June 1, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
June 1, 2026 - Select Board
Recording in progress.
Thank you.
Chair of the Select Board, I'm calling the Select Board meeting on the U116 at 6 p.m. to order.
This is an in-person and well-access meeting, and we are in the Weyland Town building in Odyssey Lyons Zoo.
This meeting will be recorded, and if recorded, it will be made available to the public and WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
When you are having an Executive Session this evening, we will be excluded from the Executive Session portion of the meeting.
Pursue Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in-person and via remote access and according to the Act of the Law.
One may watch or participate remotely, but the meeting link can be found on the webpage or on the town calendar.
When required by law or allowed by the Chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting,
but do so in-person or via remote access.
Our comments should be limited to two minutes per person.
Please note that the different items that are listed, which they are, or approximate items may not be discussed in order,
or the time listed in all topics may be subject to deliberation or load.
Joining me in the room this evening is Mr. Whitney, Mr. Levine, Mr. Reynolds, and myself, Ms. Martin,
and remotely participating with Mr. Fay.
John, can you hear us?
I can, thanks.
Thank you, good evening.
Because Mr. Fay is remaining remotely, all votes tonight will be via roll call.
So, after we finish reading the agenda for the public, we will welcome our new board member, Mr. Reynolds,
followed by announcements and public comment.
We'll have a discussion with our plannings director regarding our general obligation bond anticipation notes.
Actually, 620, we will end the session and discuss a number of items as listed on the agenda.
So, approximately 7pm, we will return to the session.
We will do a series of appointments to committees that are reappointments.
We will do a confirmation appointment in front of the committees, overseen by the moderator.
Approximately 7-15, we will have a follow-up discussion with next steps and possible funding to vote
in the rear 20-quarter zoning.
We will have a discussion with potential next steps on a volunteer land model
for facilitating community dialogue regarding civil discourse.
We will have a continued deliberation of a liquor license request for discussion
of possible vote to approve that amendment to allow outdoor alterations
of the premises at the Dudley Chateau.
Approximately 8-10, we will have a discussion with a potential role
on the proposed rodenticide policy, followed by a discussion
of the updated campus control commission law, house number 53-50.
8-30, we will have our organization of the select, our annual organization of the select board,
followed by a discussion on the historic district parking suggestions,
I should say the historic district commission's parking suggestions and steps,
we will have our town manager's report, our consent calendar.
They are in, minutes are not available, so there will be no minutes.
We will review correspondence.
Hopefully around 9-10, we will have some select board's reports of concerns,
and we're very optimistic adjournment of 9-15.
So, first of all, I would like to welcome Mr. Reynolds, who is now joining us.
Congratulations on being elected to your society.
Thank you very much.
Good to be here.
And so, for those who are, who may not know you, I might give you a couple of minutes,
maybe you'd like to tell a little bit about yourself and why you decided to join us.
Well, I hope to win your hearts with gravity.
I've lived in town for a long time.
I love the town.
I think there are a lot of things we could do with civic input.
Save a little money along the way and hold on to our values.
The only announcement I have to the select board is, pardon me if I seem quiet at first,
I'm the newbie looking at a lot of experience here, so I've got to get to it.
Well, you learn by asking questions as we've, as I've said.
So, does anybody in the board want to say one thing?
Well, I am thrilled to welcome Mr. Reynolds to the board.
I've been eagerly awaiting his arrival for some time now.
I know that he is a great community organizer, a thoughtful civic leader,
and I believe we'll add a lot to our discussion.
So, we're very happy to have.
Well, it taught that.
It taught that.
Really?
I'm impressed for some time and delighted that he's decided to step forward.
I'm sure you bring a lot to our deliberations.
And while you are a newbie, if not, bad habits that some of us made.
So, we look forward to a fresh perspective.
That's correct.
I'll have some.
Christopher?
No, I echo what Bill just said.
A fresh perspective is healthy for any board and committee.
Chris comes with a great deal of energy and a real impressive knowledge of the town.
So, looking forward to working with him.
Oh, and now it's your first night.
I really made a mistake because earlier when I was announcing who was in the room with me,
I failed to neglect to announce that we're also joined with the town manager, Mr. McConnell,
Mr. McConnell and our assistant town manager, Ms. Spurlett.
And so, now I would like to ask them if they would also like to give you a welcoming one.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
No, I've had the good fortune of working with Mr. Reynolds on a couple of endeavors since he's come here.
So, Arts Wayland getting the festivities off on the town center and a few other initiatives.
And it's always been a pleasure to work with him.
And I'm looking forward to working with him again for the next three years.
Thank you.
I've also had the pleasure of working with Chris on a multitude of different projects.
And I really enjoyed the experience.
So, I hope we can work together closely, continue to work together closely.
So, Chris already has town email.
We're in the process of getting him connected with an iPad, which I think is coming soon.
Thank you.
And I just want to make sure, do you have everybody's cell phone number?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Great.
All right.
All right.
We'll move to item number three.
Okay. Okay. Okay. And that's public conference. Thank you. Hi. Hi, guys. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you, Kelsey, for your help in the town meeting. And I hope you guys have all recovered. I would like tonight to make a brief comment about that at this time. As it definitely was not a great experience for me in terms of participating in the oldest form of U.S. democracy for my first time. And while I obeyed my time limits and couldn't complete my prepared presentations despite having practiced, I noted that a select board member did keep going. I was unaware that someone from the board was going to have con arguments to present until right before that. And he prepared them, not aware that I would be splitting the vote on the second one so that the request for a safety zone in order to reduce a speed limit would be voted on separately. So I felt much of what he had to say was no longer relevant. It was incomplete and inaccurate so-called information that I think confused people who are already tired. But mostly I feel that Doug Levine saying to voters that I was just bringing these articles out of some type of vengeance about the bridge project in public was not only completely false but unprofessional and a public assault on my character unfitting for an elected official and member of the select board. Yep, I'm done. No, we still have a little time left. But I'd like to remind you that at the select board we conduct ourselves in a respectful manner and do not say Yeah, well, he didn't. And since he came representing the select board, I feel that a select board meeting is where this needs to be shared, since he could share what he wanted, which was false about me, and I'm only sharing facts that everybody else heard. Yeah, time is up number one and number two. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let me start one more. Okay. I don't know the show. Is this the... Sorry, go ahead. Yes, no, I'm sorry. I recognize you. My name is Pavel. Last name is Azrogin. Is this the time right now to talk about the comments from the public about the Chateau liquor license, or is that later as well? Yes. And this is the time to do it because we have already closed the hearing. Therefore, there will be no more new information taken anywhere. When we revisit that later tonight, we will be continuing our deliberation as we've written on the agenda. So yes, go ahead. Okay. So last time we heard from many neighbors voice their concerns with having outdoor dining and drinking at Chateau. These complaints range from the impact to the wildlife and to the pond and to inadequate parking that constantly causes people going to Chateau to park illegally and potentially block emergency access and or just blocking neighbors' driveways. We neighbors really hear everything that's being said at the patio, right? They can be very loud, very, very loud for good reasons, you know, happy reasons, and sometimes for fighting reasons. This is a residential neighborhood. There is a normal houses that are not on the main street, not in the town center or anything like this. These houses are probably similar to the houses that you select board members live in, and you probably enjoy relaxing after work and peace and quiet. We know that Chateau existed for quite a few years, but the outdoor seating wasn't there. It wasn't there until COVID. It was the extreme circumstances of the COVID that allowed for outdoor seating in a bar in a residential neighborhood. Due to social distancing rules, they couldn't sit enough people inside. So the moment the social distancing rules were lifted by the state, this license for outdoor seating should have been either canceled or revoked or whatever the appropriate term for that is. Imagine that your neighbor, like literally, you know, all you people in the room and Tom on the video, imagine that your neighbor comes to you and says, hey, I'm going to open the bar in my house. And that's what the chat is, right? It's somebody's house. If you've ever seen it, it's literally somebody's house. And your neighbor says, I'll also have outdoor seating there so people can eat and drink and laugh and scream well into the night. Would you approve such a license in a residential neighborhood? I don't think so, right? So that's the end of my statement. Thank you for listening. Thank you. No new hands are raised. Okay. Okay. Can I move to number four? Please do. Please do. Please do. Mr. Kevin. Okay. So what we're going to do is discuss the folks inside the general public. The visitation of finance begins June 2026. And it's on page. Oh, my. That's what these numbers do. So. Thank you. I'm going to approve on that. Okay. Page seven of the packet for those who are phone on the line. Thank you. So good evening and hello, Mr. Reynolds. Welcome. So I did put together a memo dated April 13th to Mr. McCrawl, which I believe is in the packet. So I want to do is sort of go back to what we did at the beginning of the year and just walk you through where we stand on the town's debt financing plan. And it will just take a moment to sort of bring you guys back to what is actually going on. So back in November, the plan was to retire all the water and the wastewater bans, which we did. And we issued long term bonds and the amount of $8.8 million. So that's been done. The second thing in the memo that I put out back in September to Mr. McCaw, which I think you guys got to in like October, November, was that we were going to issue bands for four general fund projects to the tune of 1.3 million. So we did do that. And also in November, I came to the select board asking to do what they call an advanced funding through DOR. So the plan back then was to transfer 6.3 million from the general fund to various capital accounts. We ended up transferring 5.4 because the snake dam transfer was no longer needed. So again, the letter said 6.3. We ended up transferring 5.4. So this brings us to June. So in this current month, what we're going to do is reverse that $5.4 million entry and put the money from the capital accounts back into the general fund, which was the plan all on or required by DOR to do that. So that will happen. So most recently, last week, we did issue bands. The amount was $3,820,099. That was for 11 projects that we put bands out on. I'm sorry. There's total. There will be a total of 11 projects that will have bands by the end of the year. So the most recent band of $3.8 million is a five year loan. It has a 4% interest rate. It has a 4% interest rate. The winning bid up was for the fidelity capital markets. So that is pending. You folks have the loans to sign. So at June 30th, we will have a total of $5.1 million in outstanding bands. All of those bands, the ones we issued in November of 2025, and the bands that we're issuing now will all be retired in November 26 when we will issue long term bonds. This was all discussed in the original memo back in the fall. So nothing has changed from our original plan other than some of the numbers that moved on a little bit. So that's currently where we stand. Like I said in November 26, we'll be issuing $13 million in long term bonds, which relate to both general fund projects, water projects and wastewater projects. So that's the summary of where we started from in September 25 to where we got today with our bond and band financing plan. Thank you, Brian. Any questions from the board? Brian, is that looking at the chart that you drew up in your memo, which is helpful, is the band duration that you're referencing, the five months that expires in November, that's a typical band duration period? You would have any duration, one month, five months, a year. We pick five months because we're going to issue long term bonds in November. So both the bonds that we took out in November 25 and the bonds we took out in June 26 will all retire at the same time in November 26 when we do long term bond issue. And what is it says approved general fund advancing and reverse? What is reverse general fund? So what happened was we took money from we took $5.4 million from the general fund, their fund balance and moved it into the capital accounts. We did that in November. That money needs to come back to the general fund by June 30. So that's what we're doing. That's the purpose of that is that money came out. Now money's going back. We're reinforcing ourselves. So this is an inexpensive way to do, you know, interim financing instead of issuing short term bans. You can just do a different borrowing from the general fund. I'm confused. 5.7. Pardon me. I guess I'm trying to understand Brian the relationship between the 5.7, the 5.4 and the 3.8. So the 5.7 was the total amount of authorized projects. It was the authorized that the authorized but unissued debt. At which, at the, at the town meeting that was just completed. There was, you can see it's fiscal 20, all of these were fiscal 26. Okay. And so, so they were authorized but unissued. Okay. And they were, it was from the 2025 annual town meeting. Okay. So what happened though is that we, we used the 5.7 million is the total amount of the appropriations. Okay. And the expectation that they, that they probably won't spend that much in fiscal 20. Okay. But we put it at 5.7 as the total. So there's no downside to moving more money than we should. And so what happens is, so the money's going back 5.7. And so with the real amount of money, the 3.8 represents how much will be spent by these projects by June 30th of this fiscal year. So each one of the accounts needs to have a revenue source equal to the equal or greater than its expenses at June 30th, 2026. That's what that 3.8 billion dollars is. Is the difference explained by the fact that, uh, we've gotten this federal grant for the, for the dam? Uh. Or is it just that we only expect to pay 3.8 of the previously appropriated 5.7? Yeah. Can you give me a second? I got a little one down again. Take the fire truck. Fire truck was listed at 1.1 million. We're only expected to spend $50,000 by June 30th. The town building mechanical and electrical, which is 1.3 million. We're only expected to spend a little over a million. So it's essentially a timing thing. Right. Not a, not a diminution of the actual amount that you expect to spend. No. What we need to be careful is that at June 30th, each project has funds equal to or greater than what was actually spent to date. Yeah. Or if we don't do that, DOR will reduce our free cash. Yeah. So what was the five year, uh, sale, uh, bond sale? Uh, what did that finance? The five year? Well, you just referred to a Fidelity. So that, so Fidelity Markets was the winning bidder. So Fidelity Investments was a winning bidder. Second was Piper Sander and Harper Miner was third. So what happens is Hilltop Securities along with bond council advertise that Whelan wants to borrow 3.8 million. Okay. These various banks will bid, um, a certain interest rate. Right. And in doing this, what they do is they also provide a premium. So this particular band issue, we earned $15,000 in premium, not $15,000 extra money will be used to pay the band issuance cost. Okay. And, uh, but I thought you referred to a five year term of, of that ban. It's five months. Did I say year? You might have said five years. Five years. Five years. Okay. Five months. But you said five months all along and then at the end. Okay. I understand. Um, Mr. Ferrier, any questions? No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. So the one question that the board had when we were going through this process initially was, what is, and I don't know if you can tell us at the moment, but what is our actual total cost to have undertaken this activity? This, um, when we did this last November? The conversion. Oh, you mean looking at the interest rate back then versus now? I haven't done that calculation. Yeah, because you thought it was one number and then it seemed to come down a little. Is this a 4% rate you think that we're going to get? The five month is a 4% annualized rate. Okay. Great. All right. I think we're good. So we have, does anyone else have any other questions? No, we have to take a vote to sign these. And then there's a number of documents here we have to sign. And do we need everyone's signature on them all the time? You need at least the majority, but it would be great if four of you will sign. So Tom, the documents will be available in the town manager's office tomorrow if they want to sign it, otherwise we'll process them without you, I guess, right? Yeah, I'm out of state, but I would at some point like an update on the ability of us to do DocuSign. This may not be the documents that you can use DocuSign, but if we can, I'm happy to give my permission to do that. Okay. So you know what? I'm going to put that on my ever famous list of things we want to talk about and sort out. So do you want to pass these around to figure out what everyone has to sign? This one is the next one. Do we need to take action? First, because then we have to pass them around. So I need a motion. What would the appropriate motion be? Vote to find the general location. Vote to accept 3.8 for the exact amount. $3,820,099 of bond anticipation notes that will be due November 2026 in their five-month term. So move. Second. Okay. So any further discussion? We will have a roll call vote, Bill? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes. Carol? Yes. Thank you, Brian. Yes. That's been great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I move the sign for an entry to Executive Session. A, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A1, to discuss the reputation, calendar, physical condition, mental health, and professional confidence of an individual, or to discuss the discipline of the dismissal of what complaints or charges brought against a public officer, attorney, staff member, or individual. B, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategies with respect and bargaining with the following units. Weyland Place Offices Unit, the New England Police Benevolent Association, Local 176, International Association of Firefighters, AFL-CIO, Local 1978, Weyland Department of Public Lawyers, Association 2, which is Local 170, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, Local 690-DAC, Units 1 and 2. C, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategies with respect and litigation on the matter of pass-caded development at the C. C. Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A7, to review and approve the intent to hold the Executive Session Minutes of April 27, 2026, May 4, 2026, and May 5, 2026. Is there a second to move into Executive Session? Second. Thank you. The Chair declares that the public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating, negotiating, and bargaining position of the town. We'll have a roll call vote. Mr. Reynolds? Yes. Mr. Levin? Yes. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Farrick? Yes. And Ms. Martin? Yes. It's 5-0. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, Town Manager, Council Fowler, Assistant Town Manager. Are we being joined by Ms. Ryan? No. No. All right. I'm Jalen Braddock. I'm Banners, my analyst, with slash communications coordinator. The committee will rejoin the public meeting of the Executive Session, and then we'll return to open session in approximately 40 minutes. So now, we should definitely move. Recording stopped. Thank you for having me say that. Recording in progress. Returning to open session at 7 o'clock. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to turn our attention to the agenda item number seven, which is a reappointment. So this is discussed and go to reappoint. There's a number of volunteers have signed up. This is a little term. And just in the motion to reappoint, please. For all of them. Yeah. Yeah. You either can read them or you can just say, as listed on the agenda. If you don't. If you don't. If you don't. Full set. Full set. I move that we vote to reappoint the members listed in our June 1st agenda. Um. To the board's list in our agenda for terms ending. Anybody have a second? Question. Let's have a second. Okay. I'll, for the purpose of discussion, I'll second. Any discussion? I have a question. Do we post these openings, these, uh, expired tournaments? Uh-huh. And as there are volunteers. We have does. Madam chair, if I may answer the questions. Um, we have posted them. Wayland post was very generous in allowing us to post them in the newspaper at a reduced cost. And we do try to advertise as much on Facebook and Instagram or, you know, you know, you know, low cost or free cost, you know, low cost or free cost, um, and then on our website. And, you know, it goes in our newsletter every, every month that we put out. So we do try to do some. We do try to do some. Um, we have posted them. We have posted them. Wayland post was very generous in allowing us to post them in the newspaper at a reduced cost. And we do try to advertise as much on Facebook and Instagram or, you know, low cost or free cost, advertising venues. Um, and then on our website and, you know, it goes in our newsletter every, every month that we put out. So we do try to do some advertising to the best of our ability. Um, I guess my question is whether, um, others have, uh, expressed interest in employment to these boards and committees, aside from the incumbents. Um, there have been some of those, and we'll be interviewing those next, some of those folks next week at our next meeting. Um, generally speaking, we ask folks if they would like to be re-appointed. We send them a letter and they'll turn us into Brian and say, who's you going to be re-appointed? So generally we tend to re-appoint. However, next week or the next meeting, we will see what I probably have. We'll give you a positive, but it's a probably pretty lengthy list of openings and vacancies that existed that, um, even making these top three appointments. Anyone else say that? Um, really, I'm curious whether anyone has specifically, uh, responded to one of these, and these openings, in which case, where should we afford them the opportunity to be considered? So for example, we have, uh, three or four folks who are not currently on HRDEI for expressed interest without our vacancies, and we are going to be interviewing them next week. These are not all the vacancies that we have. Um, so to Bill's point, for example, if we look at HRDEI, we're reappointing three members, Ms. Blumenfeld, Ms. Borkowski, and Mr. Goodwin. Do you know, Kelsey, how many vacancies then remain if we have multiple people interested in interviewing from, from how many slots? There is one, um, voting position, and there is a student position, and there's a student who is applied, and there are several associate positions. And so we have more openings than applicants. It's my understanding that is the case. Mm-hmm. Let's consider hypothetical boundaries. There's one person seeking reappointment, and there are others who, ten other, or others who have expressed interest in that position. Yeah. Are we saying, by default, it goes to the incumbent? I'm going to rephrase my sentences. I am not aware that there have been any other emphasis of candidates for any other position that any or technical reappointments for. Except for HRDEI. Except for HRDEI. Except for HRDEI. But there are spots there. Yes. Madam Chair, if I may. There, it hasn't happened recently, but I think a year before I joined in 2022, there were some competitive seats for, I can't remember what board. I think maybe ConsCom or something along those lines. And when it's a competitive seat like that where there are people who have served and are about to be reappointed, but there are other people who want that seat, you interview them all together. Right. And that's the last time that I remember that happening. And that's the process the board took last time. We actually were, to your point, we actually were scheduled tonight on the agenda to do the interviews for HRDEI vacancies, but then one of the candidates was not available tonight. So I said, no, no, we can't do that. We took it and put it to next meeting because you want to interview all the candidates for those slots at the same time. And so for instance, Bill, on the CBA, very familiar with that board. Yes. We have two individuals seeking the appointment. Right. We still have another vacancy, but nobody else has submitted. Okay. I, I, I, you know, and this is no reflection on any of the people. No. They're very generously giving of their time. I appreciate what they're willing to continue to do. So I just want to sort of understand that the process that we have when there are people who are expressing an interest in being appointed to a board and committee and, you know, where do we default to the incumbent or do we say, you know, let's bring both in. I think, I think we're going to do that. Yeah. I personally agree with the personal language. Absolutely. Um, on the other hand, we, we will have, if we interviewed every single person, even if there was no other candidates, we would have to probably do a couple months for meetings because this is just personal. I understand. Well, I think the board, of course, is interested and has focused on and endorses being inclusive. And so one of the things that we've instituted in the last couple years that we started, became chair, is that the chair no longer looks at or is aware of the applicants until they actually come before us at the meeting to make sure that we are in fact being inclusive. So good. We have a second right. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Then I'm going to have a low call vote and then I'm going to start with Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Fagg. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Ms. Martin. So that's going to be 5-0. Yeah. So the next one we do separately because we are confirming the appointment. This is the public ceremonies committee. Reappointment of Mr. Turner for a term ending June 30, 20, 29. It is a confirmation because this is a committee that's under the moderator, not a select board just to make the appointment on this. We just confirmed this. So I just need a vote. I mean, I have a motion. I have a motion. He moved to your motion. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Doug? Yes. Yes. Okay. That takes care of it. So the next item, which is number nine. That is exactly the same. Yay! We'll fix that. Yes, exactly. I was looking at Bill and I'm saying, please remember that. It was right on time at 7.50. I'd like to invite Ms. Lewis from the planning board here. And I guess it's going to be a very quick discussion, but certainly welcome to join us. This item is entitled to follow up discussion and next steps in possible funding of the Rule 20. As you know, one of our objectives is to participate, you know, in furthering. And in the packet, we had asked, just my bypass, right on schedule, not working. In the past, maybe back in March or maybe before then, we discussed with the planning board, you know, how to move forward on this project. We worked together on this. And the planning board, the chair, the board was before us and indicated to us that they had, they had a plan and they wanted to look at the number of the zoning that we have to get more compatible with the recommendation that what they had provided us. But they did not have the capacity to, to get this work done. So we asked them to, Phil and I asked, the board asked us to pursue this. So we did. We went out and we asked them to come back with us with a proposal. And this is the proposal that is actually in the, in the packet on page. So I want to ask, does anyone on the board have any questions about this? Yeah, I just, I'm sorry. Just want us to be really quick. We'll be quick. We posted this meeting just because I thought there would be more than just me coming. Okay. And so there are three of us here now. So I just like to, at 718, call the planning board meeting to order and take attendance at . Yeah. Whatever. You can just say your name. Phil Sterling. Phil Sterling. And, or any others online? No. No. No. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So does anyone on the board have any questions about, first of all, you remember the discussion that we've had, right? And so I believe I spoke with Mr. McCall online because I believe it's a guesstimate that we need about 40 to 60 hours of legal time. And we made a wild guess that that should be somewhere around about 15 or so thousand. And so, um, I'm going to... What did you think, Hakeem? I thought you said . Let me finish this. Thank you. Listen. Wait a minute. Watch this. So when Mr. McCall and I spoke, he was guesstimating, you know, for dealing rates, there would probably be around 12, 15 thousand. And I said, well, why don't we present to the board and recommend the board that we authorize 20,000, um, so that, you know, they run short, we don't have to, they don't have to come back and hopefully they don't run short. Um, and my recommendation is that we will fund this through, I never said, was it a guarantee payments that we accepted? They guaranteed deposits. I say that one every time. Um, and we felt that, um, it was a good source because those guarantee deposits are for the benefit of the hotel. So I think maybe what we would, I might need a little more clarification. We recently had some guaranteed deposits that we had to clear up. And one of them was with them was, um, I worked with the planner. We've cleared up one of them. I believe those are in a fund, uh, held by the finance director. Uh, they can be used. Uh, I would have to pull back. Yeah. Uh, I would have to pay $60,000, but I can get them. Okay. So first of all, do you have any questions? Back to my original question. Does anyone on the board have any questions or comments? Um, but this follow up, Mr. Frank. I have a comment and a question. First, my question is, um, uh, does the planning board see value in reaching out to the property owners along Route 20? And if so, when do you think that would be most appropriate? Uh, so they can be part of the process here. My understanding that the property owners had already been reached out to by the economic development committee on multiple occasions. All right. All right. So, um, just so we have an understanding, is it your hope that the EDC will continue to keep them posted and bring them and work with you and bring them in, in the process of, of, of, um, visioning for this section of the roadway? We're not exactly visioning. Um, if you looked at the attachment, well, we're, we did the visioning. You are, you hired beta to do visioning. They did the visioning. We're at the point now where we have to create zoning to, um, effectuate the visiting, the visioning. And that's where we are. So we've had, uh, forums. We've had, uh, meet planning board meetings as well. Um, and we've talked through these things and, um, I'm not sure the owners have had the opportunity to participate and have been told when we were having the forums. Um, so I'm not sure what you have in mind. What I have in mind basically is, and I appreciate the distinction between visioning that's behind us and zonings in front of us. But if I'm a property owner along Route 20 and, and there's a board of committee considering changing zoning, that's going to really affect, um, the possible use of my property and the value. So, um, you know, I, I think this needs to be some effort either by your board or the EDC or our board to, um, get them involved in the process. Maybe they choose an individual who can follow the process along and that individual can report to all of them. So, just so there's good communication. The other point I had was, um, um, Mr. Clement, that possibly AI may be a tool to, uh, create zoning. Um, um, that I know other communities are doing that. It may be worth, uh, pursuing, but, uh, uh, obviously any final zoning proposals that we need to be, uh, fact checked closely, but that may save the town some money and maybe save some hours on, on your end or any professional's end. That's all I have. Thank you. Um, I don't, I'd be really uncomfortable using AI, uh, because of how complicated our zoning is and I don't know that it would pick up the nuances and allow us to do what we needed to do. And, and I would also agree with that in that if somebody were going to use AI, I would like it to be a trained professional, somebody who with a lot of experience drafting zoning bylaws, whereas we're amateurs, we're, we're hacks. Um, and so if a professional with true, you know, planning, drafting experience were to run something through AI as a starting point and then work from there, I'd have a lot more confidence than if we were trying to do it ourselves because we're old and, uh, and inexperienced. So in terms of AI, I think it's outside of our realm of expertise. So, and in terms of the property owners, they've had an opportunity to weigh in, but this is only going to affect them if, for example, they tore down their building, um, and it isn't going to affect them unless they take that drastic step. So, and, and they know that these changes are coming. So, and I think they're pretty pro-business changes too. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. I just respond to Robin by saying that I tell myself all the time that all this is a state of mind. I'm not sure I've convinced myself. Um, no, I, I support this. Uh, the one question I have is whether, uh, the appointment of town council is a function of the select order of the town manager, under the town manager act. This is a town council council. It's council two. Um, well, we can, um, what was it? Let's ask Mr. McCall with his opinion on that. This is, oh, isn't this outsourcing a vendor to do the current project? So, if we're hiring a lawyer, it would probably, I'm sorry. We're going to get there faster if you'll let us drive by than that. Mostly me, and there I am. Under section 4e, the select board shall appoint a town manager, town council, independent order, independent order, and any other boards, committees, commissions. So, you appoint the town council. I think you, um, could do that here. I mean, you delegate day to day, but I, I think that this is a bigger issue. Oftentimes it, it comes to me whether it be just a single question. Could I reach out to town council or just check on something? This is, I think you're authorizing a rather large expenditure. And I think it would be more appropriate for the board to just say, uh, we would like to authorize this separate board to utilize up to not exceeding $20,000. Or would the planning board appoint the outside council? What would be your comfort? Well, your, your authorization of town managers, you appoint council. You could authorize them to use your appointed council or, uh, most recently the, um, working with Mr. Faye, we selected an outside council special in conservation in Dover matters. Yeah. The, the board could look for somebody specializing in these types of things and then authorize the planning board to utilize the services and maybe we work in conjunction with the planning board to find that expert. Are you comfortable with that? I guess. I mean, I always, I was always a reviewer. The town council was appointed by the select board, but that was. Technically. I'm going on, uh, my recollection from 15 years ago. Okay. So I think I got in my mind, and then I may have to rethink this here. I was thinking is that we are authorizing the use and we're also providing the funding. But if we need to revisit once that we've selected someone, they can make a recommendation and we just make that on the consent calendar. For me to offer a motion to authorize the expenditure of up to $20,000 to assist the planning board and drafting, uh, zoning regulations with respect to, uh, reclining west of the town center. That's a motion. It's in. Not west. Yes. Annette, please. I personally would be appreciative of any corrections. Yes, but I want to just hear if that's your motion first. I want, I want to ensure it's the correct motion. What would you like? When you say west of the town center, are we talking about the intersection of Route 20 and 126 heading west? Because there's an area mostly between there and the town center development. Can you just say from town building? Or how about, how about the Route 20 corridors? Right. The Route 20 corridor. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you. Okay. Do we even know what we're watching? Was there your second name? Yeah. Okay, great. I'm really reluctant to say this, but is there any further discussion on the both? No, just a friendly, to be funded by the guarantee deposit gifts. Right. Which were referred by the planning department as accepted by the select board back on February 2nd of 2020. $20,000. It has to send to it. Yeah. But it comes out of those gift funds. I don't have an exact gift fund name. Right. I'm glad I'm not doing these minutes because I'm really not sure. I think, I think we're authorizing up to $25,000. I think we are. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Let's vote. Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Mr. Yes. And Ms. Martin. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. We'll get in touch. Okay. Our people will talk to your meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're very excited, actually, that this is going forward. So, terrific. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks. I adjourned my meeting. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. Did you all sit in that? Seriously? The planning board meeting is adjourned. At 730. Perfect. Thank you. So, let that be a notice to everyone else. I'm armed and wild with this gavel tonight. You were. Okay. Okay. What was the answer to Mr. Whitney's question about whether the select board or the town manager appoints council? We appointed, but then we authorized Michael to handle the day-to-day interface with council. You will see, I think starting maybe a couple of meetings, we're actually going to be looking at some proposals because we need to, you know, our contract and stuff. So, we need to see what we actually, under the town manager act, select and appoint town council. My motion ducked that question. Yes. You talked about spending $20,000. I'm sure between the town manager and the chair of the planning board will be more about it. Well done. All right. So, the next item, which is number 10, is going to be a discussion with the potential next steps, volunteer-led model, facilitated community dialogue regarding civil disability. We're going to invite in attendance to join us. I think we're going to need a few chairs. You may have questions. Yeah, you guys should all come up because it has to be picked up by this towel. We're going to need a couple of guests.
Jeff Wiener, Elizabeth Ward, Yamini, and one other individualist. I think, I don't know if you'll have to. We're going to get everybody. I'm Jess at a career trial, and I'm going to get everybody. I'm Jessica Greer-Trowell. Okay. So if you look at our packet, I'm just going to let... Yeah, I'm going to let you... Would you like my bill? No. I'm going to ask Mr. Levine who's been spearheading this from the beginning, and graciously kept me in the loop, and I've kind of been going along learning as we go, to introduce this and then the presentation. But the information for those who are following us is on age 22. Thank you. In the name of the packet. Thank you all for joining us. I want to just do some brief introductions for the select board. And before I do that, I just want to set the table briefly. And that is that I've been working with this group of very professional individuals who have been volunteering their time in an attempt to bring a new model into Wayland, which is this concept of structured dialogue. As we've seen, unfortunately, over the last few years, there have been a number of incidents throughout town that have caused a lot of hurt and pain for residents and our staff and volunteers. And while we may not be able to prevent some of these incidents from happening in the future, I think it behooves us to create spaces where we can bring our community members together for some of this structured dialogue in an effort to just continue to build what I believe is a very strong community to begin with. So I'm going to let each of these individuals introduce themselves, and then I'm going to give a little bit more background information. Go ahead, Yamini. Hello, everybody. I'm Yamini, and I've joined this group recently, and I'm always there wherever there is a community building happening. So you will find me in places where there are talks, conversations, committees, and boards. That's my contribution right now. On to Elizabeth. And former chair of the HRDEF. The first chair of the HRDEF. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Wurtz. I am a former town-wide PTO president, and been part of, I was helping to organize the Spirit Council meeting in collaboration with the chairs of the HRDEI committee. And my professional background is in fostering dialogues in colleges and workplaces. I'm Jessica Grouchala. I came at this work or expressed interest in this work because I also have a background in higher ed. Specifically, I've participated and created structured dialogue programs on a campus nearby to here. So I've seen the success of that from just a community building perspective. And I just kind of organically found this group and folks who are interested in bringing similar work here to town. My name is Jeff Witter. I'm a clinical psychologist and researcher at Boston Children's Hospital. I've lived in Wayland for almost six years. I have two little kids. And I work with Heidi at a center where we're focused on community building and social belonging. And as part focused on refugee and immigrant communities. And then part on preventing hate-motivated violence. We've done work adjacent to this in many communities outside in the United States. And we're excited to be asked to participate in our own backyards. And I'm Heidi Ellis. I'm also a clinical psychologist, also at Boston Children's Hospital with Jeff. I direct the Trauma and Community Resilience Center there. And as you said, this is an area that we've done a lot of work in together nationally. And we both love and live in Wayland. And we're very excited to think about, you know, is there any learning from other spaces that we can help bring to the effort here? I feel very fortunate that this group has come together and is willing to volunteer their time. We all have very busy lives. And so if folks refer to the very draft document on page 22 of our packet, there are essentially two underlying purposes that I think that this group could make a meaningful difference in carrying forward. And the first is a strategy format that both Michael and Carol are aware of because we had the opportunity to meet with folks from this group, which is called the Wellesley Civil Discourse Initiative, which was founded now six years ago in the town of Wellesley. On the following page after that is a brief summary of the Civil Discourse Initiative in Wellesley. They have had in my couple of conversations now with them seemingly really productive results in terms of trying to reach more members of the community. And one way they talked about doing that is they host between three or five of these structured dialogues each year on a different topic. Just a handful of those are listed in the packet, and they found by they reach different groups, different demographics within Wellesley by approaching these different topics. And they have a mix on their organizing board of Wellesley town staff, board members, and resident volunteers. And it just seems to be a recipe that can potentially be working. They've trained a number of other towns and shared their model. So this is something that we've now, our select board has had a couple of discussions about because it ties inherently with more than one recommendation from the equity assessment that we reviewed a couple of times with the HR DEI committee over the last number of months. So that is one item that I'd like to engage with this group and the board to discuss because that does, it does come with a cost. But to me, it's a very reasonable cost. So Wellesley uses this group called Essential Partners that Elizabeth is familiar with their work. And they train some 20 residents over the course of a lengthy day to be able to serve as moderators for structured dialogues. And so in a sense, then it kind of perpetuates itself to be able to continue without having an ongoing cost. Wellesley has conducted these trainings three times, so they've trained some 60 individuals in the town of Wellesley, which gives them quite a bench to run some of these dialogues. So I want to open it up to the board to discuss questions about that. And then our second idea, which we're continuing to form, is really the idea of the fact that there are a number of groups in town that are doing this work, namely the HR DEI committee, but also the library board of trustees, the youth advisory commission, Whale and Community Action Network. And I think that there is a challenge just like there is with our town government of these different groups talking to one another. And so we were just discussing just at a conceptual level of how this group could potentially just serve as a convener in terms of keeping the lines of communication open. So that folks in these different groups are working across purposes and that ideally we're all rolling in the same direction doing a piece of this work. But I want to have the board really engage with folks and I was hoping you would have a dialogue here. The one other thing that I want to add is I think that this is particularly timely right now because while we can never predict where an incident of hate may occur, I do know, based on discussions that we've had recently, is it more likely than not that we have an override vote coming in this town, which is a potentially divisive time in a town and we have not had one for nearly 20 years. And so to have a group be able to bring folks together to have a moderated structured mindful dialogue. I think this is very timely to be able to do this work right now. So I will say that I'm going to just remind everyone that Ms. Ellis and Mr. Wyn O'Hare before talking to us about the work that they have done. We missed that presentation. And I think the rest of us will remember the concept that they had, which Doug has prolonged here, is setting the table, you know, and taking the resources that Tom has and layering and seeing how we can achieve some of our goals and objectives by doing that. It's a wonderful presentation that they did for us. I'm going to open this up to the board for questions. We would like to start, obviously, about you and I. Ms. Whitney! Would you like to start? Oh, sure. Excuse me. I'm very, very much in favor of this. I have a suggestion, which I want to emphasize is not an objection. I'm very much in favor of this. I've worked with some of the groups that Mr. Levine described, and sometimes they seem amorphous. And I get questions all the time. Where is our money going? What are we paying for? What are we getting for every dime? So I would really like it. If periodically subject to scheduling for a wonderful chair, you came in and said, hey, we did this. We had this meeting. This many people came. This many people said they changed their mind. I don't want to tell you what it is, but there would be some periodic deliverable so that we could show that this isn't just pretty work. This is really important work. And we're keeping our eyes on managing the butter. I think the thing is I had the pleasure of, well, a couple of things now. I'll tell you a few things on this. What's really interesting is it's learning how others view. Really the goal here is learning how others view rather than making changes, learning to accept our differences in our thoughts rather than trying to sell or convince or convert or whatever other working order that we use. I think it's a very timely, and I think it's really terrific that Whalen is very lucky to have Wellesley as a, who has done the preliminary work. And then we can just be trailblazers and pioneers probably in some of this area ourselves. Bill? Bill. I'm very interested in, in this approach. And I was surprised to hear Doug site pending, possible overrides as a basis of discussion. No, not just because my inference was, you know, we've had these incredible incidents lately. lately and so one can imagine a dialogue about differences and commonalities, but it sounds like it could also, the topics of the discussion could be more proserge. And so I'm curious how it's structured, how the topics are to be discussed or chosen, how the participants are selected. Is there a desired size of the group? So I'm just curious about, generally, how this works and how you envision it. I can share what I know from Wellesley and my experiences with dialogue and I think a lot of this is a little flexible depending upon what each community, how they want to shape things. What I understand from how Wellesley has chosen topics is that they have somewhat or emerged organically throughout the year prior or things are coming up that they want to talk about. But I could imagine we, through some form of process that I don't think we've worked out yet, could come up with certain topics that Wayland would want to talk through. And in terms of how people are chosen, your other question was how people are chosen. I mean, I'm just generally curious how it works. How are the topics selected, how are the participants selected, how large or small of a group would you envision is a right size to, you know, make people comfortable, but, you know, just, if you could just walk me through an illustration of how you envision this might work, that would be helpful. Sure. So what I understand how Wellesley has done in the past and those of you who have listened to their conversations feel free to jump in and and add more to it, but what I understand that they've done in the past is a topic will emerge that they've decided to, to talk about. They have already trained, um, at least 20, if not more facilitate who are ready to facilitate. And that's a combination of people who serve on volunteer boards, people on, um, staff of various, and then community volunteers. Um, from that cohort of folks who had been trained, um, a smaller group is often to want to participate in this particular topic. Um, and then I, from what I understand, it's, it's fairly open to the public to participate, um, in the conversation. Um, my experience in dialogue shares that, um, It works very well when there is a group of about 15 folks in a circle. So what I would envision and, and correct me for those of you who have heard Wellesley or, or it could be shaped a little different, but my, my speculation would be that, say, for example, you have 20 facilitators trained, 20 are choosing to participate in this topic. You would have pairs. So you could potentially have 10 dialogue circles of 15 to 20, um, community members, um, all in a big space. So there's multiple different circles, discussing the same issue, discussing the same issue. And then it would feed somehow into a larger conversation. Jessica, anything you want to add there? Um, yeah, I, I would say the model that we used to facilitate was set up similarly, you know, sometimes there are topics where you are able to have participants self-select where there's an even balance of, of folks viewpoints on their particular issue. And then you are creating a little bit more symmetry, um, for, you know, psychological safety within the group, knowing that there are some peer viewpoints that match your own. Um, but it's usually a co-facilitation with sort of two moderators and then the, the participants. And what kinds of issues are discussed typically would you anticipate? So what I understand Wellesley has discussed is, are things like, um, there, they talked a little bit about, there was an education dialogue around parents perspectives on public education. Um, there was, uh, a conversation around, um, experience of race and racism in Wellesley. Um, there was a topic around town government. So it was an opportunity for, um, members of boards and committees, um, to talk about their experiences and share sort of their, their perspectives on working for the town. I think one of the things that I think is great about dialogue is it's, it's a skill set and a structure that is very flexible to be used in a whole host of different topics. Whether it be around aspects of, you know, we've talked a little bit about the experiences of, of hate in our community. And with Doug mentioned override, I think it's very flexible to be used in a whole variety of spaces and topics. If I could add to that, you use the term prosaic. And I think one of the things that's really wonderful about this model is that it's, it allows people to build, to build their muscle essentially of how to have constructive conversations. And it means you can have a whole range of topics, some of which might feel easier to talk about, um, than others. But what you're really doing is building a culture and a skill set around how you have those conversations. As Jeff and I have worked with communities on similar initiatives, what we've found is that there are, um, you might recall or might not be talking, there's certain risk or certain protective factors you want to build in a community. Many of those can be built by existing programs getting strengthened. So there's a real push for how do you strengthen what's already there and going strong in the community. The one area that was often not represented well in a community was what we would call cognitive flexibility. How do you encourage community members to sort of build that muscle to take different perspectives and, and be more flexible. And it's a really key risk factor in terms of incidences of hate. So what I think this does is allows a sort of, um, it's an opportunity to build that muscle across a wide range of community members who can reach into different sectors of the community who care about different issues and begin to sort of, um, build that skill set. But then if there's a very high tension incident that happens, we're one step further ahead in terms of having the right tone to the conversation. Thank you, Carol. I really want to applaud your efforts here, um, for a lot of, a lot of reasons. This is, um, um, a real positive step, um, in communication among residents in a world where human interaction is a lot less than it used to be. Also, as a select board member, we all see great value in people feeling like they belong to, uh, uh, to the town of Wayland, that they belong, uh, to the community that they're part of the town. This effort is one side benefit is it does give people, I think it will give people that sense of belonging. They may meet someone who they've never met who might, um, have an interest that they, that they have an interest in. And, um, so the friendships will develop and maybe some will get involved in town affairs, but that's secondary. What's primary is that people feel, um, um, a sense of belonging, increased sense of belonging, which, um, is so needed. And it's a, it's a building process, right? So hopefully year after year, more people feel, um, like they belong, uh, to the community. But this, what you're doing will really enhance that. So I, I appreciate that. Because this is such an exciting and big thing that I'm coming up with something classic. I think I would like to also see, um, um, his, uh, power spread. I would also like to participate in something to say. I have a couple of ideas here for you. Oh, I think from our initial meeting, Madam chair with the folks in Weston, it was evident that this was, um, you know, a valuable tool, I would say. And I don't mean to take that term lightly, but we need to foster better dialogue in all communities. All you have to do is turn on the news and you can see that people just cannot communicate. Um, I'm often just astounded when I work with some younger folks who, and I'm just, this has nothing to do with some of the communication, but people use their phone more and people just don't talk. And I do think that having the ability to have people that can go out in the community and foster, uh, human, human connections and dialogue and discussion about the issues that are facing community is extremely important. Um, more now than ever. I think what was also very interesting is Elizabeth and I met with folks from Wellesley at the beginning of the year and the folks that they had join our call, um, represented their assistant executive director, which is like the equivalent of our assistant town manager. They had their DPW director and they had, um, a representative from their group called world of Wellesley, which is, I think in some ways synonymous to our whaling community action network. Then when we met with them again, this time with Michael and Carol, it was the founder who was a former chair of their select board, another member of their select board, and then their assistant executive director again. So I feel like there's buy-in from different parts of the community that has really made this work and sustainable. I think, um, obviously we're going to talk about the next steps, right? Please. But before we do that, this might help with the language coming in. We're talking about all these issues. And I think, um, and Michael kind of touched on it as well. The dissonance, the disparity, if you will, on the objectives, the goals, the reasons for learning and learning among the residents. I got invited to a lovely barbecue, but it had to be indoors. And it absolutely was an exquisite home, thanks to Mr. Doug. Um, and I was listening to everyone talk about, you know, what they would like to see if it's going to do. And, of course, I'm always struck because we have two or two really strong resident groups. I think that would be a real good topic. I saw it just a couple of, understand the perspective of why, why someone lives here in Miami. What they're looking for, for being here. And it might even be just a suggestion of this. But it might be like one of the good and opening topics, if you will, because of how people understand. Why do I live in Miami? What is the difference? You've been here for the same years, right? You've been here for the same years, right? 30 o'clock. It's an imperative, no problem. Did you put children through school? Did you never have any children in the school system yet? I really think this might be just a quote of thought in your list of points to consider. So let's move on to the next steps, because that's really the key. I think we all seem to think this program has extreme value. So, um, we're a really good board. We move along. We don't move down. So what is our next step? We're looking for some funding, right? So we need some money to, uh, hire some folks to come in and start, um, training facilitators. Is that what we need to do? I think we need to have an initial conversation, maybe with Wellesley again, but certainly at least with folks at Essential Partners, um, to understand the logistics of how this works. Because I think, and this is concept has been presented to the HRDEI committee. It didn't land as well as we had hoped. Um, and I think that it's about ensuring that folks who want to be involved and included, that there is a clear, transparent process about how they can be involved. So I think it's important for us to talk to Essential Partners next to figure out, for example, how many facilitators would they train and how are those facilitators selected? How much time do you think they would need? For us to connect with them? They have to have them come in person. It's on my list. So I'm saying, do you think they'll need like a half hour, an hour? What do you think? If they were to come with the Select Board? Would Essential Partners come meet with the Select Board? Yeah, like a representative from them. I mean, we can talk to them offline first to get a sense. Yeah. I mean, would they need 15 minutes? I, yeah, I don't think they would. I don't think it would be more than that. Yeah. Okay. Let's see if we can fit them in. Well, our problem is we're, we, um, there's a big push here. We have a lot of items to discuss. Everybody asks to the list, but then they'd like to have some, a lot more summer nights off. So I don't know how many weeks we're going to have to pull off in the sun. But we'll see what I can talk to you and see what we can do. Does that sound good? Sure. Can you just interrupt me if I'm, um, okay. Um, it seems like everybody appears in favor of this. The amount of money involves pretty small. And earlier you said something dear to me. You said this could self-capitulate. You said self-sustain. Because it's going to train facilitators who can then dot, dot, dot. Is it out of order to suggest we just to fill the line today and then have the process then proceed with it? Could you make a motion? I'm asking first. Um, I don't think that would be inappropriate. The last, um, information that we had was speaking directly to the folks from Wellesley who quoted us that number. So we don't have that directly through essential partners. We haven't been in touch with them directly. Please know my enthusiasm. Doug, you also discussed possibly having the folks from Wellesley come in. But we could do that in the second step or something like that in the first step. So, all right. I withdraw. I didn't have to withdraw. This is Chris's first night. So anybody, uh, any of our esteemed guests would wish to add anything to the dialogue or the conversation before I... Is there anything you want to say about the second, like, briefly, the umbrella concept? Um, I would just say this particular program we've talked more about, but we're, we're thinking about, you know, what is all the different connective tissue that is needed in order to really support the great efforts that are already in place and make that work reach more people. Again, from our work in other communities, what we often see is that, um, there are, there's a core group of people who does great work, but then there are many people who are not a part of it. And the, the metaphor is like, where's the door? They don't even know where the door is to get in, to be a part of things. And so we've been playing around with ideas. Like you mentioned, can we have, uh, sort of more connectivity between groups who are in some way addressing this issue? I think there's a core group who groups who are. And then beyond that, there's many people who are doing great work in Wayland who might not think of themselves as directly addressing this issue, but are because they're building belonging, they're building civic engagement and, and offering volunteering opportunities for kids. All that is, is really critical. So maybe there's an outer layer there. And we've even sort of banded out some ideas of just, um, other ways to start hyperlocal in neighborhoods and build a sense of connectivity and, um, belonging. So these are maybe down the road, more ideas that we can bring. But, um, I just wanted to add, um, the HRDIC efforts in bringing conversation to our community community in the past one year, they've done conversation with change, Jamil and, uh, Eden Renee, Dr. Eden Renee. And, uh, I was, um, attending these meetings. And when I was in the audience, I realized that there are so many, not so many demographic participating. It is very important. There are a lot of unofficial subgroups that I'm connected to. People are active. They are, they, they want to pitch in, but they just don't know. Like Heidi said, they, they don't know where the door is. And so when I joined this group, I took some time to understand where we are going with this. And so my positive thought about this is anytime there's an intention to bring people together, we should always support and pitch in. And this is our opportunity to get all those efforts combined together in a very positive way. Nobody's competing with anyone, any organization here. Um, and again, HRDIC, WACAN, all of these organizations have done tremendous, beautiful job, but you will see that in the audience. There are some community missing. There are many communities missing sometimes. So it's very important work. And that's all it was mine. I would just add, I think, you know, there's, there's gaps just as Yamini was mentioning. And, and we have some collective expertise and there's other folks who are doing this work in town who also have expertise to contribute. Um, and even just from that umbrella, like assessment standpoint, you know, the ability to get all of the pieces and components laid out to see if there's any other gaps that we need to fill that, that we as a community we can focus on will be really helpful. A number of us have also been reaching out to these different groups to let them know that I wouldn't have this idea and this effort. So, and a number of us work directly or serve on with these other groups as well. Unless anybody has anything else you want to add? I'm going to thank everyone. And I'm going to put my head together with Mr. Levine to see when we can fit that of the essential partners on the agenda. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Very exciting. Thank you. Even the chairs, because I think we're going to need them for the next agenda. So thank you. Um, number two is going to be a, the continued deliberation for the liquor license. Um, this is a discussion of possible vote to approve the liquor license amendment. Outdoor-owned operation and premises, the Dudley Chateau LLC and DBA, Dudley Chateau, at 20 Press Road, here obviously in Weirman. We're going to invite attendance by Andy Phillips, um, and Kenneth Phillips, um, and this, just yourselves, right? Correct. Okay, great. All right. Um, so we, last week we had a, um, there's only three of us this week or five of us in a year. Um, but, um, we had a, we had a hearing as posted, you know, on your record, on your request to allow the outdoor dining that wasn't started because of the COVID to continue. And we all understand that that's what we're discussing here is just the fact, you know, outdoor dining, um, that, um, there was no change allowed or contemplated in the number of the capacity. The capacity still remains at, I think it's, somebody's with, um, this is better, they said 85, right? 85, thank you. And that there would be a max of 30 outside. So that's really that. Um, we did receive a number of public comments last week. We did receive, um, about this issue, um, both calling for con. And then we did receive, and I'm just doing this off the top of my head, some, um, emails that we got over the week that I responded to, so that we can get into the packet here. Um, in support, you know, on the project, we have some expensive issues and questions about parking and noise, and when I went back and looked at my notes, uh, I noticed also that, um, the fire department, the board of health, and, uh, a number of departments had been consulted. And I think the one that really spoke up was the fire department that said the barriers need to remain in place for the security, you know, of the patrons. Obviously it would be security for the restaurant as well, because we wouldn't want to take them down if something happened. So, okay. Now with that, um, there was also a question last week, uh, about, okay, excuse me, about, because three of us were there in the hearing that only three of us would be able to vote and continue all over this five minutes present. So I think I want to be clear on that. Have I got to have a lot of the details? Okay. So I'm going to open it back up to the board now, um, to continue the deliberation. So hopefully I got all the points here. I think in the intervening time, we've also received, um, some further comment from residents, including the butters, including as recently as late this afternoon at 4 30, uh, for which I thought was a reasonably worded statement, uh, from an individual who has lived next to the chateau, uh, for four and a half years or so and wants to see it succeed. Um, I think one of the things that we had talked about last time was having conversations with the neighbors and the butters that, you know, although not easy, it's always helpful, uh, at least for the board and for the butters to be heard, to open that straight, um, thread of dialogue. Are we able to ask some questions? You're going to ask questions? Yes. Um, wait a minute. This is up to Michael. I wouldn't want to do it again. So open it. What do we want to do? Yeah. So I'm looking at you because it was, it was one of the reasons that they wanted to continue to potentially give them a chance to reach out to the neighbors. Well, I think you've considered, you know, you're, you heard from the public. The whole point of the public hearing is to get input from the public, but you, now you're asking the advocates some specific questions. I would note that one of the things that we were also hanging on was, um, Mr. Whitney had, uh, a question and I can read, uh, from town council at whatever time you would like. Yeah. So, um, you didn't ask if we had to re-advertise the hearing? Well, there's two questions. One, did we have to re-advertise? And as long as we continue to date certain, we did not need to re-advertise. It wouldn't have been if we just continued indefinitely and then pick the new date at a separate time. So, um, I can't go ahead and Michael reached up, um, and we reached up to the ABCC. We had to re-advertise and they said eventually, yeah, just reach town council. So, Michael reached up to town council, said that the hearing was advertised open and then the board voted to continue the hearing to date certain IU June 1, which is what we did. There was no need to re-advertise. If the board voted to continue with no certain date, then it must be re-advertised. So I think we're comfortable. Does that sound? Are you comfortable with that? Yes. Oh, okay. Sure. I mean, and thank you for reminding me that I didn't do that. So, all right. So now, yes. And there was another question. Mr. Whitney had relatively whether or not, but I'll probably get it correctly, but you would ask the select board was looking at this, but could this also fall under the purview of the planning board? Because there is a town by-law that allows planning board may allow by site plan approval food and beverage to be served on or consuming the premises outside the building that contains a lawfully existing restaurant in any zoning district. And the previous opinion of town council, they cited the carriage house as a, as an example. So I asked for further review and the, there was two mechanisms by which this could occur either through the planning board by site plan approval or under this new Mass General Law 40A Section 3 which allows the select board to extend outside dining, alcohol service to outside dining of an existing restaurant. And town council writes at the bottom, in my opinion, because the Dudley Chateau is operating a lawful pre-existing non-conforming use. It may be considered a lawful existing restaurant under town zoning by-law. And assuming it is a current convivicular license and or liquor license from the select board, it would be considered a restaurant under this new select board policy which was adopted pursuant to this new Chapter 40A 3B. Um, accordingly, it falls within the purview of both of these procedures and may apply for site plan approval with the planning board or approval by the select board pursuant to this new policy. I recognize that alterations to a pre-existing non-conforming use are typically subject to a finding under Mass General Law 40A Section 6 and special permit from the zoning board and appeals pursuant to further town. However, the council says, I remind you that under the new law it states, notwithstanding the provisions of this Chapter, any special permit, variance, or other approval issued there under or any other general law or special law, to the contrary, the city or town may approve a request for expansion of outdoor table service, including the description of the licensed president, um, in this new law or under the extension of early granted approval. So town council concludes accordingly is my opinion that the above statutory language overrides the provisions of Mass General Law 48 Section 6, as well as the corresponding provisions of the town zoning bylaw requiring a finding and special permit to allow pre-existing non-conforming restaurants such as the Dudley Chateau to alter or expand its use to add to outdoor dining. So, essentially, the select board may make the decision. I think we had kind of discussed that last week. Thank you for reviewing that with us. To view that specific to Chairman. Right, no, and I appreciate that. I would point out, however, that the agenda refers to discussion and possible vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, outdoor-only alteration premises. So it doesn't, it doesn't say to permit the extension of outdoor dining. It says to approve a Wicker License Amendment. I'm not sure. You don't think it's okay. Tom, what do you think about the fact that it also captures in the, in the, that next colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises? We're talking about the agenda here? Yeah, item 11. Well, the agenda I'm looking at says discuss and possible vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises. In other words, the, the ask of our board is to approve or not approve the, the outdoor area. That, that's how I read the agenda item. So, is that your point, Bill? That, that it doesn't, it doesn't specifically state that we're, we're asked to approve the Wicker License? The question is, it looks to me as though the agenda speaks only to the question of Wicker License Amendment, as contrasted with approval of outdoor dining as a use. I, I, I don't read it that way. I, I, I, the word outdoor-only alteration of premises, I think, gives the public notice that we're talking about outdoor use of the facility, of the, of the site, for a dialogue. It looks like, because you can see Bill's point, because it says vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises, colon, the Dudley Chateau. I, I, I think that, that we could still take this vote because the language is listed. The language could be a little confusing, but the language is still listed there, because outdoor-only alteration of premises is still there. Right. I agree. Yeah. Well. What is, what they only refer to? We're not talking about any of the seating inside. We're only concerning ourselves with the outdoor seating. Okay. Are you comfortable now? The limit would raise it. Can we move on to the deliveries, or do we need to discuss this one? It's so part of the deliberation. Okay. Then we're all set. The item that I was raising that I wanted to find out if anything has happened in the last couple weeks is, has there been any conversations with any of the others? Right. Of the Chateau? And that's what I wanted to close. I know. I think that is a question I have as well. Didn't make any of that, but I will say this. I also received a bunch of phone calls myself. Some of you probably did as well. Folks who have lived there for a long time and have said, if you live near the pond, you hear everything anyone does, no matter where they are, because every conversation echoes that goes across the water. So it's an interesting observation. Folks lived close up to 27 this end, and here people talking like three streets over, like they're standing right next to you because of the water, which I found interesting, I think, and said, you know, the noise can be, it can be loud at times. But on the other hand, these folks said, you know, we go over there. We walk over there. We can get take out. We can just walk over and grab it, you know, or whatever. So they would be, they were in favor of the outdoor dining, even though you can hear everything. It's three items that keep rearing their head that I put on the table for discussion. Right. One is the noise. Right. And I have to say, I am somewhat less concerned about that. I understand I am myself not in a butter, but I also understand that the Dudley Chateau has been there for quite some time. And a number of these neighbors have probably come into this property afterwards. And I also understand that the outdoor seating has been in place now for going on six years, if it's been COVID, since COVID. But the two items to me that are more salient are people have now received comments on multiple occasions where people say that folks are parking on both sides of the road. That obviously creates a public safety hazard. We don't know if that necessarily falls on the Dudley Chateau versus our police department to be warning people and ticketing these cars to ensure that doesn't happen. And it was just raised again in this motion, most recent correspondence that we received because they mentioned that there was a fire within the last several weeks on Dudley Road. And if, in fact, cars are parking along both sides of the road, what would be nice is if there was a partnership between the Chateau and the police department so they can be in communication. We obviously only have so many officers on patrol in the town at one time. So that's one item. And then the last item is just the safety of how people are driving in that area and being concerned they're leaving a bar in a very residential neighborhood. Noise is one thing, but how they're driving is another thing. Again, I think that falls to a partnership between the establishment and our police department. So I have the three notes over here. Who enforces the parking? So we got the same, the same. Yeah. And if a neighborhood meeting had occurred, it's only been two weeks, so perhaps they haven't done it. But I would highly encourage them because, as you had said earlier, we're going to revisit this in December. Right? Because these are one-year liquor licenses. We renew liquor licenses every December 1st. That's when we do them. So this is a six-month, five-month, six-month. Well, this is different, though, because this is for the outdoor seating. So I think we still have to set a time on this. Right. Otherwise, I was asking Michael, are we issuing this in perpetuity? Or should we say we can revisit this in a year? I think we revisit the liquor no matter what every December. Right. But this isn't tied directly. Well, right. Well, we're in the same. Yeah. We're in the same thing. So I do think the neighborhood meeting would be beneficial for everyone. I do think that we need to find out who enforces the parking lot. Because I am also concerned that people in our parking lot do not have enough parking spaces of what has happened here. So, I don't know. Did you have any other concerns? Well, I've used it in hearing the applicant respond to Doug's question about literature. I don't know if I can do that. Michael just said I could close it. Can we do that as a question? Any questions? You've taken input from the public. Yeah. You've asked the questions. But you essentially asked at the close of last meeting that you would like to hear if there's going to be any dialogue. So, I think you can ask. Can you ask that one question? Oh, yeah. Because the public hearing portion, you may still have a question for the applicant. I think you're entitled to ask. Tom, do you understand the question here? Yeah. Yeah. Can you ask the question? Yeah. Just because the hearing is over doesn't mean the board can't continue to, you know, inquire and try to learn more information. And I think it's quite appropriate that Ms. and Mrs. Phillips be here to answer questions of the board. Sure. So, I will ask the question. They'll answer the question. They're not to provide any other information, right? I don't see why not. Okay. Just being clear. So, our question is, be surprised now. Here's our question. Have you made arrangements here on this neighborhood meeting that I know you had volunteered, you would do it, and you were considering doing one. And what has taken place since your service two weeks ago? We were in Italy two weeks. We were in Italy. We were in Italy. We were working in Italy. We were working in Italy. We were working in Italy. It was one in the morning in Italy when we were on our last meeting. So, when we just returned home on Tuesday. So, there hasn't been any time to do any kind of neighborhood meeting. But the capacity is at 85 people. So, whether they're indoors or outdoors, the problem is that 85 people all drive to the restaurant, there isn't enough parking. And I physically was the one who asked the police to please put up the no parking signs. I asked them to put those up. There were no parking. Those signs didn't even exist before. And it was a problem because, you know, if you're parking on both sides of the street, yes, emergency vehicles can't get through there. So, I did ask the police to put the signs up and, you know, they do come down there. They do come inside. They do threaten to ticket. I don't know if they do ticket, but they do come in, ring the bell, have the announcement. So, it has happened in the past. And trying to figure out how to stop people from parking or, you know, like when six guys come to the restaurant and they're all sitting around the table and all six of them drove. It does become tight in the neighborhood. It's just not directly related to the outdoor seating. It's just, it's a larger issue. Right. That has to be addressed. That's kind of, yeah, it's just, it's, it's a problem that it just needs to be addressed, I think, with maybe the police. And, I mean, we can try to get an employee to kind of go around or hang out outdoors when at seven o'clock. I don't, I don't know how to fix the parking. Specific to the outdoor dining hall. It's not an issue in the, really in the summer months to speak of. It's, it's more people bike, walk, kayak, etc. So, I don't really see it in the, in the, in the summer months as much. It seems to be a lot less. As far as the community, we own the Chateau for 17 years now. And we meet with the community, oddly enough, on a pretty regular basis because the majority of individuals come into the chat for takeout or to have a meal now and again. Do they give Mandy and I their honest input if it's negative? Maybe not. But now again, we hear, we certainly hear negative input. But most of all, the community, and it has changed a little bit from, from day one where it's come full circle, where they really see it as an asset to not only community, but the, but the neighborhood. And it is a very special neighborhood. And to Mr. Levine's point, if you were there before the chat, you're probably about 130 years old at this point in time. Um, so most of them really see it as an asset and we do communicate with them regularly, but we can certainly, uh, you know, facilitate, um, you know, maybe through the Dudley Pond Association or just otherwise throughout Facebook or something to that, um, to that extent, uh, an actual meeting, you know, before this, um, you know, the liquor license renews again. Yeah, I think it would make sense because I think it's very different to try to receive feedback while you're doing business in that environment versus in a quiet room where you're sitting with, with the neighbors together. What we do, we have a, a, a gentleman that puts a trash can, um, down at the, at the end of the, uh, um, you know, where the boat launch kind of, kind of was at one point. And, uh, when he's traveling, he messages me, if it's over full, he says, can I use your dumpster? And we do have a lot of back and forth neighbors have brought things to, for our attention before, uh, which, you know, we remedied as soon as we can. So we try to be very responsible, commercial neighbors, although inherently in the pre-existing non-conforming nature of the building, you do have a commercial establishment in close proximity to, uh, you know, to residential. But I, I think for the most part, uh, it, it does work as harmoniously as it can. And I don't, you know, you know, obviously my opinion, but I don't see the, the outdoor dining area really detracting from it, you know, or adding to any issues per se. I just found through my experience that it just makes a difference when people can feel for, just to give them that opportunity. I agree. Share how they're feeling. Agreed. Agreed. So, I guess I would, I mean, that's one of our thoughts would, our hopes would be, because it's really probably like the same vigor, is it enabling anyone to curse? So that would, I think that's what I was wondering. Ironically enough, when you got last panel, I was just here to facilitate the conversation. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. We only had that in action. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. So, that was... Maybe you could have your neighbors come to Italy. Yeah. We could queue outdoor dining en masse. Mm-hmm. So, um, Boston? It's tough, you know, uh, land uses generate parking demand. And, uh, this is a successful restaurant. Uh, and, and the demand exceeds the capacity. Um, I don't know if there are other ways you, if you can restart the lot. If you, uh, were to consider valet parking, or you could stack cars up the way they do in, uh, New York City. The fancy restaurants. Uh, you know, where, uh, you have to wait 10 minutes to get your car and so forth. Uh, but I do think a community meeting would be helpful. Uh, so if, if the word were to act tonight, I think that, uh, suggests that the board can consider making the approval of the out, the use of the outdoor dining, uh, coterminous with the liquor license. Yeah. So that we have the opportunity to review it at the end of the year. Um, but, but also, uh, I think we should, uh, maybe reach out to the, uh, police chief and get his take on what's going on. Uh, I can't imagine it'd be great for your business to have 15 cars ticketed. Yeah. So, uh, you've also found car just wherever you feel like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're taking the chance. We have heard about neighbors saying their driveways are blocked. So it's a tough one, you know, it is, uh, I think almost everybody who's there has, uh, has been there. That moved in with the understanding the shack that was there. And, uh, so what's the language advisor here with the board? Do we want to make a motion? Do we want to do it? Yeah, I think we want to do it. Okay. So, Mr. McColl? Right. I just want to reiterate, Madam Chair, that we should establish some times, hours of operation, dates of operation for outdoor seating when it begins in the spring, ends in the fall. Um, and be sure that's there. You can have your annual view in time in the region of the outdoor dining. Um, that's all I have for suggestion. So if someone is, um, and not to exceed the capacity and the existing liquor license, you're just extending the service area, but not increasing the capacity. Right. I think I immigrated that point earlier, but I... But just reinforcements. So does somebody want to wish to make a motion? I need some of that information because it's not in this memo. What are the hours of operation currently? The from? What are the forms? What are the forms? Be warm. The form. The form? How do you say that? Well, the outside or just in general? The outside. The outside. The outside. Is all weather purposes. The outside. The outside. The outside. The outside, it's all weather-proof. The pressure. I don't know if it's going to go ahead. Um, so, you can do the further steps. You can just go ahead and tell me how you're on the panel. it's all weather permitted um but it would be noon last seating at seven and then closed by nine and the capacity is 30. the capacity is 30. i think during covid we had till 9 30 but we didn't it was kind of like cleaning up and getting everybody out of there by 9 30. and then it's the season what's the season for outdoor dining um usually usually somewhere you know by the end of october if the bees are out there it's just hang on a second we're looking to see what's on the application i would just say you know from maybe 4-1 but that's already passed to maybe like 11-1 yeah so i have a question too because there's this is right here and typed up to me
i can't yeah so i move that the select board approve um the licensing authority certification specifically with respect to outdoor only alteration of premises outdoor seating for the dudley chateau located at 20 crest road in wayland with a maximum seating capacity outdoors of 30 to be utilized tuesdays through sundays from noon with a last seating at 7 p.m and closed at 9 p.m beginning april 1st of 2026 um through october 31st 2026. the term set approval being effective through december 31st 2026. friendly amendment accepted thing but it's like a motion you know i said that they don't have anything in there why don't we have we don't have to have a vote because there's a lot of three presidents no because you have somebody sorry to interrupt but you have somebody get the road it's not voting um just the three of us because it's not voting suspenders would might do a roll call felt and suspenders might do a roll call well that was my second thought okay well combo bill yeah yes yes yes motion passes three zero thank you thank you thank you make sure you have that name with me because we'll ask
and um follow up to that do we want to reach up to the chief and see what we can do about this parking and should i put that on my list here yeah all right michael good speaker the chief of new partners right parking update i think the next item that we're going to talk about here is going to be uh discussion of potential bonus proposed redenticide policy um that is on page 45 or 46 of the packet i'm going to let uh mr fay leave the discussion on this one please and i think we're going to invite uh ms sharon to join us how i have she's on the conservation commission thank you for waiting for now running a little late but we weren't running around yes um before i begin i'd like to have ask robbie to bring on um other members who wanted to be present during this discussion including shannon fisher i think she's the only other person who will be joining here and i started here linda hansen oh sorry about that linda and linda i'd like to recognize linda hansen i'm sorry linda i was looking at the list on the side so can you all right great super great um so my way of background this is basically an effort to um prohibit use of certain poisons um to control rats and and mice uh in the town uh it's a policy that's actually being considered um statewide by the legislature but it's unclear whether any bill will pass along these lines the topic has come up the last couple of years by the conservation commission they considered warrant articles on this but in discussions it seemed appropriate that our board would establish a policy that would have the same end so um through you madam chair i invite um uh miss fisher to chat about the origins of this objective and and and why it's being sought certainly okay um we've been pursuing this with the conservation commission for a little while um mirroring some of the efforts that are going on in towns and cities across the state so second generation anti-coadulant rodenticides um came about 1970s um to replace the first generation which rats and mice became um somewhat immune to and unfortunately they work um one feed is enough to kill the rodent but it doesn't take it doesn't kill it immediately the road can run around for up to a week or more um accumulating more and more and it builds up in their bodies it stays active and what you get is any predator that comes along and eats that rodent um can become poisoned multiple times and you have owls who will eat tens of thousands of rodents in their lifetime hawks the same foxes bobcats coyotes and wildlife rehabilitators are seeing um dead and dying predators across the state and it also gets into the soil it gets into the food chain snapping turtles have died of second generation rodenticides so um we did try to get um a municipal ban in place um i believe uh last year and because there were some questions about how it may or may not work with an existing pesticide i think it was 84 a pesticide by lot we we shelved it but the people actually came up and they they voted to turn it into a resolution which they then supported and we tried again this year with a version that would fit in um that would collaborate with that better but we weren't able to get it in the warren article but a lot of towns have done this internally and in fact we pursued it as as a warren article to be voted on by the town kind of the public education approach um but arlington who's been a leader in this because they started out because the first pair of bald eagles to come and nested in arlington um in 50 years after they got rid of ddt died from escars so they became new leaders so following them it started to make sense that we could do this as an internal policy um it it sounds like actually the the public works here in wayland are already not using them so it's actually not really changing anything it's more codifying and protecting this and it also puts wayland in the same kind of um it puts wayland in company with i think it was 49 other towns and cities that have already made restrictions i think there's 130 something who have community organization of some kind so we would be in good company um it's a good look for wayland um it protects some good that we're already doing and uh yeah so i think the proposal that you guys have in your packet is modeled after arlington's internal internal policy questions from the board um also i have one question so do you have any sense for how often these types of second generation rodenticides are used privately like will this actually make a meaningful difference if it's codified or do we really need to move forward and i know you end up being a home will petition have to go to the legislature right is that where we really move the needle yeah well yes so because it's not really being used on public land right now in a sense no it doesn't change anything dramatically but it does set an example and then when we do public education we can say the town the town has looked at this and done this um i think these are very widely used in in private residences they are or not are i know personally i've if if you personally i've i've dealt with pest control companies in my own house if you don't ask them what they're going to use and you say i have a mouse problem this is their first line of defense over a half a million pounds of escars were distributed across massachusetts in 2022 based on mdar data which is i think the most recent data we have unless something just came out so i think it was 559 000 pounds of it it makes up 96 percent of the rodenticides used in the state it's the first line of defense even though it shouldn't be the epa says it shouldn't be used as a long term but i even went i've gone to some of the shopping centers here in town and i've i counted like i think it was 31 boxes not all of them were labeled those that were were pretty much labeled with second generation rodenticides they were also next to open dumpsters so these are often used in lieu of better practices so by the town doing this it might not change things immediately but it sets a really good example that we can then point to and say a like here's something that your town leaders have voted on this is great for public education and b like it adds one more town to the list of um towns and cities that are doing this as the state considers the larger bill thank you
and tom i would assume you're all set i am happy to move i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off madam chair if uh anybody else want to speak the only one left is me and i'm good thank you so please please do your thing happy to move that this board approved the proposed rodenticide policy is set forth in our packet for june 1st 2026. okay for discussion otherwise we're going to have a little call vote tom yes yes yes yes and carol yes five zero thanks sir thank you guys so much thank you thank you um i'm going to propose because i see there are a lot of people here and i couldn't get here for item number 15 so i am going to propose taking item 15 next and there's somebody on the board projects okay so this is an interesting agenda item um you know sometimes things start one way and then they end up another way what had happened here is i think that this on the item here is uh discussion of the historic uh district commission's parking suggestions and we have stuff in the historic district i don't know the exact thing but i think it was a mid-april um miss schula reached out to me and said you know we have some suggestions and we'd like the board you know to make get them in front of the board and she was going to come to the public comment and she did and then i said you know we are really we're really really um busy getting ready for time meeting what have you but i've been focused on the agenda on um june 1st and so that was the intent of this agenda item tonight was to just look at these suggestions and and kind of have a quick look at this and see what we thought in the meantime we've um so it may look coincidental and i believe there's a lot of folks from the library here um but we did receive some correspondence about some concern from a residential residence concerning those the no parking signs or the library only parking signs in the library parking lot that is not the intent of this agenda item this is a very short item we are just looking in the way i have set it up much the board feels differently because i wanted to just get a first glance if you will is to look at this i think this um i think the historic um district commission brings up a valid point that is more and more uh commercial and businesses go into the historic district we really should be taking a look at the at the parking situation i can't i can't recognize you because it's not on my agenda he's not on the agenda you're not on the agenda you're not recognizing you no we're just just reviewing the i the list that would be sent in by mr i didn't know that someone was going to hell and we're going to speak so so i'm going to open this up to the board did we lose mr okay okay all right so does anybody have any initial comments on that i mean essentially what they're saying is is that there's more and more like what i just said there's more and more people are using these wonderful facilities whether it's the depot or it's the real trail or the dwell ford and helps the museum or this possible new cap data spend on this new cafe that's coming in um we really need we're really going to have um some strong competition for parking spaces there and they did offer three short-term solutions um and three long-term solutions so um including and i don't know how we would do this limiting uh parking in the depot and perhaps wait on 27 a half to two hours that kind of thing so um i'm going to ask michael to a final list and he's just rolled his eyes i didn't realize i'm waiting i'm waiting um because i thought that was my goal he was just to get us to get this on our radar screen and you know maybe we would end up having a look at this another time as much um anyway what's your thought i want to switch we're taking 15 now i think i know i've seen and i've received you know actually mr weintraub left me a voicemail over the weekend i didn't get a chance to call and it's been topic of discussion at some of my town manager office hours michael that was on something else i know but i'm just pointing out you you do you brought this up because uh mr weintraub like others would like to foster uh you know a downtown community um in a neighborhood community especially with the interest in the the call the old collins market um there's been ideas floated about you know could we create more parking in that triangle and find the veterinarian there or do something on the other side near the pelham island road i i i think there's a challenge and i i see the library folks here as well you know when when this came up last year we spent some time i spent some time with ms jeunesse looking at you know the the grants of land and how it came to the library and this is why we've also received feedback on these new signs that we put out um i think we do need a conversation with all stakeholders at the table including the dpw um to talk about what we can do to create adequate parking to allow businesses to survive and thrive and not impede upon the library operations but also to um allow access to the rail trail because i've received some comments about that as well now i know we we may want to invite the new owners of town center because they're very eager in you know helping out in these types of endeavors uh they can be accessed to the rail trail from their parking lot i'm sure they would be willing partners in that conversation as well but i think if we had everybody at once some of those people are here this evening that we could come up with a reasonable solution where else we could put parking that would work for everyone um and you know we looked at alternatives we tried to reach out to some people that own land or at least i have abutting the depot area uh you know to see what we could do and maybe exchange some land and some folks if the land is at a premium here so we have to be creative and now volunteering to um put this committee or group together and this meeting of the stakeholders and then report back to us i'm happy to do that that sound like a good action uh plan for the board okay thank you very much if you have something i want us to see why don't you email it to me and then we're going into the it already it already has an email it's on the agenda it's a memo from the district district commission basically talking about collaboration and and backing that the letter is in the packet the letter is in the packet already the items that i mentioned that gretchen gave us that she gave us the victim of a comment is already there's no need for a comment or so we're all not welcome yeah sorry i'm sorry we just okay all right thank you i hope everybody's happy with that they make your comment i don't know if i go ahead i had a conversation with governor of the town center he was very enthusiastic just the way they say that that should be a sort of a lot of thing i think michael will come up with a brilliant idea so now i want to go back now to number 13 which is the discussion of the updated cannabis control commission law post number 5350 i'm at modernizing the commonwealth's cannabis laws and potential vote to authorize the town manager to sign the opt-out waiver relative to the town by law section 803.5.8 in the packet you will find somebody will have to tell me the pages on that town by law i think it looks like it's on page 40. town of whalen bylaw restricting marijuana retail so um this one i'm also going to turn over to mr mccall because um he's the one that's brought up to our attention when i'm speaking to him madam chair i think you're making most of them that's everything i would uh move with the board authorized town manager mike mccall to sign the opt-out waiver on by law section 803.5.8 do i have a second second what's left some discussion here serving
so we've we've briefly approached this topic on a couple of occasions but i was hoping that we would be able to discuss it as a full board um now that we've been joined by mr reynolds and um the topic that i wanted to put on the table for discussion is the balancing act that we as a select board are making this determination for the entire town where the town itself be a town needed to not have any recreational marijuana establishments the town itself did not take any vote related to specific individual delivery to homes and so i'm thinking like an equivalent of a town like weston that doesn't have any alcohol serving establishments but i do believe individual homeowners could have alcohol delivered to their home for example um and so analogizing that here is that a vote that we just automatically want to take now the hesitancy that i have is this is obviously relatively new um the statute and the cannabis industry itself is relatively new in the commonwealth and so i don't really know what kind of enforcement mechanisms are in place right now in terms of delivery of cannabis products or or how that's enforced um is it required that an individual who's 21 or older sign for a cannabis product before it can be delivered and that's a question i don't have an answer to um but i'd like to hear from the police department but you know at this point i i wouldn't vote yes i would abstain at best but uh you know i just feel like we don't have all the information but i understand i might be in the minority on this board um comments from other members of the board bill tom so sure i'll comment um so um in my view the bylaw that was passed the town meeting covers this it specifically talks about uh prohibiting um marijuana transporters all right and that's what this proposal is is to permit transporting marijuana within the town for delivery so i think the bylaw right now prohibits um what's um what's being proposed and i think time meeting has spoken you know at some point in the future if this board or or to a petitioner wanted to present a warrant article to have time being revisit um either having dispensaries in the town or transportation that that that's possible right um in a more global respect um they really i agree with what doug said that the industry really is in its early stages the cannabis control commission has been an embarrassment for the state um um fortunately they have one of our own heading it up which um i think will set it on on a much better course but you know there's issues with labeling standards there's issues with the need for stronger consumer health education and there's also a need for type of enforcement against market fraud so i just think that um um uh the timing is not right and it's certainly inconsistent based on time meeting vote to um um permit transporting of of uh and delivery of cannabis within the town and i support the motion on the table i just have to take one issue with one thing that you said tom just to push back when i've done a little research it seems that the actual definition of a marijuana transporter is business to business not business to consumer so the part that i take issue with is i don't think the town has had a say to vote on this particular issue that is home delivery of cannabis products because i don't think that's covered in violence um if you take the second part of that sentence though if i if and if i agree with you which is marijuana transporters or any other type of licensed marijuana related businesses shall be prohibited and i would argue that those delivery companies you know could include licensed marijuana related businesses that maybe it could be it could be amazon right but it could be um licensed businesses which would be covered under the current bylaw that's a good point let's see what mr wendels did you want to echo mr faye's point about the violent okay any further discussion here all right shall we go to the vote then please
mr whitney yes mr wendels yes mr faye yes no mr levine and miss martin i'm going to also say yes so it's going to vote it's going to be four one zero correct correct okay um the next item on our agenda is number 14 organization of the board but there are folks here who i think are interested in the item in the town manager's report so with the board's intelligence i'm going to move to the town meters report so that they can go home earlier than we are so mr mr it's going to give me a look now
i'm sure we'll follow shortly yeah we're going to follow this really we'll work on it so and for the town manager's report mr pico well it's a recap yeah i think we may have to take some things out of order because i think i have more to say in a couple things um sorry no no no nothing
so why don't we just talk a little bit about item c first i think that would probably make the most sense um and that's really the the millennium fund and so i had reached out shortly after the last meeting and written some emails to senator eldridge's staff as you know i was away last week i hadn't heard anything back i reached out to uh david emmer who had been counseled for senator eldridge he has since left senator eldridge's office and gone to the department of revenue but he was fairly current on what was going on with the status of the millennium fund and uh he had indicated in a conversation about two weeks ago with our council michael diortenzio of kp law that mr diortenzio had written a letter to the senate council um indicating that the board of library trustees can handle the donations that's one of the specific issues of the handling and the donations that come into the millennium upon you um mr emmer thought that it was an excellent letter and i understand ms jeunesse had helped mr diortenzio and provided quite a bit of information relative to that letter um and that there as far as mr emmer had known as of earlier today that they were still waiting on a response from senate council later this afternoon i did uh wind up speaking with ms jeunesse who updated me that senate council has since made contact with senator eldridge's staff and that they are amending the bill and inserting the changes that were in the red line version from the select board and that they are checking back with senator eldridge to see if anything else needs to be done prior to going further through the legislative process so that's where we are to date on this i know this is my update but i i do know ms jeunesse is here as well as mr lindquist so i don't know madam chair if we wanted to hear from either of those individuals so in my update i had said i spoke with ms jeunesse and she happens to be present so i just didn't know if you need any additional information from her while she's here no i think the question generally that i received is will this slow it down to the point that it won't make it through the legislative process in this session or will this be one of the many normal petitions that will likely move through the process before they adjourn so that is i think uh the question that both ms jeunesse and i were left with this afternoon we i i called miss uh senator eldridge directly uh he couldn't take the call at that time i'm hoping to get an answer in the next day or so so i reached out to several staff members so i think together ms jeunesse and i can work on that my sense is that it would not have moved forward had this conversation not incurred
well if senate i'm speculating but uh senate council is recommending these changes you know it has been approved by the house you know with the earlier version now there are amendments that would address majority of the senate councils sooner so hopefully it could go to the senate and bring back to the house you know for application okay i need to see if i got that right that's that's what i'm hoping the record shows you nodding all right not nodding off just all right so we want to finish i know we all said we got ready because i know bill was gracious enough to ask for us to have that report you know status report and then the town manager's report so thank you for doing that i have other bullet points that you asked me to check oh yes i just want to mention um you would ask me to check on saint ann's the status of saint ann's on constituent road at the uh at the catholic church yeah and i had reached out to phil crean who's from the planning office of the for urban affairs for the archdiocese of boston we wound up planning phone tag last week but we exchanged some emails and he informed me that they are working towards construction starting this october likely toward the end of the month the timeline is driven by mass housing's quarterly board meeting scheduled he said once they receive approval at the september board meeting they anticipate being able to close on the construction loan since 30 to 60 days construction is expected to take approximately 15 months placing the projected completion date in january of 2028 he also indicated he needs uh some help i've already reached out to the weyland um municipal affordable housing trust they need a letter from them relative to the monies that they authorized last year and he needs some data from our planning office relative to and assistance with local preference documents so um i know robert hummel is involved and mary and just responded to my request for the letter so we'll do what we can on our side to ensure that this is moving along
all right and just under the recap is some of you know i was at the massachusetts municipal managers association meeting last week uh one of the primary topics they spent almost a whole day addressing uh manager burnout not just managers but assistant managers and managers itself a big topic we also covered uh ai in the workplace and looking at tools that can be used and whether people have to we had individual table discussions about putting together policies on working with our it director on that um also interestingly enough i mentioned to a couple board members i was asked a couple board members uh whether or not i was becoming the next town manager in my hometown um and i quickly pulled that rumor i and did not put in for that i was not anticipating that um so that uh the rumors of my departure are greatly exaggerated so um i have a great working relationship with you folks here and i i have quite a long time to go here hopefully so um i i was just taken aback a little bit but that several people had asked me so i heard i was thinking of leaving right like i'm sorry i want to make sure folks here knew that wasn't the case um also as some of you may know we've had some preliminary meetings and discussions already about the fy20 budget we started some uh planning discussions for a possible override i know madam chair as well as mr dean have been involved in those in the next week or so i will be participating in some of the board meetings that i participate on including the west suburban health group um we should be having another meeting with our regional emergency communication as i mentioned to some of you um the status of the grant monies and how we utilize them has become a bit of a concern which is pushing back our projected go live date uh out until july 1 of 2027. so uh i i did have some offline discussions with my counterpart natick so i'm looking forward to the next meeting with those folks we're also having a meeting this week with our regional housing service office that helps us maintain our inventory for subsidized housing as well as other housing initiatives usually mr hummel and i attend together and then i just want to bring up um and i'm thinking of as we move forward maybe publishing a little brief to everybody on the tuesday following my town manager hours i was trying to wrap up a few things but an awful lot of things come up i usually get about a dozen or so folks plus or minus attending um and as i've indicated before usually one person brings up a topic but everybody's allowed to participate and as individuals brought up the topic since last time around there was a lot of group discussion and then you know there was the two biggest ones where some people took issue with um the concerns at town meeting about video surveillance and a couple people wanted to see the town put together a town position on video surveillance what our policy would be relative to retention of any video and distribution and what if any impact that could have on our relationship with other law enforcement agencies some of this is mine and whether or not that would jeopardize a grant or other state or federal funding um the library signage that that recently went up around the parking lot came up several folks i've passed on several complaints that came in about curbing um relative to what happened with the plowing and there's some damage uh some residents complained about some landscapers i've passed those on to our zoning officer and then i worked with mr phaia but the veterans groups they were happy about a couple things but they did point out that we there's a listserv that sends out a notice when we have to move town flags to half staff in case there's a death of a service member or other elected official and there's a concern that not everybody's getting those emails because not all flags are getting so i will work on all that with mr turner and the local veterans organization but that was pretty much everything that happened since we met last time thank you so now we're going to move back now we're back on board number 14 which is the organization of the board now normally we do this the meeting after town meeting but there was only three of us and we decided to let everybody vote so we started the way to this meeting and normally we do it at the beginning of the meeting because that's what happens um yeah the chair takes over for the next year um however i would have an awful lot of guests if you will talk with i like to let the guests go through what happened so um we're going to do three things we're going to discuss them both to elect a chair and a vice chair we're going to look at the liaison journals and assignments those are in the packet from last year and the designated selectable liaison to the fire staffing study working group that we discussed at the next meeting so let me open it up to the floor is there anyone who's interested in serving this either the vice chair or the chair of the board um next year i'd like to ask you madam chair whether you'd consider um continuing on as chair um you you do a very good job and you're very um um you seem to still like it and you uh don't seem burnt out about doing it and uh so that's my question to you yes thank you um it's really an interesting and incredible learning experience particularly when you have uh served if you were with town for so many years but it really was a big learning crew i've enjoyed it i find it very um exciting and challenging so i certainly would be um if it was it was amenable to the board i wouldn't be willing to serve another year
but if also what would you like would you like to be on that
you know i think mr fay would do an excellent job with vice chair if uh the current incumbent uh would refer not to serve in that capacity i would second that uh all right so i said i would move to the board point bill martin uh as chair and as a vice chair as a select board uh we're concerned extending uh from today until uh usually fall in the 20 27 annual time that second all right i'm gonna let chris that right all right is there any discussion i want to say um thank you for the to the board for your help to share i want to say thank you for your your faith in me um i am definitely going to do two things better next year i'm going to put these darn page numbers down on my notes so i won't keep saying what's the age number the backing and i'm going to learn how to do the hearings i've only done about 15. i still don't feel like i do something well all right oh i echo those remarks and i appreciate the board's uh uh support if they choose to vote in favor of the motion and uh look forward to working with you all and in particular with chair to make it an efficient and productive year yeah and all those in favor uh chris all right yes yes tom yes entirely yes so that we're off and running and you have to say thank you it was a fun game it really was and we really enjoyed working with you um all right so now we're going to uh oh i want to do it on page 49 that's the list of the current liaisons um i spoke to uh chris and uh said to him that um this was a list that ann had right i thought i would start here and then in that list other than perhaps human rights diversity i thought maybe i think you had expressed interest so mentioned to chris that you sort of thought you would like that so that's going to move to your list um on the special projects there is no spare customer more because the work's finished uh but we we do need a fire staffing working group liaison and we kind of had mentioned last week and passing that might be christmas amenable that might be something that would be in his real house enthusiastically enthusiastically um i think um um what about your work did you want to make it your next year skip all the night did you want to make any changes it's got a lot here um if anybody has an interest i didn't have the opportunity to work in any meaningful fashion with the board appellate so any of the members of this board would have an interest in connecting with them and probably do a better job than i doing right now frank for help and otherwise you're all set because we're giving you like one in there um bill i'll let you are you okay with your numbers i want to make some changes um general comment i think we should fix it up a little bit yeah um what did i get sued uh you know that the finance stuff is near and dear to your heart but um in that general area yeah well i do want to keep those actually that's not moving on those but um capital improvement planning and finance creating this yeah i was kind of interested in the subsidy as well yeah i think it might be healthy to split finance and capital improvement um just to kind of get another set of ears and and and uh thoughts on those two topics because i think that the capital improvement committee is is going to be an increasingly important committee as they continue to do their work and um um i think it's wise to have a separation there between uh board members within those two uh those two committees i'll think about that what else would you do you have your eye on bill again i thought just generally um the notion of things around just um so that each board member they just kind of yeah frankly has exposure to they have exposure exposure to others so uh so i don't have a specific suggestion um apart from what you just said um and tom obviously with 227 law field list because that's as uh expired right that's that's um that's done with so i'm i think doug to your point if you want to give up border health i'm happy to take that on um um chris do you have any desire for any of the boards that we currently liaised with um if they're not stepping on anybody's toes i would take a look at recreation commission i have some things i'd like to do there and there were some housing reports that the chair and i discussed but you have a couple more hands to things you're interested in before i put this draft together but on the special project side because i have more notes because you know a lot of these have um finished and there's others coming um like for example financial policies that's kind of an ongoing thing but the main thing that i had the main formalization of the financial policies we got done actually that was product so i don't know about that um you know tom is also uh is actually chair of the 212th gentryment road committee so what's your part of the list well actually i've got a parentheses around it what was your name because actually that has um that has also finished his work we disbanded it but now we're waiting for the they are coming up to the board and then maybe we'll make a new plan so i put that one in parentheses for that reason because i wasn't sure exactly what to do with that probably take it off for now right i also added on the nose onto special projects you'll have to tell me the name of the school between the school building yeah that's that's i've been kind of quiet i think it's kind of uh the school committee is it was uh basically a k-12 long-range uh facilities planning committee uh and i think it's the the school thing is basically okay thanks it's the land area uh and and they are uh i think the uh the ball is kind of in the school committee and the superintendents well do you want me to leave it there so we're narrowing the choices true i'll just do it and then i have taken an organization written jcc organization so it makes more sense because that's a little more specific but yeah and that's really how managers
so you want to take that one off yeah i think so all right um and then for tom of course i'm taking off the 250th america celebration and real trail science because both of those are keep the real trail science project doesn't give the real trail science with bill are there others you want to uh give up on your list i um are you comfortable with the library trustees others are interested i'm i'm just trying to spread things around fairly and i'd be if that's something you didn't feel strongly about happy to take it but if you like it then you can keep it so you know one thing that i really have not done much with the trust fund commission or liaison there or frankly audit committees to say don't speak about it
they might have a team problem i don't think they have a problem when you talk about right right that's true that's it um a concern i think we have a concern on this sidebar of positions with the zone for zba as well i think that some you know vacancies there so all right well why don't i type this up a little bit and see where we're at um and go from there especially on the special projects i just like to list those because it also gives like doug i'm giving you civil discourse
yeah and uh the way cam the way cam the cable advisor but i think i just like way cam in general for you because you have a lot of work with that tom is now our special counsel you know for the legal so that's it unless there's a contract yeah we have a question mark there so that kind of things over here so i wanted to fiddle around with this and then we'll put it back up by next time um
would you like to be in light of some of the discussions we had this past year with the capital improvement planning committee and um concerns that mr fay has raised i think we need to create a town hall vision committee that's oh yeah really spirited by this board yeah no but um where we're already starting to look at fyi i think we need to get behind that because the capital planning committee is asking me to come in this week they want to get mr kevin in there as well too to start talking about future projects and as you know they postponed some of the we collectively postponed some improvements to this building because they want to know what we're going to do long term and i think it's important to have that lay out the options and show folks especially as we're competing for precious dollars in the next couple years for operations um you know water oh you know it just makes sense so i think as we'll be in this fair company speak to us i hope that they would also be able to pull information out of the inside on-site report and give us one of those grants and explanations of the projects and the costs other projects that need to be done in this building and they just i guess they weren't ready to do that so i think we were sort of waiting for that from which we would then establish a vision and committee so i don't know if we should circle back and see if you can do that for us real quick and what we want to do but that might be that might be one of the things to do so maybe we'll put some on that and see yeah
did you know that okay and then the last thing we want to do on this list is we need to designate a uh first i don't know if we need a vote or not a liaison to fire staffing study so we already only agree it's going to be just to take the vote and we are set so do you want to make a motion i move that the board nominate our newest member christopher h reynolds this is our liaison to the fire staffing study where we move second this is employment follow point and all right all right hello is in favor tom yes bill yes dog yes yes and kelly has five so it's getting late i've gone to them okay where am i consent right
for the discussion otherwise mr reynolds yes yes you're still being mr whitney yes mr fag yes msmart yes five zero okay now we're in the minutes uh there are no minutes their table correspondence anybody have any comments and correspondence um mr fay do you have a comment correspondence no i'm good thank you um perhaps we wanted to talk about the remote participation correspondence you want you want well i mean we're not um we're not looking at legislation anytime soon that'll permit whalen to have no participation i'll leave it at that and we're gonna we're gonna we keep we keep plugging and uh but we're trying but um not not hopeful for this year's sessions there were two really nice emails from mr bernstein about you know laying out the particular bills that are before and the status of those and i think he sent those primarily to talk tom and myself and uh had to put in the correspondence packet so nobody could see all the work he's doing on that on our behalf i mean yeoman's work to try to get this move forward slow slow progress so all right reports and concerns you just touched on one is there some way we couldn't let mr bernstein i give mr bernstein some encouragement that does seem like a glacial slaughter i really appreciate i find when i disagree with him i still like him and when i agree with him i still like he's just a great guy i'm wondering if we could encourage his efforts well that's why i wanted to point this out and that's why i included those in the correspondence because he has done an incredible amount of feedback and sometimes i'm sure it feels like this is a one-man band on us but he really does uh done a lot um all right reports and concerns tom not four items the first um the way the whitney and i continue to work on putting together an rfp concerning the 212 constituent road property and we're making good progress number two i reviewed the rap report from 2017 to get a handle on what property might be appropriate for sale um at a possible future time meeting maybe even in 2027 it might be something that we look at um more closely um some properties really aren't appropriate for sale but some might be number three i am concerned about the makeup of the finance committee and its future um and i think we need to have i think we're planning to have a meeting with the finance committee the current members soon which is great um but i also think we need to give some thought to um its role relative to the town managers act i'm not talking about abolishing it what i'm talking about is frank discussion about how um our expectations of this deliverables relative to the time managers act might be um adjusted um number four um um um i had a meeting um like a friday or two ago with tom holder uh becky stanisi and a couple of other folks regarding robert hummel regarding the uh curb cut monies so uh rfp is being put together for um hiring a professional relative to curb cut issue on route 20. so that's that's progressing that's all i have thank you um mr rickman well just to echo uh tom's point uh on on the 212 we're working with uh consulting to uh to uh the town manager and assistant town managers have a lot of experience in procurement specifically with respect to disposition of real property and uh it is uh it's involved uh including uh preparation of uh draft documents that should be included in the rfp uh a sailor at least was contemplated and so uh and those documents are just so uh so it's staking longer than i think we have hoped that uh in europe what do you also because we can't ask questions did you want to give a sense of when that might be available ready for reviews for the draft list here it would be hard to say uh i think it you know uh i think it's in pretty good shape uh but for uh some of the exhibits particularly the brown police um so uh they're inevitably released back and forth on that
one item for mr levine and that is i would like to thank richard turner especially if he's still watching for pivoting very quickly to the indoor memorial day ceremony of remembrance in the middle school i thought it went off without a hitch there were a number of people that had to be organized very quickly um but uh it proceeded well and i actually in some sense at times prefer to be indoors because folks tend to pay rapt attention um to the various speakers but a big thanks to richard turner and the public ceremonies committee for organizing that event year after year yeah okay mr lucas i would also thank extend thanks on top of that to our facilities and mr turner did mention that and that day we had uh gennaro done a job he was out there helping to do that as he did last year and you know uh veterans day when we had to move indoors so um mr turner do pass along his thanks so i just recognize the staff that approve everything quickly this is my turn so we can finish up and i want to say my i want to speak about i said the parade thank you to don for representing the board at the at this ceremony which i concur we'll see very nice nicely done um so i did think um i said wait a minute last year i went on and i said you know we need a select board banner and i don't know what happened to that and then tonight we have in the consent someone who has donated two hundred dollars uh to the towns for bet and use that they seem most appropriate and i think it would be most appropriate for the select board to have a banner and i you know just a little fold the banner i'm hoping that two hundred dollars will cover it and i'm going to recommend that that's all that spends it i'm sure it's more but i really think we need one before the next uh parade please so um yeah so i do want to mention that i think some of you already knew that we were scheduled tonight to speak with um we need to follow-up meeting with the folks from the town center like you know that they had um and we called out and we with abby were to confirm the time we were having they asked to reschedule they are actually meeting with the planning board and working through a number of issues and things that they would like to do we wanted to i guess finish that off before they met with us so it's tentatively i've been out for 629 but i'm not so sure it may end up going into july and then finally everybody saw the schedule for the for the meetings um there's a big break there of four weeks and i have a feeling things will happen they come up for example we may do stuff so we may end up having our camera and i put our heads together on this and and we thought maybe in those weeks in between if we have to do something maybe do like an hour meeting on a thursday like at 10 a.m or something those who can come can come and we'll do some of these other little items like for example if it doesn't presentation for us all the meetings um from july 20th and two august ones will be fully remote as we did last year so and with that i will take the meeting to adjourn pushing to adjourn at 9 30 p.m thank you welcome okay from the discussion all right mr wells you want to stay sorry you want to stay yes okay yes yes oh we just yeah and myself yes all right that's your name five zero thank you everyone
Okay. Okay. Okay. And that's public conference. Thank you. Hi. Hi, guys. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you, Kelsey, for your help in the town meeting. And I hope you guys have all recovered. I would like tonight to make a brief comment about that at this time. As it definitely was not a great experience for me in terms of participating in the oldest form of U.S. democracy for my first time. And while I obeyed my time limits and couldn't complete my prepared presentations despite having practiced, I noted that a select board member did keep going. I was unaware that someone from the board was going to have con arguments to present until right before that. And he prepared them, not aware that I would be splitting the vote on the second one so that the request for a safety zone in order to reduce a speed limit would be voted on separately. So I felt much of what he had to say was no longer relevant. It was incomplete and inaccurate so-called information that I think confused people who are already tired. But mostly I feel that Doug Levine saying to voters that I was just bringing these articles out of some type of vengeance about the bridge project in public was not only completely false but unprofessional and a public assault on my character unfitting for an elected official and member of the select board. Yep, I'm done. No, we still have a little time left. But I'd like to remind you that at the select board we conduct ourselves in a respectful manner and do not say Yeah, well, he didn't. And since he came representing the select board, I feel that a select board meeting is where this needs to be shared, since he could share what he wanted, which was false about me, and I'm only sharing facts that everybody else heard. Yeah, time is up number one and number two. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let me start one more. Okay. I don't know the show. Is this the... Sorry, go ahead. Yes, no, I'm sorry. I recognize you. My name is Pavel. Last name is Azrogin. Is this the time right now to talk about the comments from the public about the Chateau liquor license, or is that later as well? Yes. And this is the time to do it because we have already closed the hearing. Therefore, there will be no more new information taken anywhere. When we revisit that later tonight, we will be continuing our deliberation as we've written on the agenda. So yes, go ahead. Okay. So last time we heard from many neighbors voice their concerns with having outdoor dining and drinking at Chateau. These complaints range from the impact to the wildlife and to the pond and to inadequate parking that constantly causes people going to Chateau to park illegally and potentially block emergency access and or just blocking neighbors' driveways. We neighbors really hear everything that's being said at the patio, right? They can be very loud, very, very loud for good reasons, you know, happy reasons, and sometimes for fighting reasons. This is a residential neighborhood. There is a normal houses that are not on the main street, not in the town center or anything like this. These houses are probably similar to the houses that you select board members live in, and you probably enjoy relaxing after work and peace and quiet. We know that Chateau existed for quite a few years, but the outdoor seating wasn't there. It wasn't there until COVID. It was the extreme circumstances of the COVID that allowed for outdoor seating in a bar in a residential neighborhood. Due to social distancing rules, they couldn't sit enough people inside. So the moment the social distancing rules were lifted by the state, this license for outdoor seating should have been either canceled or revoked or whatever the appropriate term for that is. Imagine that your neighbor, like literally, you know, all you people in the room and Tom on the video, imagine that your neighbor comes to you and says, hey, I'm going to open the bar in my house. And that's what the chat is, right? It's somebody's house. If you've ever seen it, it's literally somebody's house. And your neighbor says, I'll also have outdoor seating there so people can eat and drink and laugh and scream well into the night. Would you approve such a license in a residential neighborhood? I don't think so, right? So that's the end of my statement. Thank you for listening. Thank you. No new hands are raised. Okay. Okay. Can I move to number four? Please do. Please do. Please do. Mr. Kevin. Okay. So what we're going to do is discuss the folks inside the general public. The visitation of finance begins June 2026. And it's on page. Oh, my. That's what these numbers do. So. Thank you. I'm going to approve on that. Okay. Page seven of the packet for those who are phone on the line. Thank you. So good evening and hello, Mr. Reynolds. Welcome. So I did put together a memo dated April 13th to Mr. McCrawl, which I believe is in the packet. So I want to do is sort of go back to what we did at the beginning of the year and just walk you through where we stand on the town's debt financing plan. And it will just take a moment to sort of bring you guys back to what is actually going on. So back in November, the plan was to retire all the water and the wastewater bans, which we did. And we issued long term bonds and the amount of $8.8 million. So that's been done. The second thing in the memo that I put out back in September to Mr. McCaw, which I think you guys got to in like October, November, was that we were going to issue bands for four general fund projects to the tune of 1.3 million. So we did do that. And also in November, I came to the select board asking to do what they call an advanced funding through DOR. So the plan back then was to transfer 6.3 million from the general fund to various capital accounts. We ended up transferring 5.4 because the snake dam transfer was no longer needed. So again, the letter said 6.3. We ended up transferring 5.4. So this brings us to June. So in this current month, what we're going to do is reverse that $5.4 million entry and put the money from the capital accounts back into the general fund, which was the plan all on or required by DOR to do that. So that will happen. So most recently, last week, we did issue bands. The amount was $3,820,099. That was for 11 projects that we put bands out on. I'm sorry. There's total. There will be a total of 11 projects that will have bands by the end of the year. So the most recent band of $3.8 million is a five year loan. It has a 4% interest rate. It has a 4% interest rate. The winning bid up was for the fidelity capital markets. So that is pending. You folks have the loans to sign. So at June 30th, we will have a total of $5.1 million in outstanding bands. All of those bands, the ones we issued in November of 2025, and the bands that we're issuing now will all be retired in November 26 when we will issue long term bonds. This was all discussed in the original memo back in the fall. So nothing has changed from our original plan other than some of the numbers that moved on a little bit. So that's currently where we stand. Like I said in November 26, we'll be issuing $13 million in long term bonds, which relate to both general fund projects, water projects and wastewater projects. So that's the summary of where we started from in September 25 to where we got today with our bond and band financing plan. Thank you, Brian. Any questions from the board? Brian, is that looking at the chart that you drew up in your memo, which is helpful, is the band duration that you're referencing, the five months that expires in November, that's a typical band duration period? You would have any duration, one month, five months, a year. We pick five months because we're going to issue long term bonds in November. So both the bonds that we took out in November 25 and the bonds we took out in June 26 will all retire at the same time in November 26 when we do long term bond issue. And what is it says approved general fund advancing and reverse? What is reverse general fund? So what happened was we took money from we took $5.4 million from the general fund, their fund balance and moved it into the capital accounts. We did that in November. That money needs to come back to the general fund by June 30. So that's what we're doing. That's the purpose of that is that money came out. Now money's going back. We're reinforcing ourselves. So this is an inexpensive way to do, you know, interim financing instead of issuing short term bans. You can just do a different borrowing from the general fund. I'm confused. 5.7. Pardon me. I guess I'm trying to understand Brian the relationship between the 5.7, the 5.4 and the 3.8. So the 5.7 was the total amount of authorized projects. It was the authorized that the authorized but unissued debt. At which, at the, at the town meeting that was just completed. There was, you can see it's fiscal 20, all of these were fiscal 26. Okay. And so, so they were authorized but unissued. Okay. And they were, it was from the 2025 annual town meeting. Okay. So what happened though is that we, we used the 5.7 million is the total amount of the appropriations. Okay. And the expectation that they, that they probably won't spend that much in fiscal 20. Okay. But we put it at 5.7 as the total. So there's no downside to moving more money than we should. And so what happens is, so the money's going back 5.7. And so with the real amount of money, the 3.8 represents how much will be spent by these projects by June 30th of this fiscal year. So each one of the accounts needs to have a revenue source equal to the equal or greater than its expenses at June 30th, 2026. That's what that 3.8 billion dollars is. Is the difference explained by the fact that, uh, we've gotten this federal grant for the, for the dam? Uh. Or is it just that we only expect to pay 3.8 of the previously appropriated 5.7? Yeah. Can you give me a second? I got a little one down again. Take the fire truck. Fire truck was listed at 1.1 million. We're only expected to spend $50,000 by June 30th. The town building mechanical and electrical, which is 1.3 million. We're only expected to spend a little over a million. So it's essentially a timing thing. Right. Not a, not a diminution of the actual amount that you expect to spend. No. What we need to be careful is that at June 30th, each project has funds equal to or greater than what was actually spent to date. Yeah. Or if we don't do that, DOR will reduce our free cash. Yeah. So what was the five year, uh, sale, uh, bond sale? Uh, what did that finance? The five year? Well, you just referred to a Fidelity. So that, so Fidelity Markets was the winning bidder. So Fidelity Investments was a winning bidder. Second was Piper Sander and Harper Miner was third. So what happens is Hilltop Securities along with bond council advertise that Whelan wants to borrow 3.8 million. Okay. These various banks will bid, um, a certain interest rate. Right. And in doing this, what they do is they also provide a premium. So this particular band issue, we earned $15,000 in premium, not $15,000 extra money will be used to pay the band issuance cost. Okay. And, uh, but I thought you referred to a five year term of, of that ban. It's five months. Did I say year? You might have said five years. Five years. Five years. Okay. Five months. But you said five months all along and then at the end. Okay. I understand. Um, Mr. Ferrier, any questions? No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. So the one question that the board had when we were going through this process initially was, what is, and I don't know if you can tell us at the moment, but what is our actual total cost to have undertaken this activity? This, um, when we did this last November? The conversion. Oh, you mean looking at the interest rate back then versus now? I haven't done that calculation. Yeah, because you thought it was one number and then it seemed to come down a little. Is this a 4% rate you think that we're going to get? The five month is a 4% annualized rate. Okay. Great. All right. I think we're good. So we have, does anyone else have any other questions? No, we have to take a vote to sign these. And then there's a number of documents here we have to sign. And do we need everyone's signature on them all the time? You need at least the majority, but it would be great if four of you will sign. So Tom, the documents will be available in the town manager's office tomorrow if they want to sign it, otherwise we'll process them without you, I guess, right? Yeah, I'm out of state, but I would at some point like an update on the ability of us to do DocuSign. This may not be the documents that you can use DocuSign, but if we can, I'm happy to give my permission to do that. Okay. So you know what? I'm going to put that on my ever famous list of things we want to talk about and sort out. So do you want to pass these around to figure out what everyone has to sign? This one is the next one. Do we need to take action? First, because then we have to pass them around. So I need a motion. What would the appropriate motion be? Vote to find the general location. Vote to accept 3.8 for the exact amount. $3,820,099 of bond anticipation notes that will be due November 2026 in their five-month term. So move. Second. Okay. So any further discussion? We will have a roll call vote, Bill? Yes. Doug? Yes. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes. Carol? Yes. Thank you, Brian. Yes. That's been great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I move the sign for an entry to Executive Session. A, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A1, to discuss the reputation, calendar, physical condition, mental health, and professional confidence of an individual, or to discuss the discipline of the dismissal of what complaints or charges brought against a public officer, attorney, staff member, or individual. B, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategies with respect and bargaining with the following units. Weyland Place Offices Unit, the New England Police Benevolent Association, Local 176, International Association of Firefighters, AFL-CIO, Local 1978, Weyland Department of Public Lawyers, Association 2, which is Local 170, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, Local 690-DAC, Units 1 and 2. C, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategies with respect and litigation on the matter of pass-caded development at the C. C. Pursuant to Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 38A, Section 21A7, to review and approve the intent to hold the Executive Session Minutes of April 27, 2026, May 4, 2026, and May 5, 2026. Is there a second to move into Executive Session? Second. Thank you. The Chair declares that the public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating, negotiating, and bargaining position of the town. We'll have a roll call vote. Mr. Reynolds? Yes. Mr. Levin? Yes. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Farrick? Yes. And Ms. Martin? Yes. It's 5-0. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, Town Manager, Council Fowler, Assistant Town Manager. Are we being joined by Ms. Ryan? No. No. All right. I'm Jalen Braddock. I'm Banners, my analyst, with slash communications coordinator. The committee will rejoin the public meeting of the Executive Session, and then we'll return to open session in approximately 40 minutes. So now, we should definitely move. Recording stopped. Thank you for having me say that. Recording in progress. Returning to open session at 7 o'clock. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to turn our attention to the agenda item number seven, which is a reappointment. So this is discussed and go to reappoint. There's a number of volunteers have signed up. This is a little term. And just in the motion to reappoint, please. For all of them. Yeah. Yeah. You either can read them or you can just say, as listed on the agenda. If you don't. If you don't. If you don't. Full set. Full set. I move that we vote to reappoint the members listed in our June 1st agenda. Um. To the board's list in our agenda for terms ending. Anybody have a second? Question. Let's have a second. Okay. I'll, for the purpose of discussion, I'll second. Any discussion? I have a question. Do we post these openings, these, uh, expired tournaments? Uh-huh. And as there are volunteers. We have does. Madam chair, if I may answer the questions. Um, we have posted them. Wayland post was very generous in allowing us to post them in the newspaper at a reduced cost. And we do try to advertise as much on Facebook and Instagram or, you know, you know, you know, low cost or free cost, you know, low cost or free cost, um, and then on our website. And, you know, it goes in our newsletter every, every month that we put out. So we do try to do some. We do try to do some. Um, we have posted them. We have posted them. Wayland post was very generous in allowing us to post them in the newspaper at a reduced cost. And we do try to advertise as much on Facebook and Instagram or, you know, low cost or free cost, advertising venues. Um, and then on our website and, you know, it goes in our newsletter every, every month that we put out. So we do try to do some advertising to the best of our ability. Um, I guess my question is whether, um, others have, uh, expressed interest in employment to these boards and committees, aside from the incumbents. Um, there have been some of those, and we'll be interviewing those next, some of those folks next week at our next meeting. Um, generally speaking, we ask folks if they would like to be re-appointed. We send them a letter and they'll turn us into Brian and say, who's you going to be re-appointed? So generally we tend to re-appoint. However, next week or the next meeting, we will see what I probably have. We'll give you a positive, but it's a probably pretty lengthy list of openings and vacancies that existed that, um, even making these top three appointments. Anyone else say that? Um, really, I'm curious whether anyone has specifically, uh, responded to one of these, and these openings, in which case, where should we afford them the opportunity to be considered? So for example, we have, uh, three or four folks who are not currently on HRDEI for expressed interest without our vacancies, and we are going to be interviewing them next week. These are not all the vacancies that we have. Um, so to Bill's point, for example, if we look at HRDEI, we're reappointing three members, Ms. Blumenfeld, Ms. Borkowski, and Mr. Goodwin. Do you know, Kelsey, how many vacancies then remain if we have multiple people interested in interviewing from, from how many slots? There is one, um, voting position, and there is a student position, and there's a student who is applied, and there are several associate positions. And so we have more openings than applicants. It's my understanding that is the case. Mm-hmm. Let's consider hypothetical boundaries. There's one person seeking reappointment, and there are others who, ten other, or others who have expressed interest in that position. Yeah. Are we saying, by default, it goes to the incumbent? I'm going to rephrase my sentences. I am not aware that there have been any other emphasis of candidates for any other position that any or technical reappointments for. Except for HRDEI. Except for HRDEI. Except for HRDEI. But there are spots there. Yes. Madam Chair, if I may. There, it hasn't happened recently, but I think a year before I joined in 2022, there were some competitive seats for, I can't remember what board. I think maybe ConsCom or something along those lines. And when it's a competitive seat like that where there are people who have served and are about to be reappointed, but there are other people who want that seat, you interview them all together. Right. And that's the last time that I remember that happening. And that's the process the board took last time. We actually were, to your point, we actually were scheduled tonight on the agenda to do the interviews for HRDEI vacancies, but then one of the candidates was not available tonight. So I said, no, no, we can't do that. We took it and put it to next meeting because you want to interview all the candidates for those slots at the same time. And so for instance, Bill, on the CBA, very familiar with that board. Yes. We have two individuals seeking the appointment. Right. We still have another vacancy, but nobody else has submitted. Okay. I, I, I, you know, and this is no reflection on any of the people. No. They're very generously giving of their time. I appreciate what they're willing to continue to do. So I just want to sort of understand that the process that we have when there are people who are expressing an interest in being appointed to a board and committee and, you know, where do we default to the incumbent or do we say, you know, let's bring both in. I think, I think we're going to do that. Yeah. I personally agree with the personal language. Absolutely. Um, on the other hand, we, we will have, if we interviewed every single person, even if there was no other candidates, we would have to probably do a couple months for meetings because this is just personal. I understand. Well, I think the board, of course, is interested and has focused on and endorses being inclusive. And so one of the things that we've instituted in the last couple years that we started, became chair, is that the chair no longer looks at or is aware of the applicants until they actually come before us at the meeting to make sure that we are in fact being inclusive. So good. We have a second right. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Then I'm going to have a low call vote and then I'm going to start with Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Fagg. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Ms. Martin. So that's going to be 5-0. Yeah. So the next one we do separately because we are confirming the appointment. This is the public ceremonies committee. Reappointment of Mr. Turner for a term ending June 30, 20, 29. It is a confirmation because this is a committee that's under the moderator, not a select board just to make the appointment on this. We just confirmed this. So I just need a vote. I mean, I have a motion. I have a motion. He moved to your motion. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Tom? Yes. Bill? Yes. Doug? Yes. Yes. Okay. That takes care of it. So the next item, which is number nine. That is exactly the same. Yay! We'll fix that. Yes, exactly. I was looking at Bill and I'm saying, please remember that. It was right on time at 7.50. I'd like to invite Ms. Lewis from the planning board here. And I guess it's going to be a very quick discussion, but certainly welcome to join us. This item is entitled to follow up discussion and next steps in possible funding of the Rule 20. As you know, one of our objectives is to participate, you know, in furthering. And in the packet, we had asked, just my bypass, right on schedule, not working. In the past, maybe back in March or maybe before then, we discussed with the planning board, you know, how to move forward on this project. We worked together on this. And the planning board, the chair, the board was before us and indicated to us that they had, they had a plan and they wanted to look at the number of the zoning that we have to get more compatible with the recommendation that what they had provided us. But they did not have the capacity to, to get this work done. So we asked them to, Phil and I asked, the board asked us to pursue this. So we did. We went out and we asked them to come back with us with a proposal. And this is the proposal that is actually in the, in the packet on page. So I want to ask, does anyone on the board have any questions about this? Yeah, I just, I'm sorry. Just want us to be really quick. We'll be quick. We posted this meeting just because I thought there would be more than just me coming. Okay. And so there are three of us here now. So I just like to, at 718, call the planning board meeting to order and take attendance at . Yeah. Whatever. You can just say your name. Phil Sterling. Phil Sterling. And, or any others online? No. No. No. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So does anyone on the board have any questions about, first of all, you remember the discussion that we've had, right? And so I believe I spoke with Mr. McCall online because I believe it's a guesstimate that we need about 40 to 60 hours of legal time. And we made a wild guess that that should be somewhere around about 15 or so thousand. And so, um, I'm going to... What did you think, Hakeem? I thought you said . Let me finish this. Thank you. Listen. Wait a minute. Watch this. So when Mr. McCall and I spoke, he was guesstimating, you know, for dealing rates, there would probably be around 12, 15 thousand. And I said, well, why don't we present to the board and recommend the board that we authorize 20,000, um, so that, you know, they run short, we don't have to, they don't have to come back and hopefully they don't run short. Um, and my recommendation is that we will fund this through, I never said, was it a guarantee payments that we accepted? They guaranteed deposits. I say that one every time. Um, and we felt that, um, it was a good source because those guarantee deposits are for the benefit of the hotel. So I think maybe what we would, I might need a little more clarification. We recently had some guaranteed deposits that we had to clear up. And one of them was with them was, um, I worked with the planner. We've cleared up one of them. I believe those are in a fund, uh, held by the finance director. Uh, they can be used. Uh, I would have to pull back. Yeah. Uh, I would have to pay $60,000, but I can get them. Okay. So first of all, do you have any questions? Back to my original question. Does anyone on the board have any questions or comments? Um, but this follow up, Mr. Frank. I have a comment and a question. First, my question is, um, uh, does the planning board see value in reaching out to the property owners along Route 20? And if so, when do you think that would be most appropriate? Uh, so they can be part of the process here. My understanding that the property owners had already been reached out to by the economic development committee on multiple occasions. All right. All right. So, um, just so we have an understanding, is it your hope that the EDC will continue to keep them posted and bring them and work with you and bring them in, in the process of, of, of, um, visioning for this section of the roadway? We're not exactly visioning. Um, if you looked at the attachment, well, we're, we did the visioning. You are, you hired beta to do visioning. They did the visioning. We're at the point now where we have to create zoning to, um, effectuate the visiting, the visioning. And that's where we are. So we've had, uh, forums. We've had, uh, meet planning board meetings as well. Um, and we've talked through these things and, um, I'm not sure the owners have had the opportunity to participate and have been told when we were having the forums. Um, so I'm not sure what you have in mind. What I have in mind basically is, and I appreciate the distinction between visioning that's behind us and zonings in front of us. But if I'm a property owner along Route 20 and, and there's a board of committee considering changing zoning, that's going to really affect, um, the possible use of my property and the value. So, um, you know, I, I think this needs to be some effort either by your board or the EDC or our board to, um, get them involved in the process. Maybe they choose an individual who can follow the process along and that individual can report to all of them. So, just so there's good communication. The other point I had was, um, um, Mr. Clement, that possibly AI may be a tool to, uh, create zoning. Um, um, that I know other communities are doing that. It may be worth, uh, pursuing, but, uh, uh, obviously any final zoning proposals that we need to be, uh, fact checked closely, but that may save the town some money and maybe save some hours on, on your end or any professional's end. That's all I have. Thank you. Um, I don't, I'd be really uncomfortable using AI, uh, because of how complicated our zoning is and I don't know that it would pick up the nuances and allow us to do what we needed to do. And, and I would also agree with that in that if somebody were going to use AI, I would like it to be a trained professional, somebody who with a lot of experience drafting zoning bylaws, whereas we're amateurs, we're, we're hacks. Um, and so if a professional with true, you know, planning, drafting experience were to run something through AI as a starting point and then work from there, I'd have a lot more confidence than if we were trying to do it ourselves because we're old and, uh, and inexperienced. So in terms of AI, I think it's outside of our realm of expertise. So, and in terms of the property owners, they've had an opportunity to weigh in, but this is only going to affect them if, for example, they tore down their building, um, and it isn't going to affect them unless they take that drastic step. So, and, and they know that these changes are coming. So, and I think they're pretty pro-business changes too. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. I just respond to Robin by saying that I tell myself all the time that all this is a state of mind. I'm not sure I've convinced myself. Um, no, I, I support this. Uh, the one question I have is whether, uh, the appointment of town council is a function of the select order of the town manager, under the town manager act. This is a town council council. It's council two. Um, well, we can, um, what was it? Let's ask Mr. McCall with his opinion on that. This is, oh, isn't this outsourcing a vendor to do the current project? So, if we're hiring a lawyer, it would probably, I'm sorry. We're going to get there faster if you'll let us drive by than that. Mostly me, and there I am. Under section 4e, the select board shall appoint a town manager, town council, independent order, independent order, and any other boards, committees, commissions. So, you appoint the town council. I think you, um, could do that here. I mean, you delegate day to day, but I, I think that this is a bigger issue. Oftentimes it, it comes to me whether it be just a single question. Could I reach out to town council or just check on something? This is, I think you're authorizing a rather large expenditure. And I think it would be more appropriate for the board to just say, uh, we would like to authorize this separate board to utilize up to not exceeding $20,000. Or would the planning board appoint the outside council? What would be your comfort? Well, your, your authorization of town managers, you appoint council. You could authorize them to use your appointed council or, uh, most recently the, um, working with Mr. Faye, we selected an outside council special in conservation in Dover matters. Yeah. The, the board could look for somebody specializing in these types of things and then authorize the planning board to utilize the services and maybe we work in conjunction with the planning board to find that expert. Are you comfortable with that? I guess. I mean, I always, I was always a reviewer. The town council was appointed by the select board, but that was. Technically. I'm going on, uh, my recollection from 15 years ago. Okay. So I think I got in my mind, and then I may have to rethink this here. I was thinking is that we are authorizing the use and we're also providing the funding. But if we need to revisit once that we've selected someone, they can make a recommendation and we just make that on the consent calendar. For me to offer a motion to authorize the expenditure of up to $20,000 to assist the planning board and drafting, uh, zoning regulations with respect to, uh, reclining west of the town center. That's a motion. It's in. Not west. Yes. Annette, please. I personally would be appreciative of any corrections. Yes, but I want to just hear if that's your motion first. I want, I want to ensure it's the correct motion. What would you like? When you say west of the town center, are we talking about the intersection of Route 20 and 126 heading west? Because there's an area mostly between there and the town center development. Can you just say from town building? Or how about, how about the Route 20 corridors? Right. The Route 20 corridor. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you. Okay. Do we even know what we're watching? Was there your second name? Yeah. Okay, great. I'm really reluctant to say this, but is there any further discussion on the both? No, just a friendly, to be funded by the guarantee deposit gifts. Right. Which were referred by the planning department as accepted by the select board back on February 2nd of 2020. $20,000. It has to send to it. Yeah. But it comes out of those gift funds. I don't have an exact gift fund name. Right. I'm glad I'm not doing these minutes because I'm really not sure. I think, I think we're authorizing up to $25,000. I think we are. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Let's vote. Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Mr. Yes. And Ms. Martin. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. We'll get in touch. Okay. Our people will talk to your meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're very excited, actually, that this is going forward. So, terrific. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks. I adjourned my meeting. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. Did you all sit in that? Seriously? The planning board meeting is adjourned. At 730. Perfect. Thank you. So, let that be a notice to everyone else. I'm armed and wild with this gavel tonight. You were. Okay. Okay. What was the answer to Mr. Whitney's question about whether the select board or the town manager appoints council? We appointed, but then we authorized Michael to handle the day-to-day interface with council. You will see, I think starting maybe a couple of meetings, we're actually going to be looking at some proposals because we need to, you know, our contract and stuff. So, we need to see what we actually, under the town manager act, select and appoint town council. My motion ducked that question. Yes. You talked about spending $20,000. I'm sure between the town manager and the chair of the planning board will be more about it. Well done. All right. So, the next item, which is number 10, is going to be a discussion with the potential next steps, volunteer-led model, facilitated community dialogue regarding civil disability. We're going to invite in attendance to join us. I think we're going to need a few chairs. You may have questions. Yeah, you guys should all come up because it has to be picked up by this towel. We're going to need a couple of guests.
Jeff Wiener, Elizabeth Ward, Yamini, and one other individualist. I think, I don't know if you'll have to. We're going to get everybody. I'm Jess at a career trial, and I'm going to get everybody. I'm Jessica Greer-Trowell. Okay. So if you look at our packet, I'm just going to let... Yeah, I'm going to let you... Would you like my bill? No. I'm going to ask Mr. Levine who's been spearheading this from the beginning, and graciously kept me in the loop, and I've kind of been going along learning as we go, to introduce this and then the presentation. But the information for those who are following us is on age 22. Thank you. In the name of the packet. Thank you all for joining us. I want to just do some brief introductions for the select board. And before I do that, I just want to set the table briefly. And that is that I've been working with this group of very professional individuals who have been volunteering their time in an attempt to bring a new model into Wayland, which is this concept of structured dialogue. As we've seen, unfortunately, over the last few years, there have been a number of incidents throughout town that have caused a lot of hurt and pain for residents and our staff and volunteers. And while we may not be able to prevent some of these incidents from happening in the future, I think it behooves us to create spaces where we can bring our community members together for some of this structured dialogue in an effort to just continue to build what I believe is a very strong community to begin with. So I'm going to let each of these individuals introduce themselves, and then I'm going to give a little bit more background information. Go ahead, Yamini. Hello, everybody. I'm Yamini, and I've joined this group recently, and I'm always there wherever there is a community building happening. So you will find me in places where there are talks, conversations, committees, and boards. That's my contribution right now. On to Elizabeth. And former chair of the HRDEF. The first chair of the HRDEF. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Wurtz. I am a former town-wide PTO president, and been part of, I was helping to organize the Spirit Council meeting in collaboration with the chairs of the HRDEI committee. And my professional background is in fostering dialogues in colleges and workplaces. I'm Jessica Grouchala. I came at this work or expressed interest in this work because I also have a background in higher ed. Specifically, I've participated and created structured dialogue programs on a campus nearby to here. So I've seen the success of that from just a community building perspective. And I just kind of organically found this group and folks who are interested in bringing similar work here to town. My name is Jeff Witter. I'm a clinical psychologist and researcher at Boston Children's Hospital. I've lived in Wayland for almost six years. I have two little kids. And I work with Heidi at a center where we're focused on community building and social belonging. And as part focused on refugee and immigrant communities. And then part on preventing hate-motivated violence. We've done work adjacent to this in many communities outside in the United States. And we're excited to be asked to participate in our own backyards. And I'm Heidi Ellis. I'm also a clinical psychologist, also at Boston Children's Hospital with Jeff. I direct the Trauma and Community Resilience Center there. And as you said, this is an area that we've done a lot of work in together nationally. And we both love and live in Wayland. And we're very excited to think about, you know, is there any learning from other spaces that we can help bring to the effort here? I feel very fortunate that this group has come together and is willing to volunteer their time. We all have very busy lives. And so if folks refer to the very draft document on page 22 of our packet, there are essentially two underlying purposes that I think that this group could make a meaningful difference in carrying forward. And the first is a strategy format that both Michael and Carol are aware of because we had the opportunity to meet with folks from this group, which is called the Wellesley Civil Discourse Initiative, which was founded now six years ago in the town of Wellesley. On the following page after that is a brief summary of the Civil Discourse Initiative in Wellesley. They have had in my couple of conversations now with them seemingly really productive results in terms of trying to reach more members of the community. And one way they talked about doing that is they host between three or five of these structured dialogues each year on a different topic. Just a handful of those are listed in the packet, and they found by they reach different groups, different demographics within Wellesley by approaching these different topics. And they have a mix on their organizing board of Wellesley town staff, board members, and resident volunteers. And it just seems to be a recipe that can potentially be working. They've trained a number of other towns and shared their model. So this is something that we've now, our select board has had a couple of discussions about because it ties inherently with more than one recommendation from the equity assessment that we reviewed a couple of times with the HR DEI committee over the last number of months. So that is one item that I'd like to engage with this group and the board to discuss because that does, it does come with a cost. But to me, it's a very reasonable cost. So Wellesley uses this group called Essential Partners that Elizabeth is familiar with their work. And they train some 20 residents over the course of a lengthy day to be able to serve as moderators for structured dialogues. And so in a sense, then it kind of perpetuates itself to be able to continue without having an ongoing cost. Wellesley has conducted these trainings three times, so they've trained some 60 individuals in the town of Wellesley, which gives them quite a bench to run some of these dialogues. So I want to open it up to the board to discuss questions about that. And then our second idea, which we're continuing to form, is really the idea of the fact that there are a number of groups in town that are doing this work, namely the HR DEI committee, but also the library board of trustees, the youth advisory commission, Whale and Community Action Network. And I think that there is a challenge just like there is with our town government of these different groups talking to one another. And so we were just discussing just at a conceptual level of how this group could potentially just serve as a convener in terms of keeping the lines of communication open. So that folks in these different groups are working across purposes and that ideally we're all rolling in the same direction doing a piece of this work. But I want to have the board really engage with folks and I was hoping you would have a dialogue here. The one other thing that I want to add is I think that this is particularly timely right now because while we can never predict where an incident of hate may occur, I do know, based on discussions that we've had recently, is it more likely than not that we have an override vote coming in this town, which is a potentially divisive time in a town and we have not had one for nearly 20 years. And so to have a group be able to bring folks together to have a moderated structured mindful dialogue. I think this is very timely to be able to do this work right now. So I will say that I'm going to just remind everyone that Ms. Ellis and Mr. Wyn O'Hare before talking to us about the work that they have done. We missed that presentation. And I think the rest of us will remember the concept that they had, which Doug has prolonged here, is setting the table, you know, and taking the resources that Tom has and layering and seeing how we can achieve some of our goals and objectives by doing that. It's a wonderful presentation that they did for us. I'm going to open this up to the board for questions. We would like to start, obviously, about you and I. Ms. Whitney! Would you like to start? Oh, sure. Excuse me. I'm very, very much in favor of this. I have a suggestion, which I want to emphasize is not an objection. I'm very much in favor of this. I've worked with some of the groups that Mr. Levine described, and sometimes they seem amorphous. And I get questions all the time. Where is our money going? What are we paying for? What are we getting for every dime? So I would really like it. If periodically subject to scheduling for a wonderful chair, you came in and said, hey, we did this. We had this meeting. This many people came. This many people said they changed their mind. I don't want to tell you what it is, but there would be some periodic deliverable so that we could show that this isn't just pretty work. This is really important work. And we're keeping our eyes on managing the butter. I think the thing is I had the pleasure of, well, a couple of things now. I'll tell you a few things on this. What's really interesting is it's learning how others view. Really the goal here is learning how others view rather than making changes, learning to accept our differences in our thoughts rather than trying to sell or convince or convert or whatever other working order that we use. I think it's a very timely, and I think it's really terrific that Whalen is very lucky to have Wellesley as a, who has done the preliminary work. And then we can just be trailblazers and pioneers probably in some of this area ourselves. Bill? Bill. I'm very interested in, in this approach. And I was surprised to hear Doug site pending, possible overrides as a basis of discussion. No, not just because my inference was, you know, we've had these incredible incidents lately. lately and so one can imagine a dialogue about differences and commonalities, but it sounds like it could also, the topics of the discussion could be more proserge. And so I'm curious how it's structured, how the topics are to be discussed or chosen, how the participants are selected. Is there a desired size of the group? So I'm just curious about, generally, how this works and how you envision it. I can share what I know from Wellesley and my experiences with dialogue and I think a lot of this is a little flexible depending upon what each community, how they want to shape things. What I understand from how Wellesley has chosen topics is that they have somewhat or emerged organically throughout the year prior or things are coming up that they want to talk about. But I could imagine we, through some form of process that I don't think we've worked out yet, could come up with certain topics that Wayland would want to talk through. And in terms of how people are chosen, your other question was how people are chosen. I mean, I'm just generally curious how it works. How are the topics selected, how are the participants selected, how large or small of a group would you envision is a right size to, you know, make people comfortable, but, you know, just, if you could just walk me through an illustration of how you envision this might work, that would be helpful. Sure. So what I understand how Wellesley has done in the past and those of you who have listened to their conversations feel free to jump in and and add more to it, but what I understand that they've done in the past is a topic will emerge that they've decided to, to talk about. They have already trained, um, at least 20, if not more facilitate who are ready to facilitate. And that's a combination of people who serve on volunteer boards, people on, um, staff of various, and then community volunteers. Um, from that cohort of folks who had been trained, um, a smaller group is often to want to participate in this particular topic. Um, and then I, from what I understand, it's, it's fairly open to the public to participate, um, in the conversation. Um, my experience in dialogue shares that, um, It works very well when there is a group of about 15 folks in a circle. So what I would envision and, and correct me for those of you who have heard Wellesley or, or it could be shaped a little different, but my, my speculation would be that, say, for example, you have 20 facilitators trained, 20 are choosing to participate in this topic. You would have pairs. So you could potentially have 10 dialogue circles of 15 to 20, um, community members, um, all in a big space. So there's multiple different circles, discussing the same issue, discussing the same issue. And then it would feed somehow into a larger conversation. Jessica, anything you want to add there? Um, yeah, I, I would say the model that we used to facilitate was set up similarly, you know, sometimes there are topics where you are able to have participants self-select where there's an even balance of, of folks viewpoints on their particular issue. And then you are creating a little bit more symmetry, um, for, you know, psychological safety within the group, knowing that there are some peer viewpoints that match your own. Um, but it's usually a co-facilitation with sort of two moderators and then the, the participants. And what kinds of issues are discussed typically would you anticipate? So what I understand Wellesley has discussed is, are things like, um, there, they talked a little bit about, there was an education dialogue around parents perspectives on public education. Um, there was, uh, a conversation around, um, experience of race and racism in Wellesley. Um, there was a topic around town government. So it was an opportunity for, um, members of boards and committees, um, to talk about their experiences and share sort of their, their perspectives on working for the town. I think one of the things that I think is great about dialogue is it's, it's a skill set and a structure that is very flexible to be used in a whole host of different topics. Whether it be around aspects of, you know, we've talked a little bit about the experiences of, of hate in our community. And with Doug mentioned override, I think it's very flexible to be used in a whole variety of spaces and topics. If I could add to that, you use the term prosaic. And I think one of the things that's really wonderful about this model is that it's, it allows people to build, to build their muscle essentially of how to have constructive conversations. And it means you can have a whole range of topics, some of which might feel easier to talk about, um, than others. But what you're really doing is building a culture and a skill set around how you have those conversations. As Jeff and I have worked with communities on similar initiatives, what we've found is that there are, um, you might recall or might not be talking, there's certain risk or certain protective factors you want to build in a community. Many of those can be built by existing programs getting strengthened. So there's a real push for how do you strengthen what's already there and going strong in the community. The one area that was often not represented well in a community was what we would call cognitive flexibility. How do you encourage community members to sort of build that muscle to take different perspectives and, and be more flexible. And it's a really key risk factor in terms of incidences of hate. So what I think this does is allows a sort of, um, it's an opportunity to build that muscle across a wide range of community members who can reach into different sectors of the community who care about different issues and begin to sort of, um, build that skill set. But then if there's a very high tension incident that happens, we're one step further ahead in terms of having the right tone to the conversation. Thank you, Carol. I really want to applaud your efforts here, um, for a lot of, a lot of reasons. This is, um, um, a real positive step, um, in communication among residents in a world where human interaction is a lot less than it used to be. Also, as a select board member, we all see great value in people feeling like they belong to, uh, uh, to the town of Wayland, that they belong, uh, to the community that they're part of the town. This effort is one side benefit is it does give people, I think it will give people that sense of belonging. They may meet someone who they've never met who might, um, have an interest that they, that they have an interest in. And, um, so the friendships will develop and maybe some will get involved in town affairs, but that's secondary. What's primary is that people feel, um, um, a sense of belonging, increased sense of belonging, which, um, is so needed. And it's a, it's a building process, right? So hopefully year after year, more people feel, um, like they belong, uh, to the community. But this, what you're doing will really enhance that. So I, I appreciate that. Because this is such an exciting and big thing that I'm coming up with something classic. I think I would like to also see, um, um, his, uh, power spread. I would also like to participate in something to say. I have a couple of ideas here for you. Oh, I think from our initial meeting, Madam chair with the folks in Weston, it was evident that this was, um, you know, a valuable tool, I would say. And I don't mean to take that term lightly, but we need to foster better dialogue in all communities. All you have to do is turn on the news and you can see that people just cannot communicate. Um, I'm often just astounded when I work with some younger folks who, and I'm just, this has nothing to do with some of the communication, but people use their phone more and people just don't talk. And I do think that having the ability to have people that can go out in the community and foster, uh, human, human connections and dialogue and discussion about the issues that are facing community is extremely important. Um, more now than ever. I think what was also very interesting is Elizabeth and I met with folks from Wellesley at the beginning of the year and the folks that they had join our call, um, represented their assistant executive director, which is like the equivalent of our assistant town manager. They had their DPW director and they had, um, a representative from their group called world of Wellesley, which is, I think in some ways synonymous to our whaling community action network. Then when we met with them again, this time with Michael and Carol, it was the founder who was a former chair of their select board, another member of their select board, and then their assistant executive director again. So I feel like there's buy-in from different parts of the community that has really made this work and sustainable. I think, um, obviously we're going to talk about the next steps, right? Please. But before we do that, this might help with the language coming in. We're talking about all these issues. And I think, um, and Michael kind of touched on it as well. The dissonance, the disparity, if you will, on the objectives, the goals, the reasons for learning and learning among the residents. I got invited to a lovely barbecue, but it had to be indoors. And it absolutely was an exquisite home, thanks to Mr. Doug. Um, and I was listening to everyone talk about, you know, what they would like to see if it's going to do. And, of course, I'm always struck because we have two or two really strong resident groups. I think that would be a real good topic. I saw it just a couple of, understand the perspective of why, why someone lives here in Miami. What they're looking for, for being here. And it might even be just a suggestion of this. But it might be like one of the good and opening topics, if you will, because of how people understand. Why do I live in Miami? What is the difference? You've been here for the same years, right? You've been here for the same years, right? 30 o'clock. It's an imperative, no problem. Did you put children through school? Did you never have any children in the school system yet? I really think this might be just a quote of thought in your list of points to consider. So let's move on to the next steps, because that's really the key. I think we all seem to think this program has extreme value. So, um, we're a really good board. We move along. We don't move down. So what is our next step? We're looking for some funding, right? So we need some money to, uh, hire some folks to come in and start, um, training facilitators. Is that what we need to do? I think we need to have an initial conversation, maybe with Wellesley again, but certainly at least with folks at Essential Partners, um, to understand the logistics of how this works. Because I think, and this is concept has been presented to the HRDEI committee. It didn't land as well as we had hoped. Um, and I think that it's about ensuring that folks who want to be involved and included, that there is a clear, transparent process about how they can be involved. So I think it's important for us to talk to Essential Partners next to figure out, for example, how many facilitators would they train and how are those facilitators selected? How much time do you think they would need? For us to connect with them? They have to have them come in person. It's on my list. So I'm saying, do you think they'll need like a half hour, an hour? What do you think? If they were to come with the Select Board? Would Essential Partners come meet with the Select Board? Yeah, like a representative from them. I mean, we can talk to them offline first to get a sense. Yeah. I mean, would they need 15 minutes? I, yeah, I don't think they would. I don't think it would be more than that. Yeah. Okay. Let's see if we can fit them in. Well, our problem is we're, we, um, there's a big push here. We have a lot of items to discuss. Everybody asks to the list, but then they'd like to have some, a lot more summer nights off. So I don't know how many weeks we're going to have to pull off in the sun. But we'll see what I can talk to you and see what we can do. Does that sound good? Sure. Can you just interrupt me if I'm, um, okay. Um, it seems like everybody appears in favor of this. The amount of money involves pretty small. And earlier you said something dear to me. You said this could self-capitulate. You said self-sustain. Because it's going to train facilitators who can then dot, dot, dot. Is it out of order to suggest we just to fill the line today and then have the process then proceed with it? Could you make a motion? I'm asking first. Um, I don't think that would be inappropriate. The last, um, information that we had was speaking directly to the folks from Wellesley who quoted us that number. So we don't have that directly through essential partners. We haven't been in touch with them directly. Please know my enthusiasm. Doug, you also discussed possibly having the folks from Wellesley come in. But we could do that in the second step or something like that in the first step. So, all right. I withdraw. I didn't have to withdraw. This is Chris's first night. So anybody, uh, any of our esteemed guests would wish to add anything to the dialogue or the conversation before I... Is there anything you want to say about the second, like, briefly, the umbrella concept? Um, I would just say this particular program we've talked more about, but we're, we're thinking about, you know, what is all the different connective tissue that is needed in order to really support the great efforts that are already in place and make that work reach more people. Again, from our work in other communities, what we often see is that, um, there are, there's a core group of people who does great work, but then there are many people who are not a part of it. And the, the metaphor is like, where's the door? They don't even know where the door is to get in, to be a part of things. And so we've been playing around with ideas. Like you mentioned, can we have, uh, sort of more connectivity between groups who are in some way addressing this issue? I think there's a core group who groups who are. And then beyond that, there's many people who are doing great work in Wayland who might not think of themselves as directly addressing this issue, but are because they're building belonging, they're building civic engagement and, and offering volunteering opportunities for kids. All that is, is really critical. So maybe there's an outer layer there. And we've even sort of banded out some ideas of just, um, other ways to start hyperlocal in neighborhoods and build a sense of connectivity and, um, belonging. So these are maybe down the road, more ideas that we can bring. But, um, I just wanted to add, um, the HRDIC efforts in bringing conversation to our community community in the past one year, they've done conversation with change, Jamil and, uh, Eden Renee, Dr. Eden Renee. And, uh, I was, um, attending these meetings. And when I was in the audience, I realized that there are so many, not so many demographic participating. It is very important. There are a lot of unofficial subgroups that I'm connected to. People are active. They are, they, they want to pitch in, but they just don't know. Like Heidi said, they, they don't know where the door is. And so when I joined this group, I took some time to understand where we are going with this. And so my positive thought about this is anytime there's an intention to bring people together, we should always support and pitch in. And this is our opportunity to get all those efforts combined together in a very positive way. Nobody's competing with anyone, any organization here. Um, and again, HRDIC, WACAN, all of these organizations have done tremendous, beautiful job, but you will see that in the audience. There are some community missing. There are many communities missing sometimes. So it's very important work. And that's all it was mine. I would just add, I think, you know, there's, there's gaps just as Yamini was mentioning. And, and we have some collective expertise and there's other folks who are doing this work in town who also have expertise to contribute. Um, and even just from that umbrella, like assessment standpoint, you know, the ability to get all of the pieces and components laid out to see if there's any other gaps that we need to fill that, that we as a community we can focus on will be really helpful. A number of us have also been reaching out to these different groups to let them know that I wouldn't have this idea and this effort. So, and a number of us work directly or serve on with these other groups as well. Unless anybody has anything else you want to add? I'm going to thank everyone. And I'm going to put my head together with Mr. Levine to see when we can fit that of the essential partners on the agenda. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Very exciting. Thank you. Even the chairs, because I think we're going to need them for the next agenda. So thank you. Um, number two is going to be a, the continued deliberation for the liquor license. Um, this is a discussion of possible vote to approve the liquor license amendment. Outdoor-owned operation and premises, the Dudley Chateau LLC and DBA, Dudley Chateau, at 20 Press Road, here obviously in Weirman. We're going to invite attendance by Andy Phillips, um, and Kenneth Phillips, um, and this, just yourselves, right? Correct. Okay, great. All right. Um, so we, last week we had a, um, there's only three of us this week or five of us in a year. Um, but, um, we had a, we had a hearing as posted, you know, on your record, on your request to allow the outdoor dining that wasn't started because of the COVID to continue. And we all understand that that's what we're discussing here is just the fact, you know, outdoor dining, um, that, um, there was no change allowed or contemplated in the number of the capacity. The capacity still remains at, I think it's, somebody's with, um, this is better, they said 85, right? 85, thank you. And that there would be a max of 30 outside. So that's really that. Um, we did receive a number of public comments last week. We did receive, um, about this issue, um, both calling for con. And then we did receive, and I'm just doing this off the top of my head, some, um, emails that we got over the week that I responded to, so that we can get into the packet here. Um, in support, you know, on the project, we have some expensive issues and questions about parking and noise, and when I went back and looked at my notes, uh, I noticed also that, um, the fire department, the board of health, and, uh, a number of departments had been consulted. And I think the one that really spoke up was the fire department that said the barriers need to remain in place for the security, you know, of the patrons. Obviously it would be security for the restaurant as well, because we wouldn't want to take them down if something happened. So, okay. Now with that, um, there was also a question last week, uh, about, okay, excuse me, about, because three of us were there in the hearing that only three of us would be able to vote and continue all over this five minutes present. So I think I want to be clear on that. Have I got to have a lot of the details? Okay. So I'm going to open it back up to the board now, um, to continue the deliberation. So hopefully I got all the points here. I think in the intervening time, we've also received, um, some further comment from residents, including the butters, including as recently as late this afternoon at 4 30, uh, for which I thought was a reasonably worded statement, uh, from an individual who has lived next to the chateau, uh, for four and a half years or so and wants to see it succeed. Um, I think one of the things that we had talked about last time was having conversations with the neighbors and the butters that, you know, although not easy, it's always helpful, uh, at least for the board and for the butters to be heard, to open that straight, um, thread of dialogue. Are we able to ask some questions? You're going to ask questions? Yes. Um, wait a minute. This is up to Michael. I wouldn't want to do it again. So open it. What do we want to do? Yeah. So I'm looking at you because it was, it was one of the reasons that they wanted to continue to potentially give them a chance to reach out to the neighbors. Well, I think you've considered, you know, you're, you heard from the public. The whole point of the public hearing is to get input from the public, but you, now you're asking the advocates some specific questions. I would note that one of the things that we were also hanging on was, um, Mr. Whitney had, uh, a question and I can read, uh, from town council at whatever time you would like. Yeah. So, um, you didn't ask if we had to re-advertise the hearing? Well, there's two questions. One, did we have to re-advertise? And as long as we continue to date certain, we did not need to re-advertise. It wouldn't have been if we just continued indefinitely and then pick the new date at a separate time. So, um, I can't go ahead and Michael reached up, um, and we reached up to the ABCC. We had to re-advertise and they said eventually, yeah, just reach town council. So, Michael reached up to town council, said that the hearing was advertised open and then the board voted to continue the hearing to date certain IU June 1, which is what we did. There was no need to re-advertise. If the board voted to continue with no certain date, then it must be re-advertised. So I think we're comfortable. Does that sound? Are you comfortable with that? Yes. Oh, okay. Sure. I mean, and thank you for reminding me that I didn't do that. So, all right. So now, yes. And there was another question. Mr. Whitney had relatively whether or not, but I'll probably get it correctly, but you would ask the select board was looking at this, but could this also fall under the purview of the planning board? Because there is a town by-law that allows planning board may allow by site plan approval food and beverage to be served on or consuming the premises outside the building that contains a lawfully existing restaurant in any zoning district. And the previous opinion of town council, they cited the carriage house as a, as an example. So I asked for further review and the, there was two mechanisms by which this could occur either through the planning board by site plan approval or under this new Mass General Law 40A Section 3 which allows the select board to extend outside dining, alcohol service to outside dining of an existing restaurant. And town council writes at the bottom, in my opinion, because the Dudley Chateau is operating a lawful pre-existing non-conforming use. It may be considered a lawful existing restaurant under town zoning by-law. And assuming it is a current convivicular license and or liquor license from the select board, it would be considered a restaurant under this new select board policy which was adopted pursuant to this new Chapter 40A 3B. Um, accordingly, it falls within the purview of both of these procedures and may apply for site plan approval with the planning board or approval by the select board pursuant to this new policy. I recognize that alterations to a pre-existing non-conforming use are typically subject to a finding under Mass General Law 40A Section 6 and special permit from the zoning board and appeals pursuant to further town. However, the council says, I remind you that under the new law it states, notwithstanding the provisions of this Chapter, any special permit, variance, or other approval issued there under or any other general law or special law, to the contrary, the city or town may approve a request for expansion of outdoor table service, including the description of the licensed president, um, in this new law or under the extension of early granted approval. So town council concludes accordingly is my opinion that the above statutory language overrides the provisions of Mass General Law 48 Section 6, as well as the corresponding provisions of the town zoning bylaw requiring a finding and special permit to allow pre-existing non-conforming restaurants such as the Dudley Chateau to alter or expand its use to add to outdoor dining. So, essentially, the select board may make the decision. I think we had kind of discussed that last week. Thank you for reviewing that with us. To view that specific to Chairman. Right, no, and I appreciate that. I would point out, however, that the agenda refers to discussion and possible vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, outdoor-only alteration premises. So it doesn't, it doesn't say to permit the extension of outdoor dining. It says to approve a Wicker License Amendment. I'm not sure. You don't think it's okay. Tom, what do you think about the fact that it also captures in the, in the, that next colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises? We're talking about the agenda here? Yeah, item 11. Well, the agenda I'm looking at says discuss and possible vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises. In other words, the, the ask of our board is to approve or not approve the, the outdoor area. That, that's how I read the agenda item. So, is that your point, Bill? That, that it doesn't, it doesn't specifically state that we're, we're asked to approve the Wicker License? The question is, it looks to me as though the agenda speaks only to the question of Wicker License Amendment, as contrasted with approval of outdoor dining as a use. I, I, I don't read it that way. I, I, I, the word outdoor-only alteration of premises, I think, gives the public notice that we're talking about outdoor use of the facility, of the, of the site, for a dialogue. It looks like, because you can see Bill's point, because it says vote to approve Wicker License Amendment, colon, outdoor-only alteration of premises, colon, the Dudley Chateau. I, I, I think that, that we could still take this vote because the language is listed. The language could be a little confusing, but the language is still listed there, because outdoor-only alteration of premises is still there. Right. I agree. Yeah. Well. What is, what they only refer to? We're not talking about any of the seating inside. We're only concerning ourselves with the outdoor seating. Okay. Are you comfortable now? The limit would raise it. Can we move on to the deliveries, or do we need to discuss this one? It's so part of the deliberation. Okay. Then we're all set. The item that I was raising that I wanted to find out if anything has happened in the last couple weeks is, has there been any conversations with any of the others? Right. Of the Chateau? And that's what I wanted to close. I know. I think that is a question I have as well. Didn't make any of that, but I will say this. I also received a bunch of phone calls myself. Some of you probably did as well. Folks who have lived there for a long time and have said, if you live near the pond, you hear everything anyone does, no matter where they are, because every conversation echoes that goes across the water. So it's an interesting observation. Folks lived close up to 27 this end, and here people talking like three streets over, like they're standing right next to you because of the water, which I found interesting, I think, and said, you know, the noise can be, it can be loud at times. But on the other hand, these folks said, you know, we go over there. We walk over there. We can get take out. We can just walk over and grab it, you know, or whatever. So they would be, they were in favor of the outdoor dining, even though you can hear everything. It's three items that keep rearing their head that I put on the table for discussion. Right. One is the noise. Right. And I have to say, I am somewhat less concerned about that. I understand I am myself not in a butter, but I also understand that the Dudley Chateau has been there for quite some time. And a number of these neighbors have probably come into this property afterwards. And I also understand that the outdoor seating has been in place now for going on six years, if it's been COVID, since COVID. But the two items to me that are more salient are people have now received comments on multiple occasions where people say that folks are parking on both sides of the road. That obviously creates a public safety hazard. We don't know if that necessarily falls on the Dudley Chateau versus our police department to be warning people and ticketing these cars to ensure that doesn't happen. And it was just raised again in this motion, most recent correspondence that we received because they mentioned that there was a fire within the last several weeks on Dudley Road. And if, in fact, cars are parking along both sides of the road, what would be nice is if there was a partnership between the Chateau and the police department so they can be in communication. We obviously only have so many officers on patrol in the town at one time. So that's one item. And then the last item is just the safety of how people are driving in that area and being concerned they're leaving a bar in a very residential neighborhood. Noise is one thing, but how they're driving is another thing. Again, I think that falls to a partnership between the establishment and our police department. So I have the three notes over here. Who enforces the parking? So we got the same, the same. Yeah. And if a neighborhood meeting had occurred, it's only been two weeks, so perhaps they haven't done it. But I would highly encourage them because, as you had said earlier, we're going to revisit this in December. Right? Because these are one-year liquor licenses. We renew liquor licenses every December 1st. That's when we do them. So this is a six-month, five-month, six-month. Well, this is different, though, because this is for the outdoor seating. So I think we still have to set a time on this. Right. Otherwise, I was asking Michael, are we issuing this in perpetuity? Or should we say we can revisit this in a year? I think we revisit the liquor no matter what every December. Right. But this isn't tied directly. Well, right. Well, we're in the same. Yeah. We're in the same thing. So I do think the neighborhood meeting would be beneficial for everyone. I do think that we need to find out who enforces the parking lot. Because I am also concerned that people in our parking lot do not have enough parking spaces of what has happened here. So, I don't know. Did you have any other concerns? Well, I've used it in hearing the applicant respond to Doug's question about literature. I don't know if I can do that. Michael just said I could close it. Can we do that as a question? Any questions? You've taken input from the public. Yeah. You've asked the questions. But you essentially asked at the close of last meeting that you would like to hear if there's going to be any dialogue. So, I think you can ask. Can you ask that one question? Oh, yeah. Because the public hearing portion, you may still have a question for the applicant. I think you're entitled to ask. Tom, do you understand the question here? Yeah. Yeah. Can you ask the question? Yeah. Just because the hearing is over doesn't mean the board can't continue to, you know, inquire and try to learn more information. And I think it's quite appropriate that Ms. and Mrs. Phillips be here to answer questions of the board. Sure. So, I will ask the question. They'll answer the question. They're not to provide any other information, right? I don't see why not. Okay. Just being clear. So, our question is, be surprised now. Here's our question. Have you made arrangements here on this neighborhood meeting that I know you had volunteered, you would do it, and you were considering doing one. And what has taken place since your service two weeks ago? We were in Italy two weeks. We were in Italy. We were in Italy. We were working in Italy. We were working in Italy. We were working in Italy. It was one in the morning in Italy when we were on our last meeting. So, when we just returned home on Tuesday. So, there hasn't been any time to do any kind of neighborhood meeting. But the capacity is at 85 people. So, whether they're indoors or outdoors, the problem is that 85 people all drive to the restaurant, there isn't enough parking. And I physically was the one who asked the police to please put up the no parking signs. I asked them to put those up. There were no parking. Those signs didn't even exist before. And it was a problem because, you know, if you're parking on both sides of the street, yes, emergency vehicles can't get through there. So, I did ask the police to put the signs up and, you know, they do come down there. They do come inside. They do threaten to ticket. I don't know if they do ticket, but they do come in, ring the bell, have the announcement. So, it has happened in the past. And trying to figure out how to stop people from parking or, you know, like when six guys come to the restaurant and they're all sitting around the table and all six of them drove. It does become tight in the neighborhood. It's just not directly related to the outdoor seating. It's just, it's a larger issue. Right. That has to be addressed. That's kind of, yeah, it's just, it's, it's a problem that it just needs to be addressed, I think, with maybe the police. And, I mean, we can try to get an employee to kind of go around or hang out outdoors when at seven o'clock. I don't, I don't know how to fix the parking. Specific to the outdoor dining hall. It's not an issue in the, really in the summer months to speak of. It's, it's more people bike, walk, kayak, etc. So, I don't really see it in the, in the, in the summer months as much. It seems to be a lot less. As far as the community, we own the Chateau for 17 years now. And we meet with the community, oddly enough, on a pretty regular basis because the majority of individuals come into the chat for takeout or to have a meal now and again. Do they give Mandy and I their honest input if it's negative? Maybe not. But now again, we hear, we certainly hear negative input. But most of all, the community, and it has changed a little bit from, from day one where it's come full circle, where they really see it as an asset to not only community, but the, but the neighborhood. And it is a very special neighborhood. And to Mr. Levine's point, if you were there before the chat, you're probably about 130 years old at this point in time. Um, so most of them really see it as an asset and we do communicate with them regularly, but we can certainly, uh, you know, facilitate, um, you know, maybe through the Dudley Pond Association or just otherwise throughout Facebook or something to that, um, to that extent, uh, an actual meeting, you know, before this, um, you know, the liquor license renews again. Yeah, I think it would make sense because I think it's very different to try to receive feedback while you're doing business in that environment versus in a quiet room where you're sitting with, with the neighbors together. What we do, we have a, a, a gentleman that puts a trash can, um, down at the, at the end of the, uh, um, you know, where the boat launch kind of, kind of was at one point. And, uh, when he's traveling, he messages me, if it's over full, he says, can I use your dumpster? And we do have a lot of back and forth neighbors have brought things to, for our attention before, uh, which, you know, we remedied as soon as we can. So we try to be very responsible, commercial neighbors, although inherently in the pre-existing non-conforming nature of the building, you do have a commercial establishment in close proximity to, uh, you know, to residential. But I, I think for the most part, uh, it, it does work as harmoniously as it can. And I don't, you know, you know, obviously my opinion, but I don't see the, the outdoor dining area really detracting from it, you know, or adding to any issues per se. I just found through my experience that it just makes a difference when people can feel for, just to give them that opportunity. I agree. Share how they're feeling. Agreed. Agreed. So, I guess I would, I mean, that's one of our thoughts would, our hopes would be, because it's really probably like the same vigor, is it enabling anyone to curse? So that would, I think that's what I was wondering. Ironically enough, when you got last panel, I was just here to facilitate the conversation. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. We only had that in action. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. So, that was... Maybe you could have your neighbors come to Italy. Yeah. We could queue outdoor dining en masse. Mm-hmm. So, um, Boston? It's tough, you know, uh, land uses generate parking demand. And, uh, this is a successful restaurant. Uh, and, and the demand exceeds the capacity. Um, I don't know if there are other ways you, if you can restart the lot. If you, uh, were to consider valet parking, or you could stack cars up the way they do in, uh, New York City. The fancy restaurants. Uh, you know, where, uh, you have to wait 10 minutes to get your car and so forth. Uh, but I do think a community meeting would be helpful. Uh, so if, if the word were to act tonight, I think that, uh, suggests that the board can consider making the approval of the out, the use of the outdoor dining, uh, coterminous with the liquor license. Yeah. So that we have the opportunity to review it at the end of the year. Um, but, but also, uh, I think we should, uh, maybe reach out to the, uh, police chief and get his take on what's going on. Uh, I can't imagine it'd be great for your business to have 15 cars ticketed. Yeah. So, uh, you've also found car just wherever you feel like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're taking the chance. We have heard about neighbors saying their driveways are blocked. So it's a tough one, you know, it is, uh, I think almost everybody who's there has, uh, has been there. That moved in with the understanding the shack that was there. And, uh, so what's the language advisor here with the board? Do we want to make a motion? Do we want to do it? Yeah, I think we want to do it. Okay. So, Mr. McColl? Right. I just want to reiterate, Madam Chair, that we should establish some times, hours of operation, dates of operation for outdoor seating when it begins in the spring, ends in the fall. Um, and be sure that's there. You can have your annual view in time in the region of the outdoor dining. Um, that's all I have for suggestion. So if someone is, um, and not to exceed the capacity and the existing liquor license, you're just extending the service area, but not increasing the capacity. Right. I think I immigrated that point earlier, but I... But just reinforcements. So does somebody want to wish to make a motion? I need some of that information because it's not in this memo. What are the hours of operation currently? The from? What are the forms? What are the forms? Be warm. The form. The form? How do you say that? Well, the outside or just in general? The outside. The outside. The outside. Is all weather purposes. The outside. The outside. The outside. The outside, it's all weather-proof. The pressure. I don't know if it's going to go ahead. Um, so, you can do the further steps. You can just go ahead and tell me how you're on the panel. it's all weather permitted um but it would be noon last seating at seven and then closed by nine and the capacity is 30. the capacity is 30. i think during covid we had till 9 30 but we didn't it was kind of like cleaning up and getting everybody out of there by 9 30. and then it's the season what's the season for outdoor dining um usually usually somewhere you know by the end of october if the bees are out there it's just hang on a second we're looking to see what's on the application i would just say you know from maybe 4-1 but that's already passed to maybe like 11-1 yeah so i have a question too because there's this is right here and typed up to me
i can't yeah so i move that the select board approve um the licensing authority certification specifically with respect to outdoor only alteration of premises outdoor seating for the dudley chateau located at 20 crest road in wayland with a maximum seating capacity outdoors of 30 to be utilized tuesdays through sundays from noon with a last seating at 7 p.m and closed at 9 p.m beginning april 1st of 2026 um through october 31st 2026. the term set approval being effective through december 31st 2026. friendly amendment accepted thing but it's like a motion you know i said that they don't have anything in there why don't we have we don't have to have a vote because there's a lot of three presidents no because you have somebody sorry to interrupt but you have somebody get the road it's not voting um just the three of us because it's not voting suspenders would might do a roll call felt and suspenders might do a roll call well that was my second thought okay well combo bill yeah yes yes yes motion passes three zero thank you thank you thank you make sure you have that name with me because we'll ask
and um follow up to that do we want to reach up to the chief and see what we can do about this parking and should i put that on my list here yeah all right michael good speaker the chief of new partners right parking update i think the next item that we're going to talk about here is going to be uh discussion of potential bonus proposed redenticide policy um that is on page 45 or 46 of the packet i'm going to let uh mr fay leave the discussion on this one please and i think we're going to invite uh ms sharon to join us how i have she's on the conservation commission thank you for waiting for now running a little late but we weren't running around yes um before i begin i'd like to have ask robbie to bring on um other members who wanted to be present during this discussion including shannon fisher i think she's the only other person who will be joining here and i started here linda hansen oh sorry about that linda and linda i'd like to recognize linda hansen i'm sorry linda i was looking at the list on the side so can you all right great super great um so my way of background this is basically an effort to um prohibit use of certain poisons um to control rats and and mice uh in the town uh it's a policy that's actually being considered um statewide by the legislature but it's unclear whether any bill will pass along these lines the topic has come up the last couple of years by the conservation commission they considered warrant articles on this but in discussions it seemed appropriate that our board would establish a policy that would have the same end so um through you madam chair i invite um uh miss fisher to chat about the origins of this objective and and and why it's being sought certainly okay um we've been pursuing this with the conservation commission for a little while um mirroring some of the efforts that are going on in towns and cities across the state so second generation anti-coadulant rodenticides um came about 1970s um to replace the first generation which rats and mice became um somewhat immune to and unfortunately they work um one feed is enough to kill the rodent but it doesn't take it doesn't kill it immediately the road can run around for up to a week or more um accumulating more and more and it builds up in their bodies it stays active and what you get is any predator that comes along and eats that rodent um can become poisoned multiple times and you have owls who will eat tens of thousands of rodents in their lifetime hawks the same foxes bobcats coyotes and wildlife rehabilitators are seeing um dead and dying predators across the state and it also gets into the soil it gets into the food chain snapping turtles have died of second generation rodenticides so um we did try to get um a municipal ban in place um i believe uh last year and because there were some questions about how it may or may not work with an existing pesticide i think it was 84 a pesticide by lot we we shelved it but the people actually came up and they they voted to turn it into a resolution which they then supported and we tried again this year with a version that would fit in um that would collaborate with that better but we weren't able to get it in the warren article but a lot of towns have done this internally and in fact we pursued it as as a warren article to be voted on by the town kind of the public education approach um but arlington who's been a leader in this because they started out because the first pair of bald eagles to come and nested in arlington um in 50 years after they got rid of ddt died from escars so they became new leaders so following them it started to make sense that we could do this as an internal policy um it it sounds like actually the the public works here in wayland are already not using them so it's actually not really changing anything it's more codifying and protecting this and it also puts wayland in the same kind of um it puts wayland in company with i think it was 49 other towns and cities that have already made restrictions i think there's 130 something who have community organization of some kind so we would be in good company um it's a good look for wayland um it protects some good that we're already doing and uh yeah so i think the proposal that you guys have in your packet is modeled after arlington's internal internal policy questions from the board um also i have one question so do you have any sense for how often these types of second generation rodenticides are used privately like will this actually make a meaningful difference if it's codified or do we really need to move forward and i know you end up being a home will petition have to go to the legislature right is that where we really move the needle yeah well yes so because it's not really being used on public land right now in a sense no it doesn't change anything dramatically but it does set an example and then when we do public education we can say the town the town has looked at this and done this um i think these are very widely used in in private residences they are or not are i know personally i've if if you personally i've i've dealt with pest control companies in my own house if you don't ask them what they're going to use and you say i have a mouse problem this is their first line of defense over a half a million pounds of escars were distributed across massachusetts in 2022 based on mdar data which is i think the most recent data we have unless something just came out so i think it was 559 000 pounds of it it makes up 96 percent of the rodenticides used in the state it's the first line of defense even though it shouldn't be the epa says it shouldn't be used as a long term but i even went i've gone to some of the shopping centers here in town and i've i counted like i think it was 31 boxes not all of them were labeled those that were were pretty much labeled with second generation rodenticides they were also next to open dumpsters so these are often used in lieu of better practices so by the town doing this it might not change things immediately but it sets a really good example that we can then point to and say a like here's something that your town leaders have voted on this is great for public education and b like it adds one more town to the list of um towns and cities that are doing this as the state considers the larger bill thank you
and tom i would assume you're all set i am happy to move i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off madam chair if uh anybody else want to speak the only one left is me and i'm good thank you so please please do your thing happy to move that this board approved the proposed rodenticide policy is set forth in our packet for june 1st 2026. okay for discussion otherwise we're going to have a little call vote tom yes yes yes yes and carol yes five zero thanks sir thank you guys so much thank you thank you um i'm going to propose because i see there are a lot of people here and i couldn't get here for item number 15 so i am going to propose taking item 15 next and there's somebody on the board projects okay so this is an interesting agenda item um you know sometimes things start one way and then they end up another way what had happened here is i think that this on the item here is uh discussion of the historic uh district commission's parking suggestions and we have stuff in the historic district i don't know the exact thing but i think it was a mid-april um miss schula reached out to me and said you know we have some suggestions and we'd like the board you know to make get them in front of the board and she was going to come to the public comment and she did and then i said you know we are really we're really really um busy getting ready for time meeting what have you but i've been focused on the agenda on um june 1st and so that was the intent of this agenda item tonight was to just look at these suggestions and and kind of have a quick look at this and see what we thought in the meantime we've um so it may look coincidental and i believe there's a lot of folks from the library here um but we did receive some correspondence about some concern from a residential residence concerning those the no parking signs or the library only parking signs in the library parking lot that is not the intent of this agenda item this is a very short item we are just looking in the way i have set it up much the board feels differently because i wanted to just get a first glance if you will is to look at this i think this um i think the historic um district commission brings up a valid point that is more and more uh commercial and businesses go into the historic district we really should be taking a look at the at the parking situation i can't i can't recognize you because it's not on my agenda he's not on the agenda you're not on the agenda you're not recognizing you no we're just just reviewing the i the list that would be sent in by mr i didn't know that someone was going to hell and we're going to speak so so i'm going to open this up to the board did we lose mr okay okay all right so does anybody have any initial comments on that i mean essentially what they're saying is is that there's more and more like what i just said there's more and more people are using these wonderful facilities whether it's the depot or it's the real trail or the dwell ford and helps the museum or this possible new cap data spend on this new cafe that's coming in um we really need we're really going to have um some strong competition for parking spaces there and they did offer three short-term solutions um and three long-term solutions so um including and i don't know how we would do this limiting uh parking in the depot and perhaps wait on 27 a half to two hours that kind of thing so um i'm going to ask michael to a final list and he's just rolled his eyes i didn't realize i'm waiting i'm waiting um because i thought that was my goal he was just to get us to get this on our radar screen and you know maybe we would end up having a look at this another time as much um anyway what's your thought i want to switch we're taking 15 now i think i know i've seen and i've received you know actually mr weintraub left me a voicemail over the weekend i didn't get a chance to call and it's been topic of discussion at some of my town manager office hours michael that was on something else i know but i'm just pointing out you you do you brought this up because uh mr weintraub like others would like to foster uh you know a downtown community um in a neighborhood community especially with the interest in the the call the old collins market um there's been ideas floated about you know could we create more parking in that triangle and find the veterinarian there or do something on the other side near the pelham island road i i i think there's a challenge and i i see the library folks here as well you know when when this came up last year we spent some time i spent some time with ms jeunesse looking at you know the the grants of land and how it came to the library and this is why we've also received feedback on these new signs that we put out um i think we do need a conversation with all stakeholders at the table including the dpw um to talk about what we can do to create adequate parking to allow businesses to survive and thrive and not impede upon the library operations but also to um allow access to the rail trail because i've received some comments about that as well now i know we we may want to invite the new owners of town center because they're very eager in you know helping out in these types of endeavors uh they can be accessed to the rail trail from their parking lot i'm sure they would be willing partners in that conversation as well but i think if we had everybody at once some of those people are here this evening that we could come up with a reasonable solution where else we could put parking that would work for everyone um and you know we looked at alternatives we tried to reach out to some people that own land or at least i have abutting the depot area uh you know to see what we could do and maybe exchange some land and some folks if the land is at a premium here so we have to be creative and now volunteering to um put this committee or group together and this meeting of the stakeholders and then report back to us i'm happy to do that that sound like a good action uh plan for the board okay thank you very much if you have something i want us to see why don't you email it to me and then we're going into the it already it already has an email it's on the agenda it's a memo from the district district commission basically talking about collaboration and and backing that the letter is in the packet the letter is in the packet already the items that i mentioned that gretchen gave us that she gave us the victim of a comment is already there's no need for a comment or so we're all not welcome yeah sorry i'm sorry we just okay all right thank you i hope everybody's happy with that they make your comment i don't know if i go ahead i had a conversation with governor of the town center he was very enthusiastic just the way they say that that should be a sort of a lot of thing i think michael will come up with a brilliant idea so now i want to go back now to number 13 which is the discussion of the updated cannabis control commission law post number 5350 i'm at modernizing the commonwealth's cannabis laws and potential vote to authorize the town manager to sign the opt-out waiver relative to the town by law section 803.5.8 in the packet you will find somebody will have to tell me the pages on that town by law i think it looks like it's on page 40. town of whalen bylaw restricting marijuana retail so um this one i'm also going to turn over to mr mccall because um he's the one that's brought up to our attention when i'm speaking to him madam chair i think you're making most of them that's everything i would uh move with the board authorized town manager mike mccall to sign the opt-out waiver on by law section 803.5.8 do i have a second second what's left some discussion here serving
so we've we've briefly approached this topic on a couple of occasions but i was hoping that we would be able to discuss it as a full board um now that we've been joined by mr reynolds and um the topic that i wanted to put on the table for discussion is the balancing act that we as a select board are making this determination for the entire town where the town itself be a town needed to not have any recreational marijuana establishments the town itself did not take any vote related to specific individual delivery to homes and so i'm thinking like an equivalent of a town like weston that doesn't have any alcohol serving establishments but i do believe individual homeowners could have alcohol delivered to their home for example um and so analogizing that here is that a vote that we just automatically want to take now the hesitancy that i have is this is obviously relatively new um the statute and the cannabis industry itself is relatively new in the commonwealth and so i don't really know what kind of enforcement mechanisms are in place right now in terms of delivery of cannabis products or or how that's enforced um is it required that an individual who's 21 or older sign for a cannabis product before it can be delivered and that's a question i don't have an answer to um but i'd like to hear from the police department but you know at this point i i wouldn't vote yes i would abstain at best but uh you know i just feel like we don't have all the information but i understand i might be in the minority on this board um comments from other members of the board bill tom so sure i'll comment um so um in my view the bylaw that was passed the town meeting covers this it specifically talks about uh prohibiting um marijuana transporters all right and that's what this proposal is is to permit transporting marijuana within the town for delivery so i think the bylaw right now prohibits um what's um what's being proposed and i think time meeting has spoken you know at some point in the future if this board or or to a petitioner wanted to present a warrant article to have time being revisit um either having dispensaries in the town or transportation that that that's possible right um in a more global respect um they really i agree with what doug said that the industry really is in its early stages the cannabis control commission has been an embarrassment for the state um um fortunately they have one of our own heading it up which um i think will set it on on a much better course but you know there's issues with labeling standards there's issues with the need for stronger consumer health education and there's also a need for type of enforcement against market fraud so i just think that um um uh the timing is not right and it's certainly inconsistent based on time meeting vote to um um permit transporting of of uh and delivery of cannabis within the town and i support the motion on the table i just have to take one issue with one thing that you said tom just to push back when i've done a little research it seems that the actual definition of a marijuana transporter is business to business not business to consumer so the part that i take issue with is i don't think the town has had a say to vote on this particular issue that is home delivery of cannabis products because i don't think that's covered in violence um if you take the second part of that sentence though if i if and if i agree with you which is marijuana transporters or any other type of licensed marijuana related businesses shall be prohibited and i would argue that those delivery companies you know could include licensed marijuana related businesses that maybe it could be it could be amazon right but it could be um licensed businesses which would be covered under the current bylaw that's a good point let's see what mr wendels did you want to echo mr faye's point about the violent okay any further discussion here all right shall we go to the vote then please
mr whitney yes mr wendels yes mr faye yes no mr levine and miss martin i'm going to also say yes so it's going to vote it's going to be four one zero correct correct okay um the next item on our agenda is number 14 organization of the board but there are folks here who i think are interested in the item in the town manager's report so with the board's intelligence i'm going to move to the town meters report so that they can go home earlier than we are so mr mr it's going to give me a look now
i'm sure we'll follow shortly yeah we're going to follow this really we'll work on it so and for the town manager's report mr pico well it's a recap yeah i think we may have to take some things out of order because i think i have more to say in a couple things um sorry no no no nothing
so why don't we just talk a little bit about item c first i think that would probably make the most sense um and that's really the the millennium fund and so i had reached out shortly after the last meeting and written some emails to senator eldridge's staff as you know i was away last week i hadn't heard anything back i reached out to uh david emmer who had been counseled for senator eldridge he has since left senator eldridge's office and gone to the department of revenue but he was fairly current on what was going on with the status of the millennium fund and uh he had indicated in a conversation about two weeks ago with our council michael diortenzio of kp law that mr diortenzio had written a letter to the senate council um indicating that the board of library trustees can handle the donations that's one of the specific issues of the handling and the donations that come into the millennium upon you um mr emmer thought that it was an excellent letter and i understand ms jeunesse had helped mr diortenzio and provided quite a bit of information relative to that letter um and that there as far as mr emmer had known as of earlier today that they were still waiting on a response from senate council later this afternoon i did uh wind up speaking with ms jeunesse who updated me that senate council has since made contact with senator eldridge's staff and that they are amending the bill and inserting the changes that were in the red line version from the select board and that they are checking back with senator eldridge to see if anything else needs to be done prior to going further through the legislative process so that's where we are to date on this i know this is my update but i i do know ms jeunesse is here as well as mr lindquist so i don't know madam chair if we wanted to hear from either of those individuals so in my update i had said i spoke with ms jeunesse and she happens to be present so i just didn't know if you need any additional information from her while she's here no i think the question generally that i received is will this slow it down to the point that it won't make it through the legislative process in this session or will this be one of the many normal petitions that will likely move through the process before they adjourn so that is i think uh the question that both ms jeunesse and i were left with this afternoon we i i called miss uh senator eldridge directly uh he couldn't take the call at that time i'm hoping to get an answer in the next day or so so i reached out to several staff members so i think together ms jeunesse and i can work on that my sense is that it would not have moved forward had this conversation not incurred
well if senate i'm speculating but uh senate council is recommending these changes you know it has been approved by the house you know with the earlier version now there are amendments that would address majority of the senate councils sooner so hopefully it could go to the senate and bring back to the house you know for application okay i need to see if i got that right that's that's what i'm hoping the record shows you nodding all right not nodding off just all right so we want to finish i know we all said we got ready because i know bill was gracious enough to ask for us to have that report you know status report and then the town manager's report so thank you for doing that i have other bullet points that you asked me to check oh yes i just want to mention um you would ask me to check on saint ann's the status of saint ann's on constituent road at the uh at the catholic church yeah and i had reached out to phil crean who's from the planning office of the for urban affairs for the archdiocese of boston we wound up planning phone tag last week but we exchanged some emails and he informed me that they are working towards construction starting this october likely toward the end of the month the timeline is driven by mass housing's quarterly board meeting scheduled he said once they receive approval at the september board meeting they anticipate being able to close on the construction loan since 30 to 60 days construction is expected to take approximately 15 months placing the projected completion date in january of 2028 he also indicated he needs uh some help i've already reached out to the weyland um municipal affordable housing trust they need a letter from them relative to the monies that they authorized last year and he needs some data from our planning office relative to and assistance with local preference documents so um i know robert hummel is involved and mary and just responded to my request for the letter so we'll do what we can on our side to ensure that this is moving along
all right and just under the recap is some of you know i was at the massachusetts municipal managers association meeting last week uh one of the primary topics they spent almost a whole day addressing uh manager burnout not just managers but assistant managers and managers itself a big topic we also covered uh ai in the workplace and looking at tools that can be used and whether people have to we had individual table discussions about putting together policies on working with our it director on that um also interestingly enough i mentioned to a couple board members i was asked a couple board members uh whether or not i was becoming the next town manager in my hometown um and i quickly pulled that rumor i and did not put in for that i was not anticipating that um so that uh the rumors of my departure are greatly exaggerated so um i have a great working relationship with you folks here and i i have quite a long time to go here hopefully so um i i was just taken aback a little bit but that several people had asked me so i heard i was thinking of leaving right like i'm sorry i want to make sure folks here knew that wasn't the case um also as some of you may know we've had some preliminary meetings and discussions already about the fy20 budget we started some uh planning discussions for a possible override i know madam chair as well as mr dean have been involved in those in the next week or so i will be participating in some of the board meetings that i participate on including the west suburban health group um we should be having another meeting with our regional emergency communication as i mentioned to some of you um the status of the grant monies and how we utilize them has become a bit of a concern which is pushing back our projected go live date uh out until july 1 of 2027. so uh i i did have some offline discussions with my counterpart natick so i'm looking forward to the next meeting with those folks we're also having a meeting this week with our regional housing service office that helps us maintain our inventory for subsidized housing as well as other housing initiatives usually mr hummel and i attend together and then i just want to bring up um and i'm thinking of as we move forward maybe publishing a little brief to everybody on the tuesday following my town manager hours i was trying to wrap up a few things but an awful lot of things come up i usually get about a dozen or so folks plus or minus attending um and as i've indicated before usually one person brings up a topic but everybody's allowed to participate and as individuals brought up the topic since last time around there was a lot of group discussion and then you know there was the two biggest ones where some people took issue with um the concerns at town meeting about video surveillance and a couple people wanted to see the town put together a town position on video surveillance what our policy would be relative to retention of any video and distribution and what if any impact that could have on our relationship with other law enforcement agencies some of this is mine and whether or not that would jeopardize a grant or other state or federal funding um the library signage that that recently went up around the parking lot came up several folks i've passed on several complaints that came in about curbing um relative to what happened with the plowing and there's some damage uh some residents complained about some landscapers i've passed those on to our zoning officer and then i worked with mr phaia but the veterans groups they were happy about a couple things but they did point out that we there's a listserv that sends out a notice when we have to move town flags to half staff in case there's a death of a service member or other elected official and there's a concern that not everybody's getting those emails because not all flags are getting so i will work on all that with mr turner and the local veterans organization but that was pretty much everything that happened since we met last time thank you so now we're going to move back now we're back on board number 14 which is the organization of the board now normally we do this the meeting after town meeting but there was only three of us and we decided to let everybody vote so we started the way to this meeting and normally we do it at the beginning of the meeting because that's what happens um yeah the chair takes over for the next year um however i would have an awful lot of guests if you will talk with i like to let the guests go through what happened so um we're going to do three things we're going to discuss them both to elect a chair and a vice chair we're going to look at the liaison journals and assignments those are in the packet from last year and the designated selectable liaison to the fire staffing study working group that we discussed at the next meeting so let me open it up to the floor is there anyone who's interested in serving this either the vice chair or the chair of the board um next year i'd like to ask you madam chair whether you'd consider um continuing on as chair um you you do a very good job and you're very um um you seem to still like it and you uh don't seem burnt out about doing it and uh so that's my question to you yes thank you um it's really an interesting and incredible learning experience particularly when you have uh served if you were with town for so many years but it really was a big learning crew i've enjoyed it i find it very um exciting and challenging so i certainly would be um if it was it was amenable to the board i wouldn't be willing to serve another year
but if also what would you like would you like to be on that
you know i think mr fay would do an excellent job with vice chair if uh the current incumbent uh would refer not to serve in that capacity i would second that uh all right so i said i would move to the board point bill martin uh as chair and as a vice chair as a select board uh we're concerned extending uh from today until uh usually fall in the 20 27 annual time that second all right i'm gonna let chris that right all right is there any discussion i want to say um thank you for the to the board for your help to share i want to say thank you for your your faith in me um i am definitely going to do two things better next year i'm going to put these darn page numbers down on my notes so i won't keep saying what's the age number the backing and i'm going to learn how to do the hearings i've only done about 15. i still don't feel like i do something well all right oh i echo those remarks and i appreciate the board's uh uh support if they choose to vote in favor of the motion and uh look forward to working with you all and in particular with chair to make it an efficient and productive year yeah and all those in favor uh chris all right yes yes tom yes entirely yes so that we're off and running and you have to say thank you it was a fun game it really was and we really enjoyed working with you um all right so now we're going to uh oh i want to do it on page 49 that's the list of the current liaisons um i spoke to uh chris and uh said to him that um this was a list that ann had right i thought i would start here and then in that list other than perhaps human rights diversity i thought maybe i think you had expressed interest so mentioned to chris that you sort of thought you would like that so that's going to move to your list um on the special projects there is no spare customer more because the work's finished uh but we we do need a fire staffing working group liaison and we kind of had mentioned last week and passing that might be christmas amenable that might be something that would be in his real house enthusiastically enthusiastically um i think um um what about your work did you want to make it your next year skip all the night did you want to make any changes it's got a lot here um if anybody has an interest i didn't have the opportunity to work in any meaningful fashion with the board appellate so any of the members of this board would have an interest in connecting with them and probably do a better job than i doing right now frank for help and otherwise you're all set because we're giving you like one in there um bill i'll let you are you okay with your numbers i want to make some changes um general comment i think we should fix it up a little bit yeah um what did i get sued uh you know that the finance stuff is near and dear to your heart but um in that general area yeah well i do want to keep those actually that's not moving on those but um capital improvement planning and finance creating this yeah i was kind of interested in the subsidy as well yeah i think it might be healthy to split finance and capital improvement um just to kind of get another set of ears and and and uh thoughts on those two topics because i think that the capital improvement committee is is going to be an increasingly important committee as they continue to do their work and um um i think it's wise to have a separation there between uh board members within those two uh those two committees i'll think about that what else would you do you have your eye on bill again i thought just generally um the notion of things around just um so that each board member they just kind of yeah frankly has exposure to they have exposure exposure to others so uh so i don't have a specific suggestion um apart from what you just said um and tom obviously with 227 law field list because that's as uh expired right that's that's um that's done with so i'm i think doug to your point if you want to give up border health i'm happy to take that on um um chris do you have any desire for any of the boards that we currently liaised with um if they're not stepping on anybody's toes i would take a look at recreation commission i have some things i'd like to do there and there were some housing reports that the chair and i discussed but you have a couple more hands to things you're interested in before i put this draft together but on the special project side because i have more notes because you know a lot of these have um finished and there's others coming um like for example financial policies that's kind of an ongoing thing but the main thing that i had the main formalization of the financial policies we got done actually that was product so i don't know about that um you know tom is also uh is actually chair of the 212th gentryment road committee so what's your part of the list well actually i've got a parentheses around it what was your name because actually that has um that has also finished his work we disbanded it but now we're waiting for the they are coming up to the board and then maybe we'll make a new plan so i put that one in parentheses for that reason because i wasn't sure exactly what to do with that probably take it off for now right i also added on the nose onto special projects you'll have to tell me the name of the school between the school building yeah that's that's i've been kind of quiet i think it's kind of uh the school committee is it was uh basically a k-12 long-range uh facilities planning committee uh and i think it's the the school thing is basically okay thanks it's the land area uh and and they are uh i think the uh the ball is kind of in the school committee and the superintendents well do you want me to leave it there so we're narrowing the choices true i'll just do it and then i have taken an organization written jcc organization so it makes more sense because that's a little more specific but yeah and that's really how managers
so you want to take that one off yeah i think so all right um and then for tom of course i'm taking off the 250th america celebration and real trail science because both of those are keep the real trail science project doesn't give the real trail science with bill are there others you want to uh give up on your list i um are you comfortable with the library trustees others are interested i'm i'm just trying to spread things around fairly and i'd be if that's something you didn't feel strongly about happy to take it but if you like it then you can keep it so you know one thing that i really have not done much with the trust fund commission or liaison there or frankly audit committees to say don't speak about it
they might have a team problem i don't think they have a problem when you talk about right right that's true that's it um a concern i think we have a concern on this sidebar of positions with the zone for zba as well i think that some you know vacancies there so all right well why don't i type this up a little bit and see where we're at um and go from there especially on the special projects i just like to list those because it also gives like doug i'm giving you civil discourse
yeah and uh the way cam the way cam the cable advisor but i think i just like way cam in general for you because you have a lot of work with that tom is now our special counsel you know for the legal so that's it unless there's a contract yeah we have a question mark there so that kind of things over here so i wanted to fiddle around with this and then we'll put it back up by next time um
would you like to be in light of some of the discussions we had this past year with the capital improvement planning committee and um concerns that mr fay has raised i think we need to create a town hall vision committee that's oh yeah really spirited by this board yeah no but um where we're already starting to look at fyi i think we need to get behind that because the capital planning committee is asking me to come in this week they want to get mr kevin in there as well too to start talking about future projects and as you know they postponed some of the we collectively postponed some improvements to this building because they want to know what we're going to do long term and i think it's important to have that lay out the options and show folks especially as we're competing for precious dollars in the next couple years for operations um you know water oh you know it just makes sense so i think as we'll be in this fair company speak to us i hope that they would also be able to pull information out of the inside on-site report and give us one of those grants and explanations of the projects and the costs other projects that need to be done in this building and they just i guess they weren't ready to do that so i think we were sort of waiting for that from which we would then establish a vision and committee so i don't know if we should circle back and see if you can do that for us real quick and what we want to do but that might be that might be one of the things to do so maybe we'll put some on that and see yeah
did you know that okay and then the last thing we want to do on this list is we need to designate a uh first i don't know if we need a vote or not a liaison to fire staffing study so we already only agree it's going to be just to take the vote and we are set so do you want to make a motion i move that the board nominate our newest member christopher h reynolds this is our liaison to the fire staffing study where we move second this is employment follow point and all right all right hello is in favor tom yes bill yes dog yes yes and kelly has five so it's getting late i've gone to them okay where am i consent right
for the discussion otherwise mr reynolds yes yes you're still being mr whitney yes mr fag yes msmart yes five zero okay now we're in the minutes uh there are no minutes their table correspondence anybody have any comments and correspondence um mr fay do you have a comment correspondence no i'm good thank you um perhaps we wanted to talk about the remote participation correspondence you want you want well i mean we're not um we're not looking at legislation anytime soon that'll permit whalen to have no participation i'll leave it at that and we're gonna we're gonna we keep we keep plugging and uh but we're trying but um not not hopeful for this year's sessions there were two really nice emails from mr bernstein about you know laying out the particular bills that are before and the status of those and i think he sent those primarily to talk tom and myself and uh had to put in the correspondence packet so nobody could see all the work he's doing on that on our behalf i mean yeoman's work to try to get this move forward slow slow progress so all right reports and concerns you just touched on one is there some way we couldn't let mr bernstein i give mr bernstein some encouragement that does seem like a glacial slaughter i really appreciate i find when i disagree with him i still like him and when i agree with him i still like he's just a great guy i'm wondering if we could encourage his efforts well that's why i wanted to point this out and that's why i included those in the correspondence because he has done an incredible amount of feedback and sometimes i'm sure it feels like this is a one-man band on us but he really does uh done a lot um all right reports and concerns tom not four items the first um the way the whitney and i continue to work on putting together an rfp concerning the 212 constituent road property and we're making good progress number two i reviewed the rap report from 2017 to get a handle on what property might be appropriate for sale um at a possible future time meeting maybe even in 2027 it might be something that we look at um more closely um some properties really aren't appropriate for sale but some might be number three i am concerned about the makeup of the finance committee and its future um and i think we need to have i think we're planning to have a meeting with the finance committee the current members soon which is great um but i also think we need to give some thought to um its role relative to the town managers act i'm not talking about abolishing it what i'm talking about is frank discussion about how um our expectations of this deliverables relative to the time managers act might be um adjusted um number four um um um i had a meeting um like a friday or two ago with tom holder uh becky stanisi and a couple of other folks regarding robert hummel regarding the uh curb cut monies so uh rfp is being put together for um hiring a professional relative to curb cut issue on route 20. so that's that's progressing that's all i have thank you um mr rickman well just to echo uh tom's point uh on on the 212 we're working with uh consulting to uh to uh the town manager and assistant town managers have a lot of experience in procurement specifically with respect to disposition of real property and uh it is uh it's involved uh including uh preparation of uh draft documents that should be included in the rfp uh a sailor at least was contemplated and so uh and those documents are just so uh so it's staking longer than i think we have hoped that uh in europe what do you also because we can't ask questions did you want to give a sense of when that might be available ready for reviews for the draft list here it would be hard to say uh i think it you know uh i think it's in pretty good shape uh but for uh some of the exhibits particularly the brown police um so uh they're inevitably released back and forth on that
one item for mr levine and that is i would like to thank richard turner especially if he's still watching for pivoting very quickly to the indoor memorial day ceremony of remembrance in the middle school i thought it went off without a hitch there were a number of people that had to be organized very quickly um but uh it proceeded well and i actually in some sense at times prefer to be indoors because folks tend to pay rapt attention um to the various speakers but a big thanks to richard turner and the public ceremonies committee for organizing that event year after year yeah okay mr lucas i would also thank extend thanks on top of that to our facilities and mr turner did mention that and that day we had uh gennaro done a job he was out there helping to do that as he did last year and you know uh veterans day when we had to move indoors so um mr turner do pass along his thanks so i just recognize the staff that approve everything quickly this is my turn so we can finish up and i want to say my i want to speak about i said the parade thank you to don for representing the board at the at this ceremony which i concur we'll see very nice nicely done um so i did think um i said wait a minute last year i went on and i said you know we need a select board banner and i don't know what happened to that and then tonight we have in the consent someone who has donated two hundred dollars uh to the towns for bet and use that they seem most appropriate and i think it would be most appropriate for the select board to have a banner and i you know just a little fold the banner i'm hoping that two hundred dollars will cover it and i'm going to recommend that that's all that spends it i'm sure it's more but i really think we need one before the next uh parade please so um yeah so i do want to mention that i think some of you already knew that we were scheduled tonight to speak with um we need to follow-up meeting with the folks from the town center like you know that they had um and we called out and we with abby were to confirm the time we were having they asked to reschedule they are actually meeting with the planning board and working through a number of issues and things that they would like to do we wanted to i guess finish that off before they met with us so it's tentatively i've been out for 629 but i'm not so sure it may end up going into july and then finally everybody saw the schedule for the for the meetings um there's a big break there of four weeks and i have a feeling things will happen they come up for example we may do stuff so we may end up having our camera and i put our heads together on this and and we thought maybe in those weeks in between if we have to do something maybe do like an hour meeting on a thursday like at 10 a.m or something those who can come can come and we'll do some of these other little items like for example if it doesn't presentation for us all the meetings um from july 20th and two august ones will be fully remote as we did last year so and with that i will take the meeting to adjourn pushing to adjourn at 9 30 p.m thank you welcome okay from the discussion all right mr wells you want to stay sorry you want to stay yes okay yes yes oh we just yeah and myself yes all right that's your name five zero thank you everyone