November 17, 2025 – Historical Commission – Video & Transcript

November 17, 2025 - Historical Commission

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I now want a thought, according to my phone, so I'm going to call the meeting for order, and I'm going to start with, pursuant to Chapter 2 of Acts 2025, this meeting of the Historical Commission will be conducted in person and via remote means in accordance to the applicable law. This meeting may be recorded, which will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as the meeting is practical. Okay, so when required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting, they do so by in-person attendance or by assessing the meeting remotely, as noted above. We request a public comment to be committed to two minutes per person, and so I'm going to call to order, and I'm going to ask you to start off by saying your name because we're on the scene. Thank you all for making this meeting, and my apologies for the change of date and time at the last minute. Okay, so we'll start with public comments since we have people here interested. Any public comment? No? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Elizabeth Hart. I live in Charlizeau. Thank you. I'm sorry. Would you like to come up here and talk? You have to identify yourself, name and address. Oh, I did. I'm sorry. Somebody was whispering in my ear. Yeah, I go by Elisa. I live on Sherman's Bridge Road, and I was just down at the bridge watching the beautiful northern lights in the dark, and most people weren't very calmly walking and driving the light, and there are people from out of town who came through Japan. And the ability for pedestrians to use the bridge freely and to be able to just back up against the railing if we're on the other side so people can go by is important. There's a whole traffic thing that needs to be done, too, but I think it should be maintained as good as we fought, as people fought for when I needed to show back 30 years ago. And I don't believe we need the inside guardrails because there are people living in the neighborhood for 50 years who don't remember a single car accident on the bridge, and it is 25 miles an hour on both sides of the bridge, and there are, I think, barriers or something for accidents coming into the bridge. They have some kind of thing out there, so I just encourage people to look at the history of the bridge, acknowledge the history of the bridge, and we'd love to have a sign acknowledging the historic site, well, I don't think that, let's be fair to everybody, and we would really love your support and recommend Wooden Bridge. Thank you for your comments and for your letters, which I believe everyone has received a copy of Elisa's letter. Yes, sorry, Kate? A copy of Elisa's letter that she sent? Okay, everybody has received it, thank you. Any other public comment? Yes, questions. Operation Shuler, 1260, I sent you an email. The information that you have online is up to the website, with H, about the closed demolition delay. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to start off with the applications for CPA funding. Robert Leroux has decided not to apply, so we will not be talking to him. That brings us back to Gretchen. Come on up.
Thank you very much, all of you. Obviously, the Historical Society is asking for a letter of support for the project that we plan to do next year, relative to stabilizing the building. It is drainage issues. It is, I hope, did you all receive it? Yes. Okay, thank you. And Structural Issues, the Northwest Corner Post is definitely undersized, and it was partially replaced halfway up. And so that's what we know that we should replace it. And also, the sill was done with two-inch boards stacked vertically. And so it's not a solid piece of wood. It's just these boards that are making up the sill for 12 feet at this point. So we want to fix those two issues, and the final thing is flashing and a couple of potential leakage areas on the roof, the slate side. So those are the package. And I know you're a little bit in the quandary, because you have two people here that are intimately connected with the Historical Society. So goes it. So it makes sense. Gretchen, a question I had was the estimate was roughly $55,000. Those were written estimates that you went out and obtained? We had somebody do each section, three of it, and the drainage one is very fluid because it's unknown until they start digging. And so we sort of took the middle road there. And if it's a lot more, to figure it out. Well, I guess I was going to go to my question. How comfortable are you with the estimate? And if it may be low, should the amount of your request be higher? I mean, it could be, but it's, again, the estimate was really problematic because it was between $5,000 and $50,000. And, you know, we just knew it wasn't going to be $5,000. And the $50,000, I think, was if it got involved with the sidewalk, that they had to do anything. But the sidewalk is way below. It has nothing to do with the property. So it will not involve that. And we just decided to take a gamble. Okay. So thanks for being concerned about that. But in this instance, we have applied for one grant for $10,000. And I don't, I'm not counting on it. So, but if that were to happen, obviously, or if we get other grants in the meantime that we apply for, then even if we did receive, by a vote, all the money, we would do the same thing that we did for the heating system last year, where we applied for the $52,000, whatever it was. And we got a grant for half of it for $27,000. And so we then were able to return at the end, say, push the money back into the proper firm. Any other questions? Any comments? Do I hear a motion? I move to endorse the recommendation for the CPA funding for Routherd-Hassman-Theme. With a letter of support. Yes, with a letter of support.
Second. Any other discussion? Right. I'm going to abstain because I work. I get paid there. Sherry-Ann does not get paid there. So I'm going to ask for a vote. And it has to be an oral vote since we're now on Zoom. So I'm going to start with Sherry-Ann. Yes. Yes. You have to tell who you are. Oh, Sherry-Ann Bryant, yes. Amanda Chacho, yes. Brad Barber, yes. Rick Connard, yes. Ann Gordon, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. Thank you.
And so I don't see Abby here. So Sherman Bridgerow in discussion. I have a feeling that we have a lot of people. More of us.
So why don't you just bring your chairs up along over here and then we can all be comfortable. But before you speak, you have to identify yourself. This is a reminder. Identify with each group.
I will find you. Coming up with a question. Do you want to comment on that?
Please. French page. That was part of my class of 1990. Who would like to start? Who would like to start? I think I sent out a piece a while ago. Identify yourself. Doug Stott's 39 Sherman's Wood Road. That the revised proposal made a lot of progress in terms of taking the asphalt paving. But I think the steel guardrails, both being steel in and of themselves, and the fact that they extend much farther than the current wood guardrails, detracts from the historical appearance that we're trying to maintain. Furthermore, taking away the asphalt paving means that, you know, it's a blue lamp surface that presumably has some coating on it. I don't know if it's polyurethane or linseed oil or whatever. And then the question is, well, what does the surface look like? And does that look like, does that have a historically authentic look to it? Does it have a faux historical look to it? Um, or does it look like the sort of, uh, laminated wood paneling that graced so many rec rooms in the 1960s? I guess, you know, from a, uh, from the standpoint of maintaining the historical authenticity look and feel, um, you know, the, uh, the document that was put out on October 30th that spoke extensively to the, uh, removal of the asphalt paving, uh, did not go into detail at all on, you know, the look and feel of the guardrails, did not say that the guardrails were the, I'm sorry. The term of art is the approach guardrails, I think, not the ones on the bridge themselves, uh, or being shortened at all. Uh, the other thing is I've been having a discussion with Kay about its status as a potential indigenous people site. Uh, and extending the torch guardrails would also mean that there'd be a fair amount of excavation that needs to be done, um, which could be a sensitive archeological site. Uh, furthermore, um, it did not say whether, said the paving was being removed, but did not say whether the, uh, stormwater management system, which consisted of a 12-inch reinforced concrete pipe, slung underneath the bridge, uh, going to a couple of catch basins. Um, one of those catch basins being located square in the middle of the, uh, depending on your preference, northern or western boat ramp on the Wayland side, and, uh, you know, putting in those catch basins and the riprap, again, would have an impact on what might be a sensitive archeological site, and, uh, certainly, uh, I'm not sure in colonial times how many well-wedge reinforced concrete pipes were previously seen slung around. All right, so, so that's enough for that, that's enough for a start, and if you wanted, I got more. Any questions? Um, I noted in your, in that massive document that you asked for a sample, a precise sample of the blue lens, so you could see what it actually looks like. You haven't gotten that? No, um, you know, it's kind of funny because you don't really, you know, they, they put this communication out on October 30th. Which represented, you know, three weeks of good and earnest work since the, uh, October 9th meeting. It's almost three weeks since then now, and, and not a peep. Yeah. Um, I'm hoping that the Board of Public Works at their meeting tomorrow night might, uh, start, uh, at their last meeting, they started asking a lot of the right questions, and hopefully they'll, they'll continue in that vein. But, uh, you know, it, it, it, it's, it's unclear to all of us what the next step is on this process and, and basically who's in charge here. So other than, you know, I would submit to you that, uh, my civics education was that, uh, elected boards and boards appointed by elected people should be making decisions and not, uh, town departments. And people wouldn't pay to execute on policy making matters. Well, that's just me. Yeah. I have a question. I really appreciate all the advocacy you've done. It's great. I mean, it's, and it's very informative. It's helpful. Um, comparison to glulam versus wood. Cause I saw references to maybe need to, should just be wood. Um, I guess two questions. One, do you have any sense of the difference in cost between like glulam and wood? And I guess the other point is just the aesthetics. Well, yeah. So, you know, and glulam basically is glorified plywood and they're doing wonderful things with wood, building 24 story skyscrapers out of wood. And when they say that the structural elements are glulam. Um, we've all seen what happens to plywood when it lies in the public for a week or so, it does flood there. Um, and one of the calls to action here, one of the, uh, the putative reasons for the hurry is that, you know, you know, the ads on late night TV that say call by midnight tonight, where we're getting a bit of that there in that, you know, the state might withdraw their offer free glulam. Um, and I follow the freedom of information act request and found out that, you know, the one email said that, you know, the blue lamb needs to be ordered by the end of the fiscal year, which would be June 30th of 2026. But the shop drawings already exist. And, you know, I think most vendors, if you said, I've got an order for you would be pleased to give you an invoice right away, which means we'd have to order it by, you know, June 29th of 2026. Um, and the figure that's been cited about the value of the blue lamb is $325,000 and that's for roughly 2,240 square feet of blue lamb, um, which is a lot of money per square foot. Uh, uh, the current bridge decking is 10 inch by four inch hemlock, um, which is readily available in eight to 24 inch lengths from any, you know, from any number of rough cut saw knows around New England. Um, and, uh, if you just ask for what it costs to buy a single fund, it's about $12 a lineal foot for buying say 2,700 lineal feet, you might be able to get it for 10 bucks a square foot. Uh, that's $27,000 versus $325,000, um, that's natural, that has listed flooding before, will withstand flooding in the future. And when you don't, when you maintain it, you don't need to hire a specialty contractor with a barge. So, as it's attached the same way, it's like, uh, yeah, the lamb has a hole underneath the lamb, you have to attach it from the bottom, especially less fasteners. And yeah, yeah, I've noticed that, uh, repairs to the bridge or practically reconstruction of the whole bridge is about 25 years in between. So you were there, it was 1992, but were you at a ribbon? So my question is, is, will the glue lamb last longer or less? Uh, that's a good question. It hasn't been tested for a long time. The, the management consultant would say it would have to last over 300 years to get into a similar cost per year. Um, the, uh, in the earlier communications, the joint planning team said that the maintenance interval would be doubled from 20 to 40 years. That was with the pavement. Um, I think we have the last year's town meeting warrant. You find a statement from the Wayland EPW saying that the towns roads and streets, including, uh, thinly traveled streets, like Ray Burchette, Ray Burch Lane, are in a 15 year, uh, replacement cycle. So, you know, I don't know what putting an asphalt on a blue lamb versus a ballast, you know, sends the light by 25 years.
And so do we know what the cost would be of, uh, as in the 1990 news report from the Boston Globe that talked about that they were going to use New England wood. And the cost of that versus, well, the, the $10 is for a foot or a lineal foot I told you was for New England wood, you know, native hemlock. Uh, there's actually a, a, a guy in Hopkinton with a mill at New England, there's all sorts of people in New York. And, and so it'd be, you know, about $27,000 for the decking itself would be $7,500 for a couple thousand lag bolts and washers. So this hemlock, is that a tighter, uh, need, or, or grain, grain, thank you, uh, for the, uh, on the wood that might last longer than the pine or something else? Oh, I think it's roughly comparable, you know, but softwood, softwoods run about $10,000 or something like that, so. Mm-hmm. What's on the question? I don't know. I didn't take a poor sample or analyze DNA, but, uh, I think it's a native softwood. Oh. But you said it was. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, it's what I get the quote of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just identify yourself again. Alisa. Carter. Um, I would worry a little bit about the blue land, um, being a smooth surface. Um, I mean, smoother than wood or asphalt and potentially being slippery in the rain. And, um, when it was originally at the October 9th meeting, I asked about, um, was, no, someone asked about potholes and, and, and, because they were going to have the, the, um, asphalt on top of the blue line. Um, and, uh, I think it was an engineer responded that if there is a pothole, it must be repaired immediately, which is a ridiculous concept of any pothole being prepared immediately. Um, and they said, and you have to be very careful not to damage the blue line underneath. Um, cause that brings up, that's a whole other thing, but we don't know what that whole other thing is. So if there is damage on this blue land, what does that mean? We don't know. Um, but it does worry me, um, because yeah, it's fine if it's in the construction, surrounded by steel cement or whatever, but there is no bridge that has been around for 20 or 30 years with blue land on the surface. Have they demonstrated any, um, bridges around that met blue land on it? Didn't they find one that used it? It was on one. Yeah. There's a picture in the report. And then the, you know, one of the bridges they pointed out was basically a bridge over railroad track, railroad tracks on flood. And it wasn't very old. That's the Marion street. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's not blue land. Blue land. It's like in Framingham. Right. Marion street has wooden decking laid out at a 30 degree angle. So that, uh, each board only has one wheel on it at a time. Excuse me. I missed your name. Could you say it again? John Flint. Thank you. Oh, are you Mikey Scott? Of course. Yes. I'm Webb's mom. Yeah. That one bridge, which is in Framingham. And it's only, it's not that old. It's not that old. Eight years. Yeah. And I can point you to a bridge in Wendell. And I have to know where Wendell is. Uh, but I've been to the bridge, which is a blue land bridge deck bridge built in 2022 or so. And it has wood decking on it. It looks nice. I think there's a, there's a picture of it in my tone. So. So the construction was blue land, but it has wood deck. It has a wood deck, which looks quite nice. And there was a Wendell. Wendell. The reason they didn't choose blue land surface. So, you know, again, it said the October 30th communication said we're not going to pay with the asphalt for the open issue is. And what is the wearing surface? And historical. And it's going to cost extra to get right here. Something else. I understand that you had planned a luncheon with Mr. Stopper. Is there anything come out of it? Uh, no, I haven't, uh, planned that, uh, been emailing back and forth. He's actually back up in New Hampshire for a couple of days and without internet access. So. Any other questions or comments that you want to make? Anyone from the audience? Yes. Have you already, uh, made any comments to, for the record, for the historic, um, sorry, for the, uh, each of you? No. No. Is that what you're trying to decide? I will, uh, tell you that Tom Holder did call me and asked me to come in and speak to him, which I did do. Um. And I will say that they feel that there are some statements in your mailbox at the, that are incorrect. Uh, they may have contacted you. I hope they have about correcting them. Um, he, uh, they don't, they're missing in their archives data. So they can't say that Mr. Stopper is incorrect in his memory and they can't say that he's correct. But they have no record of any of their agreements that he refers to. Um, so I want you to be aware of that, that DPW side. Yeah. They're, I think they're very, uh, confident in the glue gun. Um, but, uh, who am I being acceptable? Um, if it looks historic and it's maintainable and, and, you know, those, those would be open issues. Um, and safe to drive. It's pretty, the traffic is supposed to be 25 and people speed over it. I mean, I did make this suggestion that they work with the police department about monitoring it for a while. Um, we all know the spots where the police like to sit. And so we automatically slow down whether they're there or not, which is good. But, um, I suggested it a few times by Sherman bridge road that, uh, people might slow down. Um, and the fact, and also there's a question of weight. Um, yes. They, they say, they told me that the bridge would hold the weight of the dump trucks and the, um, buses. And that bridge is made to do that. And, uh, so they're not sure that they can limit according to them. Only the state can limit on bridges. Yeah. And yeah, that's an open issue too. In that, when you read the Massachusetts general laws, they state, say that the mass dot mass highway as the exclusive authority to declare a maximum weight limit on a bridge. But nowhere in statute does it say that a town does not have the right to impose a lower weight limit on a bridge. Lower than the maximum. Right. And, and, you know, I'd say the prima facie evidence of that is, you know, I think you saw the email from, uh, Sheila, Sheila, I forget her last name. Yeah. Over the last couple of days saying she remembers a weight limit sign on the bridge from 1995 when they moved in to about 1998. Which is when the Route 117 bridge collapsed in, in, between concrete and Lincoln Leesbridge. And Occam's razor would suggest that they removed the weight limit sign at that time. So the Lincoln Sudbury school bus could get the LS since they couldn't go over what was left of Leesbridge. And that, uh, it was never restored. And you said there's, um, per mile sign on both sides of the bridge. Uh, 20 or 25 mile hours. Yeah. I don't know that they're posted at the bridge. Yes. Uh, um, and the problem is for Sherman's bridge road, once they turn, uh, there may be one sign, but after the stop sign, it goes up a hill and it's sort of forested. And as soon as they come off the bridge, they just start flooring it. And then they go up that hill. And by the time they pass my house, they're going from 19 to the top of the hill. The second hill. This was the second hill. Well, the hill from, go from the bridge and then it dips down and then you're at the top of the second hill. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yes. So, um, anyway, they're going 45,000. And that was sort of the traffic, the average, I think from the, the traffic study done actually from my driveway that wasn't within it yet. Um, they average over 40 miles an hour and the traffic that was going eastbound. And, um, so it, I think it would be helpful to make sure there is a sign and something that says maximum speed limits for 25 miles strictly enforced or 25 miles in blue would help. But regarding the, um, weight limit sign, there is also something in one of his documents. Um, I don't know, it was from the historical commission or one of the other commissions, but there was a note that something had commented. It was in the, the minutes from the meeting that was in that document saying, you know, they wondered what happened to the weight limit sign, you know? So they were noticing it had disappeared. And since it was all always there and it was for 25,000, why not put it back up? And, you know, keep that. There was a neighbor. I mean, I don't know if there's no letter I wrote to you, but someone on the Lincoln side saw this house being constructed with all steel frame. And the massive truck carrying all these massive steel beams, instead of going into Lincoln, came down Sherman's Bridge Road and went over Sherman's Bridge with this massive steel stuff to go to the construction site just on the other side of the river in suffering. So, I mean, a weight limit sign and even the end of those two roads. I mean, this time note, Sherman's Bridge is a weight limit. That's awesome. You have, uh, stated in your documents that there's been no, uh, accidents on the bridge. No accidents on the bridge itself. And I think in there, I have a map from the mass dot crash database going back to 2013 with a dot at every crash site on Sherman's Bridge and Lincoln roads. As you would expect, the, uh, the most of the dots are on the curves, you know, the curve coming down on the Whalen side, Sherman's Bridge, and also on the curve at Weir Hill and Sudbury, which is already a 20 mile hour. But, but there are no dots on the bridge itself. And there were people present October 9th who said they'd lived there for 50 years and couldn't recall any accidents. Well, I have to, I came back Saturday from, uh, Marlboro that way just to see what it was like. It's a lovely drive, very narrow roads. And, uh, I did a couple of times that I was concerned. Yeah. It seems a lot now at 25 tons. That means school buses will still go over. Cause there are 25,000. Yeah. Well, even so it'll still be, um, Previous weight limit was two and a half tons. Yeah. Well, that would exclude buses, but at 25. Yeah. It's how many people on it and gasoline and everything else. So I, I just want to clarify that. Yeah. So what is being asked of us? Well, you're the historical commission. And we hope that you might, uh, intervene with a letter of concern saying we're very interested in having the historic look and feel preserved that, you know, it is a priceless artifact in a wonderful setting and the middle of a great, the national wildlife refuge. And, uh, you know, part of what it makes special to live here is having places like this that look like this and therefore, you know, we want a road surface that looks authentic. Uh, we don't like the idea of steel guardrails. If there are steel guardrails that can be encased in natural looking wood, that's a discussion point. And that, uh, lengthening the approach guardrails, um, doesn't seem in keeping with the historical nature, whether they're wood or steel. And that we're concerned that further excavation might disturb an archeological site. That's not for starters. So I would prefer not having guardrails because they will limit the ability of pedestrians who do use the bridge. Well, there's the, there's the interior, there's the double walkway, which is gone. The double walkway. Yeah. So the, the interior walk, the interior guardrail between the driving surface and the walkway is no longer three and a half feet high. Instead, it's very similar to the one on the Merriam street bridge, which, you know, basically rises to about ankle height. So you can walk over it. You can, uh, before my hip got replaced. Yes. What about, and on the other side? On the other side where there's no pedestrian walkway, there's just the, uh, the guardrail that's there. Yeah. See, that's a problem for pedestrians because it's not that wide a bridge and car, a car is coming and you're on that side, you can back up against the rail. You can't do that if there's a guardrail. No, I think it's basically, well, I don't know. Like I say, there's still a lot of open issues because the October 30th, uh, submission did not have a big set of plans. Right. Okay. And I will say for those that are concerned with the recreation, the kayaking, the fishing down at river level. Um, when I spoke with, uh, Tom and Paul, they said that the guardrail does not go far enough to impede people from launching their boats or walking down to the river and so forth. Um, yes and no, um, the guardrail goes further. Um, and at times peak usage, their cars parked there, trailers parked there, et cetera. So there are times when it would impede people from being able to get down there. And also during peak usage times, which are the times most likely for there to be an emergency, there's a risk that will prevent access from the rescue boats of the Sudbury and Wayland fire departments. Um, well, I guess it's a difference of opinion between. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we do know that in the area, there are. Also making boards should resolve those differences. Yes. If you have something more to. Um, yes, I just want. I think it would be, uh, useful for everyone. If the, uh, historical commission and Sudbury historical commission to coordinate your comments. And I know that, uh, case talk to Chris, Chris has talked to me a lot. Chris, uh, was the chair of that commission. Um, and they, um, they're grappling. They've been told that they don't have that depurview because it's not historic. So I've pushed back with him about that. Um, so he's, he's working on that. He's maybe tomorrow night. I think it's tomorrow night. And, uh, you know, he's got. He's got some language to parent that. And, um, so I, you know, all the things that Doug said, as long as they're pointing towards the, um, the historical, historical sense of it is appropriate. And knowing that it's so appropriate to get into other issues that are not related to the, the history just because it puts them off. That's why you want to really focus on this and, and have it. I think it's, uh, about the, um, slavery, uh, kind of, same, similar aspects. And I, I do, do believe that there is an argument that it was historic pieces of wood that are there right now were not there since 1743, nor were they there since 19, uh, 25 or even probably 1890, a lot of the place. But, you know, look at our house built in 1762. There are a lot of new cohorts and there are different windows. There's all sorts of things that have changed since then. It's still listed in the National Register, you know, and it's not just because it was, uh, you know, it was demolished and rebuilt and not so much. Did you look for the date, uh, on the other side of the, uh, Sudbury? On Sudbury side? I did not know. As I've been told, there's a date there. I'm not sure what the date is. Um, in fact, you could inquire if BPW has a photo of it because I was told that they might, uh, have a photo of it. But that may or may not help with the idea of being historical. But this site, it's the same site. And it's historic site where Minutemen crossed the bridge that was there at that time, which was anchored in that location. And, and it is the site that, um, uh, Thoreau, you know, looked at the bridge and crossed the bridge and wrote about the bridge in that location with that view where you can't see anything else man-made. Um, and it's in a national, uh, national refuge. Um, so it, it is a historic site. It may not, the bridge itself may not physically be historic because it has been rebuilt, um, several times. But the site is certainly historic. Yeah. To that point, I might add that the folks of the National Wildlife Heritage are getting back to work. And they've already reached out without becoming involved. And that would be really true to Tom Shasha and the Bridge Stewardship Council. I do want to point out that we feel that Stonebridge is a historical site. And yet it is not the original bridge either. So, um, we want to take that into consideration. We also feel that the four arch bridge at, uh, the town bridge is considered historical as well. And I'm sure it's not the original bridge. Um, so, um, we do. It was actually delisted. I'm sorry. That, uh, the town bridge was actually delisted for the National Register. Uh, because it was incorrect information in the nomination. It could be re-done. Mm-hmm. But we did not do the numbers for the Stonebridge. And that is the supernatural. But this has already been determined not to be eligible, uh, for the National Register listing. And I get it. I understand why. And I just wanted to request it, though. The town bridge? No, true. No. But, well, it's, um, because it, it was completely rebuilt. The other ones were rebuilt, but way off in as stuff. Not as, but they claim that this. Yeah. It's wrong people. But that's national. Yeah. And it's not historic. It's not historic landscape. And it's historic for Massachusetts, whether they want to say nationally or not. It is historic location. Yeah. Location, setting, design. Materials. Not materials. Materials. And we want to point out that where the bridge is located was a 40 point for the Native Americans that were living here in this area. Um, there are other. Theological sites that I don't know whether they are registered. I know one that is, but I'm not sure about the others. Um, in the area. So if they're close enough, they need to, um, to make the assumption that. That indigenous people lived and worked in that area. So you have a point with the archeology, uh, concerns, but it may be just to observe. Yes. Uh, the work that's being done. Rather than having to do, uh, days before. So that isn't going to be really a detriment to their time. anything else we thank you all for taking the time and effort to come in the middle of the day to talk to us thank you i appreciate his job and just add the uh you know the board of public works is meeting tomorrow night so i don't know if the committee the commission would consider any sort of uh input for them for that well we have to talk about what we want to say and as uh gretchen pointed out or you pointed out working with a uh sedbury commission which has not yet met and i'm meeting tomorrow at the same time uh their meeting starts half an hour after the quarter reports me starts i know you could actually watch it on zoom by the way but you have to have tevo for zoom but you can let them know that something is coming you're consulting with the center or even if you did it just copied so they can think we're going to copy them it's never happened thank you so much thank you thank you discussion comments proposals emotions well i think i think the the idea of expressing support for the you know historical nature of the the location the design is important and i'm perfectly comfortable saying that i'm a little less comfortable about the archaeology piece uh because we're not aware of any uh actual archaeological sites i guess you said there may be one nearby uh if that's the case then that's that's certainly worth pointing out well there is one registered with the state okay at least one that i know about and is it is it close enough that it might be impacted by the construction i would think so i i would be happy to discuss it uh and show you what we have but i'm not sure because we do keep uh registered sites private right right um i think tanya would feel pretty confident about saying that we're sensitive sites are there like it's a low the landing right there and the weir system that they used i think it's i wasn't going to discuss that but yes i think it's pretty safe to say yeah rick do you have anything on that um i would be more sympathetic if it was a true historic bridge but it was built in 1992 as a replacement bridge and from what i can tell it seems that the way when dpw has reacted to doug's you know the group's comments and has made accommodations may not be a hundred percent but i i think they have listened and modified the design and i'm not a bridge engineer i don't know about the technical lasting qualities of glulam and i personally would rather defer to the experts rather than to elected or appointed members of the board to make those kinds of technical decisions i think um our job is the historical commission is to decide whether or not we want to support this as at a historical site that um has half farms around it we have to admit that and uh but it also has undisturbed lands in the wildlife and the uh subbury valley trustees area so uh i think if we make a motion it has to be based on our historical support rather than anything that has to do with the makeup of the bridge per se other than to comment on the aesthetics of the bridge looking historical i agree katie i think we really need to stay in our lane and we don't we don't have any expertise on bridge engineering or in speed control traffic patterns uh maximum weight we have nothing to say about those i mean you can all comment as citizens of wayland on that but not at from the historical commission yeah so i i agree with you that i think our job is to look at the site itself determine if we feel it has historic significance and if we do then what is our message uh about it um what is our ask well wouldn't the ask be and i agree completely that you said about staying in line given the fact that it's a historic site uh you know thorough being there and uh you know other other other points that you mentioned that we think it's important that given the historical significance of that site that any replacement bridge or repairs to the bridge uh maintain a proper historic uh feel or uh feel or or design someone like to make that into a motion or i just i agree with all this and i think it's important to stay in our lane with what we're responsible for in our duties and vision and and be very supportive in that aspect so is it enough for us to say the bridge should maintain a proper historic feel or design uh or do we have any scanning to go further and be specific about a wood surface um what are we how how detailed well we could mention a setting in our landscape um to kind of port maybe too much steel extending beyond visually beyond the i i don't know what would it be appropriate to say that it feels important to remain to retain the historical character of the bridge i think that's a better way of placing it rather than being specific because then we're getting too close to commenting about how the bridge is being built and so forth which we have no control or say over uh yeah that's why i i said landscape like i wouldn't say that i wouldn't use the word steel but but in in mention that the bridge but also mention the setting the setting is very historic and we can certainly verify that from indigenous people to today and that um the fact that it has been continued to be maintained in a historical aspect uh is another reason to can for us to ask that it be continued again that way now i will say i will say this for the audience as well that having talked to a retired select person who was a select person in uh the 1990s that he checked the deed and there was nothing in the deed about it so if uh going forward you may want to consider the possibility of having some sort of deed restriction placed and saying that it needed to be continued to have this historic aspect or whatever you want um because that's something i don't want to get into but that's a thought it's a good idea bridge has a deed i didn't know how can you have a deed on a public oh we have the account has a deed that owns half the bridge property and the other half is owned by uh sudbury so there's a deed on the bridge but can you put a interesting conservation that's not a public piece of public property i don't see why not you can't oh i don't know i don't know i don't know i really don't i mean this is something for them to discuss themselves i just pointed it out because it was brought to my attention um that this is something that would submit it it would no longer be a he said she said situation in the future and uh it because it would be on record and it would be a record that that they couldn't change and just i don't know that you would ever get them to agree to that but um it's a thought and if they're using that as helping them make decisions it might be better to have it on in the future as we all know
we have we depend on our archives to tell us what went on and what happened this is why ann's wonderful minutes are so good because people know what was discussed it isn't just that it's discussed they will understand why something was decided the way it was because she has recorded that and i know when uh demolition delay was turned down i asked well what did they say that turned the audience to say no and nobody knew nobody could remember but they knew the final result and so that's not helpful in the future people need to know and understand why a decision is made and so um getting back to this decision i think the fact that it's um extremely close to uh a registered site in massachusetts that it seems likely and we know that is a fording area for the indigenous people that we might want to take that into consideration historically quick question is sherman bridge road a designated scenic road yes yes so it has some protection through that okay thank you
both sides of the bridge as is the river that the bridge shows over is a scenic byway and again that's not right so back to our we're going to make a motion here um to write a letter of support i think it sounds like we're all comfortable saying this is an important historic landscape um and cite some of the reasons why it's considered important um including the presence of native people in the area and the use of that spot as a boarding area um the continual use of the bridge and the repair of the bridge over time in an historic manner it sounds very good yeah i think i would include the number of years i mean they kept the historical character for since the first bridge was built whenever so you put 200 and some years i think 1743 was the first bridge which one 1743 if you actually put the number of years that that bridge has maintained began and has been maintained through various repairs and rebuilds for 200 and some years well i want to be fair and then point out the fact that it was a one-lane bridge and it came a two-lane bridge with sidewalk was there a period where there was no sidewalk 1925 1989 it's 16 foot wide bridge which was two lanes and sidewalk well the sidewalk is wood yes and don't forget the minute now that it's about 30 years after we're passing it so my remaining is um we can say that we support the historic um aspects that the bridge the character of the bridge be maintained um historic character um but that does leave it open to interpretation as to what that means we want to go any further and specify what we mean by that i don't know how i don't feel comfortable doing
i mean i i'm very supportive of what you're saying but as a historical commission i don't think we should get into uh recommendations about construction types i don't think that's our purview okay i suggest that worded as you suggest as more detail because people look at the detail and consider whether you want to go further but we might say that we want to continue the historical as appearance of the bridge as it has been for the last hundred and whatever years the aesthetic and the character ends but i think to answer ann's question is to point out as it has been okay that way we don't have to get into wood or land food glam or anything else because i think you'll agree that this is has adapted to our modern society but still retain the historic appearance and that's the way i would emphasize it okay so is it is the motion we're going to be presenting is uh basically we're supporting the preparation of a letter of support and not necessarily saying in the motion what what the letter is going to say um i think we can make a motion of any kind i would i would suggest that the motion should be that we're going to write a letter of support that the historic character of the bridge be maintained so there's a little specificity in the motion itself beyond just a letter right but then can the letter be included with the minutes or next month's minutes uh as showing that we actually did something yeah after it's after it's final yes because like i said before that this project has brought up the importance of um keeping archives and keeping them well not just keep putting them into a file because i spent quite a bit of time first i went up to look for the seven 1972 well we didn't exist then so that was easy but now i i'm having trouble finding the 1990s because i believe they wrote a letter of support in the 1990s
they wanted to turn it into concrete at that point and they really fought against that right so who's ready to make the motion i move that the historic commission prepare a letter of support that the the reconstruction or rehabilitation of the chairman's bridge
maintain the historic character of the bridge and the site given the historical significance of the location of uh uh the site the location and location okay i second okay good i'm gonna repeat it for everyone please uh brad moved that the historic commission prepare a letter of support that the repair of the bridge maintain the historic character of both bridge and the site given the historic significance of the location that does not say to whom we are sending the letter of support but do we need to do that i believe that it would be helpful even for future archivers to have to come back and look at it my recommendation would be to the whalen dpw the sudbury dpw and the sudbury historical commission i don't know if there's any other town managers what i'll manage we could send it to the town
we could also um send it to um sudbury valley we could send it to the national wildlife we could also send it to our conservation group those would be my suggestions um anybody else i mean once it's out in the public but the fact that we address it to each one of those individually i think it's important well can we just for instance send it to db dpw and have all those others listed as carbon copies yes that would be carbon copies it would get a little clunky if you had to put all those people in it yeah no you would send one letter address to the sudbury commission one letters addressed to the sudbury department public works one letter each one would get their own separate letter at the at the head but you can list all the others that you know we're sending it to so that they're aware that we're sending it to all these people not just to them do we want to send it to the wayland post sure and then it will go up on doug's we have the dale and m sudbury dpw
the sudbury historical commission the board of public works sudbury valley trustees national wildlife refuge oh do we need the same river we should that's tom siaka that's that's a consortium group right but yes we should send it to them as well because it's crossing their river uh our river right that has a specific name i know in the enemy either in our listing of town commissions and the tom siaka yeah but see that's not a town commission the same stewardship that's what it is yeah yeah that's the way it's listed on the town site
all right and the conservation conservation and the way of us do i have a second i've seconded
we're going to have a vote and we're going to say your name first and then vote sherry and bryant yes amanda chacho yes brad carver yes rick connor yes and gordon yes hey go to westcott yes so um can we just talk about the logistics here i'm guessing you like me to write the letter when i when i yes yesterday and then i'll send a draft to all of you and send me your comments and yes so please check your town email so you can respond quickly especially if i have to meet with the uh sudbury historic commission so that i can um tell them what we're doing anything else on sherman bridge and we're going to move on to the minutes thank you thank you again thank you all for your work with all the work yeah that that uh document is just unbelievable okay but tell them where you've had a lot of that i found a lot of it you know i'll unite up the theaters off the stage behind the channel i said never do it existed yeah have you reviewed your minutes into all the other paperwork that you had to do
anybody have any comments on the october minute i didn't see any i didn't see anything oh good wow okay we have a motion to accept the minutes as written i moved that we accept the minutes as written i second any further discussion all right let's take a vote sharianne you want to say your name and vote sharianne bryant yes amanda tracho i'm going to stay who comes in here brad carver yes rick connor yes and gordon yes okay gardener westcott yes that was fast okay the uh display in the town building i have reached out to chief burman at the police department they will are in the process of considering it i've given him the uh dimensions of the display case i reminded him that they are important they have already reached out to the indigenous population to uh work together and i said it's a really special display and i would recommend that you know any children come by he does not want it for december because they're collecting toys uh i said it could be it could be after december he wanted to know how long i didn't say indefinitely but
what i said well as long as you know there's an interest what's going on nobody understands what's happening in that discipline we have to explain about the fishing weirs we have to explain about the canoe being uh carved out we need to talk about the drying fish we need to talk about the skins that are being cleaned and how they're being cleaned um now i'm not sure that that that house is exactly the kind of house that they have locally but it is an interesting house and then in the fact that it is uh uh shell shaped so that when the wind blows into the door which there is no door it does not go into the living area but it goes into a wall because it's circular all those things are interesting points that would catch people's imagination but we have to write up something that describes that because they're not going to get that just looking at it they don't know what the wares are when when i point them out oh that's what that is we need someone that that can work on that and display at the community center does explain what a fish weir is it's a beautiful display over there finally got in that building well we might use that um but uh we do need somebody to write up the information and we have to talk about how it would be presented because you can't put it in the display there's too much information and um so a qr code but so you have a qr code in the in the just like in the display and then we'll have the information well on my visits to uh different historical societies i've asked them how the qr plays out and they say very few people use it um i'm happy to help work on that i just don't know it it would ruin the display to put it in the display right now the top you cannot look down into it so that means the whole surface at the top uh or if we put the empty uh display case back on top of it we could put the explanations in that you might want to put one here and then one up here is the house and you know 10 is the fishing there i don't know but where would you put that rating you know is it where you took out the um artifacts yeah on the top but it would kind of block the it's gonna block anyway i mean it's yeah i know i would look into changing the top yeah putting a plexiglass so people can look down yes and children can look if they're taller can look down in well i would like that too but this year we have absolutely no money about that and then maybe a pocket where you could have sheets of paper would like that idea you know well yeah and that's a qr code also so that you don't have to waste too much but but yes one laminated sheet um may be attached with a ring and then a bunch of xeroxed ones for somebody who might want to take it home yeah it's a good idea but i'm open to other suggestions as well the one problem i kind of foresee with it being located at the safety building is how many if we're really interested in children seeing it how many children visit the safety building well certainly they do on the days that they're uh having open house however i agree it's not my first thought but we've already been turned down by the schools we've been turned down by the public library um they obviously do not want it in this building and we've been turned down by the coa because i went back last week and talked to julie about it and um just no way i don't understand the coa doesn't own that whole building it's a community center so it seems a little one well she didn't turn it down because of the contents okay she turned it down because of fire regulations uh people leaving and the width of the hallway things like that okay she had legitimate and there is already a display in fairness i just well currently there's a display that's not going to stay up there forever um so they do have meeting rooms i talked about putting it in the room and again she had concerns about if there was an emergency and they had a large group the exit and so forth it feel free to go over and talk to her i'm you know maybe i didn't explain it well enough to her or not but um i saw several places where i didn't think it would it be inhabited and in the court when you walk the first walk in there's that corner there and she's not happy with the way it's set up at the moment and i said this could go right underneath the the large television that's up there and she didn't think that that was an appropriate place either so
what what is happening with the um the building that's between the library and the the freight house the thing you're afraid house what's happening is anything happening with that not that has been publicly said no and you have to remember there's no heat in the past i thought there was talk about maybe making it into a museum space or something well there's been talk about many groups want to use that freight building many groups have many ideas of what they could do in that freight building but um nothing has been determined anybody else have any other suggestions where it might go i i thought at the police station and the reason i came up with that was because um actually i've been thinking about it and then watertown contacted us and said oh you know what we're we're putting in a whole new display at the fire department because they don't want all handcuffs and guns and elite clubs and so forth and it'll be rotating and that was for the historical society so i thought he has a big lobby why not even if it's a temporary location we find a better home it i'm just afraid the longer it sits out here the more likely it's going to be tossed because it appears that we're not concerned about it i think there are a fair number of kids that go through that i know i remember you know my son i don't know if it was boy scouts or just school groups they go through the police station so i think there are a fair number of children that do go through there so i think it does make some sense well i wondered about that other than there were groups that wouldn't have gone through the police or safety building for uh firing police the fact that he was pleasant about it and didn't say no right away kind of made me feel good about it but he has he gets points for that and he answered the phone i couldn't believe that no secretary he answered the phone um so anyway i had reached out to the sudbury historical society to see if they were interested but there's also will be temporary because they change their displays yes more frequently than the way i haven't heard that she's heard back uh-huh well fernando was out on the family leave yeah and uh yes so anyway the um again that would be a temporary location for assuming that it fits in with their particular display that they work so so we must put on your thinking caps here be creative and help us find a home for when you talked to the school did you talk to the superintendent who did you talk to i did not talk to the school i believe pat talked to the school the head custodian he's been trying he's desperate to find a place for it he's been calling a lot of places i mean and i did not talk to the library again he talked to the library i'm just wondering if they'd be willing to consider you know maybe it could travel between all the schools and it's not like a thing to move they'd have to get go to uh town hall to get somebody to move it from yeah i remember which year they focused on the curriculum i mean i know there's the third grade the second third grade covers it but did they do it again in middle school i don't know that's why i picked up on your idea on that and suggested as so if we're really down to no place for it to go is some way to make it into three pieces that could be easily transported to the schools and then hook back together like a puzzle that's a smart idea well that's i just thought it's last resort that might be the lady that created it you know i thought she was going to talk to her about that and of course she's whether that resin could be cut you mean i don't know what i thought it was on plywood i don't know what the blue resin that's oh that goes over yeah the for the water and so forth i yeah i don't but i don't know that that water would be cut i don't know if the grass is resin or not green area if you cut it in thirds the water wouldn't be cut because it's right on the edge it might have to be a zigzag kind of cut so it actually looks like a puzzle piece to get around the things that you don't want to cut through right but anyway then we have to get a special caring cases because i'm somebody who knows how to put things back in when they fall over before and i say that's last resort if there's no place for it so and we could try private schools as well we don't have to say with public schools i mean wow and then you want to try private schools that that school that has come to us and veritas veritas has been very interested well there are no native american museum in new england there is what native american museum well there's province and there's another one um it was closed for renovations and i don't really know what that means whether it's reopening or not um down it's it's it's a notebook museum um and i can't remember which town it's in but it's kind of southwest of here well if you're sending it to a specific um tribe my concern is that i don't think those houses are the correct houses tanya was so sure it was yes well the reason why i say that is because the lady who made it said that to me not that she wasn't and i can't remember whether she said read us what is it read it yeah right she said it wasn't correct i thought she said that it wasn't i can't imagine tanya would have let her do it if it wasn't so weird well it's an easy check with you all and for sure absolutely uh i just had another idea when you said that what about the wayside in they're always so open they have so many interesting events and they
or the one up in act and the one of an act in the pine hole is it acting yeah there's no
and there's uh i mean it's a shame that it would leave whalen but right if to say that yeah well there's robbins uh although that's not even open to the public anymore oh really i don't think so i think people go down and they can't get in and i don't think it's okay well tommy had suggested robbins and i've been to robbins that so i know they have a lot there um but if it's not open to that i've heard that people can't get in that they go and it's not open okay could be wrong double check someone let's make a note of the places that have been suggested so let's see where this is we could put it out there on the um i don't know if it's the type of thing you put on the historical listserv but just to say that we have this it would be a shame not to save it does anybody know of a school who does a big focus who would like it does pinehawk have a an actual facility yeah okay so pinehawk is one and then um the wayside inn always kind of collaborates and does these teaching events i don't know the wayside isn't it called wayside long fellow and yeah wayside inn oh we say
they have a museum area yeah and they probably have storage that's what i was thinking to pull it out whenever they do i would think that storage would be a big problem for them just like it is for the historical society although they do have an archives you know we might think about the archives i just think it's such a shame that the school wouldn't be willing to use it it's like it just makes me crazy because when we go in there for one day and you know history the kids just eat it up they love it i know it's more about space this is so tiny i mean there are classrooms it used to be closets you know i know just don't have room for something i know i think this is the problem is that there isn't room and when they have already things set up the way they want it then to do something else and to justify it to get in that space uh which is at its premium you can understand so i have down uh pinehawk and wayside inn and wayside inn archives anything else well if you're not wed necessarily to keep me then wayland then i'd contact separate schools sudbury historical society
i mean they may have the space same space issues but well i think subbury historical society is good but they won't keep it and it's coordinated and framing him and i mean anybody really there's a separate have they indicated they would take it on a temporary basis the um police department is considering you're not the police the sudbury historical society oh i don't know i did not talk to them oh i thought you said they would be a temporary um based on the fact that they changed their displays every oh every six months yes they haven't said that they wanted no oh but i've been through their storage area which is pretty full yeah and they store off-site as well and um their space is at a premium so that doesn't sound like an option it's my educated guess the very schools numbers should be coming down student body wise there's no books in the schools anymore everything's virtual i don't know maybe space will open should we create a letter to send to people instead of everybody just going in there and yawn to some of these suggestions i still remember that you took a bunch of pictures of it a year and i tried to find those and i hadn't been able to find do you still have those pictures oh they're still on here okay okay is there a listserv we could post this on instead of you know like that would would that one the historical one be appropriate or is that not really a would this not be appropriate for that you know kind of thing they probably would absolutely and if you i'm not even sure what it's called you know which one i mean but you know everyone's gonna want to work with commission yeah exactly that could be on a long time i wouldn't want to misuse it i don't know if this is the appropriate place oh not for the mass historic commission there is another um history kind of thing where they send out you know we're getting rid of mannequins or we're getting rid of shelving or we're getting rid of whatever and anybody can pick it up that's how we got a lot of our stuff up in uh in the office now this is i'm sure he would say no because space but joe bagley what joe bagley he might say no absolutely but if he gives tours of his lab which you know he does he might want it as a oh no i'm sorry jill he's the city archaeologist in boston i don't know last name again b-a-g-l-e-y tanya knows him very well yeah bagley is what you're saying bagley is that what you're saying okay but and i know they just moved into new i know he had no space and they moved just recently like in the last six months into a new space that's bigger but i don't know how big yeah so i mean you might not want it but who knows if we showed him pictures you might say actually i don't know never hurts to ask okay so any other suggestions how about um some historical homes that just happen to have space like uh shirley eustace house or you never see it people you know see the habits you mean like open like historic houses in waltham or in yeah yeah it's not private homes no no no concrete a private house or what's the one on the farm that um codman farm yeah places like that like i don't know well i think we would reach people if we went out on that historic history list uh see if we can have and we could say that you know we're looking for a permanent home but it also could be a temporary if you happen to have a temporary show coming up you know and then there's transportation if it's temporary well yeah they'd have to provide it yeah well but when returning it as well that's the other thing too and where would we put it when it's returned before we have another place well i mean you know at least it would give us a little bit of a window of opportunity like a time to find another home home as fast as we're finding it this time no i'm i'm open to all sorts of ideas i mean who knows maybe and maybe in the end we won't find a place for it but just a shame okay well i think we've talked about but also if it is incorrect inaccurate well i don't think we should right we need to find that yeah i actually don't even think it should be up if it's inaccurate that that that i find i think it's of the same time period but maybe just not this area in other words uh i can't imagine they'd be doing something very different just like you know 20 miles it's a very elaborate house when you go out it's under the staircase you can look at it and see what i'm talking about if you don't remember what it looks like but our immediate area was more a transit area yeah it's treasonally and that i i would think that'd be a difficult structure to move seasonally because of this the size and just the amount of of uh although that create the sides you know like a teepee that's you know you just fold it up and parted away i know but like when you see when you see like my brain is really is really fried but when you when you see the amish put up a house in a day kind of thing i i don't think it's but they're not moving a house they're just building it yeah but they could also take it down and move it also it's not so i don't think i don't think it's as tricky as we we think it might be yeah i mean i know it's true people lived under cliffs and people if people have lived all sorts of woods right but i um just just a half an hour but northwest of here but that doesn't mean that they all all lived that way i'm sure there was a variety of ways that people lived so um if this was based on a house within like a 30 you know some kind of archaeological evidence that there was an existing structure with post holes like that and things within a 30 mile radius i think it's safe to assume it's a decent representation of what something could have looked like well it's quite a bit of choices but i need people to to look at because well we'll talk about that later but we it's one thing to sit here and say something but i need people that will actually reach out and make the well before we do any of it let's find out if it's accurate right because i don't really want to reach out to anybody if it's not so
so it's rita that we should contact yeah so that's the house yeah i mean i'm not a native specialist so
i don't know i mean i know down at plymouth they have the lawns right so i don't know this is she said it to me in passing and i remember asking asking tanya about it because i had not and she said it was accurate and i just took her a word because these are the ones you're talking about yeah yeah i took them for the rail trail because i thought they wanted to envision this pictures of envision the site and i thought well maybe this will pass but they didn't so okay it's not here this plans okay 250th anniversary
any updates or um suggestions that we follow up for the 250th i heard a speaker talk about
the native americans living here in sudbury and framingham area i have sent her an email inquiring if she would talk about it on behalf of the historical commission i can't hear you could you speak up i'm sorry um do you want to say no i did too thank you okay um a speaker and his name i cannot remember at the moment in um the sudbury public library did an in-depth research on the native americans who were here in 1628 38 and um to find out what they could historically about the area and the native americans that lived here and they focused on cato which signed the second deed selling us the land and they have been unable to find anyone by that name or close to that name or close to that name under various spellings ever existed here so they don't know anything about that person they have followed up on other people who have lived in the area that they could trace and this was done by a native american um it was an interesting talk i thought maybe we could invite her to come talk here in uh wayland and um as i said i have not received contact so now i'm going to go through the library because the library sponsored it and see if i can get hold of her that way as we know um it's often difficult to get native american speakers they're a hot topic right now and they're in demand but we will keep trying and if there is a cost to that i don't know how much it is because of course she did it free for the group that sponsored her to do it and uh she has uh her resume is that she's a professional actress so again i don't know whether there be content with that or not one of the uh programs that we're sponsoring francis perkins uh julie was very interested in being the venue over at the coa for her since it doesn't appear that folks will be available and then the question becomes is there a charge if it's over at the coa for a town function we are a town board and it is for a town activity so um is there no sufficient cd there's three hundred and uh one of the drawbacks is that she doesn't have a two-foot podium or not podium but stage for somebody to be just a little bit higher because everybody's sitting flat um which may or may not be a problem uh but maybe something they'll consider in the future because they have lots of things going on there so anyway that's uh i've reached out to her for the francis perkins and i reached out to the high school who indicated that they were interested in having francis perkins um the actors playing francis perkins come to the high school to do a separate program for their students that was back in september and i have not heard from them again even though i sent them a reminder email because at the time i was going to apply for a cultural council grant and there was a limited time and he the response was don't bother doing that we have other funding sources so again i've not heard i may ask scarlett so she's i guess was a student of his to reach out and see whether she can get a resource is david schmermer oh yeah there's a history department but i know we've had difficulties communicating in the past so that's we'll ask charlotte if she will do that for us scarlett not charlotte um anything else i want to say what a wonderful job again the lloyland festival was and the excitement that everybody generated when they covered the table and they from the rail trail to blacks to archaeology and all the effort that you went to and making that such a wonderful display and i was going to ask um and if i could take your separation thing and send it to the post for them to publish the separation thing between the convention of society and uh uh this is oh the difference is sure the different groups sure i know you had suggested adding education to uh believe the commissioning was it what yeah you you told me something as part of our mission or yeah i think education is about this yeah yeah not i wouldn't want to print it all up new you know no this wouldn't be printing it'd be electronically so if you could send it to me and i could edit it and then i can't remember where i thought of it always a problem uh again i go back to the archives and um you know if you're downsizing and you want to get rid of um all your papers maybe we could take them to the office and have margaret go through them and keep one set of minutes and agendas and any other information that you've worked on that you've joined the board would be helpful so that uh future people can look back and see what was determined and why and what was said notes you took uh i know i've taken mine in so and ann's left some that she had here at the building i believe right you brought in uh some of the papers you had in your drawers yeah yeah they're down there now mostly they were really almost all of them related to cemetery work okay all right so then house box reports uh house box we have two pending applications they've been pending for a while i've sent a couple follow-ups uh haven't heard back and then kay today you handed me a new application i haven't had a chance to look at but i will follow up he has a check in there yeah i saw that yeah okay yeah the only reason i say that is because i thought they were supposed to send directly to the uh they are okay but i can follow for that yeah okay and where she what is the um address on that one is it on the envelope oh i guess so uh 94 old connecticut path that's 90. oh she has a mac bus attached to it sounds like it's near friction yeah i would say i think so is there a sign of style but by marshall stone carpentry but if you look at the uh second page 18 12 here we go isn't that a mac oh yeah i see yeah oh yeah i know that right on the corner it's about two three houses from going east from um gretchen's house yeah on the same side of the road interesting when i drive by that house i always thought that was a uh reproduction lovely yeah adorable yeah very nice love it so it's just a new mac a replacement or a new this is a new yeah is it are they new owners don't know okay but i will follow up so we need an update on the cemetery program so um as you all know i think um we have terminated our contract with epic participation um and pay or whoever would like a copy of the terminations board files um they uh this was this was a mutual agreement they were just unable to keep up um they felt that uh they had underpriced the whole job and as time went by and inflation kicked in it just got harder and harder for them to make it work financially with josh's illness they just were unable to keep up and um so they are currently actually i don't have the total i broke it down by priorities um but they the priority one stones are 69 complete priority two stones are only six percent done um and the priority three stones are 38 percent done um so by mutual agreements brad and i met with calce she walked us through it created the documents we have terminated our contract with epic and they finished up work um at the end of october financially where do we stand did did was it how much money did they end up using oh that's a great question i should have figured that out uh but i didn't so they just they submitted a requisition i'm not sure the final one is the pay has it did kelsey pay the last one um they submitted two invoices actually i could probably pull that up and their invoices include um the percentage well it doesn't include the percentage of the money it includes percentage of the job so i don't know um but at any rate you know we are we are idle at the moment and we would be anyway because of the weather so it's a natural break but so the money that's left over is still designated for cemetery work it is how much was dispersed already to them yeah that that i'm not we're not
but the question is sort of um i think it's a reasonable assumption that the money left is not going to be enough to cover the work that's left from the original proposal um so there are some things things to figure out uh including do we want to go forward with the work that's still undone do we want to reevaluate um is it money well spent um does it require an additional assessment so the way that we got here was we hired epic to do an assessment of what needs to be done they gave us an estimate of what they felt needed to be done then we put out the rfp which they we award to them and they um have been working their way through that so does the work needs does everything need to be reassessed so that we know what needs to be done going forward the conquered people didn't want the job is that right the expensive group did not bid up and then there was another group two others two others and one was fairly far away and it's super expensive one was um actually not fast less money money than epic but also less experience experience with history i felt like one of them was down in springfield one was now west who's level yes blood low and was there an issue with where they were going to stay i know that was with epic but but not with the other not with the springfield or well level we never we didn't accept their bid so we don't know everyone okay to me that they clearly that the remaining money is not going to be enough to do the remaining floor i think that's that's a safe bet yeah so well if it wasn't enough for them that it's not going to be enough for so we would so we would need to go back to cpa cpa anyway once we have all the that's right okay or an alternative and and i i don't know if it would work is i'm not sure that the priority three stones which is largely just cleaning um if those have to necessarily be professionally done uh you know an option would be to rebid it for the priority one and prior to two stones and hope that that would be enough to cover it that's you know we haven't really discussed that with kelsey or how we necessarily approach it but that would be one option did we ever discuss the friends of the cemetery idea well yeah it's what we did brought up i mean did we ever like begin that project or no no no no well we were discouraged what we know they were discouraged what we know from dbw is that they are not in favor of having volunteers team the stones so we just backed right off right and but is it they're they're not encouraging it but it's not against the rules right they it's it's a tricky um a nuanced relationship and i can't explain it probably accurately their biggest concern was that somebody were to trip or hurt themselves in the cemetery while doing this activity that they could sue the town but this could happen anybody visiting any stone any time and the reason we are tasked with maintaining these stones but they are tasked with managing the cemetery right so that's what i mean about this relationship but they will not take care of cemetery stones because they feel that the owner of the lot's responsibility not theirs right
although the families have passed on right so then yeah so so i thought that i thought actually it was part of our mission the perpetuity of it i thought it felt to us it officially it does not well we have just taken this up on our own no it's part of our mission i'm just saying you know there are a lot of players here and and the family you know arguably is one of them um but yes our job is to maintain and preserve the cemeteries as works of art as places of history etc i mean we could decide that we only maintain the older stones then or the stones that are don't have family any longer or around i mean but that that gets awfully complicated because there's family around somewhere i mean i mean how how do you track it i mean they might have ancestors but having family and ancestors oh okay i see what you're saying i can't imagine how we could figure that out no i can't either i mean if somebody's visiting the great versus somebody people who aren't i i don't know i don't i guess my point is if we had volunteers we could eliminate that band right because we could we could put some slush money a very small amount in in this friends of the cemeteries group and they could we could go out on a pretty day every couple you know in the spring and summer and clean some of these stones in that band
versus the other ones that are really critical or they require professional right that require professional i i don't know well i think we would need to meet with the cemetery commissioner in the dpw and raise have this discussion again about using volunteers to work on stones and who knows maybe there'll be nobody that wants to do it like you know that's i'm assuming that that we could gather together a group of people that might be interested i think friends of the cemeteries is a hard sell personally all the draw that we all feel on our time and interest from so many different types of organizations well sort of like adopt a lot you can sell that to you know this is how you clean we'll help you do it the first time and then it's up to you to keep it clean because we don't have the money but there's a world of difference in the ones that have been clean oh and the ones right beside that uh have not been clean and you're just driving by south cemetery and looking at the clean ones versus the other ones just stark difference in in what was done and the appearance and i and i wouldn't necessarily argue that we don't have the money we got the money we asked for for this round well for cleaning yes but it seems to me it's more important to finish up the 30 of number one priority and and they have barely started on the second priority that those get done first um and it's we i i feel that we should have gone for cpa funding this year we only have one group doing going for history money historic funding and um expand added to it if uh um they felt that they didn't have enough money it wasn't financially feasible to continue um could they give us an estimate of how much it would cost to finish what what was left if you left on friendly terms and maybe they would do that for you just looking at their records um that we could ask for for cpa funding that way it would have gone to town meeting in 2026 and we would have had the funds in 2026 to continue doing what we're doing meanwhile we can't continue in 2026 we're putting out another rfp for what's left and see what if the people out in ludlow uh apply again or some other group i think one of the problems is we thought they were new to the project that they were they're the ludlow people yeah they're more experienced with other types of statuary and other types of stonework and terry buildings but not so much oh that's right you were evaluating too not so much gravestones but since we we didn't go for more funding i i think just case i'm clear are you talking about more funding to fund to pay epic more or no it's more funding for another group if once you sent out the rfp i don't think we could have because the contract was just terminated a week ago so right we couldn't solicit bids with an existing contract in place but you knew you were canceling the contract you could have asked them to tell you you know that it's 30 percent of priority one and it's almost almost 100 of priority two the reason they felt they it wasn't um financially beneficial for them to continue they must have an idea of how much it would cost why or they would have finished the contract well it's it's a little more complicated because we also have the issue of josh not being healthy assuming that he was healthy though how much more it would have cost to use that as as a reason to break the contract and so um getting that we could based on that we could have put in for cpa funding around this year but next year we can do that but we can get a head start by having them tell us what they think just like when you went to concord and asked them what they thought the cost would be well i think informally uh josh and rachel will be cooperative with us if we ask them for additional information i'm very confident they'll they'll provide us with some additional information backup so we as part of a rebidding process i think that we can certainly uh expect their cooperation well what i'm saying is let's ask now while it's still fresh in their minds rather than asking them to go back and dig through records and so forth what they think and it's just an estimate just like when cochran came through and gave us an estimate of what the cost would be right is it required go ahead i just wondered whether whether they provided us with photos before and after and a report yeah every every invoice they submitted had photographs attached of the work they had done i think that's right writing yes is it required to be kept um i have them all on my computer and we really need to i mean we've always had books that have been printed out and um that show the before and the after and what they did and in detail of all that that's what we've always gotten in the past and a copy went to the library copy went to us and a copy went to the historical society
oh yes well this isn't a finished product so these are in well but they finished up at a certain point they can give us that are you saying we should ask for books from well you know spiral bound
is that what you mean yeah final report right i think their invoices serve as a yes serve the same purpose because they do include all the information but if it's just on your look well i can print them all out and send them just like staples to get bound yeah i think asking them to print out all the photographs i understand that that was not what i was asking i was asking that we have a paper copy to give to all these places now maybe the library isn't interested in it since they're downsizing their local history but certainly the historical society and the historical commission should have copies one as a backup to the other and that it should be printed out and i know i go to those books and use them when i get questions asked at the historical society so so this raises a good question about how to get stuff done like this because um it's a lot of a lot of paper i mean some of the invoices there's 30 pages long because all the photos so if i can i can i give you like a thumb drive of all the information and could well my grave doesn't really help with the commission easily put them out here i don't think that would be the because kelsey has them because we provided her with all the invoices see what they would do with there's a summary sheet and they would fill out the summary sheet with pictures of before and after in the summary sheet of what they did maybe the 30 page one is it all on the same stone over there let's say let's say they did 30 stones right in a month period then at the end of the month they put that invoice together with my with all the pictures of before and after right well that's basically what the summary is right so i'm trying to i'm trying to i guess i'm asking do i have to print all that out or can i give it to the lab with facilities here or how does she get like who gets reimbursed the point i'm trying to make is obviously we don't have the staff to do it to print it out but we have a printer but i don't know it's a lot that's a lot of well i think digital copies on the laptop that's in the lab yeah you could but that doesn't help when you need a paper copy and certainly we want a paper copy of it this society and that's the backup to this copy if anything happens the backups for each other and who knows in 10 years what software will be able to read something on there who will pay for it well now that's a good question because they've always paid for it the people that uh did the work and now that we've terminated the contract and they haven't paid for it nor do they expect to pay for it but we never asked them to provide us with hard copies of the invoices no because because they were expected to provide a report at the end so that's why i'm not sure i'm not sure about that either i think that was ever that's standard procedure i think i think they i think they did expect to give i mean i don't think so before it was out it listen when they don't think they were going to give us a report at the end well i would then they've already given us all they're giving us monthly reports the invoice the invoices served to the same all all along oh wow i never would have i that wasn't my impression because always they always oh okay what would the report have that the invoices don't i i just i just would have assumed i don't know but sorry my question before was are we required now but it's since you did go with these folks and since this is now being closed can we just do we have to really go back out and do three more bids or could you now go and call up one of those other folks and say hey we have this much money left in a budget can you just take the priority one i think i asked kelsey that and what did she say i think she said i did ask her um i think she had asked about to repeat it she said what it had to be rebid because i asked her i said can't go to the number two bidder who was low or actually number one but love low and and asked them to to price it i think she said she might have said she'll talk to i think she was going to check with michael i think she was going to check with michael because we did ask her that exact question and i'll follow up with kelsey
in terms of re-procurement because you can't just ask we talked about a couple different ways of doing for instance we could ask bidders to bid priority one and two and to have priority three which is the cleaning as an alternate so the bids can come in and you'll see how much money you have left and you might just be able to afford priority one and two and not three but those are the things we have to sort out with kelsey but maybe kelsey will say you know we'll we'll send all of this to staples or somebody else they have a relationship with and we'll bind it and we'll use money from from this this budget if if you want a printed copy kit right well i would i mean kelsey has cop now has copies of all the invoices and we're we are a town board i don't know why if we want a hard copy why the town wouldn't just print out copy you've been asked well i think they'll print it but i don't know if they'll find find it for you the way you're talking that's well maybe we could be flexible on that you know does it have to be a booklet or could it be a because we we have used the booklet from the past work at the cemeteries to go through and check on condition and check on when a family comes in and says we think we're buried in north cemetery and sometimes it's go back to see exactly what that stone looks like it's you mean yeah at the society we have a copy of past work that's been done
but i'm i'm not clear now on what the priority two work was to include if the one was repair of broken damaged three was cleaning what was the two level i'm not exactly sure what the difference is between two either one was clear the most number ones were the ones that i think that josh felt had like a public safety risk uh that may injure somebody as opposed to perhaps just a crack something that needed immediate attention right and so that's and would deteriorate dramatically if not addressed i think two was those that are tilted those that have minor damage to them that needs repair but repair would help alleviate further damage to it um so if it lasted another year it would be okay i mean it wouldn't be so far damage that would be totally lost first priority one would be a real loss of or damage to the stone that might not be repairable later and i think that's the difference it's sort of the middle group and the good news is they did focus on the priority one and they did get roughly 70 percent of all the priority one done which are the most expensive to to address well posted a 40 percent still needs to be done if it's only 69 percent well i had 69 percent done on priority one so um so no that's a good thing that would be and they were if their prices were low and i suspect they were uh uh that means we got good prices for the most expensive work to be done so i think we're asking the town if they would um print them up give us a hard copy um and and have it you know it could be in a loose leaf notebook if you don't want to find them so uh listen i don't want to get you know too into the weeds here but the historical society is not part of the town so no but they have in the past given it as a backup or given it to the public library which is part of the town the library i understand the library is but the historical society is an independent organization so is the town providing this report they have in the past let me put it that way and you can argue that it's not part of the town and therefore well it isn't but it the historical commission and the town is using it as a repository as a backup for them so in a way they're using the historical society rather than the historical society using the historic commission well like i said i need to talk to kelsey about the various bid options and what and i talked to kelsey about before and i connect talk to her about what policies on printing out hard copies of all the documents that they have okay you know i think it'd be better to finish the work to go out with the rfps or whatever because i still am not sure ludlow has it's based on what they had sent us in the past has experience or unless they can show they how they have experience in repairing seriously damaged stones maybe they do now by now maybe they yes yes which which through an rfp they would come back and sew us and show us and if they're interested i don't disagree with you i i my my recollection was they got pretty good uh we got pretty good recommendations for them but i i i agree with you yeah for the type of work that they did yeah that they do for the have done for the majority of her and they probably feel i can work on marvel for that i can work on marvel for this and so forth but they may feel also that well we submitted a bid that they didn't accept so maybe we don't want to this is a far place to go yes who knows yeah yeah that's entirely possible so how do we leave the assistant uh let me follow up with uh kelsey what the next steps are one of the reasons we wanted to go through the termination at this point was uh no work is going to would be done under anything so so we do have a little bit of breathing to figure it out but but obviously we want to get things and start okay so anything else i don't want to cut it short if we don't know um archaeology the human rights diversity equity and inclusion committee has reached out to um the historical commission after the visit at the whelan festival day table and they would like to do something with um with the historical commission and they specifically want to do something with indigenous people so we had a meeting set up and it kind of fell through and trying to set up another one is between difficult as well so they shared uh a possible program that they might like to do which is um maybe i suggested it they didn't ask it's finishing up uh what is it sant hill is that what it is is over on amanda is it sand hill that's on the way to the transfer station yeah and but tanya just said to me that she she thinks that that is no longer a viable project so overgrown well i can understand why she said that because there's grass growing on it and so on and so forth and i think she thinks that they may have dumped more dirt on that area that did not come from the original dig and i think some was removed and some was put back and but they would like to do some sort of archaeology dig they think that's fabulous they would like to do that um in an area where we could do it easily and safely i'm not sure that that road to the transfer station is a safe place to do it now that the area where cars parked off the road is now they dumped all that land on it and it's a hill and uh i know marianne doesn't like people walking on the road when they're open so the question becomes where would we do it if we do it and i know that the screens and things used to be stored and you still have them i was just going to ask i don't know where they're located so tanya has turned a corner a bit about some of the material on the lap and she was just talking about how we could get rid of some of the soil but she would like to maybe we don't need to float it but we could sift it through a fine sifter maybe they'd want to do that so how many sifters do you have you have a lot of dirt i know you have a lot of dirt but that wasn't the question oh i don't have any fine sifters only time because i don't know how many she has i only have the big sifters right so we'd have to ask her well i'm throwing it out for consideration they like that idea um and a lot of work it is a lot of work and that's what i pointed out to them that this takes a lot of time and energy and planning and of course it wouldn't be till spring or summer anyway um which is why they want to get started now how old are they they want to open it to the public so that's all ages i'm only asking because my back kills me i don't know this is it's it's a career for young people
um well i was thinking that any archaeologists we have would be an overseer and not necessarily a doer um and i didn't know if we could invite kathy for the day to come and help i think she's in ireland with her son ah he hasn't been around for a while um they rented a place there for a year i work to um i mean i'm happy to oversee but it takes planning and it means meetings with uh hr to coordinate everything i don't want this to fall directly on us to do everything we need to do it as a with someone i mean i i don't think it's going to be very exciting i don't think they're going to find anything yeah and and that's that's the problem i when i did summer camps i you know for kids i would plant things because it's just not for a lay person they're not finding anything why do they want to do a dig i'm sorry why do they want to do a dig or they just thought that was an exciting thing for especially younger people to become aware of the existence of the native americans in the area um things that had happened before now whether it's uh something from somebody's household or something else so but also i'm open to other suggestions that they could work with us on they have no budget zero so they cannot contribute financially everything that they contribute would have to be in kind service do they want to clean cemetery spots they might it's not indigenous people but i will write it down i was like i was all kidding i know you were but now anyway it's maybe not with the assets involved but if you can think of anything else specifically well they they want it specifically with indigenous people but they're open to other suggestions i think it wouldn't be more interesting to sit the stuff that's in the lab even though they we might not find anything in that dirt there's other stuff we can talk about and point to in the lab but the lab's not big enough for a group well we would have to bring that dirt outside anyway we can't sift it in the building um so it also might be something somebody who's handy like tom i don't i don't know could make i mean you just need to you just need some mesh but you know and to put it these are small screens so they're not they're not the big screens um i don't know what gauge she would use for the really fine ones well i told her i knew not absolutely nothing about it so i would have to refer to what uh people here or our two archaeologists but i mean this this soil was specifically saved because it was coming out of a feature or out of something of interest so if we were going to find something it would be more likely that we might find something in in this soil than in some stairs yeah okay then in some random and then there's a matter of getting it from the attic down here yeah i mean that's that's the biggest thing is that the boxes are heavy and getting the soil outside and also where would the town say it's okay for me to sift it exactly i mean there's going to be a pile of dirt much how much dirt are we talking there's quite a number of boxes i don't know in pounds how many
several boxes how many boxes do you think there are 25
so you can sell paper like xerox coffee size boxes and they're heavy they're heavy yeah can you do it in a sandbox and just leave the dirt no no because they've done the the playground and it's not dirt but i mean i think i could do it off to the side there you know where the buses kind of bark i i don't think it'd be a big deal it's just powdery sandy dirt but then we also have to think about the environment that you're in is somebody going to step off into a puddle or whether it might or i don't know it's it's it's it's it's gonna if it's windy day it's gonna fall homes and they have to do it over on the grass yes but then there are cars going by the end of the building and uh it's just a lot of details to think about to you know everybody's safety especially if somebody's crossing the road to get to the other side for whatever reason and watching out for traffic you know and the people participating have to realize they don't get to keep what they find necessarily well i mean i think it's come from a site if they're supporting diversity equity inclusion i'm i'm assuming that they're being they're very sensitive to these things i i don't know though you're right no but when you have kids and they're sifting oh yes if it's over to the public right right right i mean that's why they go to places that have gemstones and you know oh right i don't think tanya was like the fact it would be open to the public actually i don't know well she's getting rid of it anyway yeah she doesn't mind she didn't mind it when it was down in the she didn't mind it when it was the town dump the the transfer station site but this this material i'm not sure how she feels well as i said there were a lot of details that have to be figured out but if you can think of an alternative project or program
we could give them a diorama
and ask them to find a good place for it task them actually i think i did mention something like that to her
that um did she have any input any place else with that to go but anyway um they reached reached out to us which is very nice they want to work with other town boards and committees they want to um show that their interest in care and so forth and of course our interest is history so i don't know uh what else to suggest nothing i don't know if there's any update on the progress of organization of the lab do you have anything on that well amanda and i have been working on picking up where mary left off and i'm back to working on the box that she was working on that's good so i finished up mary's and i close that out so beyond the dirt how many buying and i worked on on some of her um so like i said she's she's being more flexible about getting rid of some of the charcoal and some of the dirt and um and some of the bone even and um from realizing that it really is from very disturbed sites and it is newer it's not that old um so we went through the books and um looked made sure that we had a record of it for instance a lot of the uh chestnuts that weren't even charred silly silly that they were even kept in the first place so we we checked the record books made sure that in the notes that the site notes that you know they had been recorded and then we threw them away that was last wednesday and um i was very proud of her and we noted that they were discarded and uh did we do anything else
you left before shockingly
tanya and i stayed later than rick which highly unusual exactly how many boxes beyond the dirt upstairs do you think i haven't we haven't had as much access as we used to have more difficult getting up there than it used to be to personnel and children's way very what time do they leave not sure but we're going to need to arrange an appointment to get up there it used to be that we could ring and they would let us go up there now we have to schedule something i think so um we'll need to make an appointment okay let's get on with the railroad and the rail trail well um continue i'll be right
in july i had sent mock-ups for most of the signs to bonnie and carol and as a starting point for the signs that had relevant material i hadn't heard anything carol was away for over a month in preparation for our previously scheduled historical commission meeting last week i contacted bonnie and said is there any update um a couple of days later i got a file from bonnie with designs that carol holtz had done carol did not use any of the material from the mock-ups that i had prepared oh she started from scratch oh i'm not sure that's quite right i think bonnie sent her text bonnie revised the text and she was condensing the text
beyond what i had in my mock-ups did you send her an email carol so yesterday i spent most of the day reviewing carol's designs i know this is a late meeting and we don't have a lot of time to go through this now but i will pass these out and i will i will walk you through the handouts here um the first section are my comments the first four pages which are eight numbered pages one through four at the bottom after that uh hey also received the copy and she provided some comments on the next two pages carol provided an email with some updates the day after she sent her graphs and then following that the first set of colored pages starting with page number one circled in the lower right corner these are carol's latest designs so that's so those are pages one through ten starting on page 11 the circle number in the lower right corner are the mock-ups that i had sent in mid-july and i said in my mock-ups i'm not a graphic designer but here's here's what i think is a start um and i hope you can improve upon my designs but first the page uh 12 was from the dcr sudberry signed one of the panels or sudbury for the mass central rail trail and sudbury and hudson and so i think
and i included it because i wanted the design for whalen to be somewhat similar to sudbury and hudson and i have an email into dcr to determine the status of these signs there were six signs that we designed
and you notice that the the title at the top is mass central rail trail and one of my biggest concerns is that carol changed hers to wayside rail trail and it's dcr has consistently called the trail the mass central rail trip so in my mock-ups i had mass central rail trip so pages uh 14 encircled numbers at the lower right corner through the end were my mock-ups with uh suggestions of photos and texts and illustrations and expected locations of the signs but from what i can tell carol did not use any of my mock-ups it apparently started from scratch i understand has anyone asked her why i haven't i don't know to what extent bonnie worked with carol or whether carol was i mean is on the main from the town and she has been yes so she might not more than anyone about how this all went when you sent her the mock-up did you send her the pd um the jpegs of these images i sent a compressed file i i did my mock-ups in powerpoint and then i exported it to a pdf and compressed it so that it would be the size that i could email and uh independently of that the historical society scarlet had already provided on a dropbox i believe it was a whole lot of files that were organized by signed categories so that carol had had the uh files from which to work and and you didn't say anything and either did bonnie i had not heard anything other than an acknowledgement from bonnie that she received my mock-ups in july i have heard nothing since july from carol or anyone and was carol expecting mock-ups from you is it was it had she requested this what was the process like
for all we're getting information to the girl carol i don't think specifically but we had we had a meeting at the historical society we did meet and um bonnie everything filtered through bonnie i believe now we did not have direct contact to tell everything went through bonnie and there is a reply to rick and tom faye you want to read what that is that one just came in was this today yes i believe so where tom has already sent carol's mock-up carol's i didn't do mock-ups of all the signs the ones entering way of wetlands i didn't do those i did very little on the library because bonnie was meeting with the library but the ones that pertained to the railroad was those were the ones that i focused on right that makes sense and so the topics that you focused on in each of your mock-ups did she use the general topic yes so those match you had agreement on the the signs not the contents i see but but total disagreement on the contents and the titles and so now bonnie and scarlett did come over with it last week that they were there and they were choosing the uh photographs again a second time this isn't even our church this isn't first parish church what page are you i don't know what yeah number four of what sign four of what the carol ph it is with that sign in front you're saying it used to have either old picture of it huh yeah and it used to be painted differently and you have the shutters used to have shutters and and it used to have a dark circle doesn't anymore oh it's the clock huh okay it does look like saint anne's before on main street doesn't i mean on route 20. i was thinking it was the i was thinking of set berries but they look very much well when it's painted like that it does i guess it yeah we still have the shutters in one of the storage okay i guess i guess it's looks different with that sign so um so where do we go from here what what what happens next well obviously she needs to know that wayside rail trail is not the name of the rail trail where did that come from um dcr does use wayside rail trail but underneath mass central rail trail for example in western depot on church street there's a sign hanging this is mass central rail trail wayside section underneath and this is the depot it doesn't even look like the depot to me i feel like i'm losing my mind it's old pictures i know my history stylistically there's something which page are you on this this one looks smaller yeah that is way on default maybe it's because um the ground is now it's you know elevated or something i i don't know well this portion comes out more than in the deal if this has been cut away where the signs are because you see the bomb is through you know he's in the middle of this and he's the leader would be the one to explain the difference between what you submitted and what you got i think that's this eight pages here or four pages double-sided is another thing uh scarlett commented i have it in my uh comments that she wanted uh more inclusion of women they're all white men that are have their photographs on the signs there are no women women well there are no women listed here and certainly there have been women involved in this area that could have been chosen and there's a duplication of a wrap electrical wrap on uh the very first now the pages that the train with the smoke coming through there is page five the circle image number five yes the time is parking so that's the same image right the same image that we use them at um tower hill tower hill so it would make more sense for them to choose another image rather than that particular one though on this page they mentioned charlotte adams gifted the property so is there an image that they could have put charlotte adams there you go there you can find an image of charlotte adams with the other problem we do need a different image than the one that's already down i can see why she chose it though it's a very dramatic photo if you look at page 32 the circle page number 32 and what it lights on that was the mock-up that i had done for the millbrook adams park and there's a very dramatic oh that's it you're right yeah that's very bad that it was at millbrook i like that picture but for some reason uh daryl chose the black and white photo at tall hill instead of using this one but you don't know why yet so that's the missing information for us is like what what was her what was what was what was she thinking why did she make these choices um what did bonnie know about the process why did the why is there such a disconnect and there aren't many maps used in hers which i was surprised at i love the map that's um on the one that you have right down below so yeah i do too um which page is that what i did well i think it's now i have to think it's flipped i don't know but it was the first page we were on and it it it it kind of yeah we said it said number 12. number 17. well then it says you are here and it kind of shows you oh that's the subbury yeah i'd like that yeah but we like the idea of the map being on it and also on 17 we show the engine terminal and the turntable and stuff yeah it's interesting that's interesting as well well in the engine terminal the only photo that l used was the water tank he did not show the turntable for the turntable for the engine house and there was a sketch uh showing the tracks yeah this is the one i like this picture of this of the depot and i said that this would need to be redrawn
so she included this as a background but she covered it up with um photos this is more recognizable too maybe because i think of the depot as red and so when i see that black and white picture it doesn't register register can i think about the black and all the signs this has a train too oh definitely i will say that i found on page six there's something handwriting in the background but you can't discern what it is and it yes i think i commented on that and i thought you know somebody was curious like me i would be very frustrated with with that and it also distracts from the images and in front of it on page seven um the engine terminal on the right hand side at the top you see the very top of that sketch of the track but it's obscured by the photograph is that what it is i thought it was a record that's not even an important part i see what you mean of that it's just been obscured by the yeah photo and admittedly that drawing would have to be done but that's something that
oh i see she did use it actually now that it on page eight that one i liked just did it in a different spot um but so she completely that graphic could have extended all the way underneath these words and things because um it because it's because it's got the reverse with the white writing you know it could have but the shape of it um is vertical she could have okay marched it horizontal i see what you mean if you it's gonna make this too smaller and jogged it over but you know what our job is not to design right right i'm just gonna say you know this i i find this stuff fascinating i actually i want to look at these but i'm trying to figure out what are we doing today with this material are we being asked to do something with this because you know we could go through these for two hours but i'm not sure what we're being asked to do today with this i guess it's just rick putting so much time oh no it's it's huge amount of that i think it's amazing you know is is it accurate is it is it i think we don't know about i mean i i think if bonnie were here you know she could talk to us about the process and how carol ended up creating what she did but without that information i don't know what to i think this is more information for the commission than anything else to show how the process is so far and our comments on what um we think would help to improve it and um just so that we have our input into it oh no i agree and i didn't mean otherwise i i'm just saying i mean because rick clearly done work but i can't i don't think it's necessarily productive for us to go through each one of these no i don't think i think i think the appropriate next step would be to reconvene our groups that met at the grow herd house and whether we include carol or not and go through each one we'll view the selection of the photos i commented that uh most of the photos in carol's uh design don't have captions maybe these are preliminary they don't have credits yet they need to have credits uh but um you know we need to get on the same page well as i said the selection of photographs was um bonnie and scarlet i did the grunt work of uh scanning and putting them into files they took them out of the files they have not been cut they've taken them out of the files so i don't know where they are quite frankly because they have dispersed them instead of copying and pasting they just took them and um and they are the ones that went through them and sent them to carol well you all at the historical society museum did a tremendous amount of work selecting the photos scanning the photos putting them in dropbox making them available um what i tried to do in july was to select the ones that i thought would be most appropriate for each sign along with the text with captions with credits and all that work seems to have just been ignored by carol what about the content of your writing did you feel like that transferred or not that either some of it was condensed and maybe bonnie followed the dcr mandate or i believe yes absolutely which um which we for our sons did not have that if we don't have the dcr is not involved in our signs well at this point um i think it's important that we indicate that we do not approve of the the designs as presented so that dcr and bonnie don't and tom fey is very anxious to get the signs done um i think we ought to you know i would like to make a motion that we not approve the current version of the signs as produced by carol holtz well i think you mean the first really current draft of the signs or the current draft of the signs right for a november 11th version of the signs and that we we need further work on reviewing the context of the signs i have a question the text is it accurate like i found inconsistencies incorrect information which bonnie corrected and it should be corrected on here historical facts but um there are a few things minor things i did note that um and this is in my comments for weyland depot um i had let's see weyland depot depot
depot the title of the sign was changed from weyland depot a community hub to weyland depot a national historic landmark well it's not a national historic landmark you can go on the park service website and see that it's not listed as a park service national historic landmark it would be a national historic landmark without being on the in the park in a car the weyland historic district is in the national register as a district but the weyland depot is not individually on the national register according to my information okay and it's not a designated national historic landmark um
most of the other information is factually accurate i i get it you know i spent yesterday making four pages of comments off of that i see things that don't correspond that to me don't make logical sense but maybe to other people they do for instance it they mentioned first parish like kirkside next to first parish and being on this old house there's no picture of kirkside there's pictures of other buildings you know like this building and it's nobody knows what it is i think it's st anne's but what i'm saying is if you read this you might think no i i i made comments about that too that i so i i don't know i just there's some it there's some things that don't well perhaps you want to state something about further review because i felt that too about other pictures that i knew what they were because i've been involved in it but somebody else wasn't involved in it wouldn't know necessarily know they didn't connect the photos yes i mean there's somewhere in there so this is a draft because i i agree i mean they there are no captions so it's you don't know what you're looking at but well it wasn't identified as a draft i thought it was a draft i don't remember seeing the words draft yeah obviously bonnie attached her comments and suggested some changes a day after she sent this version yes
that would be some better images i feel attached is the updated version few notes on images and suggested text edits yeah attach is an updated version a few notes on images and suggested text edits and she made a couple of herself here when did that that letters that letter is in here that was um november 12th
did she send it to you i don't see you on here i do remember seeing that but that's what this is isn't it no no it was the gossels and scarlet and katherine from carol it's without page my email from bonnie number pages yeah well from carol to bonnie and then bonnie sent it on the scarlet and myself
i think carol sent it to gossels scarlet hoey and katherine so carol sent it to you so sent it to me directly based on the letter that's wrong either right well the thing is um what comes up first when i click on it is bonnie's and then comes carol so it looks like it comes from bonnie but i see that it says to me maybe because she responded before i opened it up and that's why it's there so it's an updated version can you say yours is the 11th okay so but i forgot the three hour mark um what would you like from us well i think we need to have a message that we don't approve of the current version of the signs and we need further work that's great that word approve i i think i'd rather say we have serious questions about this version and what if we say we've received the preliminary uh sample after the signs uh and we think that they require further review and edits it's a good start but needs but requires some necessary i'm gonna just let you all know at this point i'm gonna abstain from this vote because i don't feel i have enough information i don't know why carol did what she did i don't know what bonnie what role bonnie played in interpreting rick's information to carol um when you hire a professional graphic designer you're expecting them to do the designing so she's probably got some kind of explanation for why she's presenting it this way and we're not privy to that i just i can't vote on this um i'm happy to but would you approve it looking like this with the text like this it's it's not relating to the images to approve it yeah i don't think we can shouldn't being asked to approve it or is this a town project that's been led by tom today i don't see anything in here that that says that this is what we're supposed to approve but okay we're not being asked to but would you be happy if these images were on the trail i know but what i'm seeing i'm just saying like what if they ended up on the trail like this i don't know i haven't had time i would be upset because here we've for years talked about signs and i i actually really like carol's work so it's nothing personal against carol i but i would be upset if these were the final but we don't even know what they are i know but carol's not representing these are fine no i know but that's why we're saying that we're like we've seen these and we have and and we're questioning and they're that we're like hoping they're preliminary because i believe they are i believe they're first just around oh how can we i think that's what we're asking though i think asking is different from voting to disapprove them oh i don't think he has i don't think we're saying that i think we're saying that we want we want more information about them before we i think we're i think we're trying to hint that we want to be included well you might want to say we're concerned about either contents or photos or whatever you want to say what we're concerned about rather than this is good or this is bad or we approve what we disapprove i don't think we would drill down on specifics but no i just say that we have some concerns about the text and photos being used but but even to i mean to anthony and it's a good one how can we say we have concerns that we don't even know what carol was presenting to us well actually i don't think she was presenting anything to any of us this was to this is to scarlett and myself and rick and tom fay because we're the core group that have been working on this and so um since scarlet joined as a as a representative of the historical society i was there as the representative of the historic commission even though i admit i'm the one that asked bonnie to to head the group when we first started talking about signs when tom fay came and said we need signs so i asked bonnie to follow up and she did she went to the select board she got money she got us money for our three signs she's done a really good job of that i think and rick was involved in the beginning and i think he's been left out a lot so i think that he's sharing the information he has at this moment and i don't know um rick whether we as a group can really comment on it one way or the other until i mean look it over if you have suggestions please contact rick to myself so that we can convey it to the the smaller group but i think what bonnie was trying to avoid was you know you have too many cooks in the kitchen i don't have any specific suggestions i just think i think it would be a real disaster if they didn't bring it to the commission for final approval or review for accuracy for all sorts of things that's all i've i mean i'm i think i think carol i think i was actually the one who found carol in the first place and i don't know and i think bonnie's done a fabulous job spearheading and i'm glad actually that tom wants to get it going because it's been so many years so finally it's actually moving but i i don't think that means that we should move so fast that we put it out there kind of half-baked i don't know well it's not going to go out like that let's make that clear right now it's going to come out with um who who took the pictures it's going to come out a little bit different but i think you have to
we have to represent the historic commission on this rather than having the commission vote on anything that's my my opinion that we as representatives it's our job to meet ask for meeting with bonnie and starlet and tom and and express our opinion and the and the opinions of the commission and i also think the part that involves and talks about the interpret railroad interpretive site is of major concern for this commission because that has been our responsibility for years now of trying to get that plan worked out and there are at least two signs in here which are concerning particularly it will be on tom's uh at some property so that she's but she's designed but she is writing up and creating the that is the sign for it so i think we need to be extra alert to what's on that those two particularly since it involves the interpretive site and um terryann knows more about it because she and bonnie sat down and went over the text and so on and so forth so that um that's why she's more familiar with it than uh and maybe it's easier for me to spot some things in what i'm seeing that doesn't jive with what we had originally worked on when i did proofreading and so forth so so how do you feel about that rick that we as representatives of the historic commission need to have our say we need to call a meeting and and see what's going on rather than a motion just so it doesn't uh not if we go into production no i don't i don't know why tom face sent it to the bcr except maybe to get their opinions on it so who wants to find the range meeting well i think that you have the most concerns why don't you reach out to her and ask for a meeting okay tuesday or thursday morning and grab her house is that possible that's possible
so um so let's move on to our own signage that we do know we get input on um well uh carol has the copy for all three signs that we reviewed and approved a while ago um and uh although as kate pointed out we don't need to adhere to the dcr specs to the letter they will be designed in the same style um just to create a sense of continuity um and um as tay well knows the next step is to get some photographs to carol to go on the signs now that stuff has been done i did that friday night and i sent it off to her so i haven't seen anything yet from carol but um i will check in with her now that she has the photos thank you for doing that um and you know we'll see where we go from here it was a map included of the mansion in property and i did ask her if that needed to be done at a higher dpw because you can quite click on a picture and then go to details and it tells you how much the dpi is but on that one it didn't so and it's also something we got from tom lashman the uh town surveyor which if it's not high enough we'll have to go back and ask if he can rescan it at a higher level and um because i think it would be a nice background whether she agrees or not but i'm not going to bother him until i know that it's going to be used and that it needs to be rescanned um so i had left that but all the pictures that were initially sent have been rescanned at 600 dpi put into the drive and shared with carol so that's all up to date terrific thank you so we'll see where she goes with that right because she hasn't sent you any graphs or anything yeah yeah okay before we get to the last item i would like to set a date for next month's um meeting the the first one thing is that what we decided what aren't we doing first wednesday first wednesday first wednesday oh first wednesday okay i'm just informing so that would be december 3rd and i will confer with um abby to be sure that um we have the room marked and booked and so new business well we have two new things to talk about that was not decided after the agenda went into place in the last 48 hours so the first one you want to tell them your news um i will be stepping off at the end of this calendar year so i will serve through the end of december um but i will have reached almost 10 years and um it's time for me to move on um given that the cemetery work is at a little bit of a break um and these signs are nearly done uh it felt like the right time so that's nice well we can't say enough about your note-taking presentations and your logic when you offer an opinion we appreciate that i second that so the other one is my email that i sent you um this is my last meeting as a chair person and i that's why i wanted to get the date set you all have to decide among yourselves who's going to be chair but i'm not going to chair the next meeting i will tell you that you have to get the agenda in early having failed at that several times and i'm happy to help you write on the agenda you can use this as a boilerplate i'm happy to help anybody who's willing to take over chairmanship understand what they need to do or what i have done and you can make it your own chairmanship and decide not to do any of it or to do more it's time that we set some goals some new goals because we've achieved so many goals in the last 10 years uh that i've been on the board uh and and i started at the same time almost 10 years and so um i leave it to you i will show off at the meeting if it is the agenda is posted and i will be happy to participate and if it's helpful i will continue on the cpc as uh elisa did for me uh but somebody else has to take over change anybody want to make a notion for chairman well let me just say with respect to myself i've recently was sort of recruited to be on the capital improvement planning committee which started about a month or two ago that's hanging up a lot of time so i'm i will not be uh chair this so it's going to be too much work see i understand that being on six different committees for the town and work which is why i'm stepping back i just can't continue to do that and i have a brother who's older than i am and i want to spend some time with him and i have not been able to do that since he retired and i have retired anybody else want to step up well we may go into limbo then which is too bad for some of the goals that have not been completed and um so may i have a motion to close the meeting
i moved may i have a second second and um any discussion that's it everybody vote uh say your name and vote simian and brian yes amanda chacho yes bred carver yes bred conard yes and borden yes