February 3, 2026 – 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee – Video & Transcript
February 3, 2026 - 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee
Recording in progress.
On Zoom, we have Phil Whitney, Gene Milburn, and we expect possibly Stephanie Lynch will join us and possibly Phil Adams will join us shortly.
Invite individuals to give public comments on here if they like. Our agenda will include public comment, consideration of minutes, and discussion of the draft report to be submitted to the board and then we will adjourn. Ask anyone online who is interested in giving public comment. You see anybody, Robbie? No, I see no online. All right. So we'll give the public comment period and move on to minutes. In the packet, we have minutes of three meetings, the 8th of January of this year, the 27th and 29th, and actually we have eight minutes from the 3rd. And the reason why I draft minutes from the 3rd is, it's possible, but this will be our last meeting, so these minutes will be addressed at the end of the meeting. If we conclude, this will be our last meeting. If it isn't, then we won't address it. Focusing then on the minutes of January 8th, 27th, and 29th of 2026, I want to obtain a motion to approve those comments. So moved. So moved. Thank you, Bill. And second, Brian? Yes. Brian, second. Any discussion on the minutes? I mean, none of those in favor of approving the minutes. Jean? Yes. Bill, Whitney? Yes. Right. John? Yes. Brian? Yes. Myself, as an A. Yes, both, as a 5-0 bill. Bobby, you can keep your eye out for Stephanie or Bill Adams. I appreciate that. All right. So let's move on now to the most recent draft report. Evening, Stephanie. Great to see you. Stephanie's joined us at 7-0-3. So the most recent version of the draft report, this is my thinking, that we try to complete the report this evening, keeping in mind the phrase that I suggested the last time we met, that is, is it something you can live in? Thomas, I'm sorry. Were we going to review the January 27th minutes? Oh, I'm sorry. A motion of all three. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Am I mistaken? Am I right that I suggest all three? Or that I list all three? And if it's unfair, we'll redo it. I thought it was one. OK. Fine. Great. So let's move on now to the two other minutes in the packet. Two of the four, January 27th and January 29th, 2026. I want to maintain a motion for approval of those two sets. Motion. That's done. Second. Second. Brian. Okay. Discussion on those two? There is none. Close in favor of the motion to approve the sets of January 27th, 26th, and January 29th, 2026 minutes. Close in favor. Bill Whitt? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Still left? Yes, but I have to abstain from the 29th because I wasn't there. OK. So what we're going to do is we're going to, if you don't mind, we'll withdraw the motion. We'll do one set at a time. Sorry. That's right. No, I appreciate that. Make it cleaner. So are you OK with drawing the motion, John? Yes. Yes. OK. So the motion withdrawn will file. It will entertain a motion strictly for the 27th of January of 2026 to approve those minutes. Is that the motion, John? Yes. And the second one? Yes. Thank you. Any discussion? All right. None in favor of that one set only. Bill Whitt? Yes. Jean? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Bill Adams? Yes. Yes. We're moving on to the next set of minutes, January 29th to 726. Do I hear a motion to approve of those minutes? So moved. Thank you, Brian. Second? Second. Thank you, John. Discussion? Doing none in favor of approval of those minutes. Bill Whitton? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Jean? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Bill Adams? yes yes you've seen you know 29 this one yeah 29 you you i wasn't there so you want to understand this is the 29th oh sorry i've stayed okay and i'll say it so 601 great um okay um so let's move on now to discussion of drafting for the most recent version that you received and that is both in the packet online and i received it separately as well um if possible i'd like to complete the report this evening i should keep in mind the phrase can you live with it
and if we're in a position to approve the report tonight with changes that we make tonight um one way to handle it is to take a vote to authorize the chair to make changes um that are discussed tonight and then submit it to the select select uh that we basically vote to submit it with as amended but it's premature to consider that motion based on our um given that it'll be based on the discussion to see with that of mine i'd like to turn to um a document that was sent to me by robert hummel the same document the reviewing he had some comments and i'm going to walk walk you through it you have the if you have the most recent version handy i'll just walk you through his his comments and we can discuss and so if you're with me if you turn to page four last there are four bullets on page four so harvard's comment was as follows local preference question mark there are state guidelines for this process which i believe is something that we have discussed and we agree that if you're going to have definition of if you're going to have local preferences that may work with some organization and some arrangements with the state and some may not so i think robert's comment is accurate and i'm not going to insert his comment because it was just a comment on what he read and um moving on now to page seven um uh he just has a couple of a couple of typos which i've noted in um under section six first paragraph uh suggesting we insert five and eighty eight and that's fine that's just a typo moving on to page 15 um under under appendix c capital a let people at the moment to get there on the first paragraph it says executive office of housing and middlewood communities eohlc and then next to it it says massachusetts department of housing and community development d8cd so he suggested we take that we take that up from massachusetts and the d8cd that seems that that accurate to you jean um what i read was basically that the dhcd had had become a city subsidiary uh part of the eohlc but that it still had a defined mission and i know john thinks that that's not true and i don't know how to what to do you know so um john do you agree with robert that we should we could strike me i do i do i believe that was the the the title of that secretariat level uh agency was that the name was changed and the mission was changed in 2003 in 2000 2023 2023 yeah thank you based on that comment are you okay if we if we take out that gene yeah i don't think it's worth worrying about all right moving on to the third paragraph where it says low income housing tax credit lihtc he just wants to insert instead of dhcd replace it with eohlc okay okay so i'll make that change moving on page 16 um section this section b second paragraph
called massachusetts rental voucher program mrvp he wants to again replace dhc with eohlc is that okay that's fine that's fine um right um right moving on to page 17 he wants to make the same change under the first bullet of policy and shi relevance okay okay with that he wants to make the same change under the last paragraph role group homes the last bullet again replace dhcd with eohlc no objection um it's another one under affordability uh what page uh 18 18. maybe search the whole document for dhc but looks like you got it paid oh yes he did yep you're right about that i missed that good we've got changed um his next entry is on page 28 under data sources same change the fourth bullet moving on
that's the last one so let's move now to let's continue on with the draft and um at some point soon i'd like to address this issue of executive summary but before we go there i'd like to address the note that jane has on the top page of the cover page um where she says note to committee members in this version we offer an alternate to appendices enf it is concluded at the end of the document please study and determine if you prefer one approach over the other in addition to what we heard and learned has been returned in the rfp replaced with the ww's version ecologically sound native manscaping and recommended various of the smaller changes were made in the pjm also key additions or changes are gene mean are in red so um let's focus on appendices e and f and um um i'm interested in people's thoughts on that uh any thoughts on um um and just so i'm clear i mean you're proposing that the e and f included instead of instead of another section is that right well i i ought this um this optional material this additional materials it's just a different way of describing some of the same issues and i thought we had quite a bit of discussion in the last meeting about that table and there didn't seem to be really great comfort with what was in it so i thought well is there some other way i can run through this data uh and present it that the group might like better so that that's what i'm attempting to do here is see if there's something the group likes better and i wouldn't suggest that we include all the uh copy about how the content of the chart was determined but i thought the committee might want to see it so whitney thoughts uh i thought uh the the changes that gene had made uh to enf in uh the body of the uh of the report uh captured uh very well the sort of discussion of the committee so i thought e enf as they are presented in the body of the report uh was very clear and concise and i very much appreciate her uh making those changes uh as well as uh the entire report which i continue to think is excellent i um note that the enf can be found on page 19 of the report uh stephanie what was your impression i thought the report was excellent and really um i like it very much in its present form and i like the enf in the body of the report as well um and much better than the alternatives presented at the end and i just think it was an excellent job and it really captured what we were thinking and i think it's going to be very helpful to the select board and it does accomplish i think what our group was supposed to accomplish and i'm and jenna really appreciate gene it's a great job um putting together our thoughts thank you i feel lucky enough i agree as is clear and i think it's it's good because it doesn't claim to be comprehensive i worry at the end of that table where it says you know uh projects in massachusetts it might imply that this is somehow comprehensive and it's not and so i agree with what other people said i think what's in there now is pretty solid i had a couple maybe editorial things but nothing big okay for later um brian yeah i agree i i think um the table's really useful and um it gives people an idea when i would spell out some options for the uh the boys like what you consider so so the comments thus far have been they like e and f in the body and are okay with without correct me if i'm wrong okay without the e and f in the back um so are you saying that you like you like the um i know i get in the body it keeps the curtains so you like to the report yeah right just so we're clear the uh you like the uh current appendix e and appendix f or um what did you want to insert some of the or some or all of the exhibit alternate appendices e and f which start on page 30. i think have an e and f in the body is where it should be the one is the one that's there now it's okay yeah okay and then john um i i felt that the um the appendix e and f in the body were preferable to the alternates however i i just had a question so gene in the body appendix f uh remains unchanged is that correct because we we had talked about going back let me get there so page 21 we had gone back and forth about having some issues with some of the numbers some of the descriptions possibly i don't remember who threw it out but somebody suggested perhaps uh removing the the capacity all together um so my question is did you make any changes to that um i don't think i i chopped i chopped off the far right hand column which no one seemed to like so that's gone uh it was five columns before um and frankly i wouldn't know what changes to make in the fourth column um which is one of the reasons i you know came up with the alternate to to you know try to see if there was some way to get uh to a presentation that people felt more comfortable with so i think i made a comment john that i felt that the fourth column with the numbers might be helpful to the board um okay but that doesn't mean it takes a day so if others if others want to uh eliminate that and um i don't feel terribly strongly about it but i think it got it provides some guidance to the select board what we're talking here
i mean i i didn't necessarily feel strongly one way or the other as in terms of eliminating that i just remember from our last discussion having some thoughts about the the the numbers as they're laid out there and specifically i think i was suggesting gene that perhaps we could consider lowering the the the lower end of some of those numbers as to whether or not people felt comfortable comfortable or not with the higher end of those ranges i i i don't have a i don't have a strong feeling but i thought perhaps we could lower some of those numbers to make them more inclusive of a lower number like like six to ten for example a number one yeah but i'm i'm i was thinking more okay
i was just thinking it might be useful uh to go to um page 32 and and look at 32 uh and 33 and 34 and 34 and look at the newer analysis and look at the numbers that came out of it and in those i used um properties of organizations that presented us so i i avoided trying to go to the general case and uh look at the larger market and said okay well these were examples that we were told about because these organizations came to us and um so you can see the numerical ranges there that's what i'm offering is take a look and see if that helps i'm personally not troubled by the numbers and uh exhibit f uh gene's first sentence uh is all scenarios are illustrative relative capacity estimates are intended to compare development scenario approaches rather than you know so i think it's uh i think it's a good sort of generic description of what's out there i think it uh is useful for the select board to see the kind of range of options i don't think one would infer that a uh 24 to 36 person uh residence or residences is recommended but rather it just illustrates that uh a broad gamut was considered uh researched and i'm personally comfortable with it i'm i'm okay with it too in my view um the chart the dependencies on page 32 33 34 might be a bit overwhelming to the members of the select board like too much information what does this all mean i think in the end it will come down to which organizations respond to the rfp and what's the division how many houses how many how many residents um i think what page 21 demonstrates is that it could be two homes two to four homes with with this range of individuals that might that might that might be interested in in establishing a project at the site john i just feel like we wouldn't want to preclude for example having a um an art center and a group bomb and if that was the case you would be precluding a single dds funded group home with five persons so i i don't i'm not going to uh uh yeah fight folks on this i mean if you'd like if you'd really like to keep those numbers i i don't have a strong objection i was just going to throw that out um so my sense of the the consensus is that that we won't correct me if i'm wrong we won't include alternate dependencies enf that begin on page 30 and end on page 35. um you want to object to that okay i i don't know the comment on appendix f as yes in the body in the body on page 21. it still doesn't feel crystal clear to me that that these aren't recommendations like that these are you know hypothetical situations and is there any way to make that clear but what i could do is i could insert the following phrase all scenarios uh are illustrative illustrative um but but but not but not necessarily recommended no in other words what word would you yeah yeah i mean it says these examples seen are are seen under their sites and are not recommendations i just yeah it says right there does say not recommendations okay it says our our illustrative illustrative it says right at the very bottom it does yeah i think there's a three dollar award but not recommendation that's good i like that let's it let's say so clear it says yeah the last last sentence is these are examples seen on other sites and i'm not exactly so good i missed that okay my bad that's all right um all right um so i'm gonna now uh ask bill whitney are there other aspects of the report um actually before i go there let's move to the to the executive summary um gene submitted version and i inserted a word that is found in the report at least two other times um but some may not agree with its placement in the executive summary the word is innovative innovative what paragraph is that um it was one of the bullets i believe i thought it was within the executive oh oh okay yeah okay it's in the second bullet on page four under the subsidized housing um inventory bullet right and um john i think you felt that that would get too specific there i just felt that we were if you inserted the word innovative you were requiring that bullet to do double duty when the original intent was really to uh to focus on the subsidized housing inventory in other words um we we were hoping to suggest to the select board well actually bill adams uh was the one who suggested inserting the word prioritize which i actually really liked um and we agreed to adopt at the last meeting so prioritize uh development models that create accessible housing for adults with disabilities while also producing subsidized housing inventory so i thought the the purpose of that bullet was really to sort of focus on the subsidized housing inventory as opposed to focusing on non-traditional models which i think is
i was just again i'm not wedded to the to opposing the change i just felt that throwing innovative in there is perhaps diluting from the uh original intent of that bullet which was subsidized housing inventory focused um that's fine do you see value in including that word within the executive summary or not necessarily well my suggestion um which i had thrown out to to tom and jean in response uh was to to we we could create a separate bullet um since we're creating bullet bullet recommendations at the end of the um executive summary okay to suggest that the select board consider non-traditional models okay a simple something something yeah i i don't have the wording in my head but something that focuses on i think what the intent of your inclusion in that word was which i support i do as well yeah so if i it's a sentence if we if i had a bolt this is the select board considered non-traditional innovative um housing models does that work sounds fine is it turning off to say that they could be um replicated or emulated by other towns or i don't think so uh i think we'll i think the report includes discussion of some return models in other towns but we have like a great success that other people will want to copy so that oh i think more disabled people get housed if i said yeah that's true but i think i think to say that it i guess if it's innovative people yeah okay but imitation is good as one flowery
flowery time will tell where that happens bill whitney i wonder if it should say innovative models are encouraged as well as traditional models i would hate to scare off an experienced developer or service provider using something that's you know more standard i just want to again see that we cast the broadest possible net and see what's out there so i don't want to discourage somebody who has got a tried and true proposal or approach copy a sentence after the end of the second bullet um that we say you know prioritize development of these types of models and then you know encourage submission of innovative as well as traditional approaches sure i could add a sentence yeah i could add a sentence as people just said both innovative and traditional models um should be considered yeah that work bill yeah great were there other aspects of the executive summary um that you might want to consider changing john yeah so um i had include i don't know if you can pull up my side-by-side summary it's on that i've sent to you and people do that yeah i mean that kind of lays out the two versions and then i could maybe more clearly explain why i think one is preferable to the other
john help help me here so i intended that this be the executive summary be the one that you wrote have i pasted in the wrong one or did well are you making edits to the one that you wrote out so in in the report that tom had sent out i believe on sunday gene there there was a paragraph that i had added and sent to you okay in response to the discussion at the last meeting where we talked about uh providing some content around and we we agreed that we didn't necessarily have to use the word local preference but something that captured the gist of what we discussed so okay so you're saying there's a missing paragraph well that was the paragraph that i had sent to you somehow changed and morphed into a bullet that ended up in the report that tom sent and i can't uh i don't have the forensic know-how to understand who made that change whether it was you or or tom but i had some objections to the the form that it ultimately ended up as on the screen i don't know if you guys can see it or not change i made was in terms of where innovative which we have just discussed so on the screen right now is the original and the revised if you want to come over here okay so i had no intention of revising that paragraph john that you provided i just lost it somewhere the stuff on the right is just something i figured hadn't been completely covered because you know we had an extended conversation about the issues of determining what radius we put around wayland and you know so that's why i said determine a means um so you know let's just use your paragraph if the rest of the committee is doesn't see anything they want to change i can't see anything period okay i can't see that i printed i'm gonna read it this way okay it's also here in my lab we're feasible so that future development could provide housing um where where was the original language uh is that reflected in the current draft it is not bill i had sent it uh again i had offered to craft some language i sent it to gene and tom uh at the at the conclusion of our our meeting our last meeting but the original language bill is on the left side of the screen right correct but that's not currently in the draft is that right that's correct i was suggesting just um adopting the language that i had originally submitted and deleting uh the language in the in the contained in the bullet in the current draft that you were sent so do people feel that the original language that john used um i can explain some of my rationale for a while yeah no i i prefer john's writing and i just lost it somewhere i had no intent of removing or revising it no problem there's no problem with retaining john's original language well just one comment yes do we agree it's accurate to say many models cannot support local presence or would it be some or it could be like many seems like most to me so if people read that they might conclude that it's going to be a really hard thing to do um i think it's accurate to say that many of the models that we heard as part of the committee presented to us would preclude a local preference because they're all dbs many of them many of them are so hence many of the the models that i think might be proposed i'm not i i'm not wedded to if you'd like to edit that that's fine so so just so i'm clear that the original language in the left hand box would that replace the fourth bullet on uh in the current draft on page four well let me put this way bill i think before we we delete the fourth bullet all right use the original draft i'm not sure exactly where it was but we just we just will retain it so the question is whether i'm sorry um but the the placement was also something that i i felt strongly should be maintained in the body of the executive summary as opposed to one of the bulleted recommendations which i feel makes it kind of a standalone prescriptive more more strong and i don't think that's what we ought to be doing with regards to this particular point so you're okay then if we delete the current fourth bullet on page you're okay we delete that absolutely and and we just retain your original executive summary as written well the the amended executive summary the the language that i had sent at the conclusion of our last meeting that wasn't my original oh right this was an additional paragraph right i was i had offered and agreed to uh include language that was reflective of the discussion reflective of our choice of words which included surrounding communities if you folks would remember and we have that whole discussion about abutting communities uh bill whitney felt that framingham wasn't an abutting community brian corrected him um okay so i was again that was the intent of of what i was attempting to do with the language that i had submitted all right okay can you can you tell us john where you want to place that paragraph um i believe it was it was let's see have i don't have the i don't have my final document that i had sent to you and tom in front of me i i emailed it to you and tom with the uh amended language in bold i think i can and they have it here let's see when i go presumably this is a paragraph in the executive summary that precedes the bullets okay that's correct and i think it could go right before the based on the level of interest i think that might have been where it was now oh yeah i had sent it after the the paragraph that says the committee emphasized that any so it would be the penultimate paragraph before the books i think that probably if memory serves me that's probably one that works as you read through these quickly okay but we recognize this we engage we distilled yeah and then we also identified this particular concern which is important about by this thing that's among the residents yeah all right so bill adams fill me in i see it right now the change to the current version includes taking and deleting the fourth bullet and inserting a paragraph john has provided and is that paragraph the within the original box behind okay yeah right john yes and you want that and you want that to be placed where exactly the first person it would be the first paragraph on page 4 above above above the above the word based on the level of interest
great thank you um okay now let's let's i just have a concern though that the original i like the original paragraph but it doesn't really talk about preferential treatment for waylanders so that's my concern maybe that's covered somewhere else but this paragraph doesn't really say that well it specifies wayland or surrounding communities
it doesn't it doesn't say there would be preference for wayland people though right yeah where the other the replacement does say something like preferential treatment that's just my concern yeah so at right now the fourth bullet's gone based on the changes so what you're saying um stephanie is that maybe we keep a part of the fourth bullet um but we don't want to contradict ourselves right with based on i think well at some point don't we want to say we're interested in having preferential treatment for people from wayland we discussed that and and i do think that that is consistent with um with our discussion okay yes we have language like if possible or um where feasible or many don't allow it but that means that some do but it doesn't mean we would limit it to those that do it's tricky it is tricky and it's also you have to be very careful because this language is going to end up in this document which will be consumed by the public and i i think you also want to limit you don't want to limit the flexibility for future rfp respondents to read between the lines and say oh this is what those folks in wayland are really intending okay i just i just i mean i just think it risks creating expectations um and possibly constraining the select board before proposals are even received i mean that's why i tried to keep the the language extremely broad and why i was really kind of pulling back from the much more specific language that's contained within the uh that was contained within the bullet stephanie yeah i can see it'd be very tricky to say they it should go just to waylanders or some of it i guess you can really if you really can't say that then this is a good way of putting it you can't you can't say it more directly the words aspirational consideration i think it's a great phrase um and i think it sends a message to the select board what this how this committee sees it mm-hmm um okay let's move on now to the uh report as a whole um so whitney are there certain lines sections that you'd like to edit keeping in mind the phrase can you live with it oh tom you're tough tough what if what if i don't accept that premise no i which is why i invite you to the climate and go to it you can reach out if you like no i i i i'm very happy with the report my only uh quibble was uh with respect to the the very paragraph we just talked about uh i i'm kind of where stephanie is as you all know and i think that the uh that the the new paragraph uh affords more of an opportunity for someone to uh infer that there's an interest in having some wayland residents accommodated here so um i i have um no specific comments with respect to the body of the report i think uh we owe gina great debt of gratitude for uh the enormous amount of work that she has done and the good cheer with which she has accepted uh our uh appreciation for the uh the language she's developed but uh to not avail ourselves of it stephanie how about yourself are there aspects of the report that you'd like to address i think the report is great um i don't have any other issues with it gina how about you uh i think we've done good work uh you know perhaps we've done a little more than they expected but uh hopefully it will uh enrich their discussion when they get around to this um i appreciate the opportunity to participate in the committee and uh it's been a great learning experience for me um and will help me personally and i look forward to being active in the next steps of the project and being a community advocate for uh folks getting to a positive view of this project i have a few not that many though and i agree that it is it's a really nice report what page are we starting page five uh the first paragraph of that slide number three okay the last sentence it says and several residential properties about the parcel i think it should be seven residential properties above the parcel yeah i meant i meant seven and it sounds like yeah it says several good darn spell check well yeah but also the word above and then about right not about yeah yeah good about um okay next page page page seven three the community values and standards it felt a little redundant there it says the same stuff doesn't it dignity autonomy inclusion like is um in both paragraphs it's a small thing it's not bad to say it twice but it just seemed redundant um okay guarded by shared community values dignity autonomy and inclusion i'm sorry what paragraph mean uh number five five in the first two paragraphs okay we talk about dignity autonomy shared they're slightly different but they're kind of redundant all right um they could be combined if you maybe yeah i think they could be combined because they're the same they're really important concepts okay i'll combine just a bit of editorial yep
okay so this is so now i'm on page 10 right i wanted to propose for number four um with regard to green space yeah that we change the language from should be considered to is recommended like these are recommendations so preserving a section of the existing property as non-buildable green space is recommended could be if possible or something but we want to say that we recommend it not that you should just think about it okay what do people think of that that um how about is recommended if practical okay if practical that work for you bill works okay recommended if practical if practical is recommended um space and then in this in this set of recommendations is there a place to put the preference the aspirational desire to prioritize or attend uh include some you know dedicated space for waylanders like could that be a recommendation also if practical it feels like a common area almost um well no it would be like um a recommendation of this committee would be if possible we should uh reserve space for waylanders to live in these these units you know oh i see preference what we talked about local before local preference is there a way to say that and make it a recommendation or is are we still the same thing that we we want to keep it under specified and see what we can do you probably talked a lot about this last time so sorry if i'm making it up again but well i think the point that you're making is also it's in the it's in the executive summary the executive summary is a summary where where is it in the rest of the document that's yeah right yeah i was thinking that but i didn't i i would object to having something in there i just want to make sure that it's very carefully worth it right um i just feel like most of the if i were a select person um i would go to the executive summary i would look for the recommendations and then i would try to find some examples of what are you guys talking about um so i think this could be a really important part of the report so probably paragraph seven is the is the location for modification based on that you know adam's so yeah um maybe another sentence at the end of that that says if feasible could use feasible again um the needs of i would suggest including and linking to the um the town's housing plan okay i mean the town's housing plan is very specific we can even make a quotation uh we could pull language from the town's housing plan that points out the fact that there there is not enough dedicated uh housing for people with disabilities in the town of wayland i think i pointed out at the last meeting the fact that there's only five bedrooms in one single group home in the entire town of wayland juxtaposed against the rest of the town's population so we i i think you can thread the needle at least in part by referencing the town's uh housing plan and a different section yeah would you add it to that part no i think this is a good place because it's under recommendation yeah yeah i like that adding it to that uh because it's a public policy goal i mean there are specific recommendations in that plan that have to do with producing housing for people with disabilities within the town of wayland how about the committee further recommends that it
consider the town's um unmet need no the what's it what's the document housing production plan housing production plan recommendation um guideline address uh to address um the housing needs of way of wayland the town's housing direction plan to address the housing needs of the town's housing needs of wayland's um wayland's disabled adults that kind of um it's great i'm not being i'm not housing needs i'm not i'm not i'm not housing needs housing needs i'm not yes bill um doing so i think obliges somebody to say oh i gotta flip back and find the housing plan and see what that says uh the other kind of approach that we talked about that i think nobody liked uh was uh to say something something aspirational uh a simple sentence saying it is hoped that uh wayland families may uh be able to take advantage of this opportunity or something of that not not a recommendation per se but a expression of a hopeful expression i like that too it is hope that wayland families can you utilize that can be served by this development or something
wayland families and individuals with disabilities i don't think you'd want to preclude adults that are living independent of their families i just hope that wayland's what phrase do you like wayland's wayland's uh wayland families loved ones and no i i i just want to get away from sort of the maternalist paternalistic uh maternalistic sort of attitude um families and or adults with um disabilities individuals or adults yeah yeah individuals or adults i mean you can just leave it at that sorry i couldn't hear that does anybody else have that difficulty give it a go so no uh it is hoped that this development will provide opportunity housing opportunities for adult individuals individuals with disabilities who are are wayland residents or wayland resident uh uh no i'm trying to i'm gonna i'm gonna yeah it is hope that this development will bring you will provide housing
opportunity i may address in part the unmet housing needs of wayland's disabled adults individuals with disabilities individuals with disabilities thank you beautiful um is hope that this development will address in part right the unmet housing needs of individuals with disabilities living in wayland well i guess they're well they're living usually with parents right yeah i'm not sure but living somewhere right yeah this would be a better place to live yeah about this is hope that this the law that will address the law that will address in the heart the unmet need of and the house housing needs housing needs housing needs of uh disabled wayland adults no individuals with disability adult language with disabilities living in wayland which was your suggestion individuals with disabilities living in wayland yeah okay yeah good that works um honestly that was it for me actually right about uh um yeah i think it's a remarkable report uh i'm really happy to have been part of this committee and um i'm really thrilled to see this go to the next step and uh hopefully keep moving forward but uh i think it's a great document gene did a great job and everybody in the committee how about john how do you feel um just a minor uh edit and that's to uh delete the executive summary from the top of page three one one of the two we don't need it twice it is i'm sorry okay three it's great just delete one of the executive summaries we have exactly yeah yeah yeah someone else was which one do you want to get rid of it we'll keep the we'll keep the big one keep the big one flip the coin didn't yes any further john no no i think uh i can live with it well it's nice no i i didn't mean it like that no no it did a great job no i concur with what everyone said gene your uh time and effort you put in your flexibility your willingness to listen to the committee to i'll push your own thoughts in a classy professional way um i totally respect uh your opinions and i appreciate your your respect to the process and um i'm very proud of this report and i've had a pleasure spending time with each of you in this endeavor and frankly this is kind of the first step and i suspected um so whitney and and i may be calling find you on occasion the process that continues anyone you know overnight or whatever has a couple other typos they see feel free to reach out to me and um i'm happy to include those with that in mind um i'll entertain a motion to authorize the chair to um submit this report as amended this evening and any further typos whatever definitely have uh to the select board um prior to uh prior on a deadline on february 15th of 2026
so moved any one second second a second second from brian uh those in favor of motion uh gene yes bill whitney yes stephanie lynch yes brian yes johnny yes uh seven happy vote uh grand grand grand so the next item on the agenda is to consider and approve meeting minutes of february 3rd 2026 which is tonight and i did draft them like the suggestion of the town clerks as best i could um and they i think reflect our discussion this evening however to the extent that they do not i will edit um accordingly therefore i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of february 3rd 2026 as amended and again amendments will improve reflect our uh discussion so moved thank you bill thank you bill i hear a second second second those in favor of the motion regarding the february 3rd 2026 minutes uh jean yes stephanie yes philip whitney yes brian yes john yes i'll say yes um i'll now entertain the motion to adjourn so moved all right do i hear a second second thank you um was it in favor of speaking yes seven yes no 20 yes yes um but yes so if people really want to get together if we're another zoomy why would you let me know he can do so i'll set feel free law and uh not a problem i'm sorry i told you we'll be we'll be disbanded soon but the motion does prevail something seven nothing uh again great to be with you all and and i'll keep you posted on the final uh final product and obviously send it to you uh so you can take a look
On Zoom, we have Phil Whitney, Gene Milburn, and we expect possibly Stephanie Lynch will join us and possibly Phil Adams will join us shortly.
Invite individuals to give public comments on here if they like. Our agenda will include public comment, consideration of minutes, and discussion of the draft report to be submitted to the board and then we will adjourn. Ask anyone online who is interested in giving public comment. You see anybody, Robbie? No, I see no online. All right. So we'll give the public comment period and move on to minutes. In the packet, we have minutes of three meetings, the 8th of January of this year, the 27th and 29th, and actually we have eight minutes from the 3rd. And the reason why I draft minutes from the 3rd is, it's possible, but this will be our last meeting, so these minutes will be addressed at the end of the meeting. If we conclude, this will be our last meeting. If it isn't, then we won't address it. Focusing then on the minutes of January 8th, 27th, and 29th of 2026, I want to obtain a motion to approve those comments. So moved. So moved. Thank you, Bill. And second, Brian? Yes. Brian, second. Any discussion on the minutes? I mean, none of those in favor of approving the minutes. Jean? Yes. Bill, Whitney? Yes. Right. John? Yes. Brian? Yes. Myself, as an A. Yes, both, as a 5-0 bill. Bobby, you can keep your eye out for Stephanie or Bill Adams. I appreciate that. All right. So let's move on now to the most recent draft report. Evening, Stephanie. Great to see you. Stephanie's joined us at 7-0-3. So the most recent version of the draft report, this is my thinking, that we try to complete the report this evening, keeping in mind the phrase that I suggested the last time we met, that is, is it something you can live in? Thomas, I'm sorry. Were we going to review the January 27th minutes? Oh, I'm sorry. A motion of all three. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Am I mistaken? Am I right that I suggest all three? Or that I list all three? And if it's unfair, we'll redo it. I thought it was one. OK. Fine. Great. So let's move on now to the two other minutes in the packet. Two of the four, January 27th and January 29th, 2026. I want to maintain a motion for approval of those two sets. Motion. That's done. Second. Second. Brian. Okay. Discussion on those two? There is none. Close in favor of the motion to approve the sets of January 27th, 26th, and January 29th, 2026 minutes. Close in favor. Bill Whitt? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Still left? Yes, but I have to abstain from the 29th because I wasn't there. OK. So what we're going to do is we're going to, if you don't mind, we'll withdraw the motion. We'll do one set at a time. Sorry. That's right. No, I appreciate that. Make it cleaner. So are you OK with drawing the motion, John? Yes. Yes. OK. So the motion withdrawn will file. It will entertain a motion strictly for the 27th of January of 2026 to approve those minutes. Is that the motion, John? Yes. And the second one? Yes. Thank you. Any discussion? All right. None in favor of that one set only. Bill Whitt? Yes. Jean? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Bill Adams? Yes. Yes. We're moving on to the next set of minutes, January 29th to 726. Do I hear a motion to approve of those minutes? So moved. Thank you, Brian. Second? Second. Thank you, John. Discussion? Doing none in favor of approval of those minutes. Bill Whitton? Yes. Stephanie? Yes. Jean? Yes. Brian? Yes. John? Yes. Bill Adams? yes yes you've seen you know 29 this one yeah 29 you you i wasn't there so you want to understand this is the 29th oh sorry i've stayed okay and i'll say it so 601 great um okay um so let's move on now to discussion of drafting for the most recent version that you received and that is both in the packet online and i received it separately as well um if possible i'd like to complete the report this evening i should keep in mind the phrase can you live with it
and if we're in a position to approve the report tonight with changes that we make tonight um one way to handle it is to take a vote to authorize the chair to make changes um that are discussed tonight and then submit it to the select select uh that we basically vote to submit it with as amended but it's premature to consider that motion based on our um given that it'll be based on the discussion to see with that of mine i'd like to turn to um a document that was sent to me by robert hummel the same document the reviewing he had some comments and i'm going to walk walk you through it you have the if you have the most recent version handy i'll just walk you through his his comments and we can discuss and so if you're with me if you turn to page four last there are four bullets on page four so harvard's comment was as follows local preference question mark there are state guidelines for this process which i believe is something that we have discussed and we agree that if you're going to have definition of if you're going to have local preferences that may work with some organization and some arrangements with the state and some may not so i think robert's comment is accurate and i'm not going to insert his comment because it was just a comment on what he read and um moving on now to page seven um uh he just has a couple of a couple of typos which i've noted in um under section six first paragraph uh suggesting we insert five and eighty eight and that's fine that's just a typo moving on to page 15 um under under appendix c capital a let people at the moment to get there on the first paragraph it says executive office of housing and middlewood communities eohlc and then next to it it says massachusetts department of housing and community development d8cd so he suggested we take that we take that up from massachusetts and the d8cd that seems that that accurate to you jean um what i read was basically that the dhcd had had become a city subsidiary uh part of the eohlc but that it still had a defined mission and i know john thinks that that's not true and i don't know how to what to do you know so um john do you agree with robert that we should we could strike me i do i do i believe that was the the the title of that secretariat level uh agency was that the name was changed and the mission was changed in 2003 in 2000 2023 2023 yeah thank you based on that comment are you okay if we if we take out that gene yeah i don't think it's worth worrying about all right moving on to the third paragraph where it says low income housing tax credit lihtc he just wants to insert instead of dhcd replace it with eohlc okay okay so i'll make that change moving on page 16 um section this section b second paragraph
called massachusetts rental voucher program mrvp he wants to again replace dhc with eohlc is that okay that's fine that's fine um right um right moving on to page 17 he wants to make the same change under the first bullet of policy and shi relevance okay okay with that he wants to make the same change under the last paragraph role group homes the last bullet again replace dhcd with eohlc no objection um it's another one under affordability uh what page uh 18 18. maybe search the whole document for dhc but looks like you got it paid oh yes he did yep you're right about that i missed that good we've got changed um his next entry is on page 28 under data sources same change the fourth bullet moving on
that's the last one so let's move now to let's continue on with the draft and um at some point soon i'd like to address this issue of executive summary but before we go there i'd like to address the note that jane has on the top page of the cover page um where she says note to committee members in this version we offer an alternate to appendices enf it is concluded at the end of the document please study and determine if you prefer one approach over the other in addition to what we heard and learned has been returned in the rfp replaced with the ww's version ecologically sound native manscaping and recommended various of the smaller changes were made in the pjm also key additions or changes are gene mean are in red so um let's focus on appendices e and f and um um i'm interested in people's thoughts on that uh any thoughts on um um and just so i'm clear i mean you're proposing that the e and f included instead of instead of another section is that right well i i ought this um this optional material this additional materials it's just a different way of describing some of the same issues and i thought we had quite a bit of discussion in the last meeting about that table and there didn't seem to be really great comfort with what was in it so i thought well is there some other way i can run through this data uh and present it that the group might like better so that that's what i'm attempting to do here is see if there's something the group likes better and i wouldn't suggest that we include all the uh copy about how the content of the chart was determined but i thought the committee might want to see it so whitney thoughts uh i thought uh the the changes that gene had made uh to enf in uh the body of the uh of the report uh captured uh very well the sort of discussion of the committee so i thought e enf as they are presented in the body of the report uh was very clear and concise and i very much appreciate her uh making those changes uh as well as uh the entire report which i continue to think is excellent i um note that the enf can be found on page 19 of the report uh stephanie what was your impression i thought the report was excellent and really um i like it very much in its present form and i like the enf in the body of the report as well um and much better than the alternatives presented at the end and i just think it was an excellent job and it really captured what we were thinking and i think it's going to be very helpful to the select board and it does accomplish i think what our group was supposed to accomplish and i'm and jenna really appreciate gene it's a great job um putting together our thoughts thank you i feel lucky enough i agree as is clear and i think it's it's good because it doesn't claim to be comprehensive i worry at the end of that table where it says you know uh projects in massachusetts it might imply that this is somehow comprehensive and it's not and so i agree with what other people said i think what's in there now is pretty solid i had a couple maybe editorial things but nothing big okay for later um brian yeah i agree i i think um the table's really useful and um it gives people an idea when i would spell out some options for the uh the boys like what you consider so so the comments thus far have been they like e and f in the body and are okay with without correct me if i'm wrong okay without the e and f in the back um so are you saying that you like you like the um i know i get in the body it keeps the curtains so you like to the report yeah right just so we're clear the uh you like the uh current appendix e and appendix f or um what did you want to insert some of the or some or all of the exhibit alternate appendices e and f which start on page 30. i think have an e and f in the body is where it should be the one is the one that's there now it's okay yeah okay and then john um i i felt that the um the appendix e and f in the body were preferable to the alternates however i i just had a question so gene in the body appendix f uh remains unchanged is that correct because we we had talked about going back let me get there so page 21 we had gone back and forth about having some issues with some of the numbers some of the descriptions possibly i don't remember who threw it out but somebody suggested perhaps uh removing the the capacity all together um so my question is did you make any changes to that um i don't think i i chopped i chopped off the far right hand column which no one seemed to like so that's gone uh it was five columns before um and frankly i wouldn't know what changes to make in the fourth column um which is one of the reasons i you know came up with the alternate to to you know try to see if there was some way to get uh to a presentation that people felt more comfortable with so i think i made a comment john that i felt that the fourth column with the numbers might be helpful to the board um okay but that doesn't mean it takes a day so if others if others want to uh eliminate that and um i don't feel terribly strongly about it but i think it got it provides some guidance to the select board what we're talking here
i mean i i didn't necessarily feel strongly one way or the other as in terms of eliminating that i just remember from our last discussion having some thoughts about the the the numbers as they're laid out there and specifically i think i was suggesting gene that perhaps we could consider lowering the the the lower end of some of those numbers as to whether or not people felt comfortable comfortable or not with the higher end of those ranges i i i don't have a i don't have a strong feeling but i thought perhaps we could lower some of those numbers to make them more inclusive of a lower number like like six to ten for example a number one yeah but i'm i'm i was thinking more okay
i was just thinking it might be useful uh to go to um page 32 and and look at 32 uh and 33 and 34 and 34 and look at the newer analysis and look at the numbers that came out of it and in those i used um properties of organizations that presented us so i i avoided trying to go to the general case and uh look at the larger market and said okay well these were examples that we were told about because these organizations came to us and um so you can see the numerical ranges there that's what i'm offering is take a look and see if that helps i'm personally not troubled by the numbers and uh exhibit f uh gene's first sentence uh is all scenarios are illustrative relative capacity estimates are intended to compare development scenario approaches rather than you know so i think it's uh i think it's a good sort of generic description of what's out there i think it uh is useful for the select board to see the kind of range of options i don't think one would infer that a uh 24 to 36 person uh residence or residences is recommended but rather it just illustrates that uh a broad gamut was considered uh researched and i'm personally comfortable with it i'm i'm okay with it too in my view um the chart the dependencies on page 32 33 34 might be a bit overwhelming to the members of the select board like too much information what does this all mean i think in the end it will come down to which organizations respond to the rfp and what's the division how many houses how many how many residents um i think what page 21 demonstrates is that it could be two homes two to four homes with with this range of individuals that might that might that might be interested in in establishing a project at the site john i just feel like we wouldn't want to preclude for example having a um an art center and a group bomb and if that was the case you would be precluding a single dds funded group home with five persons so i i don't i'm not going to uh uh yeah fight folks on this i mean if you'd like if you'd really like to keep those numbers i i don't have a strong objection i was just going to throw that out um so my sense of the the consensus is that that we won't correct me if i'm wrong we won't include alternate dependencies enf that begin on page 30 and end on page 35. um you want to object to that okay i i don't know the comment on appendix f as yes in the body in the body on page 21. it still doesn't feel crystal clear to me that that these aren't recommendations like that these are you know hypothetical situations and is there any way to make that clear but what i could do is i could insert the following phrase all scenarios uh are illustrative illustrative um but but but not but not necessarily recommended no in other words what word would you yeah yeah i mean it says these examples seen are are seen under their sites and are not recommendations i just yeah it says right there does say not recommendations okay it says our our illustrative illustrative it says right at the very bottom it does yeah i think there's a three dollar award but not recommendation that's good i like that let's it let's say so clear it says yeah the last last sentence is these are examples seen on other sites and i'm not exactly so good i missed that okay my bad that's all right um all right um so i'm gonna now uh ask bill whitney are there other aspects of the report um actually before i go there let's move to the to the executive summary um gene submitted version and i inserted a word that is found in the report at least two other times um but some may not agree with its placement in the executive summary the word is innovative innovative what paragraph is that um it was one of the bullets i believe i thought it was within the executive oh oh okay yeah okay it's in the second bullet on page four under the subsidized housing um inventory bullet right and um john i think you felt that that would get too specific there i just felt that we were if you inserted the word innovative you were requiring that bullet to do double duty when the original intent was really to uh to focus on the subsidized housing inventory in other words um we we were hoping to suggest to the select board well actually bill adams uh was the one who suggested inserting the word prioritize which i actually really liked um and we agreed to adopt at the last meeting so prioritize uh development models that create accessible housing for adults with disabilities while also producing subsidized housing inventory so i thought the the purpose of that bullet was really to sort of focus on the subsidized housing inventory as opposed to focusing on non-traditional models which i think is
i was just again i'm not wedded to the to opposing the change i just felt that throwing innovative in there is perhaps diluting from the uh original intent of that bullet which was subsidized housing inventory focused um that's fine do you see value in including that word within the executive summary or not necessarily well my suggestion um which i had thrown out to to tom and jean in response uh was to to we we could create a separate bullet um since we're creating bullet bullet recommendations at the end of the um executive summary okay to suggest that the select board consider non-traditional models okay a simple something something yeah i i don't have the wording in my head but something that focuses on i think what the intent of your inclusion in that word was which i support i do as well yeah so if i it's a sentence if we if i had a bolt this is the select board considered non-traditional innovative um housing models does that work sounds fine is it turning off to say that they could be um replicated or emulated by other towns or i don't think so uh i think we'll i think the report includes discussion of some return models in other towns but we have like a great success that other people will want to copy so that oh i think more disabled people get housed if i said yeah that's true but i think i think to say that it i guess if it's innovative people yeah okay but imitation is good as one flowery
flowery time will tell where that happens bill whitney i wonder if it should say innovative models are encouraged as well as traditional models i would hate to scare off an experienced developer or service provider using something that's you know more standard i just want to again see that we cast the broadest possible net and see what's out there so i don't want to discourage somebody who has got a tried and true proposal or approach copy a sentence after the end of the second bullet um that we say you know prioritize development of these types of models and then you know encourage submission of innovative as well as traditional approaches sure i could add a sentence yeah i could add a sentence as people just said both innovative and traditional models um should be considered yeah that work bill yeah great were there other aspects of the executive summary um that you might want to consider changing john yeah so um i had include i don't know if you can pull up my side-by-side summary it's on that i've sent to you and people do that yeah i mean that kind of lays out the two versions and then i could maybe more clearly explain why i think one is preferable to the other
john help help me here so i intended that this be the executive summary be the one that you wrote have i pasted in the wrong one or did well are you making edits to the one that you wrote out so in in the report that tom had sent out i believe on sunday gene there there was a paragraph that i had added and sent to you okay in response to the discussion at the last meeting where we talked about uh providing some content around and we we agreed that we didn't necessarily have to use the word local preference but something that captured the gist of what we discussed so okay so you're saying there's a missing paragraph well that was the paragraph that i had sent to you somehow changed and morphed into a bullet that ended up in the report that tom sent and i can't uh i don't have the forensic know-how to understand who made that change whether it was you or or tom but i had some objections to the the form that it ultimately ended up as on the screen i don't know if you guys can see it or not change i made was in terms of where innovative which we have just discussed so on the screen right now is the original and the revised if you want to come over here okay so i had no intention of revising that paragraph john that you provided i just lost it somewhere the stuff on the right is just something i figured hadn't been completely covered because you know we had an extended conversation about the issues of determining what radius we put around wayland and you know so that's why i said determine a means um so you know let's just use your paragraph if the rest of the committee is doesn't see anything they want to change i can't see anything period okay i can't see that i printed i'm gonna read it this way okay it's also here in my lab we're feasible so that future development could provide housing um where where was the original language uh is that reflected in the current draft it is not bill i had sent it uh again i had offered to craft some language i sent it to gene and tom uh at the at the conclusion of our our meeting our last meeting but the original language bill is on the left side of the screen right correct but that's not currently in the draft is that right that's correct i was suggesting just um adopting the language that i had originally submitted and deleting uh the language in the in the contained in the bullet in the current draft that you were sent so do people feel that the original language that john used um i can explain some of my rationale for a while yeah no i i prefer john's writing and i just lost it somewhere i had no intent of removing or revising it no problem there's no problem with retaining john's original language well just one comment yes do we agree it's accurate to say many models cannot support local presence or would it be some or it could be like many seems like most to me so if people read that they might conclude that it's going to be a really hard thing to do um i think it's accurate to say that many of the models that we heard as part of the committee presented to us would preclude a local preference because they're all dbs many of them many of them are so hence many of the the models that i think might be proposed i'm not i i'm not wedded to if you'd like to edit that that's fine so so just so i'm clear that the original language in the left hand box would that replace the fourth bullet on uh in the current draft on page four well let me put this way bill i think before we we delete the fourth bullet all right use the original draft i'm not sure exactly where it was but we just we just will retain it so the question is whether i'm sorry um but the the placement was also something that i i felt strongly should be maintained in the body of the executive summary as opposed to one of the bulleted recommendations which i feel makes it kind of a standalone prescriptive more more strong and i don't think that's what we ought to be doing with regards to this particular point so you're okay then if we delete the current fourth bullet on page you're okay we delete that absolutely and and we just retain your original executive summary as written well the the amended executive summary the the language that i had sent at the conclusion of our last meeting that wasn't my original oh right this was an additional paragraph right i was i had offered and agreed to uh include language that was reflective of the discussion reflective of our choice of words which included surrounding communities if you folks would remember and we have that whole discussion about abutting communities uh bill whitney felt that framingham wasn't an abutting community brian corrected him um okay so i was again that was the intent of of what i was attempting to do with the language that i had submitted all right okay can you can you tell us john where you want to place that paragraph um i believe it was it was let's see have i don't have the i don't have my final document that i had sent to you and tom in front of me i i emailed it to you and tom with the uh amended language in bold i think i can and they have it here let's see when i go presumably this is a paragraph in the executive summary that precedes the bullets okay that's correct and i think it could go right before the based on the level of interest i think that might have been where it was now oh yeah i had sent it after the the paragraph that says the committee emphasized that any so it would be the penultimate paragraph before the books i think that probably if memory serves me that's probably one that works as you read through these quickly okay but we recognize this we engage we distilled yeah and then we also identified this particular concern which is important about by this thing that's among the residents yeah all right so bill adams fill me in i see it right now the change to the current version includes taking and deleting the fourth bullet and inserting a paragraph john has provided and is that paragraph the within the original box behind okay yeah right john yes and you want that and you want that to be placed where exactly the first person it would be the first paragraph on page 4 above above above the above the word based on the level of interest
great thank you um okay now let's let's i just have a concern though that the original i like the original paragraph but it doesn't really talk about preferential treatment for waylanders so that's my concern maybe that's covered somewhere else but this paragraph doesn't really say that well it specifies wayland or surrounding communities
it doesn't it doesn't say there would be preference for wayland people though right yeah where the other the replacement does say something like preferential treatment that's just my concern yeah so at right now the fourth bullet's gone based on the changes so what you're saying um stephanie is that maybe we keep a part of the fourth bullet um but we don't want to contradict ourselves right with based on i think well at some point don't we want to say we're interested in having preferential treatment for people from wayland we discussed that and and i do think that that is consistent with um with our discussion okay yes we have language like if possible or um where feasible or many don't allow it but that means that some do but it doesn't mean we would limit it to those that do it's tricky it is tricky and it's also you have to be very careful because this language is going to end up in this document which will be consumed by the public and i i think you also want to limit you don't want to limit the flexibility for future rfp respondents to read between the lines and say oh this is what those folks in wayland are really intending okay i just i just i mean i just think it risks creating expectations um and possibly constraining the select board before proposals are even received i mean that's why i tried to keep the the language extremely broad and why i was really kind of pulling back from the much more specific language that's contained within the uh that was contained within the bullet stephanie yeah i can see it'd be very tricky to say they it should go just to waylanders or some of it i guess you can really if you really can't say that then this is a good way of putting it you can't you can't say it more directly the words aspirational consideration i think it's a great phrase um and i think it sends a message to the select board what this how this committee sees it mm-hmm um okay let's move on now to the uh report as a whole um so whitney are there certain lines sections that you'd like to edit keeping in mind the phrase can you live with it oh tom you're tough tough what if what if i don't accept that premise no i which is why i invite you to the climate and go to it you can reach out if you like no i i i i'm very happy with the report my only uh quibble was uh with respect to the the very paragraph we just talked about uh i i'm kind of where stephanie is as you all know and i think that the uh that the the new paragraph uh affords more of an opportunity for someone to uh infer that there's an interest in having some wayland residents accommodated here so um i i have um no specific comments with respect to the body of the report i think uh we owe gina great debt of gratitude for uh the enormous amount of work that she has done and the good cheer with which she has accepted uh our uh appreciation for the uh the language she's developed but uh to not avail ourselves of it stephanie how about yourself are there aspects of the report that you'd like to address i think the report is great um i don't have any other issues with it gina how about you uh i think we've done good work uh you know perhaps we've done a little more than they expected but uh hopefully it will uh enrich their discussion when they get around to this um i appreciate the opportunity to participate in the committee and uh it's been a great learning experience for me um and will help me personally and i look forward to being active in the next steps of the project and being a community advocate for uh folks getting to a positive view of this project i have a few not that many though and i agree that it is it's a really nice report what page are we starting page five uh the first paragraph of that slide number three okay the last sentence it says and several residential properties about the parcel i think it should be seven residential properties above the parcel yeah i meant i meant seven and it sounds like yeah it says several good darn spell check well yeah but also the word above and then about right not about yeah yeah good about um okay next page page page seven three the community values and standards it felt a little redundant there it says the same stuff doesn't it dignity autonomy inclusion like is um in both paragraphs it's a small thing it's not bad to say it twice but it just seemed redundant um okay guarded by shared community values dignity autonomy and inclusion i'm sorry what paragraph mean uh number five five in the first two paragraphs okay we talk about dignity autonomy shared they're slightly different but they're kind of redundant all right um they could be combined if you maybe yeah i think they could be combined because they're the same they're really important concepts okay i'll combine just a bit of editorial yep
okay so this is so now i'm on page 10 right i wanted to propose for number four um with regard to green space yeah that we change the language from should be considered to is recommended like these are recommendations so preserving a section of the existing property as non-buildable green space is recommended could be if possible or something but we want to say that we recommend it not that you should just think about it okay what do people think of that that um how about is recommended if practical okay if practical that work for you bill works okay recommended if practical if practical is recommended um space and then in this in this set of recommendations is there a place to put the preference the aspirational desire to prioritize or attend uh include some you know dedicated space for waylanders like could that be a recommendation also if practical it feels like a common area almost um well no it would be like um a recommendation of this committee would be if possible we should uh reserve space for waylanders to live in these these units you know oh i see preference what we talked about local before local preference is there a way to say that and make it a recommendation or is are we still the same thing that we we want to keep it under specified and see what we can do you probably talked a lot about this last time so sorry if i'm making it up again but well i think the point that you're making is also it's in the it's in the executive summary the executive summary is a summary where where is it in the rest of the document that's yeah right yeah i was thinking that but i didn't i i would object to having something in there i just want to make sure that it's very carefully worth it right um i just feel like most of the if i were a select person um i would go to the executive summary i would look for the recommendations and then i would try to find some examples of what are you guys talking about um so i think this could be a really important part of the report so probably paragraph seven is the is the location for modification based on that you know adam's so yeah um maybe another sentence at the end of that that says if feasible could use feasible again um the needs of i would suggest including and linking to the um the town's housing plan okay i mean the town's housing plan is very specific we can even make a quotation uh we could pull language from the town's housing plan that points out the fact that there there is not enough dedicated uh housing for people with disabilities in the town of wayland i think i pointed out at the last meeting the fact that there's only five bedrooms in one single group home in the entire town of wayland juxtaposed against the rest of the town's population so we i i think you can thread the needle at least in part by referencing the town's uh housing plan and a different section yeah would you add it to that part no i think this is a good place because it's under recommendation yeah yeah i like that adding it to that uh because it's a public policy goal i mean there are specific recommendations in that plan that have to do with producing housing for people with disabilities within the town of wayland how about the committee further recommends that it
consider the town's um unmet need no the what's it what's the document housing production plan housing production plan recommendation um guideline address uh to address um the housing needs of way of wayland the town's housing direction plan to address the housing needs of the town's housing needs of wayland's um wayland's disabled adults that kind of um it's great i'm not being i'm not housing needs i'm not i'm not i'm not housing needs housing needs i'm not yes bill um doing so i think obliges somebody to say oh i gotta flip back and find the housing plan and see what that says uh the other kind of approach that we talked about that i think nobody liked uh was uh to say something something aspirational uh a simple sentence saying it is hoped that uh wayland families may uh be able to take advantage of this opportunity or something of that not not a recommendation per se but a expression of a hopeful expression i like that too it is hope that wayland families can you utilize that can be served by this development or something
wayland families and individuals with disabilities i don't think you'd want to preclude adults that are living independent of their families i just hope that wayland's what phrase do you like wayland's wayland's uh wayland families loved ones and no i i i just want to get away from sort of the maternalist paternalistic uh maternalistic sort of attitude um families and or adults with um disabilities individuals or adults yeah yeah individuals or adults i mean you can just leave it at that sorry i couldn't hear that does anybody else have that difficulty give it a go so no uh it is hoped that this development will provide opportunity housing opportunities for adult individuals individuals with disabilities who are are wayland residents or wayland resident uh uh no i'm trying to i'm gonna i'm gonna yeah it is hope that this development will bring you will provide housing
opportunity i may address in part the unmet housing needs of wayland's disabled adults individuals with disabilities individuals with disabilities thank you beautiful um is hope that this development will address in part right the unmet housing needs of individuals with disabilities living in wayland well i guess they're well they're living usually with parents right yeah i'm not sure but living somewhere right yeah this would be a better place to live yeah about this is hope that this the law that will address the law that will address in the heart the unmet need of and the house housing needs housing needs housing needs of uh disabled wayland adults no individuals with disability adult language with disabilities living in wayland which was your suggestion individuals with disabilities living in wayland yeah okay yeah good that works um honestly that was it for me actually right about uh um yeah i think it's a remarkable report uh i'm really happy to have been part of this committee and um i'm really thrilled to see this go to the next step and uh hopefully keep moving forward but uh i think it's a great document gene did a great job and everybody in the committee how about john how do you feel um just a minor uh edit and that's to uh delete the executive summary from the top of page three one one of the two we don't need it twice it is i'm sorry okay three it's great just delete one of the executive summaries we have exactly yeah yeah yeah someone else was which one do you want to get rid of it we'll keep the we'll keep the big one keep the big one flip the coin didn't yes any further john no no i think uh i can live with it well it's nice no i i didn't mean it like that no no it did a great job no i concur with what everyone said gene your uh time and effort you put in your flexibility your willingness to listen to the committee to i'll push your own thoughts in a classy professional way um i totally respect uh your opinions and i appreciate your your respect to the process and um i'm very proud of this report and i've had a pleasure spending time with each of you in this endeavor and frankly this is kind of the first step and i suspected um so whitney and and i may be calling find you on occasion the process that continues anyone you know overnight or whatever has a couple other typos they see feel free to reach out to me and um i'm happy to include those with that in mind um i'll entertain a motion to authorize the chair to um submit this report as amended this evening and any further typos whatever definitely have uh to the select board um prior to uh prior on a deadline on february 15th of 2026
so moved any one second second a second second from brian uh those in favor of motion uh gene yes bill whitney yes stephanie lynch yes brian yes johnny yes uh seven happy vote uh grand grand grand so the next item on the agenda is to consider and approve meeting minutes of february 3rd 2026 which is tonight and i did draft them like the suggestion of the town clerks as best i could um and they i think reflect our discussion this evening however to the extent that they do not i will edit um accordingly therefore i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of february 3rd 2026 as amended and again amendments will improve reflect our uh discussion so moved thank you bill thank you bill i hear a second second second those in favor of the motion regarding the february 3rd 2026 minutes uh jean yes stephanie yes philip whitney yes brian yes john yes i'll say yes um i'll now entertain the motion to adjourn so moved all right do i hear a second second thank you um was it in favor of speaking yes seven yes no 20 yes yes um but yes so if people really want to get together if we're another zoomy why would you let me know he can do so i'll set feel free law and uh not a problem i'm sorry i told you we'll be we'll be disbanded soon but the motion does prevail something seven nothing uh again great to be with you all and and i'll keep you posted on the final uh final product and obviously send it to you uh so you can take a look