April 16, 2026 – Community Preservation Committee – Video & Transcript
April 16, 2026 - Community Preservation Committee
All right. There are sufficient numbers of us, and welcome everybody. We're going to go ahead
and start. Recording in progress. Awesome. There's a plethora of us now. Yes, thank you everyone so
much for coming. Today is April 16th, 2026. It is 6 30 ish p.m., and this is a meeting of the
Community Preservation Committee of Wayland. I'm Susan Weinstein. I'm pleased to be joined by Doug
Stotts, Judy Ling, Leslie Stewart, Kay Gardner-Westcott, Maureen Cavanaugh, and Larry Kiernan,
and I think that's everybody who's on. And of course, thank you to Jalen for coming on on
Thursday and getting this going. Is there any public comment? Seeing none, we'll do a quick
review of the minutes of January 7th. Everybody got a chance to see them? Yes. Okay,
what you got for us? I didn't see them. Oh, well, since we're kind of in a hurry tonight,
why don't we table those and we'll do them at our next meeting? Okay. Is there a motion to table the
minutes of January 7th? So moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. All right, we got to do the
roll call thing. Sorry, Doug. Here. Leslie? Am I saying here or yes to? Yes, yes would suffice.
All right, thank you. Larry?
Yes. Maureen? Yes. Okay. Yes. Judy, and I'm a yes. Judy, you said? Yes. Awesome. Okay. All right.
So this thing came up that we, last year, we had approved, sorry, we had recommended to town
meeting and town meeting had appropriated funds for rehabilitation of the playground at town
building, primarily,
used by the Children's Way, but open to the public at other times when school is not in session.
I was first told that it was moving to Locher, but in fact, they're moving the Children's Way to Happy Hollow School, and there is not an appropriate playground at that location for this age group. So there was a request made that we figure out how we could consider changing the location of the playground to be used by the Children's Way. And so we're moving the Children's Way to be worked on from town building to Happy Hollow School. We received an email from Catherine Brenna from the Recreation Department saying that they were very much in favor of this. I don't know, Leslie, did you guys agree already? We did. We had a nice long meeting today. And you guys said yes? No? So yeah, so we had a lot more questions than we anticipated having. We were thinking it was going to be a pretty clear decision just to say, yes, to adjust the funds. But because it was such an abrupt or last minute request, there was a lot of uncertainty. And we did meet with the superintendent and we got some of our questions answered. A lot of it had to do with space and space of the other facilities and how things were going to be shift. Watching the school committee meeting, they said that they would be adjusting the buffer zone and possibly there could be a knock-on effect to kindergarten, adding more kindergartners in future years. But so anyways, the point is they are, but they were saying in the school committee meeting that if there is an influx of additional kindergartners, that they would have to change the buffer zone a little bit or use more of the to shift more people to loker. So there could be a knock-on effect or there could be some adjustments. Because of that, we wanted to make sure that the money could be used for whatever site that it was needed. And we wanted to kind of following the conservation department's lead when they submitted their application to the Hamlin Woods boardwalk thing, their entry said conservation properties boardwalks. So we would like it to cover recreation departments, playgrounds, so that if there is an adjustment, it can be used for wherever it's needed. Um, I would prefer that we limit it to like the three elementary schools or, you know, something like that, just because otherwise it could be asked to be used at a non-school location. Yeah. And I had one question for Catherine or whoever, and that is, it's said the playground is, or the children's way is moving for the 26, 27 school year. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for good and not moving for one year and then. Well, that's not a question for recreation. That's a question for the superintendent. Um, we did ask that question at our meeting today and he said for the time being it's moved, you know, some it's moved. Um, and that's, it's not to rebuild the town building space or anything. It's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've, yeah, there is some consolidation. So, um, so, you know, Susan, to what you've said, you know, that's not what we approved at our meeting. We just said playgrounds. Um, and it really was with the intention to follow this purpose. Um, but we didn't specifically say school playgrounds. Um, but what we could say is in connection with the location of the children's way, does that work? I just don't want it, you know, going to or constituent fields or whatever. I think, yeah, no. So the issue is that if the money's currently for the town building and it is a different function to just the children's way, the town building has to have a playground here. So it has to be used. So, so that would, um, that's kind of the conflict, um, that, uh, you know, if we, if we move the money strictly to schools, we're, we're not actually covering the purpose as well. I'm not, I'm not clear on why there's a conflict. I mean, the children's way is at the town hall. It's not a school, but the children's way is part of the school department, school system. And it's, so it's associated with that. It's a public playground and there's a school and the playgrounds at the schools are also public when school's not in session. So I'm not sure where the conflict is.
Um, so I'm saying by limiting the use to just school playgrounds, if the children's way is a school and moves away from the town building. We can no longer do any needed repairs at the town building. If it's limited to just schools and the children's way is vacated.
Well, I don't think that amount of money is going to cover both things. Is it?
Well, I don't know. I think the original plan for this, I mean, I just watched the school committee meeting yesterday. So I'm sure you've caught up to that. They just said that it was for the fencing. But then when I spoke to, um, Susan, wait, sorry, what was that? Susan? You didn't hear that. Okay. I just saw you make a, no, I, I, I wasn't paying attention to the school committee. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No. So they said, so from what I understood, it was only supposed to be the fencing. And I thought, okay, that's a little, that's a small ask, but, um, there are additional items that are going to be needed. Um, I mean, it could use the whole thing. It could be, they could be asking for more. Um, but so they have to take one of these playgrounds and make sure, I don't know what the percentage is, but a certain percentage of it is applicable to third and fourth, uh, third and fourth, four-year-olds. I can't say the words. Three and four-year-olds. Three and four. Thank you. It just, yeah. Susan, can I ask a question? So if I understand correctly, the children away playground at the town building is no longer suitable to be a playground and that will be shut down. No, it's still going to be there. Yeah. No. Caught up in like conservation issues and stuff, right? Susan, Catherine Brunner's raising her hand. Do you want me to bring her over? That would be awesome. Yes. Catherine. She dares. She dares. You know, actually valuable information. What a concept. Sorry. Thank you so much, Jalyn. Our hero.
Woman of the hour. Hi, everybody. She dares. I can help answer that question about the condition. Of the town building playground, if you'd like, I would love you to thank you. So the town building playground was inspected by a certified playgrounds specter late in 2024. We got the report early in 2025. The playground is in usable condition. There was some recommendations to make some repairs, both to the playground and the fence, which we have done, um, just to allow the children's way to continue to use it. It is in usable condition right now, and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. With, you know, just ongoing maintenance that we do at all of our playgrounds. So there are some years left in the town building playground. So basically we have a kind of a capital schedule, a rotation of replacing the playgrounds. And if we say, uh, effectively swap this one with happy hollow, uh, we do believe that the town building playground will continue to serve the town until its next turn comes up in the cycle.
So I thought, Catherine, that the, um, playground at the town building was next in the cycle to be repaired or improved, right? Sure. It was, um, and mostly because, um, the children's way that we're using it, we're, um, pretty vocal about the needs of that playground and the ways that they used it, um, which might be different if it's, if it's a playground used at town building and there's not a school present. But, um, for example, we have 12 playgrounds in town. When we initially. We had our 24 year schedule, we looked at all of the playgrounds based on their, the age of the equipment and the condition that they were in. And the worst ones were at the time, the clay pit hill playground and the happy hollow playground and the town beach playground, which we, so we prioritize those three playgrounds first. And we've since renovated those with, um, obviously with CPA funds from you all. Um, and then like the next four in the rotation, we're all about the same in terms of age and condition. And so we chose the town building to be next because of the children's way. It was there. Um, and so the, the idea is that the appropriation was for, to benefit, um, the children's way preschool. And so it kind of made sense for it to follow them. Um, it also gives us an opportunity to kind of reprioritize those four playgrounds that were about the same, um, since that time conditions have changed and requests have come in. Um, so it allows us to kind of rewrite that, that 12 playground, 24 year schedule. Uh, in a way that makes more sense now, 10 years later that we, we just have better in different information. Um, yeah, one of the other, I was going to say, the other thing I'd add was my wife was very involved in the group that raised the funds to build the Alpine road playground almost 30 years ago, which is very much focused on, you know, two, three and four year olds. Right. And, and still going strong as far as I can tell, but in some ways, you know, having the one at Alpine and having a. Similar one at happy hollow sort of, you know, spaces those out fairly evenly in the north and south sides of town and might be more equitable to the two, three and four year olds than the one, one, a town building and one in Alpine.
Right. Right. So Catherine, I have a question. Is there a playground there for the three and four year olds could use, and because there was a mention of just putting up fencing. So I think that the school committee at one point talked about just fencing in the existing. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think that the school staff at one point talked about just putting up fencing in the existing. That's what they wanted to talk about. So again, I think that, you know, for those that are interested, if they're interested in, you know, some of the things we talked about, like that kind of thing that we talk about before, is that the school is either going to have the building in terms of theоздium. Or you know, with the school going to have a building, that's going to have the wind on it. That's what they want to have in terms of putting it in terms of building. This is a new thing. And there's the idea that they're going to be able to move that building that we're going to be able to move back into the city. And so. for two- to five-year-olds, and then there's also some safety considerations where they need to be separate, and so if we were going to install a two- to five-year-old playground or some elements of it, they would need a fence around it. Most people who run programs for two- to five-year-olds really prefer to have it fenced in just because they're more likely to have runners at that age. Yes. So if we transferred the funds to make the request to make it at Happy Hollow, does that mean that you're starting all fresh for the brand-new playground? Does it include ADA compliance, or is the school doing that, and all you're requesting is money for the fence? No, the money that was initially appropriated from your committee and then eventually town meeting last year was $400,000. $400,000 to renovate the Children's Way playground and also install some port-in-place. I talked to a playground consultant that I work with here in town today, and he feels pretty strongly that we could build new, a two- to five-year-old playground new in the size that is needed for the Children's Way that has that port-in-place surface so it would be fully accessible, and playground technology has just come a long way, and so the equipment might look different than it does a town building now so that each element is really... It's really inclusive and accessible. And it includes ADA compliance. Yeah, it has to be, yep. So question, do we go from 12 playgrounds to 13? That's a great question, and the Recreation Commission brought that question up today. So we won't know until we go through the design process with the playground consultant at the Happy Hollow School. Happy Hollow School has kind of two separate play areas right now that we consider two separate playgrounds. Okay. One is kind of older, also five- to 12-year-old equipment kind of in the back, and so if we were going to just remodel that and outfit it for two- to five-year-old equipment, we'd still be at 12 playgrounds across the town. If it makes more sense to kind of just build off the existing playground, in my opinion, I think we'd still be at 12. We'd just have a bigger footprint of the Happy Hollow playground, but we might find that it's more useful to have it, say, on a different side of the school, which would add potentially a 13th playground. You know, to the inventory of playgrounds. Okay. So you were at your commission's meeting, I assume? Yes. And what language do you think? Well, I mean, to us, you know, we try to defer to the commission, but we don't have to. But I wouldn't want to get on, you know, town meeting floor and have the Recreation Commission stand up and be like, no. So. So what do you think would be appropriate language for how we designate where this funding would go? I mean, it's hard to say. I think that the commission in general wanted the sense for it to be more flexible so that potentially that we've kind of petitioned the CPC and the town meeting for these funds to renovate the town building and the Children's Way playground. And it wasn't our decision necessarily to move the Children's Way. And so we're trying to be good partners. We're trying to be good partners to them and help them kind of move this money where the kids are going. So I think the Rec Commission was really looking for just a little bit of flexibility in case things don't go as planned. Or if town meeting doesn't approve this or what, you know, how it goes. They were concerned mostly about having to turn the money back and start over again. So they were just looking to kind of expand. Like, I think the original suggested language was Happy Hollow or town building, but a little bit more flexibility. You know, I'm not sure. I think to Leslie's point, it does make sense to keep it so that it serves, you know, a school department function, but also the general public. But I think that's a criteria for your committee, that it has to be open to the general public. So, yes. Well, I kind of agree that this was specifically targeted because it was part of a school and I would be OK with, you know, Well, I kind of agree that this was specifically targeted because it was part of a school and I would be OK with, you know, limiting it to schools rather than just saying you can use it anywhere you want to use it in town. So just to put it in perspective, of the 12 playgrounds, six of them are at schools. And then, like Doug mentioned, there's Alpine, there's the Anna Williams Playground, Kitchener-Whip Ballpark, Riverview Ballfield has one, and the Town Beach, which we just renovated last year. But we do know that there is interest in the Kitchener-Whip Ballfield playground. So, you know, wouldn't want it to get derailed for that. And just so you all know, the language for the motion that came from town council just says, just adds or happy hollow school at the end. But I also don't know because it says rehabilitation and this isn't rehabilitation. This would be rehabilitation or construction, right? Yeah. Or even exchange. We have to get out there with the playground designer and see what our options are. But my sneaking suspicion is that this is just going to be an expansion of the existing footprint with some kind of barrier between the two. Would it be a hardship to wait a year and let things settle? Yes. I think the school would say yes. I think that their goal is to move the school by September. And it would be really tough to run a preschool without a playground for an entire year. I mean, I think they want it to be open on the first day of school in September. Like I. I had concerns about the timeline. They didn't want to wait through the winter. So can you really do that? I did talk to a playground consultant who felt that this was the right budget and the right timeline that they could do it. Well, so children's way would move to happy hollows, what you're saying? Yes, that's already been announced and that they will move. All right. And I should just say that we are spending way more time on this than town meetings going to care. Yes, it's nice that we take it all so seriously. But I also think that if we're agreed in concept that we're okay with moving, you know, the playground money away from town building to where it's needed, then I think that that's probably fine. Should we just say it follows where the children's way moves to in case it goes to Loker instead? Well, I think by saying to a school or school grounds, then that covers, you know, the last minute they go up to clay pit that it's already covered and we don't have to worry about it. And we could always amend it on the floor. So. So, Leslie, the question is whether you would be comfortable saying to the rec commission that you did your best to get us to do what they wanted, whether this would suffice. Or not. Yeah, I think I think we can meet in the middle with school playgrounds would be really the best outcome. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. What is the objection? You know, if it if the cards fell in a way that it was going to be spent, you know, at a different playground that wasn't necessary school, what is the objection to that? Like, why is that a bad thing? Not a bad thing, but it's a good thing for schools. And that's what you brought. It's the you brought a specific school playground that you repaired or updated. It was kind of a hybrid town building in Children's Way is kind of a hybrid function. And so making it just. But it was the schools that was pushing it, right? Yeah, I viewed it as core to the Children's Way mission. And I was just question. I mean, I. I think the other thing is that, you know, we try to defer to the schedule that you guys have. And so if the schedule is saying that, you know, it should be at Alpine, for lack of me knowing anywhere else. That doesn't satisfy anything with the current need. So that's why I was trying to tell it a little bit. That's great. Yeah. But then. So would we still consider the town? Building part of a school. Location. If money was needed. If the Children's Way is there. So then if we don't have all of the. Up keeps we needed a town building that that that is lost now. Because that still has to be a. Playground because the town building exists. Or the language that they had sent. The attorney had sent says or Happy Hollow School. And we could just change that to or. A school property. Or a school property housing the Children's Way. And because it seems that's where the need is, is where the three, four and five year olds are. Is that they came asking for playground for that specific group. Yeah. And then and then we toned it down. So it didn't say specifically the Children's Way. So it said the town building. I think school grounds give you more flexibility, Catherine, but you can choose. No, as we think about this, I haven't thought about this before now, but I'm just thinking the appropriation is 400,000. If we go to Happy Hollow School and we find out that we can build this. Playground a two to five real playground at the Happy Hollow School that meets the Children's Way need and they can do it for 250. Do we turn back the difference back to the CPA or could it be spent a town building to do what we set out to do a town building? Sans the children. I think ethically you turn it back to the CPA. I think you should turn it back because that's. What do you because you requested a playground for this particular group. And if that group isn't at the town building. But you're forgetting that this particular group does encompass the general public. We have to have a general public playground at the town building. Yeah, yeah, it reads up to 400,000. So not 400,000. So, you know, I think you need to turn back any extra. To the CPA. Without making any improvements to the town building. It's one or the other. You're saying we can accomplish both. And if it were to take 400,000 to refurbish the town building one, but only 250 to create a whole brand new one. That was an arbitrary and a previous one that was existing. Right. What I'm saying, it costs more money to fix it rather than make it. We're turning a procedural discussion into a philosophical one. Such as law, right? So does does or mean exclusively one versus the other or could it be both? Said the lawyer. Now I'm going to have to actually reread the proposal. Because because it says to be expanded for rehabilitation of the playground at Wayland Town Building or at Happy Hollow School. And to me like that. It doesn't mean that like rehabilitation. It's not construction, you know, so I think that that language is too limiting. So it has to be and or right there to do both. Yeah, I don't I don't know. Or it could be and but then that would mean that should be both. Right. All right. How about this? So you guys really believe that we couldn't we couldn't use the 400,000 to cover both. If funds were available. We don't know how much any of this is going to cost, right? So this is speculation. So why don't we just say and or in case there is money left over and you can put sand in the one that's town building or what have you. I just don't. Yeah, I just want to make sure we stay with 12 and that go up to 13 because that would be some kind of creep that I think the general public needs more say. I mean, town meetings already. I mean, we've already recommended the 400,000 to playground with or without an S. And so I don't I mean, I think it's fair. We've given the Recreation Department the 400,000 to put into we put it into into children's way. But if if they had extra and they want to put a different one, it's still we've already agreed that 400,000 is a is a good number. And so they should be able to spend it versus us clawing it back and then going back to another town meeting to give it to them. Give it to another playground. But the reason for the school grounds is because somebody mentioned earlier, it might get moved to loker. And so then the question becomes, if you pour all the money into these two, then they're well, I don't know it. That's the only reason I chose school grounds is because if children's way got moved again to loker at the last minute, like it is for Happy Hollow at the moment, then it then they would have the capability of doing the playground at loker rather than Happy Hollow. We just say Happy Hollow and they move. Then we're stuck in the same position that we are at the moment. And I just from our discussion with the superintendent today, he felt like this move from the children's way to the Happy Hollow school was, let's not say permanent forever, but like I think he said, at least like a 10 year move that it wasn't going to move from school to school year to year. That they have done extensive studies. On, you know, enrollment trends and, you know, even birth rate trends. I mean, we could do something like one or more playgrounds for ages two to five. Still not the original purpose, but we'll do well. And that's limiting potentially, because if the children's way is not at the town building playground, there might be an appetite to convert that into a five to 12. Now that there's not a right. Thanks. I'm complicated. I'm looking here. I think we're just trying to figure out the best way to spend this money to satisfy the highest need, you know, without limiting ourselves. And like you said, like, we are probably going to come back in the future and go before this commission. Well, we were expecting you every two years. Exactly. And that'll be this December. Well, if we can come up with something that isn't the exact language, but gives us the parameters of what we want, and we can agree on that, then I think we can take that to town council and have them make it into the right language. Well, I like your suggestion of playground or playgrounds for what it was at three to four, three and four or three to five, whatever it was. Then that opens up all the playgrounds that are for that age group, which is what we were initially voting on. Particularly for the children's with the site where the children's way is located. I don't know that you have to say that where the children's way is located, because it's I see what you're saying. They can make it three to five year old someplace else. OK, I understand what you're saying. But then that means that they can't go back. I'm sorry. Go ahead. The application that we approved in town meeting approved last year was to support the children's way. And town building. Yes. The children's way at the town building. Because we largely conflated the two. Yeah, it wasn't and the building town building. It was at the town building, at the town building. Yeah. So is there a problem? I asked the lawyers in the room of saying and or the children's way and or Happy Hollow. But I mean, town building and or Happy Hollow. Yeah, I mean, well, then the question came up. What if it's not Happy Hollow? But I mean, it's it's this is the situation we're in now. So why don't we just say that? Yeah. I mean, it's April. Happy Hollow has to know where they're moving. And in terms of the movie, my kids went to children's way. They went three places. They went to Loker, they went to Happy Hollow and they went to town building, you know, so it moves. So I mean, and then if that that limits it and then if they don't use the money, then I get then we get it back. But I think it'd be not hard to spend the money. So we could. So do we specify the children's way or not specify the children's way? I would do town building. And or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For happy. Hello? And I wouldn't specify two to five because Catherine said, not every playground needs two to five. You know, if if if the Children's Way isn't there, that may not be what the improvements are, that the Recreation Department would make it at Town Building. Then why include the time building? As Catherine, as I said, there's extra money, could they because town building has identified needs and they then put it towards that. But if there is a two to five playground elsewhere in town, couldn't they use it towards that? No, they would use it too. not two to five improvements at town building. They use it towards, I don't know, six to 12 or whatever. Right. I understand that. But if we approve for a playground for that particular age group and they had money left over, couldn't they, if it was at a school, couldn't they use that money to upgrade that playground? Well, they don't cater to the, I mean, elementary schools don't generally cater to two to five, right? I mean, five and up. But you don't know when they're going to open up a second kindergarten at another school either.
All right. I'm trying to think of how we can make this simple.
We're way past that. Take it to town meeting. I mean, the idea is that it shouldn't be controversial. Yes. That what we're really asking is, you know, thank you, town meeting. You appropriated this money. You appropriated this money for a playground at town building with the intention that it would support the children's way and then, you know, off hours activities of the public. Here we're saying we would like to do playground work to support the children's way and off hours activity for the general public. Right. And if there's money left over, then to use it elsewhere. I mean, that's the problem. I just, you know, I don't understand why we're talking so at length about it because recreation has historically always turned back to extra funds. And so it's not as if you've seen history of using these funds for something other than its purpose. We're just trying to be broad to make sure that we're covering it. There's no intention here to do something that this group is not privy. There's no intention here to do something that this group is not privy to. I don't think we're worried about you. I think we're worried about public pressure. Well, I have last year's warrant open. Yay. And the children's way is mentioned as a glancing blow, if you will. So the finance committee comments, which is the one that speak to it, says the funding requested, which will be used to renovate the town buildings playground, including replacement, the older equipment will come from the CPF uncommitted fund. This playground. Which is used by the children's wavering most weekdays in the public. Most other times will be the fourth of 12 playgrounds parks to be renovated with CPA funds in recent years, talks about the 12 year plan, et cetera. And upon reading this and the rest of the article, I'm pretty much convinced that, uh, we did not sell to town meeting this year that last year that this was solely for the children's way and therefore I'm much more comfortable with giving flexibility in the spending of the funds.
It sounded like it was for the children's way. And, and the, it mentioned the children's way was used at the town building and for the general public at other times, but spoke in much more general terms. And I don't think people went out and said to town meeting that this is, you know, something we're doing for solely for the children's way, so I don't think we have a credibility. Problem asking for the, uh, the usage of the funds to be broadened across all playgrounds, knowing that hopefully, you know, we wanted to go to loker for the children's way, happy, happy, yes. Don't confuse me. I'm having enough trouble. All right. So back to you, Leslie, what would you like to say? I mean, um, it, I mean, if it could say, um, I, I don't, I don't even know if we, we should prioritize it and say, you know, for town building happy hollow or other school playgrounds, you don't think we should, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, cause the way it passed was playground at whaling town building. The proposal was, which is, which is used by the children's way.
So I think, but that wasn't, that wasn't part of the motion that was made. That was part of the motion that was part of the finance committee. That was part of the motion that was approved at the previous town meeting. Um, so to change it from saying rehabilitation of the playground at whaling town building by adding at the end or happy hollow school and, and, or the future site of the children's way. Oh, I like that. Yeah. That's better because if they decide to go to loker instead, we won't have this conversation again. I mean, can we just do school playgrounds, town building and or school playgrounds? Yes. Uh, is there a general agreement with that? Sure. I think that's fine. Cause town council's going to pretty it up anyways. You could call it that whatever they do.
All right. Um, so, uh, we would go back to town council and ask that the language be changed to say, uh, adding at the end and, or school playgrounds playground located at the school, one of the whaling public schools, right? You don't want it to go to the private schools.
Yeah. Okay. Uh, and just, does anyone think that there's a problem with it saying rehabilitation and nothing about. Installation. Expansion, expansion, creation, whatever.
You say rehabilitation and, or new construction or expansion or whatever.
If we said construction, does that cover rehabilitation too? Yes.
I'm asking, are you nodding Catherine? Are you just, I think the more flexibility we have, the better that we're going to be able to, you know, spend this money in a way that benefits the most children. Does the word construction include rehabilitation? Well, yeah. As long as it includes painting. Yeah. Huh? As long as it includes painting. Yes. I mean, we could say rehabilitation, whatever. Yeah. Okay. I mean, we can tell the, uh, town council, we intend for it to be expansive, that it's not restricted to just rehabilitation. It's not restricted, just new construction and whatever she thinks is the language that's needed for that, then that's what we'd like to do. Okay. So. Whatever kind of building. Yeah. Work kind of thing, and either at the town building and, or, uh, a site at a Wayland public schools. People are good with that. Yes. Yes. So is there a motion that you guys can just say, so moved. So moved. So seconded. All right. Um, everybody's okay with what we're voting on. We're all clear on it. Okay. Judy. Yay. Doug. Yay. Jerry. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Yes. Leslie. Yes. Maureen. Yes. And I'm a yes. All right. Thank you, Catherine. Very much. Appreciate it. Thank you all. I'll be back in December to talk more about playgrounds. Okay. We have 12 of them all. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maureen, do you have to skedaddle? I do have to skedaddle now. So I'm going to miss the discussion of Gleason Lane. So hope someone's taking notes. I believe that that became a formal request. So moved. Someone needs to take notes for the next part of the meeting. So. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Maureen. All right. Okay. Bye. All right. Who is able to take notes for the last bit of the meeting?
Do I really have to name somebody? Well, I'm doing the talking. So. Well, I appreciate that. I'll write something down. I've never taken notes for a meeting. Just. Okay. Well, I'll scribble some things, too. And between the two of us, we'll come up with something. And it should be on tape as well. So. Oh, that too. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. And actually, a neat trick is to record the recording on an Apple voice memo and then upload it to any AI engine and ask for a transcript. Oh, God. I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that.
I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I just don't. I don't know how to do that. And I'm going to do a voice memo on here. We'll just we'll just we're good. Could someone do a voice memo for me? I can see really can help after the fact, Leslie. Already. All right. I can do it. I don't know that there's any other discussion. I'm sorry. I was going to say the next item on the agenda is the Annual Town Meeting articles and presentations. My only update is that they thought that they were going to put both of our articles on the consent calendar because there's an amendment. because there's an amendment, this, the projects, one can't be on a consent calendar. It's likely that the, you know, the set of size and transfers will be in which case there's nothing to be said on them on that particular one. So I'll just have some remarks ready for this. And I would venture to say that somebody from recreation should probably be, you know, on deck in case there's any questions about this part. Okay. Doug, 17 Gleason. Yes. And Jalen, if you could put it up. Wonderful. I don't know if everyone has been following 25 Holiday Road and the situation there, but briefly 13.7 acres bought in 56 under the care, custody and control of the school committee, fully wooded. And from what I've heard, it's been a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, looking at Google Earth over the years seems to be about a half pine, half evergreens and half hardwoods. Article 16 is asking for $200,000 to quote, investigate alternatives at the annual town meeting. And their focus seems to vary, be very much on new growth and tax revenues, both one time from sale of the property and ongoing tax revenues. Monday at the select board meeting, there was a forum pretty well attended by the neighborhood and a few other concerned citizens. I'm a member of the district, which is myself. And it actually seems at the end of it that there's a collaborative approach emerging, that the select board at their next meeting on the 27th is going to talk about appointing a working group like they did for Route 20 South and 212 Kachichiwet. It also seems to me that, you know, it's likely to end up as market rate housing, simply because we're in the 40 B safe harbor for the conceivable future and rezoning out of what is R 40 would require two thirds town meeting vote. Also encouraging at the meeting was the members of the select board were both using the words conservation cluster, and town homes as potential things to put their jail or if we can move to the next.
Coincidentally, at the same time, since I believe 1936 the property just to the south of it which I have outlined in yellow is for sale. Called 17 glaze glaze and row lane. It certainly isn't the. oddly shaped lot. It's 6.3 acres, 6.03, with a 2,300 square foot home that's in pretty rough shape. The home is now being, the property is now being sold by his estate. Went on for sale in October at two and a half million. The most recent price cut was to 1.4 million. And, you know, a reasonable lay observer would assume that, given Wayland's stature, that developers had looked at it and found it largely undevelopable. And the reasons for that, the driveway is only 30 feet wide, and I think the subdivision requirements are 50 feet. There's a steep drop-off halfway through the property. And it's such a oblong lot that it might be tough to put in both a road and the size and shape lots for McMansions you want. And it would require a quarter mile long road, and those cost about a thousand dollars a foot right now. The other thing is that 17 Gleason Lane does have a 900 foot plus border contiguous with 25 Holiday. Next up, Jalen, if we go to the next one, there we go. So, you know, this is a bit of a long shot, but Wayne Gretzky said 100% of the shots you don't take don't go in. So, the scenario would be that, you know, the working group recommends and the school committee recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends the school committee and select board vote to pursue a conservation cluster development, which levers the existing roads, you know, so it's sort of a little loop off of both Holiday Road and Orchard Lane. If those were freestanding homes under the conservation cluster ordinance, it would be 10 or 12 of them on 20,000 square foot lots plus the road. That might be six to seven acres of the 13.7, or potentially three, four unit townhome buildings plus the road, which, you those four acres uh under the conservation cluster bylaw that would have to deed the rest of conservation and permanently protect it uh that 17 gleason continues not to find a buyer uh that concom who started discussing this last night sponsors an annual town meeting article in our next cycle to acquire it that we and and the annual town meeting next year agree and the result of this three cushion shot would be that you know the town gets the new growth and the monetization that looks for for 25 holiday plus the town preserves 13 to 15 acres of open space forever that the base circuit trail is able to be relocated off gleason lane roadway onto uh or at least half of it and there's access to this new conservation area for gleason lane so if we can keep rolling jaylen so this is you know just my very rough not to scale uh completely unqualified hacking around on powerpoint schematic of what would look like where you'd have the three townhomes around that new little loop road between holiday lane and orchard uh holiday road and orchard lane excuse me and you would also have this fairly large new conservation area uh with the access up that neck to gleason lane where's the drop off there doug uh if you look at where the word area is it runs roughly uh well no actually you can sort of see it um because just to the left of the sea in conservation yeah that's uh you know i think this is the the terrain view so where that shading is is where the drop off is and it's walkable so that they could get it's walkable yeah it's it's definitely walkable it's not a cliff okay but it is the sort of thing that you know it would take a lot of time to figure out how to do it but it's it's a it's a it's a little bit of work to build a road down i think uh susan already circulated my remarks at the select board forum which is the next page but basically you know it's what i said to tee this up if we go to the next one jaylen so this is what the base circuit trail could look like at the top is where it winds its way through sedge meadow comes into uh orchard lane or rather gleason lane where that top p is follows gleason lane down to route 27 and crosses it into what is the cal common conservation area where you see the dash red line take a left that would be down the current driveway of 17 gleason then it would take a right through the rest of the property and onto the main service road at north cemetery uh crossing to the current parking area for cal common following an existing uh uh path at cal common uh to the to the south south west and then you know currently the base circuit trail goes up and around and onto bow road but it's actually already relocated essence to the community center and when the wayland sudbury rail trail is built next year uh the base circuit trail will be routed upon that so if you go to the last page please jaylen thank you uh two potential votes that we might want to consider tonight uh one is to authorize the cpc chair or vice chair to contact the listing broker of 17 gleason lane to indicate the possibility of wayland acquiring the property using cpc funds should the property remain available into 2027 and you know any any discussion has to be you know that this is highly speculative and not probable at this point but at least one will let the let them know of the possibility and second since uh you know sponsoring the purchase will ultimately be the conservation commission's call to approve spending up to ten thousand dollars from administrative funds upon request of the conservation commission to conduct a professional appraisal of 17 gleason Lane should the conservation commission vote to sponsor a community preservation act application to acquire this property for open space and I don't think the pros appraisals cost ten thousand I think they cost less than five but but I'm not sure so that's why the number is there um would you go back to the fourth slide oh yeah the schematic so do you need the property to do this um you could do this without that property right without 25 holiday no you could do it uh without 17 gleason uh what I show here as being the town homes on 25 holiday would be achievable without 17 gleason but the extra we get is more conservation land and access more conservation land and access and and the reroad of the bct so would in I I can't really see it but you wouldn't have to go down that slope and then back up you could kind of stay along the top Ridge the trail would go from gleason down that long Ridge road to long the bridge to the cemetery is that your uh it's a slope Larry and not a cliff all right and well when I go to the uh Cemetery and look off that it looks quite steep yeah so that yeah that may require some work and and that steep part is already on town land is on cemetery land and you know with walking trails can be you know at a diagonal to read to reduce the slope so will they be satisfied with that small portion for housing or do they want to expand that further uh well you know that there are different points of view that I think there's a path that people coalescing on and what I think personally is that the town would have the option to designate these town homes as 55 plus I think there's also a market for very attractive town homes and you know we're talking about ones with individual elevators for instance and that would fetch a pretty high percentage of what instead putting 12 McMansions on acre Lots would get for one time I would get a very high percentage of what those uh 12 McMansions would generate in annual property tax revenue but would they have the advantage of putting you know almost no students into the Wayland Public Schools versus you know 10 or 12 McMansions would be likely to put you know say 20 or so kids into the schools so you know from a uh a Life Cycle economics point of view this may be the most attractive option financially to the town as well um and just and all of this is all of this is under the current conservation Cluster bylaw just for uh transparency there's been discussions at the housing trust about acquiring 17 Gleason and seeing about putting affordable housing there you're putting up and then should we then should we reword the uh the votes susan yep so doug can i ask you a question um if i heard you correctly the 25 holiday which is the bigger piece of the parcel that we're talking about here if it is sold then it's sold to a developer and why do you think the town would have any say as to what they would build uh well a the select board has asked for 200 000 and so it's the the select board if they get their 200 000 potentially has the ability to do the site work do the legal work hire the several engineerings and saying look we as a town have decided that we're selling you the developer the opportunity to buy 4.5 acres to build three townhouse three four unit townhomes or you know 6.7 acres to build 12 individual homes on a conservation cluster etc the second is that it sounds very likely that you know the select board and school committee are going to make their decisions after hearing the results of the citizens working group that's likely to be named and one one could surmise that that group may come up with a recommendation that looks something like this judy the the answer is that when the town is disposing of property it issues like an rfp and it can put whatever conditions it wants in it if somebody wants to buy it under those conditions i mean that's how we got all to oxbow i see so we we can actually say this is town land we're selling it but you have to abide by x y and z yes and we're not looking at building affordable housing there because we want the tax revenues that am i hearing that correctly the discussion and reading between the lines i've heard from the select board is and the finance committee is the need for new growth and and both one-time proceeds and ongoing tax revenue um it would take a lot of work zoning wise to put higher density housing there so i think this is the uh given that goal i think this is the likely scenario well if it's affordable housing you're going to have to deal with a lot of that um you would get a comprehensive permit and and many of those kinds of density things are waived yeah uh does that hold true in the 40b safe harbor a comprehensive permit's a comprehensive permit okay you know more than i had madam chair
i mean the town is under less pressure to approve it but yes okay yes so susan were you saying that you uh affordable housing was interested in 17 gleason yeah and how many houses would that be it was also it was also very preliminary discussion and there wasn't like rousing approval because we just didn't have enough information about it um but uh it's not totally off the table yet but there had been no discussion of like particular number of units or anything like that it was just you know this was a piece of property that was of it you know significant enough size and you know was there a possibility of utilizing it for affordable housing especially because it was you know not extraordinarily expensive yeah and and all of this is very preliminary so i would think you know any vote we take on making administrative funds available for valuation for appraisals that are should be involved in of in of of a lot of things um first of all we'd like to get your views and the include both the conservation commission and the the housing authority given what you just said the trust yeah um i'm just wondering whether we actually have to have them be the impetus for it or whether we can do it on our own i i think we can do it on our own yeah i mean i and and the way that the property would be appraised is it's always you know highest and best use it doesn't matter if we want to acquire it for open space or for affordable housing or whatever yeah it doesn't change the appraisal yes hey jalen can you scroll down to what uh he thought the motions would be please thank you and i don't know if that's our role to be reaching out to the i mean it's the select board that has the authority to do anything about acquiring property but i see this as merely letting the broker know that there's a process they want to monitor might be interested in monitoring okay any one of us could do that as a private citizen i was gonna say yeah how much did they want for the property the 17 gleason lane well right now the asking price is down 1.4 million jalen can you go back to that schematic map for a second too far too far one more one a little bit more yeah and if you look if you follow the neck the driveway that comes down from gleason lane just as it opens up on the on the north part of that is a you know a rectangular lot that lot was is called 17 8 17 a gleason lane and it sold last week to the owner of the house just to the north west of it for 175 000
that puts a value of 216 000 an acre on it and that times the six acres suggests that you know if an appraiser was going to use only that comp and i think they would use other comps which probably aren't as high per acre for you know unbuildable land basically that suggests a valuation around 1.3 million um and again that too is incredibly speculative is there is there an amount of land that's required to have a conservation cluster yes five acres just fine well let me rephrase that leslie The original lot has to be five acres.
The resulting developed part of it does not have to be five acres. Right.
In order to apply for a conservation cluster, you have to have at least five acres available. Yes. Yeah. Not that we have a whole lot of conservation clusters.
Is that driveway accessible to Gleason for these cluster, the townhomes? Is that a potential? No, what the road would be would be that little arc I have in the shaded area. And, you know, this is me playing around on PowerPoint, right? Yeah. So that would connect Holiday Road and Orchard Lane.
Well, you're a civic engineer. Yes. Civil engineer.
All right. I mean, I don't see any downside to us indicating that we would be willing to do an appraisal.
So, I mean, we could. We could approve spending up to $10,000 from administrative funds to conduct a professional appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane. And then we can decide when we wanted to do it. But we would have already had the approval done. Yeah. Are there other boards who are also looking at this property, like the Economic Development Committee or some, you know, some other? I just wonder if somebody else is going to be. Well, yeah, I think the Economic Development Committee. Is very interested in seeing this developed and may have gotten over their skis a little bit last year by suggesting it was a site of potential site for up to 50 townhomes, which got the neighborhood in quite a lather. The school committee actually has control over the land. And, you know, there's legal precedences on this piece of land as to how they would have to transfer it. So, you know, the select board is extending them a seat at the table. Is that? Property line, that thin gray line that goes through the R of conservation. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the southern line.
All right.
If there were other boards that were interested, it would only the only way we would do an appraisal would be for, you know, purposes consistent with the Community Preservation Act. Yeah.
But. All right, how would you want to do sorry, do you all just want to do like a, you know, we would be willing to spend up to $10,000 of administrative funds for an appraisal when the time is appropriate, you know, when warranted. I would I'd prefer to see it worded on the response on the request of the Conservation Commission or the housing affordable housing trust. By the way, a lot of other boards are doing that. So, this is, I guess, more of an appropriate way of doing that. And so, we just, you know, we want you to, you know, we want people to be able to get a sense, you know, an end of the appraisal that, you know, the local government is really willing to do it, is that they are willing to do it. And this is a, this is a reason we are doing this, this is because we want to have the stories in the community. And this is exactly that. And I, I, I think it's important, and I think this will be very important, because the community, the local government will want the stories, the local people will want the stories, the local community will want the stories that community is interested in. during the next cycle, or an application for the next cycle. Should we wait for one of those two boards to approach us before we do something like this, or should we preemptively approve it? I think preemptively, because then we don't have to call another meeting. To say you're pretty certain- Well, no, she was saying without there being a request from either. Doug, I thought you were just saying the opposite. No, what I'm saying is, this is on the table should they want to exercise it, as opposed to us needing to reconvene a meeting in August, for instance, to- I don't have a problem- This is something we would support now, so. I don't have a problem approving it because it would have to be done at some point. Yeah.
So you would say approve up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane. What's the last part you want? Upon request of either the Conservation Commission or- The Affordable Housing Trust, if you think that's the right agency. What about the Select Board? For them to support an application by them for the next Community Preservation Act funding cycle.
What about the Select Board?
Well, I think that comes up. I'm not sure that's necessary because, ideally the Conservation Commission or the Housing Authority moves forward with this once a proposal emerges from the working group that's being put together. Okay. I mean, okay, sorry, I won't. All right, so Doug has made the motion to approve up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane upon the request of the Conservation Commission or the Wayland Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund in support of an application for the next funding cycle. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. That was Judy. Right. Okay. All right. Can you just repeat the proposal, please? Says person acting as secretary and not functioning prop. I know you wrote it down and I'm so impressed because I did miss it. So, but could you just repeat it for my benefit? Sure. That the committee approve expenditure of up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane, upon the request of the Conservation Commission or the Wayland Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund in support of an application for the next funding cycle. And I can send it to you. No, thank you so much. I wanted to make sure I understood it so I can. All right. So any further discussion? Let's do votes then. Doug. Yes. Judy. Yes. Larry. Yes. Leslie. Yes, I'll go with that. Okay. Yes. And I'm a yes. Okay, so. All right. And then did you, do you think it's necessary for us to do the first motion that you had put here? I would be more comfortable with it. And I think it actually means something when we talk to the broker, let's say, you know, we voted to authorize. I would also say, you know, given the interest of them, we're pretty comfortable affording housing trust, making ores and doors are very popular tonight. And I suggest we do the same. I'm sorry, say that part again. So I would, you know, you and I may want to call the broker together. Oh, okay. Given the interest of the housing trust. So I move to authorize the Wayland CPA chair and or vice chair to contact the listing broker of 17 Gleason lane, to indicate, or to access the indicate the possibility of Wayland acquiring the property using CPC funds, should the property remain available into 2027? We just need to switch those because you had said the Wayland CPA chair and that should be CPC. And then it's CPA funds rather than CPC funds. Okay. So everybody heard that. It's pretty much what it says on the screen, except for it was and or. And instead of CPC funds, it would be CPA funds. What is the value in our contacting them rather than having the conservation or affordable housing committee contact? Because we can do it tomorrow. I think. And at least start a dialogue with the broker and hopefully the end seller. And I don't know if... I mean, the housing trust isn't necessarily ready to reach out and do anything. And I don't know what the concoms situation is. But I think for us to do it, it shows that, I mean, it has to go through us one way or another. So if we're the ones who say, you know, we've heard some talk about this and, you know, it's something that we'd be, you know, we've already voted that we're willing to. Invest in an appraisal. I don't think anybody else can, is in a position to say that. All right. So Doug had moved this. Did anybody second? Second. Will somebody? Okay. Is there any other discussion? All right. Doug, I'm going to guess yes, but I'll let you say it. Yes. Judy? Yes. Kay? Yes. Leslie? Abstain. Okay. And Larry? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Anything else with regard to 17 Gleason Lane? Not a thing, Madam Chair. Fantastic. Does anybody have any project or financial updates or other business that they have a burning desire to present? Hearing none, there are no matters that I have not reasonably anticipated. So I would welcome... Well, first I will say, I hope that you all will be able to join us for a town meeting, which begins on Monday, May 4th at 6.30 p.m. at the Wayland High School Fieldhouse. Doors open at 5.30. And I do have my... Is tailgating allowed? That's why I'm able to say it. Madam Chair, is tailgating allowed? Huh? Hmm? You know, there's controversy with the World Cup. Is tailgating allowed at town meeting?
No drinking in town. Public. The way people drive here, they're always tailgating. Oh, different kind of tailgating. Gotcha. All right. Is there a... And also, thank you guys so much for making the time. I really appreciate it. Is there a motion now that it's 7.46 p.m. that we adjourn? So moved. Second. Okay. We'll just put anybody. It's good. All right. Doug? Yes. Judy? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Kay? Yes. Larry? Yes. Susan? I'm a yes. Jalen, thank you so, so, so, so much for making yourself available. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Jalen. This meeting is adjourned.
I was first told that it was moving to Locher, but in fact, they're moving the Children's Way to Happy Hollow School, and there is not an appropriate playground at that location for this age group. So there was a request made that we figure out how we could consider changing the location of the playground to be used by the Children's Way. And so we're moving the Children's Way to be worked on from town building to Happy Hollow School. We received an email from Catherine Brenna from the Recreation Department saying that they were very much in favor of this. I don't know, Leslie, did you guys agree already? We did. We had a nice long meeting today. And you guys said yes? No? So yeah, so we had a lot more questions than we anticipated having. We were thinking it was going to be a pretty clear decision just to say, yes, to adjust the funds. But because it was such an abrupt or last minute request, there was a lot of uncertainty. And we did meet with the superintendent and we got some of our questions answered. A lot of it had to do with space and space of the other facilities and how things were going to be shift. Watching the school committee meeting, they said that they would be adjusting the buffer zone and possibly there could be a knock-on effect to kindergarten, adding more kindergartners in future years. But so anyways, the point is they are, but they were saying in the school committee meeting that if there is an influx of additional kindergartners, that they would have to change the buffer zone a little bit or use more of the to shift more people to loker. So there could be a knock-on effect or there could be some adjustments. Because of that, we wanted to make sure that the money could be used for whatever site that it was needed. And we wanted to kind of following the conservation department's lead when they submitted their application to the Hamlin Woods boardwalk thing, their entry said conservation properties boardwalks. So we would like it to cover recreation departments, playgrounds, so that if there is an adjustment, it can be used for wherever it's needed. Um, I would prefer that we limit it to like the three elementary schools or, you know, something like that, just because otherwise it could be asked to be used at a non-school location. Yeah. And I had one question for Catherine or whoever, and that is, it's said the playground is, or the children's way is moving for the 26, 27 school year. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for the children's way. And I just wanted to make sure that it's moving for good and not moving for one year and then. Well, that's not a question for recreation. That's a question for the superintendent. Um, we did ask that question at our meeting today and he said for the time being it's moved, you know, some it's moved. Um, and that's, it's not to rebuild the town building space or anything. It's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've, yeah, there is some consolidation. So, um, so, you know, Susan, to what you've said, you know, that's not what we approved at our meeting. We just said playgrounds. Um, and it really was with the intention to follow this purpose. Um, but we didn't specifically say school playgrounds. Um, but what we could say is in connection with the location of the children's way, does that work? I just don't want it, you know, going to or constituent fields or whatever. I think, yeah, no. So the issue is that if the money's currently for the town building and it is a different function to just the children's way, the town building has to have a playground here. So it has to be used. So, so that would, um, that's kind of the conflict, um, that, uh, you know, if we, if we move the money strictly to schools, we're, we're not actually covering the purpose as well. I'm not, I'm not clear on why there's a conflict. I mean, the children's way is at the town hall. It's not a school, but the children's way is part of the school department, school system. And it's, so it's associated with that. It's a public playground and there's a school and the playgrounds at the schools are also public when school's not in session. So I'm not sure where the conflict is.
Um, so I'm saying by limiting the use to just school playgrounds, if the children's way is a school and moves away from the town building. We can no longer do any needed repairs at the town building. If it's limited to just schools and the children's way is vacated.
Well, I don't think that amount of money is going to cover both things. Is it?
Well, I don't know. I think the original plan for this, I mean, I just watched the school committee meeting yesterday. So I'm sure you've caught up to that. They just said that it was for the fencing. But then when I spoke to, um, Susan, wait, sorry, what was that? Susan? You didn't hear that. Okay. I just saw you make a, no, I, I, I wasn't paying attention to the school committee. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No. So they said, so from what I understood, it was only supposed to be the fencing. And I thought, okay, that's a little, that's a small ask, but, um, there are additional items that are going to be needed. Um, I mean, it could use the whole thing. It could be, they could be asking for more. Um, but so they have to take one of these playgrounds and make sure, I don't know what the percentage is, but a certain percentage of it is applicable to third and fourth, uh, third and fourth, four-year-olds. I can't say the words. Three and four-year-olds. Three and four. Thank you. It just, yeah. Susan, can I ask a question? So if I understand correctly, the children away playground at the town building is no longer suitable to be a playground and that will be shut down. No, it's still going to be there. Yeah. No. Caught up in like conservation issues and stuff, right? Susan, Catherine Brunner's raising her hand. Do you want me to bring her over? That would be awesome. Yes. Catherine. She dares. She dares. You know, actually valuable information. What a concept. Sorry. Thank you so much, Jalyn. Our hero.
Woman of the hour. Hi, everybody. She dares. I can help answer that question about the condition. Of the town building playground, if you'd like, I would love you to thank you. So the town building playground was inspected by a certified playgrounds specter late in 2024. We got the report early in 2025. The playground is in usable condition. There was some recommendations to make some repairs, both to the playground and the fence, which we have done, um, just to allow the children's way to continue to use it. It is in usable condition right now, and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. With, you know, just ongoing maintenance that we do at all of our playgrounds. So there are some years left in the town building playground. So basically we have a kind of a capital schedule, a rotation of replacing the playgrounds. And if we say, uh, effectively swap this one with happy hollow, uh, we do believe that the town building playground will continue to serve the town until its next turn comes up in the cycle.
So I thought, Catherine, that the, um, playground at the town building was next in the cycle to be repaired or improved, right? Sure. It was, um, and mostly because, um, the children's way that we're using it, we're, um, pretty vocal about the needs of that playground and the ways that they used it, um, which might be different if it's, if it's a playground used at town building and there's not a school present. But, um, for example, we have 12 playgrounds in town. When we initially. We had our 24 year schedule, we looked at all of the playgrounds based on their, the age of the equipment and the condition that they were in. And the worst ones were at the time, the clay pit hill playground and the happy hollow playground and the town beach playground, which we, so we prioritize those three playgrounds first. And we've since renovated those with, um, obviously with CPA funds from you all. Um, and then like the next four in the rotation, we're all about the same in terms of age and condition. And so we chose the town building to be next because of the children's way. It was there. Um, and so the, the idea is that the appropriation was for, to benefit, um, the children's way preschool. And so it kind of made sense for it to follow them. Um, it also gives us an opportunity to kind of reprioritize those four playgrounds that were about the same, um, since that time conditions have changed and requests have come in. Um, so it allows us to kind of rewrite that, that 12 playground, 24 year schedule. Uh, in a way that makes more sense now, 10 years later that we, we just have better in different information. Um, yeah, one of the other, I was going to say, the other thing I'd add was my wife was very involved in the group that raised the funds to build the Alpine road playground almost 30 years ago, which is very much focused on, you know, two, three and four year olds. Right. And, and still going strong as far as I can tell, but in some ways, you know, having the one at Alpine and having a. Similar one at happy hollow sort of, you know, spaces those out fairly evenly in the north and south sides of town and might be more equitable to the two, three and four year olds than the one, one, a town building and one in Alpine.
Right. Right. So Catherine, I have a question. Is there a playground there for the three and four year olds could use, and because there was a mention of just putting up fencing. So I think that the school committee at one point talked about just fencing in the existing. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think that the school staff at one point talked about just putting up fencing in the existing. That's what they wanted to talk about. So again, I think that, you know, for those that are interested, if they're interested in, you know, some of the things we talked about, like that kind of thing that we talk about before, is that the school is either going to have the building in terms of theоздium. Or you know, with the school going to have a building, that's going to have the wind on it. That's what they want to have in terms of putting it in terms of building. This is a new thing. And there's the idea that they're going to be able to move that building that we're going to be able to move back into the city. And so. for two- to five-year-olds, and then there's also some safety considerations where they need to be separate, and so if we were going to install a two- to five-year-old playground or some elements of it, they would need a fence around it. Most people who run programs for two- to five-year-olds really prefer to have it fenced in just because they're more likely to have runners at that age. Yes. So if we transferred the funds to make the request to make it at Happy Hollow, does that mean that you're starting all fresh for the brand-new playground? Does it include ADA compliance, or is the school doing that, and all you're requesting is money for the fence? No, the money that was initially appropriated from your committee and then eventually town meeting last year was $400,000. $400,000 to renovate the Children's Way playground and also install some port-in-place. I talked to a playground consultant that I work with here in town today, and he feels pretty strongly that we could build new, a two- to five-year-old playground new in the size that is needed for the Children's Way that has that port-in-place surface so it would be fully accessible, and playground technology has just come a long way, and so the equipment might look different than it does a town building now so that each element is really... It's really inclusive and accessible. And it includes ADA compliance. Yeah, it has to be, yep. So question, do we go from 12 playgrounds to 13? That's a great question, and the Recreation Commission brought that question up today. So we won't know until we go through the design process with the playground consultant at the Happy Hollow School. Happy Hollow School has kind of two separate play areas right now that we consider two separate playgrounds. Okay. One is kind of older, also five- to 12-year-old equipment kind of in the back, and so if we were going to just remodel that and outfit it for two- to five-year-old equipment, we'd still be at 12 playgrounds across the town. If it makes more sense to kind of just build off the existing playground, in my opinion, I think we'd still be at 12. We'd just have a bigger footprint of the Happy Hollow playground, but we might find that it's more useful to have it, say, on a different side of the school, which would add potentially a 13th playground. You know, to the inventory of playgrounds. Okay. So you were at your commission's meeting, I assume? Yes. And what language do you think? Well, I mean, to us, you know, we try to defer to the commission, but we don't have to. But I wouldn't want to get on, you know, town meeting floor and have the Recreation Commission stand up and be like, no. So. So what do you think would be appropriate language for how we designate where this funding would go? I mean, it's hard to say. I think that the commission in general wanted the sense for it to be more flexible so that potentially that we've kind of petitioned the CPC and the town meeting for these funds to renovate the town building and the Children's Way playground. And it wasn't our decision necessarily to move the Children's Way. And so we're trying to be good partners. We're trying to be good partners to them and help them kind of move this money where the kids are going. So I think the Rec Commission was really looking for just a little bit of flexibility in case things don't go as planned. Or if town meeting doesn't approve this or what, you know, how it goes. They were concerned mostly about having to turn the money back and start over again. So they were just looking to kind of expand. Like, I think the original suggested language was Happy Hollow or town building, but a little bit more flexibility. You know, I'm not sure. I think to Leslie's point, it does make sense to keep it so that it serves, you know, a school department function, but also the general public. But I think that's a criteria for your committee, that it has to be open to the general public. So, yes. Well, I kind of agree that this was specifically targeted because it was part of a school and I would be OK with, you know, Well, I kind of agree that this was specifically targeted because it was part of a school and I would be OK with, you know, limiting it to schools rather than just saying you can use it anywhere you want to use it in town. So just to put it in perspective, of the 12 playgrounds, six of them are at schools. And then, like Doug mentioned, there's Alpine, there's the Anna Williams Playground, Kitchener-Whip Ballpark, Riverview Ballfield has one, and the Town Beach, which we just renovated last year. But we do know that there is interest in the Kitchener-Whip Ballfield playground. So, you know, wouldn't want it to get derailed for that. And just so you all know, the language for the motion that came from town council just says, just adds or happy hollow school at the end. But I also don't know because it says rehabilitation and this isn't rehabilitation. This would be rehabilitation or construction, right? Yeah. Or even exchange. We have to get out there with the playground designer and see what our options are. But my sneaking suspicion is that this is just going to be an expansion of the existing footprint with some kind of barrier between the two. Would it be a hardship to wait a year and let things settle? Yes. I think the school would say yes. I think that their goal is to move the school by September. And it would be really tough to run a preschool without a playground for an entire year. I mean, I think they want it to be open on the first day of school in September. Like I. I had concerns about the timeline. They didn't want to wait through the winter. So can you really do that? I did talk to a playground consultant who felt that this was the right budget and the right timeline that they could do it. Well, so children's way would move to happy hollows, what you're saying? Yes, that's already been announced and that they will move. All right. And I should just say that we are spending way more time on this than town meetings going to care. Yes, it's nice that we take it all so seriously. But I also think that if we're agreed in concept that we're okay with moving, you know, the playground money away from town building to where it's needed, then I think that that's probably fine. Should we just say it follows where the children's way moves to in case it goes to Loker instead? Well, I think by saying to a school or school grounds, then that covers, you know, the last minute they go up to clay pit that it's already covered and we don't have to worry about it. And we could always amend it on the floor. So. So, Leslie, the question is whether you would be comfortable saying to the rec commission that you did your best to get us to do what they wanted, whether this would suffice. Or not. Yeah, I think I think we can meet in the middle with school playgrounds would be really the best outcome. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. What is the objection? You know, if it if the cards fell in a way that it was going to be spent, you know, at a different playground that wasn't necessary school, what is the objection to that? Like, why is that a bad thing? Not a bad thing, but it's a good thing for schools. And that's what you brought. It's the you brought a specific school playground that you repaired or updated. It was kind of a hybrid town building in Children's Way is kind of a hybrid function. And so making it just. But it was the schools that was pushing it, right? Yeah, I viewed it as core to the Children's Way mission. And I was just question. I mean, I. I think the other thing is that, you know, we try to defer to the schedule that you guys have. And so if the schedule is saying that, you know, it should be at Alpine, for lack of me knowing anywhere else. That doesn't satisfy anything with the current need. So that's why I was trying to tell it a little bit. That's great. Yeah. But then. So would we still consider the town? Building part of a school. Location. If money was needed. If the Children's Way is there. So then if we don't have all of the. Up keeps we needed a town building that that that is lost now. Because that still has to be a. Playground because the town building exists. Or the language that they had sent. The attorney had sent says or Happy Hollow School. And we could just change that to or. A school property. Or a school property housing the Children's Way. And because it seems that's where the need is, is where the three, four and five year olds are. Is that they came asking for playground for that specific group. Yeah. And then and then we toned it down. So it didn't say specifically the Children's Way. So it said the town building. I think school grounds give you more flexibility, Catherine, but you can choose. No, as we think about this, I haven't thought about this before now, but I'm just thinking the appropriation is 400,000. If we go to Happy Hollow School and we find out that we can build this. Playground a two to five real playground at the Happy Hollow School that meets the Children's Way need and they can do it for 250. Do we turn back the difference back to the CPA or could it be spent a town building to do what we set out to do a town building? Sans the children. I think ethically you turn it back to the CPA. I think you should turn it back because that's. What do you because you requested a playground for this particular group. And if that group isn't at the town building. But you're forgetting that this particular group does encompass the general public. We have to have a general public playground at the town building. Yeah, yeah, it reads up to 400,000. So not 400,000. So, you know, I think you need to turn back any extra. To the CPA. Without making any improvements to the town building. It's one or the other. You're saying we can accomplish both. And if it were to take 400,000 to refurbish the town building one, but only 250 to create a whole brand new one. That was an arbitrary and a previous one that was existing. Right. What I'm saying, it costs more money to fix it rather than make it. We're turning a procedural discussion into a philosophical one. Such as law, right? So does does or mean exclusively one versus the other or could it be both? Said the lawyer. Now I'm going to have to actually reread the proposal. Because because it says to be expanded for rehabilitation of the playground at Wayland Town Building or at Happy Hollow School. And to me like that. It doesn't mean that like rehabilitation. It's not construction, you know, so I think that that language is too limiting. So it has to be and or right there to do both. Yeah, I don't I don't know. Or it could be and but then that would mean that should be both. Right. All right. How about this? So you guys really believe that we couldn't we couldn't use the 400,000 to cover both. If funds were available. We don't know how much any of this is going to cost, right? So this is speculation. So why don't we just say and or in case there is money left over and you can put sand in the one that's town building or what have you. I just don't. Yeah, I just want to make sure we stay with 12 and that go up to 13 because that would be some kind of creep that I think the general public needs more say. I mean, town meetings already. I mean, we've already recommended the 400,000 to playground with or without an S. And so I don't I mean, I think it's fair. We've given the Recreation Department the 400,000 to put into we put it into into children's way. But if if they had extra and they want to put a different one, it's still we've already agreed that 400,000 is a is a good number. And so they should be able to spend it versus us clawing it back and then going back to another town meeting to give it to them. Give it to another playground. But the reason for the school grounds is because somebody mentioned earlier, it might get moved to loker. And so then the question becomes, if you pour all the money into these two, then they're well, I don't know it. That's the only reason I chose school grounds is because if children's way got moved again to loker at the last minute, like it is for Happy Hollow at the moment, then it then they would have the capability of doing the playground at loker rather than Happy Hollow. We just say Happy Hollow and they move. Then we're stuck in the same position that we are at the moment. And I just from our discussion with the superintendent today, he felt like this move from the children's way to the Happy Hollow school was, let's not say permanent forever, but like I think he said, at least like a 10 year move that it wasn't going to move from school to school year to year. That they have done extensive studies. On, you know, enrollment trends and, you know, even birth rate trends. I mean, we could do something like one or more playgrounds for ages two to five. Still not the original purpose, but we'll do well. And that's limiting potentially, because if the children's way is not at the town building playground, there might be an appetite to convert that into a five to 12. Now that there's not a right. Thanks. I'm complicated. I'm looking here. I think we're just trying to figure out the best way to spend this money to satisfy the highest need, you know, without limiting ourselves. And like you said, like, we are probably going to come back in the future and go before this commission. Well, we were expecting you every two years. Exactly. And that'll be this December. Well, if we can come up with something that isn't the exact language, but gives us the parameters of what we want, and we can agree on that, then I think we can take that to town council and have them make it into the right language. Well, I like your suggestion of playground or playgrounds for what it was at three to four, three and four or three to five, whatever it was. Then that opens up all the playgrounds that are for that age group, which is what we were initially voting on. Particularly for the children's with the site where the children's way is located. I don't know that you have to say that where the children's way is located, because it's I see what you're saying. They can make it three to five year old someplace else. OK, I understand what you're saying. But then that means that they can't go back. I'm sorry. Go ahead. The application that we approved in town meeting approved last year was to support the children's way. And town building. Yes. The children's way at the town building. Because we largely conflated the two. Yeah, it wasn't and the building town building. It was at the town building, at the town building. Yeah. So is there a problem? I asked the lawyers in the room of saying and or the children's way and or Happy Hollow. But I mean, town building and or Happy Hollow. Yeah, I mean, well, then the question came up. What if it's not Happy Hollow? But I mean, it's it's this is the situation we're in now. So why don't we just say that? Yeah. I mean, it's April. Happy Hollow has to know where they're moving. And in terms of the movie, my kids went to children's way. They went three places. They went to Loker, they went to Happy Hollow and they went to town building, you know, so it moves. So I mean, and then if that that limits it and then if they don't use the money, then I get then we get it back. But I think it'd be not hard to spend the money. So we could. So do we specify the children's way or not specify the children's way? I would do town building. And or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For happy. Hello? And I wouldn't specify two to five because Catherine said, not every playground needs two to five. You know, if if if the Children's Way isn't there, that may not be what the improvements are, that the Recreation Department would make it at Town Building. Then why include the time building? As Catherine, as I said, there's extra money, could they because town building has identified needs and they then put it towards that. But if there is a two to five playground elsewhere in town, couldn't they use it towards that? No, they would use it too. not two to five improvements at town building. They use it towards, I don't know, six to 12 or whatever. Right. I understand that. But if we approve for a playground for that particular age group and they had money left over, couldn't they, if it was at a school, couldn't they use that money to upgrade that playground? Well, they don't cater to the, I mean, elementary schools don't generally cater to two to five, right? I mean, five and up. But you don't know when they're going to open up a second kindergarten at another school either.
All right. I'm trying to think of how we can make this simple.
We're way past that. Take it to town meeting. I mean, the idea is that it shouldn't be controversial. Yes. That what we're really asking is, you know, thank you, town meeting. You appropriated this money. You appropriated this money for a playground at town building with the intention that it would support the children's way and then, you know, off hours activities of the public. Here we're saying we would like to do playground work to support the children's way and off hours activity for the general public. Right. And if there's money left over, then to use it elsewhere. I mean, that's the problem. I just, you know, I don't understand why we're talking so at length about it because recreation has historically always turned back to extra funds. And so it's not as if you've seen history of using these funds for something other than its purpose. We're just trying to be broad to make sure that we're covering it. There's no intention here to do something that this group is not privy. There's no intention here to do something that this group is not privy to. I don't think we're worried about you. I think we're worried about public pressure. Well, I have last year's warrant open. Yay. And the children's way is mentioned as a glancing blow, if you will. So the finance committee comments, which is the one that speak to it, says the funding requested, which will be used to renovate the town buildings playground, including replacement, the older equipment will come from the CPF uncommitted fund. This playground. Which is used by the children's wavering most weekdays in the public. Most other times will be the fourth of 12 playgrounds parks to be renovated with CPA funds in recent years, talks about the 12 year plan, et cetera. And upon reading this and the rest of the article, I'm pretty much convinced that, uh, we did not sell to town meeting this year that last year that this was solely for the children's way and therefore I'm much more comfortable with giving flexibility in the spending of the funds.
It sounded like it was for the children's way. And, and the, it mentioned the children's way was used at the town building and for the general public at other times, but spoke in much more general terms. And I don't think people went out and said to town meeting that this is, you know, something we're doing for solely for the children's way, so I don't think we have a credibility. Problem asking for the, uh, the usage of the funds to be broadened across all playgrounds, knowing that hopefully, you know, we wanted to go to loker for the children's way, happy, happy, yes. Don't confuse me. I'm having enough trouble. All right. So back to you, Leslie, what would you like to say? I mean, um, it, I mean, if it could say, um, I, I don't, I don't even know if we, we should prioritize it and say, you know, for town building happy hollow or other school playgrounds, you don't think we should, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, cause the way it passed was playground at whaling town building. The proposal was, which is, which is used by the children's way.
So I think, but that wasn't, that wasn't part of the motion that was made. That was part of the motion that was part of the finance committee. That was part of the motion that was approved at the previous town meeting. Um, so to change it from saying rehabilitation of the playground at whaling town building by adding at the end or happy hollow school and, and, or the future site of the children's way. Oh, I like that. Yeah. That's better because if they decide to go to loker instead, we won't have this conversation again. I mean, can we just do school playgrounds, town building and or school playgrounds? Yes. Uh, is there a general agreement with that? Sure. I think that's fine. Cause town council's going to pretty it up anyways. You could call it that whatever they do.
All right. Um, so, uh, we would go back to town council and ask that the language be changed to say, uh, adding at the end and, or school playgrounds playground located at the school, one of the whaling public schools, right? You don't want it to go to the private schools.
Yeah. Okay. Uh, and just, does anyone think that there's a problem with it saying rehabilitation and nothing about. Installation. Expansion, expansion, creation, whatever.
You say rehabilitation and, or new construction or expansion or whatever.
If we said construction, does that cover rehabilitation too? Yes.
I'm asking, are you nodding Catherine? Are you just, I think the more flexibility we have, the better that we're going to be able to, you know, spend this money in a way that benefits the most children. Does the word construction include rehabilitation? Well, yeah. As long as it includes painting. Yeah. Huh? As long as it includes painting. Yes. I mean, we could say rehabilitation, whatever. Yeah. Okay. I mean, we can tell the, uh, town council, we intend for it to be expansive, that it's not restricted to just rehabilitation. It's not restricted, just new construction and whatever she thinks is the language that's needed for that, then that's what we'd like to do. Okay. So. Whatever kind of building. Yeah. Work kind of thing, and either at the town building and, or, uh, a site at a Wayland public schools. People are good with that. Yes. Yes. So is there a motion that you guys can just say, so moved. So moved. So seconded. All right. Um, everybody's okay with what we're voting on. We're all clear on it. Okay. Judy. Yay. Doug. Yay. Jerry. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Yes. Leslie. Yes. Maureen. Yes. And I'm a yes. All right. Thank you, Catherine. Very much. Appreciate it. Thank you all. I'll be back in December to talk more about playgrounds. Okay. We have 12 of them all. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maureen, do you have to skedaddle? I do have to skedaddle now. So I'm going to miss the discussion of Gleason Lane. So hope someone's taking notes. I believe that that became a formal request. So moved. Someone needs to take notes for the next part of the meeting. So. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Maureen. All right. Okay. Bye. All right. Who is able to take notes for the last bit of the meeting?
Do I really have to name somebody? Well, I'm doing the talking. So. Well, I appreciate that. I'll write something down. I've never taken notes for a meeting. Just. Okay. Well, I'll scribble some things, too. And between the two of us, we'll come up with something. And it should be on tape as well. So. Oh, that too. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. And actually, a neat trick is to record the recording on an Apple voice memo and then upload it to any AI engine and ask for a transcript. Oh, God. I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that.
I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. I just don't. I don't know how to do that. And I'm going to do a voice memo on here. We'll just we'll just we're good. Could someone do a voice memo for me? I can see really can help after the fact, Leslie. Already. All right. I can do it. I don't know that there's any other discussion. I'm sorry. I was going to say the next item on the agenda is the Annual Town Meeting articles and presentations. My only update is that they thought that they were going to put both of our articles on the consent calendar because there's an amendment. because there's an amendment, this, the projects, one can't be on a consent calendar. It's likely that the, you know, the set of size and transfers will be in which case there's nothing to be said on them on that particular one. So I'll just have some remarks ready for this. And I would venture to say that somebody from recreation should probably be, you know, on deck in case there's any questions about this part. Okay. Doug, 17 Gleason. Yes. And Jalen, if you could put it up. Wonderful. I don't know if everyone has been following 25 Holiday Road and the situation there, but briefly 13.7 acres bought in 56 under the care, custody and control of the school committee, fully wooded. And from what I've heard, it's been a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, looking at Google Earth over the years seems to be about a half pine, half evergreens and half hardwoods. Article 16 is asking for $200,000 to quote, investigate alternatives at the annual town meeting. And their focus seems to vary, be very much on new growth and tax revenues, both one time from sale of the property and ongoing tax revenues. Monday at the select board meeting, there was a forum pretty well attended by the neighborhood and a few other concerned citizens. I'm a member of the district, which is myself. And it actually seems at the end of it that there's a collaborative approach emerging, that the select board at their next meeting on the 27th is going to talk about appointing a working group like they did for Route 20 South and 212 Kachichiwet. It also seems to me that, you know, it's likely to end up as market rate housing, simply because we're in the 40 B safe harbor for the conceivable future and rezoning out of what is R 40 would require two thirds town meeting vote. Also encouraging at the meeting was the members of the select board were both using the words conservation cluster, and town homes as potential things to put their jail or if we can move to the next.
Coincidentally, at the same time, since I believe 1936 the property just to the south of it which I have outlined in yellow is for sale. Called 17 glaze glaze and row lane. It certainly isn't the. oddly shaped lot. It's 6.3 acres, 6.03, with a 2,300 square foot home that's in pretty rough shape. The home is now being, the property is now being sold by his estate. Went on for sale in October at two and a half million. The most recent price cut was to 1.4 million. And, you know, a reasonable lay observer would assume that, given Wayland's stature, that developers had looked at it and found it largely undevelopable. And the reasons for that, the driveway is only 30 feet wide, and I think the subdivision requirements are 50 feet. There's a steep drop-off halfway through the property. And it's such a oblong lot that it might be tough to put in both a road and the size and shape lots for McMansions you want. And it would require a quarter mile long road, and those cost about a thousand dollars a foot right now. The other thing is that 17 Gleason Lane does have a 900 foot plus border contiguous with 25 Holiday. Next up, Jalen, if we go to the next one, there we go. So, you know, this is a bit of a long shot, but Wayne Gretzky said 100% of the shots you don't take don't go in. So, the scenario would be that, you know, the working group recommends and the school committee recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends that the school group recommends the school committee and select board vote to pursue a conservation cluster development, which levers the existing roads, you know, so it's sort of a little loop off of both Holiday Road and Orchard Lane. If those were freestanding homes under the conservation cluster ordinance, it would be 10 or 12 of them on 20,000 square foot lots plus the road. That might be six to seven acres of the 13.7, or potentially three, four unit townhome buildings plus the road, which, you those four acres uh under the conservation cluster bylaw that would have to deed the rest of conservation and permanently protect it uh that 17 gleason continues not to find a buyer uh that concom who started discussing this last night sponsors an annual town meeting article in our next cycle to acquire it that we and and the annual town meeting next year agree and the result of this three cushion shot would be that you know the town gets the new growth and the monetization that looks for for 25 holiday plus the town preserves 13 to 15 acres of open space forever that the base circuit trail is able to be relocated off gleason lane roadway onto uh or at least half of it and there's access to this new conservation area for gleason lane so if we can keep rolling jaylen so this is you know just my very rough not to scale uh completely unqualified hacking around on powerpoint schematic of what would look like where you'd have the three townhomes around that new little loop road between holiday lane and orchard uh holiday road and orchard lane excuse me and you would also have this fairly large new conservation area uh with the access up that neck to gleason lane where's the drop off there doug uh if you look at where the word area is it runs roughly uh well no actually you can sort of see it um because just to the left of the sea in conservation yeah that's uh you know i think this is the the terrain view so where that shading is is where the drop off is and it's walkable so that they could get it's walkable yeah it's it's definitely walkable it's not a cliff okay but it is the sort of thing that you know it would take a lot of time to figure out how to do it but it's it's a it's a it's a little bit of work to build a road down i think uh susan already circulated my remarks at the select board forum which is the next page but basically you know it's what i said to tee this up if we go to the next one jaylen so this is what the base circuit trail could look like at the top is where it winds its way through sedge meadow comes into uh orchard lane or rather gleason lane where that top p is follows gleason lane down to route 27 and crosses it into what is the cal common conservation area where you see the dash red line take a left that would be down the current driveway of 17 gleason then it would take a right through the rest of the property and onto the main service road at north cemetery uh crossing to the current parking area for cal common following an existing uh uh path at cal common uh to the to the south south west and then you know currently the base circuit trail goes up and around and onto bow road but it's actually already relocated essence to the community center and when the wayland sudbury rail trail is built next year uh the base circuit trail will be routed upon that so if you go to the last page please jaylen thank you uh two potential votes that we might want to consider tonight uh one is to authorize the cpc chair or vice chair to contact the listing broker of 17 gleason lane to indicate the possibility of wayland acquiring the property using cpc funds should the property remain available into 2027 and you know any any discussion has to be you know that this is highly speculative and not probable at this point but at least one will let the let them know of the possibility and second since uh you know sponsoring the purchase will ultimately be the conservation commission's call to approve spending up to ten thousand dollars from administrative funds upon request of the conservation commission to conduct a professional appraisal of 17 gleason Lane should the conservation commission vote to sponsor a community preservation act application to acquire this property for open space and I don't think the pros appraisals cost ten thousand I think they cost less than five but but I'm not sure so that's why the number is there um would you go back to the fourth slide oh yeah the schematic so do you need the property to do this um you could do this without that property right without 25 holiday no you could do it uh without 17 gleason uh what I show here as being the town homes on 25 holiday would be achievable without 17 gleason but the extra we get is more conservation land and access more conservation land and access and and the reroad of the bct so would in I I can't really see it but you wouldn't have to go down that slope and then back up you could kind of stay along the top Ridge the trail would go from gleason down that long Ridge road to long the bridge to the cemetery is that your uh it's a slope Larry and not a cliff all right and well when I go to the uh Cemetery and look off that it looks quite steep yeah so that yeah that may require some work and and that steep part is already on town land is on cemetery land and you know with walking trails can be you know at a diagonal to read to reduce the slope so will they be satisfied with that small portion for housing or do they want to expand that further uh well you know that there are different points of view that I think there's a path that people coalescing on and what I think personally is that the town would have the option to designate these town homes as 55 plus I think there's also a market for very attractive town homes and you know we're talking about ones with individual elevators for instance and that would fetch a pretty high percentage of what instead putting 12 McMansions on acre Lots would get for one time I would get a very high percentage of what those uh 12 McMansions would generate in annual property tax revenue but would they have the advantage of putting you know almost no students into the Wayland Public Schools versus you know 10 or 12 McMansions would be likely to put you know say 20 or so kids into the schools so you know from a uh a Life Cycle economics point of view this may be the most attractive option financially to the town as well um and just and all of this is all of this is under the current conservation Cluster bylaw just for uh transparency there's been discussions at the housing trust about acquiring 17 Gleason and seeing about putting affordable housing there you're putting up and then should we then should we reword the uh the votes susan yep so doug can i ask you a question um if i heard you correctly the 25 holiday which is the bigger piece of the parcel that we're talking about here if it is sold then it's sold to a developer and why do you think the town would have any say as to what they would build uh well a the select board has asked for 200 000 and so it's the the select board if they get their 200 000 potentially has the ability to do the site work do the legal work hire the several engineerings and saying look we as a town have decided that we're selling you the developer the opportunity to buy 4.5 acres to build three townhouse three four unit townhomes or you know 6.7 acres to build 12 individual homes on a conservation cluster etc the second is that it sounds very likely that you know the select board and school committee are going to make their decisions after hearing the results of the citizens working group that's likely to be named and one one could surmise that that group may come up with a recommendation that looks something like this judy the the answer is that when the town is disposing of property it issues like an rfp and it can put whatever conditions it wants in it if somebody wants to buy it under those conditions i mean that's how we got all to oxbow i see so we we can actually say this is town land we're selling it but you have to abide by x y and z yes and we're not looking at building affordable housing there because we want the tax revenues that am i hearing that correctly the discussion and reading between the lines i've heard from the select board is and the finance committee is the need for new growth and and both one-time proceeds and ongoing tax revenue um it would take a lot of work zoning wise to put higher density housing there so i think this is the uh given that goal i think this is the likely scenario well if it's affordable housing you're going to have to deal with a lot of that um you would get a comprehensive permit and and many of those kinds of density things are waived yeah uh does that hold true in the 40b safe harbor a comprehensive permit's a comprehensive permit okay you know more than i had madam chair
i mean the town is under less pressure to approve it but yes okay yes so susan were you saying that you uh affordable housing was interested in 17 gleason yeah and how many houses would that be it was also it was also very preliminary discussion and there wasn't like rousing approval because we just didn't have enough information about it um but uh it's not totally off the table yet but there had been no discussion of like particular number of units or anything like that it was just you know this was a piece of property that was of it you know significant enough size and you know was there a possibility of utilizing it for affordable housing especially because it was you know not extraordinarily expensive yeah and and all of this is very preliminary so i would think you know any vote we take on making administrative funds available for valuation for appraisals that are should be involved in of in of of a lot of things um first of all we'd like to get your views and the include both the conservation commission and the the housing authority given what you just said the trust yeah um i'm just wondering whether we actually have to have them be the impetus for it or whether we can do it on our own i i think we can do it on our own yeah i mean i and and the way that the property would be appraised is it's always you know highest and best use it doesn't matter if we want to acquire it for open space or for affordable housing or whatever yeah it doesn't change the appraisal yes hey jalen can you scroll down to what uh he thought the motions would be please thank you and i don't know if that's our role to be reaching out to the i mean it's the select board that has the authority to do anything about acquiring property but i see this as merely letting the broker know that there's a process they want to monitor might be interested in monitoring okay any one of us could do that as a private citizen i was gonna say yeah how much did they want for the property the 17 gleason lane well right now the asking price is down 1.4 million jalen can you go back to that schematic map for a second too far too far one more one a little bit more yeah and if you look if you follow the neck the driveway that comes down from gleason lane just as it opens up on the on the north part of that is a you know a rectangular lot that lot was is called 17 8 17 a gleason lane and it sold last week to the owner of the house just to the north west of it for 175 000
that puts a value of 216 000 an acre on it and that times the six acres suggests that you know if an appraiser was going to use only that comp and i think they would use other comps which probably aren't as high per acre for you know unbuildable land basically that suggests a valuation around 1.3 million um and again that too is incredibly speculative is there is there an amount of land that's required to have a conservation cluster yes five acres just fine well let me rephrase that leslie The original lot has to be five acres.
The resulting developed part of it does not have to be five acres. Right.
In order to apply for a conservation cluster, you have to have at least five acres available. Yes. Yeah. Not that we have a whole lot of conservation clusters.
Is that driveway accessible to Gleason for these cluster, the townhomes? Is that a potential? No, what the road would be would be that little arc I have in the shaded area. And, you know, this is me playing around on PowerPoint, right? Yeah. So that would connect Holiday Road and Orchard Lane.
Well, you're a civic engineer. Yes. Civil engineer.
All right. I mean, I don't see any downside to us indicating that we would be willing to do an appraisal.
So, I mean, we could. We could approve spending up to $10,000 from administrative funds to conduct a professional appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane. And then we can decide when we wanted to do it. But we would have already had the approval done. Yeah. Are there other boards who are also looking at this property, like the Economic Development Committee or some, you know, some other? I just wonder if somebody else is going to be. Well, yeah, I think the Economic Development Committee. Is very interested in seeing this developed and may have gotten over their skis a little bit last year by suggesting it was a site of potential site for up to 50 townhomes, which got the neighborhood in quite a lather. The school committee actually has control over the land. And, you know, there's legal precedences on this piece of land as to how they would have to transfer it. So, you know, the select board is extending them a seat at the table. Is that? Property line, that thin gray line that goes through the R of conservation. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the southern line.
All right.
If there were other boards that were interested, it would only the only way we would do an appraisal would be for, you know, purposes consistent with the Community Preservation Act. Yeah.
But. All right, how would you want to do sorry, do you all just want to do like a, you know, we would be willing to spend up to $10,000 of administrative funds for an appraisal when the time is appropriate, you know, when warranted. I would I'd prefer to see it worded on the response on the request of the Conservation Commission or the housing affordable housing trust. By the way, a lot of other boards are doing that. So, this is, I guess, more of an appropriate way of doing that. And so, we just, you know, we want you to, you know, we want people to be able to get a sense, you know, an end of the appraisal that, you know, the local government is really willing to do it, is that they are willing to do it. And this is a, this is a reason we are doing this, this is because we want to have the stories in the community. And this is exactly that. And I, I, I think it's important, and I think this will be very important, because the community, the local government will want the stories, the local people will want the stories, the local community will want the stories that community is interested in. during the next cycle, or an application for the next cycle. Should we wait for one of those two boards to approach us before we do something like this, or should we preemptively approve it? I think preemptively, because then we don't have to call another meeting. To say you're pretty certain- Well, no, she was saying without there being a request from either. Doug, I thought you were just saying the opposite. No, what I'm saying is, this is on the table should they want to exercise it, as opposed to us needing to reconvene a meeting in August, for instance, to- I don't have a problem- This is something we would support now, so. I don't have a problem approving it because it would have to be done at some point. Yeah.
So you would say approve up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane. What's the last part you want? Upon request of either the Conservation Commission or- The Affordable Housing Trust, if you think that's the right agency. What about the Select Board? For them to support an application by them for the next Community Preservation Act funding cycle.
What about the Select Board?
Well, I think that comes up. I'm not sure that's necessary because, ideally the Conservation Commission or the Housing Authority moves forward with this once a proposal emerges from the working group that's being put together. Okay. I mean, okay, sorry, I won't. All right, so Doug has made the motion to approve up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane upon the request of the Conservation Commission or the Wayland Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund in support of an application for the next funding cycle. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. That was Judy. Right. Okay. All right. Can you just repeat the proposal, please? Says person acting as secretary and not functioning prop. I know you wrote it down and I'm so impressed because I did miss it. So, but could you just repeat it for my benefit? Sure. That the committee approve expenditure of up to $10,000 for appraisal of 17 Gleason Lane, upon the request of the Conservation Commission or the Wayland Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund in support of an application for the next funding cycle. And I can send it to you. No, thank you so much. I wanted to make sure I understood it so I can. All right. So any further discussion? Let's do votes then. Doug. Yes. Judy. Yes. Larry. Yes. Leslie. Yes, I'll go with that. Okay. Yes. And I'm a yes. Okay, so. All right. And then did you, do you think it's necessary for us to do the first motion that you had put here? I would be more comfortable with it. And I think it actually means something when we talk to the broker, let's say, you know, we voted to authorize. I would also say, you know, given the interest of them, we're pretty comfortable affording housing trust, making ores and doors are very popular tonight. And I suggest we do the same. I'm sorry, say that part again. So I would, you know, you and I may want to call the broker together. Oh, okay. Given the interest of the housing trust. So I move to authorize the Wayland CPA chair and or vice chair to contact the listing broker of 17 Gleason lane, to indicate, or to access the indicate the possibility of Wayland acquiring the property using CPC funds, should the property remain available into 2027? We just need to switch those because you had said the Wayland CPA chair and that should be CPC. And then it's CPA funds rather than CPC funds. Okay. So everybody heard that. It's pretty much what it says on the screen, except for it was and or. And instead of CPC funds, it would be CPA funds. What is the value in our contacting them rather than having the conservation or affordable housing committee contact? Because we can do it tomorrow. I think. And at least start a dialogue with the broker and hopefully the end seller. And I don't know if... I mean, the housing trust isn't necessarily ready to reach out and do anything. And I don't know what the concoms situation is. But I think for us to do it, it shows that, I mean, it has to go through us one way or another. So if we're the ones who say, you know, we've heard some talk about this and, you know, it's something that we'd be, you know, we've already voted that we're willing to. Invest in an appraisal. I don't think anybody else can, is in a position to say that. All right. So Doug had moved this. Did anybody second? Second. Will somebody? Okay. Is there any other discussion? All right. Doug, I'm going to guess yes, but I'll let you say it. Yes. Judy? Yes. Kay? Yes. Leslie? Abstain. Okay. And Larry? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Anything else with regard to 17 Gleason Lane? Not a thing, Madam Chair. Fantastic. Does anybody have any project or financial updates or other business that they have a burning desire to present? Hearing none, there are no matters that I have not reasonably anticipated. So I would welcome... Well, first I will say, I hope that you all will be able to join us for a town meeting, which begins on Monday, May 4th at 6.30 p.m. at the Wayland High School Fieldhouse. Doors open at 5.30. And I do have my... Is tailgating allowed? That's why I'm able to say it. Madam Chair, is tailgating allowed? Huh? Hmm? You know, there's controversy with the World Cup. Is tailgating allowed at town meeting?
No drinking in town. Public. The way people drive here, they're always tailgating. Oh, different kind of tailgating. Gotcha. All right. Is there a... And also, thank you guys so much for making the time. I really appreciate it. Is there a motion now that it's 7.46 p.m. that we adjourn? So moved. Second. Okay. We'll just put anybody. It's good. All right. Doug? Yes. Judy? Yes. Leslie? Yes. Kay? Yes. Larry? Yes. Susan? I'm a yes. Jalen, thank you so, so, so, so much for making yourself available. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Jalen. This meeting is adjourned.