March 9, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
March 9, 2026 - Select Board
Good evening. As chair of the select board, we're going to call the March 9, 2026 meeting
of the select board to order at 6 p.m. This is a hybrid meeting this evening, both in-person
and remote access. We are physically located in the Whelan Commons room of the Whelan Town
building. The meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, it will be made available to
the public in WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. The public will be excluded through
tonight's executive session. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be
conducted in person and by remote access in accordance with ethical law. You may watch
or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the Whelan Town calendar
and also us in the select board agenda. When required by law or allowed by the chair of
the person's whistle to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting, may
do so in person or via remote access. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
May I read the agenda, but I would like to indicate up front and please note agenda item times are
appropriate, excuse me, our approximate, hopefully they're appropriate, uh items being on not
be discussed in order or at the times listed in the evening and all topics will be subject to
deliberation and vote. So we are using a revised agenda this evening and um we are announcing this
public comment after which we will enter into executive session. We'll spend some minutes February 13th
and also we will conduct strategies in preparation negotiations with our manager.
Actually at 6.30 we hope to return to open session and have a possible announcement and
vote taken for the agreement with our town manager. Followed by the first of three discussions of the
annual 10.26 articles and this will be article DD. It will be followed by a discussion on article E.
Finally, after that process, we have our finance director, Mr. Kevenny on our possible potential
debt exclusion ballot question. We will meet with the um human resources director and the chair of the
personnel board after that to discuss their personnel board's class and compensation study.
And 6.7.25 hopefully we will return to the annual discussion to look at some articles, review and discuss
potential order of the articles and vote to insert the number of articles. We'll have to disrupt that
discussion uh at 8 am for a liquor license for a change of manager at Coach Grill after which we
continue and hopefully finish tonight's discussion on our 2026 annual term meeting articles. We will view
communications developed by the economic development committee with guiding residential commercial tax revenue.
um we will have a discussion of possible vote to hire a special town council to assist the town of
Dover amendment projects and that will be followed in the county news report consent calendar.
We don't know that we have any minutes tonight. Review correspondence followed by select board reports of concerns.
There are no topics not reasonably anticipated uh 48 hours in advance and hopefully we will adjourn.
It says 9 43 so let's just stop watching. 9 43. Okay so joining me in the room this evening,
Mr. Whitney, Mr. Faye, Mr. Levine and online we have our board member, I saw that I don't see it right now,
uh in Branson. Okay and myself Carol Martin. We are also joined by our town manager, Mr. Faye, and our
assistant town manager, um Kelsey Klaus-Ferlette. So having said all that, do we have any announcements
from the board? I think we have one. And the announcement is that the board is trying out brand
new chairs this evening. Thank you, Ms. Kelsey. And they certainly are a lot more comfortable than the
required chairs. Do we have any public comment? Okay, do we have any public comment online? Hi Ann,
I see you. Hey, sorry about that. I think you guys were trying to communicate. I was just having a little
issue. Okay, I just wanted to make sure we hadn't lost you. On that, I am going to move this move the
select board entry to executive section. A, pursuant to Mass General's Laws Chapter 30A Section 21A 7
to review and approve the executive session minutes of February 13, 2026 and March 2, 2026 with the
attempt to hold seven minutes. And B, pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter 30A Section 21A 2 to conduct
strategy sessions in preparation for negotiation with our non-union personnel, which is in this case
as our town manager. Is there a second to the motion to enter into executive session? Second. Thank you.
The Chair declares that a public discussion on these matters may have a detrimental effect from the litigating, negotiating, and bargaining position of our town. We have a roll call vote. Ann? Yes. Thank you. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall town manager, Kelsey Powell's assistant town manager, and I think that's it. The committee will rejoin the public meeting from executive session, and then we will return to open session approximately. Okay, so I'm going to bring the select board back into open session at 641, please. And the next item on our agenda will be part of our annual discussion. We're going to invite attendance by the School Committee Chair, Erin Gibbons, and School Committee Member Betsy Cullen, and we're going to put our attention to Article DD, the Holiday World Article. So if Erin and Betsy want to come up and say who you are and join us and be here. And I am going to say, I think this is on page
So on page 8 of our packet, what we did, um, is the mic going to pick that up there or should they see? No, I can pick them up. Pick them up. Pick them up. Okay, great. Um, we had talked about, perhaps, um, we talked, we talked about
In the packet, you'll find two versions of the article draft that the School Committee took of what we submitted. And what we did was we took all, they had kind of edited. So the, the original submission is on page, um, on page 8, what we did was I had, um, Abby take out all the edits so it would be easy to read and just mark across the School Committee drafts. And I think that's going to be the purpose of our discussion tonight. Uh, Bill and I had gone out and let Bill set the floor next, uh, and met with the School Committee, uh, to talk about, uh, the transfer and of the, uh, and their intent on hoard the property at 25 Holiday Road. Bill, would you like to? Sure. Well, uh, thank you for joining us and thank you for your email. You know, it was a hard stop for something very important. So we'll try to make this brief. Um, uh, we, uh, appreciate the willingness of the School Committee to, uh, engage with the Select Board. And, uh, obviously given that the property is in the care and control of the School Committee, natural interest in it. Um, it strikes me that, uh, the School Committee presently has an ongoing process of evaluating its, uh, K through 8 facility needs on a long-term basis. And there are 16 or 20 alternatives that are being, have been floated and I think it's been whittled down to 12 or something. Uh, yeah. And, uh, and, uh, and my guess is it'll take some time to sort that out and for the School Committee to tell them we, uh, make a decision as to, uh, what it wishes to propose to the state, uh, as far as, uh, a specific plan. Do you have a sense of your process and timetable? Mm-hmm. Um, we'd love to have submission to the MSBA by next April, which would mean that we would need to have an idea of what we'd like to do by kind of December-ish. Okay. Um, 2026. And I think the process moving forward is a little bit fluid. Um, we're talking about getting together some constituents of a couple of different boards to sit together and discuss kind of best routes to MSBA funding. Um, and then form some more community conversations around kind of what the community is interested in us doing and what they'd like to see us pursue from an option standpoint. Um, I think we had already kind of whittled down those first few options because we were looking at timetables that were so astronomical as well as dollars. Um, and based on the information that we have on enrollment, et cetera, it doesn't seem like that's really, truly viable for the town of Wayland or the district. So, um, we're looking more at the options under C&D. Um, so rather than talk about the words, uh, let's talk about the concept. One concept that is, uh, and for embodying your draft is kind of joint control as it were of, uh, uh, determining the scope of the study. Uh, another is, uh, the desire to have a school be among the uses to be considered. Um, so with respect to the kind of joint direction approach as, uh, and I don't mean to speak for the board, but I guess I am, uh, though, uh, they're not bashful about, uh, jumping in if I can speak. I think that it's probably more efficient to have one board sort of determine the scope of services. Uh, we would propose, as we came up, I would suggest that, uh, the select board do that in consultation with the school committee. Um, we would want obviously to consult with you and with your consultants about the scope of study to be examined. Um, I, I think that, and certainly the material, the products of the, of the investigation will be useful to the school committee should you determine, should the town determine that that's the right place for a new elementary school. Um, but I, I think we view this as kind of preliminary due diligence to just look at options and, uh, for kind of sake of efficiency, uh, it would be my suggestion that we consider that the, uh, select board go forward with that in consultation with the school committee. Also, uh, you have a very good architect under contract who specializes in school design rather than have somebody else come in and do that. I think, uh, again, to the extent that the SOE reflects the Holiday Road site is one that you want to investigate and that would be the subject of a similar kind of analysis with state support. And so that would be my suggestion as to, um, how to go forward. So let's do this really more informally. I know both when our boards are formally around the room, so Bill has said something. I don't hear anybody on the board saying, no, that doesn't suggest. So what, why don't you want to respond to that? Would you like the rest of the board to speak first? Go ahead. Oh, yeah. I think that what you just said wore in mind that any exploration, I think our sense is that it's premature to lean heavily into any organ conclusion of what the parcel might be most beneficially used for from town. And so I think our interest as school committee is that we do the exploration just to understand what the options are, knowing that as we do our facilities work, that parcel is potentially in the scope of a possible new school. Um, and so I think that is our main commitment. Um, I think we would need to bring back to the committee the control over the statement, but I think we could do that quickly. I don't, I'll speak for myself personally. I think your suggestion from an efficiency perspective may work. Um, I think we would definitely want to understand. And then just a point of clarification, Bill, are you suggesting that we could potentially look to the architect already engaged to advise on sort of the scope of exploration that we might do for feasibility just because they would understand what might be needed for state application later in order to pursue a school there? I wasn't sure if I understood the last part of your comments. Well, as, as I envision this, you know, this is kind of preliminary reconnaissance. We bring in somebody to do site planning to look at a series of options. It sure makes sense for somebody like HMFH who understands this stuff to sort of contribute that expertise to the process. So I don't know if that's on your current scope, but for us to go get a third party when you've got somebody who's has a deep understanding of the school, the school's needs and so forth doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. So I would, you know, I would think that we want to develop a draft scope of services run it by the school committee, run it by your consultants, uh, who would have, you know, some very good suggestions about how many test pits of what depth we need to, you know, establish this or that, or utility, you know, what utility loading needs a school would have, what's involved in doing that. So I think once we kind of get going,
a fairly fluid process. Can I ask a question, you basically suggesting a scope of what the investigation would be, what would a civil engineer be looking for, what would a site planner be looking for, what would an environmental consultant just sort of, uh, here are the things that we want to study, and, uh, and run that by HMFH, who has a very good understanding of the kind of information they, they or someone like them would need to do a school. See, every time someone speaks, I'm going to look back. Do you want to speak, otherwise we're going to the next one? I go to Doug. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Levine on Ms. Brinsley, would you like to speak about this work, working with the article DD, trying to... No, I think I echo everything that, um, was already said, but it's important that we do it.
Yeah. I had the idea to bring you folks here this evening, because I didn't feel like we were so far apart, but I feel like it is so imperative that we do this work however we come to some arrangement now, this exploration now, versus potentially waiting another year to start the exploration process in 2027. So I'm going to have to take umbrage with that, because I think that Mr. Wimby and I had a glory of the extension. Yeah, I'm taking the credit, absolutely. All right, we'll see you all the time. You guys can take that offline. Yeah. Oh, we do, we have to. Um, so I wrote you, I think we knew, had mentioned something about having joint the, uh, input on the funds. I wrote you an email about that, and how we possibly, we don't even handle the funds ourselves. We, the projects get done either by a small hotel manager's office or facilities. So they, we approve the contract, if you will. Right. So I don't know if you wanted to have a response to that. I guess my, my point of confusion here is what, what would we do as a school committee to explore this site initially, just to determine where the setbacks are, where the wetlands are, where the conservation is, is the soil clean enough, that you think you would be doing at this stage before the school committee has determined whether or not it's going to use this for a school. I, I feel a little bit like cart before horse, as much as I don't want anybody to lose a year. Um, I'm sort of feeling that that, um, and I guess what would it hurt to have the school committee take charge of the exploration initially to determine those things that I think would be beneficial to everyone to determine first if there's viability for a school and then those results would still be usable for the town should there be a disposition of it that we, we don't feel it's needed. So I'm going to take that one. Um, in order to do this work, we anticipate we need, I don't remember what we thought maybe about, we thought more, but we whittled it down to 200. We have one $200,000 fund. That's it. So wherever we put our funds, we hope, our goal is to find some new growth to help. This is what everybody's coming, economic development, finance committee, the finance director come in and say, and our new growth is flat, but very long, you know, in terms of all the other communities. So this is the goal here is we're looking at land and town to see what possible new growth options might be. And we have identified one little pot, $200,000 that we could do this. So I think for me personally, I have to say, I want to make sure that we're putting our money in a spot that we might be looking at some new growth. So I have to say, I don't, I don't think we're there yet. Right. Um, I can do that. So maybe that, maybe this isn't the best place for us to, but I want to endorse the bullet over time. See, I think you'll get better and for new, good information sooner under this approach than the normal approach where we go through this process. We pick out a kind of preferred option. Uh, we do an SOE a year from now, and then there's some, or whatever it is, six months from now, eight months from now, there's, there's some back and forth with MSBA. They provide some funding to do just a lot of these kinds of things. What are the soil's conditions? What are the, what's the zoning? What's the wetlands? What's the wellhead protection district implications? I think you'll have more information sooner that will inform your selection of a recommended approach. So what's the harm in leaving this and changing it to be a school committee article or the school committee controls it and the studies so that we get it done and you can still use it in the event that they, that it's not possible for a school. So I think, and I'm going to look over here at, um, let's see, and Michael bought this article, the articles were submitted on January 15th, so it's a, it's a, it's a ton of weightless. It's a ton of weightless. It's a ton of weightless article, but it's also select what article is written. So I don't know that it could be converted and then, I think, I mean, then there's the funding source situation. So am I right or am I wrong? Is it better to have a post-council? You're not supposed to be converted? I think the other, um, you know, kind of the genesis from our point of view is recognizing that here's a piece of land that is not presently on the tax rolls, uh, and as I'm fallow for want of better terms. So I think we wanted to help frame a series of choices for the town about how to go forward with something on the site. And, so I, I think that would include both tax exempt and taxable uses, uh, projections of revenue and cost in terms of cost to the schools, but also just cost generally. But you know, the revenue is important obviously to the schools and 70% of the budget is, uh, for the schools. So I, I think it, it would, it would be a broader range of potential uses to be explored rather than necessarily school-centric, but a series of uses including schools. The, what I'm hearing from you is a concern that due diligence should be focused more on a school structure. And I just think this is going to be such a basic, basic review, a structure, whether it be a school. Agreed. Right. So all I'm suggesting is the control of the, of the study fall into the school committee. Since the school committee is not prepared to release the land, we haven't determined whether it's going to be part of a go forward plan or not. And to everyone's point, let's not wait. Um, sitting here tonight, I can't say that the school committee would be okay with relinquishing control of the scope of the study to the select board. Um, that was a big point of our discussion. So, and, and that was my question as to what are you going to get from a study if the select board runs the scope versus the school committee? And we can just as easily have it that we're doing it in consultation with you or Mr. McCall, um, as the reverse. Is it that's, that's really my point. Here's my concern. My concern is that I think, um, and I haven't had a chance to review it, but that school committee has a full long range facility study. And honestly, I feel like this falls right into that as a potential school site. Um, and I, whenever we kind of hit something like this where it's, it's a intersection to me, it, this is a perfect time to bring, bring an idea to, to, uh, the town and ask them for a decision. So that's exactly what we're going to be doing at annual town meeting. So, well, so respectfully, I don't think we're at a point where we can take that decision to the town because no one has any idea if this piece of property is usable for anything. Exactly. That's why we want to do this. And that's why we want to do this under our control and we can get the answers that are preliminary enough that should it not be suited for a school. We can also have some answers around would it be suitable for something else. But, but, but your study may conclude that the current sites where schools are work well, whether for renovation or for, for a new, for a new structure, whether it be happy, hollow, local, or middle, or whatever. Actually, apart from the Justice Tom, so you understand, we actually received that presentation in our last meeting and the initial facilities assessment is only the middle school was appropriate for renovation. So that, that's sort of the 16 plus options all included. And this is a very viable spot for a swing space during construction. Assuming you want to do with a space. Right. Right. A double move. Right. But it could potentially significantly speed up timeline and save dollars ultimately. I do want to just add one teeny point here. I don't think the select force. I didn't hear anything, you know, we're taped and then people say, oh, look what you're doing now. I don't think the intent was that we were anticipating the school committee was entertaining, you know, declaring the land surplus at this point. I think the idea is that some due diligence would occur and then a conversation would occur as to the disposition of the property. Does it stay, you know, because you need it for buildings or just, so I want to be clear on that, not because I don't think anyone at the moment doesn't understand it, but just in case during the conversation it may have sounded of a loss. I understand perspectives here. I really think it's important that this meeting, we need to figure out how to proceed because we're done a week here before we have to find. The other thing that I would really hate to see this one go to the floor and die.
With lots of political stuff behind it, I want to see this succeed and move forward for everyone's benefit. And I guess I'm just not hearing what the reasoning is behind the school committee driving the exploration. I'm not hearing that we can't explore the same things that the select board would be exploring. I'm not hearing that. So that's lost. I think the difference is that the housing reuse is one that we'd like to look carefully at as an alternative to this, to look at single family housing or conservation cluster and to do the projections of revenue expense associated with that. Something that if I were on the school committee, I'd be tempted to really kind of look very hard at the school and not so much at the other. I'm still not hearing why we can't ask for those evaluations. I'm going to give it a shot. How's that sound? Sure. When you have capital projects, who takes care of your capital projects? Who runs them? Facilities. Who's going to run out of project? Facilities. So it's banana or what is it? Potato, potato, right? The same staff is going to be doing the work once the scope is determined. We will assign this to potatoes. I think it's optics for a successful warrant. That's a good point because I think that's why we might be where we are as well. Doug is right though. Next Monday night, the better before us, I'm supposed to have all articles voted and you're supposed to have them turned into this lovely lady over here by plus 10, but she gave us to 4 p.m. on Tuesday. Otherwise, I think you turn into pumpkins. So, you know, I know we have been, we have been having conversations for months on probably should have mentioned to the wire. Are you, are you meeting this? We have a meeting on Wednesday night. Perfect. I still have a question because I, I don't tend to know what's, you guys have side conversations sometimes and I get brought in and I do the research and so I look at it a little differently. Everything that I researched on this was that this was a property that was school committee controlled. Correct. What did I miss? What am I missing?
I'm sorry, but this is what I mean. That's why I'm like, we should just bring it to this floor under school committee control and let the town decide. This is, I don't, that's my position. I don't, I'm confused as to, like, I feel like I just said that and it was understood as, you know, we don't have enough to bring to the floor, but I'm, I'm confused here. It's the different, I think the conflict is, or not the conflict, but the intersection is just that we want to control and school committee wants to control the process of the engineering and these studies. Is that pretty much it? I think it's a matter of, I think one factor, Ann, is just
who has the time and where it might be most efficient. I mean, the school committee is a very busy board, very busy board. Your timetable may move a whole nother year. We have town meeting once a year and we just saw this as an opportunity to explore this acreage for the benefit of the town, whether it be a structure that might involve education or a structure of structures that may involve housing or maybe no structures at all. We just want to understand what can go there. So I recommend that there be further discussions between the school committee and the select board at least during next week and see whether we can come up with acceptable, acceptable article that we can live with that achieves the same, the same end. The same end being the school committee is satisfied that when work is done, you'll have a sense as to whether a school can go there. We're satisfied that when work is done, you know, what other things can go there if the school, if the school committee decides, you know what, that space isn't for us. One year is a lot now and we're facing an override next year. We just need to be responsible and we need to be frankly aggressive in looking at opportunities where we can reduce the residential tax burden and this is why we're we're pushing this So if we want to go back to shared oversight, that is what we've brought for your consideration in our revisions. But then the response back was single board control. So I think that's what we're responding to because I think our original proposal that we shared with you is we figure out a path to shared oversight of the study to make sure that all of the the study to make sure that all of these options are thoroughly and carefully considered and included in the scope.
So I think we can discuss it again on Wednesday, but I would just say that we might have the we might have started at the position of compromise that we now find ourselves seeking. I'm chewing it. I mean the thing is I think the article is written the way it was written. It was originally was a select book article and normally when, for example, we're co-sponsoring an article with a board of public books. It's a little different because it's not a question of, you know, who wants to land in it. But we just follow their lead and we're co-sponsoring and we support this, you know, that town meeting. And this article here, like you say, you've changed it to be a school community article. So perhaps if it's just a joint. No, it's a joint article. It's just we kept it as joint. It's a joint. It's a joint article. It's a joint article. He's driving. We're all driving in the same car. It's just who's driving. That's all it says. And so I recommend, Madam Chair, if the school meet chair, willing to have further discussions for next week and maybe we can come up with some compromise that we both deliver. So obviously you're always welcome, of course, to chat with me. You can. Sure. But you know, as I said initially, we have, we try to have one person in driving our buses, if you will. And Bill is the liaison for the article. So if you want to keep me on the loop of any of the emails, it's great, but otherwise I'm going to let Bill continue to take the lead on that and see what we can come up with. We have a meeting Wednesday. So I'll just, I'll update our agenda. I'll just have to put it on there. I don't know that we need anybody to attend, but I'll definitely reach out. Terrific. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. I know.
It's all important. If only we could clone ourselves. Someone wanted to add something. Nope. Have to be on time. Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. Good to see all of you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't share her sentiments. I love seeing you all. Yes, you do. And I'll lie around it. The next item on our agenda is also an annual term meeting article. We're going to invite Brian Kemeny, our finance director. Hi, Brian. Please join us. We want to talk a little bit about article B, which is the enterprise fund article. This is in the packet on page. Well, thank you. And I will tell you the one reason that Brian has come and he has probably has a number of reasons on this article, but I think it was last year or the year before it was brought to everyone's attention from that enterprise funds have normally operating budgets for capital budgets and the capital needed to be pulled up. It was Tom Carson mentioned it to us. And I think Brian came in last year and said there were three options. One, we could do a separate operating article and a separate capital article for these funds. Two, we could put it in the fund in this budget article, which is what we did last year as a motion. And three, we could put it in the enterprise article. You'll notice this year that Brian, I think your recommendation is to put it in the article, right? Yes. So the floor is unified. Well, I've been going to back forward to the government. I ought to allow us to get through this talk. If I can, I'll be asking the folks on the right to jump in. So this has come up with the finance committee about putting the capital in the enterprise budgets. You know, we always said we were indifferent where to put it. It makes sense to put it in the enterprise budget. It's no harm to town meeting. We can put all their budgets in one article. And to me, there's no downside to doing this. The only difference is you folks would oversee the capital. It's your article that goes to town meeting. So what you have before you is the operating budgets, the wastewater and the transfer station, as well as you would have capital related to the water fund and the enterprise fund. So there'd be a couple of motions on the floor that would be read. And we would read these. It's not abbreviated. I don't think I don't believe it is, right Carol. It's not an abbreviated article. No. Wait a minute. Is it consent? We'll look it up. We might be consent. We'll pull it out. We'll pull it out. So that's the background as to why the capital is in it. We've gone through the operating budgets with DBW and the folks in wastewater and the numbers are in front of you tonight. Town meeting votes. Them as you see one through six will be one motion and then the second motion will simply be the water capital. It's all funded by debt and the wastewater is also funded by debt. So it's a pretty simple straightforward article and I don't see any trouble in doing it this way whatsoever. Same consent. You okay with that? Yeah. So what Brian is saying is recommendation now is to just put a rule in the one article. This is where it will stay. I'm wondering, Brian, if we should change the article name to Enterprise Fund Operating Capital Budgets. That's fine. Is that something? Yeah. It'll be clear up at home so they know what we're looking at. The first one says revenue. Should we or should we say revenue and capital to match the terms? I would say operating capital budgets. Okay. Anybody have any comments on this? I think also, you notice that there's, we're talking about this tomorrow night if they go to public works, right? They're talking about MWRA debt and a bunch of unknowns. Yeah, because I think there was some edits. I think the other question you have for us is number five, the retained earnings. Number five, number three, water retained earnings. When I talk to you. You mean number one of the water revenue? Yeah, you wanted to have, you wanted to talk about that? Well, the Board of Public Works has asked that $200,000 of retained earnings be used to balance the budget. I'm completely against that. The fund has gone from approximately $4 million back in 2013 to 1.4 now. I think using any retained earnings for any purpose is going to continue to erode the fund. I did put together a schedule as to, if you want, I know any doesn't have one, but Moody's wants us to maintain fund balance of 25%, which now includes the enterprise funds. So any use of retained earnings by the water fund is not, in my view, advisable. They need to roll back the fund balance. They need to stabilize the erosion of fund balance. And if you take a look at their upcoming future of 28 and 29, you may not have any amount packet, but we did get the debt service from Hilltop related to the water fund. Do you have the? Oh, the water fund? No. So the waste water fund has approximately $1.4 million of fund balance or cash in the account as it closed last year. So in fiscal 29, in what would be November of 28, they were going to have to make a debt payment in the amount of $3 to $4 million. They currently don't even have that as a fund balance. So I've already expressed to the Board of Public Works through GeorgiaVegis, the next two years, they need to be mindful about increasing rates. The rate increase for 27 is projected to be 30%. It was no rate increase in 26. So once you get to fiscal 29 and you're in November of 28, you have to make a $3 to $4 million debt payment. You don't even have that in your fund. And I'm already talking to DR now about, is the fund able to even do that? Or will the general fund have to give them sort of what we did with the capital? Will we advance some money into them and give them some money? So we may have to do something like that. The point being is that going forward, the water fund really needs to make sure that their rates are raised properly so that they can cover their expenses. And as we all know, whether we get the state loan or we have to borrow by debt, by bonds, the expenses in the fund are going to go significantly higher. So it's important that the rates are set appropriately to make sure that the revenue is coming in not only support expenses, but to start to build back some of that fund balance. So the ask from DPW was to put $200,000 in there. By time being vote, I'm against it. It's the Board of Selectments decision. It's your article. We can only, Mike and I can always tell you what we think. Ultimately, it's up to you. The last time we used $200,000 retained earnings was a few years back and we did some capital. We did meet with the prior Board of Public Works chair who's now off the board with Tom Holder a couple of summers ago when we went through this and he was on board that the fund can no longer use retainers. So we've expressed that to the Board of Public Works and that's sort of our position and it's always been that way. If you take a look at what's happened, it became an enterprise fund in 2013. Around 2016, they drew up $2.5 million in fund balance. I sent a memo to then town administrator Nan Balmer and Chris Brown, bringing to their attention the drop of $2.5 million. Just a year later, the Board of Public Works wants the town meeting to use $1.3 million of fund balance to do the water meters. And Louise and I were also against that. I believe how you were too. But it's again using fund balance to a large amount that really shouldn't be used. So now they have a metric that they want to maintain fund balance or certify retained earnings around $800,000. But if you go back and take a look at the warrants in 2012, it specifically said that the water fund needs to maintain a balance of about 25% of revenues, plus an amount to support capital, plus an additional around $2 million to support a catastrophic event. So not only did the MassDEP and the Abrams Group at that time, they both recommended a maintaining a fund balance around that. It wasn't voted at the time and it was just in the warrant for folks to read. Since then, it's really depleted. And if you take a look at their number one item in their line is the water user fees. So they have a few other different revenue categories, but really it's the water user fee. Only one time in 10 years if they achieved their water user fee revenue target number or budget number. Just one out of 10 years. One time in 10 years. So what Brian's question to us is, are we comfortable? The Board of Department of Works has not only voted to use $200,000 of retained earnings as their revenue source this year. In their position, it's as needed. So if they don't spend it, then of course it rolls back because it's a contingency. Or do we want to not allow that to go through? They have voted. They have written several mills recently. And as Brian said, it's our decision. I am in the interest of time going to hop in and say, I think we've had several conversations with them about raising the rates appropriately come May. And I think that if you don't mind pushing this along, and I did say to Brian, this is what they voted. I think the Board probably might consider letting it go through. But come May, we're just going to have that major big conversation when they're going for it. First, if they don't get the rates up with us. So open them to the floor. So that's the question on that. Are we going to allow the $200,000 of retained earnings as a funding source? Or are we going to then have to have a conversation with them, bring them in, tell them we're doing that? Does anybody like to take that one? Michael, what's your recommendation? I would say it's probably easier to take it out now, and then you're driving it rather than leaving me in there, and then hoping we'll take a course of action. Anybody else have any comments? I'm fine with that. You know, we've discussed this topic before. I threw out the idea to them. They want our Board and people, in part because of this issue, your ongoing concern about, I'm fine with Michael. I mean, they have the expertise, and they advise us, and then we make decisions. We have the, on the other hand, is they are an independent entity because they are an enterprise fund, and they, we've adopted, help me out there with the words, the code and the language that establishes them, and they are the rate creators, and they do their budget. So for me, that's the only reason I'm saying, let's go through, but come May, they better get those rates up. So I spoke to someone yesterday, and they weren't happy with me when I finished talking to them. So I said, I have to get the rates up. I don't want to pay it either, but the fact is, is we've got to pay the bills. That's a problem. The rates should have come up 26. They should have. Yeah. So the thought was that, because with the new meters, there would be an increase in the revenue, and that that was how it was going to be their increased revenue. How's that worked out? Well, it wasn't, but it recently did. But there was some concern there, because it was fairly flat, but I think maybe because in the beginning of the year, we're dealing with that, with the more, the limited water use options. So there may have been a slight increase, but I do also know this year, I probably know this too, that they've had to use emergency connection twice to the tune of about 140, 140, 160, 160, 160, and that's going to come out in that retained earnings. So they have spent 200,000 of the retainers. So I also know, and this is that the staff will get close to the end of the end. If anything, we're getting close to the number, they will push it into the next year. It's not good. We really do need to have this conversation, but I'm not sure if I should take a shot across the bar right here is the solution. So I take an entertaining motion. I'd just say that rather than offer a motion, I'm fine as well. I appreciate, Carol, your suggestion that we maybe let this go through and see what happens in May. But as you consider the significant increase that is going to occur due to debt service, with respect to not only NWRI connection, but other needs as well, we would expect that increasing the rates to reduce the sticker shock. This is essentially dipping into the piggy bank in order to subsidize the water. You know, I have to go to that meeting tomorrow night and this piece of information gets transmitted. I mean, we do want our jobs, everything. We do want our jobs, everything. So Brian, if we were to not support retained earnings, they would then have to go, you'd have to change the budget numbers, put that number elsewhere, right? No, the retained earnings is not even in the number. Number one, number one is 6.2 million is their total expense budget. Okay, so it's not in here yet. No, it's not in there. It's not in here yet. That's the idea is they want you to put it in. Okay. Is there any other numbers changing on this? It's in the, it's in the, it's in the finance committee comments, all right? Yeah.
Oh yeah, they wrote in capital too. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, they'd have to fix this. Stamps increase will be funded. Any other thoughts here on this? Have we finished with the water? I want to talk about the transfer station. Brian, that's not a subsidy. Where is it? It's number six. Subsidy. Oh, Jim. Okay. There it is. But in the write-up, it says subsidy. And I think it's less than it's supposed to be, but nonetheless. Okay. Let's have a motion then on this part, though, I guess. A motion to, a motion to support and here. Yeah. Okay. Sure. This isn't an insert, is it? I don't think we have to insert this. There's a couple of language that's not inserted. So, I mean, number eight, it's already been inserted. So we're just supporting it. But isn't there a critical language here that isn't clear? In other words, I guess my point is just something that can be voted on at our next meeting? What's not clear? Oh, $200,000. Well, if we don't vote that, I'll just tell the finance community. This is their write-up. They'll take them out. Do you want to revisit it? Do you want to revisit it? Is there any other change that we need? That's not possible. Does there need to be more than $200,000 of amount of revenue? I just asked Brian that. He said it's already in there. The write-up talks about the retained earnings, but it's not in the chart. If you look at the chart, the chart doesn't have retained earnings. Brian's only got revenue. So the enumeration of one through six, phone, first paragraph, or expenses. What town meeting votes, historically, is they voted by revenue. So the motion is going to be that the water fund will be voted by $6.2 million of water revenue. So we vote one number for each one of the funds. And what we do is we break up the revenue sources in the motion. So the $6.2 million you have here is all-inclusive to the entire budget. It's not, there's no use of retainers. If you wanted to add retainers, you'd have to reduce the $6.2 million by $200,000 and then another line item of $200,000. Very similar to number two and three. Did you say these are going to be individual votes historically is how it happened? I think it's one, it's one motion. One motion. Yeah, because this is on the consent. And then the second motion will be the capital. There's a minor point at the moment. So would the appropriate motion be to support the adoption of Article E as presented? Yes. Yeah. Be happy to make that motion. So I move that, I move that, uh, the board support the enterprise fund budgets. So we don't need to say anything about it because of the $200,000. Right. So what I'll do is I'll turn it up to the finance committee. I'll explain there isn't any of that. Also, to be honest with you, they need to write YOY, which is zero, what, and then the SCAD, whatever SCADA is, is going to see I've got those highlighted. So I think we're all set there. But if you want to see the final one, I can get that back next week. But let's, there's a motion on the floor. All those in favor, Ann? Yes. Yes. Um, Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Five, zero. Okay. We're all set back. Um, the next question we have is, you wanted to talk to Keith. We asked you, and you're graciously shortening our packet. Somebody's going to tell me what page we're on here. Some options. I think they start on page 17. Those are the options for how we could fund the wastewater project, which is $2 million. From school. Is that what goes on, Brian? Right. Okay. We'll check this to Keith. Do you want to walk us through those, please? So the question was, what other options does the town have to fund the $200,000 for the wastewater? And really, there's only three revenue sources to look at. The first one is the real estate account. The real estate account right now has only $256,000. So that's obviously not available to fund the $2 million. And we still may have some liabilities in December, which we may pay out of that real estate account. The other two funding sources would be free cash in the capital stabilization fund. So I did put out in the packet four different spreadsheets. I'll go over the free cash first. So the very first free cash schedule you have here, that's the pending budget for free cash. We have in here the use of free cash to fund the capital, I mean, the capital appropriations, as well as other articles. So it's projected that we're going to have a free cash go from 11.8 million currently right now up to 16.1 million by the end of 2031, based upon pending and estimated uses of free cash and the replenishments of free cash. So the next chart, which is actually has a bad heading, it says not funding the project. The next one you see in yellow, the $2 million. That would be as if we funded the wastewater plant at the high school with $2 million of free cash. That would automatically bring down free cash or fund balance by $2 million. That's something we don't want to do overnight. Remember, we want to maintain fund balance at 25%. Fund balance is all the governmental funds, plus stabilization funds, plus others, plus enterprise funds. By taking $2 million out in one swoop, we would be bringing down fund balance more than we should. And it would take a while to replenish that. You just don't replenish $2 million in the next fiscal year. Free cash should go up gradually. If you're doing your budgets properly, you should see a gradual increase in fund balance. I mean, free cash once in a while, you do see a spike, something happens. But normally, if your budgets go properly, you should go up gradually. In this scenario, taking $2 million of free cash would simply drive down the value of free cash, which would also bring down the value of the general fund's fund balance. So yes, you can do it. To me, it's not advisable. So in this scenario, I would not recommend it. Because, say why? Because it's that strike against us in our credit rating? Yeah, so the $2 million would be a significant drop. We're already using $2.1 million for the 27 budget. What you'd be doing is adding another $2 million. So you'd be appropriating the capital at $4.1 million. Your total appropriation of free cash in the 27 budget would be $4.7 million. That's $2 million higher than we've ever done. And it would take a very long time to replenish that, if at all. So it would be a big drop. Remember, free cash is usually equal to about 85% of your town's fund balance. So as free cash rises, your fund balance rises, because free cash is a derivative of the fund balance. Taking $2 million out in one vote is just too much, I think, for the fund balance to absorb. But the free cash would hold steady, according to this chart. It would drop from $11.8 million to $11.1 million, then go back up $12.2 million, $12.7 million, $13.14 million, but that's still problematic. Yeah, compared to what we didn't do, which is the first chart, you'd be at $16.1 million in fiscal $31 million, as opposed to $14.1 million. But that makes a big difference for us, whether we're $16 million or $14 million? Because why? Because Moody's rates, the town's fund balance, as a percentage of revenues, and there's $2 million. Using $4.7 million would be a drop in the town's fund balance. $2 million more than anticipated. And we would probably fall well below the 25% threshold. I see. And it takes time to build that up. Okay, I see. How much free cash typically is created each year? Usually we want the amount to be created as the amount we use. So usually, if you take a look at the bottom chart, there's a good indication here, is that they're very tough where it says sources of free cash. That recovery is usually when DOR does an adjustment when we do free cash. They penalize us. So that $5.25 will be coming back. Usually we get tax liens, that's unbudgeted revenues, that's $100,000. Prior year real estate and personal property collections, that's not budgeted revenue. That's unbudgeted. That adds to free cash. And then usually we collect about 99% of our tax levy. So you never collect 100%. So we'll probably leave almost a million dollars of uncollected tax levy on the table every year. And that's normal. We make like $500,000 of local receipts over budget. If you keep going down the line, it's really in the turnbacks. Typically our turnbacks run around 2% of our budget. We don't create the budgets bringing 2%. It's just mathematically that's what comes out. If we have years which we're experiencing now with all these deficits, where your turnbacks on is great, you've got to just adjust for that in a few years. So we plan for about 2% of our budget to come back. That's the replenishment of free cash. And that's a consequence of not spending money as quickly as we thought or not filling vacant positions. Yeah, vacant fees. Like for example, you didn't use the Finance Committee of Reserve Fund. We probably haven't used that one in five years. This year we're probably going to use the whole thing. We have a big snow and ice problem this year. So we're going to have to tap into other appropriations to fill that. We haven't had that in a good five years anyways. So this is, you run into the year where things are going sideways on you and this is that year. It's been a confluence of events to make us closing out FY26 rather challenging. So we are already going to be behind the ball on free cash next year because of the at least half a million, if not more, that we're going to have to cover at the end of this fiscal year. So if you take more out, you're just going to be more challenged. So then your next suggestion is the standard. So if you take it, you want to go to the capital stabilization now? So there's two more charts I put in here. One chart shows the use of actually, I want to make sure you look at the right one. It would be a 20-year loan at 4%. It says FY26-31 financial plan with debt service payments. So let's look at that one. So what I did was a map in, so a bunch of years back we bought a fire truck for $950,000 in the ambulance fund. We took the debt service related to that as an indirect into the general fund. So the ambulance fund was actually paying the debt service for the fire truck. So if you take a look at the same scenario, can the capital stabilization fund pay the debt service for this one? So if you look at it, highlighted in red, starting in fiscal 28, you see that $210,000. That would be the debt service related to the wastewater. The debt service would be appropriate in the general fund. The capital stabilization fund would transfer $210,000 into the general fund to make it taxable. It would not be any tax effect. So that works except for this is a 20-year loan. So if we appropriated it this way, you'd be asking the next 20 years of tax recaps, finance communities, and warrants to make sure that they put in the warrant that the capital stabilization fund is going to be sending that money to the general fund to the general fund. If this was a five-year window, like the fire truck is very manageable, this one we have to do over 20 years. So that's the difference. You can do this. We would just have to manage it over a 20-year period to make sure that it's in the warrant, that the capital stabilization fund is going to be sending per indirect payment to the general fund to replenish the general fund for the cost of the $2 million wastewater plant. So this technically works. It's just a 20-year period advantage. So that's similar to what we do with Mainstone, because the CPC funds the debt service for the Mainstone purchase. Right. Now it's about $370,000, somewhere around there. Yeah. So is this what you recommend? Yeah, and the other one is very similar to what I talked about with the free cash. It takes $2 million right out of the capitalization fund. It brings the balance right down to under a million. I don't advise this, again, for the exact same reasons. This is fund balance. It's too much in one year to bring it down. Yeah. If the board would entertain or if they were thinking about doing something to not have 200 million as levy or excluded debt, really the only plan that you can really bring forward is this one, the capital stabilization. Just remember, we just have to manage this over 20 years. With a 4% interest, is that right? And so that's the advantage of paying it all in advance, is you're not imposing all of that. The 4% is a higher number. We always use 4%. Right now the bond rate is around 3, 6, 3, 5. So when we project out, we use the 4%. This is really only plant in me that works. It's just a long period of time. And the other thing too is, there's nothing that prevents the town from where we get, depending on where we are. You know, we get out around 28, 29, instead of putting 250 into the cap stabilization plan, maybe we put 350, which helps to continue the fund to grow, although the fund is growing. Does anybody, so that's your recommendation, is to fund it. Yeah, that's, I mean, I told you everything you can do. This is the only thing I think that doesn't harm the town in any way. It's just a bigger managed program over a period of time. I want to say thank you very much for coming up with these. I'm speaking to the board. I think we appreciate having other options because then the other option, the reason we asked you to do this was because we were asked to consider funding that $2 million project for debt exclusion. So let's open it up to the floor for deliberation. Do you, Michael, you're comfortable with this recommendation as well? The debt service to the cap plan standpoint? I'm a little confused. So does this presuppose that debt is issued in the amount of, principal amount of $2 million plus, plus, you know, on council fees and brokerage and so forth, um, and this would not be subject to a debt exclusion or not, of just, it's just part of the capital budget. Right. So they'll be part of the operating budget. Well, the actual item to fund the wastewater will be in the capital budget. Yes, the funding source will be, the funding source will be, if you do this, the funding source would be the capital budget. But going forward, it would be in the motion. Yes, but for this year, to answer Bill's question, it would be still in the capital budget, the blurb, but the funding source would be the cap stabilization fund, um, versus debt exclusion, for example. I think it sounds like those are the two we're looking at. Does that sound a spoiler right? That does. Okay. So, Brian, what's your recommendation is between this approach and debt exclusion? I mean, obviously, you know, you're going to do a $2 million project. It doesn't make sense to do levy debt. We're only having to plan 4.6 as levy debt. If you did this one as levy debt, you're running up to, um, you know, it's over 6 billion in levy debt. You would just be adding the $200,000 anticipated debt service or so onto your override number. So doing this as levy debt doesn't make sense. If you're going to do it by debt, excluded debt would make sense even though it's below the $5 million threshold. I think Whalen, the $2 million project is still a sizable project. So I think the options really are, from a financial point of view, to either fund it by excluded debt or fund it by this capital stabilization program. So we'll call this recommendation saying that we wouldn't have a debt exclusion question. No. We'd be in a situation five years from now where someone's going to come back and say, you know, just like where it really should have excluded that debt. I don't know if they're not saying that. See, as long as you take a look at it, if you take a look at the top portion on revenue on interest, the interest you're earning, highlighted in green, is paying the debt service. As long as you fund it by $250,000 a year, if you take a look at the expected interest, the interest earned by the fund will be funding the debt service. That's an important fact. Well, that's what it is. And did you have any questions or comments on where we're at with this topic? We covered some of this before, so I get it. I just have a question. But isn't this recommendation in a way consistent with the board's policy of having a minimum of $4 to $5 million debt exclusion question? Right? I was corrected by the chair of the finance committee once when I made that observation. He said, no, anything over five should be excluded debt. I mean, it's to the town's discretion as to whether it's below five. Gotcha. And I remember we funded the local roof project, which did have some reimbursement from the MSBA. That was $4.1 or $4.2 million, and we funded that through the lending. So it works both ways, you know. So in the interest of trying to move things along,
the question before that we have to answer is, do we want the debt exclusion ballot question? So do we want to place a question on the ballot for a debt exclusion to fund the wastewater project? That's the question before us. And so we'd ask Brian to come in with some scenarios, which he did, which was terrific. And if we're comfortable with either this scenario or another one that he thinks is better, or do we want... Is the finance committee discussing this right now too? No, the finance committee asked us to support it for debt exclusion. And they await this other option though? They have not seen these. So they will discuss this? Oh yeah, will they discuss this? I think, I mean, if they're voting it probably right now, they can always change the motion. Right. The funding source is an easy thing to do. They can't put in a debt exclusion until we vote yes on that. So right now they have to have another funding source. Yeah, I would just add one more thing for you folks, is that anything coming out of a stabilization fund needs two-thirds vote. So going forward, when we vote the operating budget, we may have to have another line by two-thirds vote to move that money out of the capital stabilization. That's a good point. You have two-thirds vote at the time meeting. What's that debt? Oh, no, that's the joke. You have to have a majority ballot. Yeah, well that's, you'd have to get four-fifths for the T&K two-thirds. You have to have four members of this vote to vote for the debt exclusion. I was referring to town meeting. I think it's just a majority of town meeting. I think it's two-thirds. I think it's a material ballot. Oh, two-thirds, but at the ballot, it's the majority. Excuse me. Yeah. So is it possible to get a motion? No, we have to have a motion. We've been asked, we have on the debt exclusion, we have to vote whether we're going to put a debt exclusion ballot. Question on the ballot. So that's the issue. We have to vote. No motion's made that we won't be doing it. We don't have to vote, yes or no. Okay, our lawyers are speaking. Well, if that's the case, couldn't you have told me that 10 minutes over and I said it won't go on? Didn't I say it really? It was a very full schedule. Well, this is kind of fun, though. And I'm going to look, just if you don't mind, I'm going to confirm with another resource, because I don't have a problem here. Do we have to take the loan here? Because we've been asked places so much. If we don't do anything, then how do we tell the findings committee what we've decided? Say we, the select board did not authorize a debt exclusion. Right, you didn't not authorize, you never brought it up for a vote. You could just say the select board took no position on the request. Because if you don't, if you don't make a motion, I'm sorry, I'm just getting out of terms. Come right in. I apologize. Come right in. But if you want to be specific and say the select board declined or the select board accepted, then you take a vote. If you wanted to report back that the select board took no position, then you don't make a motion. You don't vote. I think that's- Is the consensus on the board no position? I would say the select board did not vote to authorize. I think what the finance committee needs to do is just vote it as levy debt. Because we're going to be issuing the debt. And then the funding source going forward will be the capital stable issues. So that's going to be the finance committee. Right. They just changed it. Whatever they vote, they'll vote debt. That's what they're going to vote. Okay, so we're done on this topic, right? Yeah, I'll remind them when we finish the warrants. In the end, I'd tell me it'll be funded by levy debt, but the capital stabilization fund will be given the general fund debt service. Going forward, there'll be no tax effect. Terrific. Okay, so we're taking care of that. The one last thing is, which we're not going to do too much tonight. Brian, we can go to an email this morning. We do need to have a greater comfort level of where we're going with the finance and the potential financing on article HH. Unless you can give that to us two minutes, because we're already late. And I have a hearing at eight o'clock.
If you want to give me a few seconds to guess what, I do have a... Very quick. Okay, and me and Ann are going to get the phone. The question was, again, Carol, what are the options with funding the end of February? Yes, please. That's article HH. So we're going back with Hilltop, our initial advisor. They gave us two different scenarios. We can either fund this by a 20-year debt or 30-year debt. I think Bond Council is going to lean more on a 20-year debt structure. If we do a 20-year at 4% as the ballpark number right now, and we choose on equal payments, so on principal and interest, we have an equal principal payment every single year for 20 years, the interest would change. The total interest we would pay is $16.2 million. The total debt we would pay on a $38.6 million loan would be $54.8 million. The next inexpensive way to do it would be, again, 20 years, what they call level service, which means your debt service stays the same, but you end up paying a little bit more. That would end up being $57.1 million in total debt paid.
The worst, then you get into the 30 years. So 30 years, if we get 30 years, and I'm almost certain Blind Council is not going to recommend that, is that doing level principal payments, again, it's the same principal payment every single year, but your interest changes. That would come out to 32 point, I'm sorry, $62.5 million. And then lastly, the level debt, meaning your level debt, your debt service is the same every single year for 30 years, you end up paying $67.5 million. So the most advantageous funding of this would be 20 years at equal, for equal principal, you'd end up paying $54.8 million over the life of the loan in 20 years. And that would be $16.2 million in interest. Thank you. Does anybody have any quick questions for Brian? I do want to make one observation that I thought of today when I was reading the write-up, is that in the SRF loan, right, there is contingency upon contingency, upon contingency, and I'm wondering if we are not doing that rule, if we might in fact be not three or $4 million worth of contingency, but closer to maybe a $2 million, and maybe that might help improve the thought. Because they got 10% and then 10% and then another 10%. My question is whether it makes sense to hold on this article and to find out how it would stay.
You cited that as the most advantageous option. I'd say that's the least disadvantageous. It's adding $16 million, $16 plus million of interest that we didn't anticipate. What does that do to the water rates? That I haven't seen. The advisor's working on that. Because he built this model based upon was they loaned no interest. Before we were expecting 20 years, equal principal payments, right? No interest, right. And that was like $1.6 million a year or something like that? I'd have to go back to that. Whatever 1 20th of $38.6 million is. Yeah, and it wasn't starting until I believe after the construction was. It had a different cycle of payments other than issuing bonds. Right. So maybe if there's going to be some more information, you might want to come back and visit us next week about this so we can finalize up this December. That's our last time to be able to finalize it. Right. But are we comfortable going knowing that this is? I have this article to talk about on our list when we're talking about articles. We could maybe come back to that. I really want to get them in before I take a walk. Okay. If you don't mind because I have a hand. Is that okay? That is? Okay. Thank you. Brian, thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. I want to invite our human resource director, Kate Bryant and the chair of the personnel board and Marianne Peavy to come forward. We'll call all the class to study. It begins at on what page I have in here. A bunch of slides. They're going to be very fast though, right? Okay. All right. Well, I might want to just jump ahead. So, Robbie, can you go forward? Yeah, sure. On the slide. Quick big picture. The purpose of this was to make sure that our classification systems had internal equity and we were in compliance with NEPA, the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, and also competitive. So, we can recruit and retain, you know, great employees. So, go to the next slide. So, I did a brief history overview. We can sort of skip that for now, but feel free to read through it. The current, the compensation plans that are covered in this particular study are non-union, AFSCME, DPW, library association, and a handful of what I call our miscellaneous schedules. So, part-time employees as well. Primarily library. Keep going. You don't have to go that fast. Oh, no, that's okay. We're going faster than I do. So, this is just a snapshot of where we are. As of last week, 245 employees on the town side, 169 of those are benefits eligible. Primarily our full-time employees. We have a handful of part-times that are eligible. And then a whole bunch of part-time employees. Again, primarily in our library. They have a lot of part-time employees. The classification titles. Those, these are, this is just a sort of a snapshot again of what was covered in our study. 126 position descriptions or job descriptions for 114 classification titles. The reason those don't add up is because we have, for example, we have department assistants. They're all the same classification title, but they all have separate job descriptions because they're in different departments. And then for our survey, we did 54 benchmark positions. And those are positions that, you know, every town has like a town clerk, a town manager, HR, that type of thing. So, we surveyed those to get our market data. Keep going. So, proponents of the study are first, the classification system. To do that are all of our employees received what is called a job analysis questionnaire or JAQ. They filled this pretty much everyone participated that was covered by the study, which is great. They filled that out in that JAQ. There's, there's nine factors and each factor, depending on how they fill that out, they would get a score for it. And then they get a total score for all of those nine factors. And that's really how they built the classification plan or study structure. Sorry. And that's how they kind of placed all of the positions based on that score. So, everyone was kind of scored uniformly across the board. The next piece of that is going out into the market, getting our market data. We had 16 comparable communities. According to our account, we actually got almost all but one responded to us. So, we got a lot of great data. 15 out of 16 replies. Yeah, 15 out of 16 replies. So, tons of really useful data that we can use, you know, moving forward as well. So, all right, keep going. And then our recommendations from MGT, they created a new grading scale. They basically took all of our positions and kind of put them in one big bucket so that they could, based on those scores, make sure that everyone is internally equitable across different units. So, collective bargaining, non-union, etc. And then they created our 16 pay grades. One is the lowest, 16 is the highest, our table manager. And then built pay ranges based on our market data at the 75th percentile. And then they placed that all on a big table for us. They basically kind of lumped all the various groups together. The data sort of told them, you know, specific groups of positions that fall within particular grades based on the data. You can go down, Robbie. So, the implementation piece, can you actually scroll down to the next slide, Robbie? Right here. Yeah. So, this is hard to read up here, but this is the, this is kind of the meat and potatoes of the study. It shows all of our positions. Their grade, or not grade, but the new grade, proposed grade, which is based on their skill level. That's that total that they got out of those nine factors from the JEQ. They gave us all of our survey data here at the 75th percentile, our current salary ranges. And then they proposed a new salary ranges for all of these new grades at the 75th percentile. Now, on the, on the upside, the good news is that the vast majority of our positions, those salary ranges are already close to the 75th percentile, which I expected for our non-union and our askable positions, because they just recently got a market adjustment over three years, which is, is great news, right? We're already competitive. And I've seen that in our hiring, right? We've been able to bring in new candidates and a lot more interest. Um, where we're, we're, we're struggling a little bit with is our, our library. And again, we kind of expected that going into it and a handful of positions, um, in our DPW. Um, so I was actually going to, um, hand it over to Michael to talk about implementation unless, um, Marianne, you wanted to, to say anything. Um, our board thought it was an excellent study. I would urge you to watch our meeting from last Monday. The, the, the consultant did a great presentation and it'll be understandable. Um, Michael and Kate want to have a lot more, um, more steps on each scale, which will mean that people can grow over time. Right now they're impressed. People hit their head very quickly and then they want their, their job changed, but really this is a, a better way to do it. Um, our board thought it was very well done. Our, our concern is, are, are we picking the percentage before we look at, at the data? And we wanted to see, uh, we saw every, they did it from the 50th percentile, which is market. And then for every 5% above that, it's, uh, additional. So 60 is, uh, 10% above market, 65 is 15% above market, 70 is 20% above market, 75 is 25% above market. And 30, 80 is 30% above market. We have, we have people at the 80th percentile. We have people who are under the 50th, which are below market. So we think they should be raised, but because the range has to be moved doesn't mean that people that are on that range wouldn't already fit on a, on a, a, a higher range. So it's not everybody that's below market, but we think that you should raise those people who are below market. Um, we wanted to see it. They showed us all of, all of the jobs that they were looking at on all of those ranges. And we think if they gave us data that showed you say at the 60th, 65th, 70th, 75th percentile, you could decide there's about a 1000 to $2,000 band between each of those percentage increases. It may not be a lot of money. I could be, I could be convinced that it belongs at the 75th, but I don't know that that's where it should be paid, but, um, and, and it's implementing it. Michael still has to do negotiations. It's how much money is it. And I asked Kate to kind of come up with some worst case scenarios. She did them on the 75th percentile. So what's the, do you have a dollar volume? Um, well, so we have, we actually have 18 positions that are, um, current salaries below the minimum that's recommended by our, um, consultants. So based on the 75th percentile, um, and rough estimate of how much it would cost to bring all those people up just to the minimum would be about 50-ish thousand dollars, maybe a little bit more than that. Right. Of course. So it's fascinating. I know people are speaking. It's fascinating that we have 245 employees and only 19 people, so it didn't mean it was about seven or eight percent. It must have been, were you surprised that it was that, we did that well now, but I'm sorry. So there's a couple of things, uh, specifically with regard to this class and comp study, and I want to thank Ms. Ryan for spearheading this in this PDD for insisting and going over this, um, you know, how do we, how do we do some of the implementation? You know, we're probably less than eight weeks out from town meeting, so like, in reality, we're not going to be able to implement a lot of this right now, but I think it will be a great exercise and in all likelihood we will try to integrate these suggestions that a MGT has made into our tables for some of the non-union personnel. To renegotiate salary tables with the unions would take some time. I had already come into negotiations, at least talking to a couple of unions that have smaller steps, increases, uh, to consider changing. I think the challenge that we have is we, between union and union, there are some that have within their bargaining units only about four steps, some have six, and there's others that have ten. Some towns have ten, twelve. They also have different, um, percentage increments between the steps. What I, I've seen since coming here is our employees jump very quickly and then hit top step in several of our bargaining units, which makes it hard for them to see the increases that other units do. And what I get concerned about is losing talent in some of those units, so people won't jump, um, to another community that has something. So that's one problem. But what, what I see happening here is much, you know, and I, I still have to talk to the unions about how we'll do this, but there's only two unions in particular that are affected by this. And I will likely talk to them at the table about trying to make some adjustments. It could be over one year, it could be over multiple years, as you know, we did with AFSCME, to bring them up the market. We did it over a period of three years. But the long-term goal would be to look at our tables, put the appropriate number of steps, and migrate people on percentage increase between them. I've shared with some of you, and I, I think it can be to their benefit, especially those folks who are stuck right where they are right now. A lot of it will happen at, you know, the table. Some might happen this year, but we'll probably look to make some substantial changes. We'll come back to town meeting for the nine. Any comments for the board? I appreciate the work here. I remember three, four years ago, we had discussions on the board about the need to be competitive. Yeah, no, I'm here. I, I'm, I'm watching all of it. I think it, um, it is nice to know that we're competitive, but I think, um, you know, the thought process that's going into some of these, um, you know, just navigating year to year, and improving the benefits, and being mindful of how you put a package together that could be competitive. It's, it's working. Now, they did our benefits as well, and our benefits are competitive. They appreciate this work, and this presentation is very informative for me, and I like the level of professionalism we're always doing. This has been talked about, I think, when I first joined this on the board, we were talking about it, and then we put an article in because we hadn't been able to get in, so we put a special article for us to put in, and I went to a couple years, and when I'm here, I was getting frustrated because I'm all about it. This is so important to do, and you can see it, and like Dan said, it's a very professional now, we're going from six bands, and, um, I think it's terrific, so. Did you want to add anything else before you leave us? I appreciate you coming in. Thank you. Thank you. We'll look forward to hearing more on this.
Anybody know the hearing information is something? It's towards the end of the pack. Original packet? Yeah, the original pack. Oh, yes, original packet, page 68. 50? 68.
Um, how are you recognized over there? I see Laura Palmer on there, and Margot Violus. So let's bring over Laura Palmer. She's already on. All right, and Margot Gillis. She's on too. Okay, good. So, let's move on. Can you hear me? Yeah, hang on just one second. Okay. Before I started, appreciate it. Okay, so I am going to declare, uh, the hearing is open for the purpose of considering the application for change of manager for BBRGTR, LLC, DBA, the Coach Grill of Whelan, for an annual all-alcoholic liquor license. So the notice that was published in the Metro West says, Notice is hereby given that the Whelan Select Board will hold a public hearing on Monday, March 9, 2026, beginning at 8 p.m., the Whelan Town Building, 41 Pichichoke Road in Whelan, Mass., and remotely for the application filed by Margaret Gillis, Esquire, McDermott, Quilty, Miller, and Hanley, LLP, on behalf of BBRGTR, LLC, DBA, the Coach Grill of Whelan. This public hearing is for a change of manager to Laura Palmer for an annual all-alcoholic liquor license, and that is ABCC number two, excuse me, 00002-RS-1340. And so joining us tonight, I'm recognizing Attorney Gillis and Ms. Paul. Hello, how are you? Great. Good evening. I'm Attorney Margo Gillis from McDermott, Quilty, Miller, and Hanley, on behalf of the licensee BBRGTR, LLC, doing business as the Coach Grill of Whelan. I am joined by Laura Palmer, the proposed manager of record. Ms. Palmer has worked in the restaurant industry for over a decade and has been a manager supervising the sale and service of alcohol. She is a United States citizen, a resident of the Commonwealth. She has experience in the food and beverage industry. She is TIP certified. She is also familiar with the laws of the Commonwealth, the rules of the ABCC, and this board for the sale and service of alcohol. There are no other changes besides change of manager being made to the license. We would like to thank the board for hearing this application today and would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Okay. So, before we do that, I do need to state formal rules of evidence and other court procedures do not apply to public hearings before the select board. The board expects the prospective applicant and any members of the public who comment, to present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner. And the order will be, as I think we've already done, to explain the reason for applying for the grant. The select board will pose any questions. Members of the public, if any, may ask a question or make a comment. You can then summarize if you feel you need to add more information. I will close the hearing and we'll take the matter under advisement and make a decision. So, you have presented your application, I believe. Why don't I move now to allow the select board to question the applicant. Any questions from the board?
Just a quick question. What occasions this change? What? What occasions this change? Why make this change at this time? Well, it's a staffing change. So, it would be the person who's in the office. It's going to be on premise to oversee the sale and service of alcohol in the restaurant. Okay. Doug, Ann, any questions? No, I don't either. And I don't think, Robbie, do you see anyone, any members of the public want to make a comment? Is there any other additional information we'd like to provide? Um, no, I think we've covered everything. Thank you. Thank you. Then I'm going to move to close the hearing and, uh, the board will now deliberate
and we don't have a lot of deliberation that perhaps we can have a motion. Move that the board approve the application for a change of manager to Laura Palmer for BBRG TR LLC, doing business as the Coach Bill of Whalen for an annual all alcohol liquor license, ABC number 0002RS 1340. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Otherwise, we'll take, um, go call vote. Mr. Fay? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Ms. Brensley? Yes. Mr. Whitney? Yes. And Ms. Martin? Yes. Motion passes 5-0. And I think that's, that takes care of that, right Kelsey? Could we get a letter from the office? Um, no. No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great day. Enjoy. All right. So now that brings us back to, um, would you like to, uh, did you print something for me? Yes. That's just, I don't say. I'm looking back to number four because I think we want to make an announcement. Um, I'm going to let Mr. Fay, start with this paper over here that I'm going to look at. Oh, okay. Happy to report that this board has a review of the town manager, submitted evaluation forms, uh, forms that were placed into one report, be public. And the reviewer, Mr. Paul, was extremely, uh, positive. And this year, at many different levels, including the amount of money he saved town through various endeavors, or by endeavors, I'm referring to budgeting skills, among other things. Worked hard to develop town manager form of government. I personally can't think of a dedicated, professional town manager. At least in our town, it is very difficult. Okay. Um, I think that there's a long, what I hope to be a long-term relationship with Michael. I continue to see us move together better and more efficiently and with different goals, but goals that overlap. And so I'm really hoping that Michael feels like he's being challenged and this is his home because we, we definitely are, are uniting around you as our town manager. Mr. Whitney. The benefit of responses, uh, to the, uh, questionnaire that was, uh, put together a year or two ago, I believe. Individual evaluations by the board. Certainly consensus in some cases, unanimity as to about the excellent performance of lighting. And of course, um, I've been lucky that I've worked in the leadership for three years with Michael and, um, get to see firsthand how hard he works on our roadmap and how much he cares about oil and how terrific it is. He's very mindful of our financial situation and always looking for ways to either get grants or do something in a more economical manner. And it's a really wonderful, wonderful and refreshing experience.
As I always say, do not do this without the tremendous support from the excellent people here at town hall. One of those people sitting right here, Ms. Powers Belay, one of my right-hand people. And you saw Ms. Ryan here. So we have great addition. It's great when you have department heads that you can just rely on. And I think we've been very successful in finding some people as the people turn over here. And I'm very, very pleased to have the staff here. Thank you. And with that, we will dig right into the meat and the potatoes of tonight. The articles for Tom Williams. Um, you don't know what page we're on. Um, it's Article A is where we will start. Bill, we're going to go down a motion. I'm going to make a motion. I'm going to make a motion too. I'm going to make a motion. I don't have a motion. I don't have a motion. We can make a motion. Yeah. Sure. Thank you. We don't really get a motion. Please just sign the review. Let's do that.
All right. So while we're doing, while we're doing that, Tom's giving the motion together, maybe we can all sign the, um, the review. So I'll move this recent agreement with the town manager entitled third amendment to the employment agreement between the town of Weyland and the town manager, Michael McCall, which includes annual base salary effective February 27th, 2026 of $256,750. We have further discussion right then on those who support the motion. And I say yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Motion covers 4-0. Thank you. And I will proceed to sign the... Did we all sign the agreement to this? Yes.
All right. I'm going to move us now. Can somebody tell me what page... I'm on. 39. 39. Thank you. You are following along. We are on page 39. We're going to start. We have about 16 or so articles that we need to look at.
And, um, first one is going to be article A, which is working on citizens. I think this is one of your articles. And, and, and it was mine. Oh, to us. Yeah. Okay. Would you like to talk about it? Um, get an webinar? I was fortunate to receive a draft of this from Ms. Powers-Spirilette and Ms. Bradica. Um, I think there has been some email traffic about potential additions, including a potential of unfortunate recent additions, um, that we are researching, but this is nearly finalized. And I think that it would be fair to take a position on this standard area. Happy to move the United citizens and employees from particular service to town and essentially set forth. I will second that motion. Okay. So what we're going to do again on, on the motions tonight, just easy for the minutes is it's going to be Tom and then Doug. Okay. Any further questions or comments? Otherwise the vote please. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Ann? Yes. And Carol, yes, that counts as five, zero. B, B is in the second supplemental packet. And it is called pay previous year fiscal unpaid bills. I think this one is yours, Ann. I think it has kind of a few extra iterations today. Did you want to walk us through it? Yeah, we already walked through it last time. It's the exact same one that actually article, the B keeps getting taken off and re-put on for some reason. So it's in the, uh, in the packet, it's now off again. But, um, the good news is one of the issues the last time was that these numbers were not all fully updated and now they are. Okay. So in all honesty, we don't need to be anymore because after tonight, it's going to have a number, but it's not why it's probably why people put it on, take it off. All right. Okay. Happy to move this board vote to support article B. Yeah. Pay previous fiscal years unpaid bills are set forth essentially in our packet. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's, uh, vote, Ann. Yes. Doug. Yes. Tom. Yes. Bill. Yes. And Carol, yes. So, would you do me a favor and just hand this to Ms. Nelson right there. Okay. Article C is my understanding that there are no going to need article C currently transfers. So in this case, we will take a vote to insert. After you move this board to insert article C entitled current year transfers. Second. So just to remind everybody, we're not inserted. So first, I mean, this is not. Well, I'm sorry, I thought you said you wanted to vote to insert. No, you do. You do. We have to put in the visit. But I'm reminding everyone that I'm not anticipating this showing up in the lawn. Understood. So I'm going to start with you, Tom. No. Bill. No. And Carol, no. So that's zero, five, zero. That's right. Okay. Now the article is number D. This is the OPEB funding. I believe this is in here on page 41. Well, this is interesting because when I got this one, it had no numbers in the chart. So I kind of paste them from somewhere else and put them on the bottom. But then when the article came through, they were where they belong. So, and this is your article. Did you want to talk about it? Yeah, I think it's the, you know, I hate to go back to last meeting, but we actually went through this a little bit, but it was the same thing. We had the same numbers in here in the finance committee comments side, but we didn't have the numbers for the food service base. Like these numbers up here, weren't here and now they all are. Terrific. So this, by the way, is one of these articles that I would have liked to have seen streamlined. Spoiler alert. It's going to be a summer project. I was happy you've moved that this board vote to support article D as successful as in our package. Second. Thank you. Entitled pep pun. Any further discussion? Other ones that spoke? Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. And? Yes. Carol, yes? Motion passes 5-0. Now, Article H, which is the next one that we have opened, is the budget. And I believe the finance committee has got their operating budget recommendation in place. I'm looking at Michael C.B. if you can confirm this. I don't believe they have finalized the capitals. The first time we will see these numbers is next week. All right. So that's going to be on 3-16. All right. Article L. Happy to move this board. Hang on one second. I just want to tell you what the problem that was. Article L, last week, I think we voted it, but did we vote to insert it? We did not. Wait a minute. No, L. I'm on the wrong one. Sorry. Go ahead, Tom. I'm happy to move this board vote to insert and support Article L entitled, Sell or Trade, Vehicles, and Equipment. Thank you. That's the central plan back. Thank you. Okay. We have a discussion. Otherwise, let's to vote. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Ann? Yes. Thank you. And Carol, the motion passes 5-0. The next one up is Article O. This is the updated bylaw personnel wage classification plan. And this will be, we wait until the last night for this, but this was still waiting for some language on this one. So this we'll see next week as well. All right. The next one I have, somebody's keeping track of what we're doing is eat. What did I do?
We need to insert. It appears a particular thing. Oh, we did not. Because we didn't insert. Oh, we did not insert. Right.
Insert Article M as Mary entitled, Spend Reserve Fund. Thank you. All right. All those in trade lines? Excuse me. Do you want to include, uh, supporting it as well? Yeah. Insert and, insert and support. We did support this one last week. But I think it's always good to insert. Yeah, let's do it again. Because I don't know what we did. The motion is to, the motion is to insert and support Article M as in Mary, Spend Reserve Fund. Okay. Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Okay. Now, where am I?
E. What are we talking about? I'm going to leave speaking. That is correct. That's what I want to talk about. So this article has now been scaled down from two substantive purposes to a single substantive purpose based on the feedback and discussion that we had with members of the planning board two meetings ago. So this, as the title of the article notes, is only about the appeal from the planning board for their site plan approval for certain large-sized projects to move that appeal timeline up after the planning board issues its determination, a resident or an appeal within 20 days versus in our current bylaws, that resident would have to wait until government issues.
So I believe we voted to insert this on 223, but then we also voted that same night to refer to the planning board. And we did that because I thought in roomies that we could not take a position until we got a planning board report. After speaking with them, looking at Bill, after speaking with the planning board chair, I believe the select board could take a position on their article, but it is town meeting that cannot take a position until we vote. So there's a report. The report is a town meeting under 40 minutes. The town meeting cannot until there is a report. Right. Did I say it wrong? So now, Doug has revised it. It's gone to the planning board and I don't know what the status is on the report, but we can take a position on this. So if we would like to do that. After they moved to this board and over to RPE entitled, and then town code section 198, planning board appeals and advance notice to select board by applicants.
Yeah. Question, given that it is now addressing one point instead of two points, should we vote to again to insert the current version? We don't have to because we have to revise, but We can do it if you like. I don't have a problem. You know what, I'll withdraw the motion. If you think it's okay, it's okay. I think it's okay, but I'll withdraw the motion in part because the title which I read is not the accurate title. The new title is different. So I'll make it, I withdraw the motion.
Oh yeah. I'll move this vote to support RPE entitled, and then town code section 198, planning board appeals, and the motion is to insert and support. Second. All right. Do we have any other discussion? Mr. Whitney? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Ann? I'm going to vote yes to insert, but I'm going to vote no to approve. Say that again, please. Yes to insert, no to approve. Can she do that if it's a single vote? We'll have to start over. Only one motion. So I will draw the motion. Thank you. Can we start again? I will move that this board vote to insert article EE entitled, and then town code 198, planning board appeals as set forth in our packet for this week. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Otherwise, we'll go to the vote. Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Carol, yes. So we'll go to 5-0 to insert. I move that this board vote to support article EE entitled, and then town code 6198, planning board appeals as essentially set forth in our packet. Okay. No further discussion. Then we'll go to the vote. Ann? No.
Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. So, Carol, yes. It's going to be 4-0-1. No, 4-1-0. No, 4-1-0 there. Yep. That's why we're doing not one of them. Okay. So now the next item on the list is Article 8, and I put this on here for a couple of reasons. Can I just look back at the section FF and GG, which are my articles. Are they not? We don't see it from the CCC Seminary. I'm sorry. Isn't that weird? We need to do something at home because I keep looking at the flags and saying to myself, after I have a heart attack, that I've missed something. All right. Very good. Yeah. This is always good to ask now. Okay. So in Article 18, which was submitted by the Board of Public Works, there's a blank in that column there. A couple of things. I know Bill wanted to bring up some discussion about where we're at. I wanted Brian and Michael if he has it to give us some more information about the possible financing.
The more it goes to press. I do know that the Board of Public Works is going to the meeting tomorrow night. I'll be attending that. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is that when we took the vote to support in January, there were only three of us here. And so I was going to also throw out to see if we wanted to vote whether five of us were here. And that was a question we raised if it's on when we did it. But anyway, that's all the things on the table of this. So I'm going to let Bill have the Board first to continue his point that he was trying to make. But I really don't know.
As we all know, there's a substantial change in the cost of an annual basis.
So you're addressing appropriate state agency later this month with the state moves, but I suspect it by the time that it's sent to the printer. So it's advisable. I had a question for the town manager. There's a sense of the state loan.
See what I'm getting at. No interest loan's been around. Are they revisiting it because now there's a high demand? Is it an opportunity to make some money?
So on. For years ago, and I know we are a sewer project. We got these types. What I can see in Mr. Holder, we had consultants helping the project and we submitted it based on we achieved a score on their scale. And the state looked at our application, only 200. So there were other projects that were raised higher. So I don't think it pushes out to make the money. So what you're telling us is that the state charges interest the community companies that don't really need, don't need, hold on. No, no, we think they generally made a real mathematical project. They came out and announced these and everybody was shocked. Mr. Holder, the consultants, our engineers, that we were led to believe the application process. So as for the PNQ, if the appeal is successful, how do we, what are our options in paying its interest? So we're examining somebody. For me, I do see that it's needed and necessary. I'm also looking if the appeal is successful. The cost that we've had some sort of leverage in our appeal to hold off. We can see how the appeal plays out. And I guess I'm wondering, are we disadvantaged by having a mistake to say, well, with interest?
So I don't know if that's a legitimate concern or not. I also don't know what it does to the rates and so forth. So it's just material change at the 11th hour through no fault of anybody else. I suspect it's just one thing. I think we should just be cautious because when interest rates, my concern right now is the trend in Massachusetts is when interest rates go up like this, it's connected to some sort of infrastructure or some sort of project plan that the state has. And I'm seeing more and more money go into expanding and improving the MWRA system in general. And as we said a long time ago, I think it was one of my concerns was we're putting this money into a happy hollow. And is it possible that the state's going to move towards trying to actually have people all dependent on the MWRA, in which case that those monies that we put into fixing a system that might not be able to be fixed in the long term, we end up in a position where we spent that money, but we end up 100 percent MWRA anyway. And I think it would be really helpful for all of us to do some research into that. I started to do some and I found that I was kind of moving in the direction I thought.
Yeah, and that issue is the towns, the state is requiring towns that have their own water supply to maintain them. In other words, they're not necessarily encouraging communities to go all at MWRA and just shut off their spigot. They kind of, they want, they want town to have a hybrid. That's what I think we need to do more, more research on. It was a concern I had really, really early on, and it was because what was happening was people were discovering that they just couldn't fix it. And so it was costing the state money by having these towns do that and then end up having to do MWRA. So my concern is that we're going to find out that the state has come to that realization that all those people who were on the ground working on it and saying this can't be fixed trickled back up and that the state is now putting money into those improvements and we're going to end up in a position very similar to some of those towns. And I got that information from the people that were actually working on these projects and they were messaging that back. And I don't think at that time when I brought this up, you know, I had much more to say than, hey, the people on the ground that I'm talking to that are working on these projects are giving us feedback. But now I'm just wondering if they're connected. And my gut feeling and just watching how policies move and how interest rates move is that I might have, I might not have been right, those people reporting to me telling me that might have been right and influenced things. I just think it's worth us all doing a little bit of research and that extends out to not just, I think we really actually need to do our own legwork on this and not rely fully on maybe people who have an expertise in it, but just might not be up to date on going on. You know, the challenge is, is that we are on deadline. So the fact is, is that, at first of all, I said this, and I know Bill mentioned, I think that perhaps, you know, we pass over or we throw this article. Just want to mention one minor point, it's not our article. But the select book controls the alarm. The select book controls the alarm book. We would have to go back to the board of public works and have a joint meeting with them. We don't have the time to do that, number one. My bigger concern is this, that there is this seven hundred, seven million dollar entry fee that everyone has to join our system. The initiation fee, if you will, it's waived for a certain number of time. And I swear when I heard Tom say, some form or some reading we were at, that there are communities coming in now that won't, that are trying to join the authority, but won't get in the application of the paperwork done in time, and they most likely will have to pay the entry fee. That's the seven million dollars question, a decision we're making here, among other things. I think we need more information. I think we have some concerns. I think we need to find out how to do the appeal. What we might want to do is put this through, because guess what, we can call it a tummy, and by then we'll have two more months more of information, if we still want. And we would have to have a conversation, obviously, with the Board of Commons to see what their position is. The other thing is that this is really not about, the article isn't about funding, the article is about the authorization to go forward, and I think that's really, see I don't have a crystal ball over here with all the answers, so, but I am concerned about the seven million. I think we would have to find out if we didn't continue the process, would we be in jeopardy, would we have to start over again? We are unable in the high peak times to provide 100% of our demand. We are utilizing, have utilized the emergency connection two or three times. If we have a repair, and we have to take happy hollow lock line, we have to use the emergency one, and every time you go, there's a fee plus a 10%. I'm making these numbers up, but there's a surcharge on each time, and I think, well, there was a period of like 10 or 12 days, they had to use water. What did I say, really? It was 160. So it's an expense. We have a lot of possible expenses for this decision, but I think it's a good question to ask.
I'm comfortable with that. The only thing that I'd say is, and I don't think this would happen, because this is like the biggest project that we have, but just, you know, just to get your assurance that if one of these board members wants to put this back on the agenda, even if it's just to discuss it, that that becomes a priority, which I know you would already do, but it's the only thing that I would be concerned about is that something would come up, we'd get some information, and we'd be behind them. Hey, you know, could be an agenda item closer to like, we kind of need, you know, minute five-minute information on this one, if anybody gets stuff. Well, I would think that Michael's pretty good at giving us this, but I certainly can add that to my list. I can also, I'm going to the meeting tonight, as I mentioned, about 90 times, I'm sure you've heard that already, and maybe I can inquire what would happen to the entry fee and the admission or the waiver of the entry fee should move someone on to support this at the Springtown meeting. I mean, I think Bill had also mentioned that maybe we'll read and do this in the Fall, at a Falltown meeting. I don't know what Mr. Gall would like to... I mean, what do you think? Should we keep the article and go full, or should we... what should we do here? Well, I was nodding when you said if we have it, we can be able to call it based on other information. I try and get things worked out in the field. I also understand, because I think it's just harder to put it back in, if you consider it, take it out and add it. Almost absolutely, all I do, except for one thought, how I would put things back in. Well, I do. I've got one thought. When did the bonds have to be sold? I don't think they start. That was why I thought that it's not successful. Did Brian say tonight, November of 27th? That would make sense, because then the first payments would we do, like, in FY29. 29 is not enough. Right. It's the thought then that... Oh, well, if we get the answer, it's not enough. Oh, you've got to complete the work and drawings,
we appropriated some funds last year. There were some offer funds, I think, and then we appropriated some funds, doing something off the top of my head, for the design and the permit phase. I think they're supposed to be... Is it 30% Michael? I tell me, and then after that, they're going to complete it. So there is some funding that can continue to design. So we need to know when we're going to... And when does it... 7 million? Yes, thank you. And I'm going to write that down, evaporates from 7 million. I thought he said that there was a deadline sometime next. I'd be interested in what the rates is just doing some back-of-the-envelope math of 8.6 million. You spread that of 20, well, principal payments, that's about 1.9 million a year. Right. If you pay 4% interest in the first year on the outstanding balance, that's another million. I think I have seen something like that. So these are... Sobering figures. But, you know, to your point about leaving it in, I mean, one approach is you... You seek to pass over if you decide to leave it in. Another is, I suppose, the Select Board is authorized, but not complicated, to issue the debt. I don't think the language... Does it authorize the town to which it was in the board? Just this, um, approval of the Select Board. Can we change the text on this article to resolve this issue where we're not committing to to authorize the town to raise you with approval of the Select Board. After all, making this up, the avenues that have been explored, including a state with all the file loan or something like that? Yeah. I guess it says that the language is... gives the board the flexibility. It says with the board, if you don't know, or you don't approve. Even on the money, that first bullet says appropriate the sum. Yeah. Money has now been appropriated. But it doesn't happen. If you don't have... But if you don't have... They're giving us permission to appropriate, and then it tells you how to get... But if you don't have $38.6 million to appropriate, because you have to borrow it. Yeah. So didn't, in the beginning of the meeting, I asked Brian to give us some more information if he had. I don't, I think what he's going to give you what you said. The other thing is, interest rates are so volatile, and perhaps, you know, there's a lot of conversation that rates made comes down. We know by the time we get there, we might be, you know, 2% home. Oh, sure. Well, it's a long way to phrase that. There's a lot of conversation about it should be less. Sure. We're all my best on that. Thank you. So, I wanted to get some more information. We'll come back and talk about the steps one day. Do I dare ask if we want to take a vote? If all five of us to support this, so shall I revisit that Monday as we fall? All right. Let's go to the next item, which is going to be... The next one is KK, and I think that there's in this packet, however, in the supplemental packet, supplemental number one, it wasn't revised. What happened here was the senior tax committee came in and he spoke with us, right? Let's show another picture. This was some of the mental illness does this to me. I don't know. So, I got it. So, what happened was they came in and they spoke to us, and then we had a lot of suggestions and questions, and then Ms. Clifford, who's a member of the senior tax relief committee, went back to the committee, and then they met this past week. And then I told them that if they didn't have a revised, they didn't have the revised in by Thursday to us, then that we would have to do that because we're on deadline. And to his credit, we did it, and it was supposed to see how loud it would put it in the form. And then I think it was Iris and I worked on this. And this first draft, you see, was the one we had ready when the pack was ready as well. And then there was more work on it over the week. But essentially, it's a thank you if you will. There's a lot of requirements to which you have to have been here 20 years. I think they've laid it out pretty nicely. You have to have, be the primary owner, you have to pay the taxes on the property. You have to also, which doesn't say it in the write-up, which I had mentioned to them earlier today, again, this isn't opt-in. So, if you don't want to participate, you don't have to participate. So, did everybody have a chance to read this?
I didn't. You did? And do we have any comments on this? Well, in the write-up by the finance committee, they note that, fiscal year 25, 2081, residential homes are owned by a resident, 865 plus, out of 486, nearly 40%. The interesting thing is, there's an opt-in and an opt-out as well. And I think in the new revised version, they list all sorts of options that are available for tax relief, but most of those are income restriction. The only one that I think you can apply for unrestricted might be the CPA. You can apply to not pay a tax, I believe that's 65. And then what were you saying? I'm just trying to, cause it says 40% would qualify where you're saying it gets Yeah, but my point is that, that that doesn't mean those homeowners have lived in town for 20 years years. Um, and maybe they didn't have kids that went to the public schools. What's the public schools? The discussion with Mr. Clifford as well, actually. Well, for me, because my screen's gone black, which I appreciate tremendously. Um, uh, but, um, his position was that most folks in, if you're over 65 and you live here, they've probably been here for 27 years. You may have downsized into a condo or what have you. My point was there are oftentimes folks will downsize and then they move to be closer to their children. Those folks, if they own that condo, they are not going to be in this group because they aren't been here for 20 years.
So, so on a new number, they will do it. The other question is now on this one, on the very top and I'm, I need to talk to Brian, Kelsey, Michael or somebody. Um, they had a cost on him in $1, but there is no cost because it's just, we should kind of like a residential exemption. So then when he said you would net with the home, you would net $200, I, that's me, that $200 for household. That was just to highlight that we really need to make sure that's a correct number. That seemed to me clearer, but somebody who's far brighter than I am should, uh, develop that cost. My view is, if you're going to put an estimate in cost, you'll be participating no more than X or no less than X ones. Max? Yeah. I ran an estimate. Yeah. Is that appreciated? It's like, no one's done the math here. You're going to be serious to figure out who's, who's been here. Oh yeah, yeah. Who had kids. Right. And it's an opt-in. Right. I mean, I, um, I talked to somebody who had the article initially and said even though they qualified, they would not opt-in. Yeah. Um, is there any other discussion on this one? Do we want, are we ready to take a vote on it? I don't have a list, but I do think that it's something you want to look at. The accessories, the register, it doesn't say anything about the number of 65. And the only other thought is the form. You can or cannot say it, have the form be out of a pain to tell you. It has to be here. It's just, I don't have a million dollars, is the estimate. But now, granted, I know that's, we're just asking people to pay.
I mean, actually, if you look in the supplemental packet, and hopefully those works as mine's not, you'll see that we're talking about the actual cost is no more than 200 per household. Yeah, that's the total of a million. If everyone participates, but like. Everybody participated. Well, I don't know you can say that the cost is a million. I don't know how to phrase that myself.
Any other thoughts on this? I think I asked this question when Mr. Crickwood was here, and I know probably answered, do other towns do this? Does anybody recall? I don't think anyone has done this. No. No, I looked into it. There are some towns that do some similar program. It has to be a credit, so it can't be reduction, like initially believed that it would be. All right. So I'm happy to move this board to support our KK entitled senior property assessment credit and accessories that were in our packet. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, Bill? We're going to abstain as I would feel better about it. There is a means test, and as I am to qualify for this. Mr. Crick?
Yes. Ms. Brinsley?
Um, seniors.
All right. Yes. Okay. And since I'm low and probably also going to qualify, I'm going to vote yes as well. This is my liaison. So that's going to be 4-0-1, right? I think we have to redo that motion. I think the motion needs to be to insert and support. Am I right? I don't know if Mr. Dodd, they wouldn't come up, but I'm going to move it. Solve. I think you are correct. So I will move this board to vote to insert and support our KK entitled senior property assessment credit and accessibility set forth our packet. Okay. Let's write this again. So all those in favor? Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Ron? Yes. Bill? I'm staying. And Carol? Yes. He's in 4-0-1. Okay. That's great. So that brings us to the next item, which is article 00. And this one, I don't even know if this is in the packet. What we have here was some questions on this, and we asked Michael to go forth and come back with the information on this. And this one, by the way, for those who are watching, is the, sorry, I've got a little remiss here, the Multifamily Housing, Route 20 West Sub-District, Amend Maximum Dimensions article. And Michael, I think I asked you for a couple of questions. Did you, were you able to successfully obtain that information? Well, I did speak, you would ask me to speak to the fire chief. Yeah. I think it responded to individually.
I wasn't here for Alta-Oxpo, but there is, within the river's edge, there was an exception, I think, for 58 feet for one particular quarter into the project. The fire chief said to me, and I shared it with Mr. Fay, and somebody asked the department of health, or what's the highest apparatus, and he said it isn't always, you know, apples to apples, because you could be fighting fire from various angles, you could be on a road that's lower, so they have concerns about just blanket approval of a certain height and feel that it should be going through essentially a permitting process, right? What the other districts have had is essentially indicated. All right, and also I think that we, was that the questions we had? One was to speak to the chief, and the other, and the other was, then we received some correspondence in an email indicating that the OANs had been issued on to Oxpo, which in the chart shows, I think we just recorded that, a couple of the buildings were a little taller. But just to clarify that point, the ZBA actually permitted the developer of Alta-Oxpo to build structures in the Northwest Quadrant up to 58 feet, which is set back from the road by a certain order. And that's the difference, and that's the difference. That information is very helpful for me, and that was one of my concerns. The difference, the distance between Route 20 and the line where they can start building at 58 feet is 236 feet. If you look at the location of where this project is going to be built, the Cadella and building across the street, it's much closer to Route 20. There wouldn't be any such, if I understand it, ability of the town. Have it set back, you know, I would say a three-story and then maybe a five-story. But my concern is this. If this passes, you're going to have two six-foot buildings. Six-story. Six-story, six-story, sorry, thank you. It would not be nice. Six-story buildings, flat roof, that'll be the, that'll be what people see when they first. I am concerned that what happens, we may need to buy a new fire truck because of these buildings. Having said that, I favor affordable housing, would result in at least 10% of affordable housing.
I don't accept the argument that because this is lower, it's palatable. If you accept that argument, Colt's way is 150, 160 feet above sea level. That's another MBTA district. This, this space, model is 184 feet above sea level. If you buy the logic, because it's low compared to Alta Oxbow, then a coastal way project should be seven stars. So that argument, I think. So I personally, this doesn't sit right for me, this all in all 58 feet at this. I much prefer it to be 45, absent some other restriction relative to control over tiered growth, which I do not anticipate because the developer would then lose money. That's why they, that's why you want 58 feet, right? That's why the developer, Mr. Watkins, wants 58 feet because he can maximize, because he is the right to, it's his property, maximize the profit on the structure. Tom, the numbers that you just recited about Alta Oxbow and the permissible zoning for height toward the back of the, was that what town meaning originally voted on to approve? I don't know. My source is just. There were zones of 35 feet, 45 feet and the affirmation 58 feet. Town meeting. Which was in the 2014, I think. Good. Tom, are you saying that a similar approach could not occur in property? There's not the setback? Alta Oxbow, Alta Oxbow was the town of a private property. You put together,
and then that's the depth. I don't see that happening with the site at Kandala. It's just not analogous because you couldn't have similar setbacks for that. I don't think, I don't see a need to change the zoning. It's, if you have a project and you're going to, you know, you can ask for variances, right? So we're not saying no to somebody. We're just saying, uh, you know, we're not going to change the standard. Well, there are certain very limited circumstances under which a variance can be granted, right? There are sort of three principle criteria. Yeah. And the main was that you're not derogating the usual site conditions. CBA could subject to successful challenges. I hate to say it, but it's, it's a point of negotiation where, you know, if you want that variant, sometimes you do things, you offer things like more affordable units, which can become a benefit to changes. I don't, I just don't see a need to change this. This is
on the 58 feet myself. And then I read that the ultra oxbow was higher. And then I said, okay, however, the ultra oxbow are more in, uh, I'm going to say lower fifties, below 55 range. And so my mind, I was thinking, well, to be consistent because it's that area and you know, it is on route 20 versus like, you say cold story, which is residential. Um, what if we went now, here you go, they'll hold on to you. I'm ready now. What if we asked the planning board, if they would like adjust the 58 down to like a 55 or a 54, it would be consistent with the ultra oxbow right on that quarter. And then the builder would, or the builders or the rest would have to make the adjustments on the property or whatever to use the 54. It just doesn't, it'd be very outside of normal development. I mean, it, it tends to come down to acres. The big difference is actually that it's 5.5 acres on a river's edge. Whenever a project has more land, then you know that you have more room to put it, tuck it away. Usually have it be at least abutting some sort of, you know, conservation area or something that's closed off so that it's kind of removed from the neighborhood. Two acres at 58 feet. That's where we would be changing things. We'd be changing, you know, what any developer would expect in the area. And, and the thing is that sometimes you do change things. Sometimes you make exceptions, but usually you kind of cut a deal, you know, something that makes it more valuable to the town because you're asking them to bend for you in your project. And I think that can be very healthy. And I, I don't think there's any, I'm a huge economic development person, real estate development. I want to encourage people to come for school and to do projects. This just seems like completely unnecessary to be honest with you.
So I do know that after we talked about what this property was located, I went and looked at it and I believe that the current thought, which is why the height is so high, just food for us. And we're not, we're not the planning board and we're not the ZBA Doug withstanding, but you know, so we're in a different role. But in my mind, I said, okay, I might need some more facts here. And, um, currently, the project is proposed is to be all in planning, which means all the tax dollars go to us, all the affordable units go to us. If not, they, they could expand over into the property that's owned, is in Sudbury. Then some of the revenue, and of course, maybe some of the affordable units would go to Sudbury. So it's kind of a... Would Sudbury need to pass that article? No, I didn't even, I was only looking. I wasn't talking to anybody. I don't think Sudbury has made their property part of the MDT community side. Right. And that's the other thing, what I liked about this was this MDT community, and we use Oxbow, and then this is right next door. Our goal is to put our apartment complexes, if you will, in there. And to be clear, I've said it before, I'll say it again, I support, I support the project, I don't support the height of the project. So what height, what do you support? I support 45. But the Donald Oswald got higher than 45. In the Northwest Quadrant, we can't even notice it. No, and the front building is a 53. No, no. They actually, CBA did approve variances for three of the buildings in excess. I didn't drive out there, but if you look at the topography out there, it appears to roll off, it's 100. At Alta Oxbow, it's about 150 feet on the front, and then it drops down closer to 130, 120. So we probably need the allowance for how high the building is. Well, we got an email that said one building was in the variance that was granted by the CBA, their case number, and one building was 51 or two, and the other one was 53. I didn't see any 58s myself, but in that email that we got, did somebody, did you, Bill, did you look at the variance? I did. Well, I spoke to the town planner who advised that three of these buildings got variances in the 45 zone that were somewhat in excess of 50 feet, 50 feet two inches. I would think it would have to go at least 52 or 53. Michael, if this were adopted, and the fire chief had material concerns about the ability to fight a fire in one of these buildings, does that trump in any way the zoning? If the apparatus couldn't get far enough away for a firefighter to climb? I have to be honest and say I don't know the exact answer, but I usually date apparatus and turn it around, fire suppression. In my experience, the fire chief always gets what he or she wants, irrespective of zoning and so forth. And so if there's a, if there are two buildings that are, you know, smack next to each other and you can't get a ladder between the two buildings, for instance. Also, I suppose these are going to be sprinkler buildings and maybe they would have the concrete code change. I think we're being asked, and I personally would feel more comfortable if there were something like 35 or 45 feet with bonuses for more affordable housing or design review or things of that nature. This is kind of the thing before us, so I think. Yeah, one thing I would just say just from a legal standpoint is if you set this precedent, then you have to assume that the other groups that might not have that height are going to come and say, hey, that group got to do it at two acres. We're at four acres. So I don't, I appreciate everybody's, you know, I love development. I love development. Like this is, I am so into it. This is just not the right move. This is just not it, you know? So I, I don't know. I want to get to know Dave Watkins and be like, Dave, let's figure this out and get you what you want. This is just not, this would not be the way that I would ever advise doing it for the town. So, so this requires a two thirds vote. So we can, um, if we want some information, I'm sorry. I think we have enough information. I'm happy to move this board vote to support article OO entitled multi-family housing in 20 west sub-districts and men's maximum dimensions, because we set forth in a packet from last week. Second. Second. Okay. And I was going to say, um, we could always defer, uh, to our meeting if we still need to get more information. Or, or not take a position. Or not take a position. All right. So there any further discussion? Okay. Um, uh, Anne? No. No. Bill? Yes. Carol? Uh, yes. It's going to be the motion passes three, two, zero, correct. Bill, two, three. Bill, two, three.
Two, two, three, two, three. Oh. No abstentions. Oh, right. I had the numbers but I'm going to back this again. So now we're going to go on to the, um, I think it's, at the, we'll run this, the petitioner articles aren't natural, right? Because this is where we are. I'm at a disadvantage because my supplemental packet is not coming up at all and any notes i have on who knows where i love this so um you'll have to tell me which one that is that you want supplemental packet article tt entitled sherman's bridge second pedestrian walkway yeah um you'll recall we have spoken about all six of the sherman's bridge related articles with the two petitioners at our last meeting this is one from mr stotz and i've had occasion to speak with mr stotz speaker of my finance committee liaison and also i had occasion to speak with mr holder i think one important two important factors to be aware of that i want to highlight for you in this article is that the town on several occasions now based on feedback that they received from the abutters and nearby residents in both sudbury and whalen have gone back on multiple occasions to the massachusetts department of transportation and a number of those suggestions were incorporated into revised plans these plans are now ready to go mr holder reported to me that it would take a certain number of months to obtain the materials and then a certain number of months to actually complete the construction and in order for that to happen in this calendar year we need to proceed in this article with with some sense of haste and so i think we also spoke with mr stotz about the fact is if there were to be a second walkway at some point it would probably make more sense to not incorporate it as part of this initial project and secondly the other point i wanted to make is that in the article you know it's a hundred thousand dollar cost uh mr holder has informed me on more than one occasion that that is a very low ball number and it would most likely be on the order of multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars and i guess they are working on some type of engineering memo to give us some more details but he is very confident that it would be far north of a hundred thousand dollars and so mr stotz talked about that money potentially being raised from non-profits or privately but i don't think there is a plan in place right now to come forward with that kind of money to fund this aspect of the project so with that information i happen to answer any questions i might be able to answer
so if i may just talk in the answer i don't have my notes but like home with these finance committee write-ups on they don't say anything that you just said and that was my problem earlier because this we put it in a couple of many arguments it needs to be in the comments so the cost the whole thing like this is request is on top of a bridge repair not a renovation it's actually a deck repair deck repair thank you i'm saying i'm almost i'm going corrected me listen you guys so i think yeah hang on just one second i really need this write-up to be a lot clearer this takes kind of like oh we're just looking at a walkway i think we need to have the whole inch a lot of the process of the bridge was deemed um on the mass dot's list of the unsafe or help me out here michael um and then the two towns got together and they put together the grounds and we want the whole history on this
i've had this conversation twice under the rules of the petitioner's articles in order for the petitioner's comments to be there the finance committee has to make a report the reports more than 150 words which means pros and cons and then i mentioned i've only said this speech several times as i'm sure you can tell so i didn't have a chance to speak to the interim chair today but all of these have to have a flush out response first of all i personally think it's only fair to a resident who puts the article and then we give them a full write-up and secondly it's obviously our job to make sure that the residents have a full thing so we need to really go to something so just to be clear madam chair is your preference then for us to wait on these articles and uh until they're fully fleshed out i'm talking tt uu bb ww yeah that's fine that's it xx we're going to talk about yeah why why didn't you this is that's busy that's busy and i think what we could do to be honest with you oh it's michael's turn but i'm going to take my turn again sorry is i think maybe we should reach write something and then send it to like michael and um mr holer who have much more for that affected like facilities we've get input from mr fair on our articles so i think we should do that so so i'm hearing like you want the procedural history but you don't need that in each of the six articles you need to cut paste right because it's a lot there's also there's also procedural issues uh concerns history whatever the word i want to say is with the two agreement articles as well just though some articles may last
i would just say there's a couple things you know starting with the uh putting the second walk away mr holder and i whose name appears in a lot of these emails reminded him we're doing the deck
once you add the second walkway you're exceeding the scope of what they were looking if that's something we want to do it would reset the clock because we're spotted much bigger repair improvements substructure and we were relying at one point sherman's bridge was in the capital and the other thing we need to go is you need buying with sudberg and nasty ot on any of these things almost all of these take the one-sided position and unilateral position that wayland's going to separate wayland's going to set the bridge win it doesn't work without cooperation yet trying to save money at every resetting the clock on this or losing this money all together work with our counterparts we've reaffirmed as most recently as last week as we're still committed to moving forward in cooperation with sudbury and massdot uh to repair the top and to point about the the other two which make reference to the agreement while i don't doubt there was conversation i mean there was a select board agenda talks that a large group of residents came in and spoke at me we had gone through the archives down clerk and we cannot find anything and there's nothing in the what's filed in the registry there is a notation on one of the plans about an 18-week wideners it's pointed to but you're allowed to make the minimus takings and not necessarily all of that circumstantial evidence doesn't mean there was ever a formal meeting and a formal agreement reduced to writing notwithstanding that situations can change over time you know safety requirements change so i think the proposal that we've made honors the spirit and the intent of what everybody wants out here we're doing our best to accomplish we probably adopted 90 percent of what we continue to work with sudbury and massdot and i respect what they're trying to do uh we talked earlier mr holder and i feel it's important to make a decision moving forward to ensure that we get these funds and the matching donations of labor so that we can save the town and some money and improve the safety of that bridge i also think there are some things that could be done by the board but do not necessarily need talent to do it the legislative body i don't think can buy and can make suggestions i would be mindful of you know wordiness and giving some people some false hopes that by passing this women's electoral it's going to dictate what happened this bridge this church and in some instances governed by state law uh if mass community uh i got all that as i just stopped writing okay i'm around to help if you want some help but i think we we probably could get some really big help here on it you know and we should solicit to make a position i really want to see the write-ups i really do because to me like i said the residents deserve a whole lineup and i want to make sure that what we present for these articles matches what our votes on the page i'm just at the time and looking at the calendar and it's a nice friend
no no i'm please i really feel we need to see the full thing i really do because i want that i want to make sure he's happy with her well why it will still be we're here you know articles to do next week we're going to do including most all right let's can we go to xx please i really i really am happy please don't do this essentially says forth on a packet call
second pedestrian water discussion you know we're going to have to review the write-up next week you know that we do our packets every week i'm sorry what we review our packets every week all those in favor uh am and no sorry which did you all okay uh don't know tom no bill no i move with this board vote to support i will view you entitled chairman's bridge five tell the weight when they're essentially so forth and i'll be in a second okay any further discussion i am going to notice on this one this one eliminates a lot of vehicles um which would mean at this way size weight school buses including the wayland school buses that i do remember for my notes so are those in favor no no um no uh doug no and all carol no so zero five i move this board vote to support article bv entitled we renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreements
for the discussion is that the wv uh bv maybe we also okay uh bill looking for is it in the okay yeah i vote now yeah and what's he saying and carol no ww which is we negotiate the sherman bridge road neighborhood agreement this is uh second article i'm looking at this board vote to support articles which you just stated okay any further discussion all right i'm done and no no no bill no power
i move this board vote to support arco yy entitled increased safety reduce fear for residence and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and bridges essentially set forth on our back any further discussion um okay bill no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no okay that brings us back to xx all right that one's in the main packet i don't know the page number um page 60 i'm sorry okay so miss plum came into the petitioner here she came here she spoke to us we had some comments uh also uh carl barnes and i worked on this write-up and then uh we made some suggestions and she made some edits and it and changed it it was originally long-term facilities planning it has changed to inventory um it just softened up some of the language in here but essentially um you see in the finance committee comments we're saying that uh some of this is going to be duplicate right because section 8 of the town managers act states the town manager is responsible for maintaining an inventory of town assets and also the town's capital improvements which was established as charged with preparing both the annual capital plan as well as the long-term capital planning planning planning committee has not had an opportunity to really get the a full year and really get going and done terrific for what they've done and the time they've had but i think we need to wait and then after one year if we don't um we don't achieve this i think that makes sense this law makes makes more sense i believe the finance committee has voted um there was some support for the concept of having the inventory because this is a good thing it's a good planning tool it's good information for residents but i think that the three that voted i did not vote to support it felt that again we should allow the capital planning improvement committee to kind of get their feet under of people and then maybe revisit this another time and move this board questions no questions we have to move this board vote to support article excess and try the long-term facilities exactly any further questions okay all those in favor are done no and no bill no tom no and carol no motion does not pass zero five zero okay so now we're going to go to the article order i just want to say what we have to do next week is f which is the revolving funding waiting for information on that uh we have o we have the budget which is age we want to revisit um the long-term supply construction funding even though we've already done it and i'm pretty sure i'm down we're down for a while now the other order of our business we had to do tonight was to make sure we inserted c which we did l m and kk so i think we've got those things done that brings us now to page something earlier how about age oh it's different than the supplements they have to go on the supplements yeah page 17 was supplemental so um what happened here was doug did it i put a couple we talked about a couple edits i said i would do them in the answer state of my drafts until monday sorry uh so i didn't send it out in timely manner i apologize um the difference between these two because doug and may only add it's just that we just reconciled so that we have 52 articles accounted for those have been pulled and those you know with long what happened down the bottom so do you want to speak to me well my first question is that article that we were discussing with brian today um we have that in the consent calendar which one yeah that's fine yeah and so trying to mix up the abbreviated presentation or consent calendar articles with substantive articles in the middle and so we always start with recognized citizens but then we've got a full now 10 now plus 8 articles in the consent calendar our first consent calendar which took financial articles and then we go into the budget because we have to take a vote on those financial related articles before the budget and we go back to a shorter consent calendar before what i call administrative articles and then we have the big vote on mwra if it still so exists and then a list of the abbreviated presentation procedure articles which will hopefully still allow us on this first night to move into the discussion about holiday road and then my next question is about the easements article is that something that will actually take 15 20 minutes um hopefully 50 minutes um and then if you know if we if time still permits on that first night we'll move into the town clerk articles but i know carol was hoping that i move up those three select board articles that you see there in the bottom part of your screen in the back of this list here and what i was trying to figure out is could i move a couple of the petitioners articles up so yeah around that agreement the 1971 agreement so called i moved those up from the end to earlier indeed in 19 but happy to take any suggestions
yeah i think i was saying that um b i i s s b b i think those could be abbreviated they don't have they can go in the wrong group but they could also be abbreviated of course two clerk ones and the authorization of green burial yeah i don't know because i presented green burials last time on a single green burial and we got several questions try to do it as abbreviated but the topic piqued people's interest all right let's do the other two of them as abbreviated yeah i can just add them to the abbreviated down probably moving down here i do think we need to move the sherman bridge articles or the petitioner articles up all of them isn't that what we said last week this should be the last the sherman's bridge yeah they moved up two but they're still uh 42 i'm happy to move them up but i'm two-thirds forward on time right see that's the thing here also we'll push those ones something has to go to the end why don't we take these um these last abbreviators put them down to the end but that that doesn't really do much it doesn't matter on the timing it's just the on the seats abbreviated yeah called plenty water bills down the bottom you know you want me to move some way up you know it's fascinating because when the first time they're doing these they said don't put all the different like all the many articles together and don't put all the cpa boxes and we start spraying them around and get them all spread around and they'd be our owners would say why did you do that it's now we've got them all back together again we may only have substantive discussions on the second night these petitioners articles if we get through the budget which we obviously will on the first day and we get through mwra we happen to get through 25 poly wrote like three subs and what just really leaves the petitioners articles as substantive discussions and we can't get through all of those on the first night if each of them take more than 15 or 20 minutes so that's the issue that they're somewhere and they tune no matter where we yeah yeah not being really fan okay i think that but they i defer i was just going to say i was just going to say one of doug and i yeah is everybody comfortable this because we really need to get this into the kelsey and jalen so we can start formatting do we need a vote on this guys i know no we're all set everybody's good okay let's go to the next thing the next item is proofreading of the warrant so we're going to have a lot of proofreading and i think some things have come in that we think could be proofread and we're looking for some volunteers i'm happy to prove it okay um bill you know what's in because i think is the planning board reports right now they cancel yes yeah would you would you be willing to do those sure okay so kelsey will send those and we'll get those proofread and we might have some other ones okay um now we are the next item is we have received um what page are we on number 12. which packet uh main uh the main packet that's paid in the 87. it blows my mind on what we're doing i won't believe we're still here so the edc had come to speak to us back in november and then they said they would like to come back to us in february that was before we put you know 52 articles into the warrant and i don't know time scheduled to get them done so um they have worked really hard and i'll let tom speak to this they did a couple of these a couple fly sheets here that they've put together and um they would like to distribute them and um see them before they did them send them out now we are going to have a conversation with them again because they still want to come back and talk to us about some of the items but we just as you can see we're here for hours again tonight we just um a lot going on a lot going on thank you and we are going to have a lot going on next week hopefully after that we will be able to fit some of these things back in it's frustrating to me as well we're asking people to know tom do you want to take it please so this is a uh i'll call it a i'm not just really a newsletter but it's a kind of fact sheet that edc felt would be helpful for residents to review and kind of further appreciate wayland's tax base what makes it up how we compare with other communities you can see they mentioned this density and i think it's instructive and helpful uh given a lot of conversations in town these days relevant to projects in town we have challenges with our budget it just it just informs people and i think it's kind of consistent with the edc's role is trying to improve economic development i think it's 1.9 percent of our acreage in town this they have other things they want to chat with us about and get our blessing on since they are advisory and they're anxious together i think in an effort to streamline newsletter type communication like this comfortable from the edc liaison as it's tom at least for people have the discussion again after the election but i don't know every time a communication goes out edc still recognizing there the board and slack board the slack board needs to discuss deliberating vote on an email but curious to go to another
because i would defer to michael he has had frequent contacts with the edc and uh being a better one so far what has i have no problem working with as you know we have a couple and bc and hrdic and
ecc yes sometimes they'll come to me and add that they want to do something and say i really think you should i have no problem working with them and if you want to say michael i'm happy with you jane and working with them something you may say oh guess what uh we typed this up and we're going to send this out today we're we're going to put it on the town's web page or do you mind if we put it on the town's web page i usually say let's just check with that's the position i've taken sometimes what they want to do is great to question if it's exactly what it wants to do and i'm not signaling out any one of the other messages i don't disagree with and i still think that that still in power liaising feels comfortable well a little bit differently on this as you already know for a conversation um there are things in here that i'm not comfortable with and even though tom very gracious to share these with me for example what we're working on here it says if you're a data junkie see our initial presentation we share with the finance from the slur board and you can link on here for their discussions there were mistakes in those numbers they weren't vetted by the town and in fact the residents on orchard lane have used those numbers in emails that i've had to answer and defend so i really feel we need to see a lot of these things because i want to make sure we don't accidentally tom has wonderful judgments not that we all i don't know i don't have all the facts and it is for example right well supported in the end but i think this is a good point because this is a learning experience now for us is how because we want to have them you know keep us advised we have to be available more and um we've we've had a lot of extra things happen to these agendas the last it's just been it's so unfortunate we don't get to them i'm also uncomfortable with a sentence that says encouraging density in the group 20 west area perhaps refining our mbta communities only to put it to better one for use for us this is planning for that has passed before we put something up like that but then i'm going to get what we're going to get a dozen emails on but it shouldn't really be in there right yeah but i i want that number thing on it and then also we're going to do a survey so keep your eye up for surveys and we said last year we would allow one so i just it's just some of these things like this and needed a terrific job getting this the weird first sheet is terrific but i really feel we need to see these because these comes back on us they bounce back on the staff and there's numbers that are around right sales field we could potentially continue to create a login and because as you point out there's so much that's on our plate i think it i think it's unreasonable for every communication that goes out has to be reviewed by all of the select board i think that we need to somewhat liaison but we actually have to empower these boards to point through the members of these boards and so there there can only be so much of a level of micromanagement unless you're going to have these boards be frustrated that we have to be able to have faith in the boards to run somewhat with with what they want and their agenda to be and operationalize their agenda and if we don't do that it's really unfair too much coming through us and as we become a bottom advisory but um maybe on some major so when you have an advisory communication going out that's going to upset another board but we're trying to get a better working relationship and it has numbers in it that haven't been vetted so i really think this is a two-way street
i'm somebody of the belief that you let it you work through the kinks by doing it and you will find a more uh processed plan going forward meaning you know what doug can do this and then if it gets messed up then we know what to keep an eye out for but we become more efficient move faster you go faster it's not isn't like i mean i was all for the surveys i thought the survey i think that is an example of how it can go real bad trying to micro advantage that thing was so basic and so easy and we could have interpreted those questions to death and made it difficult and it had really important information if you if you talk to people in wayland right now they remember that survey and they remember that as a moment where they could share their thoughts and yet it was something that was like pulling teeth to get done so i'm all for trying this and seeing how it goes and not only trusting that if if doug gives feedback to economic development board that they'll listen but i i trust economic development board to do what we know they're going to do which is push the limits but then respect when we ask them to change things and i like that and i like that autonomy so my one of my issues with surveys is that a lot of folks are not computer literate my husband for example so i don't find them 100 inclusive and that's one of our guiding principles of how we operate so i don't want that to become a way of how we communicate all the time that's perfect and then you try it out and then from now future surveys and make sure that there's hard copies so i also think some of this information could maybe just go right in the like that first sheet they had but like go right in the regular town newsletter rather than have their own so anyway anybody up top bill you didn't speak up well i do think there needs to be something or some review right and whether it's the entire board or the liaison working with jalen you know sometimes these things go out they're construed to be the town's policy and we'll work on these things or advocates true believers sometimes want to lead from the friends and in ways that so but but i take doug's point that dpw advice on that so um so i i i'm personally comfortable with the liaison asking the committee's working with the aways on great so i did have one of the positive suggestions one thing i think it would be great if they included was only businesses in town we want people to support you know because how do you know what's opened in town per se about the bus so it's uncomfortable with this is going out with taking those couple items out if you're good with that and then maybe add that one other good idea in and i'll proceed and i'll also work with the town manager of college called faction and his staff thank you for doing it yes thank you all right so you don't want to tell me i'll just report no no we're not um comments have an item added into the agenda here we'll move 10 things to another week i mean good yeah yeah right i was just thinking about the conversations we've had regarding projects in town that are being done part of the dover amendment and i think we have very good town council the issues are being presented i just thought we were in discussion see where the members of the board felt i'm a special council or individual who specializes a substantial amount of experience in this type of project to provide the town we've seen too many you know spring sjc cases of all the municipalities and customers in addition sometimes when you get something compromises can i just wanted to make some of this out you know seeing this in your world you yourself as a real state person and i just wanted to the idea i personally have no experience in projects uh my observation has been that uh uh proponents uh seeking dover amendment protection uh are certainly out there i don't know defense people in this power also i gather that if a suit is filed then uh is it to be against some of them like the planning board of the zoning board of appeals well the decision is a proponent and i think that town got along sometimes lawsuits occur what i see the value in special council is to prevent such loss is to prevent such loss when the committees are comfortable with the decisions because it's when i'm standing the walls is this something that can move somewhat nimbly or does this have to go technically legal services are going to do a particular firm that i can say that i've sat on a couple of chairs that have spoken to the council about me because they are very much ones are finding someone who's special to do something if we follow them one or two we have some bios and some comments on the sjc or something like decisions regarding who the town uses for the select board i think under the town manager act used the town council so special yeah right wouldn't we engage this personally so this this just sort of popped up obviously on the revised agenda so because it did attract some questions as to what we're doing this is as we go through these dual and then right not necessarily in the beginning of the plannings and the permits and all that this is as we go through the process in the process all right should we take a vote then please happy to move to this board with your authority town manager at his discretion any further discussion i just suggest that your decision consult with the zoning board with anything for the discussion yes donna carol yes that's five zero thank you for the wonderful suggestion thank you okay now we are moving on to the town manager chair um really all i have is just to remind folks that my town manager office hours will be at 5 30 on the 23rd here in the town offices because we're meeting so if you're looking like should something come up i'll be i have several things in the works but okay let's go to consent calendar for february march night and you were one of all this year
thank you no there's no discussion almost in favor bill yes tom yes yes and carol yes i think i don't think there are any minutes in the pandemic okay so the table minutes and that brings us to correspondence this is any questions or comments and correspondence okay we will want to go to the courts um yeah no no did you have a concern no we're not our concerns listen you expressed a million concerns then all right go ahead concern article dd how do we feel about management ah i'll have to go back to the topic level again all right i want to let's i just get my report first and then i'll reopen it okay number one we're going to add in we're going to add into the schedule march 30th i originally thought april 6th then i realized that it was march 30th so there'll be a regular meeting we are going to after next week we are moving to every other week was that a problem did you tell me no did you say twice a month three hours or less please sometimes you're three mondays in a month
the other thing i want to mention which i didn't mention last time was after the joint meeting with the planning board i said i would follow up with the chair for the administrative you know components with bills following the rest and it became apparent to me that you know in the meeting that they had some some zoning that areas that they thought the areas that were like zoning dollar changes for the route 20 project this is part of the route 20 plan and the hold up is they don't have have any labor so i asked her to put together you know they don't have the time of the capacity to do it so i asked her the chair to put together for us uh a scope of what would be involved in how many hours it is you know whatever blah blah blah blah and as soon as they finish doing all the reports and the hearings for these silver projects and their reports for the town meeting they will get back to us and we can look at that and i'm hoping that we can find some money maybe and hire someone and get that moving that's okay that's one thing okay so now what i'd like to do is before we're doing i'd like to go back to item number 11. i believe that
yeah just to talk continue our discussion of the 26th and you tell me any discussions go ahead um well you wanted to talk about it strikes me that strongly that there ought to be joint management or query should we accede to that request i'm not suggesting that the specific language in europe doesn't need some work what is this what what makes up makes select board feel that they have control over the property everything i read said that it was controlled by school committee i don't think anyone thinks the select board controls the property and i just think that there's a piece of property that's been that was acquired for school purposes in 1956 and has been off the tax rolls for 70 years hasn't been put to productive use and the moment is propitious to consider how it might be developed and uh to today uh the school committee and its predecessors have not seen the need to uh explore alternatives um they're now engaged in a process of looking at at sites uh and there may not prove to be a viable candidate but in the meantime i think it would be well for somebody to look at options other uh including but not limited to schools such as housing that would uh generate revenue so that's my so i think that was the genesis of the article and your point was that that when um miss gibbons was pressing was more of the expertise for a housing study i think they are specialists in education and uh but does it preclude both of our boards i don't i don't think it does it you know as drafted it arguably has uh board has veto one group has veto power over the other but as a practical matter i suspect that it would be the case that it's going to be kind of a technical exercise and somebody will draft a scope services and there'll be comments and all that but i don't think anyone is is suggesting that there'd be any action by town meeting or this board that would change the uh designation of care and custody of the property it's just what's what's the uh possibly what are the realm of possibilities yeah but i'm confused if if school committee has control and you would like to explore other options that would benefit the town shouldn't we be just doing it jointly the way it's set up i think that's a valid argument personally i just want to get it done so i'm happy i'm happy to which i think may be a point to and i'm happy to i have no objection to this jointly presented i would just like the language to be and i'm not really sure i see it now where provision sufficient engineering studies it does say studies does say planning that's the analysis and so maybe it's maybe it's sufficient but um this is so that money can be used so that when this study is done both the school committee will have a sense as to whether a school structure can go there and the town will have a sense as to what else can be going to pass a recreation probably not marching courts exactly pick a ball so whatever just i mean with me making all these suggestions but whatever we decide to come forward if we don't sell the property or we you know have the developer come in and do the building it becomes a capital project you know i mean i sell races and we'll have to go back to the sipsi group for prioritization and we have a lot of law i live a lot of needs at the moment so you know well true but if it if the schools decide they don't want the property right it doesn't work for them but the town decides our board decides that it's prudent for housing to help our right on that case we don't because we're selling the property we're having to develop but if we decide to build a field there or the ball and that's why i found this interesting but not really when we refer to things like passive recreation and fields and other school uses i don't know the best sense of the article because um i want to go back to my original point there's we only have one little bucket of money here we don't have like a you know huge budget here so we'll try this if it doesn't mixture we can try something else and so that's a big concern for me and um you know when the article reads uh and then down here talks all these things we're going to do move i propose that we working on this article could have further discussions with the school committee to see whether there can be a modification to the article they're both in love with and if there can't then we have a separate article and then i'm going to make a decision i would um i would second that idea but i also would say that that when it comes down to it environmental integrity is going to be very key in the the overall site plan and that's going to um absolutely apply to any residential project or school projects so that might just be the best entry point and maybe that's what the article becomes about for whoever those people are that's going to talk to school committee because we could find ourselves in a position where remember the standards of school for environmental are higher than residential so that information could just really be helpful and i agree with you but i wouldn't want to limit it limited environmental in particular because from what i know of the property it doesn't seem to be near or part of a what i'll call an environmentally hot area right for example it's not next to the middle school where we now know that there's some you know excess PFAS numbers right that's just an example right and uh so but i i think that i i'm fine with keeping including environmental review do that within the two hundred thousand dollars that's fine yeah just remember um remember tom when you're doing environmental sometimes it's about the quality of the soil uh so what you can build on it and it come it becomes a drainage part of the drainage plan so when i say environmental i don't mean like just like oh is there PFAS i'm that but that's that basic outline that helps with the site plan okay gotcha all right so the way the article was written it really is as to their point a school committee article and it's an afterthought you know for the affordable housing it's absolutely way down on the list um there's also i think we ought to think about this i'm sure families already noticed this but uh with respect to the assessment of potential future use of housing analysis we'll improve in all this analysis i don't know we're doing a high level right if we're going to be that and then potential impacting schools and so on i don't know we seem to have um yeah i think we need to look at that because i don't know that we have enough money to do that nor do i know if we'd have enough detail and and and my thing is why do that so back to your bill sense of the board on the question of joint management i i i don't i don't need as long as he has to be achieved and they have the staff and the individuals to to participate witness are you defined joint management because this joint management here is it says under the joint direction you tell me what that means what happens then if we we want to do x it's on the table and you think it should be at i want to do x and the school committee member says they don't want to do x that's why i was suggesting about having one end of the initial maybe there could be a working group town manager like a fair tom holder number
i know that you have to appreciate it right right it's about communication and information
give you a sense well kind of it's uh better to uh beg forgiveness than ask permission that's just stay until next monday yeah happy to move this port adjourn at uh grand time 10 21 10 21 i'll second it all those in favor and aye yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
The Chair declares that a public discussion on these matters may have a detrimental effect from the litigating, negotiating, and bargaining position of our town. We have a roll call vote. Ann? Yes. Thank you. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall town manager, Kelsey Powell's assistant town manager, and I think that's it. The committee will rejoin the public meeting from executive session, and then we will return to open session approximately. Okay, so I'm going to bring the select board back into open session at 641, please. And the next item on our agenda will be part of our annual discussion. We're going to invite attendance by the School Committee Chair, Erin Gibbons, and School Committee Member Betsy Cullen, and we're going to put our attention to Article DD, the Holiday World Article. So if Erin and Betsy want to come up and say who you are and join us and be here. And I am going to say, I think this is on page
So on page 8 of our packet, what we did, um, is the mic going to pick that up there or should they see? No, I can pick them up. Pick them up. Pick them up. Okay, great. Um, we had talked about, perhaps, um, we talked, we talked about
In the packet, you'll find two versions of the article draft that the School Committee took of what we submitted. And what we did was we took all, they had kind of edited. So the, the original submission is on page, um, on page 8, what we did was I had, um, Abby take out all the edits so it would be easy to read and just mark across the School Committee drafts. And I think that's going to be the purpose of our discussion tonight. Uh, Bill and I had gone out and let Bill set the floor next, uh, and met with the School Committee, uh, to talk about, uh, the transfer and of the, uh, and their intent on hoard the property at 25 Holiday Road. Bill, would you like to? Sure. Well, uh, thank you for joining us and thank you for your email. You know, it was a hard stop for something very important. So we'll try to make this brief. Um, uh, we, uh, appreciate the willingness of the School Committee to, uh, engage with the Select Board. And, uh, obviously given that the property is in the care and control of the School Committee, natural interest in it. Um, it strikes me that, uh, the School Committee presently has an ongoing process of evaluating its, uh, K through 8 facility needs on a long-term basis. And there are 16 or 20 alternatives that are being, have been floated and I think it's been whittled down to 12 or something. Uh, yeah. And, uh, and, uh, and my guess is it'll take some time to sort that out and for the School Committee to tell them we, uh, make a decision as to, uh, what it wishes to propose to the state, uh, as far as, uh, a specific plan. Do you have a sense of your process and timetable? Mm-hmm. Um, we'd love to have submission to the MSBA by next April, which would mean that we would need to have an idea of what we'd like to do by kind of December-ish. Okay. Um, 2026. And I think the process moving forward is a little bit fluid. Um, we're talking about getting together some constituents of a couple of different boards to sit together and discuss kind of best routes to MSBA funding. Um, and then form some more community conversations around kind of what the community is interested in us doing and what they'd like to see us pursue from an option standpoint. Um, I think we had already kind of whittled down those first few options because we were looking at timetables that were so astronomical as well as dollars. Um, and based on the information that we have on enrollment, et cetera, it doesn't seem like that's really, truly viable for the town of Wayland or the district. So, um, we're looking more at the options under C&D. Um, so rather than talk about the words, uh, let's talk about the concept. One concept that is, uh, and for embodying your draft is kind of joint control as it were of, uh, uh, determining the scope of the study. Uh, another is, uh, the desire to have a school be among the uses to be considered. Um, so with respect to the kind of joint direction approach as, uh, and I don't mean to speak for the board, but I guess I am, uh, though, uh, they're not bashful about, uh, jumping in if I can speak. I think that it's probably more efficient to have one board sort of determine the scope of services. Uh, we would propose, as we came up, I would suggest that, uh, the select board do that in consultation with the school committee. Um, we would want obviously to consult with you and with your consultants about the scope of study to be examined. Um, I, I think that, and certainly the material, the products of the, of the investigation will be useful to the school committee should you determine, should the town determine that that's the right place for a new elementary school. Um, but I, I think we view this as kind of preliminary due diligence to just look at options and, uh, for kind of sake of efficiency, uh, it would be my suggestion that we consider that the, uh, select board go forward with that in consultation with the school committee. Also, uh, you have a very good architect under contract who specializes in school design rather than have somebody else come in and do that. I think, uh, again, to the extent that the SOE reflects the Holiday Road site is one that you want to investigate and that would be the subject of a similar kind of analysis with state support. And so that would be my suggestion as to, um, how to go forward. So let's do this really more informally. I know both when our boards are formally around the room, so Bill has said something. I don't hear anybody on the board saying, no, that doesn't suggest. So what, why don't you want to respond to that? Would you like the rest of the board to speak first? Go ahead. Oh, yeah. I think that what you just said wore in mind that any exploration, I think our sense is that it's premature to lean heavily into any organ conclusion of what the parcel might be most beneficially used for from town. And so I think our interest as school committee is that we do the exploration just to understand what the options are, knowing that as we do our facilities work, that parcel is potentially in the scope of a possible new school. Um, and so I think that is our main commitment. Um, I think we would need to bring back to the committee the control over the statement, but I think we could do that quickly. I don't, I'll speak for myself personally. I think your suggestion from an efficiency perspective may work. Um, I think we would definitely want to understand. And then just a point of clarification, Bill, are you suggesting that we could potentially look to the architect already engaged to advise on sort of the scope of exploration that we might do for feasibility just because they would understand what might be needed for state application later in order to pursue a school there? I wasn't sure if I understood the last part of your comments. Well, as, as I envision this, you know, this is kind of preliminary reconnaissance. We bring in somebody to do site planning to look at a series of options. It sure makes sense for somebody like HMFH who understands this stuff to sort of contribute that expertise to the process. So I don't know if that's on your current scope, but for us to go get a third party when you've got somebody who's has a deep understanding of the school, the school's needs and so forth doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. So I would, you know, I would think that we want to develop a draft scope of services run it by the school committee, run it by your consultants, uh, who would have, you know, some very good suggestions about how many test pits of what depth we need to, you know, establish this or that, or utility, you know, what utility loading needs a school would have, what's involved in doing that. So I think once we kind of get going,
a fairly fluid process. Can I ask a question, you basically suggesting a scope of what the investigation would be, what would a civil engineer be looking for, what would a site planner be looking for, what would an environmental consultant just sort of, uh, here are the things that we want to study, and, uh, and run that by HMFH, who has a very good understanding of the kind of information they, they or someone like them would need to do a school. See, every time someone speaks, I'm going to look back. Do you want to speak, otherwise we're going to the next one? I go to Doug. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Levine on Ms. Brinsley, would you like to speak about this work, working with the article DD, trying to... No, I think I echo everything that, um, was already said, but it's important that we do it.
Yeah. I had the idea to bring you folks here this evening, because I didn't feel like we were so far apart, but I feel like it is so imperative that we do this work however we come to some arrangement now, this exploration now, versus potentially waiting another year to start the exploration process in 2027. So I'm going to have to take umbrage with that, because I think that Mr. Wimby and I had a glory of the extension. Yeah, I'm taking the credit, absolutely. All right, we'll see you all the time. You guys can take that offline. Yeah. Oh, we do, we have to. Um, so I wrote you, I think we knew, had mentioned something about having joint the, uh, input on the funds. I wrote you an email about that, and how we possibly, we don't even handle the funds ourselves. We, the projects get done either by a small hotel manager's office or facilities. So they, we approve the contract, if you will. Right. So I don't know if you wanted to have a response to that. I guess my, my point of confusion here is what, what would we do as a school committee to explore this site initially, just to determine where the setbacks are, where the wetlands are, where the conservation is, is the soil clean enough, that you think you would be doing at this stage before the school committee has determined whether or not it's going to use this for a school. I, I feel a little bit like cart before horse, as much as I don't want anybody to lose a year. Um, I'm sort of feeling that that, um, and I guess what would it hurt to have the school committee take charge of the exploration initially to determine those things that I think would be beneficial to everyone to determine first if there's viability for a school and then those results would still be usable for the town should there be a disposition of it that we, we don't feel it's needed. So I'm going to take that one. Um, in order to do this work, we anticipate we need, I don't remember what we thought maybe about, we thought more, but we whittled it down to 200. We have one $200,000 fund. That's it. So wherever we put our funds, we hope, our goal is to find some new growth to help. This is what everybody's coming, economic development, finance committee, the finance director come in and say, and our new growth is flat, but very long, you know, in terms of all the other communities. So this is the goal here is we're looking at land and town to see what possible new growth options might be. And we have identified one little pot, $200,000 that we could do this. So I think for me personally, I have to say, I want to make sure that we're putting our money in a spot that we might be looking at some new growth. So I have to say, I don't, I don't think we're there yet. Right. Um, I can do that. So maybe that, maybe this isn't the best place for us to, but I want to endorse the bullet over time. See, I think you'll get better and for new, good information sooner under this approach than the normal approach where we go through this process. We pick out a kind of preferred option. Uh, we do an SOE a year from now, and then there's some, or whatever it is, six months from now, eight months from now, there's, there's some back and forth with MSBA. They provide some funding to do just a lot of these kinds of things. What are the soil's conditions? What are the, what's the zoning? What's the wetlands? What's the wellhead protection district implications? I think you'll have more information sooner that will inform your selection of a recommended approach. So what's the harm in leaving this and changing it to be a school committee article or the school committee controls it and the studies so that we get it done and you can still use it in the event that they, that it's not possible for a school. So I think, and I'm going to look over here at, um, let's see, and Michael bought this article, the articles were submitted on January 15th, so it's a, it's a, it's a ton of weightless. It's a ton of weightless. It's a ton of weightless article, but it's also select what article is written. So I don't know that it could be converted and then, I think, I mean, then there's the funding source situation. So am I right or am I wrong? Is it better to have a post-council? You're not supposed to be converted? I think the other, um, you know, kind of the genesis from our point of view is recognizing that here's a piece of land that is not presently on the tax rolls, uh, and as I'm fallow for want of better terms. So I think we wanted to help frame a series of choices for the town about how to go forward with something on the site. And, so I, I think that would include both tax exempt and taxable uses, uh, projections of revenue and cost in terms of cost to the schools, but also just cost generally. But you know, the revenue is important obviously to the schools and 70% of the budget is, uh, for the schools. So I, I think it, it would, it would be a broader range of potential uses to be explored rather than necessarily school-centric, but a series of uses including schools. The, what I'm hearing from you is a concern that due diligence should be focused more on a school structure. And I just think this is going to be such a basic, basic review, a structure, whether it be a school. Agreed. Right. So all I'm suggesting is the control of the, of the study fall into the school committee. Since the school committee is not prepared to release the land, we haven't determined whether it's going to be part of a go forward plan or not. And to everyone's point, let's not wait. Um, sitting here tonight, I can't say that the school committee would be okay with relinquishing control of the scope of the study to the select board. Um, that was a big point of our discussion. So, and, and that was my question as to what are you going to get from a study if the select board runs the scope versus the school committee? And we can just as easily have it that we're doing it in consultation with you or Mr. McCall, um, as the reverse. Is it that's, that's really my point. Here's my concern. My concern is that I think, um, and I haven't had a chance to review it, but that school committee has a full long range facility study. And honestly, I feel like this falls right into that as a potential school site. Um, and I, whenever we kind of hit something like this where it's, it's a intersection to me, it, this is a perfect time to bring, bring an idea to, to, uh, the town and ask them for a decision. So that's exactly what we're going to be doing at annual town meeting. So, well, so respectfully, I don't think we're at a point where we can take that decision to the town because no one has any idea if this piece of property is usable for anything. Exactly. That's why we want to do this. And that's why we want to do this under our control and we can get the answers that are preliminary enough that should it not be suited for a school. We can also have some answers around would it be suitable for something else. But, but, but your study may conclude that the current sites where schools are work well, whether for renovation or for, for a new, for a new structure, whether it be happy, hollow, local, or middle, or whatever. Actually, apart from the Justice Tom, so you understand, we actually received that presentation in our last meeting and the initial facilities assessment is only the middle school was appropriate for renovation. So that, that's sort of the 16 plus options all included. And this is a very viable spot for a swing space during construction. Assuming you want to do with a space. Right. Right. A double move. Right. But it could potentially significantly speed up timeline and save dollars ultimately. I do want to just add one teeny point here. I don't think the select force. I didn't hear anything, you know, we're taped and then people say, oh, look what you're doing now. I don't think the intent was that we were anticipating the school committee was entertaining, you know, declaring the land surplus at this point. I think the idea is that some due diligence would occur and then a conversation would occur as to the disposition of the property. Does it stay, you know, because you need it for buildings or just, so I want to be clear on that, not because I don't think anyone at the moment doesn't understand it, but just in case during the conversation it may have sounded of a loss. I understand perspectives here. I really think it's important that this meeting, we need to figure out how to proceed because we're done a week here before we have to find. The other thing that I would really hate to see this one go to the floor and die.
With lots of political stuff behind it, I want to see this succeed and move forward for everyone's benefit. And I guess I'm just not hearing what the reasoning is behind the school committee driving the exploration. I'm not hearing that we can't explore the same things that the select board would be exploring. I'm not hearing that. So that's lost. I think the difference is that the housing reuse is one that we'd like to look carefully at as an alternative to this, to look at single family housing or conservation cluster and to do the projections of revenue expense associated with that. Something that if I were on the school committee, I'd be tempted to really kind of look very hard at the school and not so much at the other. I'm still not hearing why we can't ask for those evaluations. I'm going to give it a shot. How's that sound? Sure. When you have capital projects, who takes care of your capital projects? Who runs them? Facilities. Who's going to run out of project? Facilities. So it's banana or what is it? Potato, potato, right? The same staff is going to be doing the work once the scope is determined. We will assign this to potatoes. I think it's optics for a successful warrant. That's a good point because I think that's why we might be where we are as well. Doug is right though. Next Monday night, the better before us, I'm supposed to have all articles voted and you're supposed to have them turned into this lovely lady over here by plus 10, but she gave us to 4 p.m. on Tuesday. Otherwise, I think you turn into pumpkins. So, you know, I know we have been, we have been having conversations for months on probably should have mentioned to the wire. Are you, are you meeting this? We have a meeting on Wednesday night. Perfect. I still have a question because I, I don't tend to know what's, you guys have side conversations sometimes and I get brought in and I do the research and so I look at it a little differently. Everything that I researched on this was that this was a property that was school committee controlled. Correct. What did I miss? What am I missing?
I'm sorry, but this is what I mean. That's why I'm like, we should just bring it to this floor under school committee control and let the town decide. This is, I don't, that's my position. I don't, I'm confused as to, like, I feel like I just said that and it was understood as, you know, we don't have enough to bring to the floor, but I'm, I'm confused here. It's the different, I think the conflict is, or not the conflict, but the intersection is just that we want to control and school committee wants to control the process of the engineering and these studies. Is that pretty much it? I think it's a matter of, I think one factor, Ann, is just
who has the time and where it might be most efficient. I mean, the school committee is a very busy board, very busy board. Your timetable may move a whole nother year. We have town meeting once a year and we just saw this as an opportunity to explore this acreage for the benefit of the town, whether it be a structure that might involve education or a structure of structures that may involve housing or maybe no structures at all. We just want to understand what can go there. So I recommend that there be further discussions between the school committee and the select board at least during next week and see whether we can come up with acceptable, acceptable article that we can live with that achieves the same, the same end. The same end being the school committee is satisfied that when work is done, you'll have a sense as to whether a school can go there. We're satisfied that when work is done, you know, what other things can go there if the school, if the school committee decides, you know what, that space isn't for us. One year is a lot now and we're facing an override next year. We just need to be responsible and we need to be frankly aggressive in looking at opportunities where we can reduce the residential tax burden and this is why we're we're pushing this So if we want to go back to shared oversight, that is what we've brought for your consideration in our revisions. But then the response back was single board control. So I think that's what we're responding to because I think our original proposal that we shared with you is we figure out a path to shared oversight of the study to make sure that all of the the study to make sure that all of these options are thoroughly and carefully considered and included in the scope.
So I think we can discuss it again on Wednesday, but I would just say that we might have the we might have started at the position of compromise that we now find ourselves seeking. I'm chewing it. I mean the thing is I think the article is written the way it was written. It was originally was a select book article and normally when, for example, we're co-sponsoring an article with a board of public books. It's a little different because it's not a question of, you know, who wants to land in it. But we just follow their lead and we're co-sponsoring and we support this, you know, that town meeting. And this article here, like you say, you've changed it to be a school community article. So perhaps if it's just a joint. No, it's a joint article. It's just we kept it as joint. It's a joint. It's a joint article. It's a joint article. He's driving. We're all driving in the same car. It's just who's driving. That's all it says. And so I recommend, Madam Chair, if the school meet chair, willing to have further discussions for next week and maybe we can come up with some compromise that we both deliver. So obviously you're always welcome, of course, to chat with me. You can. Sure. But you know, as I said initially, we have, we try to have one person in driving our buses, if you will. And Bill is the liaison for the article. So if you want to keep me on the loop of any of the emails, it's great, but otherwise I'm going to let Bill continue to take the lead on that and see what we can come up with. We have a meeting Wednesday. So I'll just, I'll update our agenda. I'll just have to put it on there. I don't know that we need anybody to attend, but I'll definitely reach out. Terrific. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. I know.
It's all important. If only we could clone ourselves. Someone wanted to add something. Nope. Have to be on time. Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. Good to see all of you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't share her sentiments. I love seeing you all. Yes, you do. And I'll lie around it. The next item on our agenda is also an annual term meeting article. We're going to invite Brian Kemeny, our finance director. Hi, Brian. Please join us. We want to talk a little bit about article B, which is the enterprise fund article. This is in the packet on page. Well, thank you. And I will tell you the one reason that Brian has come and he has probably has a number of reasons on this article, but I think it was last year or the year before it was brought to everyone's attention from that enterprise funds have normally operating budgets for capital budgets and the capital needed to be pulled up. It was Tom Carson mentioned it to us. And I think Brian came in last year and said there were three options. One, we could do a separate operating article and a separate capital article for these funds. Two, we could put it in the fund in this budget article, which is what we did last year as a motion. And three, we could put it in the enterprise article. You'll notice this year that Brian, I think your recommendation is to put it in the article, right? Yes. So the floor is unified. Well, I've been going to back forward to the government. I ought to allow us to get through this talk. If I can, I'll be asking the folks on the right to jump in. So this has come up with the finance committee about putting the capital in the enterprise budgets. You know, we always said we were indifferent where to put it. It makes sense to put it in the enterprise budget. It's no harm to town meeting. We can put all their budgets in one article. And to me, there's no downside to doing this. The only difference is you folks would oversee the capital. It's your article that goes to town meeting. So what you have before you is the operating budgets, the wastewater and the transfer station, as well as you would have capital related to the water fund and the enterprise fund. So there'd be a couple of motions on the floor that would be read. And we would read these. It's not abbreviated. I don't think I don't believe it is, right Carol. It's not an abbreviated article. No. Wait a minute. Is it consent? We'll look it up. We might be consent. We'll pull it out. We'll pull it out. So that's the background as to why the capital is in it. We've gone through the operating budgets with DBW and the folks in wastewater and the numbers are in front of you tonight. Town meeting votes. Them as you see one through six will be one motion and then the second motion will simply be the water capital. It's all funded by debt and the wastewater is also funded by debt. So it's a pretty simple straightforward article and I don't see any trouble in doing it this way whatsoever. Same consent. You okay with that? Yeah. So what Brian is saying is recommendation now is to just put a rule in the one article. This is where it will stay. I'm wondering, Brian, if we should change the article name to Enterprise Fund Operating Capital Budgets. That's fine. Is that something? Yeah. It'll be clear up at home so they know what we're looking at. The first one says revenue. Should we or should we say revenue and capital to match the terms? I would say operating capital budgets. Okay. Anybody have any comments on this? I think also, you notice that there's, we're talking about this tomorrow night if they go to public works, right? They're talking about MWRA debt and a bunch of unknowns. Yeah, because I think there was some edits. I think the other question you have for us is number five, the retained earnings. Number five, number three, water retained earnings. When I talk to you. You mean number one of the water revenue? Yeah, you wanted to have, you wanted to talk about that? Well, the Board of Public Works has asked that $200,000 of retained earnings be used to balance the budget. I'm completely against that. The fund has gone from approximately $4 million back in 2013 to 1.4 now. I think using any retained earnings for any purpose is going to continue to erode the fund. I did put together a schedule as to, if you want, I know any doesn't have one, but Moody's wants us to maintain fund balance of 25%, which now includes the enterprise funds. So any use of retained earnings by the water fund is not, in my view, advisable. They need to roll back the fund balance. They need to stabilize the erosion of fund balance. And if you take a look at their upcoming future of 28 and 29, you may not have any amount packet, but we did get the debt service from Hilltop related to the water fund. Do you have the? Oh, the water fund? No. So the waste water fund has approximately $1.4 million of fund balance or cash in the account as it closed last year. So in fiscal 29, in what would be November of 28, they were going to have to make a debt payment in the amount of $3 to $4 million. They currently don't even have that as a fund balance. So I've already expressed to the Board of Public Works through GeorgiaVegis, the next two years, they need to be mindful about increasing rates. The rate increase for 27 is projected to be 30%. It was no rate increase in 26. So once you get to fiscal 29 and you're in November of 28, you have to make a $3 to $4 million debt payment. You don't even have that in your fund. And I'm already talking to DR now about, is the fund able to even do that? Or will the general fund have to give them sort of what we did with the capital? Will we advance some money into them and give them some money? So we may have to do something like that. The point being is that going forward, the water fund really needs to make sure that their rates are raised properly so that they can cover their expenses. And as we all know, whether we get the state loan or we have to borrow by debt, by bonds, the expenses in the fund are going to go significantly higher. So it's important that the rates are set appropriately to make sure that the revenue is coming in not only support expenses, but to start to build back some of that fund balance. So the ask from DPW was to put $200,000 in there. By time being vote, I'm against it. It's the Board of Selectments decision. It's your article. We can only, Mike and I can always tell you what we think. Ultimately, it's up to you. The last time we used $200,000 retained earnings was a few years back and we did some capital. We did meet with the prior Board of Public Works chair who's now off the board with Tom Holder a couple of summers ago when we went through this and he was on board that the fund can no longer use retainers. So we've expressed that to the Board of Public Works and that's sort of our position and it's always been that way. If you take a look at what's happened, it became an enterprise fund in 2013. Around 2016, they drew up $2.5 million in fund balance. I sent a memo to then town administrator Nan Balmer and Chris Brown, bringing to their attention the drop of $2.5 million. Just a year later, the Board of Public Works wants the town meeting to use $1.3 million of fund balance to do the water meters. And Louise and I were also against that. I believe how you were too. But it's again using fund balance to a large amount that really shouldn't be used. So now they have a metric that they want to maintain fund balance or certify retained earnings around $800,000. But if you go back and take a look at the warrants in 2012, it specifically said that the water fund needs to maintain a balance of about 25% of revenues, plus an amount to support capital, plus an additional around $2 million to support a catastrophic event. So not only did the MassDEP and the Abrams Group at that time, they both recommended a maintaining a fund balance around that. It wasn't voted at the time and it was just in the warrant for folks to read. Since then, it's really depleted. And if you take a look at their number one item in their line is the water user fees. So they have a few other different revenue categories, but really it's the water user fee. Only one time in 10 years if they achieved their water user fee revenue target number or budget number. Just one out of 10 years. One time in 10 years. So what Brian's question to us is, are we comfortable? The Board of Department of Works has not only voted to use $200,000 of retained earnings as their revenue source this year. In their position, it's as needed. So if they don't spend it, then of course it rolls back because it's a contingency. Or do we want to not allow that to go through? They have voted. They have written several mills recently. And as Brian said, it's our decision. I am in the interest of time going to hop in and say, I think we've had several conversations with them about raising the rates appropriately come May. And I think that if you don't mind pushing this along, and I did say to Brian, this is what they voted. I think the Board probably might consider letting it go through. But come May, we're just going to have that major big conversation when they're going for it. First, if they don't get the rates up with us. So open them to the floor. So that's the question on that. Are we going to allow the $200,000 of retained earnings as a funding source? Or are we going to then have to have a conversation with them, bring them in, tell them we're doing that? Does anybody like to take that one? Michael, what's your recommendation? I would say it's probably easier to take it out now, and then you're driving it rather than leaving me in there, and then hoping we'll take a course of action. Anybody else have any comments? I'm fine with that. You know, we've discussed this topic before. I threw out the idea to them. They want our Board and people, in part because of this issue, your ongoing concern about, I'm fine with Michael. I mean, they have the expertise, and they advise us, and then we make decisions. We have the, on the other hand, is they are an independent entity because they are an enterprise fund, and they, we've adopted, help me out there with the words, the code and the language that establishes them, and they are the rate creators, and they do their budget. So for me, that's the only reason I'm saying, let's go through, but come May, they better get those rates up. So I spoke to someone yesterday, and they weren't happy with me when I finished talking to them. So I said, I have to get the rates up. I don't want to pay it either, but the fact is, is we've got to pay the bills. That's a problem. The rates should have come up 26. They should have. Yeah. So the thought was that, because with the new meters, there would be an increase in the revenue, and that that was how it was going to be their increased revenue. How's that worked out? Well, it wasn't, but it recently did. But there was some concern there, because it was fairly flat, but I think maybe because in the beginning of the year, we're dealing with that, with the more, the limited water use options. So there may have been a slight increase, but I do also know this year, I probably know this too, that they've had to use emergency connection twice to the tune of about 140, 140, 160, 160, 160, and that's going to come out in that retained earnings. So they have spent 200,000 of the retainers. So I also know, and this is that the staff will get close to the end of the end. If anything, we're getting close to the number, they will push it into the next year. It's not good. We really do need to have this conversation, but I'm not sure if I should take a shot across the bar right here is the solution. So I take an entertaining motion. I'd just say that rather than offer a motion, I'm fine as well. I appreciate, Carol, your suggestion that we maybe let this go through and see what happens in May. But as you consider the significant increase that is going to occur due to debt service, with respect to not only NWRI connection, but other needs as well, we would expect that increasing the rates to reduce the sticker shock. This is essentially dipping into the piggy bank in order to subsidize the water. You know, I have to go to that meeting tomorrow night and this piece of information gets transmitted. I mean, we do want our jobs, everything. We do want our jobs, everything. So Brian, if we were to not support retained earnings, they would then have to go, you'd have to change the budget numbers, put that number elsewhere, right? No, the retained earnings is not even in the number. Number one, number one is 6.2 million is their total expense budget. Okay, so it's not in here yet. No, it's not in there. It's not in here yet. That's the idea is they want you to put it in. Okay. Is there any other numbers changing on this? It's in the, it's in the, it's in the finance committee comments, all right? Yeah.
Oh yeah, they wrote in capital too. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, they'd have to fix this. Stamps increase will be funded. Any other thoughts here on this? Have we finished with the water? I want to talk about the transfer station. Brian, that's not a subsidy. Where is it? It's number six. Subsidy. Oh, Jim. Okay. There it is. But in the write-up, it says subsidy. And I think it's less than it's supposed to be, but nonetheless. Okay. Let's have a motion then on this part, though, I guess. A motion to, a motion to support and here. Yeah. Okay. Sure. This isn't an insert, is it? I don't think we have to insert this. There's a couple of language that's not inserted. So, I mean, number eight, it's already been inserted. So we're just supporting it. But isn't there a critical language here that isn't clear? In other words, I guess my point is just something that can be voted on at our next meeting? What's not clear? Oh, $200,000. Well, if we don't vote that, I'll just tell the finance community. This is their write-up. They'll take them out. Do you want to revisit it? Do you want to revisit it? Is there any other change that we need? That's not possible. Does there need to be more than $200,000 of amount of revenue? I just asked Brian that. He said it's already in there. The write-up talks about the retained earnings, but it's not in the chart. If you look at the chart, the chart doesn't have retained earnings. Brian's only got revenue. So the enumeration of one through six, phone, first paragraph, or expenses. What town meeting votes, historically, is they voted by revenue. So the motion is going to be that the water fund will be voted by $6.2 million of water revenue. So we vote one number for each one of the funds. And what we do is we break up the revenue sources in the motion. So the $6.2 million you have here is all-inclusive to the entire budget. It's not, there's no use of retainers. If you wanted to add retainers, you'd have to reduce the $6.2 million by $200,000 and then another line item of $200,000. Very similar to number two and three. Did you say these are going to be individual votes historically is how it happened? I think it's one, it's one motion. One motion. Yeah, because this is on the consent. And then the second motion will be the capital. There's a minor point at the moment. So would the appropriate motion be to support the adoption of Article E as presented? Yes. Yeah. Be happy to make that motion. So I move that, I move that, uh, the board support the enterprise fund budgets. So we don't need to say anything about it because of the $200,000. Right. So what I'll do is I'll turn it up to the finance committee. I'll explain there isn't any of that. Also, to be honest with you, they need to write YOY, which is zero, what, and then the SCAD, whatever SCADA is, is going to see I've got those highlighted. So I think we're all set there. But if you want to see the final one, I can get that back next week. But let's, there's a motion on the floor. All those in favor, Ann? Yes. Yes. Um, Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Five, zero. Okay. We're all set back. Um, the next question we have is, you wanted to talk to Keith. We asked you, and you're graciously shortening our packet. Somebody's going to tell me what page we're on here. Some options. I think they start on page 17. Those are the options for how we could fund the wastewater project, which is $2 million. From school. Is that what goes on, Brian? Right. Okay. We'll check this to Keith. Do you want to walk us through those, please? So the question was, what other options does the town have to fund the $200,000 for the wastewater? And really, there's only three revenue sources to look at. The first one is the real estate account. The real estate account right now has only $256,000. So that's obviously not available to fund the $2 million. And we still may have some liabilities in December, which we may pay out of that real estate account. The other two funding sources would be free cash in the capital stabilization fund. So I did put out in the packet four different spreadsheets. I'll go over the free cash first. So the very first free cash schedule you have here, that's the pending budget for free cash. We have in here the use of free cash to fund the capital, I mean, the capital appropriations, as well as other articles. So it's projected that we're going to have a free cash go from 11.8 million currently right now up to 16.1 million by the end of 2031, based upon pending and estimated uses of free cash and the replenishments of free cash. So the next chart, which is actually has a bad heading, it says not funding the project. The next one you see in yellow, the $2 million. That would be as if we funded the wastewater plant at the high school with $2 million of free cash. That would automatically bring down free cash or fund balance by $2 million. That's something we don't want to do overnight. Remember, we want to maintain fund balance at 25%. Fund balance is all the governmental funds, plus stabilization funds, plus others, plus enterprise funds. By taking $2 million out in one swoop, we would be bringing down fund balance more than we should. And it would take a while to replenish that. You just don't replenish $2 million in the next fiscal year. Free cash should go up gradually. If you're doing your budgets properly, you should see a gradual increase in fund balance. I mean, free cash once in a while, you do see a spike, something happens. But normally, if your budgets go properly, you should go up gradually. In this scenario, taking $2 million of free cash would simply drive down the value of free cash, which would also bring down the value of the general fund's fund balance. So yes, you can do it. To me, it's not advisable. So in this scenario, I would not recommend it. Because, say why? Because it's that strike against us in our credit rating? Yeah, so the $2 million would be a significant drop. We're already using $2.1 million for the 27 budget. What you'd be doing is adding another $2 million. So you'd be appropriating the capital at $4.1 million. Your total appropriation of free cash in the 27 budget would be $4.7 million. That's $2 million higher than we've ever done. And it would take a very long time to replenish that, if at all. So it would be a big drop. Remember, free cash is usually equal to about 85% of your town's fund balance. So as free cash rises, your fund balance rises, because free cash is a derivative of the fund balance. Taking $2 million out in one vote is just too much, I think, for the fund balance to absorb. But the free cash would hold steady, according to this chart. It would drop from $11.8 million to $11.1 million, then go back up $12.2 million, $12.7 million, $13.14 million, but that's still problematic. Yeah, compared to what we didn't do, which is the first chart, you'd be at $16.1 million in fiscal $31 million, as opposed to $14.1 million. But that makes a big difference for us, whether we're $16 million or $14 million? Because why? Because Moody's rates, the town's fund balance, as a percentage of revenues, and there's $2 million. Using $4.7 million would be a drop in the town's fund balance. $2 million more than anticipated. And we would probably fall well below the 25% threshold. I see. And it takes time to build that up. Okay, I see. How much free cash typically is created each year? Usually we want the amount to be created as the amount we use. So usually, if you take a look at the bottom chart, there's a good indication here, is that they're very tough where it says sources of free cash. That recovery is usually when DOR does an adjustment when we do free cash. They penalize us. So that $5.25 will be coming back. Usually we get tax liens, that's unbudgeted revenues, that's $100,000. Prior year real estate and personal property collections, that's not budgeted revenue. That's unbudgeted. That adds to free cash. And then usually we collect about 99% of our tax levy. So you never collect 100%. So we'll probably leave almost a million dollars of uncollected tax levy on the table every year. And that's normal. We make like $500,000 of local receipts over budget. If you keep going down the line, it's really in the turnbacks. Typically our turnbacks run around 2% of our budget. We don't create the budgets bringing 2%. It's just mathematically that's what comes out. If we have years which we're experiencing now with all these deficits, where your turnbacks on is great, you've got to just adjust for that in a few years. So we plan for about 2% of our budget to come back. That's the replenishment of free cash. And that's a consequence of not spending money as quickly as we thought or not filling vacant positions. Yeah, vacant fees. Like for example, you didn't use the Finance Committee of Reserve Fund. We probably haven't used that one in five years. This year we're probably going to use the whole thing. We have a big snow and ice problem this year. So we're going to have to tap into other appropriations to fill that. We haven't had that in a good five years anyways. So this is, you run into the year where things are going sideways on you and this is that year. It's been a confluence of events to make us closing out FY26 rather challenging. So we are already going to be behind the ball on free cash next year because of the at least half a million, if not more, that we're going to have to cover at the end of this fiscal year. So if you take more out, you're just going to be more challenged. So then your next suggestion is the standard. So if you take it, you want to go to the capital stabilization now? So there's two more charts I put in here. One chart shows the use of actually, I want to make sure you look at the right one. It would be a 20-year loan at 4%. It says FY26-31 financial plan with debt service payments. So let's look at that one. So what I did was a map in, so a bunch of years back we bought a fire truck for $950,000 in the ambulance fund. We took the debt service related to that as an indirect into the general fund. So the ambulance fund was actually paying the debt service for the fire truck. So if you take a look at the same scenario, can the capital stabilization fund pay the debt service for this one? So if you look at it, highlighted in red, starting in fiscal 28, you see that $210,000. That would be the debt service related to the wastewater. The debt service would be appropriate in the general fund. The capital stabilization fund would transfer $210,000 into the general fund to make it taxable. It would not be any tax effect. So that works except for this is a 20-year loan. So if we appropriated it this way, you'd be asking the next 20 years of tax recaps, finance communities, and warrants to make sure that they put in the warrant that the capital stabilization fund is going to be sending that money to the general fund to the general fund. If this was a five-year window, like the fire truck is very manageable, this one we have to do over 20 years. So that's the difference. You can do this. We would just have to manage it over a 20-year period to make sure that it's in the warrant, that the capital stabilization fund is going to be sending per indirect payment to the general fund to replenish the general fund for the cost of the $2 million wastewater plant. So this technically works. It's just a 20-year period advantage. So that's similar to what we do with Mainstone, because the CPC funds the debt service for the Mainstone purchase. Right. Now it's about $370,000, somewhere around there. Yeah. So is this what you recommend? Yeah, and the other one is very similar to what I talked about with the free cash. It takes $2 million right out of the capitalization fund. It brings the balance right down to under a million. I don't advise this, again, for the exact same reasons. This is fund balance. It's too much in one year to bring it down. Yeah. If the board would entertain or if they were thinking about doing something to not have 200 million as levy or excluded debt, really the only plan that you can really bring forward is this one, the capital stabilization. Just remember, we just have to manage this over 20 years. With a 4% interest, is that right? And so that's the advantage of paying it all in advance, is you're not imposing all of that. The 4% is a higher number. We always use 4%. Right now the bond rate is around 3, 6, 3, 5. So when we project out, we use the 4%. This is really only plant in me that works. It's just a long period of time. And the other thing too is, there's nothing that prevents the town from where we get, depending on where we are. You know, we get out around 28, 29, instead of putting 250 into the cap stabilization plan, maybe we put 350, which helps to continue the fund to grow, although the fund is growing. Does anybody, so that's your recommendation, is to fund it. Yeah, that's, I mean, I told you everything you can do. This is the only thing I think that doesn't harm the town in any way. It's just a bigger managed program over a period of time. I want to say thank you very much for coming up with these. I'm speaking to the board. I think we appreciate having other options because then the other option, the reason we asked you to do this was because we were asked to consider funding that $2 million project for debt exclusion. So let's open it up to the floor for deliberation. Do you, Michael, you're comfortable with this recommendation as well? The debt service to the cap plan standpoint? I'm a little confused. So does this presuppose that debt is issued in the amount of, principal amount of $2 million plus, plus, you know, on council fees and brokerage and so forth, um, and this would not be subject to a debt exclusion or not, of just, it's just part of the capital budget. Right. So they'll be part of the operating budget. Well, the actual item to fund the wastewater will be in the capital budget. Yes, the funding source will be, the funding source will be, if you do this, the funding source would be the capital budget. But going forward, it would be in the motion. Yes, but for this year, to answer Bill's question, it would be still in the capital budget, the blurb, but the funding source would be the cap stabilization fund, um, versus debt exclusion, for example. I think it sounds like those are the two we're looking at. Does that sound a spoiler right? That does. Okay. So, Brian, what's your recommendation is between this approach and debt exclusion? I mean, obviously, you know, you're going to do a $2 million project. It doesn't make sense to do levy debt. We're only having to plan 4.6 as levy debt. If you did this one as levy debt, you're running up to, um, you know, it's over 6 billion in levy debt. You would just be adding the $200,000 anticipated debt service or so onto your override number. So doing this as levy debt doesn't make sense. If you're going to do it by debt, excluded debt would make sense even though it's below the $5 million threshold. I think Whalen, the $2 million project is still a sizable project. So I think the options really are, from a financial point of view, to either fund it by excluded debt or fund it by this capital stabilization program. So we'll call this recommendation saying that we wouldn't have a debt exclusion question. No. We'd be in a situation five years from now where someone's going to come back and say, you know, just like where it really should have excluded that debt. I don't know if they're not saying that. See, as long as you take a look at it, if you take a look at the top portion on revenue on interest, the interest you're earning, highlighted in green, is paying the debt service. As long as you fund it by $250,000 a year, if you take a look at the expected interest, the interest earned by the fund will be funding the debt service. That's an important fact. Well, that's what it is. And did you have any questions or comments on where we're at with this topic? We covered some of this before, so I get it. I just have a question. But isn't this recommendation in a way consistent with the board's policy of having a minimum of $4 to $5 million debt exclusion question? Right? I was corrected by the chair of the finance committee once when I made that observation. He said, no, anything over five should be excluded debt. I mean, it's to the town's discretion as to whether it's below five. Gotcha. And I remember we funded the local roof project, which did have some reimbursement from the MSBA. That was $4.1 or $4.2 million, and we funded that through the lending. So it works both ways, you know. So in the interest of trying to move things along,
the question before that we have to answer is, do we want the debt exclusion ballot question? So do we want to place a question on the ballot for a debt exclusion to fund the wastewater project? That's the question before us. And so we'd ask Brian to come in with some scenarios, which he did, which was terrific. And if we're comfortable with either this scenario or another one that he thinks is better, or do we want... Is the finance committee discussing this right now too? No, the finance committee asked us to support it for debt exclusion. And they await this other option though? They have not seen these. So they will discuss this? Oh yeah, will they discuss this? I think, I mean, if they're voting it probably right now, they can always change the motion. Right. The funding source is an easy thing to do. They can't put in a debt exclusion until we vote yes on that. So right now they have to have another funding source. Yeah, I would just add one more thing for you folks, is that anything coming out of a stabilization fund needs two-thirds vote. So going forward, when we vote the operating budget, we may have to have another line by two-thirds vote to move that money out of the capital stabilization. That's a good point. You have two-thirds vote at the time meeting. What's that debt? Oh, no, that's the joke. You have to have a majority ballot. Yeah, well that's, you'd have to get four-fifths for the T&K two-thirds. You have to have four members of this vote to vote for the debt exclusion. I was referring to town meeting. I think it's just a majority of town meeting. I think it's two-thirds. I think it's a material ballot. Oh, two-thirds, but at the ballot, it's the majority. Excuse me. Yeah. So is it possible to get a motion? No, we have to have a motion. We've been asked, we have on the debt exclusion, we have to vote whether we're going to put a debt exclusion ballot. Question on the ballot. So that's the issue. We have to vote. No motion's made that we won't be doing it. We don't have to vote, yes or no. Okay, our lawyers are speaking. Well, if that's the case, couldn't you have told me that 10 minutes over and I said it won't go on? Didn't I say it really? It was a very full schedule. Well, this is kind of fun, though. And I'm going to look, just if you don't mind, I'm going to confirm with another resource, because I don't have a problem here. Do we have to take the loan here? Because we've been asked places so much. If we don't do anything, then how do we tell the findings committee what we've decided? Say we, the select board did not authorize a debt exclusion. Right, you didn't not authorize, you never brought it up for a vote. You could just say the select board took no position on the request. Because if you don't, if you don't make a motion, I'm sorry, I'm just getting out of terms. Come right in. I apologize. Come right in. But if you want to be specific and say the select board declined or the select board accepted, then you take a vote. If you wanted to report back that the select board took no position, then you don't make a motion. You don't vote. I think that's- Is the consensus on the board no position? I would say the select board did not vote to authorize. I think what the finance committee needs to do is just vote it as levy debt. Because we're going to be issuing the debt. And then the funding source going forward will be the capital stable issues. So that's going to be the finance committee. Right. They just changed it. Whatever they vote, they'll vote debt. That's what they're going to vote. Okay, so we're done on this topic, right? Yeah, I'll remind them when we finish the warrants. In the end, I'd tell me it'll be funded by levy debt, but the capital stabilization fund will be given the general fund debt service. Going forward, there'll be no tax effect. Terrific. Okay, so we're taking care of that. The one last thing is, which we're not going to do too much tonight. Brian, we can go to an email this morning. We do need to have a greater comfort level of where we're going with the finance and the potential financing on article HH. Unless you can give that to us two minutes, because we're already late. And I have a hearing at eight o'clock.
If you want to give me a few seconds to guess what, I do have a... Very quick. Okay, and me and Ann are going to get the phone. The question was, again, Carol, what are the options with funding the end of February? Yes, please. That's article HH. So we're going back with Hilltop, our initial advisor. They gave us two different scenarios. We can either fund this by a 20-year debt or 30-year debt. I think Bond Council is going to lean more on a 20-year debt structure. If we do a 20-year at 4% as the ballpark number right now, and we choose on equal payments, so on principal and interest, we have an equal principal payment every single year for 20 years, the interest would change. The total interest we would pay is $16.2 million. The total debt we would pay on a $38.6 million loan would be $54.8 million. The next inexpensive way to do it would be, again, 20 years, what they call level service, which means your debt service stays the same, but you end up paying a little bit more. That would end up being $57.1 million in total debt paid.
The worst, then you get into the 30 years. So 30 years, if we get 30 years, and I'm almost certain Blind Council is not going to recommend that, is that doing level principal payments, again, it's the same principal payment every single year, but your interest changes. That would come out to 32 point, I'm sorry, $62.5 million. And then lastly, the level debt, meaning your level debt, your debt service is the same every single year for 30 years, you end up paying $67.5 million. So the most advantageous funding of this would be 20 years at equal, for equal principal, you'd end up paying $54.8 million over the life of the loan in 20 years. And that would be $16.2 million in interest. Thank you. Does anybody have any quick questions for Brian? I do want to make one observation that I thought of today when I was reading the write-up, is that in the SRF loan, right, there is contingency upon contingency, upon contingency, and I'm wondering if we are not doing that rule, if we might in fact be not three or $4 million worth of contingency, but closer to maybe a $2 million, and maybe that might help improve the thought. Because they got 10% and then 10% and then another 10%. My question is whether it makes sense to hold on this article and to find out how it would stay.
You cited that as the most advantageous option. I'd say that's the least disadvantageous. It's adding $16 million, $16 plus million of interest that we didn't anticipate. What does that do to the water rates? That I haven't seen. The advisor's working on that. Because he built this model based upon was they loaned no interest. Before we were expecting 20 years, equal principal payments, right? No interest, right. And that was like $1.6 million a year or something like that? I'd have to go back to that. Whatever 1 20th of $38.6 million is. Yeah, and it wasn't starting until I believe after the construction was. It had a different cycle of payments other than issuing bonds. Right. So maybe if there's going to be some more information, you might want to come back and visit us next week about this so we can finalize up this December. That's our last time to be able to finalize it. Right. But are we comfortable going knowing that this is? I have this article to talk about on our list when we're talking about articles. We could maybe come back to that. I really want to get them in before I take a walk. Okay. If you don't mind because I have a hand. Is that okay? That is? Okay. Thank you. Brian, thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. I want to invite our human resource director, Kate Bryant and the chair of the personnel board and Marianne Peavy to come forward. We'll call all the class to study. It begins at on what page I have in here. A bunch of slides. They're going to be very fast though, right? Okay. All right. Well, I might want to just jump ahead. So, Robbie, can you go forward? Yeah, sure. On the slide. Quick big picture. The purpose of this was to make sure that our classification systems had internal equity and we were in compliance with NEPA, the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, and also competitive. So, we can recruit and retain, you know, great employees. So, go to the next slide. So, I did a brief history overview. We can sort of skip that for now, but feel free to read through it. The current, the compensation plans that are covered in this particular study are non-union, AFSCME, DPW, library association, and a handful of what I call our miscellaneous schedules. So, part-time employees as well. Primarily library. Keep going. You don't have to go that fast. Oh, no, that's okay. We're going faster than I do. So, this is just a snapshot of where we are. As of last week, 245 employees on the town side, 169 of those are benefits eligible. Primarily our full-time employees. We have a handful of part-times that are eligible. And then a whole bunch of part-time employees. Again, primarily in our library. They have a lot of part-time employees. The classification titles. Those, these are, this is just a sort of a snapshot again of what was covered in our study. 126 position descriptions or job descriptions for 114 classification titles. The reason those don't add up is because we have, for example, we have department assistants. They're all the same classification title, but they all have separate job descriptions because they're in different departments. And then for our survey, we did 54 benchmark positions. And those are positions that, you know, every town has like a town clerk, a town manager, HR, that type of thing. So, we surveyed those to get our market data. Keep going. So, proponents of the study are first, the classification system. To do that are all of our employees received what is called a job analysis questionnaire or JAQ. They filled this pretty much everyone participated that was covered by the study, which is great. They filled that out in that JAQ. There's, there's nine factors and each factor, depending on how they fill that out, they would get a score for it. And then they get a total score for all of those nine factors. And that's really how they built the classification plan or study structure. Sorry. And that's how they kind of placed all of the positions based on that score. So, everyone was kind of scored uniformly across the board. The next piece of that is going out into the market, getting our market data. We had 16 comparable communities. According to our account, we actually got almost all but one responded to us. So, we got a lot of great data. 15 out of 16 replies. Yeah, 15 out of 16 replies. So, tons of really useful data that we can use, you know, moving forward as well. So, all right, keep going. And then our recommendations from MGT, they created a new grading scale. They basically took all of our positions and kind of put them in one big bucket so that they could, based on those scores, make sure that everyone is internally equitable across different units. So, collective bargaining, non-union, etc. And then they created our 16 pay grades. One is the lowest, 16 is the highest, our table manager. And then built pay ranges based on our market data at the 75th percentile. And then they placed that all on a big table for us. They basically kind of lumped all the various groups together. The data sort of told them, you know, specific groups of positions that fall within particular grades based on the data. You can go down, Robbie. So, the implementation piece, can you actually scroll down to the next slide, Robbie? Right here. Yeah. So, this is hard to read up here, but this is the, this is kind of the meat and potatoes of the study. It shows all of our positions. Their grade, or not grade, but the new grade, proposed grade, which is based on their skill level. That's that total that they got out of those nine factors from the JEQ. They gave us all of our survey data here at the 75th percentile, our current salary ranges. And then they proposed a new salary ranges for all of these new grades at the 75th percentile. Now, on the, on the upside, the good news is that the vast majority of our positions, those salary ranges are already close to the 75th percentile, which I expected for our non-union and our askable positions, because they just recently got a market adjustment over three years, which is, is great news, right? We're already competitive. And I've seen that in our hiring, right? We've been able to bring in new candidates and a lot more interest. Um, where we're, we're, we're struggling a little bit with is our, our library. And again, we kind of expected that going into it and a handful of positions, um, in our DPW. Um, so I was actually going to, um, hand it over to Michael to talk about implementation unless, um, Marianne, you wanted to, to say anything. Um, our board thought it was an excellent study. I would urge you to watch our meeting from last Monday. The, the, the consultant did a great presentation and it'll be understandable. Um, Michael and Kate want to have a lot more, um, more steps on each scale, which will mean that people can grow over time. Right now they're impressed. People hit their head very quickly and then they want their, their job changed, but really this is a, a better way to do it. Um, our board thought it was very well done. Our, our concern is, are, are we picking the percentage before we look at, at the data? And we wanted to see, uh, we saw every, they did it from the 50th percentile, which is market. And then for every 5% above that, it's, uh, additional. So 60 is, uh, 10% above market, 65 is 15% above market, 70 is 20% above market, 75 is 25% above market. And 30, 80 is 30% above market. We have, we have people at the 80th percentile. We have people who are under the 50th, which are below market. So we think they should be raised, but because the range has to be moved doesn't mean that people that are on that range wouldn't already fit on a, on a, a, a higher range. So it's not everybody that's below market, but we think that you should raise those people who are below market. Um, we wanted to see it. They showed us all of, all of the jobs that they were looking at on all of those ranges. And we think if they gave us data that showed you say at the 60th, 65th, 70th, 75th percentile, you could decide there's about a 1000 to $2,000 band between each of those percentage increases. It may not be a lot of money. I could be, I could be convinced that it belongs at the 75th, but I don't know that that's where it should be paid, but, um, and, and it's implementing it. Michael still has to do negotiations. It's how much money is it. And I asked Kate to kind of come up with some worst case scenarios. She did them on the 75th percentile. So what's the, do you have a dollar volume? Um, well, so we have, we actually have 18 positions that are, um, current salaries below the minimum that's recommended by our, um, consultants. So based on the 75th percentile, um, and rough estimate of how much it would cost to bring all those people up just to the minimum would be about 50-ish thousand dollars, maybe a little bit more than that. Right. Of course. So it's fascinating. I know people are speaking. It's fascinating that we have 245 employees and only 19 people, so it didn't mean it was about seven or eight percent. It must have been, were you surprised that it was that, we did that well now, but I'm sorry. So there's a couple of things, uh, specifically with regard to this class and comp study, and I want to thank Ms. Ryan for spearheading this in this PDD for insisting and going over this, um, you know, how do we, how do we do some of the implementation? You know, we're probably less than eight weeks out from town meeting, so like, in reality, we're not going to be able to implement a lot of this right now, but I think it will be a great exercise and in all likelihood we will try to integrate these suggestions that a MGT has made into our tables for some of the non-union personnel. To renegotiate salary tables with the unions would take some time. I had already come into negotiations, at least talking to a couple of unions that have smaller steps, increases, uh, to consider changing. I think the challenge that we have is we, between union and union, there are some that have within their bargaining units only about four steps, some have six, and there's others that have ten. Some towns have ten, twelve. They also have different, um, percentage increments between the steps. What I, I've seen since coming here is our employees jump very quickly and then hit top step in several of our bargaining units, which makes it hard for them to see the increases that other units do. And what I get concerned about is losing talent in some of those units, so people won't jump, um, to another community that has something. So that's one problem. But what, what I see happening here is much, you know, and I, I still have to talk to the unions about how we'll do this, but there's only two unions in particular that are affected by this. And I will likely talk to them at the table about trying to make some adjustments. It could be over one year, it could be over multiple years, as you know, we did with AFSCME, to bring them up the market. We did it over a period of three years. But the long-term goal would be to look at our tables, put the appropriate number of steps, and migrate people on percentage increase between them. I've shared with some of you, and I, I think it can be to their benefit, especially those folks who are stuck right where they are right now. A lot of it will happen at, you know, the table. Some might happen this year, but we'll probably look to make some substantial changes. We'll come back to town meeting for the nine. Any comments for the board? I appreciate the work here. I remember three, four years ago, we had discussions on the board about the need to be competitive. Yeah, no, I'm here. I, I'm, I'm watching all of it. I think it, um, it is nice to know that we're competitive, but I think, um, you know, the thought process that's going into some of these, um, you know, just navigating year to year, and improving the benefits, and being mindful of how you put a package together that could be competitive. It's, it's working. Now, they did our benefits as well, and our benefits are competitive. They appreciate this work, and this presentation is very informative for me, and I like the level of professionalism we're always doing. This has been talked about, I think, when I first joined this on the board, we were talking about it, and then we put an article in because we hadn't been able to get in, so we put a special article for us to put in, and I went to a couple years, and when I'm here, I was getting frustrated because I'm all about it. This is so important to do, and you can see it, and like Dan said, it's a very professional now, we're going from six bands, and, um, I think it's terrific, so. Did you want to add anything else before you leave us? I appreciate you coming in. Thank you. Thank you. We'll look forward to hearing more on this.
Anybody know the hearing information is something? It's towards the end of the pack. Original packet? Yeah, the original pack. Oh, yes, original packet, page 68. 50? 68.
Um, how are you recognized over there? I see Laura Palmer on there, and Margot Violus. So let's bring over Laura Palmer. She's already on. All right, and Margot Gillis. She's on too. Okay, good. So, let's move on. Can you hear me? Yeah, hang on just one second. Okay. Before I started, appreciate it. Okay, so I am going to declare, uh, the hearing is open for the purpose of considering the application for change of manager for BBRGTR, LLC, DBA, the Coach Grill of Whelan, for an annual all-alcoholic liquor license. So the notice that was published in the Metro West says, Notice is hereby given that the Whelan Select Board will hold a public hearing on Monday, March 9, 2026, beginning at 8 p.m., the Whelan Town Building, 41 Pichichoke Road in Whelan, Mass., and remotely for the application filed by Margaret Gillis, Esquire, McDermott, Quilty, Miller, and Hanley, LLP, on behalf of BBRGTR, LLC, DBA, the Coach Grill of Whelan. This public hearing is for a change of manager to Laura Palmer for an annual all-alcoholic liquor license, and that is ABCC number two, excuse me, 00002-RS-1340. And so joining us tonight, I'm recognizing Attorney Gillis and Ms. Paul. Hello, how are you? Great. Good evening. I'm Attorney Margo Gillis from McDermott, Quilty, Miller, and Hanley, on behalf of the licensee BBRGTR, LLC, doing business as the Coach Grill of Whelan. I am joined by Laura Palmer, the proposed manager of record. Ms. Palmer has worked in the restaurant industry for over a decade and has been a manager supervising the sale and service of alcohol. She is a United States citizen, a resident of the Commonwealth. She has experience in the food and beverage industry. She is TIP certified. She is also familiar with the laws of the Commonwealth, the rules of the ABCC, and this board for the sale and service of alcohol. There are no other changes besides change of manager being made to the license. We would like to thank the board for hearing this application today and would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Okay. So, before we do that, I do need to state formal rules of evidence and other court procedures do not apply to public hearings before the select board. The board expects the prospective applicant and any members of the public who comment, to present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner. And the order will be, as I think we've already done, to explain the reason for applying for the grant. The select board will pose any questions. Members of the public, if any, may ask a question or make a comment. You can then summarize if you feel you need to add more information. I will close the hearing and we'll take the matter under advisement and make a decision. So, you have presented your application, I believe. Why don't I move now to allow the select board to question the applicant. Any questions from the board?
Just a quick question. What occasions this change? What? What occasions this change? Why make this change at this time? Well, it's a staffing change. So, it would be the person who's in the office. It's going to be on premise to oversee the sale and service of alcohol in the restaurant. Okay. Doug, Ann, any questions? No, I don't either. And I don't think, Robbie, do you see anyone, any members of the public want to make a comment? Is there any other additional information we'd like to provide? Um, no, I think we've covered everything. Thank you. Thank you. Then I'm going to move to close the hearing and, uh, the board will now deliberate
and we don't have a lot of deliberation that perhaps we can have a motion. Move that the board approve the application for a change of manager to Laura Palmer for BBRG TR LLC, doing business as the Coach Bill of Whalen for an annual all alcohol liquor license, ABC number 0002RS 1340. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Otherwise, we'll take, um, go call vote. Mr. Fay? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Ms. Brensley? Yes. Mr. Whitney? Yes. And Ms. Martin? Yes. Motion passes 5-0. And I think that's, that takes care of that, right Kelsey? Could we get a letter from the office? Um, no. No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a great day. Enjoy. All right. So now that brings us back to, um, would you like to, uh, did you print something for me? Yes. That's just, I don't say. I'm looking back to number four because I think we want to make an announcement. Um, I'm going to let Mr. Fay, start with this paper over here that I'm going to look at. Oh, okay. Happy to report that this board has a review of the town manager, submitted evaluation forms, uh, forms that were placed into one report, be public. And the reviewer, Mr. Paul, was extremely, uh, positive. And this year, at many different levels, including the amount of money he saved town through various endeavors, or by endeavors, I'm referring to budgeting skills, among other things. Worked hard to develop town manager form of government. I personally can't think of a dedicated, professional town manager. At least in our town, it is very difficult. Okay. Um, I think that there's a long, what I hope to be a long-term relationship with Michael. I continue to see us move together better and more efficiently and with different goals, but goals that overlap. And so I'm really hoping that Michael feels like he's being challenged and this is his home because we, we definitely are, are uniting around you as our town manager. Mr. Whitney. The benefit of responses, uh, to the, uh, questionnaire that was, uh, put together a year or two ago, I believe. Individual evaluations by the board. Certainly consensus in some cases, unanimity as to about the excellent performance of lighting. And of course, um, I've been lucky that I've worked in the leadership for three years with Michael and, um, get to see firsthand how hard he works on our roadmap and how much he cares about oil and how terrific it is. He's very mindful of our financial situation and always looking for ways to either get grants or do something in a more economical manner. And it's a really wonderful, wonderful and refreshing experience.
As I always say, do not do this without the tremendous support from the excellent people here at town hall. One of those people sitting right here, Ms. Powers Belay, one of my right-hand people. And you saw Ms. Ryan here. So we have great addition. It's great when you have department heads that you can just rely on. And I think we've been very successful in finding some people as the people turn over here. And I'm very, very pleased to have the staff here. Thank you. And with that, we will dig right into the meat and the potatoes of tonight. The articles for Tom Williams. Um, you don't know what page we're on. Um, it's Article A is where we will start. Bill, we're going to go down a motion. I'm going to make a motion. I'm going to make a motion too. I'm going to make a motion. I don't have a motion. I don't have a motion. We can make a motion. Yeah. Sure. Thank you. We don't really get a motion. Please just sign the review. Let's do that.
All right. So while we're doing, while we're doing that, Tom's giving the motion together, maybe we can all sign the, um, the review. So I'll move this recent agreement with the town manager entitled third amendment to the employment agreement between the town of Weyland and the town manager, Michael McCall, which includes annual base salary effective February 27th, 2026 of $256,750. We have further discussion right then on those who support the motion. And I say yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Motion covers 4-0. Thank you. And I will proceed to sign the... Did we all sign the agreement to this? Yes.
All right. I'm going to move us now. Can somebody tell me what page... I'm on. 39. 39. Thank you. You are following along. We are on page 39. We're going to start. We have about 16 or so articles that we need to look at.
And, um, first one is going to be article A, which is working on citizens. I think this is one of your articles. And, and, and it was mine. Oh, to us. Yeah. Okay. Would you like to talk about it? Um, get an webinar? I was fortunate to receive a draft of this from Ms. Powers-Spirilette and Ms. Bradica. Um, I think there has been some email traffic about potential additions, including a potential of unfortunate recent additions, um, that we are researching, but this is nearly finalized. And I think that it would be fair to take a position on this standard area. Happy to move the United citizens and employees from particular service to town and essentially set forth. I will second that motion. Okay. So what we're going to do again on, on the motions tonight, just easy for the minutes is it's going to be Tom and then Doug. Okay. Any further questions or comments? Otherwise the vote please. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Ann? Yes. And Carol, yes, that counts as five, zero. B, B is in the second supplemental packet. And it is called pay previous year fiscal unpaid bills. I think this one is yours, Ann. I think it has kind of a few extra iterations today. Did you want to walk us through it? Yeah, we already walked through it last time. It's the exact same one that actually article, the B keeps getting taken off and re-put on for some reason. So it's in the, uh, in the packet, it's now off again. But, um, the good news is one of the issues the last time was that these numbers were not all fully updated and now they are. Okay. So in all honesty, we don't need to be anymore because after tonight, it's going to have a number, but it's not why it's probably why people put it on, take it off. All right. Okay. Happy to move this board vote to support article B. Yeah. Pay previous fiscal years unpaid bills are set forth essentially in our packet. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's, uh, vote, Ann. Yes. Doug. Yes. Tom. Yes. Bill. Yes. And Carol, yes. So, would you do me a favor and just hand this to Ms. Nelson right there. Okay. Article C is my understanding that there are no going to need article C currently transfers. So in this case, we will take a vote to insert. After you move this board to insert article C entitled current year transfers. Second. So just to remind everybody, we're not inserted. So first, I mean, this is not. Well, I'm sorry, I thought you said you wanted to vote to insert. No, you do. You do. We have to put in the visit. But I'm reminding everyone that I'm not anticipating this showing up in the lawn. Understood. So I'm going to start with you, Tom. No. Bill. No. And Carol, no. So that's zero, five, zero. That's right. Okay. Now the article is number D. This is the OPEB funding. I believe this is in here on page 41. Well, this is interesting because when I got this one, it had no numbers in the chart. So I kind of paste them from somewhere else and put them on the bottom. But then when the article came through, they were where they belong. So, and this is your article. Did you want to talk about it? Yeah, I think it's the, you know, I hate to go back to last meeting, but we actually went through this a little bit, but it was the same thing. We had the same numbers in here in the finance committee comments side, but we didn't have the numbers for the food service base. Like these numbers up here, weren't here and now they all are. Terrific. So this, by the way, is one of these articles that I would have liked to have seen streamlined. Spoiler alert. It's going to be a summer project. I was happy you've moved that this board vote to support article D as successful as in our package. Second. Thank you. Entitled pep pun. Any further discussion? Other ones that spoke? Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. And? Yes. Carol, yes? Motion passes 5-0. Now, Article H, which is the next one that we have opened, is the budget. And I believe the finance committee has got their operating budget recommendation in place. I'm looking at Michael C.B. if you can confirm this. I don't believe they have finalized the capitals. The first time we will see these numbers is next week. All right. So that's going to be on 3-16. All right. Article L. Happy to move this board. Hang on one second. I just want to tell you what the problem that was. Article L, last week, I think we voted it, but did we vote to insert it? We did not. Wait a minute. No, L. I'm on the wrong one. Sorry. Go ahead, Tom. I'm happy to move this board vote to insert and support Article L entitled, Sell or Trade, Vehicles, and Equipment. Thank you. That's the central plan back. Thank you. Okay. We have a discussion. Otherwise, let's to vote. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Ann? Yes. Thank you. And Carol, the motion passes 5-0. The next one up is Article O. This is the updated bylaw personnel wage classification plan. And this will be, we wait until the last night for this, but this was still waiting for some language on this one. So this we'll see next week as well. All right. The next one I have, somebody's keeping track of what we're doing is eat. What did I do?
We need to insert. It appears a particular thing. Oh, we did not. Because we didn't insert. Oh, we did not insert. Right.
Insert Article M as Mary entitled, Spend Reserve Fund. Thank you. All right. All those in trade lines? Excuse me. Do you want to include, uh, supporting it as well? Yeah. Insert and, insert and support. We did support this one last week. But I think it's always good to insert. Yeah, let's do it again. Because I don't know what we did. The motion is to, the motion is to insert and support Article M as in Mary, Spend Reserve Fund. Okay. Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. And Carol? Yes. Okay. Now, where am I?
E. What are we talking about? I'm going to leave speaking. That is correct. That's what I want to talk about. So this article has now been scaled down from two substantive purposes to a single substantive purpose based on the feedback and discussion that we had with members of the planning board two meetings ago. So this, as the title of the article notes, is only about the appeal from the planning board for their site plan approval for certain large-sized projects to move that appeal timeline up after the planning board issues its determination, a resident or an appeal within 20 days versus in our current bylaws, that resident would have to wait until government issues.
So I believe we voted to insert this on 223, but then we also voted that same night to refer to the planning board. And we did that because I thought in roomies that we could not take a position until we got a planning board report. After speaking with them, looking at Bill, after speaking with the planning board chair, I believe the select board could take a position on their article, but it is town meeting that cannot take a position until we vote. So there's a report. The report is a town meeting under 40 minutes. The town meeting cannot until there is a report. Right. Did I say it wrong? So now, Doug has revised it. It's gone to the planning board and I don't know what the status is on the report, but we can take a position on this. So if we would like to do that. After they moved to this board and over to RPE entitled, and then town code section 198, planning board appeals and advance notice to select board by applicants.
Yeah. Question, given that it is now addressing one point instead of two points, should we vote to again to insert the current version? We don't have to because we have to revise, but We can do it if you like. I don't have a problem. You know what, I'll withdraw the motion. If you think it's okay, it's okay. I think it's okay, but I'll withdraw the motion in part because the title which I read is not the accurate title. The new title is different. So I'll make it, I withdraw the motion.
Oh yeah. I'll move this vote to support RPE entitled, and then town code section 198, planning board appeals, and the motion is to insert and support. Second. All right. Do we have any other discussion? Mr. Whitney? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Ann? I'm going to vote yes to insert, but I'm going to vote no to approve. Say that again, please. Yes to insert, no to approve. Can she do that if it's a single vote? We'll have to start over. Only one motion. So I will draw the motion. Thank you. Can we start again? I will move that this board vote to insert article EE entitled, and then town code 198, planning board appeals as set forth in our packet for this week. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Otherwise, we'll go to the vote. Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Carol, yes. So we'll go to 5-0 to insert. I move that this board vote to support article EE entitled, and then town code 6198, planning board appeals as essentially set forth in our packet. Okay. No further discussion. Then we'll go to the vote. Ann? No.
Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Tom? Yes. So, Carol, yes. It's going to be 4-0-1. No, 4-1-0. No, 4-1-0 there. Yep. That's why we're doing not one of them. Okay. So now the next item on the list is Article 8, and I put this on here for a couple of reasons. Can I just look back at the section FF and GG, which are my articles. Are they not? We don't see it from the CCC Seminary. I'm sorry. Isn't that weird? We need to do something at home because I keep looking at the flags and saying to myself, after I have a heart attack, that I've missed something. All right. Very good. Yeah. This is always good to ask now. Okay. So in Article 18, which was submitted by the Board of Public Works, there's a blank in that column there. A couple of things. I know Bill wanted to bring up some discussion about where we're at. I wanted Brian and Michael if he has it to give us some more information about the possible financing.
The more it goes to press. I do know that the Board of Public Works is going to the meeting tomorrow night. I'll be attending that. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is that when we took the vote to support in January, there were only three of us here. And so I was going to also throw out to see if we wanted to vote whether five of us were here. And that was a question we raised if it's on when we did it. But anyway, that's all the things on the table of this. So I'm going to let Bill have the Board first to continue his point that he was trying to make. But I really don't know.
As we all know, there's a substantial change in the cost of an annual basis.
So you're addressing appropriate state agency later this month with the state moves, but I suspect it by the time that it's sent to the printer. So it's advisable. I had a question for the town manager. There's a sense of the state loan.
See what I'm getting at. No interest loan's been around. Are they revisiting it because now there's a high demand? Is it an opportunity to make some money?
So on. For years ago, and I know we are a sewer project. We got these types. What I can see in Mr. Holder, we had consultants helping the project and we submitted it based on we achieved a score on their scale. And the state looked at our application, only 200. So there were other projects that were raised higher. So I don't think it pushes out to make the money. So what you're telling us is that the state charges interest the community companies that don't really need, don't need, hold on. No, no, we think they generally made a real mathematical project. They came out and announced these and everybody was shocked. Mr. Holder, the consultants, our engineers, that we were led to believe the application process. So as for the PNQ, if the appeal is successful, how do we, what are our options in paying its interest? So we're examining somebody. For me, I do see that it's needed and necessary. I'm also looking if the appeal is successful. The cost that we've had some sort of leverage in our appeal to hold off. We can see how the appeal plays out. And I guess I'm wondering, are we disadvantaged by having a mistake to say, well, with interest?
So I don't know if that's a legitimate concern or not. I also don't know what it does to the rates and so forth. So it's just material change at the 11th hour through no fault of anybody else. I suspect it's just one thing. I think we should just be cautious because when interest rates, my concern right now is the trend in Massachusetts is when interest rates go up like this, it's connected to some sort of infrastructure or some sort of project plan that the state has. And I'm seeing more and more money go into expanding and improving the MWRA system in general. And as we said a long time ago, I think it was one of my concerns was we're putting this money into a happy hollow. And is it possible that the state's going to move towards trying to actually have people all dependent on the MWRA, in which case that those monies that we put into fixing a system that might not be able to be fixed in the long term, we end up in a position where we spent that money, but we end up 100 percent MWRA anyway. And I think it would be really helpful for all of us to do some research into that. I started to do some and I found that I was kind of moving in the direction I thought.
Yeah, and that issue is the towns, the state is requiring towns that have their own water supply to maintain them. In other words, they're not necessarily encouraging communities to go all at MWRA and just shut off their spigot. They kind of, they want, they want town to have a hybrid. That's what I think we need to do more, more research on. It was a concern I had really, really early on, and it was because what was happening was people were discovering that they just couldn't fix it. And so it was costing the state money by having these towns do that and then end up having to do MWRA. So my concern is that we're going to find out that the state has come to that realization that all those people who were on the ground working on it and saying this can't be fixed trickled back up and that the state is now putting money into those improvements and we're going to end up in a position very similar to some of those towns. And I got that information from the people that were actually working on these projects and they were messaging that back. And I don't think at that time when I brought this up, you know, I had much more to say than, hey, the people on the ground that I'm talking to that are working on these projects are giving us feedback. But now I'm just wondering if they're connected. And my gut feeling and just watching how policies move and how interest rates move is that I might have, I might not have been right, those people reporting to me telling me that might have been right and influenced things. I just think it's worth us all doing a little bit of research and that extends out to not just, I think we really actually need to do our own legwork on this and not rely fully on maybe people who have an expertise in it, but just might not be up to date on going on. You know, the challenge is, is that we are on deadline. So the fact is, is that, at first of all, I said this, and I know Bill mentioned, I think that perhaps, you know, we pass over or we throw this article. Just want to mention one minor point, it's not our article. But the select book controls the alarm. The select book controls the alarm book. We would have to go back to the board of public works and have a joint meeting with them. We don't have the time to do that, number one. My bigger concern is this, that there is this seven hundred, seven million dollar entry fee that everyone has to join our system. The initiation fee, if you will, it's waived for a certain number of time. And I swear when I heard Tom say, some form or some reading we were at, that there are communities coming in now that won't, that are trying to join the authority, but won't get in the application of the paperwork done in time, and they most likely will have to pay the entry fee. That's the seven million dollars question, a decision we're making here, among other things. I think we need more information. I think we have some concerns. I think we need to find out how to do the appeal. What we might want to do is put this through, because guess what, we can call it a tummy, and by then we'll have two more months more of information, if we still want. And we would have to have a conversation, obviously, with the Board of Commons to see what their position is. The other thing is that this is really not about, the article isn't about funding, the article is about the authorization to go forward, and I think that's really, see I don't have a crystal ball over here with all the answers, so, but I am concerned about the seven million. I think we would have to find out if we didn't continue the process, would we be in jeopardy, would we have to start over again? We are unable in the high peak times to provide 100% of our demand. We are utilizing, have utilized the emergency connection two or three times. If we have a repair, and we have to take happy hollow lock line, we have to use the emergency one, and every time you go, there's a fee plus a 10%. I'm making these numbers up, but there's a surcharge on each time, and I think, well, there was a period of like 10 or 12 days, they had to use water. What did I say, really? It was 160. So it's an expense. We have a lot of possible expenses for this decision, but I think it's a good question to ask.
I'm comfortable with that. The only thing that I'd say is, and I don't think this would happen, because this is like the biggest project that we have, but just, you know, just to get your assurance that if one of these board members wants to put this back on the agenda, even if it's just to discuss it, that that becomes a priority, which I know you would already do, but it's the only thing that I would be concerned about is that something would come up, we'd get some information, and we'd be behind them. Hey, you know, could be an agenda item closer to like, we kind of need, you know, minute five-minute information on this one, if anybody gets stuff. Well, I would think that Michael's pretty good at giving us this, but I certainly can add that to my list. I can also, I'm going to the meeting tonight, as I mentioned, about 90 times, I'm sure you've heard that already, and maybe I can inquire what would happen to the entry fee and the admission or the waiver of the entry fee should move someone on to support this at the Springtown meeting. I mean, I think Bill had also mentioned that maybe we'll read and do this in the Fall, at a Falltown meeting. I don't know what Mr. Gall would like to... I mean, what do you think? Should we keep the article and go full, or should we... what should we do here? Well, I was nodding when you said if we have it, we can be able to call it based on other information. I try and get things worked out in the field. I also understand, because I think it's just harder to put it back in, if you consider it, take it out and add it. Almost absolutely, all I do, except for one thought, how I would put things back in. Well, I do. I've got one thought. When did the bonds have to be sold? I don't think they start. That was why I thought that it's not successful. Did Brian say tonight, November of 27th? That would make sense, because then the first payments would we do, like, in FY29. 29 is not enough. Right. It's the thought then that... Oh, well, if we get the answer, it's not enough. Oh, you've got to complete the work and drawings,
we appropriated some funds last year. There were some offer funds, I think, and then we appropriated some funds, doing something off the top of my head, for the design and the permit phase. I think they're supposed to be... Is it 30% Michael? I tell me, and then after that, they're going to complete it. So there is some funding that can continue to design. So we need to know when we're going to... And when does it... 7 million? Yes, thank you. And I'm going to write that down, evaporates from 7 million. I thought he said that there was a deadline sometime next. I'd be interested in what the rates is just doing some back-of-the-envelope math of 8.6 million. You spread that of 20, well, principal payments, that's about 1.9 million a year. Right. If you pay 4% interest in the first year on the outstanding balance, that's another million. I think I have seen something like that. So these are... Sobering figures. But, you know, to your point about leaving it in, I mean, one approach is you... You seek to pass over if you decide to leave it in. Another is, I suppose, the Select Board is authorized, but not complicated, to issue the debt. I don't think the language... Does it authorize the town to which it was in the board? Just this, um, approval of the Select Board. Can we change the text on this article to resolve this issue where we're not committing to to authorize the town to raise you with approval of the Select Board. After all, making this up, the avenues that have been explored, including a state with all the file loan or something like that? Yeah. I guess it says that the language is... gives the board the flexibility. It says with the board, if you don't know, or you don't approve. Even on the money, that first bullet says appropriate the sum. Yeah. Money has now been appropriated. But it doesn't happen. If you don't have... But if you don't have... They're giving us permission to appropriate, and then it tells you how to get... But if you don't have $38.6 million to appropriate, because you have to borrow it. Yeah. So didn't, in the beginning of the meeting, I asked Brian to give us some more information if he had. I don't, I think what he's going to give you what you said. The other thing is, interest rates are so volatile, and perhaps, you know, there's a lot of conversation that rates made comes down. We know by the time we get there, we might be, you know, 2% home. Oh, sure. Well, it's a long way to phrase that. There's a lot of conversation about it should be less. Sure. We're all my best on that. Thank you. So, I wanted to get some more information. We'll come back and talk about the steps one day. Do I dare ask if we want to take a vote? If all five of us to support this, so shall I revisit that Monday as we fall? All right. Let's go to the next item, which is going to be... The next one is KK, and I think that there's in this packet, however, in the supplemental packet, supplemental number one, it wasn't revised. What happened here was the senior tax committee came in and he spoke with us, right? Let's show another picture. This was some of the mental illness does this to me. I don't know. So, I got it. So, what happened was they came in and they spoke to us, and then we had a lot of suggestions and questions, and then Ms. Clifford, who's a member of the senior tax relief committee, went back to the committee, and then they met this past week. And then I told them that if they didn't have a revised, they didn't have the revised in by Thursday to us, then that we would have to do that because we're on deadline. And to his credit, we did it, and it was supposed to see how loud it would put it in the form. And then I think it was Iris and I worked on this. And this first draft, you see, was the one we had ready when the pack was ready as well. And then there was more work on it over the week. But essentially, it's a thank you if you will. There's a lot of requirements to which you have to have been here 20 years. I think they've laid it out pretty nicely. You have to have, be the primary owner, you have to pay the taxes on the property. You have to also, which doesn't say it in the write-up, which I had mentioned to them earlier today, again, this isn't opt-in. So, if you don't want to participate, you don't have to participate. So, did everybody have a chance to read this?
I didn't. You did? And do we have any comments on this? Well, in the write-up by the finance committee, they note that, fiscal year 25, 2081, residential homes are owned by a resident, 865 plus, out of 486, nearly 40%. The interesting thing is, there's an opt-in and an opt-out as well. And I think in the new revised version, they list all sorts of options that are available for tax relief, but most of those are income restriction. The only one that I think you can apply for unrestricted might be the CPA. You can apply to not pay a tax, I believe that's 65. And then what were you saying? I'm just trying to, cause it says 40% would qualify where you're saying it gets Yeah, but my point is that, that that doesn't mean those homeowners have lived in town for 20 years years. Um, and maybe they didn't have kids that went to the public schools. What's the public schools? The discussion with Mr. Clifford as well, actually. Well, for me, because my screen's gone black, which I appreciate tremendously. Um, uh, but, um, his position was that most folks in, if you're over 65 and you live here, they've probably been here for 27 years. You may have downsized into a condo or what have you. My point was there are oftentimes folks will downsize and then they move to be closer to their children. Those folks, if they own that condo, they are not going to be in this group because they aren't been here for 20 years.
So, so on a new number, they will do it. The other question is now on this one, on the very top and I'm, I need to talk to Brian, Kelsey, Michael or somebody. Um, they had a cost on him in $1, but there is no cost because it's just, we should kind of like a residential exemption. So then when he said you would net with the home, you would net $200, I, that's me, that $200 for household. That was just to highlight that we really need to make sure that's a correct number. That seemed to me clearer, but somebody who's far brighter than I am should, uh, develop that cost. My view is, if you're going to put an estimate in cost, you'll be participating no more than X or no less than X ones. Max? Yeah. I ran an estimate. Yeah. Is that appreciated? It's like, no one's done the math here. You're going to be serious to figure out who's, who's been here. Oh yeah, yeah. Who had kids. Right. And it's an opt-in. Right. I mean, I, um, I talked to somebody who had the article initially and said even though they qualified, they would not opt-in. Yeah. Um, is there any other discussion on this one? Do we want, are we ready to take a vote on it? I don't have a list, but I do think that it's something you want to look at. The accessories, the register, it doesn't say anything about the number of 65. And the only other thought is the form. You can or cannot say it, have the form be out of a pain to tell you. It has to be here. It's just, I don't have a million dollars, is the estimate. But now, granted, I know that's, we're just asking people to pay.
I mean, actually, if you look in the supplemental packet, and hopefully those works as mine's not, you'll see that we're talking about the actual cost is no more than 200 per household. Yeah, that's the total of a million. If everyone participates, but like. Everybody participated. Well, I don't know you can say that the cost is a million. I don't know how to phrase that myself.
Any other thoughts on this? I think I asked this question when Mr. Crickwood was here, and I know probably answered, do other towns do this? Does anybody recall? I don't think anyone has done this. No. No, I looked into it. There are some towns that do some similar program. It has to be a credit, so it can't be reduction, like initially believed that it would be. All right. So I'm happy to move this board to support our KK entitled senior property assessment credit and accessories that were in our packet. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, Bill? We're going to abstain as I would feel better about it. There is a means test, and as I am to qualify for this. Mr. Crick?
Yes. Ms. Brinsley?
Um, seniors.
All right. Yes. Okay. And since I'm low and probably also going to qualify, I'm going to vote yes as well. This is my liaison. So that's going to be 4-0-1, right? I think we have to redo that motion. I think the motion needs to be to insert and support. Am I right? I don't know if Mr. Dodd, they wouldn't come up, but I'm going to move it. Solve. I think you are correct. So I will move this board to vote to insert and support our KK entitled senior property assessment credit and accessibility set forth our packet. Okay. Let's write this again. So all those in favor? Ann? Yes. Doug? Yes. Ron? Yes. Bill? I'm staying. And Carol? Yes. He's in 4-0-1. Okay. That's great. So that brings us to the next item, which is article 00. And this one, I don't even know if this is in the packet. What we have here was some questions on this, and we asked Michael to go forth and come back with the information on this. And this one, by the way, for those who are watching, is the, sorry, I've got a little remiss here, the Multifamily Housing, Route 20 West Sub-District, Amend Maximum Dimensions article. And Michael, I think I asked you for a couple of questions. Did you, were you able to successfully obtain that information? Well, I did speak, you would ask me to speak to the fire chief. Yeah. I think it responded to individually.
I wasn't here for Alta-Oxpo, but there is, within the river's edge, there was an exception, I think, for 58 feet for one particular quarter into the project. The fire chief said to me, and I shared it with Mr. Fay, and somebody asked the department of health, or what's the highest apparatus, and he said it isn't always, you know, apples to apples, because you could be fighting fire from various angles, you could be on a road that's lower, so they have concerns about just blanket approval of a certain height and feel that it should be going through essentially a permitting process, right? What the other districts have had is essentially indicated. All right, and also I think that we, was that the questions we had? One was to speak to the chief, and the other, and the other was, then we received some correspondence in an email indicating that the OANs had been issued on to Oxpo, which in the chart shows, I think we just recorded that, a couple of the buildings were a little taller. But just to clarify that point, the ZBA actually permitted the developer of Alta-Oxpo to build structures in the Northwest Quadrant up to 58 feet, which is set back from the road by a certain order. And that's the difference, and that's the difference. That information is very helpful for me, and that was one of my concerns. The difference, the distance between Route 20 and the line where they can start building at 58 feet is 236 feet. If you look at the location of where this project is going to be built, the Cadella and building across the street, it's much closer to Route 20. There wouldn't be any such, if I understand it, ability of the town. Have it set back, you know, I would say a three-story and then maybe a five-story. But my concern is this. If this passes, you're going to have two six-foot buildings. Six-story. Six-story, six-story, sorry, thank you. It would not be nice. Six-story buildings, flat roof, that'll be the, that'll be what people see when they first. I am concerned that what happens, we may need to buy a new fire truck because of these buildings. Having said that, I favor affordable housing, would result in at least 10% of affordable housing.
I don't accept the argument that because this is lower, it's palatable. If you accept that argument, Colt's way is 150, 160 feet above sea level. That's another MBTA district. This, this space, model is 184 feet above sea level. If you buy the logic, because it's low compared to Alta Oxbow, then a coastal way project should be seven stars. So that argument, I think. So I personally, this doesn't sit right for me, this all in all 58 feet at this. I much prefer it to be 45, absent some other restriction relative to control over tiered growth, which I do not anticipate because the developer would then lose money. That's why they, that's why you want 58 feet, right? That's why the developer, Mr. Watkins, wants 58 feet because he can maximize, because he is the right to, it's his property, maximize the profit on the structure. Tom, the numbers that you just recited about Alta Oxbow and the permissible zoning for height toward the back of the, was that what town meaning originally voted on to approve? I don't know. My source is just. There were zones of 35 feet, 45 feet and the affirmation 58 feet. Town meeting. Which was in the 2014, I think. Good. Tom, are you saying that a similar approach could not occur in property? There's not the setback? Alta Oxbow, Alta Oxbow was the town of a private property. You put together,
and then that's the depth. I don't see that happening with the site at Kandala. It's just not analogous because you couldn't have similar setbacks for that. I don't think, I don't see a need to change the zoning. It's, if you have a project and you're going to, you know, you can ask for variances, right? So we're not saying no to somebody. We're just saying, uh, you know, we're not going to change the standard. Well, there are certain very limited circumstances under which a variance can be granted, right? There are sort of three principle criteria. Yeah. And the main was that you're not derogating the usual site conditions. CBA could subject to successful challenges. I hate to say it, but it's, it's a point of negotiation where, you know, if you want that variant, sometimes you do things, you offer things like more affordable units, which can become a benefit to changes. I don't, I just don't see a need to change this. This is
on the 58 feet myself. And then I read that the ultra oxbow was higher. And then I said, okay, however, the ultra oxbow are more in, uh, I'm going to say lower fifties, below 55 range. And so my mind, I was thinking, well, to be consistent because it's that area and you know, it is on route 20 versus like, you say cold story, which is residential. Um, what if we went now, here you go, they'll hold on to you. I'm ready now. What if we asked the planning board, if they would like adjust the 58 down to like a 55 or a 54, it would be consistent with the ultra oxbow right on that quarter. And then the builder would, or the builders or the rest would have to make the adjustments on the property or whatever to use the 54. It just doesn't, it'd be very outside of normal development. I mean, it, it tends to come down to acres. The big difference is actually that it's 5.5 acres on a river's edge. Whenever a project has more land, then you know that you have more room to put it, tuck it away. Usually have it be at least abutting some sort of, you know, conservation area or something that's closed off so that it's kind of removed from the neighborhood. Two acres at 58 feet. That's where we would be changing things. We'd be changing, you know, what any developer would expect in the area. And, and the thing is that sometimes you do change things. Sometimes you make exceptions, but usually you kind of cut a deal, you know, something that makes it more valuable to the town because you're asking them to bend for you in your project. And I think that can be very healthy. And I, I don't think there's any, I'm a huge economic development person, real estate development. I want to encourage people to come for school and to do projects. This just seems like completely unnecessary to be honest with you.
So I do know that after we talked about what this property was located, I went and looked at it and I believe that the current thought, which is why the height is so high, just food for us. And we're not, we're not the planning board and we're not the ZBA Doug withstanding, but you know, so we're in a different role. But in my mind, I said, okay, I might need some more facts here. And, um, currently, the project is proposed is to be all in planning, which means all the tax dollars go to us, all the affordable units go to us. If not, they, they could expand over into the property that's owned, is in Sudbury. Then some of the revenue, and of course, maybe some of the affordable units would go to Sudbury. So it's kind of a... Would Sudbury need to pass that article? No, I didn't even, I was only looking. I wasn't talking to anybody. I don't think Sudbury has made their property part of the MDT community side. Right. And that's the other thing, what I liked about this was this MDT community, and we use Oxbow, and then this is right next door. Our goal is to put our apartment complexes, if you will, in there. And to be clear, I've said it before, I'll say it again, I support, I support the project, I don't support the height of the project. So what height, what do you support? I support 45. But the Donald Oswald got higher than 45. In the Northwest Quadrant, we can't even notice it. No, and the front building is a 53. No, no. They actually, CBA did approve variances for three of the buildings in excess. I didn't drive out there, but if you look at the topography out there, it appears to roll off, it's 100. At Alta Oxbow, it's about 150 feet on the front, and then it drops down closer to 130, 120. So we probably need the allowance for how high the building is. Well, we got an email that said one building was in the variance that was granted by the CBA, their case number, and one building was 51 or two, and the other one was 53. I didn't see any 58s myself, but in that email that we got, did somebody, did you, Bill, did you look at the variance? I did. Well, I spoke to the town planner who advised that three of these buildings got variances in the 45 zone that were somewhat in excess of 50 feet, 50 feet two inches. I would think it would have to go at least 52 or 53. Michael, if this were adopted, and the fire chief had material concerns about the ability to fight a fire in one of these buildings, does that trump in any way the zoning? If the apparatus couldn't get far enough away for a firefighter to climb? I have to be honest and say I don't know the exact answer, but I usually date apparatus and turn it around, fire suppression. In my experience, the fire chief always gets what he or she wants, irrespective of zoning and so forth. And so if there's a, if there are two buildings that are, you know, smack next to each other and you can't get a ladder between the two buildings, for instance. Also, I suppose these are going to be sprinkler buildings and maybe they would have the concrete code change. I think we're being asked, and I personally would feel more comfortable if there were something like 35 or 45 feet with bonuses for more affordable housing or design review or things of that nature. This is kind of the thing before us, so I think. Yeah, one thing I would just say just from a legal standpoint is if you set this precedent, then you have to assume that the other groups that might not have that height are going to come and say, hey, that group got to do it at two acres. We're at four acres. So I don't, I appreciate everybody's, you know, I love development. I love development. Like this is, I am so into it. This is just not the right move. This is just not it, you know? So I, I don't know. I want to get to know Dave Watkins and be like, Dave, let's figure this out and get you what you want. This is just not, this would not be the way that I would ever advise doing it for the town. So, so this requires a two thirds vote. So we can, um, if we want some information, I'm sorry. I think we have enough information. I'm happy to move this board vote to support article OO entitled multi-family housing in 20 west sub-districts and men's maximum dimensions, because we set forth in a packet from last week. Second. Second. Okay. And I was going to say, um, we could always defer, uh, to our meeting if we still need to get more information. Or, or not take a position. Or not take a position. All right. So there any further discussion? Okay. Um, uh, Anne? No. No. Bill? Yes. Carol? Uh, yes. It's going to be the motion passes three, two, zero, correct. Bill, two, three. Bill, two, three.
Two, two, three, two, three. Oh. No abstentions. Oh, right. I had the numbers but I'm going to back this again. So now we're going to go on to the, um, I think it's, at the, we'll run this, the petitioner articles aren't natural, right? Because this is where we are. I'm at a disadvantage because my supplemental packet is not coming up at all and any notes i have on who knows where i love this so um you'll have to tell me which one that is that you want supplemental packet article tt entitled sherman's bridge second pedestrian walkway yeah um you'll recall we have spoken about all six of the sherman's bridge related articles with the two petitioners at our last meeting this is one from mr stotz and i've had occasion to speak with mr stotz speaker of my finance committee liaison and also i had occasion to speak with mr holder i think one important two important factors to be aware of that i want to highlight for you in this article is that the town on several occasions now based on feedback that they received from the abutters and nearby residents in both sudbury and whalen have gone back on multiple occasions to the massachusetts department of transportation and a number of those suggestions were incorporated into revised plans these plans are now ready to go mr holder reported to me that it would take a certain number of months to obtain the materials and then a certain number of months to actually complete the construction and in order for that to happen in this calendar year we need to proceed in this article with with some sense of haste and so i think we also spoke with mr stotz about the fact is if there were to be a second walkway at some point it would probably make more sense to not incorporate it as part of this initial project and secondly the other point i wanted to make is that in the article you know it's a hundred thousand dollar cost uh mr holder has informed me on more than one occasion that that is a very low ball number and it would most likely be on the order of multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars and i guess they are working on some type of engineering memo to give us some more details but he is very confident that it would be far north of a hundred thousand dollars and so mr stotz talked about that money potentially being raised from non-profits or privately but i don't think there is a plan in place right now to come forward with that kind of money to fund this aspect of the project so with that information i happen to answer any questions i might be able to answer
so if i may just talk in the answer i don't have my notes but like home with these finance committee write-ups on they don't say anything that you just said and that was my problem earlier because this we put it in a couple of many arguments it needs to be in the comments so the cost the whole thing like this is request is on top of a bridge repair not a renovation it's actually a deck repair deck repair thank you i'm saying i'm almost i'm going corrected me listen you guys so i think yeah hang on just one second i really need this write-up to be a lot clearer this takes kind of like oh we're just looking at a walkway i think we need to have the whole inch a lot of the process of the bridge was deemed um on the mass dot's list of the unsafe or help me out here michael um and then the two towns got together and they put together the grounds and we want the whole history on this
i've had this conversation twice under the rules of the petitioner's articles in order for the petitioner's comments to be there the finance committee has to make a report the reports more than 150 words which means pros and cons and then i mentioned i've only said this speech several times as i'm sure you can tell so i didn't have a chance to speak to the interim chair today but all of these have to have a flush out response first of all i personally think it's only fair to a resident who puts the article and then we give them a full write-up and secondly it's obviously our job to make sure that the residents have a full thing so we need to really go to something so just to be clear madam chair is your preference then for us to wait on these articles and uh until they're fully fleshed out i'm talking tt uu bb ww yeah that's fine that's it xx we're going to talk about yeah why why didn't you this is that's busy that's busy and i think what we could do to be honest with you oh it's michael's turn but i'm going to take my turn again sorry is i think maybe we should reach write something and then send it to like michael and um mr holer who have much more for that affected like facilities we've get input from mr fair on our articles so i think we should do that so so i'm hearing like you want the procedural history but you don't need that in each of the six articles you need to cut paste right because it's a lot there's also there's also procedural issues uh concerns history whatever the word i want to say is with the two agreement articles as well just though some articles may last
i would just say there's a couple things you know starting with the uh putting the second walk away mr holder and i whose name appears in a lot of these emails reminded him we're doing the deck
once you add the second walkway you're exceeding the scope of what they were looking if that's something we want to do it would reset the clock because we're spotted much bigger repair improvements substructure and we were relying at one point sherman's bridge was in the capital and the other thing we need to go is you need buying with sudberg and nasty ot on any of these things almost all of these take the one-sided position and unilateral position that wayland's going to separate wayland's going to set the bridge win it doesn't work without cooperation yet trying to save money at every resetting the clock on this or losing this money all together work with our counterparts we've reaffirmed as most recently as last week as we're still committed to moving forward in cooperation with sudbury and massdot uh to repair the top and to point about the the other two which make reference to the agreement while i don't doubt there was conversation i mean there was a select board agenda talks that a large group of residents came in and spoke at me we had gone through the archives down clerk and we cannot find anything and there's nothing in the what's filed in the registry there is a notation on one of the plans about an 18-week wideners it's pointed to but you're allowed to make the minimus takings and not necessarily all of that circumstantial evidence doesn't mean there was ever a formal meeting and a formal agreement reduced to writing notwithstanding that situations can change over time you know safety requirements change so i think the proposal that we've made honors the spirit and the intent of what everybody wants out here we're doing our best to accomplish we probably adopted 90 percent of what we continue to work with sudbury and massdot and i respect what they're trying to do uh we talked earlier mr holder and i feel it's important to make a decision moving forward to ensure that we get these funds and the matching donations of labor so that we can save the town and some money and improve the safety of that bridge i also think there are some things that could be done by the board but do not necessarily need talent to do it the legislative body i don't think can buy and can make suggestions i would be mindful of you know wordiness and giving some people some false hopes that by passing this women's electoral it's going to dictate what happened this bridge this church and in some instances governed by state law uh if mass community uh i got all that as i just stopped writing okay i'm around to help if you want some help but i think we we probably could get some really big help here on it you know and we should solicit to make a position i really want to see the write-ups i really do because to me like i said the residents deserve a whole lineup and i want to make sure that what we present for these articles matches what our votes on the page i'm just at the time and looking at the calendar and it's a nice friend
no no i'm please i really feel we need to see the full thing i really do because i want that i want to make sure he's happy with her well why it will still be we're here you know articles to do next week we're going to do including most all right let's can we go to xx please i really i really am happy please don't do this essentially says forth on a packet call
second pedestrian water discussion you know we're going to have to review the write-up next week you know that we do our packets every week i'm sorry what we review our packets every week all those in favor uh am and no sorry which did you all okay uh don't know tom no bill no i move with this board vote to support i will view you entitled chairman's bridge five tell the weight when they're essentially so forth and i'll be in a second okay any further discussion i am going to notice on this one this one eliminates a lot of vehicles um which would mean at this way size weight school buses including the wayland school buses that i do remember for my notes so are those in favor no no um no uh doug no and all carol no so zero five i move this board vote to support article bv entitled we renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreements
for the discussion is that the wv uh bv maybe we also okay uh bill looking for is it in the okay yeah i vote now yeah and what's he saying and carol no ww which is we negotiate the sherman bridge road neighborhood agreement this is uh second article i'm looking at this board vote to support articles which you just stated okay any further discussion all right i'm done and no no no bill no power
i move this board vote to support arco yy entitled increased safety reduce fear for residence and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and bridges essentially set forth on our back any further discussion um okay bill no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no okay that brings us back to xx all right that one's in the main packet i don't know the page number um page 60 i'm sorry okay so miss plum came into the petitioner here she came here she spoke to us we had some comments uh also uh carl barnes and i worked on this write-up and then uh we made some suggestions and she made some edits and it and changed it it was originally long-term facilities planning it has changed to inventory um it just softened up some of the language in here but essentially um you see in the finance committee comments we're saying that uh some of this is going to be duplicate right because section 8 of the town managers act states the town manager is responsible for maintaining an inventory of town assets and also the town's capital improvements which was established as charged with preparing both the annual capital plan as well as the long-term capital planning planning planning committee has not had an opportunity to really get the a full year and really get going and done terrific for what they've done and the time they've had but i think we need to wait and then after one year if we don't um we don't achieve this i think that makes sense this law makes makes more sense i believe the finance committee has voted um there was some support for the concept of having the inventory because this is a good thing it's a good planning tool it's good information for residents but i think that the three that voted i did not vote to support it felt that again we should allow the capital planning improvement committee to kind of get their feet under of people and then maybe revisit this another time and move this board questions no questions we have to move this board vote to support article excess and try the long-term facilities exactly any further questions okay all those in favor are done no and no bill no tom no and carol no motion does not pass zero five zero okay so now we're going to go to the article order i just want to say what we have to do next week is f which is the revolving funding waiting for information on that uh we have o we have the budget which is age we want to revisit um the long-term supply construction funding even though we've already done it and i'm pretty sure i'm down we're down for a while now the other order of our business we had to do tonight was to make sure we inserted c which we did l m and kk so i think we've got those things done that brings us now to page something earlier how about age oh it's different than the supplements they have to go on the supplements yeah page 17 was supplemental so um what happened here was doug did it i put a couple we talked about a couple edits i said i would do them in the answer state of my drafts until monday sorry uh so i didn't send it out in timely manner i apologize um the difference between these two because doug and may only add it's just that we just reconciled so that we have 52 articles accounted for those have been pulled and those you know with long what happened down the bottom so do you want to speak to me well my first question is that article that we were discussing with brian today um we have that in the consent calendar which one yeah that's fine yeah and so trying to mix up the abbreviated presentation or consent calendar articles with substantive articles in the middle and so we always start with recognized citizens but then we've got a full now 10 now plus 8 articles in the consent calendar our first consent calendar which took financial articles and then we go into the budget because we have to take a vote on those financial related articles before the budget and we go back to a shorter consent calendar before what i call administrative articles and then we have the big vote on mwra if it still so exists and then a list of the abbreviated presentation procedure articles which will hopefully still allow us on this first night to move into the discussion about holiday road and then my next question is about the easements article is that something that will actually take 15 20 minutes um hopefully 50 minutes um and then if you know if we if time still permits on that first night we'll move into the town clerk articles but i know carol was hoping that i move up those three select board articles that you see there in the bottom part of your screen in the back of this list here and what i was trying to figure out is could i move a couple of the petitioners articles up so yeah around that agreement the 1971 agreement so called i moved those up from the end to earlier indeed in 19 but happy to take any suggestions
yeah i think i was saying that um b i i s s b b i think those could be abbreviated they don't have they can go in the wrong group but they could also be abbreviated of course two clerk ones and the authorization of green burial yeah i don't know because i presented green burials last time on a single green burial and we got several questions try to do it as abbreviated but the topic piqued people's interest all right let's do the other two of them as abbreviated yeah i can just add them to the abbreviated down probably moving down here i do think we need to move the sherman bridge articles or the petitioner articles up all of them isn't that what we said last week this should be the last the sherman's bridge yeah they moved up two but they're still uh 42 i'm happy to move them up but i'm two-thirds forward on time right see that's the thing here also we'll push those ones something has to go to the end why don't we take these um these last abbreviators put them down to the end but that that doesn't really do much it doesn't matter on the timing it's just the on the seats abbreviated yeah called plenty water bills down the bottom you know you want me to move some way up you know it's fascinating because when the first time they're doing these they said don't put all the different like all the many articles together and don't put all the cpa boxes and we start spraying them around and get them all spread around and they'd be our owners would say why did you do that it's now we've got them all back together again we may only have substantive discussions on the second night these petitioners articles if we get through the budget which we obviously will on the first day and we get through mwra we happen to get through 25 poly wrote like three subs and what just really leaves the petitioners articles as substantive discussions and we can't get through all of those on the first night if each of them take more than 15 or 20 minutes so that's the issue that they're somewhere and they tune no matter where we yeah yeah not being really fan okay i think that but they i defer i was just going to say i was just going to say one of doug and i yeah is everybody comfortable this because we really need to get this into the kelsey and jalen so we can start formatting do we need a vote on this guys i know no we're all set everybody's good okay let's go to the next thing the next item is proofreading of the warrant so we're going to have a lot of proofreading and i think some things have come in that we think could be proofread and we're looking for some volunteers i'm happy to prove it okay um bill you know what's in because i think is the planning board reports right now they cancel yes yeah would you would you be willing to do those sure okay so kelsey will send those and we'll get those proofread and we might have some other ones okay um now we are the next item is we have received um what page are we on number 12. which packet uh main uh the main packet that's paid in the 87. it blows my mind on what we're doing i won't believe we're still here so the edc had come to speak to us back in november and then they said they would like to come back to us in february that was before we put you know 52 articles into the warrant and i don't know time scheduled to get them done so um they have worked really hard and i'll let tom speak to this they did a couple of these a couple fly sheets here that they've put together and um they would like to distribute them and um see them before they did them send them out now we are going to have a conversation with them again because they still want to come back and talk to us about some of the items but we just as you can see we're here for hours again tonight we just um a lot going on a lot going on thank you and we are going to have a lot going on next week hopefully after that we will be able to fit some of these things back in it's frustrating to me as well we're asking people to know tom do you want to take it please so this is a uh i'll call it a i'm not just really a newsletter but it's a kind of fact sheet that edc felt would be helpful for residents to review and kind of further appreciate wayland's tax base what makes it up how we compare with other communities you can see they mentioned this density and i think it's instructive and helpful uh given a lot of conversations in town these days relevant to projects in town we have challenges with our budget it just it just informs people and i think it's kind of consistent with the edc's role is trying to improve economic development i think it's 1.9 percent of our acreage in town this they have other things they want to chat with us about and get our blessing on since they are advisory and they're anxious together i think in an effort to streamline newsletter type communication like this comfortable from the edc liaison as it's tom at least for people have the discussion again after the election but i don't know every time a communication goes out edc still recognizing there the board and slack board the slack board needs to discuss deliberating vote on an email but curious to go to another
because i would defer to michael he has had frequent contacts with the edc and uh being a better one so far what has i have no problem working with as you know we have a couple and bc and hrdic and
ecc yes sometimes they'll come to me and add that they want to do something and say i really think you should i have no problem working with them and if you want to say michael i'm happy with you jane and working with them something you may say oh guess what uh we typed this up and we're going to send this out today we're we're going to put it on the town's web page or do you mind if we put it on the town's web page i usually say let's just check with that's the position i've taken sometimes what they want to do is great to question if it's exactly what it wants to do and i'm not signaling out any one of the other messages i don't disagree with and i still think that that still in power liaising feels comfortable well a little bit differently on this as you already know for a conversation um there are things in here that i'm not comfortable with and even though tom very gracious to share these with me for example what we're working on here it says if you're a data junkie see our initial presentation we share with the finance from the slur board and you can link on here for their discussions there were mistakes in those numbers they weren't vetted by the town and in fact the residents on orchard lane have used those numbers in emails that i've had to answer and defend so i really feel we need to see a lot of these things because i want to make sure we don't accidentally tom has wonderful judgments not that we all i don't know i don't have all the facts and it is for example right well supported in the end but i think this is a good point because this is a learning experience now for us is how because we want to have them you know keep us advised we have to be available more and um we've we've had a lot of extra things happen to these agendas the last it's just been it's so unfortunate we don't get to them i'm also uncomfortable with a sentence that says encouraging density in the group 20 west area perhaps refining our mbta communities only to put it to better one for use for us this is planning for that has passed before we put something up like that but then i'm going to get what we're going to get a dozen emails on but it shouldn't really be in there right yeah but i i want that number thing on it and then also we're going to do a survey so keep your eye up for surveys and we said last year we would allow one so i just it's just some of these things like this and needed a terrific job getting this the weird first sheet is terrific but i really feel we need to see these because these comes back on us they bounce back on the staff and there's numbers that are around right sales field we could potentially continue to create a login and because as you point out there's so much that's on our plate i think it i think it's unreasonable for every communication that goes out has to be reviewed by all of the select board i think that we need to somewhat liaison but we actually have to empower these boards to point through the members of these boards and so there there can only be so much of a level of micromanagement unless you're going to have these boards be frustrated that we have to be able to have faith in the boards to run somewhat with with what they want and their agenda to be and operationalize their agenda and if we don't do that it's really unfair too much coming through us and as we become a bottom advisory but um maybe on some major so when you have an advisory communication going out that's going to upset another board but we're trying to get a better working relationship and it has numbers in it that haven't been vetted so i really think this is a two-way street
i'm somebody of the belief that you let it you work through the kinks by doing it and you will find a more uh processed plan going forward meaning you know what doug can do this and then if it gets messed up then we know what to keep an eye out for but we become more efficient move faster you go faster it's not isn't like i mean i was all for the surveys i thought the survey i think that is an example of how it can go real bad trying to micro advantage that thing was so basic and so easy and we could have interpreted those questions to death and made it difficult and it had really important information if you if you talk to people in wayland right now they remember that survey and they remember that as a moment where they could share their thoughts and yet it was something that was like pulling teeth to get done so i'm all for trying this and seeing how it goes and not only trusting that if if doug gives feedback to economic development board that they'll listen but i i trust economic development board to do what we know they're going to do which is push the limits but then respect when we ask them to change things and i like that and i like that autonomy so my one of my issues with surveys is that a lot of folks are not computer literate my husband for example so i don't find them 100 inclusive and that's one of our guiding principles of how we operate so i don't want that to become a way of how we communicate all the time that's perfect and then you try it out and then from now future surveys and make sure that there's hard copies so i also think some of this information could maybe just go right in the like that first sheet they had but like go right in the regular town newsletter rather than have their own so anyway anybody up top bill you didn't speak up well i do think there needs to be something or some review right and whether it's the entire board or the liaison working with jalen you know sometimes these things go out they're construed to be the town's policy and we'll work on these things or advocates true believers sometimes want to lead from the friends and in ways that so but but i take doug's point that dpw advice on that so um so i i i'm personally comfortable with the liaison asking the committee's working with the aways on great so i did have one of the positive suggestions one thing i think it would be great if they included was only businesses in town we want people to support you know because how do you know what's opened in town per se about the bus so it's uncomfortable with this is going out with taking those couple items out if you're good with that and then maybe add that one other good idea in and i'll proceed and i'll also work with the town manager of college called faction and his staff thank you for doing it yes thank you all right so you don't want to tell me i'll just report no no we're not um comments have an item added into the agenda here we'll move 10 things to another week i mean good yeah yeah right i was just thinking about the conversations we've had regarding projects in town that are being done part of the dover amendment and i think we have very good town council the issues are being presented i just thought we were in discussion see where the members of the board felt i'm a special council or individual who specializes a substantial amount of experience in this type of project to provide the town we've seen too many you know spring sjc cases of all the municipalities and customers in addition sometimes when you get something compromises can i just wanted to make some of this out you know seeing this in your world you yourself as a real state person and i just wanted to the idea i personally have no experience in projects uh my observation has been that uh uh proponents uh seeking dover amendment protection uh are certainly out there i don't know defense people in this power also i gather that if a suit is filed then uh is it to be against some of them like the planning board of the zoning board of appeals well the decision is a proponent and i think that town got along sometimes lawsuits occur what i see the value in special council is to prevent such loss is to prevent such loss when the committees are comfortable with the decisions because it's when i'm standing the walls is this something that can move somewhat nimbly or does this have to go technically legal services are going to do a particular firm that i can say that i've sat on a couple of chairs that have spoken to the council about me because they are very much ones are finding someone who's special to do something if we follow them one or two we have some bios and some comments on the sjc or something like decisions regarding who the town uses for the select board i think under the town manager act used the town council so special yeah right wouldn't we engage this personally so this this just sort of popped up obviously on the revised agenda so because it did attract some questions as to what we're doing this is as we go through these dual and then right not necessarily in the beginning of the plannings and the permits and all that this is as we go through the process in the process all right should we take a vote then please happy to move to this board with your authority town manager at his discretion any further discussion i just suggest that your decision consult with the zoning board with anything for the discussion yes donna carol yes that's five zero thank you for the wonderful suggestion thank you okay now we are moving on to the town manager chair um really all i have is just to remind folks that my town manager office hours will be at 5 30 on the 23rd here in the town offices because we're meeting so if you're looking like should something come up i'll be i have several things in the works but okay let's go to consent calendar for february march night and you were one of all this year
thank you no there's no discussion almost in favor bill yes tom yes yes and carol yes i think i don't think there are any minutes in the pandemic okay so the table minutes and that brings us to correspondence this is any questions or comments and correspondence okay we will want to go to the courts um yeah no no did you have a concern no we're not our concerns listen you expressed a million concerns then all right go ahead concern article dd how do we feel about management ah i'll have to go back to the topic level again all right i want to let's i just get my report first and then i'll reopen it okay number one we're going to add in we're going to add into the schedule march 30th i originally thought april 6th then i realized that it was march 30th so there'll be a regular meeting we are going to after next week we are moving to every other week was that a problem did you tell me no did you say twice a month three hours or less please sometimes you're three mondays in a month
the other thing i want to mention which i didn't mention last time was after the joint meeting with the planning board i said i would follow up with the chair for the administrative you know components with bills following the rest and it became apparent to me that you know in the meeting that they had some some zoning that areas that they thought the areas that were like zoning dollar changes for the route 20 project this is part of the route 20 plan and the hold up is they don't have have any labor so i asked her to put together you know they don't have the time of the capacity to do it so i asked her the chair to put together for us uh a scope of what would be involved in how many hours it is you know whatever blah blah blah blah and as soon as they finish doing all the reports and the hearings for these silver projects and their reports for the town meeting they will get back to us and we can look at that and i'm hoping that we can find some money maybe and hire someone and get that moving that's okay that's one thing okay so now what i'd like to do is before we're doing i'd like to go back to item number 11. i believe that
yeah just to talk continue our discussion of the 26th and you tell me any discussions go ahead um well you wanted to talk about it strikes me that strongly that there ought to be joint management or query should we accede to that request i'm not suggesting that the specific language in europe doesn't need some work what is this what what makes up makes select board feel that they have control over the property everything i read said that it was controlled by school committee i don't think anyone thinks the select board controls the property and i just think that there's a piece of property that's been that was acquired for school purposes in 1956 and has been off the tax rolls for 70 years hasn't been put to productive use and the moment is propitious to consider how it might be developed and uh to today uh the school committee and its predecessors have not seen the need to uh explore alternatives um they're now engaged in a process of looking at at sites uh and there may not prove to be a viable candidate but in the meantime i think it would be well for somebody to look at options other uh including but not limited to schools such as housing that would uh generate revenue so that's my so i think that was the genesis of the article and your point was that that when um miss gibbons was pressing was more of the expertise for a housing study i think they are specialists in education and uh but does it preclude both of our boards i don't i don't think it does it you know as drafted it arguably has uh board has veto one group has veto power over the other but as a practical matter i suspect that it would be the case that it's going to be kind of a technical exercise and somebody will draft a scope services and there'll be comments and all that but i don't think anyone is is suggesting that there'd be any action by town meeting or this board that would change the uh designation of care and custody of the property it's just what's what's the uh possibly what are the realm of possibilities yeah but i'm confused if if school committee has control and you would like to explore other options that would benefit the town shouldn't we be just doing it jointly the way it's set up i think that's a valid argument personally i just want to get it done so i'm happy i'm happy to which i think may be a point to and i'm happy to i have no objection to this jointly presented i would just like the language to be and i'm not really sure i see it now where provision sufficient engineering studies it does say studies does say planning that's the analysis and so maybe it's maybe it's sufficient but um this is so that money can be used so that when this study is done both the school committee will have a sense as to whether a school structure can go there and the town will have a sense as to what else can be going to pass a recreation probably not marching courts exactly pick a ball so whatever just i mean with me making all these suggestions but whatever we decide to come forward if we don't sell the property or we you know have the developer come in and do the building it becomes a capital project you know i mean i sell races and we'll have to go back to the sipsi group for prioritization and we have a lot of law i live a lot of needs at the moment so you know well true but if it if the schools decide they don't want the property right it doesn't work for them but the town decides our board decides that it's prudent for housing to help our right on that case we don't because we're selling the property we're having to develop but if we decide to build a field there or the ball and that's why i found this interesting but not really when we refer to things like passive recreation and fields and other school uses i don't know the best sense of the article because um i want to go back to my original point there's we only have one little bucket of money here we don't have like a you know huge budget here so we'll try this if it doesn't mixture we can try something else and so that's a big concern for me and um you know when the article reads uh and then down here talks all these things we're going to do move i propose that we working on this article could have further discussions with the school committee to see whether there can be a modification to the article they're both in love with and if there can't then we have a separate article and then i'm going to make a decision i would um i would second that idea but i also would say that that when it comes down to it environmental integrity is going to be very key in the the overall site plan and that's going to um absolutely apply to any residential project or school projects so that might just be the best entry point and maybe that's what the article becomes about for whoever those people are that's going to talk to school committee because we could find ourselves in a position where remember the standards of school for environmental are higher than residential so that information could just really be helpful and i agree with you but i wouldn't want to limit it limited environmental in particular because from what i know of the property it doesn't seem to be near or part of a what i'll call an environmentally hot area right for example it's not next to the middle school where we now know that there's some you know excess PFAS numbers right that's just an example right and uh so but i i think that i i'm fine with keeping including environmental review do that within the two hundred thousand dollars that's fine yeah just remember um remember tom when you're doing environmental sometimes it's about the quality of the soil uh so what you can build on it and it come it becomes a drainage part of the drainage plan so when i say environmental i don't mean like just like oh is there PFAS i'm that but that's that basic outline that helps with the site plan okay gotcha all right so the way the article was written it really is as to their point a school committee article and it's an afterthought you know for the affordable housing it's absolutely way down on the list um there's also i think we ought to think about this i'm sure families already noticed this but uh with respect to the assessment of potential future use of housing analysis we'll improve in all this analysis i don't know we're doing a high level right if we're going to be that and then potential impacting schools and so on i don't know we seem to have um yeah i think we need to look at that because i don't know that we have enough money to do that nor do i know if we'd have enough detail and and and my thing is why do that so back to your bill sense of the board on the question of joint management i i i don't i don't need as long as he has to be achieved and they have the staff and the individuals to to participate witness are you defined joint management because this joint management here is it says under the joint direction you tell me what that means what happens then if we we want to do x it's on the table and you think it should be at i want to do x and the school committee member says they don't want to do x that's why i was suggesting about having one end of the initial maybe there could be a working group town manager like a fair tom holder number
i know that you have to appreciate it right right it's about communication and information
give you a sense well kind of it's uh better to uh beg forgiveness than ask permission that's just stay until next monday yeah happy to move this port adjourn at uh grand time 10 21 10 21 i'll second it all those in favor and aye yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes