard operating procedures and clinical practice guidelines that are clear, that you train staff to perform at a level to execute, you get the best outcomes in the students and adults you serve. Okay. Um, couple of follow on questions. Uh, you know, you talked about, uh, self harm and violence and people having a bad day. And then they also go out in the community. And for those of us who don't work in this industry, this is a little hard to put together. Yeah. Explain to me how you can manage the liability of somebody who's intermittently violent. Yeah. We know our guys very, very well, Jean. Like, so we, we would know what we would call antecedent behavior. So there'd be certain times where somebody's having difficulty in the morning. We'd be like, yep, we're going to stay in today. You know, like we would be able to kind of see the development of that. Um, also a lot of this behavior very often is on demand situations where we're asking or demanding, like in a routine, like a shower routine or asking them to do something that they find difficult. And so that sometimes can create an opportunity for us to see behavior. We do a significant amount of, um, functional assessment on behaviors. So we kind of know for each of the individuals we serve, what are, what we would call precursor antecedent behaviors. And so of across our organization, we do thousands of community outings per year, and we have no incidents in the last probably 10 years that have been significant in the community at all. They might have a tantrum and we have to bring them back home, but not towards anyone else. Okay. Um, tell us a little bit about the matter of financing the extra buildings on the site, because it's my understanding that DDS doesn't want to pay for quote enrichment things on sites. Yeah. That's about right. How you made those things come together with this site? Fundraised. We're fundraising it. We're in the middle of a major campaign. Um, we did take a million from the endowment, 1 million from the endowment. And then we're going to raise about 6 million. We're at 4.5 already. So we're pretty far out of the gate. I'm sure that we'll let it and make more probably go over it. So there's a zero interest, zero recourse loan program that we took advantage of. I don't know if you've heard of CDAC, FCF loans. Yeah. We, uh, took about another three, uh, there and they give you 30 years, no payments, no interest. And then they extend it for 10 years. You really don't want the money back as long as you're continuing to operate the program. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we have pretty good fundraising capacity. I just said in the last 10 years, we've raised about $95 million as an organization. And so, yeah, very, that's actually Stephanie, as you nod, that was the one thing I had no idea if I'd be good at, and I'm quite good at it. So when I became CEO. Okay. So you are self funding out of your institution, these enhancement things. I don't know. I mean, it's going to be paid for to an extent by a DDS rate over years, but the initial sort of, you know, there's sort of the cash outlay, uh, up front, but you know, as we have rates funding all the clients that are in there. That's paying for it. There's a piece of that funding that is occupancy, but you still need to get the cash up front to build it. Yeah. Okay. With the day program that you have, how do you just assess whether or not there's a local demand for a day programming? Now we haven't talked about doing a day program. There's somebody on our site, but we might as well talk about it. For us, there's, we could open, we could double our size and still not meet the need. Who's near Whalen? Or there's tons of adults. Yeah. I mean, anybody, I will tell you that anybody would need services. There's just not enough providers. So if you'd build a day program, I'm sure you would feel it. Okay. The individuals are not, is not the issue. It's getting good providers to run them. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Of course. Bill Whitney. Well, let me thank you both for joining us this evening. My personal acquaintance with Melmark goes back approximately 50 years. I had a disabled sister who had uncontrolled epilepsy and the local school district couldn't support her. And so my family and she went to Berwyn, PA and met with the founders and on a large campus with horses and everything else. So it was, it was quite an experience. Yeah. And that campus, yes, we still have that campus, but we downsized it significantly. Yeah. So, but they were, the family that ran it were lifesavers for us. So anyway, I'm interested in kind of the permanent financing of your project, whether it's here or elsewhere, you have, I guess, the DDS support, but do you go out and get conventional financing? Do you have equity invested in acquiring property? Just if you could talk a little bit about the sort of capital and operating financing, that would be. Yeah. Yeah. We'll take traditional mortgages on the, on the four homes once they're built and we'll sell another three homes that we already have and use that equity as well as part of the sort of funding. But, you know, that's why we had to do a little bit of a bridge loan in between those things to get us over the hump with the project itself. Yeah. And the bridge loan is also while the philanthropic pledges come in because a number of them are over years. Right. And we've, we've heard that DDS has lately been willing to consider models other than a maximum of five people, two miles apart and so forth. Yet when we had a recent conversation with some regional people from DDS, they said, you know, these are our guidelines. Uh, and we gather also that they much prefer to speak to providers rather than, uh, local municipal officials. So, um, what is your sense about the, the flexibility and, and the, uh, the willingness to. Um, better off talking. It's the right person, right? If you talk to those frontline. I would stay. I would probably go right to the assistant commissioner or commissioner. Um, I think, um, and I definitely would, um, use your legislators to kind of cut through the tape. Cause if we had gone through the licensing folks, we would have, we would have, you know, and, you know, I just, I mean, I was, I mean, John knows this. I was pretty blunt. Like it's not illegal. It's not against the CMS rules. And, you know, I, we're more than willing to take you to court. So yes, nothing's changed, John. Is Kelly Wallace now assistant commissioner? No, she's not, but Sarah Peterson is there. Um, it depends on the regional person you're talking in different regions. There definitely is not, there's not great communication up and down the hierarchy. We're getting emails from the region. You get a different answer from every region. Everybody's going to give you a different answer. So you've got to get to the person who makes the decision. You know, I'm sure the local, the regional people don't have the authority, frankly, to, uh, depart from the party lines. They think they do.
I forget what she's called. What's Kelly called? Yeah. So I have to go, listen, I got your staff telling me this. Would you like just yes or no? And she's like, no, that's not right. I'm like, great. Okay. Thanks. So, but. So would you encourage us to, uh, to, to work, uh, with DDS directly? Or would we be better advised to go through a provider? I mean, I think you'll have it easier with a provider for sure. Um, even if you do a provider just to get the, the, the process started with them. Um, but I think, um, they're just not used to working with municipalities. It's just not what they do. Sure. Thank you. And even with us, you know, it, it was not, we, we worked years on it. So before we got approved, two years. Thanks. Stephanie Lynch. Oh, hi, thank you very much for coming. It's very inspiring what you're doing. Um, when you mentioned heightened scrutiny, um, and, and I'm concerned about, I guess the, um, the security, you know, of people's being, being, keeping their placements, um, especially DDS. Um, is, is that very difficult to, to navigate? Is it heightened, heightened scrutiny because just of the numbers of people living in the houses? It's just the initial, once it is at the, that the entry point of developing the project. So when it says scrutiny, what it means is, is during the licensing process, they have to make sure that the setting or facilities being used do not create, um, an institutional feel. Like that's not. Right. But this doesn't have to be done every year? No. Once you get it approved, it's done. Oh, I see. There are things, Tom, on the heightened scrutiny. There's a list of like 10 things that you cannot be near. So you'd have to look that up. Like it can't be adjacent to, I think, a state hospital or things like that. Right. Well, things. Yeah. I know about a little bit in New Hampshire, but there were things like, uh, you, you have to have a lock on the bedroom doors. You can't, you know, they have to have access to food, you know, it, um, and it seemed like it was every year you had to. That's the regular licensing. That's not heightened scrutiny is really about the facility and whether or not it meets certain institutional markers. And if it does, they won't approve it. So. Right. Okay. And you have some people that are not on DDS or are they all on DDS? Um, in Pennsylvania, we have private pay. We do not have any in Massachusetts. I see. Okay. And do they ever use section eight or, um, any of that type of funding? Some of them do, but for the populations we're talking about, that would not be an effective model. So as you need the number of staff and section eight housing is often small. And then, you know, when you put the staff in there too, it gets very, very tight. Oh, so, so it doesn't contribute. There's no contribution or assistance from that to, um, it's just DDS funded then? Yeah. And a percentage of their social security. SSI. SSI goes. SSI. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Boot stamps. Yeah. Um, Phil Adams. Maybe two questions. One is you mentioned that local priority or priority for Wayland residents would fall to the provider, not DDS. Can you say a little bit about that? No. I mean, you'd have to talk to DDS about that. It's the way it works right now is the regional, uh, director has these slots. And then you can present individuals for the slots and then they can make a decision whether or not they're a priority one, two or three priority one gets residential. And so then the negotiation is, um, particularly for us, a lot of our families are from all of the state. So they are all trying to get to us in a region. So it really depends on your regional director if they've identified people for the slots. So you kind of work with them on that. So is it fair to say there's really no way to guarantee that, um, level one residents from Wayland would be prioritized? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You think that would be possible? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We do the opposite. We have people coming from all over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the region wants all their slots and I'm like, well, actually we have something we've been serving for 15 years that we're planning to keep. So you're going to have to move them. So. Because I, I think for this project, the town is likely to contribute some substantial in-kind resources to the project and they would like to, you know, support the residents in, in great need, not, not lower need than necessary, but, um, okay. And then. Okay. So I also represent the neighbors and I have a neighbor. Um, what, what do you say to reassure the neighbors when they hear, uh, Jean mentioned a little bit about, about having a bad day or being pretty physical, or I don't know if, if these guys are likely to go walk about or, um, like what I know, I know you said before that legally, certainly there are parameters, but we're hoping to, you know, be able to reassure people that this is a welcoming community and safe, I guess. Well, I think for us, I mean, we have staff with our guys all the time. So our guys are not independent. So they're always with staff who are trained. Um, and so, uh, we also know them well enough and I'm not going to tell you that's true for all providers, but we know our guys very, very well. Very often we have served them since childhood. And so we know when not to go in the community with them, or we also know what staff can work with them in terms of that. And so, um, we've just not had those kinds of incidents. So, and like Rita said, we do tons of community, we go to the supermarket shopping with them. And I mean, we keep data on everything because we're a provider of applied behavior analysis. And so, you know, when we do team meetings across the country, we, I can tell you, we have like a 99% success rate in the community. And if we bring someone back, it's typically for self injury or having a difficult time with themselves, not with others, like not like in terms of that, you know, they might flock to the ground and be frustrated because they're tired and hot and they're at the zoo. So we just bring them back, you know, that kind of stuff. And you guys are obviously exceptional providers, but like, what would be the qualities of other providers that would suggest that they're as good as you or that would be critical to Licensing information is public for the state providers. So you should look that up if you're looking at a provider. But also you would ask, you know, we want to talk to families who receive your services. The families will tell you. Thanks. Yep. John Thomas. Yeah. Thank you both very much for agreeing to speak to us tonight. Yeah. I just wanted to mention when we were fighting against painful aversives at the State House and we needed an expert witness to present testimony explaining in layman's terms how behavioral challenge people can be managed without resorting to shocking them with electricity. We always call on Rita and she would always hit it out of the park. So great, great seeing you. It's good to see you, Joe. And I'm still against them. Good. Yeah. I figured you hadn't changed your mind. So this committee has heard from several vendor organizations, families, private developers. And we've, you know, heard presentations about many different models, but probably not from anyone serving the type of high acuity folks that that Melmark serves. So I was wondering, could you maybe explain again in layman's terms for the benefit of the committee. So how one of your programs might look differently from residents serving people without behavioral needs or even people with DD who might not necessarily be on the spectrum. And I'm thinking. Yeah, I think. That's staffing. You've touched on a little bit levels of integration. So, yeah. I think in general, John, the difference for us is it's not necessarily. I think the difference is we take a lot of what I like to say is a lot of providers are very nice providers, but I wouldn't say they understand how to develop clinical practice guidelines or service guidelines to meet the individual's needs, whether they're not behavioral or behavioral, because all of these guys have aging issues and they get old. They chronically age faster. I mean, not chronologically, but health wise age faster. So I think the issue is, is that we operate in a manner assuming that all staff need to be trained and trade to proficiency to serve the individuals that we are able to assess every individual we serve, whether they're high functioning or low functioning and really identify what are their individual needs and how do we support those needs. So there's schedules in the houses. There's preference assessments for individuals. There's choice making teaching going on, those kind of things. I think the big thing is it's a very professionalized workforce with us. If you go to many providers, you'd be lucky to have a Ph.D. anywhere in the mix or anybody who has done research or anybody who has studied outcomes or public health research on outcomes with individuals fragility. And we do all of that, you know. And so those things inform our practice and inform how we run a house every single day. And so if you talk to like a parent, what they would tell you is staff are highly trained. This is a medical event. They know how to manage it. If there is a catastrophic behavioral event, they know how to manage it. But I think it's just the training of staff. If I say one thing, we invest a ton in our staff in terms of staff training. I'm thinking of John's question from another angle. Like what does the DDS house look like when I walk by it? Like and when I walk by our houses, I can pick our house or a DDS house out, you know, regardless of the acuity level. I think I can pick it out because there are five cars parked in the driveway because there are five or six staff members there. When I see people walking around outside, it's a group of like five or six people, you know, adults with maybe some younger people walking around in a group. So those are kind of the cues that you would see. And it's not it's not much more than that in terms of what it looks like, you know. Yeah. And I mean, we're lucky our facilities are gorgeous. You know, we have really beautiful facilities. Yeah. We try to integrate, you know, in the neighborhood to the best that we can. And we try to sort of understand that it might not look appealing to have five cars or six cars in the driveway. We'll do something like wrap the driveway with arborvitaes and other landscaping elements to sort of mitigate that concern and that sort of site of this, you know, if you will. And other things like that, you know. Okay, great. Thank you. Ryan. Yeah, thank you. Your work is very impressive. I just had a question about your staffing levels. You know, your home in Twixburg, you have two buildings with five clients each. So what are the staffing levels look like? So typically it would be at least a three on five, if not four on five, two overnights. And then on call clinical staff, on call nursing staff, on call overnight staff. So, plus we have video monitoring of all our sites in terms of, you know, if anything's after, say there's a clinician, say someone's having sleep problems, we can actually, you know, say, okay, we're going to look at how many times up at night. The data we take in terms of all of the health informatics around our folks is pretty impressive. But really looking at all of that staffing as well as making sure we also have on call medical physician level personnel also. But DDS primarily funds it on an annualized FTE basis. So, you know, for example, our houses are typically about 13 FTEs. So is your facility, is it a locked facility? Is it locked at night? No. I mean, it has regular, like residential locks on it, but it's not, you know, it's not a secure facility. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Just a couple of follow up, if I could. Did your company seek out this land? Like, did you have a team that was looking to land north of the city? How did you come about? Yeah. I mean, we thought about the idea a while ago and it took quite some time to kind of find a plot of land near services, you know, downtown, if you will, that was at a price that wasn't prohibited, which is very difficult to do, right? The further you get into the density, the more expensive the property is going to be. And we just kind of... We came down to two, really. Kept searching and yeah, we came down to two that sort of fit that model. Yeah. And to what extent do you use technology for either safety purposes or security purposes or teaching purposes? And that's a tremendous amount of technology. Yeah. Videos in the houses. A video monitor. We have a live incident reporting system where we get live messaging if anything is needed, if someone has a seizure, those kind of things. Live images that there's an injury that goes to medical events. Live sleep data. Door and window alarms. Door and window alarms. Capability to actually zoom in and do clinical support of staff on site. We have an AI overlay on our video monitoring that live notifies us if there's any interaction that looks like it might be abuse. A lot of technology. We also are incredibly database as an organization. So we look at individual performance and program performance, department performance, state performance, and then that data rolls up. And then we have probably key performance indicators on 200 different things that we measure in terms of our own performance to evaluate like health outcomes, reduction of psychotrophics, just a lot of different stuff. So our technology is pretty impressive. I can pull up a student and or an adult and look at their care, either from a medical perspective or clinical perspective or educational skill building perspective. But I can pull up graphs on those individuals for two weeks, six weeks. And if they've been with you for 15 years, 20 years, I can look at 20 years of data. But note that DDS does not like the cameras and you have to go through an approval process with them to get better. Yeah, it's a very extensive process. We had an individual who self injured at a very serious event and we went head to head with the state about it and we ended up getting cameras approved. So. Bill Adams. Do you guys get a substantial amount of research funding or external funding for innovation? Or is that a thing that's marketable or sellable to people? We are actually, in our 60s, we're rolling out a National Training Institute and we will be putting all of our work out for public use. And we're working with states to design whole state systems of care. We're in touch with South Carolina to design their whole system of care for kids with autism and adults with autism. And we're actually hoping to eventually get this all out. So that states like, you know, who don't have a lot of funding can replicate without having to do all the work that it went in. We this four of us now five of us have worked together for a number of years who have done work since the institutionalization and taken the most difficult to serve and developing standards in this research. And, you know, we think it should be used and we get tremendous outcomes. And there's individuals that we take that nobody would believe the outcomes we've gotten in them. One of our most difficult cases, my husband and I became the guardian of. They became his guardian when he had his parents. And my husband was our chief clinical officer, Bill. I keep the lights on. He does the clinical work. So, Rita, Bill, do you have any questions for us? Well, kudos to you guys for getting ahead of it. You know, it's a significant need. There's over 750,000 individuals in the United States waiting for services for residential services. It's an appalling problem. And I, as I say to everyone, we will all become disabled someday. We might want to think about how we treat them. Tom, if you have any follow-up questions or need any info, just email me and we'll get it done. Yeah. Thanks. And any other members of the committee have any questions at all? Are you all good? Okay, great. Well, sir, thank you. Thank you very much. Very good to see you again. Yeah, great to have you and you're full of knowledge. And you've helped us tremendously in your appearance tonight. And you're doing great work. And again, we appreciate it. Nice to meet you all. Nice to meet you all. Good luck with everything. Thank you so much, guys. Good luck with it. Let us know if we can do anything to help. Thank you very much. Thanks. Take care. Bye-bye. So, comments on what we just heard? It's impressive. Very impressive. They are the cream of the crop in the vendor community. They really are. I mean, they do serve the toughest to serve populations. They've been around a long time. So, why don't we return to our discussion that we started last night on the proposed report that Gene put together. And I did read your comments, Bill, to the committee. So, that's a matter of record. And why don't we go about it this way? Why don't we open it up to see whether people have questions on the draft report? For example, you know, why did you put that in? Or, you know, maybe a comment. Maybe we should expand that. Or ask for an explanation on certain things. If anyone has any such questions, I open it up. And then maybe after that, if we're at a point where we can go back to our discussion on more specific recommendations or focus on the recommendation section, which I think is the crux of the report. But, Bill Adams, any thoughts or questions on any aspects of the report that you have? I actually have a lot of comments and I'm not sure how to convey them exactly. I think the structure of the report is great. But I think at a high level, it doesn't really represent what the committee's been saying. That it's strongly biased towards a single large structure and not the sort of smaller two-group home vision that we had. And actually, the two-group home vision is the last thing mentioned. And it's as an alternative that's not viable. So, at a high level, I would say there's, it feels like there's quite a bit of bias away from the direction that the committee was representing. And then I have a whole bunch of specific things. I could talk through them. It would be great if we could have a Google Doc where maybe I could type some of the stuff in and with track changes and people could take or leave them. I don't know how we want to do this, but shall I read a few of the comments that I have? Let's start with your first comment and then come back to them, Bill. Jean, do you agree with Bill's comment about this, the consensus that appears to exist that a two-group home vision is what most members of the committee would like to see versus a larger structure or structures housing more than those numbers of whatever. Right. I agree. My prejudice shows. You know, I clearly am the outlier in this group. The two small house on four acres is not a model I want to pursue. And I just decided to hold on for a sec part. But part of the reason I ended up with these larger things is I was spending a lot of time trying to do analysis about economic soundness about these models. And these small models repeatedly came back as things that were frequently failing. And what's interesting is that there's almost no public documentation. I mean, maybe there is, but I couldn't find it trying to find documentation about failed homes. And, you know, so that I have a real concern about these smaller facilities not being sustainable over the long term. And with the level of investment that the town is making, I have trouble with that is a good conscience approach to giving away a million dollar asset to build a facility that I'm not going to be confident will sustain itself. I think those are great points and important points, Gene. Would you be willing to modify the report where you maybe characterize the majority recommendation and maybe a minority recommendation and you can set forth in that way? Right. You know, I'm I will make any changes you want. It's not a problem. I appreciate the offer of being able to submit a minority opinion. Yeah, I think that's important for the select board to hear. And also the reason you just explained, I think that's good for the select board to hear. Yeah. OK, so we can change anything you want. Yeah. So that'd be great. So, Bill, why don't we move on then to your other thoughts and you want to go on particular sections. And so, Gene, if you take notes and and this is being taped will be a record and everything. But thank you. I just ask a question. Sure, John. So, so, Bill, if you're it sounds like you have a lot of comments. I have a lot of comments, too. I've already submitted them to Gene and Tom. I'm going to suggest, because I don't know if there's probably going to be some replication. Could we go through? It's a it's a very long document. Could we go through it on a page by page basis? That way we could collectively throw out comments as opposed to having each member of the committee. I think that's a great idea. Have to go back to page one, seven times. I just think it would expedite the process. Great idea. I think that's a really good idea. Yeah, that's great. So, the document doesn't have page numbers, but why don't we start at section one, which is entitled Committee Charge and Membership. And if people need to bring it up on the screen, that may be what I'll do. Why don't I bring this up on the screen? Does that make sense to bring it up on the screen? Yeah, absolutely. Just give me a second to do that. Okay, please. Can we even go back to the introduction of the executive side? Yes. Right. Well, that's actually the first thing in the committee charge and membership, I think, right? Yes. I was going to say. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. There's another section one. That's actually one of my comments, which is that I think that needs to be modified a little, just because it's a little confusing. And before we dive in, I do want to say I appreciate all of Jean's hard work, and I appreciate her perspective. Absolutely. And I think it's really well organized, and we'll just work it out, what we all feel, but be respectful. All right. While you're doing that. Can we start with the introduction? Oh, I'm sorry, Bill. No. Well, just to Tom's earlier point, as I've thought about this, and I apologize for not having been able to attend last night's meeting, and based on some of the feedback we've gotten from some of the providers, I, too, worry about the viability of a two-structure development. And, you know, we heard from, I think, a couple of providers about the importance financially of having three or even four houses such that one could spread some of the staff costs, provide some backup in case an incident occurred. And I'm very cognizant of Bill and his neighbor's concerns about impacts on the neighborhood. But, you know, in my professional career, I spent a lot of time working with developers and others and neighborhood residents about proposed projects. And there was a lot of discussion about height and density in Boston, but what the real issue was was impacts. And so if impacts can be mitigated, I think that there are ways to do three or four structures with appropriate screening, with access limited to Route 27, such that we could serve more people in a way that is financially feasible and also respectful of the neighbors. And so maybe I'm a second minority opinion, I don't know, but I think that it would be well for us to afford proponents the flexibility to come in with what they think they want or need and give the select board the opportunity to evaluate that, you know, in consultation with the neighbors and probably would be public forums that the select board would hold. Bill Whitney, based on what we've heard over the past few months, could you envision a couple of structures that are simply larger than, not larger than your average home in Wayland, because God knows there are some very large homes in Wayland, but maybe larger homes than you would expect, but take two larger homes versus three or four smaller homes. Well, you know, I've listened to everybody who seems to think that sort of five residents in a house is really kind of the max that you'd want to have. And so to have more people in one building might, as some of the providers have said, create more potential for conflict among the residents. So I think a few low rise buildings, as opposed to fewer large structures would arguably have less impact, a visual impact on the neighbors. So, but, you know, maybe there's an economic argument that you should have more units in a structure, but I think to kind of respect the scale of the neighborhood and the town, smaller, you know, again, five bedroom plus staff is not small, but to not exceed that on an individual structure basis, structure basis, but have more of them in order to take advantage of four acres strikes me as something that would be preferable.
Yeah, I agree with that. You know, it is a huge investment by the town and it's, like I said before, it's a rare opportunity. I think Bill, Bill's right, Bill Whitney's right that we can develop single level homes and have maybe, maybe three buildings with five clients each, something like that would be, would be sensitive to the neighbors and provide a higher utilization on the site. I agree for what it's worth, that impact is the key word and that we can't know what people are going to propose either. We sort of talked about this yesterday, right? Like we have ground rules, like the impact should be minimal. It should support a special type of person. It should have respect these certain key principles. And then we see what people give us because we can't know right now and we can't prescribe exactly numbers and design. I think that was part of Jean's point is architectural style is probably not what we should be specifying in our proposals, right? We should say it should respect the neighborhood and, you know, whatever, you know, all that stuff that we've talked about. So I think we probably don't have to talk about two versus three, but we could, but we could talk about small residences where people have their own room and have privacy and live together. And there's a community of, of people living together that are supported, something like that, you know, stuff like that. That sounds good as opposed, but I don't think we want to suggest a large, one large building as a, as a pot, you know, as, cause I think most of us really don't envision that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so if you, if you look at the introduction, I tried to address some of these issues by, um, the, you get to the second page and it, it talks about the frameworks used by these agencies to determine, um, what they're looking for in their housing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That's very helpful right there. Um, you know, and so I tried to communicate, uh, these issues with this, uh, short list of people get autonomy, they get privacy, they have some agency, like what they say matters in their living situation. Somebody cares about their personal preference, um, stability, they're not getting rotated in and out of facilities because the mission of the facility is so narrow that people only fit at a particular part of their lifespan. Um, you know, um, you know, meeting the habitability standards, uh, and that they're acknowledged as an individual and that they have opportunities to integrate in the community. And I, I, I hoped by doing that, it would give the vendors, uh, uh, a sense of what the town was looking for in this housing situation, you know, moving away from the physical plant to rather how do human beings feel when they're in a place like this? Well, um, since we're on that page, should we just proceed? Are there comments on the prior page, which begins with, I'm sorry. I think, I think Bill, you'll want to start in the very beginning. Yeah, go ahead. My first comment was on the fifth paragraph of the introduction. Not, not in the very beginning. No, I think the introduction one, there's two section one. So, okay, confused. That was my bad. Um, the experience is experience has shown. Okay. Um, that's true that design doesn't, um, but I feel like, um, it, this doesn't, what did I write here? I said, uh, it's, it's a little, it felt too negative to me and, um, that the ratios for the require that required for clinical support. So we, we haven't talked much about the, this idea that people have the support for their mental and, um, physical needs, you know, medical needs within the place that they live. And depending on your level of disability, sometimes people will need a lot more and some people will need less. Um, so small capacity group homes. Group homes. And I would say group homes in general require high staffing ratios. Um, but that's, um, that's just part of the, part of the deal. Like that's, it's not a problem. It just is what it is, um, because those people have those needs and that's what we're trying to meet actually. Um, so linking that directly to provider instability and program closures and resident relocations. Um, we didn't hear many people talk about that. Most of the programs we heard from were actually doing pretty well with the right planning and the right frameworks and the right support from DDS. And so I would spin this in a more positive way that, um, the most successful group homes, um, uh, respect all the important qualities and principles and also support people in the way they are. And if done correctly, they are financially supportable, but we need to make certain considerations. Um, so that was my first comment. Anybody else on that page? Yeah. I mean, that was actually, um, I, I, my first comment was on that very pair, uh, paragraph as well. Would you like, would you like to strike that paragraph? I was thinking more framing it like, um, that, that the design of the building really relies on fit and it relies on fitting the, the needs of the patient to the building itself or the needs of the person to the building itself and, uh, experiencing has shown that, um, that these things need to be considered. And, um, I don't know, I could, I can't really talk and edit in real time, but, um, I think what the, the key issues here about size and how that impacts, um, the options that we have is an important one. And, um, but I wouldn't necessarily link it to problems with staffing and all this other stuff. Mm hmm. So maybe what we could be saying here is what they're going to see is that we're not recommending an architectural form, but rather, um, having the needs of the patient, um, lead, lead to what form the building eventually takes. So just, you know, rather than saying we want tall buildings or small buildings or whatever thing, we're really talking about the quality of life. We want to see inside the facilities and that the architectural form will flow from that. And that's why we are not recommending particular architectural forms. Um, I, I think you might be simpler to just to strike the paragraph. Cause you, you mentioned the other things in other places. Okay. Okay. Is everybody okay with that? Uh huh. Okay. It's gone. I guess that would be easier. Thank you, Stephanie. It's gone. Anything, anything further on that particular page? No. I'm going to move on to the next page. Anybody have any comments on the next page? Begins with housing and community development. People are good? I do, actually. Go for it. So in the third paragraph, uh, under why this matters to Wayland taxpayers. Yes. So, so I just, uh, so my comment was, we should explain why, uh, the subsidized housing inventory is being referenced here. Okay. Before stating it is, it's important and why it matters. So maybe either reference section eight, um, or, uh, include the, the following text. Most or many of the models discussed or considered would be eligible for inclusion in SHI. Okay. I'll figure out how to do that. And that's, that's in the, um, the PDF that I sent Eugene, by the way. Okay. Just so you don't. Thank you. You gotta write it all down. Anyone else on that page? Yeah. Actually up, up above that. Um, what do people think of adding a new, um, key principle? Like after community integration, something like support dash, uh, this is up above even before this section, right? Mm-hmm . In that section of things. Um, I don't, I don't see a mention here of support for the, um, physical and mental, um, needs or, or, or the clinical support for the, for the disability that they have or meeting them, uh, meeting their needs, um, both, um, physical, psychological and, um, medical or something like that. Like the, the environment has to provide that for these guys. Right. And I might call it support, uh, might be care. Mm-hmm . I don't know. Um, there's different words you could think of. I don't know if Jean, are these, is this list from like, um, people who talk about disability? Is this like a standard list? Right. Um, well, I understand what you're saying and I guess I just thought it was implicit in everything, but if you want to make it more explicit, I can figure out where to reference it. Um, part of the reason is that these organizations are so tightly regulated, you know, that if, if they're going to get a license to operate one of these facilities, that's what they do. The problem is that they've taken care of people's bodily needs and then neglected all these other things in the institutional setting, which is why these came to prominence. It's not that their bodies are being taken care of. It's just all this other was neglected. So Bill, maybe something like ensure for the programmatic needs of the residents or the ongoing, uh, programmatic programmatic would be defined as staffing necessary supports, et cetera. I like the supports word. Yeah. Cause I do think that's, what's unique about these group homes is your home is also your care system. Like it's not just, uh, one, but, um, but you're right. It is woven into everything. Um, but if we went through like a checklist, does this house meet this? Is this person support this? These people's autonomy, their privacy, their agency, then I think their, their, their support, support their needs, um, or, or services or, or what John said something like that. Right. Yeah. Okay. Are you specifically referring to their healthcare needs? Um, healthcare, emotional, um, activity, activities of daily living. Personal care. Personal care. Right. DDLs. I mean, so I, I had sent, uh, Jean and Tom sort of, um, a preface, a suggested preface for this document, which included the following paragraph, which we could maybe wordsmith, uh, to ensure longterm sustainability, the development of 212 constituent must include a plan for both the physical structure and the programmatic services necessary to assist individuals with disabilities. Bidders should demonstrate the capacity to secure capital financing, execute construction, and sustain future operation. Uh, I, I said operational funding, but we could say something, uh, related to the actual services. Okay. So is, is that for the RFP, what you described? Well, I, I was, uh, suggesting it as sort of a preface for your document, Jean. And, and I, as I mentioned in the email that I sent this morning, I'm very open to, um, wordsmithing or, uh, it was just a suggestion. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out where, where you intended for it to go. Did you want it above the introduction, uh, John? Yeah. I mean, it, I, I, I thought it was important also just, and I know Jean, you've got your, your, your appendixes, but I, I, I thought it would be helpful to frame the entire document, uh, starting out with, um, a summary of the town meeting charge. Right. So I. Rather than have, rather than have it in the appendix. Yeah. Because that's going to be the first thing that, that you're, you're seeing and you don't need to, to paste in the entire text of the town meeting, uh, um, article. I, I broke it out into three bullets that the, the, the key portions of that Warren article war would be the two 12 constituent, uh, a portion of the property would, would have to be, uh, designated for affordable housing, shared living housing for persons with disabilities, uh, or market rate housing at the board's discretion and under the terms it deems in the town's best interest. Those were the three sort of bullets that I pulled from that. And that's all you need to do, I think. And then I proceeded from there to, um, to do a summary of what the charge of the committee is. And I just thought that would be a nice, uh, way to introduce the, the committee's set of recommendations. Um, yeah. Okay. So you want the, the charge in the, in the document before the introduction? It's, it's just a suggestion. Okay. Part of a preface, right, John? Yeah. That was the way I was sort of. In other words, why are we here? Exactly. Exactly. As opposed to saying, uh, if you want to know why you're here, you know, scroll down to a page. Whatever. Well, it is section one. Um, I wonder if it would make sense for all the committee members to have the benefit of, uh, John's thinking on this. Mm-hmm. Um. Well, I've got the text right in front of me and I had sent it to Jean and Tom earlier. Are you able to bring it up, Sean? No. I can try. I'm happy. I'm happy to put it in. I'm just trying to figure out where it needs to go. Sure. Right. But Bill was, was asking if he could, you know, attach it to the minutes or something. Just, uh, I think it's helpful if we all know the benefit of all the comments. You can bring it up, John. If you can, I can bring it up. Well, I like the idea of attaching it to the minutes so that everybody gets to see it. Yeah. Well, we could definitely do. I'm perfectly willing to, uh, to do that too. Yeah. Uh, let's see. I don't want to pull up the wrong document here. Um, can you see that? Not yet. Not yet. Okay. Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to see if I can do it. Hold on a sec. Yeah. I like the language. I think the language, that language is excellent. You can carry over to the RFP is, uh, criteria for evaluating proposals that come in. Selection criteria. Can you see it now? No, not quite. I see the top of the page. Key points of article. I'm sorry. I can't, I can't, I can't figure out how to do it. I'm sorry, Tom. Yeah. You know, if you can send it so it can be attached the minutes. Then everybody will see it. Okay. And, um, I will, I will get it and I will endeavor to put it in here. Okay. Well, I, I sent it to you as an email, uh, Jean earlier, but we can, like I said. Yeah. I, I, I can put it, I can put it in the minutes. Okay. But to be honest with you, um, I'd love to, I'd love to just kind of get a consensus on it, uh, if possible, but, uh, just see. Yeah. So when you kind of just want to just mull it over a bit and, uh, we can see that. Oh, we could see that. Two pages just came and went. I don't know that we need to do this now, but just, uh, yeah. Okay. I think it's helpful for the whole committee to have the same information. Right. I'm just, I'm just trying to make sure that we're not going to miss of any, uh, open meeting law stuff. Okay. Well, can you see that? I'm seeing your email. Yeah. I see your inbox. Oh, really? Well, you're, you're, you're, you're showing us your inbox with my, right. If you double click that and bring that up, we'll probably see my email. Actually I did, and it's not, um, working. So, all right. So we'll do that. We'll put it in the minutes and that, and that's, um, all right. So now let's go back. I heard John read. I really liked, and I thought it would be a good introductory paragraph. Well, that was just, just a piece of it, Bill. Okay. Um, okay. So, well, I'll put it, I'll include it in the minutes, Gene. I give you, um, you know, creative. Uh, license. Right. Right. So let me ask a question. I, one of the, one of the things that we need to finesse here is how much importance, uh, the select board should put on having these housing units contribute to our subsidized housing inventory. Um, I regard it as pretty important. Um, we're, we're, you know, hanging right around safe harbor levels right now. What's going to happen. I think in the next couple of years is that a lot of citizens are going to build accessory dwelling units that are all going to count as housing units. And I think we're going to rapidly fall out of safe harbor. Um, and so if there's some way to get all the other features we want for the disabled people, plus get the, uh, housing inventory. It would be great, but yeah, I got sure what the sense of the committee is and how to express that. Well, I'm thinking maybe they would know that anyway. Uh, but I don't see a problem with that gene. I mean, I, I think we can say that it was, you know, other communities who have done this have, have counted their units towards their 40 beef. Yeah. Right. So I think that's, I think Jean is saying, why don't we go for 30 instead of 15 or something like, like three houses of five versus 30 and get 30 points. Right. Well, that, that's a separate issue. Okay. Uh, it's more of, clearly I was reading that some of these projects are designed in some way that they don't count it for SHI. Now, some of the reasons are so technical. I don't understand them, but, you know, read about various projects and because they didn't fit some agencies set of guidelines exactly. Then the house, the town didn't get those units. Ah, I see. Okay. So I agree. That should be prioritized and considered for sure. Cause it seems like most of the presenters said they did qualify, but. Right. Right. I just go back to my previous comment on the paragraph underneath why this matters to Wayland taxpayers, which is where, where it should go. Right. I was suggesting let's insert the following text. Most slash many of the models discussed or considered that, that this committee, um, considered would in fact be eligible for inclusion in the subsidized housing inventory. Okay. Just, just to emphasize that, you know, we're, we're talking about for the most part, most of the units you're going to hear about in, in these recommendations, um, and from bidders that are going to come before the town are, are, are going to count. Uh, so that's a good. Right. So it's a, it's a question of how strongly do we state this? Do we want, you know, at some point we're going to end up with a, a model RFP in, in this document and in terms of, you know, trying to make suggestions to the selectmen. Um, how strongly do we want to state it? Do we not want a proposal from a bidder who's going to bid a model where we would not get housing credit? Or should we not entertain bits like that? I think you're going to, to close off the process to potential bidders that might be putting forth an idea that would be interesting to consider, even if, uh, the units didn't qualify for subsidized housing inventory. For example, some of the private pay models that we heard might not, uh, and, and if, if that was the case, is that a black mark against them? And is that something that we want to do? Yeah. I think you're turning the question around. I know I'm asking another question to answer your question, but. Yeah. I think in the past that the, uh, the housing partnership, we've had other proposals where we built affordable housing that did not count in the affordable housing inventory. For example, at Greenways, there's a unit there that's called, um, it's called a community house, but it does not count for the affordable housing inventory because it's not moderate income. So, I mean, you know, we definitely want these units to count. It's a high, very high priority, but it hasn't been exclusively that way. And I don't see that as the priority or the, in fact, the charge, the, the overarching charge of this committee. Right. I mean, I'd love to have, uh, also. Yeah, of course. But I think personally, I think it's enough to point out in the language as a, as a suggestion, uh, that I put forth what the advantage would be and sort of leave it to the select board. The select board should, should appreciate the advantages also, I would think. Okay. Well, that's probably enough sense. I, I have a better sense of the group and I will try to make the language work with that. Let's move on to, um, the next page with the word purpose at the top. Any comments on this particular? Yeah. My name's spelled wrong. Oh boy. Did I leave out a name? It's Italian. Um, and, and, thank your pardon. And she, I was, I would just ask you put them in alphabetical order and also mention, um, members who also served and mentioned Katherine provost because she did serve for a period of time. Please. So the one question I had about this is, do we want to say anything about who we represent or what our background is or what our experience is, or do we would just want to say who we are? Okay. And, and, and I can tell you in past reports that's not done. Okay. In past time reports it's just names. So. That's easy then. Yeah. Back in the appendix, I do, uh, list the criterion that were put forth to select members. So there's, there's that information. So Catherine provost, you said should be mentioned. Yes. Right. The person who. And who? Former member. Yeah. And was there someone else? No, I think she's the only one. Okay. Um, anything further than that page for anybody? Hearing none. We move on to the next page, beginning with the word section three. Site context. Any comments on that page? So I thought we should mention that the, what the zoning is for the site. Um, that it has two acres owning, uh, surrounding uses. Is it primarily single family homes? They're pretty much all single family homes. I guess you could just say single family homes. Okay. Uh, size, location, and public ownership influence that. Seven rental properties about this lot. Um, the area is. Would you say like zone for two acres or. Yeah. It's our 60, isn't it? It's our 60. Maybe just define what our 60 means. Gene. Yeah. 60,000 square feet. Okay. However, I think in the same context, you might want to add a sentence that. It mentions that, that, that entities that, uh, utilize the Dover amendment. Or 40 B. Or 40 B. Can. Proceed, um, without strict regard to the local zone. Okay. I just saw this one. It's mostly describing the site, but yeah. Yeah, it's, it's the kind of thing you stick in just so that you don't assume that the reader is familiar with all this. Right. It may be the case that the membership of our select board is highly stable and no one will be new. Right. So they don't really need this, but if we had a new member, they might. Right. Right. You're meaning residential zone rather than residential area. So as opposed to, you know, it's not a commercial zone. Yeah. I think we'll just say, yeah, it's residential zoning. Yeah. Residential, uh, residential. Okay. I mean, we might, if, if we're going down this road, no pun intended, we might want to mention that it's on a, a, a state road. Maybe mention the fact that there's a sidewalk. I, I think that's mentioned. Um. Is that mentioned place also? Okay. Okay. Oh, is that the appendix I additional site related considerations? And we'll eventually get there. One other thing is I'm not, I'm not married to doing it with all these appendices. Um, it's just one approach. So we can consolidate more things into the body of the document if we want. I don't know. Whatever. I don't have a big problem with it because if people really want to dig deep, they can go to the appendices, right? Right. And further on that page that begins with the word section three at the top. Right. The non we might want to the next. Well, section four, I, I wouldn't put all the need stuff in the appendix necessarily. I think you could say more about the need for housing in the Commonwealth in that section. But yeah, there, there is a lot to say and it is in the appendix. It's pretty, pretty lengthy, but I could, I could like take the highlights of the very large numbers. I think a couple of paragraphs, Jean would be great. Okay. Otherwise you're jumping, you're really jumping around a lot. Okay. I mean, the first thing that you see is see the appendix. I'd rather at least get some kind of sense for what it is before I have to jump to the appendix. Okay. So I will do that. Even if it's just a bulleted list of key facts from the, you know, government agencies that oversee this. Just a little detail. That would be helpful. Okay. And then I think for local need for affordable disabled housing, I think you could say something positive about the current. Home in Wayland, like Tom brought up at the town meeting. Like it's been successfully operated since a certain year. It's financially stable. It's well received by the neighbors. That, you know, we have experience with this type of housing and it's generally been positive. Like, I think you could say something in that section. Okay. So. Very true. Great point. I don't know anything about the financial stability of that place or. That's true. I said that, but I don't know that. Well, you can say that it's existed in town for several years. Okay. They provided a positive assessment of the home when the, when the Charles River came by. Right. Yeah. Yes, they did. And that organization is quite healthy financially. So, anything further on that page. Hearing none, move on to the next page. Begins with the term section 6, what we heard. Anything on this page? Was there something before that? This is the prior page. And then, did you have anything further on section 3 page? Anybody? Well, there's. Yeah, go ahead. Moving on to the next page. I had a comment on section 8. Section. E. 8. 8. I have 6. I have lots of comments on 6. Okay. You go first. Okay. So, I listed out eight things I heard in addition to this list and I'll just read them out and you can decide if you want me to type them up and send them to you. But the one thing I definitely heard was that there are many successful examples of small and mid-sized efforts to support housing for people with developmental disabilities across the Commonwealth. Like we have successful examples. Like we have successful examples. We're not just inventing this on our own. Two. Is there a variety of models from self guided to state supported or self supported something about how independent people. support their own work or state supported. So when people think about what the options are, you know, there's different models of how that would work. So, a third thing I heard was that the size of the units closely correlates with the complexity of care that's required. So smaller buildings often have more complex per people living in that same space space. And that innovative solutions within this are, although DDS has traditionally had restrictions in this space on who can, how many people can live in a place. And, you know, alternative solutions may be possible. Another thing I learned for four was that Wayland is perceived as being really innovative and generous for offering to develop and provide this land for this purpose. So, and we're kind of national state level innovators like in this space, and we should be proud of that. Five was that support for local residents is possible. But, what did I write, I can't even read my own height. You know, is more difficult in some models than others. So like I learned that that's a real concern for people. My sixth thing I heard was that accessibility. In construction and design is essential for these places to support the comprehensive needs of people with disabilities. Number seven, I learned that although most efforts are done by nonprofits, there are examples of successful for profit developments. Who partner with typically nonprofit service providers. So there's different models of how this works. And then also eight was that each project. We heard about had features that were linked to local needs that. And something about the fact that many people are probably going to be interested in this project, but we really can't know with certainty who's going to propose something to this project. So we need to keep an open mind. Like those were eight things I heard. I don't know if they all fit here, but I wanted to put them out there and I can type them up and send them if it's helpful. Yeah, please do. So trying somehow to summarize all the things we've heard over many meetings from many different kinds of organizations is, you know, I'm struggling with how to do it. So I went to this very simple form. If anybody has some suggestions about how else to tackle it, I'd love to hear them. John, Thomas, I mean, you, my sense is you've had a lot of experience dealing with public policy documents. Should Bill's suggestions be as part of one of the appendices, B, C, or H, or do you see that this is a critical piece that we should put it in the main page here? So I'm not sorry, Tom, I'm not sure I understand the question. Well, the question is Bill just listed a series of pieces of information. Right. And so my question is, do we want to put it within section six, the main part, or include it within appendices? Well, I mean, my inclination would be to include it in the body of the document as opposed to, again, continue to sort of direct the reader to an appendix. Okay. So the big question is, how do we want to summarize what we heard from these many different groups with different ideas about how this, how an organization like this might be structured and organized? Um, because like back in the appendices, I list who the speakers were and what organizations they came from. But this is where I would really, you know, say, what were the key messages that these people wanted to give us. Um, and it could be very, very lengthy. If I went through organization by organization and went through the minutes and tried to, you know, glean out what their key messages were. Um, I wasn't even sure I should include this section, frankly, because it would be so complicated and maybe not run us in a direction. I think we don't have to put everything, but I think adding bills, things to that would be great. And then if there was some really strong things other people had heard that add those too, and maybe up to a half a page, three quarters of a page, just to give some people a real flavor for what we learned over all this time. I mean, I think the flow would be smoother if we could summarize. And I mean, I would have a preference for a narrative, maybe a couple of paragraphs, maybe three paragraphs versus bullets after the header. And then following those paragraphs that would include, you know, Bill's comments. Um, you could direct the reader, you know, for, for further information. And then gene, you, you know, it, it, it would, uh, flow into your text. That's directly underneath section six, what we heard, which would be, you know, for further information or for further, uh, reference summaries of presenters organizations and audit materials are provided in, uh, appendices B, C and H. So this is what we heard for further details. Go here. And I think, I think that serves the purpose, but I think this is a very important section. Um, and I'm thinking about the audience, which is a group of volunteers who every two weeks gets a fat package on Friday and sometimes Monday afternoon for a Monday night meeting. And, uh, uh, I, I'm sure I'm the laziest one on the board, but, uh, I find it tough to get through all of it, uh, particularly appendices. Uh, so I, I, I, I think that, uh, a few paragraphs, uh, I agree with John that narrative is, is, uh, is good because as I read these bullets, I understand what we mean because I've sat through the meetings. I, I, I don't know about my colleagues who have not. And so, um, you know, I, I'd be happy to work with Jean, uh, since she's, uh, bearing, uh, more than her fair share of the load on this. Uh, but I, I think it's, uh, it's a lot of what we have done is, is educated ourselves. And I think if we can distill it, uh, recognizing that not everyone is in complete agreement, but to draw out certain common threads. Uh, cause I think that there's, you know, consensus among the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the people with whom we spoke about what they felt was important. And, uh, I think if we could draw attention to those from, uh, for the select board members, I think that would, uh, that would frankly help the discussion move along at that level. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of, what I'm looking for is meaningful groupings, you know, trying to talk about these organizations and what they wanted to say. For example, like one grouping is some of these organizations are very small. They've only done one project and they did it for highly personal reasons. They were making these projects for their own children or for their immediate community. And, um, you know, I, I, I really admired those groups, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'd want to recommend that our town picked a group like that. Um, it would require a level of town involvement and handholding to get a project off the ground that I'm not sure there's an appetite to commit to. Um, so that would be, for example, one grouping that I could talk about here. Then there's the for-profit entities and the non-profit entities. And so I think I could come up with meaningful groupings. Um, yeah, I think that's kind of why one of my bullets was, you know, some people are self-determined or self-driven and smaller, and some are larger and well-established. And then followed by some comment, like, you know, while these smaller ones are very innovative, um, the committee was concerned about, you know, the concerns about infrastructure and long-term sustainability. Um, but I wouldn't rule out that a proposal would come in that had enough support to be viable. Like I wouldn't be a deal breaker to me, but it, it would be a concern that people should look very closely at. And so I think we could say that in, in a sentence or two that would just bring the select people's attention to that item and remember it. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead, John. Yeah. I was just going to say also, um, in some of the, another piece of the text that, that I had, uh, shared with Tom and Jean. And again, I'm not wedded to keeping it in the preface portion, um, but it could go into, uh, this section of what we heard. And again, Bill Whitney, to your point about, um, you know, volunteers, uh, sitting down, uh, to sheaths of paper, uh, trying to, you know, be familiarize yourself with subject matter that you're, you're honestly not familiar with. And you're, and you're, and you're doing the best you can. I suggested the following paragraph, just because I have to assume that people, uh, don't, as we heard tonight, um, you know, what, what, what, what is an acute care model? What, what does that mean to, to people? You know, um, unless you're, unless you're in the business, you don't know what that means. So, so anyway, this was another example where I thought it might be helpful just to provide a little context for people that are wading into this for the first time. So I'm just going to read this and, and, uh, you know, folks can decide if this is something that you'd like to include here or, or whatever, and it will be included in the minutes. So during the RFP process, the committee, uh, our committee, the committee suggests that the select board may encounter and should consider, and Bill Whitney, this is to your comments that Bill read to the committee last night, may encounter and should consider a wide range of disabilities to be served. This includes, but should not be limited to people with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, people on the autism spectrum, including people with Asperger's syndrome, people with head injuries, and duly diagnosed people who may exhibit a combination of intellectual or developmental disabilities and mental health conditions. Because what, what does disability mean to the select board? So. Okay. I think that's very clear and good. So, uh, let, about section six, let's just say I'm going to rewrite that. So, like nothing, that'll all be gone and we'll go for kind of a different strategy for that section. Um, and I'll, I'll just type up and email you my eight things and you can take them what you want. Pardon? I'm just going to type up my eight things and email them to you. Thank you. Thank you. And I, and I do like the idea, John, of more definitions. You know, I, I did not include a definition of disability like that. And it sounds like it ought to be in there. Yeah. I have to say, I have to agree with everything that I've heard on this, on this section. I, I think it's an important section as well. Um, I, I've found the presenters, the most interesting part of the committee's work is just how, how many different types of service models there are. Right. And to reflect that in the section, I think is wise. Right. Right. And it's going to be hard to write. Right. And I'll do my best. I'm going to have to go through all the minutes and look at all these groups and try to figure some way to. Well. Bunch them in meaningful ways. The other thought is for Bill to put together some paragraphs and send them to you. Right, Bill? Bill Adams? Yeah. Or Bill Whitney. Like, um, I think, um, what works the best for me is to use those bullets to try to get all the ideas into a list. Okay. And then roll them into, um, a narrative. Okay. And so I had my eight ideas, but I bet this committee, if they looked at those eight ideas would come up with, um, five or 10 more ideas and. Yeah. We would have a page of narrative of what we learned. Like, um, could, is there a way to start with my list and people could add their list or delete my list or, and then give it to Jean to put into narrative or. Um, cause I agree we shouldn't have to review every minute from everything. Like it would be the pooled learnings of this committee of what we remember. Um, I'm, I'm just, I just want to be efficient here. And given where we are both time tonight and timing with our deadline, I just think that collectively we have a sense of what we heard. And, and so if, if the paragraphs are put together, um, and then the next version of this document, we can talk about it further and say, well, how about adding that? Okay. How about adding that? My point is, Jean, you know, I, I really don't, I don't want to have you have to go through all the minutes or listen to the meeting. Right. Was there anything I didn't cover? Like when you heard me list my list, like what were anything occur to anyone that I didn't say? I will have to sit with. I need to see it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go ahead and, and, and kind of keep moving through the sections and see if we've got any big problems here. All right. So let's move on section by section, anything in section seven by anybody. So, um, neighborhood considerations is, is there a, and I don't think this has to be in the thing, but, um, we want to say that we met with the neighbors, right. And we listen to the neighbors and, um, you know, at a high level, these are some of the neighbors, uh, requested considerations. And then maybe in the appendix, you could put a summary of that, of those notes that I, that I created from AI, but not in, not have to make a huge deal of it, but somehow documenting that this is what they said. Okay. None of them are, the, none of them are terribly, um, controversial. I don't think, um, I would expect people to say what they said. So does that make sense to people? Oh yeah. It does. Okay. It's great. Any, one thing that we don't talk about and we didn't really talk about is this green space idea. So when we did the site visit and Tom and the LaPierres and I were walking in the back area, um, there is this part that's way up. And, and that is, um, kind of a funny triangle that is not super accessible. And there is a question of whether that could be preserved as green space. There's tons of deer that run through there. There's turkeys. We saw bobcat two days ago. Um, other things like back there. And, um, I don't know if that's an option. Um, we touched on it a little bit yesterday. The neighbors would be willing to probably contribute money to the town to buy that green space, or if it could be roped off in the deed or something. I don't know, whatever. But I don't know where that fits in as a request from the neighbors, but it was a request from one neighbor. And I don't know if I'm allowed to make requests as a committee member, but it would be a request from me too. Cause it's our backyard. And if you look at the plot plan, it's pretty obvious where it is. I put little Christmas trees there. Yeah. So is that something that, that Sudbury Valley trustees could help with? Uh, I don't know. It's a pretty small area and it's kind of, it's an island. Yeah. So, uh, an idea that I've liked all the way along is that we, you know, in our town have a cluster dwelling bylaw that requires a minimum of seven acres. And I, you know, if we're going to use some of these zoning flexibility tools, I think it would be great to make a mini cluster on this site and border it deeply with, uh, just native space. Um, I did some estimates. Um, I did some estimates a while ago, looking at the probable size of building footprints, probable size of parking lots, probable size of the septic field and, uh, figured that it might be possible to offer a setback of at least 50 feet all the way around the entire property. Um, and still have enough land left to do what needed to be done for the purposes of the homes. So I think it's in terms of the amount of space available, I think it is desirable to leave, um, a green buffer. And if that could accommodate this habitat, that would be terrific. The, uh, Dover amendment, um, which allows for these types of facilities, shared living facilities. Um, you know, they are subject to reasonable regulations and was reading from an email from Robert Hummel earlier today. And it includes, you know, yard sizes, lot areas, setbacks, open space, parking and building coverage requirements. Um, so, you know, I think, uh, I think this issue of setbacks came up in an earlier meeting or earlier meetings. Um, so that could be part of the RFP. Right. I mean, frankly, uh, Bill, my sense is that if I were a developer, I kind of like all those trees back there. I just think it gives a nice, I don't know what the word is, but, um, it, it provides even privacy for the residents who'll be living in these homes for the privacy. Yeah. So, but, but, um, legally a decision to sell land to neighbors or, you know, to create a different, uh, bylaw regarding clusters, Gene, would have to be eventually a time where you vote. But I think maybe, I think to achieve the ends, what you're talking about, Bill, I think you're talking basically, if you, if you want this report to include recommendations, select board that have certain setbacks, fine, and Gene, same, same with your idea. I mean, I recommend that this ribbon of 25 feet around the property is, uh, is something we recommend and we can certainly do that. Well, I frankly would be careful about stipulating a dimension. Um, you know, the, uh, the proposal that ultimately gets adopted will be subject to, uh, the planning board site plan review. Uh, I think Tom's point is well taken that, uh, the owners of the property, uh, hopefully will, uh, wanna respect the neighbors and, uh, but also, uh, give themselves a sense of, uh, privacy or internal cohesion or something. Um, so, uh, uh, uh, I would caution against stipulating a 25 or a 50 foot setback from all sides when the, the zoning for a single family provides, I think, 30 feet. Um, uh, so. Yeah, I, I wasn't suggesting that we stipulate it. I was just trying to wear or raise the awareness of the group that there, I think there is going to be that kind of flexibility. Um, so when they get down the pipe and the design, you know, they really could meet the objectives of the project and still leave a lovely green space. Yeah. I think we should stipulate, or we should advise the select board when the, uh, RFP is issued, uh, that, uh, it should include a site plan and should include, uh, uh, screening of the adjacent residential properties. Um, just see what they come up with because whatever they propose is going to be subject to, uh, further discussion and refinement. Mm-hmm. And then can we include the neighbors request in the appendix that a green space be respected or nobody's obligated, but it is a, a, a neighbor's request. And we'd like to document that as completely as possible. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. It's also important for wildlife. It's just a nice thing to do, especially if I can come and see the bobcat. I should have taken a picture of the footprints in the house bill. Right. Anything further on section seven, moving on to section eight. Anybody? I had a comment on that. Sure. Um, I was wondering if we could change the, uh, beginning of the first sentence in the second paragraph from that starts, not all housing for adults with disabilities. Okay. We could change that to most of the housing models, serving people with disabilities that were described to this committee would qualify for inclusion on the subsidized housing inventory. I agree. That's fine. Make it possible. I think what we want to, the objective here is to alert the select board that they need to pay attention and not assume. That they could, you know, if they didn't realize that there were some criteria they had to be following here. Um, that's really what that was intended to do. So I'll rework that. So maybe to, to that point, Jean, which I, I hear you. So maybe most comma, but not all. That's what I was thinking too. Yep. Of the housing models, serving people with disabilities. And that way you accomplish both. Yeah. Okay. That's fine. And, um, so, and I'm, I'm going to have to disagree with the, uh, the sentence that starts out traditional DDS group homes often do not meet these criteria. In fact. Okay. I will strike that. They, well, I mean, they, they do so. Okay. It's gone. Okay. I mean, maybe we want to include the text, the actual text from, um, the, the, the state guidelines that specifies very clearly that both DDS and DMH group homes. Have to be counted towards, uh, the subsidized housing inventory. And in fact, in Wayland parking back to the Charles river residents, five such units are associated with the Charles river DDS group home. Okay. Five, uh, S H I units are associated with the Charles river DDS group home. Okay. Got it. Just to drive home the fact that we, we were already taken advantage of it. Let's, uh, potentially we, we could, uh, enhance that. Right. Is that the only place we say that every bedroom counts as a unit? Yes. Yes. That's important. Yeah. Anything further on section eight. And I can send you that text gene. If you'd like. Good. Thank you. Oh, it's actually in the, I'm sorry. It's in the PDF that I sent you. If you can, if you can pull it from that, it's, it's already in there. Um, good. Good. So the next section findings. Um, I, I just think of this as something that we're, we're required to confirm. For the project to go forward. That, you know, the land is actually appears to be suitable for the purpose. Um, and that there seem to be the right vendors within our area that we can actually buy the goods and services. We need to make this project that we're not in some sort of area in which these vendors don't exist or vendors of the quality needed for the project don't exist. So that's the only reason that section is there. Um, the one thing that we haven't done is look at how this land perks. We don't really know anything about the potential septic issues on the site. If I had that data, I, and I'd put it there, but I don't have it. I think Robert has some information on that. Okay. It's favorable. Yeah. Okay. So I'll go, go to Robert. It would surprise me. It would surprise me if there were any perk issues given the height of that property. Yeah. I just don't want to assume and then find there's some giant piece of ledge under there. Right. If it's a problem, if it's a problem, we'll just use bill. We'll just use bill. Adam. It's a little rough. The last sentence, just, um, in terms of language. Okay. We expect to propose to receive. There's a, there's a. Yeah. There's a typo. Thanks. We're just taking the word too. I was, I was going to suggest also that maybe this would be the place to include that. Um, the comment that we've made before. Which is that, um, you know, both vendors and state officials. Mm-hmm. Have stated that opportunities to develop a parcel such as this in a desirable community, such as Wayland are very rare. And this represents, um, a valuable chance to address an unmet need for underserved populations. Something like that. Okay. Great. That's great. And consistent and, and, um, I think you mentioned the housing plan in the document somewhere else. That's fine. I mean, yeah. So I think that. Oh, right. Yeah. That it, that it, it, um, right. It addresses the housing plan. Right. Yeah. Really good point. Mm-hmm. One, one addition I had was about public transportation. And do we consider this site accessible to public transportation? Because of bus roads? Or is it not particularly easy access? Because I thought you could say something like shopping, comma, services, comma, and easy access to public transportation are desirable, but not required. Well, the ride can go up and down. The little vans could get, go up and down. Yeah. I would say probably to word it, if, if you wanted to do that, to say something to the effect, it's accessible to paratransit, but not, uh, us as a fixed, fixed, uh, route public transportation. At this time, anyway, at this time, it doesn't mean we can't push for an extension of the bus that loops around, uh, that part, uh, right. Right. Yeah. The, the MWRTA. Yeah. Do we want to say that or leave it out? What do you think? It is a consideration for some of the higher functioning folks to be able to walk to public transportation. That was the only reason I brought it up. Yeah. Yeah. That's more a matter of transparency. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. I put that in. So anything further on section nine?
All right. Moving on to section 10. Gene, with respect to 10.1, uh, I'm curious about the two-step process as opposed to issuing an RFP. You know, one of the things, uh, again, there was just, just my reading about key factors in successful projects, you know, and that, um, it's the, the response to an RFP is a hell of a lot of work. And, uh, so having people provide some upper level description of their capabilities and their interests in the site, and then meet with some town representatives and get their questions answered, um, might help the, the number of responses that we get. Um, if, if, you know, I'm not married to it, I just thought it sounded sensible. Is there such a thing as a two-step response to an RFP? Like, or is, can it not really work that way? I mean, we did that, we did the RFI process. We got two responses. I mean, we should have been more aggressive and, you know, sending it to people. But, you know, it's, we followed the typical procedure. And, um, so there isn't a way to put out an RFP with a lot of specifics and then people write a brief, like five page proposal and there's a screening process and then people get invited to do a full one. It doesn't work that way. Probably. We have grants that work that way, but. Well, Bill Whitney, the way you wrote the RFP, you kind of, kind of did that, didn't you, Bill? You kind of. Well, well, well, Gene's point is a valid one, which is, you know, the, the draft that we've got, uh, obliges them to do, you know, some legal work, uh, some design work and so forth. Um, the, the thing about a two-step process is assuming you do the first step where you're saying, give us a general idea of what you have in mind. And then I don't know if we have the ability under state law to say, well, we like these three. So we're going to invite you three back to do the more detailed competition as opposed to, you know, okay, we've gotten these, we know who's out there. Okay. Here's what we're going to, we're going to raise the bar and require more. And does that go to everybody? Or I guess. Um, I don't, I don't feel any need to necessarily narrow the pool. If the town prefers to model it more as an encouragement in the first phase in order to cause more candidates to persevere through the second phase. This, this is my view. My view is that by the time this RFP is finalized. Um, I, I think a lot of, we'll put this way, I'm going to be much more aggressive in reaching out to the organizations that appear before us. Even they, even though they may not submit a response, they may know organizations in this field who may be interested in it. Right? So my point is, it'll, it'll, it'll be well known of this, that this RFP exists. We're not going quietly into the night. Right. Right. And, and, and, and, and I get a, and Brian Bojan may be able to respond to this, but I, I get a sense in comments, people may have come before us that people in the industry are aware of this project and they, they kind of talk to each other. I mean, is that, is that true, Brian? I think you're right too. And, um, yeah, I too, I'm not sure how this two step process works either. I think you're going to have to, to do a legal bid. The RFP, you're going to have, you can't screen people out before you issue the RFP. Okay. What would you rather this section say? And I'll write that down. I would say the select board will issue a request. A request, a request for proposals. Right. Okay. So inviting, inviting, inviting organizations to respond. Okay. Got it. It might be worth a quick call to town council to find out if a two step process is permissible. Yeah. All right. The notion of a short list. Sure. So we're not going to get through this tonight. No, we're not. How do you suggest we proceed? Cause we're, it's. This is my proposal, Gene. Um, we're, we're not that far from, from Appendix A to be honest with you. Um, my recommend, my recommendation is that you, you revise this. And Bill's, Whitney's offered his, his, uh, his time to, to take a look at it and maybe fine tune it a bit. And then I'm happy to look at it as well. And then district typos. And then, uh, if any, and then we would put it in a packet. Um, when we're ready, sort of the entire committee can review it in a timely fashion before we next meet. Next meet on the 27th of January. And let's see, um, how far we get then. Yeah. On the 29th. And if by some miracle, we could agree on a final version on the 29th, um, we've done yeoman's work and, and you can enjoy a vacation putting this behind you. Okay. And if not, we still have a little bit of time to, uh, meet and, uh, uh, before the 15th to finalize it for submission, even though you're away. Um, good. So, um, just a related thought, the, um, diversity equity and inclusion committee would probably like to come and visit us at our next meeting. That's fine. That's fine. Talk about their objectives. Is it okay for me to show them the draft that goes in the packet? Um, that's public information, right? Well, I, I would do, I would recommend they review this draft. And then when it's, when the next draft is, is available, um, which would be before the next meeting, they'll have, they'll have time to look at it then. Right. In other words. Okay. I have to say that, um, despite all our comments tonight, that, um, you've really captured effectively so much, Gene. So if I'm a DEI member, I'm, I feel like if I read this, I get a sense as to what we're, what the, what the committee's thinking. Right. Okay. Okay. Good. I'll reach out to the, uh, DEI committee and invite them then to the, to our next meeting. Sure. Yeah. Well, I just think they're another group that I wish would have shown up by now because, you know, this is what they care about. So. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yep. That's great. One, one comment. I think that is important though, is the scenarios, because I think a lot of the reviewers of this document are going to. Yeah. Look at the summary information and some of the key points and then jump right to the scenarios. Like what might this look like? And I know the neighbors are going to look like at that too. And so. Right. I think we need to reorganize that and build out, you know, some of the more core ones. Um, whether you say it's going to be three buildings or two small buildings, I still think that's where we were coming from. And so if we could talk a little bit about that to guide you in revising that section, that'd be great. And then when we can give it to the neighbors would be my other question, which. Right. So, um, I appreciate making that point, Bill. I do think that Jean, um, acknowledged comments that we made earlier on, um, the preference of the committee. I, um, I do intend to invite the neighbors through you to come meet with us on the 27th and our next meeting. And they can also review this document, but I think it's not accurate. It won't be as accurate as it will be next version. So, um, uh, it'll be in the back. If we do the packet two days ahead of time, there'll be a new draft though. Right. So that would be closer. Yeah. Right. So we'll give them that. Okay. Right. So, um, things that would help me, um, appendix G is comparative housing models. Um, I would like suggestions of properties that members would like to have included in this list. Um, the, uh, just, it just do that. I can include more. I'm just, it is an attempt to just show a variety of different types of prop properties. Um, I will take out the reference to the number of people accommodated in the property and just put them up as things for people to look at, to get a sense. Um, and then the scenarios, I can also change. Um, and let me just work on that and you can see it in the, in the next is, it was just a different way of, um, helping people make a mental image about what could be on the site. Oh, great. I think it's really important. That's yeah. That's why spending time on it's great. Yeah. So the more, the more you guys could write down what you think and send it to me in any way Tom says is appropriate. That would be helpful. Thank you. All right. Um, given the time, I, uh, unless someone else has a comment, I would welcome motion to adjourn. So move. Do I hear a second? Second. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, John. Um, all those in favor of the motion, Jean. Yes. John. Yes. Brian. Yes. Bill. Yes. Stephanie. Yes. Bill Whitney. Yes. Right. Great. Thank you. Motion approved. So nothing at eight 58. Thanks again for all your input and look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks. See you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.