March 16, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
March 16, 2026 - Select Board
Good evening. As chair of the select board, I'm going to call the meeting of the select
board of March 16, 2026 at 6.31 p.m. to order. This meeting may be recorded, and if recorded,
will be made available to the public on WCAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Public will be excluded from executive session, however, there is none scheduled for this
evening. Pursuant to chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person
and via remote access in accordance with that law. Because we have remote access, you may
access the meeting with the link on the Wayland Town calendar or on the agenda. Required by law
or allowed by chair, person's mission to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the
meeting may do so here in the town building or by via remote access. Public comment should be
limited to two minutes per person. Tonight's agenda, the first item will be a swimming in of our new
police officer, followed by announcements, public comment, a review, and discuss on the Sherman Bridge
Road traffic study. We will have a discussion with the potential vote to accept an anonymous gift
of historical 20 signs. We will interview a gentleman who is interested in joining the Council on Aging.
At approximately 7.15, we hope to turn our attention to tonight's main order of business, which is to
finish up votes and discussions on the 2026 Annual Town Meeting articles. At 8.15, we will have a
liquor license discussion, an update that needs to be done for the license for terrain. We will have a
discussion and potential next steps of the volunteer-led model, facilitated community dialogue, known as the
Wellesley Civil Discourse Initiative, Town Manager Report, Consent Calendar, Minutes of February 23rd and
March 2nd, 2026, Review Correspondence, Any Select Boys Reports and Concerns. There are no topics
on anticipated by the chair 48 hours in advance and hopefully about 9-10 we will adjourn. I do want to
indicate that before I continue that all the agenda items are approximate and the items may or may not be
discussed in the order of the time listed and all topics are subject to deliberation and vote. Joining me in the
meeting room this evening is Mr. Whitney and Mr. Levine. Ms. Bransley is not able to join us this evening and
Mr. Bay will be joining us briefly around 7 around 7.15 for a few minutes as his schedule allows and
myself, Carol Martin. We are also joined by our Town Manager Michael McCall and our Assistant Town Manager
Calcium Pulse for that. Okay, so having done all of that, I'd like to turn that off. I think
Woody's Chief, Mr. Hayward, we'd like to come up and we'd like to come up and we'd like to
floor to you. Oh, great. I'd like to introduce a lawyer that we've done recently. She actually started
on the road today after coming up to us last week. We got all of her in-service done through the state. She got
her MPPC post-certification on Friday and we started her on FTO today out on the road as a patrol officer
where she'll be with one of our officers who works at Split Shift with Officer Jennifer Stoller. She comes
to us from Florida. She has a family connection to Wayland. Her grandparents lived here for about 60
years before her and her family moved to Natick where she was raised. So she was raised close by over
in Natick. She became a Natick police officer in 2017. She left the state in 2022 to follow family
down to Florida. She reached out to us when she was interested in coming back to Massachusetts and we
went through the process and offered her the job and was able to get her MPPC post-certification. So we're
happy to have her up here and working with us. She's in her free time. She likes to spend her time with
friends and family. She's very active, goes to the gym, runs, hike, going to the beach and anything
outdoors. She played hockey for a long time. She actually volunteered to coach in Natick for hockey.
So she has connections to the community there. She spent a lot of time going to the schools in Natick
as a police officer and forward to her continuing those activities and volunteer on building connection
to the community and being a good community service officer with us. And yeah, I'd like to introduce
her to the board and have her sworn in Tracy.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
What's that?
Go ahead.
Are you ready?
Yes.
Of course.
Please raise your hand ma'am. Do you Jennifer Stoller have some of the firm that you will support the constitution of the United States of America, the constitution and laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the laws and fordinance of the town of Wayland, the rules and the regulations of the Wayland Police Department. And you will, to the best of your ability, faithfully perform the duties of the police officer in and for the town of Wayland during your continuance of office. Thank you to sign here. Yeah. Chief. So sign the official book, Ray, the memo space, because I get everything else for you. Yeah.
Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll hold on to it. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Congrats and congratulations.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Do you have any announcements on the board? We are going to have a forum on April 7th at the Council on Aging on the long-term water supply project. Thank you. This will be in advance, obviously, of the town meeting to, you know, get some extra information, questions asked. It was seven. I believe that's seven at the COA. Right? Yeah. I also want to turn this over maybe to Kelsey. Do we want to talk about the transfer station survey? It is coming. We're still, she gathered all of the responses from the different working group members on their response to the draft, and she is still working on that, and will probably provide us an update within, I'm hoping, within the next week or so on how to move forward, depending on when we finalize that draft of the survey that will be placed in our newsletter, if time allows, but on our website, on social media, we hope to have also maybe some printed versions for people who have difficulties accessing the internet or prefer to do things in paper, and we also plan to have little flyers, or not flyers, but little 4x6 cards with a QR code so that people can take that with them if they visit our building or the COA or any of the other buildings, so that we can get the biggest response rate that we can get. Terrific. Any public comments? Is there any public comments?
Public comments? Yes, I see one person's hand raised. Eliza Carter. Sure. And Ms. Carter, I recognize you.
There we go. Sorry about that. Okay. Hi, everybody. I sent you something about my article, so I hope you can read that in the emails. But I wanted to talk about something else briefly. In light of the current illegal war that's costing taxpayers over $2 billion a day, I believe, and climate threats that serious economists have pointed out serious conditions may come very quickly with estimated financial collapse of insurance companies, which affects home buyers not being able to be able to get mortgages and collapse to the real estate market. And then, of course, we have the oil embargo kind of thing happening right now in the Middle East. I'm a little concerned about whether this is a great time to be updating the personnel bylaws and wage classification, particularly on a study that didn't compare the town's number with all the towns compared with Wayland, nothing was discussed about the number of taxpayers in those towns, the growth of those towns compared with Wayland growth, the town budgets, what they were at, or the kind of anticipated huge expenses, such as we are facing in Wayland now with the big water project and the recent bond that was taken out last year and the other bond that we're already paying off. So I just wanted to express my concern about this being the best time or not to bring this to town meeting. Maybe a better study that looks more carefully at when making comparisons and makes that clear to us might be a better idea because we are a small town with a small number of taxpayers and we're all a lot of increases. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Is there anybody else we want to offer a comment? All for a comment. All right. Wait a second. I wanted to see if there's someone over here. We all sit over here? Yeah, there's nobody online. I recognize Mr. Stutz. Chair. Thank you. Hi, I'm Doug Stutz of 39 Sherman's Bridge Road and I'd like to thank the select board for placing Sherman's Bridge Road on your agenda for tonight's meeting and for asking and impacting Chief Hebert to participate. My own belief is that no further traffic studies are needed for the select board to take action. Two studies have already been commissioned by the municipal project team working on the bridge repairs. Both compellingly demonstrate the magnitude of both the speeding and rush hour traffic issues on our scenic road. These studies also confirm that the current rickety bridge decking does slow vehicles crossing the bridge today and that they accelerate significantly by the time they reach 66 Sherman's Bridge Road about 500 feet to the east. I continue to believe that the right first steps for the select board to take are first, designate the quarter mile of Sherman's Bridge Road from the bridge east to number 51 as a traffic safety zone, which Massachusetts law grants you the sole authority to do so, with a speed limit of 20 miles per hour. Second, follow the example of Weston. Those of you who know the shortcut to Home Depot and Costco know that Lexington Street and Weston has been posted for its point eight mile length as being closed to commercial vehicles of over two and a half tons weight. This would allow the town of Wayland and the select board to act unilaterally to legally restrict these vehicles on Sherman's Bridge and Sherman's Bridge Road without the complications of involving Sudbury potentially mass dot on a limit on the bridge itself. And being realistic and pragmatic, I think that a five ton weight limit might be more realistic enforceable and, you know, a better idea than two and a half. I also request that the Board of Public Works be asked by the select board, since they have the sole authority in the town bylaws over traffic calling measures, to install speed tables at both hilltops on the road. These speed tables, along with a four-way stop sign at the Oxford Road intersection, will require motors to slow or stop three times over the 0.7 mile length of Sherman's Bridge Road. Mr. Stotts, if you can wrap up and we can take a copy of it as well. I will. Placing them in the hilltops minimizes the hazards of cyclists and places them where oncoming traffic is the most difficult to see. They would also install the appropriate signage, uh, bicycle sheriffs, etc. Sorry. I'm sorry. You're right. I already had two tires. Sorry. Let me get a little teeny bit more. Unfortunately, when we do that, it does come out. Yeah. Next time I'll talk to the FedEx guy. Exactly. Thank you. I think we have that email already. Um, the Board received that email prior. I'm, I'm, I'm nothing if not consistent. Thank you. Anybody else want to provide a public comment? And there's nobody else online, right? Somebody. No, I see someone right here. I'm sorry? Is there someone else? Yeah, it says I. It says I. It says I is on the bottom top. Yeah, let's try. Go ahead and make sure that they identify themselves. Yeah. Hello. Could you please identify yourself? Oh, I'm Sheila Corbett. I live at 72 Sherman Bridge Road. And, um, I'm really concerned with the speed as Doug was saying. Um, and I really think that, and since the police is there, police chief is there, um, it would be a good time to talk about signage, because I think they could do, you know, legally be, um, add, add signage to the road. But we really need signs for, um, sharp curves, because the curve is very sharp. And as people come down it, my husband would be walking the dog, and they literally come down flight at 40 miles an hour. And he's almost been hit several times. Um, and also the speed limit again. Um, and also there are children on the road and there should be a sign, you know, children at play. Um, and there also should be, um, another sign for the wildlife crossing. We have a lot of wildlife in the area, and there's no signage. There is also one sign at the, um, uh, stop, stop sign that says 25 miles an hour. There isn't another sign, uh, speed limit sign, all the way to the bridge, going towards the bridge. There's not another speed limit sign, and there is a sharp curve. So I think people just step on the gas as they either go, um, east or west on the road. So it's really important because of the sharp curve, people are walking their dogs, people are going down to the river, um, to go fishing, um, that there needs to be some kind of, um, safety going on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else before I should, uh, close it. It's good now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the next agenda item we have is to invite, um,
Captain, please, to our favorite backup, which will come up and speak to us. And I think we want to discuss and review traffic study and then, and possibly have a discussion about some next steps. So I think there's some different information for those who are following along in our packet. I think it's on about seven. Thank you.
I'm happy to start off the discussion. So, um, as we know, acting chief Haybert started as chief, um, the end of December, uh, I had worked with prior chief, Chief Berman. As you know, we had several conversations and we had a meeting out in Sudbury of some of the residents. And at one point it came up about should we conduct some traffic studies in that area. And chief Berman had put up, um, the stealth radar to do some of these that were done, um, last fall. So the information contained in your packet is, uh, the study that was done at that time. And, uh, we would have the acting chief here to talk about in the next steps if the board wish to see some additional data. I would just say there were some comments that were made, um, in public comments about the speeding and signage. And I will say from my experience here in other towns, and when I was the assistant town manager tasked with traffic and signage in another community, there's a delicate balancing act because while there's signage, there's also aesthetics. I mean, you want to make sure everybody's safe, but if you start putting up too many signs about children, corners, wildlife, then you'll get the inverse. You'll get people or the converse, people saying there's too much signage on a particular road. So one of the challenges that we're going to have here, as we've talked about, and it will come up later in the articles, this is a, a road that leads to a bridge that connects to communities. And as Ms. Power Sproulette now knows through her research, there are mass DOT regulations. There's also, um, a document called the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. And there's specifically Massachusetts amendments, which talks about the types of truck restrictions that Mr. Stotts referred to, and how certain signs can be put up. And there are all these other logs that were referred to by some of the prior speakers. So there's a delicate balancing act that one has to do that the select board does have the authority to set some of these, but there are exceptions because of the type of road where it's connecting to another community. So, uh, just have to bear that all in mind as we go through this process. But we have the acting chief here. I thought it'd be prudent to bring him here if the board wanted to hear an explanation about what the results were here and whether or not you wanted something else, uh, done between now and, say, time. Yeah. Um, but from looking at the speed studies that we conducted in September and October, uh, obviously one from the week of October from the 2nd to the 6th, it doesn't really show, uh, any issue in the area as far as the average speed being 27 miles per hour. It's not similar to that. I would put additional police officers. However, the one from this 27th to the 2nd, we're getting up into 31, uh, kind of breaking five, six miles over for an average speed, um, of the 85th percentile, you know, in the 35, uh, range with a good amount, you know, decent amount going from the 35 to 40, which is usually when we start enforcement on a 25 mile per hour zone. Um, so we've done a lot of directed patrols up there. I don't have specific numbers at the moment of how much we've done up there. We've done it for the stop signs. The stop signs have seemed to reduce the speed a little bit as far as cars coming out of the, uh, intersection with Alpine Road there. Um, I'm not sure if we've done a study in the bend as we get to the river. Um, we could look there and see if, you know, cars are exceeding the 25 mile per hour in that zone, you know, additional signage as far as a sharp curve is something I'd be willing to look at and kind of, uh, say, you know, uh, might be not necessary, but could be useful in that area. Um, especially with pedestrians walking on the road. I know the sidewalk terminates kind of right as you get to that curve there, which would pushes people into the roadway instead of on the sidewalk. So those portion of the sidewalk signage will be, would be useful and where the sidewalk terminates, we could look at some advisory signage there. Um, so people could slow down going around the curve, approaching the, uh, the bridge, but I don't have any speed, uh, data sets. I think from that location, um, once I've missed it here. Um, so we could do another, you know, short study beginning of the spring here and kind of look at the average speeds through that, uh, curve that approaches the bridge for that quarter mile as stated before. Comments from the board? Chief, I, uh, question for you, um, based on prior experience, because I don't recall having been engaged in this process on my first term on the board and certainly I haven't been in this most recent term. Have you, um, presented ever on a recommendation for a reduction in speed limit similar to this, where it would be a five mile per hour reduction? And if so, did that have any impact? I don't have any experience about myself either of reducing signage and if it has a requisite impact on actual speeds on the road. Um, I've never participated in the study that shows one way or the other. Um, I know that speed is a concern in other parts of the town as well. Um, so I think it's something that we could address. Again, signage doesn't always affect behavior, uh, unfortunately. And I just don't have the data showing, you know, pre and post posting of a new speed limit, what it actually does to the speeds on that road. And because I'm just curious, it's not like we'd be moving from 35 miles per hour to 20. This would be a five mile per hour reduction. Right. And I'm, I'm wondering if there's any data out there and if that, that small reduction has any type of meaningful impact on driver behavior. Yeah, I'm, I'm not sure myself. I'm willing to do the research on it and present at another time. If we want to see if, uh, you know, signage versus behavior is something, um, we can find some good peer reviewed research on out there. Thank you. Chief, it, uh, strikes me, uh, that you have a lot of experience, uh, during your time on the force and previously. Yeah. Uh, with, uh, roadways in the town, pardon me, uh, many of which don't have sidewalks. And I don't, it's a fair question, but do you have a kind of sense of where Sherman Bridge road stacks up, uh, relative to other, uh, street there, town, uh, roads in the town, uh, as far as volume of traffic, speed of traffic, uh, safety concerns. I'd say the volume of traffic, it definitely is one of the higher volume, uh, roads in the town as a, you know, we'll, uh, cut through road and it's people coming from Sudbury to Wayland and say it's probably similar to, uh, the Gleason road kind of cut through that we've seen over the years. And that's probably its best analog is Gleason road going from Concord into Weston. You have the same type of concerns where there's no sidewalks in that area, uh, for the Gleason road, uh, area. Uh, it's not really comparable to route 30 or any other sidewalked, uh, or cut throughs, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's okay. Mr. McClendon, do you want to speak before? Yeah, just one thing I think I'd be remiss, uh, if I didn't mention that although Mr. Holder is not here from DPW, um, I think there's a mention of, uh, traffic tables. Whenever we talk about traffic calming that involves, uh, raising pavement, putting in bumps or things that, that tends to be an impediment to DPW, especially in which time when plowing, um, one thing I, you know, I have noticed I've been out there and there are narrow points on that road. And when you look at traffic calming devices, and I have another community narrowing the road, it's often a way to do that. And the road, despite what we're seeing, unfortunately, it is a narrow road already. Um, a lot of times you want to take a wider road and make it more narrow with sidewalks or create a pinch point. Sometimes they'll put a diamond in the middle of forest traffic to slow down and things. Um, the fact that it's narrow and tree-lined, it almost serves as a natural, uh, calming device. Unfortunately, they don't appear, you know, that, that, that has always been the case. But, but I just wanted to stress the point about, uh, DPW would most likely take a wider down to, like, folks. It creates problems when we start putting your dishes on for favor. So over the weekend, um, Levin and I went with someone else who asked me if I had, um, been on the board when some traffic recommendations had been made. And I actually, it's true. One actually was on Sherman Bridge Royal where I think we added, uh, recently, a, uh, stop sign and a crosswalk, quickly, where they intersects with Alpine because it's a school bus stop. And yeah, and the other was at the, again, at the request of residents. And then again, the residents requested over Pemberton. Um, I don't believe it was, it was more, uh, putting in more stump signs and one of those signs that flashing river speed. I travel on Pemberton. I see that flashing a lot and it's a very good reminder to be honest with you. Um, so, um, what is the sense of the board? Um, I think that, I mean, we've had a couple good recommendations there myself and one is to perhaps have another look-see at the bend, that quarter of a mile at the bend. I don't think that's a good idea to have a study done there. And then maybe look at possibly if some signs were warranted for that, that section. Does that sound like a good next step? Is the process when you worked on those two, um, traffic calming measures, that residents would bring it to the chief? The chief would conduct an analysis for the study and then the chief would come forward with a recommendation? Help me out here. I think what happened was the residents may have gone either to the UW or they may have gone to the chief with them. Those two collaborated me and gathered the information and their recommendation for asking this. And then they came to the select board and we voted. Okay. Which I think is a good thing because quite frankly, I don't think I'm a traffic, uh, uh, consultant. I would have been a consultant. You're a traffic commissioner. Exactly. No, I'm a fence viewer. So is everybody in agreement that that's what we should do. And then perhaps that could take place, you know, in the next, uh, few weeks. I could, because I do recall having conversations with a number of residents, my first term on the board and they were all related to issues on plane road. And so then the residents would meet with at the time, um, chief Irving, I think at the time, and then chief Swan and then nothing became of it because we never got any formal recommendation from either chief before the board. So I would, I would want to hear. Yeah. I mean, I think that we, we obviously need the recommendation from the chief and the director of public events or assistant director, because they are the ones that implement this. They're the ones that handle it day to day. So everybody's good with that. I'm, I think that's it. Mr. McCauley, you're comfortable with this strategy? All right. Thank you. We'll see you. Let us know when you're ready and I'll put you back on a future agenda. I appreciate that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So my next agenda item is going to be, um, discussion about a exceptionally anonymous, going to explore it recently. We're going to invite General Braddocker, our management analyst communications coordinator to speak on behalf of the anonymous donor. And do I guess there's some page 11, I think the background information that Jalen has done for us is in the packet. Correct. And then following that on page, what is they both say on 12, is a, is a couple pictures or diagrams here of the actual signage that we would have. So, so we'll just wait one session to tell you what it's weird. Jalen, thank you. Hello. Yeah, no problem. Um, so as Carol said, um, the donor would like to remain anonymous. Um, I have been working with the donor on this. Um, so they would like to donate, um, they would like, the donor would like to donate, um, to historic Route 20 signs to be placed on Route 20. Um, so during the Wayland's 375th birthday, the owner, uh, and the founder of historic Route 20 came to Wayland to show off these signs and give a presentation about placing them in Wayland. Um, at that time, the committee thought it was a good idea, but they didn't go forward with purchasing just because it wasn't the right time for them. Um, and now due to Wayland 250, um, the donor expressed interest again, that, um, they would like to display these signs. Um, and the intent behind the donation is to highlight our part on the notable, uh, highway. Um, Route 20 runs from Boston to Oregon. So there, there's a lot of signs throughout the United States, um, locally because I drive by it on my way home. There is on one on Route 20 in Marlboro and Sudbury, and then there's one in Marlboro and North row. Um, and there's a picture of that on the second page. Um, the donor wants to purchase two 12 by 18 signs, um, from the historic Route 20 signs website. Um, each signs made to order with highway grade metal. Um, they're pre-drilled and they're improved for highway use. Um, I've spoken with Tom Holder about this. DPW is very receptive to installing the signs, um, when the ground is gone. Um, so one of the signs will be installed on the Wayland-Weston side and then the Wayland-Sudbury lines so that it would face the, um, people who are driving in when they enter Wayland. Um, the only thing that DPW asks is if the board approves, um, to notify the board of public works as a courtesy, um, and then additionally notify MassDOT, but Tom Holder has indicated that MassDOT will not have an issue with these signs being installed. Um, and we appreciate your consideration. Thank you. So hold on one second. So also after you look at the signs on page, um, from page 13 and 14 are our, um, gift policy. And in particular on page 14, you'll see the criteria for accepting donations. Um, and, um, yes. Now, does anybody have any comments about what you would like to stop? Oh, I'd like to offer a motion, though, that, uh, the Select Board, uh, accept the gift from the anonymous donor with gratitude. Second. Thank you. Okay. So good to see what we don't have any more call tonight. Sorry. Just us, us chickies. So all those in favor say hi. Hi. I think she passes tweet zero. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, when I sent out the note tonight, uh, for the update for tonight's meeting, I will ask Abby to forward, you know, on our behalf to the Director of Public Works. And then also perhaps he can notify MassDOT first. Yeah, he will notify. Yeah. So I'll, I'll take care of both of them. So that's out there. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. So next on our agenda is we're going to meet with, uh, Mr. Russ, Mr. Russ. Good evening, sir. Would you like to join us? Thank you. Would you like to have a seat and, um, introduce yourself, sir? Thank you.
Do you have to introduce yourself and give it back? Sure. Thank you. Just your name, Mr. Russ. Thank you. My name is Ken Bruss, PRUSS. I've been well in a year and a half. I live at Five Brandywine. Great. Uh, I'm Richard. Come on. Thank you. That's always, you know, you have to introduce yourself for the minutes. Yep. Go ahead. Okay. So you have, uh, contacted the town manager's office and are interested in joining the Council on Aid. So we have a very, very informal interviewing process here. And we just ask you to give us a minute or two introduction. Okay. Each of the board members, there's only three of us here tonight, Adam. Um, we'll have a question and then we will have a motion, please. All right. That's the motion. I would have explained when I passed out to you. Yes. Please. Okay. All right. Did you want to add anything? Sure. Um, I'm retired. I have a lot of time on my hands. And at this point in my life, I'm working to be a backbone. Great. I have an extensive amount of experience as a volunteer. I have yet to work with a nonprofit agency that said, boy, you know, we have so much money, we don't know what to do with it. Uh, I've been active with AARP for a number of years, and I'm passing out a flyer for the community challenge grant initiative. This is a U.S. wide program. Over eight years, we've awarded over $20 million. I'm a sub-team leader in Massachusetts with three other teams. We're reviewing 120 applications. And you see the gamut of types of things we can do. So I have a variety of skills that I think contribute to the board. I've served on the board. I've been VP and all of these types of things, civic organization. But in particular, since we're in the midst of the community grant process, and I noticed that Wayland has not applied, I'm wondering, is this an opportunity we're missing? And so one of the things I'd like to bring to the board is to focus, is there funds that we can be taking advantage of? Now, I know there's a perception where Wayland is an affluent town. But there are still some opportunities, perhaps, in the realm of... So we have a variety of types of grants. I focus most on need-based. So things such as programs to help with housing installation for seniors who otherwise can't afford it. We look at food, we look at public safety, and you see sort of the gamut of things. And I'm not aware of Wayland ever applying. And so part of what I'd like to do with the board, in addition to learning more of what they do, is perhaps to discuss, are there some avenues that you want to consider? That's it. Terrific. Open to questions from the board.
Mr. Bross, thank you first for your willingness to step forward and be considered for this. You have anticipated my question, based on my review of your materials, which is, what is the AARP Community Challenge Program? Are there specific areas, aside from helping the town explore the possible applicability of this program to the town? Are there other things that you would particularly be interested in working on in your position as a volunteer at the council? Thank you. So I'd like to learn more about what the council does to determine what I can do. I'll be upfront with you and say, I'm not interested in doing things like food delivery or physical tasks, but I have 40 years of professional experience with meeting management, with project management, with facilitations, any number of type skills that I think could, you know, bring to bear, you know, data analysis. So I've spent my life accumulating some skills, and so now what I'm looking to do is rather than turn them to helping Fortune 500 to make profit, I'm looking for nonprofits and how I can help there. And that's been the skill set that I've brought to a number of the, you know, positions in the past where I've been a volunteer. And thank you for your interest. And it's very important that our town continues to bring folks on board who have skills of varying sorts that we have over 40 boards and committees in town. I would say that we're very fortunate here to have an outstanding director of the Council on Aging, who's been in town for some time. And I was going to ask you that. And we also have, obviously, a brand new extraordinary facility that has great potential and is starting to be ramped up in terms of its use. It's interesting, when I was just looking at this flyer that you passed out there, there is currently an ongoing prospective mural project at the site of our community pool. When I am noting that it looks like application period has closed as of a couple of weeks ago, this is an annual grant. Yep. Okay. I just wanted to double check. I have to be upfront with you. We have different categories of grants ranging from, you know, 2,500 to 10,000 to 25,000. We support some of the mural type things, but I guess my bias is, is I think we tend to focus more on more serious quality of life issues. So I have to, I have this afternoon with the two different, you know, applications for 15,000. One of them was for ceramics. Another one was for housing insulation. There wasn't a question for it. Yeah. Right. So a mural and particularly knowing some of the racism, antisemitism things going on here, I think could get serious attention, but I'd still have to be honest with you and say that since we have a limited pot of money, a more pressing one would win. I also have to say that if I were on the board and I'd be encouraging people to submit an application and I could bring some expertise to drafting it, whatever team I lead would not be involved in evaluating that grant. Sure. Understood. Great. I'm good. Thank you. Um, you know, I echo the board that we're delighted with folks with such wonderful and different variety skills apply where the others are willing to, to donate their time to the town is what makes so terrific. Yeah. But one of the things I should say, um, and I don't, I certainly, uh, thank you for reaching out to the director and going to the building and probably read some of the minutes of the committee. I'm sure that's, we always ask everyone. So, um, my only thought other than we need an emotion is that, um, I think with your skill set, we, we might have, uh, if you have time on your hands, maybe you and I should have a conversation blind, maybe some opportunities, right? What's your thing? So, okay. All right. Uh, I move that the select board, uh, appoint Ken Bruss to a term on the Council on Aging Board ending June 30th, 2028. Sorry. Thank you. All those in favor, say hi. Hi. Okay. Uh, Mr. Bruss. Congratulations. Thank you. You were appointed unanimously. You will receive, um, in the next couple of weeks, a letter from the town manager's office, um, confirming that appointment and writing and also instructing you at earliest convenience to come into the town clerk's office to swear in and receive some information about conflict of interest law of which you seem to be familiar. Terrific. Carol, should I reach out to you beforehand to set up a time or show the way to do it? You can reach me out if am I telling you? I'm sorry? I'll reach out to you. Okay. That's fine. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Don't worry. It won't be long before I reach out. That's it. It's very important to say that. So I think the next item is we're going to, um, to both the, probably the most significant amount of time tonight is to leave the final discussion of the reading articles that need to be discussed, supported, voted, and what have you. Um, we certainly took on a big, big not to crack here. We had 52 articles to start with. We, even though we only have 42 going through it in the warrant, we still ended up crossing those other 10 on the way. So in effect, really, and I think we've done a terrific job to get this far. So tell me when Thomas is ready. It needs about five minutes or so. If we could do a couple others. So the first one on page, um, it is F. Yeah. So what we already voted this, but I wanted everyone to see the language that has been added to the article, which is for the Energy Project Evolving Fund. We did reach out, um, to tell you, I'm not sure how much is in their file, but they are not requesting a budget for 27, which is in the red. Um, you'll see it just before it says that we're on the net. So everybody's okay with that. Article A, a recognition and, um, citizens. We've added a couple names, um, to that since you voted it, as we've been advised of others who should be included. Is that in the past? No, I don't think so. Okay. Who did we, I was just going to ask Kelsey, who did we add Kelsey for? What was, um, the recognition? I know we added Pat Nelson, who passed away in December. Oh, um, did we ask? Just derrick me one second. I was actually reading their obituary this morning. Yeah. It was very lovely written. Um, uh, Robert, if you can feel something. Robert Farrington. I was going to say Farrington. And, uh, the other one that I mentioned was that, um, applicable, Mr. Troops. Uh, not applicable. Okay, great. I have to tell you, Mr. Whitney, I share your, your utmost concern about accuracy on this list that you expressed before, which I thought like, wow. Yeah. I don't think we've done so, but. Yes. You remember, well, when we were doing this last year and the year before, you said it was just difficult to make sure we're carrying everything. Okay, there's Tom. Okay. So, I'm going to, hi, Tom. So, let the record show that Mr. Bay has joined the meeting at 718, please. And I need to go down to, we're going to do H, H real quick, and then we're going to do D, D, D, D. How's that? We're in the regular packet. I think, H is H, I don't know. Regular H. The budget. No, we're not going to do H, H. We can do whatever we want. Or, here's what I can do, this is in page 37, Bill. So, we're talking. Yeah. And then come way down.
No, I think it's got to be in the supplemental H, H. Excellent. Thanks. Anyway. Hi, Tom. Good evening. Yeah. Page 8 of the supplemental. Okay. So, what we did here is we've already voted this article. We voted to co-sponsor it and obviously sponsor it. But there were only three of us voting it at the time. And I thought it would be nice if we had another look at this in terms of, if we wanted to have, you know, more board members were present, then we could, you know, have a stronger vote, you know, on this. This article we reviewed, it's right up itself, has gone through a number of reviews and iterations. I think it reads pretty cleanly. I think Mr. Barnes did a terrific job on this. And anybody has any questions on it? That's fine. Otherwise, I'll just take a motion. I noticed that two members of the Finance Committee abstained in their vote. I'm just curious as to why. I am not 100% certain, but I think they were focusing on, there was information in this article to begin the write-up to begin with about the State Revolvement Fund application. And then when that was, now has to be appealed, I think that created them costs and costs. Although the purpose of the article is to take the next step in, you know, determining that we have a long-term lot of this is just permission to go forward with the next step, which is the construction. Well, I understand that in the last DPW meeting, the DPW director indicated that he expects that a decision will be made on the appeal prior to the town meeting. So I think it's well for us to certainly conclude this in the warrant. I think it would be helpful, the appropriate time, to talk about how this goes forward, should it not be with the tax without the zero interest loan. I know that there were some projections put together, and the finance director expressed some concern about the ability to meet the debt service in a short year, so
we'll have a clear understanding of that once we know whether we're dealing with it. I have that down for like, um, April 13th, but I believe that may be addressed at the forum on the 7th, what information they have. Um, I did attend the meeting last week, and Mr. Holder said he has applied for, if I get this correct, multiple, submitted multiple applications for the state-level ruling fund, and this is the first one that didn't go through. There is, you know, I think Mr. Carl mentioned last week that there is surprise that our numbers did not come anywhere near what they were projected to because they didn't work with a consultant from the state federal ruling fund, but somehow we didn't seem to get the points for the PFAS issue that we felt were appropriate, we were advised, would most likely happen. So hopefully it's just, uh, um, I will also share with you that the, uh, one of the board members, uh, who's familiar with the MBTA, having worked in that industry for about 30, 40 years before retiring, indicated that if we don't get the full loan, maybe they would give us the loan for the treatment facility, and then some so the words, the words, exactly, some of the connection types, so maybe we ended, so that might be, so it's still out, but I think that right now, um, I don't think I don't share the concerns, but my thought today was that we would just re-vote this, so I don't think you were here the day we voted before, so this would give you a chance to vote. I think, I don't think you want to vote. Is everybody okay with that, and can I have a motion then?
Is the motion to support? Yeah. Since we've already, it's important, because then it'll be four of us rather than three. So moved. Thank you. Second. Okay. Um, so now, since Mr. Faye has joined us, we'll have to do a roll call vote. So Tom? Yes. Tom? I'm Tom. Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Carol? Yes. So that's now 4-0. I will advise the finance committee so they can adjust the write-up. Um, also on the supplemental packet on page, what do you think? You know what it came from? DD? DD. Page 4. Page 4. Um, so, um, Tom, I don't know if you were able to, uh, uh, read the supplemental packet today, but on page 4 is a revised write-up that Bill has put together after having all sorts of consultations to let them talk about it. Right. So, um, following our prior meeting, I reached out to the chair of the school committee. Uh, they were kind enough to invite me to their most recent meeting. It was Friday afternoon. A wonderful time to me. And, uh, uh, yeah. And, uh, but, but had a good discussion. Um, they were certainly, uh, and proposed, uh, to them that we take them up on their suggestion that the article be co-sponsored and that the management of the, uh, study funds, uh, should it be approved by town meeting be jointly managed. So there were just a couple of, and I had prepared a draft for their review. They had a couple of small changes, which we've incorporated. We also have comments now from the finance committee and, uh, the vote from the finance committee, uh, where the finance committee recommended approval on a 4-2 vote. One of the members who voted, uh, and the negative indicated a concern about the fact that a specific means of financing the study, uh, was not indicated. I responded, uh, to my counterpart in the finance committee that, uh, the town manager and the chair have found, uh, $200,000 in the sale of real estate account. And so we've given that information back to Rob Quimby. I guess the finance committee. So I don't know if they're inclined to take this up again, but it would be a five to one, but, um, nonetheless, uh, did get a, uh, uh, a three-to-one vote in support from the school committee. I want to open it up for discussion. I'll start with you, Tom. If this, uh, board votes to support the article in the current version, uh, it's my understanding that our board will likely have a public forum prior to town meeting to, to discuss the article. Is that still, uh, a consideration being considered? Yes. I, um, was waiting until we voted on this. And then once we supported it, then I am suggesting we could do the forum on April 13th, when we meet on April 13th, as part of our regular meeting. But that's one of my star notes here today. See what, when you would like to do the forum. So does that sound a reasonable time? That sounds great. Yeah. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay. I'm very glad and appreciative of Mr. Whitney's efforts in reaching a compromise language set of language here in the article and, uh, school committee, as he mentioned, passed it three to one and looking forward to moving forward with this article. Okay. Yeah. My only concern in descriptions, it says after one pass of recreation, I assume that it's just might be one of the end results, not necessarily what we would propose, right? Because we'll come back and have a look at those. The notion is to cast a white net, frankly, and look at options, uh, that would, among other things, uh, set forth a potential, uh, for revenue and expense associated with those. Um, my only comment is that the votes belong up just in front of arguments in favor. You can see my arrow here and thank you very much. I echo Doug's comments that that was a lot of work. Appreciate it. And looking forward to having a successful endeavor here. So with that, I'll have a motion, please. I move that the select board, uh, vote, uh, co-sponsor and support article DD 25 holiday road, appropriate funding for preliminary design, engineering, study, and appraisal. Thank you. Is there any further discussion? Otherwise we'll take a vote, uh, Tom? Yes. Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Okay. Yes. The motion passes for Sarah. Okay. Um, I said, would you like to stay for some other items? If we don't want to move to them, otherwise we will thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. We also thank you for your color scheme this evening. Yeah. We're very nice. I would love to stay. I really would, but I need to go to dinner. So thanks. Thank you for everything. All right. Thank you again.
Out here in the Southwest. Take care. Bye-bye now. So the, what's the time please? 725. Yeah. Mr. Faylin meeting at 725. All right. Let me just go back to when we started. So we weren't at, at the very beginning. Don't say that Mr. Fay's appearance makes me think that maybe we should, as we budget in the future, think about a clothing allowance for people. All right. Um, I think we have to go back to the regular packet because I think the next one was L. And what page is L on? I'm just trying to walk us through this so we don't have a Google. I have 20. 20. Okay. And then that one, um, we voted in, but then two items were, two vehicles were added from the police department as a one. And so I just want you to see those. We don't have to re-vote unless you want to, but I think that takes care of that. Okay. So we're all up to stuff. We're off to never any surprises when they, they come out. Um, next one says the next item. Well, I'm going to pass, I'm going to H, I think. Is that next? On your, on your agenda it is. It is? Yeah. F-L-O then D-D. Well, I'm going to do it this way, I think. Can we find H in here? Where's H? It's in here. In the regular? I have it. What do you want? Yeah. This is the, um, we have not, I want to do this for next is we have not seen this article at all. There's a couple of nine, we haven't seen it all. And it is the, first of all, I think the title has to be changed because it's about 27 budget. Hmm. Yeah. So that's the first one. I just noticed that fall off the catch. Um, so the finance committee has voted both the operating and a capital budget for next year. And these are the numbers they represent. And historically, you know, the select board really is not involved, um, in the budget development. We do a lot of listening and having, but we don't develop the budget, but because the town manager works for us and it's now, this is his budget that he recommends to the finance committee. Last year, we did take a position. So I'm going to ask Michael to give us a quick overview here. You see the numbers that are highlighted in the, in the different motions and, um, and there's some charts that go with it and maybe he can just give us a quick run-through and then we can decide, um, where we're going to, we'd like to take a position on this budget. What was this doing? Thank you Madam Chair. Um, we strive to keep the overall increase of this budget below five percent, um, to try and minimize the impact on taxpayers, their own whelings. As I've done, since I arrived here, we've asked for a level funded budget from my departments. And in some instances, uh, well, I should say level service in some instances, level funded. We've worked with the school committee to, uh, ask them to push back on their side so that all, all, you know, many things, uh, make an easy lift and we, we couldn't make all these cuts by ourselves. And a lot of this goes back, as you know, we talked starting in the summer when we had, uh, a revenue shortfall and with the assistance of the select board, we were able to close some of those gaps. Um, so the budget before you represents modest increases in areas within our operating budget, we have fixed us within our unclassified that we're responsible for. As we get to article O, you will see that many of the collective bargaining units are still, uh, not yet resolved. Um, so we're hoping to close some of those up before we actually get to town meeting, whether or not we get the result before print. Um, it's remains to be seen, but Mr. Kemeny has put some money aside to resolve those. So we believe based on all of our forecasts, what our revenue projections are, the stadium to date, we've received our, um, healthcare numbers and chapter 90, we believe that we can work within the, the revenues that we've had without asking taxpayers for any additional funds this year and still try and keep within the trend of, uh, uh, four, uh, four, uh, four plus percent increase below a five percent threshold.
Okay. So you're seeing the motion one and the operating budget is 112 million, almost 113 million dollars. Um, and it shows the different amounts where the funding is coming from 111 from taxation, just under 500,000 from the ambulance receipts, 1.1 million will be lied to transfer to funds. Then the second item is, um, the capital budget and it's highlighted in yellow. And I think the number goes there, 1 through 34. There are 34 projects and they're not set forth in the capital budget. I'm sorry, what page is that I don't care? Um, page 111? I don't know, because ours, an article H that's on page 31, is one page of narrative and then it's attachments below that. Are you in the supplemental? I'm in one page, right here. Motions, see these are the numbers uh, emotions and emotions here. See mine? I highlighted the numbers. Yeah. Just so I could carry it, carry it in a group line. So if you look over here at number two, it says items numbered one through five. Yeah. And I'm, I'm, I'm advising you that I believe there are 34 items in the capital budget. So it should say items one through 34. And then the, it goes along and it says the total amount and it's not 12 million. That number has to be fixed because I believe that number has been changed when we didn't do the, uh, the, uh, the fields. So if someone just checked that, well, 10 million, uh, that brings all these numbers changed. But this is, you think that number should be higher or lower? Well, about 10. I think it's around 10. And the 2.5 million for the fields, it's because, of course, it's going bad for the state there. This is why you're paying me the big price. But it presumably includes the 10 million for the high school treatment plan. Yes. Right. So in the way we would be looking for that is not in tax, but to make the transfers from the capital stabilization. Right. But presumably it's in the capital budgets. Yeah. This number needs to be adjusted because the finance community made a couple of little tweaks, but the gist of it is 34 capital projects, approximately 10 million. Do you know the number exactly? Um, I meant to ask you that. I may be able to find them. Do we think the 125, 244, 195 is accurate? Is that right? And it's operating in capital. Yeah. And see, when these charts that we have in the packet going forward, they don't include any COLA, which is what Michael is referring to, is that's going to be in the salary reserve. So the money is there. It's just not allocated to the various budgets. I couldn't tie the attachments to the actual motions. And what number couldn't you tie? Well, I was just looking for the detail on the 12-2 or the capital. No, I don't see the capital list here. I think this is mostly, um, looks like it's all operating. It's all operating. And I'm telling you, I believe the 12-2 includes the, uh, the field. Right, right. So it starts down to, I'm going to make, I, I say 10, it's probably closer to 9-something, like 9-8 or something. I don't know the answer. And are these, uh, the town budgets?
This is combined, isn't it, Michael? Yes, it should be. All these budgets are combined. This is beyond the bus budget. And when you go to the FY total budget summary on page 32.
See, it has school down here in the total and the last slide. We're going to go to 112. Up top. So here's your 112 up here.
And then he gives you the breakdown. Here's the 112. These technically should all add up to 112. The 24, the 55, and the 32. Does that come up to be 112? He has payroll expense and on the last five, it's on the top of page 32. He has total budget.
I think if you add these three numbers. Right. Yeah. And he breaks all. So if you have this tutor in them, it has it by town and then school. Yes. And then he breaks off at different departments. Here's the bureau. As Michael was saying, it's about a 4.1 budget. So what's been the past practice of the Gordie as far as taking a position? I was just looking that up. I looked at last year's warrant and the select board's not listed. It only says recommendation with the finance committee recommending approval on the four separate motions. I thought we did approval last year. It's not an warrant unless we did it at time. It's an article, it's on page. It is, it is, like I mentioned, it is an interesting thing because one year we didn't take one. Oh my goodness.
This should be up there. Yeah.
We don't have to take one. I think we take one as a support. Yeah. Because it's his budget is my reasoning for bringing it forward. First of all, I think we should know what it is. Yeah. The finance committee also is, I believe, I'm not sure if it's by code, but historically, they do make a budget presentation to us, but really, so the public knows what's, what has been finally voted that should be in a couple of weeks.
What are you thinking? Yes. In the last file after the board voted last week in exchange with Mr. Barnes, Mr. Kevin, he had a capital budget number that was $10,913,500, so it was $10,900. I didn't do it before, even the idea of having a vote. I feel like things are still similar to the floors. And our vote, at best, would only be 3-0 right there, right? That'd be all right. I think things are in flux. I think these are pretty much the numbers. I just think this one has to be adjusted because when this was printed, since it was printed, there's been an update. I do believe they have voted the operating and they have voted the capital budget, and that's because they're in the process of putting together their report. They can't put together their report. They're finalizing the report. So it's at the pleasure of the board. I think I'm bringing it forth because I think it's so support for Michael because under the tell me, I direct, he does prepare the budget. He does prepare a capital budget and he didn't put it to the works with the finance committee. And I believe they share, maybe I think they share again, they supported fully your operating budget recommendation, did they not? Yes. I think there were some changes in the capital because we're in the middle of switching from the finance team creating the capital plan to the capital planning. And there wasn't, as we know, a lot of time. And so I think there was some changes back and forth there. But in general, they were pretty similar. Opening up for discussion, what's your thoughts? I looked at the last three. If you haven't done it, the last three years. And then, so the question is, I like the idea of supporting it. Do you think the three zero weight carries that? Or does that beg questions in people's mind? Why are only three people on the select board voting papers? But it says zero, zero. It means there are only three people. Right. We could also do it at a time meeting. Yeah. We could take a position and that'll be our finalized name. And then when the article comes up, like on behalf of us, I think they don't say the select boards are putting them out and it might be a good time to do that. Yeah. Okay. Amy? I think it's kind of implicit that if the budget is presented, it's been developed by the manager in a consultation with the finance director. The finance committee has gone through the fine tooth comb. It goes in the select board. It's put it in the bar. It's a bit spiritualist to me, but I think having a discussion with the board with town media is a good idea. See. Mm-hmm. Write this down. Okay. I think that's good. I'm going to do all of the items before the petitioners are going to do those last. All right. Yep. Does that sound okay? Great. Okay. So article O, which Michael referred to, is the wage and salary plan and the bylaws and that. I believe that's in the, um, supplementary packet. Yes, ma'am? I don't know what page it is. It is.
Look at this, this thing with blanking down. I don't know what else about the supplemental packet. It goes blank on page two. Page two. Now I can't see it. Thank you. I have notes on it. So essentially what we have done here, is this, email? No, this is my packet. It says one to 25. There we go. Yeah. Okay. We waited till the last night to do this one as well, because you know, you need to see, and try to capture as much changes as we can. We did add in the sentence to this, um, article right up in the third paragraph on finance committee comments about the classification compensation study that was just completed. Um, so we added that in, um, up in the top on motion cease or if we're going backwards, we added in the information to make the transfers from the reserve for salary settlement to support the the JMLC award. Firefighters, uh, contract expired three years ago, right? In June. So,
and then we have down here some blanks because we have not had any, um, we don't have any information there for those. So I think we're going to, we're going to, um, I'm going to hand this over to you. Mike, I'm going to leave that blank with the thought that perhaps what? Well, there was a couple of thoughts. We may, uh, I'm in various stages with the collective bargaining units. Um, one, I haven't had a sit down with, with one I'm meeting with for the first time this week. Others, we've had several meetings that were down to, I'd say brass tacks trying to, um, resolve some numbers. I'm also in consultation with, uh, Dr. Fleischman about his efforts, uh, to work with his units, um, hoping to have some numbers before we go to print. And then the other consideration I talked to Mr. Keveney is that if we resolve some of these before we get to town, meaning we could offer, uh, an amendment in on the floor with the numbers that we've resolved to, to date and put those in there. Um, if you may recall, I believe the other year, we, some of these just didn't get resolved. We got resolved later in the year and I would encourage those unions to wait till next annual time. And if we can't resolve them in a timely fashion this year, so. So that's why we have a couple items here that are the lag, um, I'm going to open it up to the floor. Um, obviously we do take a position on this article
and I think the three motions are exactly what we do. If they've made any classification changes, we do that. We amend them the salary plan to adopt any plans for the union positions. And then we're transferring, we're transferring the money to, uh, to meet the, uh, funding requirements for the Joint Labor Management Committee award to the firefighters. So, um, we, um, to be honest with you, I hope before we go to press we're able to put a couple of these numbers in here, but that would require the board authorizing, um, the town manager to put those numbers into the, the article. So the motion would be be that, you know, open it up to the floor. Here it comes. And I'm sure I should have commented that, um, you know, my office, I sent out notices to the various representatives, you know, early in the fall. Um, several of them were responsive and we've been meeting all along and those are the ones that we're close with. So this, I just want to make clear to anybody who's watching and folks here that this wasn't us waiting to the last minute. We've been proactive and there's been several meetings that have been responsive. Some couldn't for a variety of reasons, um, get here and there's all always, uh, I think, uh, the fact that some are waiting to see what happens with the school we do and our teachers use the largest that we can see what happens. But that's not an excuse. Um, but we, I would say we, you know, we've been meeting diligently and trying to resolve this. I looked at some of the dates last year. We were wrapping up a lot of them, uh, in around February of last year. So we're, we just seem to be a little bit behind in negotiations, but I'm pretty confident that we'll get some of these done before we get there. Um, well, number is with respect to C, of the reserve for salary settlement. Um, with respect to the non-union positions, COLA blank, are we in a position to fill that in or is that something that typically isn't done until, uh, you would have, uh, very much bargaining units? In my time here, traditionally that has followed after the unions have settled. Um, that's not to say that I haven't talked to some of my folks on the non-union side about making a decision ahead of time and an effort to, um, motivate people to, to come to a decision with the open collective bargaining. Right. Um, okay. And it strikes me that we must've encountered this previously, right, where you have at least one bargaining unit outstanding. And so if that were the case, uh, when it came time to go to print, would this be amended to reflect agreement with certain of the bargaining units and, and then, uh, the, you know, presumably there's a reserve created for the, the unresolved contracts? Yes. That's my understanding speaking. It was to Kenneth, Kevin. They didn't, in prior to my arrival, there was a situation where we had to do this and I was going to reach out to, um, our town moderator to talk about, and then the procedure should we need to go that route. So, Carol, were you suggesting that maybe a motion would be in order to authorize the share or the town manager to, uh, make such changes as are necessary and appropriate based on ongoing and hopefully settled negotiations with some of the collective bargaining units? Yeah, because it's kind of a, a chicken and an egg situation. If you don't, if the flu, then we have to come up with something, you know, what if we get a, we vote to take that language out tonight, and then there's a settlement. I'll be having to pull together a quick meeting here in order to get a vote. Um, so maybe, maybe you'll authorize the chair to inform the world's behalf. And then, of course, I would report any changes to you once we have the next meeting, which will be on the 30th.
And, and this is my article, by the way, I, um, the liaison on this article, I've been following this one. Um, and, um, anyway, I do not want to put an article out with blanks, and that's going to create more conversation than we probably would prefer. And so, what my suggestion at that point would be, you know, take those out and don't exclude them. However, if we have some other settlements, we will then have to do something else, whether it's an amendment or something like that. Well, the board has previously inserted this, is it not? I'm sorry. Yeah. The board has previously inserted this. Yes. Right. Oh yeah. This is a standard article. And so, um, you know, looking for a vote to support, or are we just giving an update about?
We're looking for a vote to support. This is one of the last ones we have to vote to support. Well, let's see. I don't want to start. Do we take that one first, and then the authorization, or is the order of first motion? Hmm. That's right. Can you put it in the same one? Sure. Let me, I mean, can we? Let me, let me, let me, let me. Yeah. I think so. I move that the board support article O, the title, the update personnel bylaws and wage and classification plan and fund union agreements, um, and authorize the chair or the town manager to update as necessary, uh, the numbers contained in the article under non-union positions and, what is the other one? Uh, COLA. COLA for FY 2027. Mm-Hmm. Certain. Well, send that. Okay. All those in favor, say aye. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, before we have a hearing at eight o'clock, so we can start some of these, but I also want to have one other, um, revisit. And of course, they're revised as the hearing, the 850. Oh, good. All right. Well, let me do this for a minute. We'll come back to that. That's great news. Thank you. All right. So article E, which is the enterprise fund article budgets, which we voted last week, and we voted to not support the retained earnings for, as a funding source, for the water enterprise fund. We have received it in a correspondence packet tonight from a member of the board with a very lengthy explanation and asked us to reconsider our, uh, the request is for us to reconsider our vote on the retained earnings on the waterfront. And I, I would like to honor that and have that discussion. Um, so what would like to start? You. Me. Me? Okay. So I attended the regional public boards meeting last week, and it was, Brian explained, um, Skelly explained to them that, you know, we had, um, based on the recommendation from themselves and the town manager, that the select board had agreed with them that it was not appropriate to use retained earnings, you know, in the funding budget. And, um, and I have to tell, I was very, I told Kevin, I told Brian this earlier in the week. I was really proud of him because he, he said, we're not trying to be antagonistic here. We just think this is the best method going forward for the time for the financing of these projects. We need to build up the retained earnings because as the budgets increase in order to maintain the 20 over the 25% and the retained earnings that we need to maintain the bond rating, um, this is the direction we need to go. And also as a side note, if they were to develop a surplus in the retained earnings, they could use those funds for capital expenditures, you know, versus operating expenses. So that, that, that, that was the meaning. And then we got this thing afterwards. So, um, you will remember last week, I did say that I thought, uh, they had voted to put retained earnings in, thereby used as a funding source this year. And that I was in agreement with the rest of the board and the finance team, that it's probably not a great, um, to do that. But I personally had said, perhaps we just let them do that. And then come May, if they don't raise the rates appropriately, then we, you'll remember I said this last week. So, um, but I did vote with the board to go forward, um, and remove the retained earnings as a funding source. It has been removed, I believe, from the article. So, it turns. So, we're responding to the correspondence that we received from, did you see the chair of the Board of Public Court? Vice chair. Vice chair. And so, his rationale, uh, in the email was that, that retained earnings works in lockstep with the contingency fund expense item in the budget. And he said, removing one or the other as unintended results. Removing the retained earnings as a funding source puts pressure on the Board of Public Works to raise water rates to cover the projected expenses plus potential unplanned emergency expenses. So, how do we respond to that, to that concern? Mr. McComb, would you like to take that question? I, I have an answer, but I would prefer someone who's running the town says this. Well, under the town manager act, this is not, the Board of Public Works is responsible for this. And my other community, I, as a town manager, were in charge of setting the waters. And I did it such that we had sufficient monies to build our reserves and to cover our operating expenses. I think that's the position that Mr. Kevin and I have been concerned about. Uh, I can't remember which email, but I think that is a story about, I did talk about. We did go before the DOR this summer. Um, and Mr. Kevin and I were a little bit surprised that DOR, who had indicated that they would not be in favor of this, didn't say much when this was put in the plan. But our concern, um, well, it's twofold. Mr. Kevin, he said that historically, when this, they established this, there was supposed to, there was an agreement with time meeting at the time that they were supposed to maintain a certain balance. I wasn't here. I don't know too much about that. Um, only what's been related to me and what I've been able to find. But given that we've known about the MWA project coming along for some time, um, and speaking with Mr. Holder, I would have expected that we would have done some slow incremental increases to ensure that we were building up our reserves as we go, um, into this particular situation. I know that they were counting on the updated meters to help generate some additional revenue, but I, I do think, um, drawing from your reserves to help cover some of your operating expenses, because it's not. But if it happened to that, Mr. Kevin and I would be in favor, so. I think an analogy of that would be, let's see if I've got this one, using free cash to us to pay electric bill in the operating budget to support an operating expense. Sound good, sir. Uh, I, I had occasion to actually watch the recording of that meeting and, uh, and I appreciate Mr. Wake of Hours, a detailed explanation. Uh, I find myself in agreement with the town manager and the finance director. Um, it strikes me that actively subsidizing the water rates with the reserve is putting out the best idea. Further, I'm very concerned that the rates, um, start to build to a point where we're going to have to pay a lot of debt service, even at zero percent. But as you know, Carol, looking at the projections from their financial consultant about the possible effect, a four percent interest rate, um, over 20 and 30 years, whether it's, you know, kind of the interest on the outstanding principal balance or, uh, the, uh, on mortgage model we're all familiar with, those are big numbers. Uh, you know, I've got to see a steady increase toward those numbers. And further, the finance director has expressed concern about how we get to that plan, talking about the possibility of making some their fund transfers that get there, so that they would be the more comfortable position than the board previously took. I think if you watched the meeting, then you also saw the segment where I inquired of the DPW director of how much of the retained earnings has been used this year, because I think we had to absorb, we have absorbed, was it 160,000? I'm looking at, like, it was 140,000 or 160,000 for the emergency and the very connection that we had to have, you know, when they have an issue and then happy hour when it goes down, we don't have, we don't have backup. And so I think we used about 140,000 or 160,000 of the 200 from last year, which is using, you know, your capital for an operating expense. So I think another issue that gets raised frequently is that when we get to the end of the budget year, the staff is looking at where they are and deferring expenses to avoid tapping into that 200. Is this an item that bond rating agencies look into? Do they go into this level? I would imagine they would. I know one of the other concerns Mr. Keveney has is if they weren't able to
generate the necessary revenue and had problems coming up in the money to retain earnings, then they could look to the town to supplement them. And that would happen at a time when we would be even more challenged potentially in all rights. So that was one of his concerns. But to your exact question, I don't have the answer. I mean, I have no doubt that the model has worked pretty much up to now, but we're changing our whole system. And with that, I think so. All right, I think it's a sense in the board that we did not re-roll this. But I did feel we owe the courtesy to a fellow board to review this. Okay. So I've got a few minutes. Let's go try and somebody tell me. I think it's in the packet. Is this where TT is? Let's see. Anybody know what page? 22. Yep, I got it. So TT is Sherman's Bridge, second pedestrian walk right now. I want to say this before, a couple of enemies before we start. Doug and I have to talk to each other enough to, this is the last few days. And I'm missing this bridge discussion. Yes, I'm sure we are. I want to say two things. Number one, we've already voted this, but when we saw these, the last meeting, they didn't necessarily have the Finance Committee comments in that book. In other words, how they will most likely appear in the warrant. And I like the board to have that information. The second thing I want to say is, because these were somewhat similar, it was very, very challenging to put these together. And an inordinate amount of time has been put forth, you know, on putting these together so that they best will present what we're being asked to vote for, which is in the article description. And they want to give a shout out before we start on these two. April. No, not us. April and Ra and the Finance Committee for their patience with us, as we have made between this inordinate number of suggestions, you know, in the write-up. And of course, they are the leads on this. But I really also want to thank Hilsie and Jalen for all their efforts. They've hopped in here and tried to capture some of the questions that, you know, Mr. Holder and Mr. McCall would like to have put forth in the articles. So she did some research. And one of the links that I think she found on the webpage, I think Rob thought was the most, it was the best piece of research I could have put forth on that. So I want to thank everybody before that. Before I also say, I don't think we're a hundred percent done yet. So let's start with Titi. This one has, and Doug is the liaison on all of these. So
Titi is the chairman of the bridge. Does anybody have any comments on this one? I do want to say also in here, I most, Kelsey and you probably did too, is that we interchange the word bridge repair and deck repair or renovation. And it is a deck repair. So we need to go back through all of these and just make sure we say deck repair. Doug and I talked about this already. So anyway, anything else anyone has on this? On all of them or just Titi? Or on Titi. We're doing them one at a time. That's my famous line. So particularly Bill, because you haven't seen these. You haven't had the pleasure if you're working on these. I feel deprived, but somehow we'll get it. Well, you know, starting another round will loop you in. Madam Chair? Yes. Um, I do think, I'm just going over my notes that I made about this. I do think that something that's missing from the write-up and the thing is that an order, a point about adding a second walkway to the bridge would require major bridge renovation, which is completely out of the scope. Um, it's not as simple as just slapping on a second pedestrian walkway. Um, both, uh, Tom Holder and, well, Tom Holder has indicated that the major bridge renovation, including reconstruction of the substructure of the bridge and wing walls would need to be completed in order to do that. And I think that might be relevant since that adds either even further costs to the, um, to the pricing that was suggested by the petitioner. So we, there is mention of that in an argument proposed, but you, but you think that that should also be in the main narrative? Mm-hmm. Yeah, technically when you do these, and these are like the summaries. So whatever points you make here should really be in the narrative. And then this is if someone only reads these. I mean, I have to tell you, long before I was on these boards, I would do that. See the title, read the pros and the cons, and then I'd be good. Well, I believe I represented the last meeting, and Tom Holder would back me up on one of the last meetings we had with DOT, their engineers, and Barry Lorien, who is, um, the highest ranking member of DOT. He said, because of the changes that would need to be made, this would take this out of a deck repair and make it a deck, I mean, a bridge rehab. Right. And it would potentially knock us out of where we are on the queue for the deck pre-repair, and we'd have to get in a different queue, which would potentially jeopardize the funding. Because at the very end of the write-up, it says, following its evaluation, MassDOT denied the request, noting that it will not fund work that digress, that digresses from preserving the lifespan of the bridge. So we could add some information there. The whole project is bridge, deck, repair. Yeah, but every time we say bridge, we're not going to say bridge, deck. I mean, we're talking about a project that is the bridge, but I can add to that. Right. Would anybody else have any comments on this or this? Anybody? Do I go to the next one, then? Yeah. Okay.
You got seven minutes. Get them. Yeah, I think that we're giving it knock down, they're a queue, but the funding is scary for everyone. Good. Okay, article UU, which is Sherman Bridge five-ton weight limit. Yeah. Um, anybody have any? I only have a minor couple of things on this one. I think you may have taken these out. Um, Madam Chair, if I may. So this, so these are, these, wait a second, is this one? One second, wait. Is this one now the revised in the supplemental? Did you teach? I don't know. Is UU in the supplemental? No. I don't think so. Okay, go ahead. Don't you mind if I skip you for a second? No, not well. I, I just want to point out in the, under the finance committee's comment, the second paragraph where it says imposing a five-ton bridge limit would prohibit both buses, emergency vehicles. That's not, um, true actually. Even if you do have a truck exclusion, also known as a, which is it, HV, HV, HCVE, um, which is the heavy commercial travel, uh, vehicle exclusion. If, even if you pass that, it still allows, and I just had this, it allows, uh, vehicles making deliveries, um, emergency vehicles, and then any, um, public utility or, um, so bus, buses wouldn't be prohibited. Um, our, our vehicles wouldn't be prohibited, like, uh, uh, uh, a fire truck, ambulances, all that. Anybody making deliveries on that road would not be prohibited. And, um, yeah, so that, I think that will, yeah, would not be prohibited. Construction or utility vehicles is where I was thinking. Construction. Agricultural machinery. So what, what does it prohibit? Um, it, through trucking. Through trucking, basically. Through trucking. Through trucking. Right. So it typically includes large box trucks, tractor trailers, and similar vehicles, not standard pickup trucks. And, uh, anybody trying to avoid one set of teams moving around to avoid the traffic change. Mm-hmm. Is there any understanding of what the structural weight limit is of the bridge? It's very high. Mr. Holder has told me that there is no weight limit on there, because the way that it was built, that it's, could withstand pretty much anything, so they didn't put a weight limit on the marker. Should we add that? I'm just whispering over here to Doug. Should we add that, that what Mr. Holder said after the 1992 repairs, that's why the weight limit sign didn't come back, because he said nasty. O.T. essentially said there isn't a weight restriction for the bridge. But I think you'd have to look for him for a source. Was your question, what's the weight limit, or what's the, what's its capacity? In other words, you'll see a sign, don't go over this if it, you know, you're too tall, you're too heavy. Yeah, what, what, what, what instructional engineers say is the, is the weight over which you should not permit vehicles based on the structure of the design and construction of the bridge. So it's the latter point that you can address. Right. The current bridge could support 10 times or something like that, is what you're saying. What are the answers? Any, and, and, Mr. LaFalde, do you have any questions, any comments on this? Yes, you do. Great job. And, okay, so now I think we're on. Yeah, before we go on then. Oh, sorry. With respect to the first pair of sentence, a five-ton permanent weight limit shall be placed on all vehicles, um, does this have the effect of the legislative branch instructing the executive branch, uh, and the prior article, TT talks about directing, uh, the select board and the board of public works to use their best efforts. So, uh, I don't know if town council is, or if Newkins is. Yes. Okay. And that's a great question. I'm happy to have that discussion and we only have two minutes right now. So perhaps we could revisit this discussion. Go ahead and wait for a couple minutes. So, town council did in fact say the town meeting cannot impose a weight restriction or a heavy commercial vehicle ban on Sherman's Bridge. At best, town meeting can express its desire through a non-binding resolution. So the question is that I've been having an interesting debate with the chair is do you think that it's incumbent upon the finance committee slash us to inform town meeting members of what a yes vote would actually operationalize what, what impact that would have versus a no vote because the yes vote is not binding. And should we inform the town meeting voters of that? Otherwise, maybe they're voting to support it, then the action isn't taken. And they were like, what happened from now your, your position. Well, my position. Well, the thing is when you do these finance committee writers, they're supposed to be, just be like we said, just the facts, right? So you're supposed to address just, I call it the text, but it's on these article descriptions. So what are we voting on? You're being asked to vote on this. But we had a couple of conversations and you can say the stuff kind of twisted around so it's more of a neutral sentence. You can still get that message across, which I think we have done quite a few of these sentences that were in here. So my concern with us is if we tell people, well, this isn't written correctly, or this isn't going to accomplish your objective, but this is how you do it. I wouldn't go that far. So I wouldn't say, this is how you do it. No, but no matter what amendment they potentially could make, there's nothing they can do to bring it beyond a resolution. There's just not the authority to do it now because it's an article, right? Right. It's, it's basically serving the purpose of a resolution. It just doesn't have the term resolution, but that's the, the force and effect that it would have is a resolution. Bill brought that up when we were first discussing these a few weeks ago. Yeah. I'm not aware. Um, I just think it's a, I think that town meeting voters look to the finance committee comments for some guidance. And I look to them for the facts. This is a fact. What does a yes vote do? What does a no vote do? That's not, that's not advocacy. That's the fact. I think it creates an expectation on the part of town meeting. They are saying, okay, we voted this in the affirmative. We expect it to happen, and it doesn't happen. And for the select board to come back and say, well, you know, it's a resolution. It's a little disenchanted. So I think to answer your question is, I believe we address this when this is a town meeting, we have town council get up and speak to it. I don't agree. I know you don't. My concern with putting a yes, no, and a no vote in here. First of all, this isn't our call because this belongs, these belong to the finance committee. That's the, that's the other issue we can only suggest is if we do that here. So for example, in OO, we didn't agree with, I'm just going to use it for the example, we didn't agree with the, uh, the height in that other area, the 58, right? Yeah. However, we noticed that the Ulta Oxbow project, uh, is in the 45 feet height, but then they went and got a variance. So why don't we write there and say, even if we vote no on this, the, there's nothing that prevents anybody, a developer or a builder to go before the ZVA or every single variance, such as Ulta Oxbow did, who then built their building. I don't think you have to take the next step and say what, what you can do to operational. I would just say, let town meeting members know that a yes vote does not equate with the action we requested it. So the person who was taking the opposition speak of this, speaks to that at our meeting and says this. Well, I'd want, I'd want it to be in the line. So, so people are very clear. I need to, let's see the language. Okay. What do you think Mr. McCall? I'm not Mr. McCall, can I chime in?
Um, when specifically about, because there's two different articles of talking about weight limits, weight limits, we can be very clear about. There is a process. Chapter 85, section two says that municipalities cannot unilaterally make a decision on a roadway that affects two towns. And if discussions with that other town have said that they're not in support of this, it becomes moot because of the process through it. And I think it is a lot to take in. I mean, I learned about it in 24 hours and I was like, oh man, this is a lot, but there are specific ways that, you know, you can request a heavy commercial vehicle exclusion. It's regulated by, you know, guidance that's put out by MassDOT among the manual and uniform traffic control devices and the mass amendments to such, which specifically say there has to be engineering studies. They have to hit these two markers. Once they hit these two markers, then there's further discussions. But, um, and you also have to have an alternative route. The alternative route must live wholly in your town. If it crosses into another town, you must have written permission from that other town to do so. So the, the, at least about weight limits, you can be very clear. Like these are, this is the steps. If we can't even get to step one, which is agreeing with another town that we want to impose this weight limit because they're not in agreeance, then against, then the project becomes moot or the ask becomes moot because we can't even move forward. There's no mechanism to allow us to do it without permission from MassDOT and from the town of Sudbury. If they both, if they both indicated in the past, they're not willing to, you know, uh, to, uh, take this into consideration. I think that's something that's worthwhile because that's facts. That's, that's the process. That's the process. They're providing a process. In other words, now, the town meeting might have an amendment to tell us to go do that. And they can't. They can't. You're right. They can't. But, but what's written right here, a five-ton permanent weight limit shall be placed on all vehicles using the wheel inside of Sherman's Bridge. Right. A yes vote will not make that happen. And I think town meeting members need to know that. This needs to be reworded so that it says that, but I can. No, here, up at the top. We can't change that. But you have to explain this. We can say that. We'll attempt. Oh gosh. I thought this article was going to get bounced out by town council, but that wasn't the case. But, but if we're moving forward and warrants are going to print, I would want an imprint. I think we have to be really careful that we don't cross the bridge and we have to. Terrible. I'm leaving. I'm sorry.
Now you can tell we've had a long conversation about this. All right. Let me, let me, let's try and work on some language that accomplishes it without. This is what Rob was doing for the other two. Yeah. This is language that he has. But we still have to be careful to stay in the middle, because if we establish this precedent with this, then we're really not neutral. I would want to establish this precedent. I think we are being, I think we are telling town meeting voters, if you vote, yes, this is not going to operationalize this. This, this, yes, will not. We want to put up in here that said, this article requests the town to establish blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's not possible. See? So maybe that's what we just needed. We just need to have this. It's not possible because blah, blah, blah. Saying you, but saying that, okay, I see the point now. This isn't as clear. All right. Yeah. The finish of the passage of this article will require the town to anything. No. Right. It, it doesn't. No, it needs to be, it's missing a sentence. I'm going to give you that, but not saying a yes photo, blah, blah, blah. All right. Um, I'm, these are all done. So I'm going to now suggest two things. You're going to love this one. Are you ready? The board authorized Doug and I continue to work on this with the liaison from the finance committee, I guess the finance committee chair. With respect, you two don't agree. We will. We do. Don't we? Well, Kelsey, you followed the language that you were just citing in CZ. Yeah, because I basically, I should be coming back. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that some of them are missing. Yeah. So does everybody mind if we just go to Lincoln? Are you all saying that on this one? Yeah. I do. I do agree that the language is too vanilla here and it needs to be sorted out. I'm going to give you the, was that some? We just have to give the consequences. Well, well, we have to finance committee, but I really want to be careful because that we don't change things. All right. We need to go on to the hearing. We'll come back to this. Where were we? Article W? We want to have the hearing. We are. Um, Robbie, would you see if, um, it's actually a liquor license, it's a discussion and a potential vote to approve an amended on-premises retail annual all-alcoholic beverage license for urban Wayland Village LLC DBA is terrain located at 297 Boston Post Road, obviously here in Wayland. And, um, would you please see if Lily Bianchi, Heather France, and Jennifer Hildes, uh, from urban representatives, and Sabrina Moore, the proposed premise manager, are available to join us? This is on the package. Who is the guy? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Hi. Hi. Lily Banchini is here. Hi. Hold on. Are you joined by? Maybe your panelists, Robbie? I am not. It's just myself tonight. I apologize. That's okay. So good evening. Um, Good evening, everyone. Oh, Robbie, hang on just one second while we get, um, lined up. Does everybody find it? What? 45. 45. And I'm going to let, um, you know, Jamie explain, um, why we're having an amended on-premise retail. This is not a hearing hearing, but this is a legal license discussion because this has been an amendment. So would you be so kind as to explain to the board why we are having this discussion? Of course. The amendment is, um, required to provide more details regarding the corporate structure of the licensing entity urban wheel and LLC, um, additional requirements, uh, in regards to ownership and officers within the upper tier entities were required as well as additional detailed diagrams showing the layout of the premises. And then, um, we are considering an option for our catering's permit and needed to take a shelving unit. So a certain amount of square footage, I believe, we listed 24 square footage to be removed from the licensed area. So all those amendments have been submitted. All right. Thank you. Questions from the board. Uh, from, uh, who originated the, uh, request for these changes, please. The state liquor control commission. That is correct. Yes. Apologies. Um, I, I, I see the diagrams. I frankly don't know what they mean. Uh, I'm looking particular, uh, on page 49 of the packet, uh, which is a plan with a portion of the building of, or the, uh, building outlined in red. It is a kitchen floor plan. Yes. So we will have a dining area as well as a
type of banquet hall, but there is a store connected to our location that will not be licensed. It will not be selling serving or distributing alcohol or storing it. It will all be in the restaurant area. Okay. So is that, is that the area outlined in the, uh, red swiggle area on, uh, plan A111? I'm double checking right now. I apologize. I have the PDF in front of me. It's just delaying and loading. I apologize. It actually is the floor plan for the kitchen. So I'm not sure that that's what it refers to. Oh, yes. So the squiggly area on one match line S or five B. So our main diagram will be
being on A100 where you'll see the gray area is the unlicensed area and everything else will be covered under the license. And is that a change from the prior action? No, there's no change in regards to unlicensed area. No. Okay. Do you have any questions? Okay. Um, I don't have any questions. Um, this is not considered a hearing. It's just like a licensed discussion on their application. So we don't have the formal procedure and we just, if we are willing to accept this, then we just need a motion. But I don't have it written. See? So I move that the board vote to approve the amended on-premises retail annual alcoholic beverages license for urban Wayland Village LLC. Doing Businesses Terrain, which is located at 297 Boston Post Road in New York. Sir. Thank you. There's no further discussion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes through zero. We have, uh, something here to sign, right? All right. So now we're going to, um, uh, thank you, Ms. Piantini. Are you still with us? Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Have a great night.
We'll just sign here real quick. And then we're going to go back to article WW, right? Is that where we left off? And I think that is in the
regular packet, right?
That was in the supplemental, was it? No, right there. It's in the regular, okay. And I think it's on page 26, 25. This is, um, don't tell me, it was being negotiated the Sherman Bridge Road Neighborhood Agreement number two. All right. Anybody have any comments on this one? Um, the one comment I had, and I've had it a couple times in there, it keeps getting changed, so maybe you know the answer to this one. See down here where it says, Town Council has indicated, last sentence, and wrote the fourth one down here, see how I am, that future road commissioners are not bound by any previous vote for note of agreement. And I kind of highlighted that and said, select board, the town, whatever I want. I just need confirmation that road commissioners is the correct, do you know? It was at the time that was the road commissioners, right? But it said future. So do we leave it at that? And who are the road commissioners now? Because we no longer have road commissioners. Now it's DPW. So it's, uh, okay.
So when you write, Town Council has indicated that future road commissioners now known as members of the Board of Public Works, are they the road commissioners? Does that make better sense? Or should we say that? I'm actually going to look it up because I don't know if... When I, I was on the Board at the time that the DPS was formed, and as I recall, um, those separate bodies were incorporated into the DPW, so it's my sense that they essentially went away rather than, but I, I would defer to somebody who would actually look at the, uh, specific warrant article. Yeah, that was just one question I had for, um, we need to double check, I guess, right? Yeah, it created a statute, right? It's created an authorizing statute to establish a Department of Public Works. Or did we change the code? Yeah, and the Board of Public Works. I think we did. If we change the code, I don't call it a major state statute.
Yeah, I think the, uh, I think the, uh, Special Act of 2008, Yeah, I'm looking to use it. It, it vested the Board with, uh, it believed the, uh, the powers and duties of road commissioners. There shall be a Board of Public Works consisting of five members, one member who shall be appointed by the Board of Road Commissioners, but then the road commissioners went away. But if you get down to Section B, it said the Board shall have the powers and duties vested by General Special Law, by Town By-law, and the following Board's commissions set as providing this act, and number one, it's the road commissioners and Board of Road Commissioners. So the Board of Public, so those road commissioners were then folded into the Board of Public Works by statute. I think that, that would be my take. Um, and so we could add. It's clear if we're gonna have it there. Thanks. Yeah. Um, in the mixed paragraph, just so you know, here, down here it says, he specifically received substantial food from 50 residents, but I've seen it elsewhere as 40. I've seen it, the number is households versus individual residents. So you might have seen over 40. Okay, so we're okay with that. And then, within three weeks, an updated bridge. This is just, it's said, but it's two years. Bridged repair. No design. Yeah. And then,
I don't really understand this, of course. I'm sorry. Excuse me. This presupposes the existence of the Sherman's Ridge Road Neighborhood Agreement. Right. Right. Which, as I gather, we cannot find a copy of. Mm-hmm. Um, so. Yeah, look at the third paragraph. Yeah, the third, large paragraph. After thoroughly reviewing the town archives, no written agreement regarding Sherman's Ridge or Sherman's Ridge Road was found, or has the proposer provided the original agreement? Yeah. I guess my question is, is this an argument of post, or? What did I have? Is it fair? Is it fair? Is it fair? Is it fair? We were clear about, like, we, see, I don't understand that. That's what arguments have been. The points maintain the common bridge was constructed in 92 using federal funds. What does that have to do with this? I miss, I'm, I'm, I'm highlighted because I'm saying, what am I missing here? No, I think those arguments in favor are supposed to be in the number two, where he's, yeah, this is number two. So, number two, this article is just about preserving the bridge as a wooden bridge in perpetuity. This title he wanted to change, because he put that title in as a placeholder. But the title that he really wanted it to read is preserving the historic character of Sherman's Ridge and Perpetuity.
Because the first article about Sherman neighborhood agreement is really about the substantive agreement. This isn't really about that. The text does not match the title. So, I think we should look at, possibly, we probably could change the title. Because it was making no sense to me whatsoever. Yeah. We need to check them, Kelsey, with the moderator on this, I think. But I think we can change the title. It's the text we can't be fiddling around with here. Okay, so that would make more sense. It's the title. Right? Yeah.
Whatever language you come up with about the ability of telling me to dictate these kinds of things. We should use that in each room. If there's a magic sentence. A magic sentence we'll come up with.
I had down here, because I'm going back to the title, since no agreement, nothing to be negotiated. That's irrelevant, because that's the whole time.
Okay. Does that everybody say, Mr. Enthalmer, you've spoken on this one, you're all set? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. A little more wrong with YY, right? From YY, right?
Is this...
This one is the... I'm sorry. Increased safety, reduced fares for residents and vulnerable users of Sherman Bridge Road and Bridge. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I want to start with Kelsey. That region doesn't mind. Is that okay? Great. Yeah. Kelsey, have any thoughts on this one? Are we using the version that's in the supplemental packet or in the regular packet? Because they're very different. Supplemental. Yeah. I can find one. This is age 11. Mm-hmm. I don't see. It came up, I think.
Because it's so short, this one. Yeah. Um, I think it's, uh, I... What did I want to say? Sorry. It just lost my train of thought.
Do you think this needs to be the event? I don't know what happened. Did you accidentally cut some paragraph out? Does it seem longer to be... Yeah. It was a lot. What did we... I mean, I could be honest and say, it's rare. It was very... It's been very challenging. We've been very grateful to have all the help we've had, but it's, you know, we're doing Zooms and we're trying to read them and I... Is that summing up about right? I would change, though. I write a right here, MGL Chapter 85 Section 2. It's actually Chapter 90 Section 17 that sets speed limits. Um, it doesn't say in there that, you know, select boards can change it. Chapter 85 Section 2 gives select board authority to make changes to the roads in a variety of ways which they cite in that I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Um, so I do think if we're going to talk about speed limits, we probably should cite, um, Chapter 90 Section 17. Um, the only thing I might also note is that, um, that there... It's really... I mean, I sent a really long email with a lot of information that I got that was a lot to digest, but basically says that speed limits come in two different forms, regulatory speed limits and statutory speed limits, statutory speed limits are set in 90, 17, um, that, you know, say 40 for this, 30 for this, 20 for this, 20, whatever. Um, there are processes in which to change a speed limit, but they're, you know, they're... There's a fair amount of guidelines and I didn't want to go into the depth of it. I think the only thing that might, you might want to mention, and I was able to find the original article, the original peer-reviewed study citing it, is, um, a study done by engineers at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, found that artificially lowering speed limits without having engineering studies to back that up can actually increase traffic accidents, including fatalities, because drivers are less likely to listen to a speed limit that doesn't match the real conditions of the road. So the speed limit on Sherman's Bridge Road is set at 25, um... I think, Rob, who is this in to that paragraph because his research was the only way you could reduce it from 25 to 20 by statute is if it can be deemed and fit under this category of safety zone. Um, right. But there's also not the other background that may be helpful to the voter. Maybe just stating that, you know, speed limits aren't arbitrary, you know, the guidelines. Yeah, mass general laws have guidelines on two different types of speed limits, you know, maybe not get into the whole process of what you can do to change that because it's a lot. Um, but basically state that, you know, there are guidelines on speed limits that the state legislator has, um, promulgated and that, you know, while it might be, while it might seem easy to reduce speed limits, um, that can have a negative effect. That actually is, was in there to begin with in the body, but it did stay as the last argument yeah, posed. Yeah. Opponents might argue the law, so we do need to bring it back into the body if we have any error in the arguments so that they, you know, they match. Um, I also want to know if it's Doug and this one and maybe another one, if we want to add in that a speed study at the request of the residence was performed in the fall of 2025. Uh, results were inconclusive and board is undertaking his, uh, a second study, um, results of which will be available at the time. Um, I think that one of the problems I'm noticing is that there's overlapping content between the stats and the Carter articles, but Fincom has two separate liaisons, so they wrote them up separately. Right. But there needs to be the overlap. Yeah. Because it's all kind of addressing all of the same. Right. So if we have to be redundant, they have to be redundant. Right. But when you're talking about setting speed limits or weight limits, then it needs to contain the same information. Mm-hmm. And I also think this one did talk a little bit about having signage, which is part of the study. Yeah. Let me get some notes here too. Um, want to go to them? That would be great. Michael, Bill, how's everybody speaking about it? All right. Do I go to the next one? ZZ in May, I mentioned this is the last one that we have to look at. This is ban heavy commercial vehicles on Sherman Bridge Road. This is another one that we wrote down a lot. Um, the one sentence that I kept seeing in all these articles and I kept taking them out is, however, passage of this article alone will not necessarily impose the requested measures on Sherman Bridge Road. It's the right, to your point, it's the right concept, but it implies there are steps that could be taken that can be accomplished. And in cases where we, we probably can't do this, as the state probably would not allow us, plus what we're connected to. Bill, how would you tweak that sentence to reflect the sentiment that this is a resolution? You can't say it's a resolution, though. No, to reflect the sentiment that it is a resolution. Yes, go ahead. Well, getting back to this notion of, uh, the magic sentence, uh, I wonder if there could be just a simple sentence added to each one of these saying, uh, adoption of, uh, well, has no binding. An article like this may be useful in conveying the sense of town meaning, but there's no binding authority. Binding effect. Yeah. That's okay. Do you like the sense of town meaning? Um, I really don't, but let's be sure. If Phil says it, then I'll tell you. No, it's not that true. But that's the point, is that there, there is no binding impact. Yeah. That's the whole point. Yes. And, and it probably still needs, could be tweaked it to get there. But my, uh, my point of the dependent clause is to not dismiss it entirely, you know, as the virtue of a point of view by. Right. Could be actually, there you go. It's wonderful, Adair. Are you ready? I'm ready. Give me this.
It actually going, the first argument's opposed, right there. And actually that's going to give a good exposure because that's really the issue. Why you would not do it? Right. And the arguments in favor and action pose are why you would vote for the article, why you would not. So you would not vote for it because it's not, it can't take place. Yeah. Talking, though, out of the other side of my mouth, I wonder if saying something like, this might be useful in the debate, the sense of town meeting, does that suggest that, okay, we heard you, but we're going to ignore you. Right. Um, so, uh, maybe a simple declarative sentence is better just to say, this is effectively a resolution and it's not at the force and effect of being binding on the general, something that happened to you. It's the non-binding part is what they need. Yeah. You would think non-council would come up with it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like that answer. Yeah. What? And maybe there is one embedded here that just needs to be repeated. And I, and I, and I say something here that I really feel needs to be said at town meeting is the amount of energy and labor we have spent on these, the emails and what have you. I don't know how we politely say that because you don't want to be rude, but I do think we need to communicate, you know, with all the, uh, the public, um, records requests, um, that have occurred, all the emails, the, not only going to select board, but to the board of public works, staff, like other, the communities, the legislators. I mean, I just feel somehow we need to communicate that. So this was all communicated to the petitioners at the outset, but according to town council and the language that she used is, for example, on the weight limit, Wayland town meeting has no authority to unilaterally impose any type of vehicle restriction on this way. And then she said, it's just basically about town meeting expressing their support for this idea, but the select board has to go through a whole number of steps. So, and that, that's, that is up to the select board, but I take your point that if there is a yes vote and it's a sense of feminine that we should do this, is it incumbent upon us to then do that and try to go through the steps that steps include for the weight limit, getting concurrence from Sudbury and then going to MassDOT and getting approval. But I think the problem with the way the article language is phrased in all of them is it would appear to me as a voter who's not stepped into this at all. And yes, well, will result in what that article says. And if we don't tell them otherwise, I'd feel duped if I'm a town meeting. No, we do have to bring this up some more. All right. Or it's like a sentence at the end that says, notwithstanding the foregoing, the resulting outcome of the outcome of no binding effect. Okay. Select board action. So there's only three of us here. I'm not, um, for Doug. He's, he's a liaison for the select board. Um, and the two thinkable liaisons have been just delightful. I mean, it's really a huge amount of work. And I hopped in to help a little bit. And I have, haven't I? But, um, we'll, it, with the boards, with the boards, that means to build concurrence, we will, um, continue to, you know, uh, policies, because the point is exactly what Doug says is we want to be very clear. You have to tell them what they might. And then you have to be clear as a, as a binding speaker. It's having to be clear that as written, it's not possible to do that. Right. But just plain. So, okay. I think it may be necessary, but perhaps not sufficient. Right. To put this kind of language in a warrant. I wonder though, is, will there be a designated tigger in opposition? There will be. And would that be the appropriate time to reinforce this plan? There will for all six. Yes. All done. If one, if one goes to the moderator and says, I want to speak. We could even just pose a question to town council, even if there wasn't enough. So there was, with some meeting, there was a, uh, performer who speaks and however long they speak, um, to the seven minutes. So if they do four minutes, then they'll go. But there has to be, I want to do steps forward. I don't think there is. For all seven. I do believe that. You? I do. Okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Yeah. Um, I know that, I believe we have some candidates who are interested in that and I will confirm that. Um, and I, again, this is where I want to, I think we need to communicate to town meeting. There's the proponent principle. And this is where we get to say, well, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the real authority, whatever the proponent or opponent says are residents. But I think if I'm a town meeting voter, I want to hear from town council. Exactly. And at some point we can have a question. So like I mentioned this to you, we'll have a question for, because the town council, town manager, and the director of how the birds acknowledge of this than we do. So we need to have questions ready. that might be asked, that might be relevant. Take one of these that they then answer. That's how we accomplish a lot of this. All right. So have we, um, beat this one up or not, or should I keep it, keep going on this one? That'd be fun. And we'll be well. Okay. And with that, I think we are going to move to, oh, um, you're gonna take the lead on this one, right? So, um, um, under Doug suggested, and then Michael and myself, um, we had a zoom meeting this past week with, um, some members of the Wellesley community who have created this Wellesley Civil Discourse initiative. And I think they have a one, that some of the pages you put into the packet of families and that foot page and all that's on. It starts in 15 on supplemental. How much? 15? Page 15 on supplemental. Okay. So you want to look at 15? We don't. Okay. And so we wanted to just take a few minutes, I think we have 10 minutes here set aside to talk about that and talk about, um, how they've structured that and, and, um, the board is yours, Mr. LeBee. So this is just basically for Bill here, who hasn't been a part of these discussions. Well, because he wasn't there on us at all. That's true. Neither was Chris. So, um, I had first met with folks from Wellesley, which included their assistant executive director named, um, Corey Testa. And then Corey brought along, uh, two folks from Wellesley who serve on this planning committee for this concept, the Wellesley Civil Discourse initiative, which exists in a number of other municipalities. Wellesley was finding, as I assume many towns have, that there have been a number of difficult conversations arising on a fair host of topics, uh, in Wayland. We've had hate-based incidents, anti-Semitic incidents, um, and we have had organizations pulling people together. Um, I think all of us have gone to some of these, uh, including by HRDEI and the Whale and Community Action Network. But what Wellesley has is now this permanent structure that's been in place going on for six years, where they proactively have these conversations instead of reacting to an incident. And it seems like they're reaching a fair number of residents for each conversation, numbering 50 to 150 each time. And the way they do it to make it cost-effective, instead of having to work with a trained, um, the dialogue expert, such as this group that they use, essential partners. They use essential partners to train a number of staff and residents in Wellesley who would then have the ability to moderate these, these, and they don't call them conversations. They're really, um, facilitated dialogue. So everybody has a chance to participate and feel heard equally. They were quick to say this is no magic bullet, but it's just another tool in the toolbox to build community. And when Carol, as I expected, asked about cost, it was, I would say, a relatively modest cost of less than $10,000 to train some 20 to 25 residents. And they have now had three separate training sessions, uh, which started as two full days, and then they learned they were able to, uh, reduce that to a full day of training. And so they have a number of staff who are trained as well as volunteer residents. And, um, they've now hosted a whole number of these conversations, some of which are outlined in the summary document that is dated from September of 2024. And of course, since that time, they've had several more conversations. One that I was, um, particularly piqued my interest was they had, uh, uh, facilitated discussion with a number of town volunteers to build a greater sense of, um, community among the volunteer cadre in town, because I feel like we're, we're necessarily siloed. Sometimes we meet as joint boards, but oftentimes the boards are doing their own thing, but we are all working for a greater sense of community here. So pulling them together, they said what, that was a very successful dialogue that they hosted. Um, they're willing to serve as a resource for us. They've now met with us twice. And I think Carol's idea was when we were originally talking with the HR DEI and the equity assessment, one aspect of that is to continue to have these facilitated dialogues, but we needed some type of model. And so this is how I learned about the Wellesley civil discourse initiative. And now Michael and Carol have been brought up to speed. And I'm just hoping that we can a continue to explore this, uh, and, and B, um, start to reach out to folks and, and see if we can start to, um, build this and get it off the ground. And one of the things I would, I would add and happy to answer questions is that, uh, the folks from Wellesley there, they had the current chair of the select board on with us and the former chair of the select board, the former chair was a founder of this idea. And she said the support of the select board was critical to, to implement this model. Um, as is, um, getting the buy in of some staff and, and being able to, to, in order to have staff partner to have some type of an incentive structure, such as giving them comp time to participate in this training, et cetera. Uh, they have an ongoing planning committee, um, that meets multiple times a year. Not, not too frequently, except for planning for one of these constructive dialogues. Um, so I, I'd love to hear what Carol and Michael thought because this was the, the second time me hearing about this. And I think there is some significant value to this and, and I'm hoping that the board will be supportive as we explore. Um, one thing I noticed, it was funny that you picked that out because that was the one that I thought we should do first because it's exactly what I fear. No, working in town government, I suppose, anywhere, it says right here and there, information, relations separate point to getting things done in town government. I think that's probably two everywhere. And I, I agree with you, but I see more siloing. And I think if we had, we had more interaction with it. Um, I did notice, Michael and he and that Maya sometimes supports this. So I'm wondering if we could, you know, if we went forward with this, we could ask them to help us with some of these grants and reason that gets us some points that we need. Anyway, Bill, what are your thoughts on this? Well, I think it's a very interesting idea. Um, the, uh, looking at the paragraph, it says, uh, the overwhelming success and engagement of the community in this dialogue further reinforce the need to select, quote unquote, hot topics and enthusiasm for offering additional dialogues. So I think that's important to, uh, the scope of the discussions, uh, not merely be race or incidents, but, you know, discussion of, uh, uh, you know, uh, the, the schoolmaster going out, uh, things of, uh, of particular interests, uh, that everybody would be interested in. So, uh, I think it's a great idea. Uh, you know, and to your point about, um, um, board people getting together, I think that's a terrific idea. I, I had occasion to, uh, chat with a member of the board of public works today about, uh, and, and a completely unrelated context about
some aspect of this whole wire thing. Frankly, I got an earful and, um, like, I think I gave as good as I got, but, but there, there wasn't the opportunity for, you know, a really kind of constructive, uh, dialogue. And, uh, so, um, so I think that's, you know, there's a little friction there without, you know, recognizing how much we have in common rather than, so volunteers of town government are presumably motivated in a certain way and share a lot of the same interests and values. It'd be good to reinforce that. And, you know, it's obviously easier to pick up the phone and talk to somebody who had a bit of a relationship with them rather. Yeah. I just want to add one thing that these sentences particularly struck me, um, which is on page two of their summary. It says, the planning team has taken the long view like educators who often cannot quantify the success of their work immediately and for whom positive results may be anecdotal and can take time to emerge. The team views the dialogues as skill building, offering the community a different way to engage with neighbors and acquaintances and meaningful conversation and to become sensitized to each other's experiences. That, that, that really struck me because I feel in some ways we've been doing that in an ad hoc fashion, reactively, but I would love to be doing that regularly, proactively. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think WCAN does that. Um, I mean, they've had, are we still doing that? They're still doing those podcasts. Mm-hmm. So they're having the plot locks and it's just putting different people from different groups together. Yeah. Who maybe have, may not have met each other before and there's no, no agenda. And that's essentially what this is. Um, you'll read down here. There's no, the wrong way to follow up, but there's no goal to have, um, you know, an action claim from the dialogue. The dialogue is the product. Mm-hmm. And I think that, uh, was true. I thought it was very good. Okay. You know, I also think it will, um, help us to, um, you know, incorporate some of the ideas and suggestions that we've seen. We've seen a number of different programs and I think they can kind of be incorporated together. I know we talked about, um, Dr. Ellis, possibly participating in this as well. I mean, we're a terrific facilitator for this. Um, and there we go. Um, and it's funny that we don't pick that one about interacting as well. Um, now Chris was here, so he, Chris, heard that you're right. There's, he's sneaking out the door. So he said, well, we haven't finished yet. Um, but my question is, are we, do we want to revisit this again when Tom is here? Yeah. Let me put strapping an agenda in a couple of weeks, a couple meetings, maybe in April or something like that. Or maybe after Tom. Yeah, right after Tom meeting. Yeah, I could do that and then maybe do you want to, except we want to, like, invite the folks from Wesleyan to talk with us. What would you like to do? I think it would be nice to have a back and forth conversation, even if one or two of them joined via Zoom, so then they could be at home when we're meeting at night. Um, because I think that, you know, they're so knowledgeable about the model now because they're, they've been doing it for six years because they started, they're right during COVID in 2020. So that's what we could do because then after that, maybe we would. And they offered to come before our board. And they did, right? Michael and I had a little bit of difficulty hearing, uh, because we were in, Doug was on the Zoom with them and then we were in the room. I think something wrong with that microphone. We were talking and no one heard us. They just, they were dialoguing with us. But, you know, maybe what we could do just sort of thinking this out is, you know, we have them, we have them come in and then we kind of take the next step to maybe go to create our own, uh, our real and civil discourse. What would you like to find, Chris? I think it's a, it's a great endeavor that we should consider the, um, you just think about the events in recent weeks. You know, we have inquiries. We had a press inquiry last week, which led to us creating the press release about what's going on in response to the, um, the, uh, conflict in Iran, um, and how we've stepped up controls because people want to know. So we have these timely, uh, conversations, hot topics, but there's also, I think, longer range things that people would want to talk about a strategic planning, not only for schools here. And to me, it would seem like a natural extension of progression of kind of what I do at my office hours. For anybody who doesn't attend, when someone comes in and speaks, they often like to come in and just kind of voice their opinion about something going on in town. And everybody who's in the room, I let them participate in the dialogue. Oftentimes it's, you know, I help you back and forth and other residents will point out their concerns or point out positives. And, you know, nobody runs the dialogue. It's just, everybody chimes in and gives their thoughts and I take away some stuff and we try and see what we can do. But that's often what happens at town manager office hours. It's just kind of a group discussion that's initiated by a resident with a problem. And I just think this is a bigger extension of that. And it allows people that have concerns or questions or fears about what's going on in the community to suppress them. And I think it'd be a good thing. Definitely. Okay, so I think we've got sort of a plan here. And I'll set. Before we can, can I just circle back real quick to the annual tell me anything? Because every single one of these, we've taken a vote, right? I just want to show up the chart. And also, I did want to mention, because I skipped it, the final or the more final or the most final order of the articles that's going to be in the warrant is now in the packet. We went back and took a look at that and moved some things around. It's in the regular packet. I think it is. I think there's something on the page of the packet. Okay. Thank you. What's the number? 43. Thank you. I just want to make sure everyone's had a chance to look at that. I did highlight in red the 630 star, because last year I think we had 645, but I thought this year we voted for 630. Is that correct? 630. Yeah. Which I think is great. And I think that... Bill, do you see where my article is on Planning Board of Jobs? That's where Carol put it. 42 of 42.
That'll keep in the seat.
Madam Chair. Yes, please. The only one, and I'm assuming we did not take a vote on the omnibus budget this evening. I might... Yeah, yeah. We've decided to not defer, because we're not going to put any number. We're going to take a position and speak our position at town meeting. Okay. Once all the numbers... If we decide to take one. Well, that's fair. If we decide to take one. Some of us might be taking one. That's a good point. Anything else?
With respect to this list, if... Are we saying that the Sherman Bridge Road articles are essentially resolutions? We can't say that. We think they are. Why do you? Those resolutions simply go at the end. Yeah, but it's not resolutions. They weren't introduced as resolutions. This was my point. They have to be said resolution, and then it's got all the whereas's and the therefore's and that, and it's read as a resolution. It could have the effect of a resolution, but it wasn't submitted as a resolution. That's not to my point. Right. No, no. So my closure determines the order. Right. And if it moves it, it's effectively. Mm-hmm. Enforceable. Mm-hmm. Except for last week we said, let's move them up, and I've moved them, and I've moved this chart about three times now, so guess what? Oh, watch this.
Yeah, I don't know the order. I don't want to change this again. Read a bit. Two-thirds of the board has a quarter. Two-thirds is good with it. I just want to make sure everyone saw that we had moved some things around. We really did the best to know. Um, other committees get on, uh, express their displeasure if they're always at the back half of the Oh, we have the other title in there that I was talking about. You see, it says renegotiate Sherman's Bridge Nearby Agreement 2 slash maintain Sherman's Bridge historical experience. Yeah. That's what it could be. Okay. Do you see that? I'll change this. I do. Thank you. So tell me the theory of putting torrent by holiday road where it's...
What'd you say? What name is it, right? Yeah, what name is it? Uh, 37. 37. So we have to process right through the finance committee, and then we did like a breather after that, and we're doing the wrong splits. First 15 are pretty well set. Um, and then we went with these abbreviators to kind of say, okay, if we, if we're running good on the time, these are small items that we can finish off after we've done two really big things. That means if, theoretically, we'll start the second night somewhere around 25 or whatever, right? Um, but we may be dipping into those on the first night, right? And so then the question bill is, if you want to give people a definitive sense of where a substantive article like that is, you can't put it in the buffer between night one and night two, because it could then come up into night one, and people think, well, that was way down there. It's going to be on night two. But if you're interested in 25 holiday road, you've got to sit through the Sherman Bridge items. You've got to sit through the zoning items. Right. The zoning items should go pretty quick. We've got them in five, ten minutes, whatever problem. I think we're going to get to some of those on night one, though. I do, too. I think we're going to get to Sherman's Bridge screen. If we put the budget down to a few, and then a 30-minute presentation that was last year, I think we'll get to the budget fairly quickly. What could derail it is if we are starting to see people want to move to pull out of abbreviated presentation or consent.
That could slow things. You know, the issue becomes that, and if we move that up, then someone else is unhappy. So I'm happy to, this is what I'm going to do. I'm happy to, I really can't do it. If the board hopes to see this foreign art, it's well for there to be.
They're not able in the room. And wait, what is that? Because people who are concerned about it are frankly more apt to stick around. Right. And those are who are agnostic. Right.
So that's why I should be working. When you move into number 30, number 37. I mean, you could break, I think of the Sherman's Bridge one as the four of our potential buffers between night one and night two, and they can float into either. But I think 25 Holiday Road should either be clearly in night one or night two. And so you could split up some of the Sherman's Bridge Road and put it inserted in between the four of them. I just think about the acquisition of the Raytheon property, where the town meeting turned it down. Where people left, it was brought up for reconsideration. That was subsequently approved, because a bunch of people left. You can't do the reconsideration now, because it has to be substantial. Substantial information. Substantial information. For two years old. But yes, you can't do that. That's right. I think that's my point is that you could lose a number of people that think that we're there. My babysitter has got a test tomorrow. What if we move it up to 28th? Here's the thing. If you take all the articles that are going to really generate a lot of traffic and they will not, we will probably have a problem with these on the bottom. People don't stay for fun. So you have to leave. It's mine that's at the very bottom. Well, that's not so exciting. You've already told me this. So let's, I think we could move it up a handful. I will do my best, but this is the last, literally. Don't even call me about any more. I say, I say make them 28th. I don't want to commit. I really don't. Take a break between chairmen's bridge. I don't really want to commit on that. So let me just go back and look at that. Because you've got to do the numbers and figure out for time. And where the break might be, to your point. I think 30 might move it up to 30. Maybe it makes sense. Then if you want to move it up a few. But then you have, you only have any of your planning board, petitioner or articles, term click. I'll say people are not going to stay.
So, all right. Let's, let's take this under advisement and see what we can do. I'll try to move it up maybe if you have to have it. It's all has to be it hashed out before the 30th. Before the meeting on the 30th. This has to be hashed out last week so they can play out the world.
This was just, I did some more edits for you. And I have to give it to them tomorrow. Hope we have a tentatively scheduled meeting on Friday. I've got to give it to them so they can lay out the board. But I don't, I'm not planning on having a meeting unless I absolutely have to. And at the moment, Michael is not telling me that I have to have the meeting on Friday. So I will take this under advisement. My suggestion is that it's laid out well enough that it has things that will be of interest to people. It will keep people there. I don't see when I do the numbers that we're going to be in these seats long, because I think we're going to not spend 90 minutes on the budget. Hopefully we don't spend 45 minutes on the water supply. To your point, I think we'll be at about 20. I think you've got it up to 30 though, Carol. Maybe. Let's go. You can sit inside by yourself, Carol. It's the board. It's the numbers, guys. They are. Really, I'm telling you. I really do not choose it, so. I understand that. We're going to do our best to move it up a little bit. How's that, so? Just make it the new 30. I think the numbers will work. Okay. All right. We're moving on. What's the next afternoon? Now you guys made me late. See, I could have been on time, but they're all been on. That five-minute conversation made us 45 minutes late.
Fewer people, more chance. It never fails. I think it was Mr. I can follow you on. Yes, thank you, Madam Clerk.
Just said that for comment, Madam Chair. Because we're meeting rather frequently, there isn't too much week to week, as you know, because we're working on time noon. I will say that several members of the town staff and school staff, they go over to the Islamic Center in Boston this past week to celebrate the end of Ramadan with them in a community gathering. Chief Hebert and I attended, and I saw the library director and library staff as well as Dr. Fleischman. And as I previously indicated, we had press inquiries about the town's response to some of the anti-Semitism that we saw last week nationwide and the conflict in Iran. So we did put something out on Friday. Otherwise, the only other thing to mention is next Monday, I'll be having my town manager office hours here at 530. That's really all just the last time we got together. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Um, consent, please. I have a motion. So moved. Second. No further discussion. All those with favor say aye. Aye. Motion of gas is 3-0. The minutes of February 23rd. And do we want to do them together? What page? Um, I want to put down on the page. Oh, 76. I moved the minutes of Monday, February 23rd, 2026 as amended. Sorry. Thank you. Anybody have any edits? I do not. Of course, I have a couple. One is, um, I believe, and I could be wrong, that Ann was remote because I see later on we had roll call votes. Um, also the other thing is, is that, um, if the sentence got dropped, I don't know what happens. Normally it says I announced everyone by name because I'm required to do that when we have remote. Was this meeting? Uh, or no?
I don't think so, was it? Oh, we were meeting closed. Yes, because it's when we have the snowstorm. Okay. Never mind. Perfect. Um, and the only item is, is there are mention of articles in the right up here, uh, QQ, uh, and we have to put the titles next to it in the minutes, particularly since there's no, uh, article list attached here on the mat. Um, yeah, I'm good. That's why all these things are not showing up. I don't know. All right. Good. Do you want to take a vote? And all those in favor? All right. All right. That's three zero. Good in the minutes of March 2nd, 2026 as amended. Thank you. Anybody have any edits? Need a second. Or second? I'm certainly sure. Anyone have any edits? I can do a lot. Okay. On, um, page 88 in the packet at the end of, uh, the discussion of, or at the end of several votes, L-L-M-M-N-N, then begins a paragraph TFA expressed opposition to the article. I think it should say type article, O-O. Okay. It doesn't identify the article. So, that's it. That's the only thing I have. Great. I have... Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. I have one in A7, where we're talking about the gut explosion. And the first paragraph that starts, C. Martin noted, it said, the finance committee hasn't recommended, um, it has not yet thought of it, it said on the baseball project. It should say fields project, didn't it? Um, and then, uh, I don't know what I said. I didn't even ask. There was something here, or it said, I asked something down here at A8. Yeah. I thought it was you. Oh, it said here on A8 that C. Martin would, um, she said she would inform the library trustees that the board is aware of the risk and support the trustees decision. Was I supposed to do that? Or were you going to do that? And have we done that?
This is in regard to the Millennium Fund Senate Council changes.
It's the end of the second paragraph of A8. Yeah. Um, I, I did not, I frankly don't recall, but, um, I may have had a conversation with the, uh, I, I guess I got a note from the chair of the library board expressing, uh, thanks for the select force action. So I think it's kind of a handle. You, you might, in that paragraph, it says in discussion, C. Martin, I would say stated and she would inform. Okay, good. And where the risk, comma, but would not.
All right. All those in favor, say aye. Anything with correspondence? All right. Reports and concerns? All right. Do you have one? No. No. Okay. All set. So just me. So the schedule. We are definitely, no matter what, going back to every other. This has been a lot. I appreciate everyone's efforts, but it is a lot for us as a staff. We did have to do it to get through all this. Even if we end up with a couple of big meetings, we're going to go back. Twice, twice a month is okay too. I understand that. That's what we used to do. We should try. So 320 is a placeholder, just, and I don't think we're going to need that. But thank you. I'm going to let you know off the email by tomorrow, I guess, if I don't know that. Because it's going to have to be Monday, I mean, Wednesday. I think we're in pretty good shape. So our next meeting will be on the 30th. I just want to say now that we're through the articles and we'll start going back and doing some of the things that we were working on. So on the 30th, we will have a full meeting. We are going to have reports from the Route 20 Visioning Committee and the 212 Chichou Road Committee that have been ready for about three or four weeks now. Hopefully we'll get to those then. On 4-13, we are going to have the forum for the DD, but I'm also going to ask Mr. Lafayette to come in and speak to us. Facilities update from the inside, on-site report, including his thoughts on the town building, because we wanted to get that info. And then somewhere around the middle, starting in April, you and I and Michael can start the discussions of the pilot program roll-up. So that's where I've been leaning and where everyone thinks that's a good system. And for that, I will take a motion from adjourn at 9-17. 9-21, so moved further.
I was trying to save some of it. All those in favor say aye, thank you.
Please raise your hand ma'am. Do you Jennifer Stoller have some of the firm that you will support the constitution of the United States of America, the constitution and laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the laws and fordinance of the town of Wayland, the rules and the regulations of the Wayland Police Department. And you will, to the best of your ability, faithfully perform the duties of the police officer in and for the town of Wayland during your continuance of office. Thank you to sign here. Yeah. Chief. So sign the official book, Ray, the memo space, because I get everything else for you. Yeah.
Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll hold on to it. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Congrats and congratulations.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Do you have any announcements on the board? We are going to have a forum on April 7th at the Council on Aging on the long-term water supply project. Thank you. This will be in advance, obviously, of the town meeting to, you know, get some extra information, questions asked. It was seven. I believe that's seven at the COA. Right? Yeah. I also want to turn this over maybe to Kelsey. Do we want to talk about the transfer station survey? It is coming. We're still, she gathered all of the responses from the different working group members on their response to the draft, and she is still working on that, and will probably provide us an update within, I'm hoping, within the next week or so on how to move forward, depending on when we finalize that draft of the survey that will be placed in our newsletter, if time allows, but on our website, on social media, we hope to have also maybe some printed versions for people who have difficulties accessing the internet or prefer to do things in paper, and we also plan to have little flyers, or not flyers, but little 4x6 cards with a QR code so that people can take that with them if they visit our building or the COA or any of the other buildings, so that we can get the biggest response rate that we can get. Terrific. Any public comments? Is there any public comments?
Public comments? Yes, I see one person's hand raised. Eliza Carter. Sure. And Ms. Carter, I recognize you.
There we go. Sorry about that. Okay. Hi, everybody. I sent you something about my article, so I hope you can read that in the emails. But I wanted to talk about something else briefly. In light of the current illegal war that's costing taxpayers over $2 billion a day, I believe, and climate threats that serious economists have pointed out serious conditions may come very quickly with estimated financial collapse of insurance companies, which affects home buyers not being able to be able to get mortgages and collapse to the real estate market. And then, of course, we have the oil embargo kind of thing happening right now in the Middle East. I'm a little concerned about whether this is a great time to be updating the personnel bylaws and wage classification, particularly on a study that didn't compare the town's number with all the towns compared with Wayland, nothing was discussed about the number of taxpayers in those towns, the growth of those towns compared with Wayland growth, the town budgets, what they were at, or the kind of anticipated huge expenses, such as we are facing in Wayland now with the big water project and the recent bond that was taken out last year and the other bond that we're already paying off. So I just wanted to express my concern about this being the best time or not to bring this to town meeting. Maybe a better study that looks more carefully at when making comparisons and makes that clear to us might be a better idea because we are a small town with a small number of taxpayers and we're all a lot of increases. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Is there anybody else we want to offer a comment? All for a comment. All right. Wait a second. I wanted to see if there's someone over here. We all sit over here? Yeah, there's nobody online. I recognize Mr. Stutz. Chair. Thank you. Hi, I'm Doug Stutz of 39 Sherman's Bridge Road and I'd like to thank the select board for placing Sherman's Bridge Road on your agenda for tonight's meeting and for asking and impacting Chief Hebert to participate. My own belief is that no further traffic studies are needed for the select board to take action. Two studies have already been commissioned by the municipal project team working on the bridge repairs. Both compellingly demonstrate the magnitude of both the speeding and rush hour traffic issues on our scenic road. These studies also confirm that the current rickety bridge decking does slow vehicles crossing the bridge today and that they accelerate significantly by the time they reach 66 Sherman's Bridge Road about 500 feet to the east. I continue to believe that the right first steps for the select board to take are first, designate the quarter mile of Sherman's Bridge Road from the bridge east to number 51 as a traffic safety zone, which Massachusetts law grants you the sole authority to do so, with a speed limit of 20 miles per hour. Second, follow the example of Weston. Those of you who know the shortcut to Home Depot and Costco know that Lexington Street and Weston has been posted for its point eight mile length as being closed to commercial vehicles of over two and a half tons weight. This would allow the town of Wayland and the select board to act unilaterally to legally restrict these vehicles on Sherman's Bridge and Sherman's Bridge Road without the complications of involving Sudbury potentially mass dot on a limit on the bridge itself. And being realistic and pragmatic, I think that a five ton weight limit might be more realistic enforceable and, you know, a better idea than two and a half. I also request that the Board of Public Works be asked by the select board, since they have the sole authority in the town bylaws over traffic calling measures, to install speed tables at both hilltops on the road. These speed tables, along with a four-way stop sign at the Oxford Road intersection, will require motors to slow or stop three times over the 0.7 mile length of Sherman's Bridge Road. Mr. Stotts, if you can wrap up and we can take a copy of it as well. I will. Placing them in the hilltops minimizes the hazards of cyclists and places them where oncoming traffic is the most difficult to see. They would also install the appropriate signage, uh, bicycle sheriffs, etc. Sorry. I'm sorry. You're right. I already had two tires. Sorry. Let me get a little teeny bit more. Unfortunately, when we do that, it does come out. Yeah. Next time I'll talk to the FedEx guy. Exactly. Thank you. I think we have that email already. Um, the Board received that email prior. I'm, I'm, I'm nothing if not consistent. Thank you. Anybody else want to provide a public comment? And there's nobody else online, right? Somebody. No, I see someone right here. I'm sorry? Is there someone else? Yeah, it says I. It says I. It says I is on the bottom top. Yeah, let's try. Go ahead and make sure that they identify themselves. Yeah. Hello. Could you please identify yourself? Oh, I'm Sheila Corbett. I live at 72 Sherman Bridge Road. And, um, I'm really concerned with the speed as Doug was saying. Um, and I really think that, and since the police is there, police chief is there, um, it would be a good time to talk about signage, because I think they could do, you know, legally be, um, add, add signage to the road. But we really need signs for, um, sharp curves, because the curve is very sharp. And as people come down it, my husband would be walking the dog, and they literally come down flight at 40 miles an hour. And he's almost been hit several times. Um, and also the speed limit again. Um, and also there are children on the road and there should be a sign, you know, children at play. Um, and there also should be, um, another sign for the wildlife crossing. We have a lot of wildlife in the area, and there's no signage. There is also one sign at the, um, uh, stop, stop sign that says 25 miles an hour. There isn't another sign, uh, speed limit sign, all the way to the bridge, going towards the bridge. There's not another speed limit sign, and there is a sharp curve. So I think people just step on the gas as they either go, um, east or west on the road. So it's really important because of the sharp curve, people are walking their dogs, people are going down to the river, um, to go fishing, um, that there needs to be some kind of, um, safety going on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else before I should, uh, close it. It's good now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the next agenda item we have is to invite, um,
Captain, please, to our favorite backup, which will come up and speak to us. And I think we want to discuss and review traffic study and then, and possibly have a discussion about some next steps. So I think there's some different information for those who are following along in our packet. I think it's on about seven. Thank you.
I'm happy to start off the discussion. So, um, as we know, acting chief Haybert started as chief, um, the end of December, uh, I had worked with prior chief, Chief Berman. As you know, we had several conversations and we had a meeting out in Sudbury of some of the residents. And at one point it came up about should we conduct some traffic studies in that area. And chief Berman had put up, um, the stealth radar to do some of these that were done, um, last fall. So the information contained in your packet is, uh, the study that was done at that time. And, uh, we would have the acting chief here to talk about in the next steps if the board wish to see some additional data. I would just say there were some comments that were made, um, in public comments about the speeding and signage. And I will say from my experience here in other towns, and when I was the assistant town manager tasked with traffic and signage in another community, there's a delicate balancing act because while there's signage, there's also aesthetics. I mean, you want to make sure everybody's safe, but if you start putting up too many signs about children, corners, wildlife, then you'll get the inverse. You'll get people or the converse, people saying there's too much signage on a particular road. So one of the challenges that we're going to have here, as we've talked about, and it will come up later in the articles, this is a, a road that leads to a bridge that connects to communities. And as Ms. Power Sproulette now knows through her research, there are mass DOT regulations. There's also, um, a document called the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. And there's specifically Massachusetts amendments, which talks about the types of truck restrictions that Mr. Stotts referred to, and how certain signs can be put up. And there are all these other logs that were referred to by some of the prior speakers. So there's a delicate balancing act that one has to do that the select board does have the authority to set some of these, but there are exceptions because of the type of road where it's connecting to another community. So, uh, just have to bear that all in mind as we go through this process. But we have the acting chief here. I thought it'd be prudent to bring him here if the board wanted to hear an explanation about what the results were here and whether or not you wanted something else, uh, done between now and, say, time. Yeah. Um, but from looking at the speed studies that we conducted in September and October, uh, obviously one from the week of October from the 2nd to the 6th, it doesn't really show, uh, any issue in the area as far as the average speed being 27 miles per hour. It's not similar to that. I would put additional police officers. However, the one from this 27th to the 2nd, we're getting up into 31, uh, kind of breaking five, six miles over for an average speed, um, of the 85th percentile, you know, in the 35, uh, range with a good amount, you know, decent amount going from the 35 to 40, which is usually when we start enforcement on a 25 mile per hour zone. Um, so we've done a lot of directed patrols up there. I don't have specific numbers at the moment of how much we've done up there. We've done it for the stop signs. The stop signs have seemed to reduce the speed a little bit as far as cars coming out of the, uh, intersection with Alpine Road there. Um, I'm not sure if we've done a study in the bend as we get to the river. Um, we could look there and see if, you know, cars are exceeding the 25 mile per hour in that zone, you know, additional signage as far as a sharp curve is something I'd be willing to look at and kind of, uh, say, you know, uh, might be not necessary, but could be useful in that area. Um, especially with pedestrians walking on the road. I know the sidewalk terminates kind of right as you get to that curve there, which would pushes people into the roadway instead of on the sidewalk. So those portion of the sidewalk signage will be, would be useful and where the sidewalk terminates, we could look at some advisory signage there. Um, so people could slow down going around the curve, approaching the, uh, the bridge, but I don't have any speed, uh, data sets. I think from that location, um, once I've missed it here. Um, so we could do another, you know, short study beginning of the spring here and kind of look at the average speeds through that, uh, curve that approaches the bridge for that quarter mile as stated before. Comments from the board? Chief, I, uh, question for you, um, based on prior experience, because I don't recall having been engaged in this process on my first term on the board and certainly I haven't been in this most recent term. Have you, um, presented ever on a recommendation for a reduction in speed limit similar to this, where it would be a five mile per hour reduction? And if so, did that have any impact? I don't have any experience about myself either of reducing signage and if it has a requisite impact on actual speeds on the road. Um, I've never participated in the study that shows one way or the other. Um, I know that speed is a concern in other parts of the town as well. Um, so I think it's something that we could address. Again, signage doesn't always affect behavior, uh, unfortunately. And I just don't have the data showing, you know, pre and post posting of a new speed limit, what it actually does to the speeds on that road. And because I'm just curious, it's not like we'd be moving from 35 miles per hour to 20. This would be a five mile per hour reduction. Right. And I'm, I'm wondering if there's any data out there and if that, that small reduction has any type of meaningful impact on driver behavior. Yeah, I'm, I'm not sure myself. I'm willing to do the research on it and present at another time. If we want to see if, uh, you know, signage versus behavior is something, um, we can find some good peer reviewed research on out there. Thank you. Chief, it, uh, strikes me, uh, that you have a lot of experience, uh, during your time on the force and previously. Yeah. Uh, with, uh, roadways in the town, pardon me, uh, many of which don't have sidewalks. And I don't, it's a fair question, but do you have a kind of sense of where Sherman Bridge road stacks up, uh, relative to other, uh, street there, town, uh, roads in the town, uh, as far as volume of traffic, speed of traffic, uh, safety concerns. I'd say the volume of traffic, it definitely is one of the higher volume, uh, roads in the town as a, you know, we'll, uh, cut through road and it's people coming from Sudbury to Wayland and say it's probably similar to, uh, the Gleason road kind of cut through that we've seen over the years. And that's probably its best analog is Gleason road going from Concord into Weston. You have the same type of concerns where there's no sidewalks in that area, uh, for the Gleason road, uh, area. Uh, it's not really comparable to route 30 or any other sidewalked, uh, or cut throughs, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's okay. Mr. McClendon, do you want to speak before? Yeah, just one thing I think I'd be remiss, uh, if I didn't mention that although Mr. Holder is not here from DPW, um, I think there's a mention of, uh, traffic tables. Whenever we talk about traffic calming that involves, uh, raising pavement, putting in bumps or things that, that tends to be an impediment to DPW, especially in which time when plowing, um, one thing I, you know, I have noticed I've been out there and there are narrow points on that road. And when you look at traffic calming devices, and I have another community narrowing the road, it's often a way to do that. And the road, despite what we're seeing, unfortunately, it is a narrow road already. Um, a lot of times you want to take a wider road and make it more narrow with sidewalks or create a pinch point. Sometimes they'll put a diamond in the middle of forest traffic to slow down and things. Um, the fact that it's narrow and tree-lined, it almost serves as a natural, uh, calming device. Unfortunately, they don't appear, you know, that, that, that has always been the case. But, but I just wanted to stress the point about, uh, DPW would most likely take a wider down to, like, folks. It creates problems when we start putting your dishes on for favor. So over the weekend, um, Levin and I went with someone else who asked me if I had, um, been on the board when some traffic recommendations had been made. And I actually, it's true. One actually was on Sherman Bridge Royal where I think we added, uh, recently, a, uh, stop sign and a crosswalk, quickly, where they intersects with Alpine because it's a school bus stop. And yeah, and the other was at the, again, at the request of residents. And then again, the residents requested over Pemberton. Um, I don't believe it was, it was more, uh, putting in more stump signs and one of those signs that flashing river speed. I travel on Pemberton. I see that flashing a lot and it's a very good reminder to be honest with you. Um, so, um, what is the sense of the board? Um, I think that, I mean, we've had a couple good recommendations there myself and one is to perhaps have another look-see at the bend, that quarter of a mile at the bend. I don't think that's a good idea to have a study done there. And then maybe look at possibly if some signs were warranted for that, that section. Does that sound like a good next step? Is the process when you worked on those two, um, traffic calming measures, that residents would bring it to the chief? The chief would conduct an analysis for the study and then the chief would come forward with a recommendation? Help me out here. I think what happened was the residents may have gone either to the UW or they may have gone to the chief with them. Those two collaborated me and gathered the information and their recommendation for asking this. And then they came to the select board and we voted. Okay. Which I think is a good thing because quite frankly, I don't think I'm a traffic, uh, uh, consultant. I would have been a consultant. You're a traffic commissioner. Exactly. No, I'm a fence viewer. So is everybody in agreement that that's what we should do. And then perhaps that could take place, you know, in the next, uh, few weeks. I could, because I do recall having conversations with a number of residents, my first term on the board and they were all related to issues on plane road. And so then the residents would meet with at the time, um, chief Irving, I think at the time, and then chief Swan and then nothing became of it because we never got any formal recommendation from either chief before the board. So I would, I would want to hear. Yeah. I mean, I think that we, we obviously need the recommendation from the chief and the director of public events or assistant director, because they are the ones that implement this. They're the ones that handle it day to day. So everybody's good with that. I'm, I think that's it. Mr. McCauley, you're comfortable with this strategy? All right. Thank you. We'll see you. Let us know when you're ready and I'll put you back on a future agenda. I appreciate that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So my next agenda item is going to be, um, discussion about a exceptionally anonymous, going to explore it recently. We're going to invite General Braddocker, our management analyst communications coordinator to speak on behalf of the anonymous donor. And do I guess there's some page 11, I think the background information that Jalen has done for us is in the packet. Correct. And then following that on page, what is they both say on 12, is a, is a couple pictures or diagrams here of the actual signage that we would have. So, so we'll just wait one session to tell you what it's weird. Jalen, thank you. Hello. Yeah, no problem. Um, so as Carol said, um, the donor would like to remain anonymous. Um, I have been working with the donor on this. Um, so they would like to donate, um, they would like, the donor would like to donate, um, to historic Route 20 signs to be placed on Route 20. Um, so during the Wayland's 375th birthday, the owner, uh, and the founder of historic Route 20 came to Wayland to show off these signs and give a presentation about placing them in Wayland. Um, at that time, the committee thought it was a good idea, but they didn't go forward with purchasing just because it wasn't the right time for them. Um, and now due to Wayland 250, um, the donor expressed interest again, that, um, they would like to display these signs. Um, and the intent behind the donation is to highlight our part on the notable, uh, highway. Um, Route 20 runs from Boston to Oregon. So there, there's a lot of signs throughout the United States, um, locally because I drive by it on my way home. There is on one on Route 20 in Marlboro and Sudbury, and then there's one in Marlboro and North row. Um, and there's a picture of that on the second page. Um, the donor wants to purchase two 12 by 18 signs, um, from the historic Route 20 signs website. Um, each signs made to order with highway grade metal. Um, they're pre-drilled and they're improved for highway use. Um, I've spoken with Tom Holder about this. DPW is very receptive to installing the signs, um, when the ground is gone. Um, so one of the signs will be installed on the Wayland-Weston side and then the Wayland-Sudbury lines so that it would face the, um, people who are driving in when they enter Wayland. Um, the only thing that DPW asks is if the board approves, um, to notify the board of public works as a courtesy, um, and then additionally notify MassDOT, but Tom Holder has indicated that MassDOT will not have an issue with these signs being installed. Um, and we appreciate your consideration. Thank you. So hold on one second. So also after you look at the signs on page, um, from page 13 and 14 are our, um, gift policy. And in particular on page 14, you'll see the criteria for accepting donations. Um, and, um, yes. Now, does anybody have any comments about what you would like to stop? Oh, I'd like to offer a motion, though, that, uh, the Select Board, uh, accept the gift from the anonymous donor with gratitude. Second. Thank you. Okay. So good to see what we don't have any more call tonight. Sorry. Just us, us chickies. So all those in favor say hi. Hi. I think she passes tweet zero. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, when I sent out the note tonight, uh, for the update for tonight's meeting, I will ask Abby to forward, you know, on our behalf to the Director of Public Works. And then also perhaps he can notify MassDOT first. Yeah, he will notify. Yeah. So I'll, I'll take care of both of them. So that's out there. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. So next on our agenda is we're going to meet with, uh, Mr. Russ, Mr. Russ. Good evening, sir. Would you like to join us? Thank you. Would you like to have a seat and, um, introduce yourself, sir? Thank you.
Do you have to introduce yourself and give it back? Sure. Thank you. Just your name, Mr. Russ. Thank you. My name is Ken Bruss, PRUSS. I've been well in a year and a half. I live at Five Brandywine. Great. Uh, I'm Richard. Come on. Thank you. That's always, you know, you have to introduce yourself for the minutes. Yep. Go ahead. Okay. So you have, uh, contacted the town manager's office and are interested in joining the Council on Aid. So we have a very, very informal interviewing process here. And we just ask you to give us a minute or two introduction. Okay. Each of the board members, there's only three of us here tonight, Adam. Um, we'll have a question and then we will have a motion, please. All right. That's the motion. I would have explained when I passed out to you. Yes. Please. Okay. All right. Did you want to add anything? Sure. Um, I'm retired. I have a lot of time on my hands. And at this point in my life, I'm working to be a backbone. Great. I have an extensive amount of experience as a volunteer. I have yet to work with a nonprofit agency that said, boy, you know, we have so much money, we don't know what to do with it. Uh, I've been active with AARP for a number of years, and I'm passing out a flyer for the community challenge grant initiative. This is a U.S. wide program. Over eight years, we've awarded over $20 million. I'm a sub-team leader in Massachusetts with three other teams. We're reviewing 120 applications. And you see the gamut of types of things we can do. So I have a variety of skills that I think contribute to the board. I've served on the board. I've been VP and all of these types of things, civic organization. But in particular, since we're in the midst of the community grant process, and I noticed that Wayland has not applied, I'm wondering, is this an opportunity we're missing? And so one of the things I'd like to bring to the board is to focus, is there funds that we can be taking advantage of? Now, I know there's a perception where Wayland is an affluent town. But there are still some opportunities, perhaps, in the realm of... So we have a variety of types of grants. I focus most on need-based. So things such as programs to help with housing installation for seniors who otherwise can't afford it. We look at food, we look at public safety, and you see sort of the gamut of things. And I'm not aware of Wayland ever applying. And so part of what I'd like to do with the board, in addition to learning more of what they do, is perhaps to discuss, are there some avenues that you want to consider? That's it. Terrific. Open to questions from the board.
Mr. Bross, thank you first for your willingness to step forward and be considered for this. You have anticipated my question, based on my review of your materials, which is, what is the AARP Community Challenge Program? Are there specific areas, aside from helping the town explore the possible applicability of this program to the town? Are there other things that you would particularly be interested in working on in your position as a volunteer at the council? Thank you. So I'd like to learn more about what the council does to determine what I can do. I'll be upfront with you and say, I'm not interested in doing things like food delivery or physical tasks, but I have 40 years of professional experience with meeting management, with project management, with facilitations, any number of type skills that I think could, you know, bring to bear, you know, data analysis. So I've spent my life accumulating some skills, and so now what I'm looking to do is rather than turn them to helping Fortune 500 to make profit, I'm looking for nonprofits and how I can help there. And that's been the skill set that I've brought to a number of the, you know, positions in the past where I've been a volunteer. And thank you for your interest. And it's very important that our town continues to bring folks on board who have skills of varying sorts that we have over 40 boards and committees in town. I would say that we're very fortunate here to have an outstanding director of the Council on Aging, who's been in town for some time. And I was going to ask you that. And we also have, obviously, a brand new extraordinary facility that has great potential and is starting to be ramped up in terms of its use. It's interesting, when I was just looking at this flyer that you passed out there, there is currently an ongoing prospective mural project at the site of our community pool. When I am noting that it looks like application period has closed as of a couple of weeks ago, this is an annual grant. Yep. Okay. I just wanted to double check. I have to be upfront with you. We have different categories of grants ranging from, you know, 2,500 to 10,000 to 25,000. We support some of the mural type things, but I guess my bias is, is I think we tend to focus more on more serious quality of life issues. So I have to, I have this afternoon with the two different, you know, applications for 15,000. One of them was for ceramics. Another one was for housing insulation. There wasn't a question for it. Yeah. Right. So a mural and particularly knowing some of the racism, antisemitism things going on here, I think could get serious attention, but I'd still have to be honest with you and say that since we have a limited pot of money, a more pressing one would win. I also have to say that if I were on the board and I'd be encouraging people to submit an application and I could bring some expertise to drafting it, whatever team I lead would not be involved in evaluating that grant. Sure. Understood. Great. I'm good. Thank you. Um, you know, I echo the board that we're delighted with folks with such wonderful and different variety skills apply where the others are willing to, to donate their time to the town is what makes so terrific. Yeah. But one of the things I should say, um, and I don't, I certainly, uh, thank you for reaching out to the director and going to the building and probably read some of the minutes of the committee. I'm sure that's, we always ask everyone. So, um, my only thought other than we need an emotion is that, um, I think with your skill set, we, we might have, uh, if you have time on your hands, maybe you and I should have a conversation blind, maybe some opportunities, right? What's your thing? So, okay. All right. Uh, I move that the select board, uh, appoint Ken Bruss to a term on the Council on Aging Board ending June 30th, 2028. Sorry. Thank you. All those in favor, say hi. Hi. Okay. Uh, Mr. Bruss. Congratulations. Thank you. You were appointed unanimously. You will receive, um, in the next couple of weeks, a letter from the town manager's office, um, confirming that appointment and writing and also instructing you at earliest convenience to come into the town clerk's office to swear in and receive some information about conflict of interest law of which you seem to be familiar. Terrific. Carol, should I reach out to you beforehand to set up a time or show the way to do it? You can reach me out if am I telling you? I'm sorry? I'll reach out to you. Okay. That's fine. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Don't worry. It won't be long before I reach out. That's it. It's very important to say that. So I think the next item is we're going to, um, to both the, probably the most significant amount of time tonight is to leave the final discussion of the reading articles that need to be discussed, supported, voted, and what have you. Um, we certainly took on a big, big not to crack here. We had 52 articles to start with. We, even though we only have 42 going through it in the warrant, we still ended up crossing those other 10 on the way. So in effect, really, and I think we've done a terrific job to get this far. So tell me when Thomas is ready. It needs about five minutes or so. If we could do a couple others. So the first one on page, um, it is F. Yeah. So what we already voted this, but I wanted everyone to see the language that has been added to the article, which is for the Energy Project Evolving Fund. We did reach out, um, to tell you, I'm not sure how much is in their file, but they are not requesting a budget for 27, which is in the red. Um, you'll see it just before it says that we're on the net. So everybody's okay with that. Article A, a recognition and, um, citizens. We've added a couple names, um, to that since you voted it, as we've been advised of others who should be included. Is that in the past? No, I don't think so. Okay. Who did we, I was just going to ask Kelsey, who did we add Kelsey for? What was, um, the recognition? I know we added Pat Nelson, who passed away in December. Oh, um, did we ask? Just derrick me one second. I was actually reading their obituary this morning. Yeah. It was very lovely written. Um, uh, Robert, if you can feel something. Robert Farrington. I was going to say Farrington. And, uh, the other one that I mentioned was that, um, applicable, Mr. Troops. Uh, not applicable. Okay, great. I have to tell you, Mr. Whitney, I share your, your utmost concern about accuracy on this list that you expressed before, which I thought like, wow. Yeah. I don't think we've done so, but. Yes. You remember, well, when we were doing this last year and the year before, you said it was just difficult to make sure we're carrying everything. Okay, there's Tom. Okay. So, I'm going to, hi, Tom. So, let the record show that Mr. Bay has joined the meeting at 718, please. And I need to go down to, we're going to do H, H real quick, and then we're going to do D, D, D, D. How's that? We're in the regular packet. I think, H is H, I don't know. Regular H. The budget. No, we're not going to do H, H. We can do whatever we want. Or, here's what I can do, this is in page 37, Bill. So, we're talking. Yeah. And then come way down.
No, I think it's got to be in the supplemental H, H. Excellent. Thanks. Anyway. Hi, Tom. Good evening. Yeah. Page 8 of the supplemental. Okay. So, what we did here is we've already voted this article. We voted to co-sponsor it and obviously sponsor it. But there were only three of us voting it at the time. And I thought it would be nice if we had another look at this in terms of, if we wanted to have, you know, more board members were present, then we could, you know, have a stronger vote, you know, on this. This article we reviewed, it's right up itself, has gone through a number of reviews and iterations. I think it reads pretty cleanly. I think Mr. Barnes did a terrific job on this. And anybody has any questions on it? That's fine. Otherwise, I'll just take a motion. I noticed that two members of the Finance Committee abstained in their vote. I'm just curious as to why. I am not 100% certain, but I think they were focusing on, there was information in this article to begin the write-up to begin with about the State Revolvement Fund application. And then when that was, now has to be appealed, I think that created them costs and costs. Although the purpose of the article is to take the next step in, you know, determining that we have a long-term lot of this is just permission to go forward with the next step, which is the construction. Well, I understand that in the last DPW meeting, the DPW director indicated that he expects that a decision will be made on the appeal prior to the town meeting. So I think it's well for us to certainly conclude this in the warrant. I think it would be helpful, the appropriate time, to talk about how this goes forward, should it not be with the tax without the zero interest loan. I know that there were some projections put together, and the finance director expressed some concern about the ability to meet the debt service in a short year, so
we'll have a clear understanding of that once we know whether we're dealing with it. I have that down for like, um, April 13th, but I believe that may be addressed at the forum on the 7th, what information they have. Um, I did attend the meeting last week, and Mr. Holder said he has applied for, if I get this correct, multiple, submitted multiple applications for the state-level ruling fund, and this is the first one that didn't go through. There is, you know, I think Mr. Carl mentioned last week that there is surprise that our numbers did not come anywhere near what they were projected to because they didn't work with a consultant from the state federal ruling fund, but somehow we didn't seem to get the points for the PFAS issue that we felt were appropriate, we were advised, would most likely happen. So hopefully it's just, uh, um, I will also share with you that the, uh, one of the board members, uh, who's familiar with the MBTA, having worked in that industry for about 30, 40 years before retiring, indicated that if we don't get the full loan, maybe they would give us the loan for the treatment facility, and then some so the words, the words, exactly, some of the connection types, so maybe we ended, so that might be, so it's still out, but I think that right now, um, I don't think I don't share the concerns, but my thought today was that we would just re-vote this, so I don't think you were here the day we voted before, so this would give you a chance to vote. I think, I don't think you want to vote. Is everybody okay with that, and can I have a motion then?
Is the motion to support? Yeah. Since we've already, it's important, because then it'll be four of us rather than three. So moved. Thank you. Second. Okay. Um, so now, since Mr. Faye has joined us, we'll have to do a roll call vote. So Tom? Yes. Tom? I'm Tom. Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Carol? Yes. So that's now 4-0. I will advise the finance committee so they can adjust the write-up. Um, also on the supplemental packet on page, what do you think? You know what it came from? DD? DD. Page 4. Page 4. Um, so, um, Tom, I don't know if you were able to, uh, uh, read the supplemental packet today, but on page 4 is a revised write-up that Bill has put together after having all sorts of consultations to let them talk about it. Right. So, um, following our prior meeting, I reached out to the chair of the school committee. Uh, they were kind enough to invite me to their most recent meeting. It was Friday afternoon. A wonderful time to me. And, uh, uh, yeah. And, uh, but, but had a good discussion. Um, they were certainly, uh, and proposed, uh, to them that we take them up on their suggestion that the article be co-sponsored and that the management of the, uh, study funds, uh, should it be approved by town meeting be jointly managed. So there were just a couple of, and I had prepared a draft for their review. They had a couple of small changes, which we've incorporated. We also have comments now from the finance committee and, uh, the vote from the finance committee, uh, where the finance committee recommended approval on a 4-2 vote. One of the members who voted, uh, and the negative indicated a concern about the fact that a specific means of financing the study, uh, was not indicated. I responded, uh, to my counterpart in the finance committee that, uh, the town manager and the chair have found, uh, $200,000 in the sale of real estate account. And so we've given that information back to Rob Quimby. I guess the finance committee. So I don't know if they're inclined to take this up again, but it would be a five to one, but, um, nonetheless, uh, did get a, uh, uh, a three-to-one vote in support from the school committee. I want to open it up for discussion. I'll start with you, Tom. If this, uh, board votes to support the article in the current version, uh, it's my understanding that our board will likely have a public forum prior to town meeting to, to discuss the article. Is that still, uh, a consideration being considered? Yes. I, um, was waiting until we voted on this. And then once we supported it, then I am suggesting we could do the forum on April 13th, when we meet on April 13th, as part of our regular meeting. But that's one of my star notes here today. See what, when you would like to do the forum. So does that sound a reasonable time? That sounds great. Yeah. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay. I'm very glad and appreciative of Mr. Whitney's efforts in reaching a compromise language set of language here in the article and, uh, school committee, as he mentioned, passed it three to one and looking forward to moving forward with this article. Okay. Yeah. My only concern in descriptions, it says after one pass of recreation, I assume that it's just might be one of the end results, not necessarily what we would propose, right? Because we'll come back and have a look at those. The notion is to cast a white net, frankly, and look at options, uh, that would, among other things, uh, set forth a potential, uh, for revenue and expense associated with those. Um, my only comment is that the votes belong up just in front of arguments in favor. You can see my arrow here and thank you very much. I echo Doug's comments that that was a lot of work. Appreciate it. And looking forward to having a successful endeavor here. So with that, I'll have a motion, please. I move that the select board, uh, vote, uh, co-sponsor and support article DD 25 holiday road, appropriate funding for preliminary design, engineering, study, and appraisal. Thank you. Is there any further discussion? Otherwise we'll take a vote, uh, Tom? Yes. Doug? Yes. Bill? Yes. Okay. Yes. The motion passes for Sarah. Okay. Um, I said, would you like to stay for some other items? If we don't want to move to them, otherwise we will thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. We also thank you for your color scheme this evening. Yeah. We're very nice. I would love to stay. I really would, but I need to go to dinner. So thanks. Thank you for everything. All right. Thank you again.
Out here in the Southwest. Take care. Bye-bye now. So the, what's the time please? 725. Yeah. Mr. Faylin meeting at 725. All right. Let me just go back to when we started. So we weren't at, at the very beginning. Don't say that Mr. Fay's appearance makes me think that maybe we should, as we budget in the future, think about a clothing allowance for people. All right. Um, I think we have to go back to the regular packet because I think the next one was L. And what page is L on? I'm just trying to walk us through this so we don't have a Google. I have 20. 20. Okay. And then that one, um, we voted in, but then two items were, two vehicles were added from the police department as a one. And so I just want you to see those. We don't have to re-vote unless you want to, but I think that takes care of that. Okay. So we're all up to stuff. We're off to never any surprises when they, they come out. Um, next one says the next item. Well, I'm going to pass, I'm going to H, I think. Is that next? On your, on your agenda it is. It is? Yeah. F-L-O then D-D. Well, I'm going to do it this way, I think. Can we find H in here? Where's H? It's in here. In the regular? I have it. What do you want? Yeah. This is the, um, we have not, I want to do this for next is we have not seen this article at all. There's a couple of nine, we haven't seen it all. And it is the, first of all, I think the title has to be changed because it's about 27 budget. Hmm. Yeah. So that's the first one. I just noticed that fall off the catch. Um, so the finance committee has voted both the operating and a capital budget for next year. And these are the numbers they represent. And historically, you know, the select board really is not involved, um, in the budget development. We do a lot of listening and having, but we don't develop the budget, but because the town manager works for us and it's now, this is his budget that he recommends to the finance committee. Last year, we did take a position. So I'm going to ask Michael to give us a quick overview here. You see the numbers that are highlighted in the, in the different motions and, um, and there's some charts that go with it and maybe he can just give us a quick run-through and then we can decide, um, where we're going to, we'd like to take a position on this budget. What was this doing? Thank you Madam Chair. Um, we strive to keep the overall increase of this budget below five percent, um, to try and minimize the impact on taxpayers, their own whelings. As I've done, since I arrived here, we've asked for a level funded budget from my departments. And in some instances, uh, well, I should say level service in some instances, level funded. We've worked with the school committee to, uh, ask them to push back on their side so that all, all, you know, many things, uh, make an easy lift and we, we couldn't make all these cuts by ourselves. And a lot of this goes back, as you know, we talked starting in the summer when we had, uh, a revenue shortfall and with the assistance of the select board, we were able to close some of those gaps. Um, so the budget before you represents modest increases in areas within our operating budget, we have fixed us within our unclassified that we're responsible for. As we get to article O, you will see that many of the collective bargaining units are still, uh, not yet resolved. Um, so we're hoping to close some of those up before we actually get to town meeting, whether or not we get the result before print. Um, it's remains to be seen, but Mr. Kemeny has put some money aside to resolve those. So we believe based on all of our forecasts, what our revenue projections are, the stadium to date, we've received our, um, healthcare numbers and chapter 90, we believe that we can work within the, the revenues that we've had without asking taxpayers for any additional funds this year and still try and keep within the trend of, uh, uh, four, uh, four, uh, four plus percent increase below a five percent threshold.
Okay. So you're seeing the motion one and the operating budget is 112 million, almost 113 million dollars. Um, and it shows the different amounts where the funding is coming from 111 from taxation, just under 500,000 from the ambulance receipts, 1.1 million will be lied to transfer to funds. Then the second item is, um, the capital budget and it's highlighted in yellow. And I think the number goes there, 1 through 34. There are 34 projects and they're not set forth in the capital budget. I'm sorry, what page is that I don't care? Um, page 111? I don't know, because ours, an article H that's on page 31, is one page of narrative and then it's attachments below that. Are you in the supplemental? I'm in one page, right here. Motions, see these are the numbers uh, emotions and emotions here. See mine? I highlighted the numbers. Yeah. Just so I could carry it, carry it in a group line. So if you look over here at number two, it says items numbered one through five. Yeah. And I'm, I'm, I'm advising you that I believe there are 34 items in the capital budget. So it should say items one through 34. And then the, it goes along and it says the total amount and it's not 12 million. That number has to be fixed because I believe that number has been changed when we didn't do the, uh, the, uh, the fields. So if someone just checked that, well, 10 million, uh, that brings all these numbers changed. But this is, you think that number should be higher or lower? Well, about 10. I think it's around 10. And the 2.5 million for the fields, it's because, of course, it's going bad for the state there. This is why you're paying me the big price. But it presumably includes the 10 million for the high school treatment plan. Yes. Right. So in the way we would be looking for that is not in tax, but to make the transfers from the capital stabilization. Right. But presumably it's in the capital budgets. Yeah. This number needs to be adjusted because the finance community made a couple of little tweaks, but the gist of it is 34 capital projects, approximately 10 million. Do you know the number exactly? Um, I meant to ask you that. I may be able to find them. Do we think the 125, 244, 195 is accurate? Is that right? And it's operating in capital. Yeah. And see, when these charts that we have in the packet going forward, they don't include any COLA, which is what Michael is referring to, is that's going to be in the salary reserve. So the money is there. It's just not allocated to the various budgets. I couldn't tie the attachments to the actual motions. And what number couldn't you tie? Well, I was just looking for the detail on the 12-2 or the capital. No, I don't see the capital list here. I think this is mostly, um, looks like it's all operating. It's all operating. And I'm telling you, I believe the 12-2 includes the, uh, the field. Right, right. So it starts down to, I'm going to make, I, I say 10, it's probably closer to 9-something, like 9-8 or something. I don't know the answer. And are these, uh, the town budgets?
This is combined, isn't it, Michael? Yes, it should be. All these budgets are combined. This is beyond the bus budget. And when you go to the FY total budget summary on page 32.
See, it has school down here in the total and the last slide. We're going to go to 112. Up top. So here's your 112 up here.
And then he gives you the breakdown. Here's the 112. These technically should all add up to 112. The 24, the 55, and the 32. Does that come up to be 112? He has payroll expense and on the last five, it's on the top of page 32. He has total budget.
I think if you add these three numbers. Right. Yeah. And he breaks all. So if you have this tutor in them, it has it by town and then school. Yes. And then he breaks off at different departments. Here's the bureau. As Michael was saying, it's about a 4.1 budget. So what's been the past practice of the Gordie as far as taking a position? I was just looking that up. I looked at last year's warrant and the select board's not listed. It only says recommendation with the finance committee recommending approval on the four separate motions. I thought we did approval last year. It's not an warrant unless we did it at time. It's an article, it's on page. It is, it is, like I mentioned, it is an interesting thing because one year we didn't take one. Oh my goodness.
This should be up there. Yeah.
We don't have to take one. I think we take one as a support. Yeah. Because it's his budget is my reasoning for bringing it forward. First of all, I think we should know what it is. Yeah. The finance committee also is, I believe, I'm not sure if it's by code, but historically, they do make a budget presentation to us, but really, so the public knows what's, what has been finally voted that should be in a couple of weeks.
What are you thinking? Yes. In the last file after the board voted last week in exchange with Mr. Barnes, Mr. Kevin, he had a capital budget number that was $10,913,500, so it was $10,900. I didn't do it before, even the idea of having a vote. I feel like things are still similar to the floors. And our vote, at best, would only be 3-0 right there, right? That'd be all right. I think things are in flux. I think these are pretty much the numbers. I just think this one has to be adjusted because when this was printed, since it was printed, there's been an update. I do believe they have voted the operating and they have voted the capital budget, and that's because they're in the process of putting together their report. They can't put together their report. They're finalizing the report. So it's at the pleasure of the board. I think I'm bringing it forth because I think it's so support for Michael because under the tell me, I direct, he does prepare the budget. He does prepare a capital budget and he didn't put it to the works with the finance committee. And I believe they share, maybe I think they share again, they supported fully your operating budget recommendation, did they not? Yes. I think there were some changes in the capital because we're in the middle of switching from the finance team creating the capital plan to the capital planning. And there wasn't, as we know, a lot of time. And so I think there was some changes back and forth there. But in general, they were pretty similar. Opening up for discussion, what's your thoughts? I looked at the last three. If you haven't done it, the last three years. And then, so the question is, I like the idea of supporting it. Do you think the three zero weight carries that? Or does that beg questions in people's mind? Why are only three people on the select board voting papers? But it says zero, zero. It means there are only three people. Right. We could also do it at a time meeting. Yeah. We could take a position and that'll be our finalized name. And then when the article comes up, like on behalf of us, I think they don't say the select boards are putting them out and it might be a good time to do that. Yeah. Okay. Amy? I think it's kind of implicit that if the budget is presented, it's been developed by the manager in a consultation with the finance director. The finance committee has gone through the fine tooth comb. It goes in the select board. It's put it in the bar. It's a bit spiritualist to me, but I think having a discussion with the board with town media is a good idea. See. Mm-hmm. Write this down. Okay. I think that's good. I'm going to do all of the items before the petitioners are going to do those last. All right. Yep. Does that sound okay? Great. Okay. So article O, which Michael referred to, is the wage and salary plan and the bylaws and that. I believe that's in the, um, supplementary packet. Yes, ma'am? I don't know what page it is. It is.
Look at this, this thing with blanking down. I don't know what else about the supplemental packet. It goes blank on page two. Page two. Now I can't see it. Thank you. I have notes on it. So essentially what we have done here, is this, email? No, this is my packet. It says one to 25. There we go. Yeah. Okay. We waited till the last night to do this one as well, because you know, you need to see, and try to capture as much changes as we can. We did add in the sentence to this, um, article right up in the third paragraph on finance committee comments about the classification compensation study that was just completed. Um, so we added that in, um, up in the top on motion cease or if we're going backwards, we added in the information to make the transfers from the reserve for salary settlement to support the the JMLC award. Firefighters, uh, contract expired three years ago, right? In June. So,
and then we have down here some blanks because we have not had any, um, we don't have any information there for those. So I think we're going to, we're going to, um, I'm going to hand this over to you. Mike, I'm going to leave that blank with the thought that perhaps what? Well, there was a couple of thoughts. We may, uh, I'm in various stages with the collective bargaining units. Um, one, I haven't had a sit down with, with one I'm meeting with for the first time this week. Others, we've had several meetings that were down to, I'd say brass tacks trying to, um, resolve some numbers. I'm also in consultation with, uh, Dr. Fleischman about his efforts, uh, to work with his units, um, hoping to have some numbers before we go to print. And then the other consideration I talked to Mr. Keveney is that if we resolve some of these before we get to town, meaning we could offer, uh, an amendment in on the floor with the numbers that we've resolved to, to date and put those in there. Um, if you may recall, I believe the other year, we, some of these just didn't get resolved. We got resolved later in the year and I would encourage those unions to wait till next annual time. And if we can't resolve them in a timely fashion this year, so. So that's why we have a couple items here that are the lag, um, I'm going to open it up to the floor. Um, obviously we do take a position on this article
and I think the three motions are exactly what we do. If they've made any classification changes, we do that. We amend them the salary plan to adopt any plans for the union positions. And then we're transferring, we're transferring the money to, uh, to meet the, uh, funding requirements for the Joint Labor Management Committee award to the firefighters. So, um, we, um, to be honest with you, I hope before we go to press we're able to put a couple of these numbers in here, but that would require the board authorizing, um, the town manager to put those numbers into the, the article. So the motion would be be that, you know, open it up to the floor. Here it comes. And I'm sure I should have commented that, um, you know, my office, I sent out notices to the various representatives, you know, early in the fall. Um, several of them were responsive and we've been meeting all along and those are the ones that we're close with. So this, I just want to make clear to anybody who's watching and folks here that this wasn't us waiting to the last minute. We've been proactive and there's been several meetings that have been responsive. Some couldn't for a variety of reasons, um, get here and there's all always, uh, I think, uh, the fact that some are waiting to see what happens with the school we do and our teachers use the largest that we can see what happens. But that's not an excuse. Um, but we, I would say we, you know, we've been meeting diligently and trying to resolve this. I looked at some of the dates last year. We were wrapping up a lot of them, uh, in around February of last year. So we're, we just seem to be a little bit behind in negotiations, but I'm pretty confident that we'll get some of these done before we get there. Um, well, number is with respect to C, of the reserve for salary settlement. Um, with respect to the non-union positions, COLA blank, are we in a position to fill that in or is that something that typically isn't done until, uh, you would have, uh, very much bargaining units? In my time here, traditionally that has followed after the unions have settled. Um, that's not to say that I haven't talked to some of my folks on the non-union side about making a decision ahead of time and an effort to, um, motivate people to, to come to a decision with the open collective bargaining. Right. Um, okay. And it strikes me that we must've encountered this previously, right, where you have at least one bargaining unit outstanding. And so if that were the case, uh, when it came time to go to print, would this be amended to reflect agreement with certain of the bargaining units and, and then, uh, the, you know, presumably there's a reserve created for the, the unresolved contracts? Yes. That's my understanding speaking. It was to Kenneth, Kevin. They didn't, in prior to my arrival, there was a situation where we had to do this and I was going to reach out to, um, our town moderator to talk about, and then the procedure should we need to go that route. So, Carol, were you suggesting that maybe a motion would be in order to authorize the share or the town manager to, uh, make such changes as are necessary and appropriate based on ongoing and hopefully settled negotiations with some of the collective bargaining units? Yeah, because it's kind of a, a chicken and an egg situation. If you don't, if the flu, then we have to come up with something, you know, what if we get a, we vote to take that language out tonight, and then there's a settlement. I'll be having to pull together a quick meeting here in order to get a vote. Um, so maybe, maybe you'll authorize the chair to inform the world's behalf. And then, of course, I would report any changes to you once we have the next meeting, which will be on the 30th.
And, and this is my article, by the way, I, um, the liaison on this article, I've been following this one. Um, and, um, anyway, I do not want to put an article out with blanks, and that's going to create more conversation than we probably would prefer. And so, what my suggestion at that point would be, you know, take those out and don't exclude them. However, if we have some other settlements, we will then have to do something else, whether it's an amendment or something like that. Well, the board has previously inserted this, is it not? I'm sorry. Yeah. The board has previously inserted this. Yes. Right. Oh yeah. This is a standard article. And so, um, you know, looking for a vote to support, or are we just giving an update about?
We're looking for a vote to support. This is one of the last ones we have to vote to support. Well, let's see. I don't want to start. Do we take that one first, and then the authorization, or is the order of first motion? Hmm. That's right. Can you put it in the same one? Sure. Let me, I mean, can we? Let me, let me, let me, let me. Yeah. I think so. I move that the board support article O, the title, the update personnel bylaws and wage and classification plan and fund union agreements, um, and authorize the chair or the town manager to update as necessary, uh, the numbers contained in the article under non-union positions and, what is the other one? Uh, COLA. COLA for FY 2027. Mm-Hmm. Certain. Well, send that. Okay. All those in favor, say aye. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, before we have a hearing at eight o'clock, so we can start some of these, but I also want to have one other, um, revisit. And of course, they're revised as the hearing, the 850. Oh, good. All right. Well, let me do this for a minute. We'll come back to that. That's great news. Thank you. All right. So article E, which is the enterprise fund article budgets, which we voted last week, and we voted to not support the retained earnings for, as a funding source, for the water enterprise fund. We have received it in a correspondence packet tonight from a member of the board with a very lengthy explanation and asked us to reconsider our, uh, the request is for us to reconsider our vote on the retained earnings on the waterfront. And I, I would like to honor that and have that discussion. Um, so what would like to start? You. Me. Me? Okay. So I attended the regional public boards meeting last week, and it was, Brian explained, um, Skelly explained to them that, you know, we had, um, based on the recommendation from themselves and the town manager, that the select board had agreed with them that it was not appropriate to use retained earnings, you know, in the funding budget. And, um, and I have to tell, I was very, I told Kevin, I told Brian this earlier in the week. I was really proud of him because he, he said, we're not trying to be antagonistic here. We just think this is the best method going forward for the time for the financing of these projects. We need to build up the retained earnings because as the budgets increase in order to maintain the 20 over the 25% and the retained earnings that we need to maintain the bond rating, um, this is the direction we need to go. And also as a side note, if they were to develop a surplus in the retained earnings, they could use those funds for capital expenditures, you know, versus operating expenses. So that, that, that, that was the meaning. And then we got this thing afterwards. So, um, you will remember last week, I did say that I thought, uh, they had voted to put retained earnings in, thereby used as a funding source this year. And that I was in agreement with the rest of the board and the finance team, that it's probably not a great, um, to do that. But I personally had said, perhaps we just let them do that. And then come May, if they don't raise the rates appropriately, then we, you'll remember I said this last week. So, um, but I did vote with the board to go forward, um, and remove the retained earnings as a funding source. It has been removed, I believe, from the article. So, it turns. So, we're responding to the correspondence that we received from, did you see the chair of the Board of Public Court? Vice chair. Vice chair. And so, his rationale, uh, in the email was that, that retained earnings works in lockstep with the contingency fund expense item in the budget. And he said, removing one or the other as unintended results. Removing the retained earnings as a funding source puts pressure on the Board of Public Works to raise water rates to cover the projected expenses plus potential unplanned emergency expenses. So, how do we respond to that, to that concern? Mr. McComb, would you like to take that question? I, I have an answer, but I would prefer someone who's running the town says this. Well, under the town manager act, this is not, the Board of Public Works is responsible for this. And my other community, I, as a town manager, were in charge of setting the waters. And I did it such that we had sufficient monies to build our reserves and to cover our operating expenses. I think that's the position that Mr. Kevin and I have been concerned about. Uh, I can't remember which email, but I think that is a story about, I did talk about. We did go before the DOR this summer. Um, and Mr. Kevin and I were a little bit surprised that DOR, who had indicated that they would not be in favor of this, didn't say much when this was put in the plan. But our concern, um, well, it's twofold. Mr. Kevin, he said that historically, when this, they established this, there was supposed to, there was an agreement with time meeting at the time that they were supposed to maintain a certain balance. I wasn't here. I don't know too much about that. Um, only what's been related to me and what I've been able to find. But given that we've known about the MWA project coming along for some time, um, and speaking with Mr. Holder, I would have expected that we would have done some slow incremental increases to ensure that we were building up our reserves as we go, um, into this particular situation. I know that they were counting on the updated meters to help generate some additional revenue, but I, I do think, um, drawing from your reserves to help cover some of your operating expenses, because it's not. But if it happened to that, Mr. Kevin and I would be in favor, so. I think an analogy of that would be, let's see if I've got this one, using free cash to us to pay electric bill in the operating budget to support an operating expense. Sound good, sir. Uh, I, I had occasion to actually watch the recording of that meeting and, uh, and I appreciate Mr. Wake of Hours, a detailed explanation. Uh, I find myself in agreement with the town manager and the finance director. Um, it strikes me that actively subsidizing the water rates with the reserve is putting out the best idea. Further, I'm very concerned that the rates, um, start to build to a point where we're going to have to pay a lot of debt service, even at zero percent. But as you know, Carol, looking at the projections from their financial consultant about the possible effect, a four percent interest rate, um, over 20 and 30 years, whether it's, you know, kind of the interest on the outstanding principal balance or, uh, the, uh, on mortgage model we're all familiar with, those are big numbers. Uh, you know, I've got to see a steady increase toward those numbers. And further, the finance director has expressed concern about how we get to that plan, talking about the possibility of making some their fund transfers that get there, so that they would be the more comfortable position than the board previously took. I think if you watched the meeting, then you also saw the segment where I inquired of the DPW director of how much of the retained earnings has been used this year, because I think we had to absorb, we have absorbed, was it 160,000? I'm looking at, like, it was 140,000 or 160,000 for the emergency and the very connection that we had to have, you know, when they have an issue and then happy hour when it goes down, we don't have, we don't have backup. And so I think we used about 140,000 or 160,000 of the 200 from last year, which is using, you know, your capital for an operating expense. So I think another issue that gets raised frequently is that when we get to the end of the budget year, the staff is looking at where they are and deferring expenses to avoid tapping into that 200. Is this an item that bond rating agencies look into? Do they go into this level? I would imagine they would. I know one of the other concerns Mr. Keveney has is if they weren't able to
generate the necessary revenue and had problems coming up in the money to retain earnings, then they could look to the town to supplement them. And that would happen at a time when we would be even more challenged potentially in all rights. So that was one of his concerns. But to your exact question, I don't have the answer. I mean, I have no doubt that the model has worked pretty much up to now, but we're changing our whole system. And with that, I think so. All right, I think it's a sense in the board that we did not re-roll this. But I did feel we owe the courtesy to a fellow board to review this. Okay. So I've got a few minutes. Let's go try and somebody tell me. I think it's in the packet. Is this where TT is? Let's see. Anybody know what page? 22. Yep, I got it. So TT is Sherman's Bridge, second pedestrian walk right now. I want to say this before, a couple of enemies before we start. Doug and I have to talk to each other enough to, this is the last few days. And I'm missing this bridge discussion. Yes, I'm sure we are. I want to say two things. Number one, we've already voted this, but when we saw these, the last meeting, they didn't necessarily have the Finance Committee comments in that book. In other words, how they will most likely appear in the warrant. And I like the board to have that information. The second thing I want to say is, because these were somewhat similar, it was very, very challenging to put these together. And an inordinate amount of time has been put forth, you know, on putting these together so that they best will present what we're being asked to vote for, which is in the article description. And they want to give a shout out before we start on these two. April. No, not us. April and Ra and the Finance Committee for their patience with us, as we have made between this inordinate number of suggestions, you know, in the write-up. And of course, they are the leads on this. But I really also want to thank Hilsie and Jalen for all their efforts. They've hopped in here and tried to capture some of the questions that, you know, Mr. Holder and Mr. McCall would like to have put forth in the articles. So she did some research. And one of the links that I think she found on the webpage, I think Rob thought was the most, it was the best piece of research I could have put forth on that. So I want to thank everybody before that. Before I also say, I don't think we're a hundred percent done yet. So let's start with Titi. This one has, and Doug is the liaison on all of these. So
Titi is the chairman of the bridge. Does anybody have any comments on this one? I do want to say also in here, I most, Kelsey and you probably did too, is that we interchange the word bridge repair and deck repair or renovation. And it is a deck repair. So we need to go back through all of these and just make sure we say deck repair. Doug and I talked about this already. So anyway, anything else anyone has on this? On all of them or just Titi? Or on Titi. We're doing them one at a time. That's my famous line. So particularly Bill, because you haven't seen these. You haven't had the pleasure if you're working on these. I feel deprived, but somehow we'll get it. Well, you know, starting another round will loop you in. Madam Chair? Yes. Um, I do think, I'm just going over my notes that I made about this. I do think that something that's missing from the write-up and the thing is that an order, a point about adding a second walkway to the bridge would require major bridge renovation, which is completely out of the scope. Um, it's not as simple as just slapping on a second pedestrian walkway. Um, both, uh, Tom Holder and, well, Tom Holder has indicated that the major bridge renovation, including reconstruction of the substructure of the bridge and wing walls would need to be completed in order to do that. And I think that might be relevant since that adds either even further costs to the, um, to the pricing that was suggested by the petitioner. So we, there is mention of that in an argument proposed, but you, but you think that that should also be in the main narrative? Mm-hmm. Yeah, technically when you do these, and these are like the summaries. So whatever points you make here should really be in the narrative. And then this is if someone only reads these. I mean, I have to tell you, long before I was on these boards, I would do that. See the title, read the pros and the cons, and then I'd be good. Well, I believe I represented the last meeting, and Tom Holder would back me up on one of the last meetings we had with DOT, their engineers, and Barry Lorien, who is, um, the highest ranking member of DOT. He said, because of the changes that would need to be made, this would take this out of a deck repair and make it a deck, I mean, a bridge rehab. Right. And it would potentially knock us out of where we are on the queue for the deck pre-repair, and we'd have to get in a different queue, which would potentially jeopardize the funding. Because at the very end of the write-up, it says, following its evaluation, MassDOT denied the request, noting that it will not fund work that digress, that digresses from preserving the lifespan of the bridge. So we could add some information there. The whole project is bridge, deck, repair. Yeah, but every time we say bridge, we're not going to say bridge, deck. I mean, we're talking about a project that is the bridge, but I can add to that. Right. Would anybody else have any comments on this or this? Anybody? Do I go to the next one, then? Yeah. Okay.
You got seven minutes. Get them. Yeah, I think that we're giving it knock down, they're a queue, but the funding is scary for everyone. Good. Okay, article UU, which is Sherman Bridge five-ton weight limit. Yeah. Um, anybody have any? I only have a minor couple of things on this one. I think you may have taken these out. Um, Madam Chair, if I may. So this, so these are, these, wait a second, is this one? One second, wait. Is this one now the revised in the supplemental? Did you teach? I don't know. Is UU in the supplemental? No. I don't think so. Okay, go ahead. Don't you mind if I skip you for a second? No, not well. I, I just want to point out in the, under the finance committee's comment, the second paragraph where it says imposing a five-ton bridge limit would prohibit both buses, emergency vehicles. That's not, um, true actually. Even if you do have a truck exclusion, also known as a, which is it, HV, HV, HCVE, um, which is the heavy commercial travel, uh, vehicle exclusion. If, even if you pass that, it still allows, and I just had this, it allows, uh, vehicles making deliveries, um, emergency vehicles, and then any, um, public utility or, um, so bus, buses wouldn't be prohibited. Um, our, our vehicles wouldn't be prohibited, like, uh, uh, uh, a fire truck, ambulances, all that. Anybody making deliveries on that road would not be prohibited. And, um, yeah, so that, I think that will, yeah, would not be prohibited. Construction or utility vehicles is where I was thinking. Construction. Agricultural machinery. So what, what does it prohibit? Um, it, through trucking. Through trucking, basically. Through trucking. Through trucking. Right. So it typically includes large box trucks, tractor trailers, and similar vehicles, not standard pickup trucks. And, uh, anybody trying to avoid one set of teams moving around to avoid the traffic change. Mm-hmm. Is there any understanding of what the structural weight limit is of the bridge? It's very high. Mr. Holder has told me that there is no weight limit on there, because the way that it was built, that it's, could withstand pretty much anything, so they didn't put a weight limit on the marker. Should we add that? I'm just whispering over here to Doug. Should we add that, that what Mr. Holder said after the 1992 repairs, that's why the weight limit sign didn't come back, because he said nasty. O.T. essentially said there isn't a weight restriction for the bridge. But I think you'd have to look for him for a source. Was your question, what's the weight limit, or what's the, what's its capacity? In other words, you'll see a sign, don't go over this if it, you know, you're too tall, you're too heavy. Yeah, what, what, what, what instructional engineers say is the, is the weight over which you should not permit vehicles based on the structure of the design and construction of the bridge. So it's the latter point that you can address. Right. The current bridge could support 10 times or something like that, is what you're saying. What are the answers? Any, and, and, Mr. LaFalde, do you have any questions, any comments on this? Yes, you do. Great job. And, okay, so now I think we're on. Yeah, before we go on then. Oh, sorry. With respect to the first pair of sentence, a five-ton permanent weight limit shall be placed on all vehicles, um, does this have the effect of the legislative branch instructing the executive branch, uh, and the prior article, TT talks about directing, uh, the select board and the board of public works to use their best efforts. So, uh, I don't know if town council is, or if Newkins is. Yes. Okay. And that's a great question. I'm happy to have that discussion and we only have two minutes right now. So perhaps we could revisit this discussion. Go ahead and wait for a couple minutes. So, town council did in fact say the town meeting cannot impose a weight restriction or a heavy commercial vehicle ban on Sherman's Bridge. At best, town meeting can express its desire through a non-binding resolution. So the question is that I've been having an interesting debate with the chair is do you think that it's incumbent upon the finance committee slash us to inform town meeting members of what a yes vote would actually operationalize what, what impact that would have versus a no vote because the yes vote is not binding. And should we inform the town meeting voters of that? Otherwise, maybe they're voting to support it, then the action isn't taken. And they were like, what happened from now your, your position. Well, my position. Well, the thing is when you do these finance committee writers, they're supposed to be, just be like we said, just the facts, right? So you're supposed to address just, I call it the text, but it's on these article descriptions. So what are we voting on? You're being asked to vote on this. But we had a couple of conversations and you can say the stuff kind of twisted around so it's more of a neutral sentence. You can still get that message across, which I think we have done quite a few of these sentences that were in here. So my concern with us is if we tell people, well, this isn't written correctly, or this isn't going to accomplish your objective, but this is how you do it. I wouldn't go that far. So I wouldn't say, this is how you do it. No, but no matter what amendment they potentially could make, there's nothing they can do to bring it beyond a resolution. There's just not the authority to do it now because it's an article, right? Right. It's, it's basically serving the purpose of a resolution. It just doesn't have the term resolution, but that's the, the force and effect that it would have is a resolution. Bill brought that up when we were first discussing these a few weeks ago. Yeah. I'm not aware. Um, I just think it's a, I think that town meeting voters look to the finance committee comments for some guidance. And I look to them for the facts. This is a fact. What does a yes vote do? What does a no vote do? That's not, that's not advocacy. That's the fact. I think it creates an expectation on the part of town meeting. They are saying, okay, we voted this in the affirmative. We expect it to happen, and it doesn't happen. And for the select board to come back and say, well, you know, it's a resolution. It's a little disenchanted. So I think to answer your question is, I believe we address this when this is a town meeting, we have town council get up and speak to it. I don't agree. I know you don't. My concern with putting a yes, no, and a no vote in here. First of all, this isn't our call because this belongs, these belong to the finance committee. That's the, that's the other issue we can only suggest is if we do that here. So for example, in OO, we didn't agree with, I'm just going to use it for the example, we didn't agree with the, uh, the height in that other area, the 58, right? Yeah. However, we noticed that the Ulta Oxbow project, uh, is in the 45 feet height, but then they went and got a variance. So why don't we write there and say, even if we vote no on this, the, there's nothing that prevents anybody, a developer or a builder to go before the ZVA or every single variance, such as Ulta Oxbow did, who then built their building. I don't think you have to take the next step and say what, what you can do to operational. I would just say, let town meeting members know that a yes vote does not equate with the action we requested it. So the person who was taking the opposition speak of this, speaks to that at our meeting and says this. Well, I'd want, I'd want it to be in the line. So, so people are very clear. I need to, let's see the language. Okay. What do you think Mr. McCall? I'm not Mr. McCall, can I chime in?
Um, when specifically about, because there's two different articles of talking about weight limits, weight limits, we can be very clear about. There is a process. Chapter 85, section two says that municipalities cannot unilaterally make a decision on a roadway that affects two towns. And if discussions with that other town have said that they're not in support of this, it becomes moot because of the process through it. And I think it is a lot to take in. I mean, I learned about it in 24 hours and I was like, oh man, this is a lot, but there are specific ways that, you know, you can request a heavy commercial vehicle exclusion. It's regulated by, you know, guidance that's put out by MassDOT among the manual and uniform traffic control devices and the mass amendments to such, which specifically say there has to be engineering studies. They have to hit these two markers. Once they hit these two markers, then there's further discussions. But, um, and you also have to have an alternative route. The alternative route must live wholly in your town. If it crosses into another town, you must have written permission from that other town to do so. So the, the, at least about weight limits, you can be very clear. Like these are, this is the steps. If we can't even get to step one, which is agreeing with another town that we want to impose this weight limit because they're not in agreeance, then against, then the project becomes moot or the ask becomes moot because we can't even move forward. There's no mechanism to allow us to do it without permission from MassDOT and from the town of Sudbury. If they both, if they both indicated in the past, they're not willing to, you know, uh, to, uh, take this into consideration. I think that's something that's worthwhile because that's facts. That's, that's the process. That's the process. They're providing a process. In other words, now, the town meeting might have an amendment to tell us to go do that. And they can't. They can't. You're right. They can't. But, but what's written right here, a five-ton permanent weight limit shall be placed on all vehicles using the wheel inside of Sherman's Bridge. Right. A yes vote will not make that happen. And I think town meeting members need to know that. This needs to be reworded so that it says that, but I can. No, here, up at the top. We can't change that. But you have to explain this. We can say that. We'll attempt. Oh gosh. I thought this article was going to get bounced out by town council, but that wasn't the case. But, but if we're moving forward and warrants are going to print, I would want an imprint. I think we have to be really careful that we don't cross the bridge and we have to. Terrible. I'm leaving. I'm sorry.
Now you can tell we've had a long conversation about this. All right. Let me, let me, let's try and work on some language that accomplishes it without. This is what Rob was doing for the other two. Yeah. This is language that he has. But we still have to be careful to stay in the middle, because if we establish this precedent with this, then we're really not neutral. I would want to establish this precedent. I think we are being, I think we are telling town meeting voters, if you vote, yes, this is not going to operationalize this. This, this, yes, will not. We want to put up in here that said, this article requests the town to establish blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's not possible. See? So maybe that's what we just needed. We just need to have this. It's not possible because blah, blah, blah. Saying you, but saying that, okay, I see the point now. This isn't as clear. All right. Yeah. The finish of the passage of this article will require the town to anything. No. Right. It, it doesn't. No, it needs to be, it's missing a sentence. I'm going to give you that, but not saying a yes photo, blah, blah, blah. All right. Um, I'm, these are all done. So I'm going to now suggest two things. You're going to love this one. Are you ready? The board authorized Doug and I continue to work on this with the liaison from the finance committee, I guess the finance committee chair. With respect, you two don't agree. We will. We do. Don't we? Well, Kelsey, you followed the language that you were just citing in CZ. Yeah, because I basically, I should be coming back. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that some of them are missing. Yeah. So does everybody mind if we just go to Lincoln? Are you all saying that on this one? Yeah. I do. I do agree that the language is too vanilla here and it needs to be sorted out. I'm going to give you the, was that some? We just have to give the consequences. Well, well, we have to finance committee, but I really want to be careful because that we don't change things. All right. We need to go on to the hearing. We'll come back to this. Where were we? Article W? We want to have the hearing. We are. Um, Robbie, would you see if, um, it's actually a liquor license, it's a discussion and a potential vote to approve an amended on-premises retail annual all-alcoholic beverage license for urban Wayland Village LLC DBA is terrain located at 297 Boston Post Road, obviously here in Wayland. And, um, would you please see if Lily Bianchi, Heather France, and Jennifer Hildes, uh, from urban representatives, and Sabrina Moore, the proposed premise manager, are available to join us? This is on the package. Who is the guy? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Hi. Hi. Lily Banchini is here. Hi. Hold on. Are you joined by? Maybe your panelists, Robbie? I am not. It's just myself tonight. I apologize. That's okay. So good evening. Um, Good evening, everyone. Oh, Robbie, hang on just one second while we get, um, lined up. Does everybody find it? What? 45. 45. And I'm going to let, um, you know, Jamie explain, um, why we're having an amended on-premise retail. This is not a hearing hearing, but this is a legal license discussion because this has been an amendment. So would you be so kind as to explain to the board why we are having this discussion? Of course. The amendment is, um, required to provide more details regarding the corporate structure of the licensing entity urban wheel and LLC, um, additional requirements, uh, in regards to ownership and officers within the upper tier entities were required as well as additional detailed diagrams showing the layout of the premises. And then, um, we are considering an option for our catering's permit and needed to take a shelving unit. So a certain amount of square footage, I believe, we listed 24 square footage to be removed from the licensed area. So all those amendments have been submitted. All right. Thank you. Questions from the board. Uh, from, uh, who originated the, uh, request for these changes, please. The state liquor control commission. That is correct. Yes. Apologies. Um, I, I, I see the diagrams. I frankly don't know what they mean. Uh, I'm looking particular, uh, on page 49 of the packet, uh, which is a plan with a portion of the building of, or the, uh, building outlined in red. It is a kitchen floor plan. Yes. So we will have a dining area as well as a
type of banquet hall, but there is a store connected to our location that will not be licensed. It will not be selling serving or distributing alcohol or storing it. It will all be in the restaurant area. Okay. So is that, is that the area outlined in the, uh, red swiggle area on, uh, plan A111? I'm double checking right now. I apologize. I have the PDF in front of me. It's just delaying and loading. I apologize. It actually is the floor plan for the kitchen. So I'm not sure that that's what it refers to. Oh, yes. So the squiggly area on one match line S or five B. So our main diagram will be
being on A100 where you'll see the gray area is the unlicensed area and everything else will be covered under the license. And is that a change from the prior action? No, there's no change in regards to unlicensed area. No. Okay. Do you have any questions? Okay. Um, I don't have any questions. Um, this is not considered a hearing. It's just like a licensed discussion on their application. So we don't have the formal procedure and we just, if we are willing to accept this, then we just need a motion. But I don't have it written. See? So I move that the board vote to approve the amended on-premises retail annual alcoholic beverages license for urban Wayland Village LLC. Doing Businesses Terrain, which is located at 297 Boston Post Road in New York. Sir. Thank you. There's no further discussion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes through zero. We have, uh, something here to sign, right? All right. So now we're going to, um, uh, thank you, Ms. Piantini. Are you still with us? Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Have a great night.
We'll just sign here real quick. And then we're going to go back to article WW, right? Is that where we left off? And I think that is in the
regular packet, right?
That was in the supplemental, was it? No, right there. It's in the regular, okay. And I think it's on page 26, 25. This is, um, don't tell me, it was being negotiated the Sherman Bridge Road Neighborhood Agreement number two. All right. Anybody have any comments on this one? Um, the one comment I had, and I've had it a couple times in there, it keeps getting changed, so maybe you know the answer to this one. See down here where it says, Town Council has indicated, last sentence, and wrote the fourth one down here, see how I am, that future road commissioners are not bound by any previous vote for note of agreement. And I kind of highlighted that and said, select board, the town, whatever I want. I just need confirmation that road commissioners is the correct, do you know? It was at the time that was the road commissioners, right? But it said future. So do we leave it at that? And who are the road commissioners now? Because we no longer have road commissioners. Now it's DPW. So it's, uh, okay.
So when you write, Town Council has indicated that future road commissioners now known as members of the Board of Public Works, are they the road commissioners? Does that make better sense? Or should we say that? I'm actually going to look it up because I don't know if... When I, I was on the Board at the time that the DPS was formed, and as I recall, um, those separate bodies were incorporated into the DPW, so it's my sense that they essentially went away rather than, but I, I would defer to somebody who would actually look at the, uh, specific warrant article. Yeah, that was just one question I had for, um, we need to double check, I guess, right? Yeah, it created a statute, right? It's created an authorizing statute to establish a Department of Public Works. Or did we change the code? Yeah, and the Board of Public Works. I think we did. If we change the code, I don't call it a major state statute.
Yeah, I think the, uh, I think the, uh, Special Act of 2008, Yeah, I'm looking to use it. It, it vested the Board with, uh, it believed the, uh, the powers and duties of road commissioners. There shall be a Board of Public Works consisting of five members, one member who shall be appointed by the Board of Road Commissioners, but then the road commissioners went away. But if you get down to Section B, it said the Board shall have the powers and duties vested by General Special Law, by Town By-law, and the following Board's commissions set as providing this act, and number one, it's the road commissioners and Board of Road Commissioners. So the Board of Public, so those road commissioners were then folded into the Board of Public Works by statute. I think that, that would be my take. Um, and so we could add. It's clear if we're gonna have it there. Thanks. Yeah. Um, in the mixed paragraph, just so you know, here, down here it says, he specifically received substantial food from 50 residents, but I've seen it elsewhere as 40. I've seen it, the number is households versus individual residents. So you might have seen over 40. Okay, so we're okay with that. And then, within three weeks, an updated bridge. This is just, it's said, but it's two years. Bridged repair. No design. Yeah. And then,
I don't really understand this, of course. I'm sorry. Excuse me. This presupposes the existence of the Sherman's Ridge Road Neighborhood Agreement. Right. Right. Which, as I gather, we cannot find a copy of. Mm-hmm. Um, so. Yeah, look at the third paragraph. Yeah, the third, large paragraph. After thoroughly reviewing the town archives, no written agreement regarding Sherman's Ridge or Sherman's Ridge Road was found, or has the proposer provided the original agreement? Yeah. I guess my question is, is this an argument of post, or? What did I have? Is it fair? Is it fair? Is it fair? Is it fair? We were clear about, like, we, see, I don't understand that. That's what arguments have been. The points maintain the common bridge was constructed in 92 using federal funds. What does that have to do with this? I miss, I'm, I'm, I'm highlighted because I'm saying, what am I missing here? No, I think those arguments in favor are supposed to be in the number two, where he's, yeah, this is number two. So, number two, this article is just about preserving the bridge as a wooden bridge in perpetuity. This title he wanted to change, because he put that title in as a placeholder. But the title that he really wanted it to read is preserving the historic character of Sherman's Ridge and Perpetuity.
Because the first article about Sherman neighborhood agreement is really about the substantive agreement. This isn't really about that. The text does not match the title. So, I think we should look at, possibly, we probably could change the title. Because it was making no sense to me whatsoever. Yeah. We need to check them, Kelsey, with the moderator on this, I think. But I think we can change the title. It's the text we can't be fiddling around with here. Okay, so that would make more sense. It's the title. Right? Yeah.
Whatever language you come up with about the ability of telling me to dictate these kinds of things. We should use that in each room. If there's a magic sentence. A magic sentence we'll come up with.
I had down here, because I'm going back to the title, since no agreement, nothing to be negotiated. That's irrelevant, because that's the whole time.
Okay. Does that everybody say, Mr. Enthalmer, you've spoken on this one, you're all set? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. A little more wrong with YY, right? From YY, right?
Is this...
This one is the... I'm sorry. Increased safety, reduced fares for residents and vulnerable users of Sherman Bridge Road and Bridge. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I want to start with Kelsey. That region doesn't mind. Is that okay? Great. Yeah. Kelsey, have any thoughts on this one? Are we using the version that's in the supplemental packet or in the regular packet? Because they're very different. Supplemental. Yeah. I can find one. This is age 11. Mm-hmm. I don't see. It came up, I think.
Because it's so short, this one. Yeah. Um, I think it's, uh, I... What did I want to say? Sorry. It just lost my train of thought.
Do you think this needs to be the event? I don't know what happened. Did you accidentally cut some paragraph out? Does it seem longer to be... Yeah. It was a lot. What did we... I mean, I could be honest and say, it's rare. It was very... It's been very challenging. We've been very grateful to have all the help we've had, but it's, you know, we're doing Zooms and we're trying to read them and I... Is that summing up about right? I would change, though. I write a right here, MGL Chapter 85 Section 2. It's actually Chapter 90 Section 17 that sets speed limits. Um, it doesn't say in there that, you know, select boards can change it. Chapter 85 Section 2 gives select board authority to make changes to the roads in a variety of ways which they cite in that I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Um, so I do think if we're going to talk about speed limits, we probably should cite, um, Chapter 90 Section 17. Um, the only thing I might also note is that, um, that there... It's really... I mean, I sent a really long email with a lot of information that I got that was a lot to digest, but basically says that speed limits come in two different forms, regulatory speed limits and statutory speed limits, statutory speed limits are set in 90, 17, um, that, you know, say 40 for this, 30 for this, 20 for this, 20, whatever. Um, there are processes in which to change a speed limit, but they're, you know, they're... There's a fair amount of guidelines and I didn't want to go into the depth of it. I think the only thing that might, you might want to mention, and I was able to find the original article, the original peer-reviewed study citing it, is, um, a study done by engineers at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, found that artificially lowering speed limits without having engineering studies to back that up can actually increase traffic accidents, including fatalities, because drivers are less likely to listen to a speed limit that doesn't match the real conditions of the road. So the speed limit on Sherman's Bridge Road is set at 25, um... I think, Rob, who is this in to that paragraph because his research was the only way you could reduce it from 25 to 20 by statute is if it can be deemed and fit under this category of safety zone. Um, right. But there's also not the other background that may be helpful to the voter. Maybe just stating that, you know, speed limits aren't arbitrary, you know, the guidelines. Yeah, mass general laws have guidelines on two different types of speed limits, you know, maybe not get into the whole process of what you can do to change that because it's a lot. Um, but basically state that, you know, there are guidelines on speed limits that the state legislator has, um, promulgated and that, you know, while it might be, while it might seem easy to reduce speed limits, um, that can have a negative effect. That actually is, was in there to begin with in the body, but it did stay as the last argument yeah, posed. Yeah. Opponents might argue the law, so we do need to bring it back into the body if we have any error in the arguments so that they, you know, they match. Um, I also want to know if it's Doug and this one and maybe another one, if we want to add in that a speed study at the request of the residence was performed in the fall of 2025. Uh, results were inconclusive and board is undertaking his, uh, a second study, um, results of which will be available at the time. Um, I think that one of the problems I'm noticing is that there's overlapping content between the stats and the Carter articles, but Fincom has two separate liaisons, so they wrote them up separately. Right. But there needs to be the overlap. Yeah. Because it's all kind of addressing all of the same. Right. So if we have to be redundant, they have to be redundant. Right. But when you're talking about setting speed limits or weight limits, then it needs to contain the same information. Mm-hmm. And I also think this one did talk a little bit about having signage, which is part of the study. Yeah. Let me get some notes here too. Um, want to go to them? That would be great. Michael, Bill, how's everybody speaking about it? All right. Do I go to the next one? ZZ in May, I mentioned this is the last one that we have to look at. This is ban heavy commercial vehicles on Sherman Bridge Road. This is another one that we wrote down a lot. Um, the one sentence that I kept seeing in all these articles and I kept taking them out is, however, passage of this article alone will not necessarily impose the requested measures on Sherman Bridge Road. It's the right, to your point, it's the right concept, but it implies there are steps that could be taken that can be accomplished. And in cases where we, we probably can't do this, as the state probably would not allow us, plus what we're connected to. Bill, how would you tweak that sentence to reflect the sentiment that this is a resolution? You can't say it's a resolution, though. No, to reflect the sentiment that it is a resolution. Yes, go ahead. Well, getting back to this notion of, uh, the magic sentence, uh, I wonder if there could be just a simple sentence added to each one of these saying, uh, adoption of, uh, well, has no binding. An article like this may be useful in conveying the sense of town meaning, but there's no binding authority. Binding effect. Yeah. That's okay. Do you like the sense of town meaning? Um, I really don't, but let's be sure. If Phil says it, then I'll tell you. No, it's not that true. But that's the point, is that there, there is no binding impact. Yeah. That's the whole point. Yes. And, and it probably still needs, could be tweaked it to get there. But my, uh, my point of the dependent clause is to not dismiss it entirely, you know, as the virtue of a point of view by. Right. Could be actually, there you go. It's wonderful, Adair. Are you ready? I'm ready. Give me this.
It actually going, the first argument's opposed, right there. And actually that's going to give a good exposure because that's really the issue. Why you would not do it? Right. And the arguments in favor and action pose are why you would vote for the article, why you would not. So you would not vote for it because it's not, it can't take place. Yeah. Talking, though, out of the other side of my mouth, I wonder if saying something like, this might be useful in the debate, the sense of town meeting, does that suggest that, okay, we heard you, but we're going to ignore you. Right. Um, so, uh, maybe a simple declarative sentence is better just to say, this is effectively a resolution and it's not at the force and effect of being binding on the general, something that happened to you. It's the non-binding part is what they need. Yeah. You would think non-council would come up with it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like that answer. Yeah. What? And maybe there is one embedded here that just needs to be repeated. And I, and I, and I say something here that I really feel needs to be said at town meeting is the amount of energy and labor we have spent on these, the emails and what have you. I don't know how we politely say that because you don't want to be rude, but I do think we need to communicate, you know, with all the, uh, the public, um, records requests, um, that have occurred, all the emails, the, not only going to select board, but to the board of public works, staff, like other, the communities, the legislators. I mean, I just feel somehow we need to communicate that. So this was all communicated to the petitioners at the outset, but according to town council and the language that she used is, for example, on the weight limit, Wayland town meeting has no authority to unilaterally impose any type of vehicle restriction on this way. And then she said, it's just basically about town meeting expressing their support for this idea, but the select board has to go through a whole number of steps. So, and that, that's, that is up to the select board, but I take your point that if there is a yes vote and it's a sense of feminine that we should do this, is it incumbent upon us to then do that and try to go through the steps that steps include for the weight limit, getting concurrence from Sudbury and then going to MassDOT and getting approval. But I think the problem with the way the article language is phrased in all of them is it would appear to me as a voter who's not stepped into this at all. And yes, well, will result in what that article says. And if we don't tell them otherwise, I'd feel duped if I'm a town meeting. No, we do have to bring this up some more. All right. Or it's like a sentence at the end that says, notwithstanding the foregoing, the resulting outcome of the outcome of no binding effect. Okay. Select board action. So there's only three of us here. I'm not, um, for Doug. He's, he's a liaison for the select board. Um, and the two thinkable liaisons have been just delightful. I mean, it's really a huge amount of work. And I hopped in to help a little bit. And I have, haven't I? But, um, we'll, it, with the boards, with the boards, that means to build concurrence, we will, um, continue to, you know, uh, policies, because the point is exactly what Doug says is we want to be very clear. You have to tell them what they might. And then you have to be clear as a, as a binding speaker. It's having to be clear that as written, it's not possible to do that. Right. But just plain. So, okay. I think it may be necessary, but perhaps not sufficient. Right. To put this kind of language in a warrant. I wonder though, is, will there be a designated tigger in opposition? There will be. And would that be the appropriate time to reinforce this plan? There will for all six. Yes. All done. If one, if one goes to the moderator and says, I want to speak. We could even just pose a question to town council, even if there wasn't enough. So there was, with some meeting, there was a, uh, performer who speaks and however long they speak, um, to the seven minutes. So if they do four minutes, then they'll go. But there has to be, I want to do steps forward. I don't think there is. For all seven. I do believe that. You? I do. Okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Yeah. Um, I know that, I believe we have some candidates who are interested in that and I will confirm that. Um, and I, again, this is where I want to, I think we need to communicate to town meeting. There's the proponent principle. And this is where we get to say, well, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the real authority, whatever the proponent or opponent says are residents. But I think if I'm a town meeting voter, I want to hear from town council. Exactly. And at some point we can have a question. So like I mentioned this to you, we'll have a question for, because the town council, town manager, and the director of how the birds acknowledge of this than we do. So we need to have questions ready. that might be asked, that might be relevant. Take one of these that they then answer. That's how we accomplish a lot of this. All right. So have we, um, beat this one up or not, or should I keep it, keep going on this one? That'd be fun. And we'll be well. Okay. And with that, I think we are going to move to, oh, um, you're gonna take the lead on this one, right? So, um, um, under Doug suggested, and then Michael and myself, um, we had a zoom meeting this past week with, um, some members of the Wellesley community who have created this Wellesley Civil Discourse initiative. And I think they have a one, that some of the pages you put into the packet of families and that foot page and all that's on. It starts in 15 on supplemental. How much? 15? Page 15 on supplemental. Okay. So you want to look at 15? We don't. Okay. And so we wanted to just take a few minutes, I think we have 10 minutes here set aside to talk about that and talk about, um, how they've structured that and, and, um, the board is yours, Mr. LeBee. So this is just basically for Bill here, who hasn't been a part of these discussions. Well, because he wasn't there on us at all. That's true. Neither was Chris. So, um, I had first met with folks from Wellesley, which included their assistant executive director named, um, Corey Testa. And then Corey brought along, uh, two folks from Wellesley who serve on this planning committee for this concept, the Wellesley Civil Discourse initiative, which exists in a number of other municipalities. Wellesley was finding, as I assume many towns have, that there have been a number of difficult conversations arising on a fair host of topics, uh, in Wayland. We've had hate-based incidents, anti-Semitic incidents, um, and we have had organizations pulling people together. Um, I think all of us have gone to some of these, uh, including by HRDEI and the Whale and Community Action Network. But what Wellesley has is now this permanent structure that's been in place going on for six years, where they proactively have these conversations instead of reacting to an incident. And it seems like they're reaching a fair number of residents for each conversation, numbering 50 to 150 each time. And the way they do it to make it cost-effective, instead of having to work with a trained, um, the dialogue expert, such as this group that they use, essential partners. They use essential partners to train a number of staff and residents in Wellesley who would then have the ability to moderate these, these, and they don't call them conversations. They're really, um, facilitated dialogue. So everybody has a chance to participate and feel heard equally. They were quick to say this is no magic bullet, but it's just another tool in the toolbox to build community. And when Carol, as I expected, asked about cost, it was, I would say, a relatively modest cost of less than $10,000 to train some 20 to 25 residents. And they have now had three separate training sessions, uh, which started as two full days, and then they learned they were able to, uh, reduce that to a full day of training. And so they have a number of staff who are trained as well as volunteer residents. And, um, they've now hosted a whole number of these conversations, some of which are outlined in the summary document that is dated from September of 2024. And of course, since that time, they've had several more conversations. One that I was, um, particularly piqued my interest was they had, uh, uh, facilitated discussion with a number of town volunteers to build a greater sense of, um, community among the volunteer cadre in town, because I feel like we're, we're necessarily siloed. Sometimes we meet as joint boards, but oftentimes the boards are doing their own thing, but we are all working for a greater sense of community here. So pulling them together, they said what, that was a very successful dialogue that they hosted. Um, they're willing to serve as a resource for us. They've now met with us twice. And I think Carol's idea was when we were originally talking with the HR DEI and the equity assessment, one aspect of that is to continue to have these facilitated dialogues, but we needed some type of model. And so this is how I learned about the Wellesley civil discourse initiative. And now Michael and Carol have been brought up to speed. And I'm just hoping that we can a continue to explore this, uh, and, and B, um, start to reach out to folks and, and see if we can start to, um, build this and get it off the ground. And one of the things I would, I would add and happy to answer questions is that, uh, the folks from Wellesley there, they had the current chair of the select board on with us and the former chair of the select board, the former chair was a founder of this idea. And she said the support of the select board was critical to, to implement this model. Um, as is, um, getting the buy in of some staff and, and being able to, to, in order to have staff partner to have some type of an incentive structure, such as giving them comp time to participate in this training, et cetera. Uh, they have an ongoing planning committee, um, that meets multiple times a year. Not, not too frequently, except for planning for one of these constructive dialogues. Um, so I, I'd love to hear what Carol and Michael thought because this was the, the second time me hearing about this. And I think there is some significant value to this and, and I'm hoping that the board will be supportive as we explore. Um, one thing I noticed, it was funny that you picked that out because that was the one that I thought we should do first because it's exactly what I fear. No, working in town government, I suppose, anywhere, it says right here and there, information, relations separate point to getting things done in town government. I think that's probably two everywhere. And I, I agree with you, but I see more siloing. And I think if we had, we had more interaction with it. Um, I did notice, Michael and he and that Maya sometimes supports this. So I'm wondering if we could, you know, if we went forward with this, we could ask them to help us with some of these grants and reason that gets us some points that we need. Anyway, Bill, what are your thoughts on this? Well, I think it's a very interesting idea. Um, the, uh, looking at the paragraph, it says, uh, the overwhelming success and engagement of the community in this dialogue further reinforce the need to select, quote unquote, hot topics and enthusiasm for offering additional dialogues. So I think that's important to, uh, the scope of the discussions, uh, not merely be race or incidents, but, you know, discussion of, uh, uh, you know, uh, the, the schoolmaster going out, uh, things of, uh, of particular interests, uh, that everybody would be interested in. So, uh, I think it's a great idea. Uh, you know, and to your point about, um, um, board people getting together, I think that's a terrific idea. I, I had occasion to, uh, chat with a member of the board of public works today about, uh, and, and a completely unrelated context about
some aspect of this whole wire thing. Frankly, I got an earful and, um, like, I think I gave as good as I got, but, but there, there wasn't the opportunity for, you know, a really kind of constructive, uh, dialogue. And, uh, so, um, so I think that's, you know, there's a little friction there without, you know, recognizing how much we have in common rather than, so volunteers of town government are presumably motivated in a certain way and share a lot of the same interests and values. It'd be good to reinforce that. And, you know, it's obviously easier to pick up the phone and talk to somebody who had a bit of a relationship with them rather. Yeah. I just want to add one thing that these sentences particularly struck me, um, which is on page two of their summary. It says, the planning team has taken the long view like educators who often cannot quantify the success of their work immediately and for whom positive results may be anecdotal and can take time to emerge. The team views the dialogues as skill building, offering the community a different way to engage with neighbors and acquaintances and meaningful conversation and to become sensitized to each other's experiences. That, that, that really struck me because I feel in some ways we've been doing that in an ad hoc fashion, reactively, but I would love to be doing that regularly, proactively. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think WCAN does that. Um, I mean, they've had, are we still doing that? They're still doing those podcasts. Mm-hmm. So they're having the plot locks and it's just putting different people from different groups together. Yeah. Who maybe have, may not have met each other before and there's no, no agenda. And that's essentially what this is. Um, you'll read down here. There's no, the wrong way to follow up, but there's no goal to have, um, you know, an action claim from the dialogue. The dialogue is the product. Mm-hmm. And I think that, uh, was true. I thought it was very good. Okay. You know, I also think it will, um, help us to, um, you know, incorporate some of the ideas and suggestions that we've seen. We've seen a number of different programs and I think they can kind of be incorporated together. I know we talked about, um, Dr. Ellis, possibly participating in this as well. I mean, we're a terrific facilitator for this. Um, and there we go. Um, and it's funny that we don't pick that one about interacting as well. Um, now Chris was here, so he, Chris, heard that you're right. There's, he's sneaking out the door. So he said, well, we haven't finished yet. Um, but my question is, are we, do we want to revisit this again when Tom is here? Yeah. Let me put strapping an agenda in a couple of weeks, a couple meetings, maybe in April or something like that. Or maybe after Tom. Yeah, right after Tom meeting. Yeah, I could do that and then maybe do you want to, except we want to, like, invite the folks from Wesleyan to talk with us. What would you like to do? I think it would be nice to have a back and forth conversation, even if one or two of them joined via Zoom, so then they could be at home when we're meeting at night. Um, because I think that, you know, they're so knowledgeable about the model now because they're, they've been doing it for six years because they started, they're right during COVID in 2020. So that's what we could do because then after that, maybe we would. And they offered to come before our board. And they did, right? Michael and I had a little bit of difficulty hearing, uh, because we were in, Doug was on the Zoom with them and then we were in the room. I think something wrong with that microphone. We were talking and no one heard us. They just, they were dialoguing with us. But, you know, maybe what we could do just sort of thinking this out is, you know, we have them, we have them come in and then we kind of take the next step to maybe go to create our own, uh, our real and civil discourse. What would you like to find, Chris? I think it's a, it's a great endeavor that we should consider the, um, you just think about the events in recent weeks. You know, we have inquiries. We had a press inquiry last week, which led to us creating the press release about what's going on in response to the, um, the, uh, conflict in Iran, um, and how we've stepped up controls because people want to know. So we have these timely, uh, conversations, hot topics, but there's also, I think, longer range things that people would want to talk about a strategic planning, not only for schools here. And to me, it would seem like a natural extension of progression of kind of what I do at my office hours. For anybody who doesn't attend, when someone comes in and speaks, they often like to come in and just kind of voice their opinion about something going on in town. And everybody who's in the room, I let them participate in the dialogue. Oftentimes it's, you know, I help you back and forth and other residents will point out their concerns or point out positives. And, you know, nobody runs the dialogue. It's just, everybody chimes in and gives their thoughts and I take away some stuff and we try and see what we can do. But that's often what happens at town manager office hours. It's just kind of a group discussion that's initiated by a resident with a problem. And I just think this is a bigger extension of that. And it allows people that have concerns or questions or fears about what's going on in the community to suppress them. And I think it'd be a good thing. Definitely. Okay, so I think we've got sort of a plan here. And I'll set. Before we can, can I just circle back real quick to the annual tell me anything? Because every single one of these, we've taken a vote, right? I just want to show up the chart. And also, I did want to mention, because I skipped it, the final or the more final or the most final order of the articles that's going to be in the warrant is now in the packet. We went back and took a look at that and moved some things around. It's in the regular packet. I think it is. I think there's something on the page of the packet. Okay. Thank you. What's the number? 43. Thank you. I just want to make sure everyone's had a chance to look at that. I did highlight in red the 630 star, because last year I think we had 645, but I thought this year we voted for 630. Is that correct? 630. Yeah. Which I think is great. And I think that... Bill, do you see where my article is on Planning Board of Jobs? That's where Carol put it. 42 of 42.
That'll keep in the seat.
Madam Chair. Yes, please. The only one, and I'm assuming we did not take a vote on the omnibus budget this evening. I might... Yeah, yeah. We've decided to not defer, because we're not going to put any number. We're going to take a position and speak our position at town meeting. Okay. Once all the numbers... If we decide to take one. Well, that's fair. If we decide to take one. Some of us might be taking one. That's a good point. Anything else?
With respect to this list, if... Are we saying that the Sherman Bridge Road articles are essentially resolutions? We can't say that. We think they are. Why do you? Those resolutions simply go at the end. Yeah, but it's not resolutions. They weren't introduced as resolutions. This was my point. They have to be said resolution, and then it's got all the whereas's and the therefore's and that, and it's read as a resolution. It could have the effect of a resolution, but it wasn't submitted as a resolution. That's not to my point. Right. No, no. So my closure determines the order. Right. And if it moves it, it's effectively. Mm-hmm. Enforceable. Mm-hmm. Except for last week we said, let's move them up, and I've moved them, and I've moved this chart about three times now, so guess what? Oh, watch this.
Yeah, I don't know the order. I don't want to change this again. Read a bit. Two-thirds of the board has a quarter. Two-thirds is good with it. I just want to make sure everyone saw that we had moved some things around. We really did the best to know. Um, other committees get on, uh, express their displeasure if they're always at the back half of the Oh, we have the other title in there that I was talking about. You see, it says renegotiate Sherman's Bridge Nearby Agreement 2 slash maintain Sherman's Bridge historical experience. Yeah. That's what it could be. Okay. Do you see that? I'll change this. I do. Thank you. So tell me the theory of putting torrent by holiday road where it's...
What'd you say? What name is it, right? Yeah, what name is it? Uh, 37. 37. So we have to process right through the finance committee, and then we did like a breather after that, and we're doing the wrong splits. First 15 are pretty well set. Um, and then we went with these abbreviators to kind of say, okay, if we, if we're running good on the time, these are small items that we can finish off after we've done two really big things. That means if, theoretically, we'll start the second night somewhere around 25 or whatever, right? Um, but we may be dipping into those on the first night, right? And so then the question bill is, if you want to give people a definitive sense of where a substantive article like that is, you can't put it in the buffer between night one and night two, because it could then come up into night one, and people think, well, that was way down there. It's going to be on night two. But if you're interested in 25 holiday road, you've got to sit through the Sherman Bridge items. You've got to sit through the zoning items. Right. The zoning items should go pretty quick. We've got them in five, ten minutes, whatever problem. I think we're going to get to some of those on night one, though. I do, too. I think we're going to get to Sherman's Bridge screen. If we put the budget down to a few, and then a 30-minute presentation that was last year, I think we'll get to the budget fairly quickly. What could derail it is if we are starting to see people want to move to pull out of abbreviated presentation or consent.
That could slow things. You know, the issue becomes that, and if we move that up, then someone else is unhappy. So I'm happy to, this is what I'm going to do. I'm happy to, I really can't do it. If the board hopes to see this foreign art, it's well for there to be.
They're not able in the room. And wait, what is that? Because people who are concerned about it are frankly more apt to stick around. Right. And those are who are agnostic. Right.
So that's why I should be working. When you move into number 30, number 37. I mean, you could break, I think of the Sherman's Bridge one as the four of our potential buffers between night one and night two, and they can float into either. But I think 25 Holiday Road should either be clearly in night one or night two. And so you could split up some of the Sherman's Bridge Road and put it inserted in between the four of them. I just think about the acquisition of the Raytheon property, where the town meeting turned it down. Where people left, it was brought up for reconsideration. That was subsequently approved, because a bunch of people left. You can't do the reconsideration now, because it has to be substantial. Substantial information. Substantial information. For two years old. But yes, you can't do that. That's right. I think that's my point is that you could lose a number of people that think that we're there. My babysitter has got a test tomorrow. What if we move it up to 28th? Here's the thing. If you take all the articles that are going to really generate a lot of traffic and they will not, we will probably have a problem with these on the bottom. People don't stay for fun. So you have to leave. It's mine that's at the very bottom. Well, that's not so exciting. You've already told me this. So let's, I think we could move it up a handful. I will do my best, but this is the last, literally. Don't even call me about any more. I say, I say make them 28th. I don't want to commit. I really don't. Take a break between chairmen's bridge. I don't really want to commit on that. So let me just go back and look at that. Because you've got to do the numbers and figure out for time. And where the break might be, to your point. I think 30 might move it up to 30. Maybe it makes sense. Then if you want to move it up a few. But then you have, you only have any of your planning board, petitioner or articles, term click. I'll say people are not going to stay.
So, all right. Let's, let's take this under advisement and see what we can do. I'll try to move it up maybe if you have to have it. It's all has to be it hashed out before the 30th. Before the meeting on the 30th. This has to be hashed out last week so they can play out the world.
This was just, I did some more edits for you. And I have to give it to them tomorrow. Hope we have a tentatively scheduled meeting on Friday. I've got to give it to them so they can lay out the board. But I don't, I'm not planning on having a meeting unless I absolutely have to. And at the moment, Michael is not telling me that I have to have the meeting on Friday. So I will take this under advisement. My suggestion is that it's laid out well enough that it has things that will be of interest to people. It will keep people there. I don't see when I do the numbers that we're going to be in these seats long, because I think we're going to not spend 90 minutes on the budget. Hopefully we don't spend 45 minutes on the water supply. To your point, I think we'll be at about 20. I think you've got it up to 30 though, Carol. Maybe. Let's go. You can sit inside by yourself, Carol. It's the board. It's the numbers, guys. They are. Really, I'm telling you. I really do not choose it, so. I understand that. We're going to do our best to move it up a little bit. How's that, so? Just make it the new 30. I think the numbers will work. Okay. All right. We're moving on. What's the next afternoon? Now you guys made me late. See, I could have been on time, but they're all been on. That five-minute conversation made us 45 minutes late.
Fewer people, more chance. It never fails. I think it was Mr. I can follow you on. Yes, thank you, Madam Clerk.
Just said that for comment, Madam Chair. Because we're meeting rather frequently, there isn't too much week to week, as you know, because we're working on time noon. I will say that several members of the town staff and school staff, they go over to the Islamic Center in Boston this past week to celebrate the end of Ramadan with them in a community gathering. Chief Hebert and I attended, and I saw the library director and library staff as well as Dr. Fleischman. And as I previously indicated, we had press inquiries about the town's response to some of the anti-Semitism that we saw last week nationwide and the conflict in Iran. So we did put something out on Friday. Otherwise, the only other thing to mention is next Monday, I'll be having my town manager office hours here at 530. That's really all just the last time we got together. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Um, consent, please. I have a motion. So moved. Second. No further discussion. All those with favor say aye. Aye. Motion of gas is 3-0. The minutes of February 23rd. And do we want to do them together? What page? Um, I want to put down on the page. Oh, 76. I moved the minutes of Monday, February 23rd, 2026 as amended. Sorry. Thank you. Anybody have any edits? I do not. Of course, I have a couple. One is, um, I believe, and I could be wrong, that Ann was remote because I see later on we had roll call votes. Um, also the other thing is, is that, um, if the sentence got dropped, I don't know what happens. Normally it says I announced everyone by name because I'm required to do that when we have remote. Was this meeting? Uh, or no?
I don't think so, was it? Oh, we were meeting closed. Yes, because it's when we have the snowstorm. Okay. Never mind. Perfect. Um, and the only item is, is there are mention of articles in the right up here, uh, QQ, uh, and we have to put the titles next to it in the minutes, particularly since there's no, uh, article list attached here on the mat. Um, yeah, I'm good. That's why all these things are not showing up. I don't know. All right. Good. Do you want to take a vote? And all those in favor? All right. All right. That's three zero. Good in the minutes of March 2nd, 2026 as amended. Thank you. Anybody have any edits? Need a second. Or second? I'm certainly sure. Anyone have any edits? I can do a lot. Okay. On, um, page 88 in the packet at the end of, uh, the discussion of, or at the end of several votes, L-L-M-M-N-N, then begins a paragraph TFA expressed opposition to the article. I think it should say type article, O-O. Okay. It doesn't identify the article. So, that's it. That's the only thing I have. Great. I have... Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. I have one in A7, where we're talking about the gut explosion. And the first paragraph that starts, C. Martin noted, it said, the finance committee hasn't recommended, um, it has not yet thought of it, it said on the baseball project. It should say fields project, didn't it? Um, and then, uh, I don't know what I said. I didn't even ask. There was something here, or it said, I asked something down here at A8. Yeah. I thought it was you. Oh, it said here on A8 that C. Martin would, um, she said she would inform the library trustees that the board is aware of the risk and support the trustees decision. Was I supposed to do that? Or were you going to do that? And have we done that?
This is in regard to the Millennium Fund Senate Council changes.
It's the end of the second paragraph of A8. Yeah. Um, I, I did not, I frankly don't recall, but, um, I may have had a conversation with the, uh, I, I guess I got a note from the chair of the library board expressing, uh, thanks for the select force action. So I think it's kind of a handle. You, you might, in that paragraph, it says in discussion, C. Martin, I would say stated and she would inform. Okay, good. And where the risk, comma, but would not.
All right. All those in favor, say aye. Anything with correspondence? All right. Reports and concerns? All right. Do you have one? No. No. Okay. All set. So just me. So the schedule. We are definitely, no matter what, going back to every other. This has been a lot. I appreciate everyone's efforts, but it is a lot for us as a staff. We did have to do it to get through all this. Even if we end up with a couple of big meetings, we're going to go back. Twice, twice a month is okay too. I understand that. That's what we used to do. We should try. So 320 is a placeholder, just, and I don't think we're going to need that. But thank you. I'm going to let you know off the email by tomorrow, I guess, if I don't know that. Because it's going to have to be Monday, I mean, Wednesday. I think we're in pretty good shape. So our next meeting will be on the 30th. I just want to say now that we're through the articles and we'll start going back and doing some of the things that we were working on. So on the 30th, we will have a full meeting. We are going to have reports from the Route 20 Visioning Committee and the 212 Chichou Road Committee that have been ready for about three or four weeks now. Hopefully we'll get to those then. On 4-13, we are going to have the forum for the DD, but I'm also going to ask Mr. Lafayette to come in and speak to us. Facilities update from the inside, on-site report, including his thoughts on the town building, because we wanted to get that info. And then somewhere around the middle, starting in April, you and I and Michael can start the discussions of the pilot program roll-up. So that's where I've been leaning and where everyone thinks that's a good system. And for that, I will take a motion from adjourn at 9-17. 9-21, so moved further.
I was trying to save some of it. All those in favor say aye, thank you.