June 29, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
June 29, 2026 - Select Board
Good evening. It's part of the Select Board. I'm going to call on the Select Board meeting to order for June 29th at 6 p.m.
This is a hybrid meeting. We are in-person at the town building.
We want to choose the road and we also may participate remotely.
This meeting may be recorded and if recorded, it will be made available to the public.
We'll make it as soon as possible after the meeting.
We are having a public, excuse me, an executive session this evening and the public will be excluded from the second session.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in-person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law.
One may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the Select Board agenda or in the Rehland calendar, which is on the left-hand side of the Rehland webpage.
When required by law or allowed by the Chair, the persons wishing to provide public phone or otherwise participate in a meeting, they do so either in-person or via remote access.
Public command will be requested to be limited to two minutes per person.
In the agenda, please note that the agenda item times are approximate.
The items may not be discussed in the order of the time listed and all topics may be subject to deliberation in both.
So joining me in the room this evening, we have Mr. Wiggins, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Fay, Mr. Levine's joining us shortly, I assume.
I'm not sure, right?
Mr. Craig, myself, Carol Martin.
We are joined currently by our Assistant Town Manager, Elsie Powers Burlett, and we will be joined by the Town Manager, Michael McCall, and Ms. Levine, and we will start to recognize that Ms. Levine is joining us as we speak.
What do you think?
So, call to order, review the agenda, announcements and public comment, and we will enter into
executive session for a couple items, including discuss strategy in respect to a firefighter's
early events number 2026-0001, step three.
We will have a discussion, discuss strategy in respect to litigation 16, whispering lane,
and then we will review and approve the executive session minutes of June 8th and June 15th,
if available, be 10 to full seven minutes, before we return to open session, which we anticipate
will be about 640.
That will be followed by a joint meeting with the finance committee to discuss, review, and
vote, and approve the fiscal 26-year and 20-year transfers.
We will make an appointment to the cultural council, approximately 705, who will be joined
by Mr. Gould, who is our licensed site professional, or CMG, further discussion and updates of the
property at 195 Main Street.
We will then, for about 45 minutes, spend some time reviewing both proposals we have received
for town's town council.
At 815, we will have a hearing for a liquor license, possible vote to approve a liquor license
amendment, this is a transfer of license at the vote, followed by a one, three appointment,
and one confirmation appointment.
At approximately 830, we will move with the town center owners to continue our discussion,
I think, that we had about two months ago, and about the exciting things that they are
thinking and planning on doing with the property or with the town center.
We have a quick couple housekeeping, I'm going to say that the organization board, we need to
rebuild for expiration of their town leadership, we'll have the town manager's report, and
the minutes of June 8th and June 15th are available, review correspondence, followed by the select
boards, reports, and concerns, and with a miracle, we will adjourn at 930 AM.
All right, having said all that, do we have any announcements from the board?
Mr. McCall or Ms. Klaus Black, do you have any announcements?
Okay, great, thank you.
Then we're going to move to public comment.
Is there any public comment to the members of Bernstein?
Thank you.
Dave Bernstein, 25 Louise and Lane, Chair of the Wayland Electronic Living Implementation
Subcommittee, I'm here because legal services are, he was on your agenda, I wish to comment
on that, on May 15th, 2021, Wayland's Annual Town Meeting approved Article 16, authorizing
you to select board to file a Home Rule Petition to enable remote participation in Waylandstown
meetings.
Despite repeated requests from our town administrator, KP Law's Managing Attorney Lauren Goldberg
failed to engage until February 2022, delaying submission of our Home Rule Petition by nine
months.
This pattern of non-responsiveness by Attorney Goldberg has since been repeated multiple
times, despite efforts by our town manager to facilitate access.
Most recently, our moderator has spent two months attempting to consult with Attorney Goldberg
on our remote participation legislative strategy without success.
In April, I was invited by Nantucket's moderator to present remote participation to a public meeting
of its select board.
Without prior notice, Attorney Goldberg joined that meeting, she's evidently town council
there as well, and contradicted my response to a question about increased participation
at meeting duration.
She cited results from representative town meetings, an inapplicable comparison given the
fundamental differences from town meetings that are open like Wayland's and Nantucket's.
Publicly undermining the client's position without warning falls short of the professionalism
and judgment that Wayland should expect from its legal counsel.
I therefore urge you to choose a more reliable and trustworthy organization to serve as Wayland's
town council.
I don't have time for more detail.
Our liaisons, Tom and Doug, know the broad strokes if you need them.
I can revive or be told more.
Thank you.
Anybody else in the moment? I see two people online. Okay, I don't see who that is. Gretchen Dresden. Gretchen Dresden, yes. Gretchen, I recognize you. Hi, Gretchen Dresden's, 155 Main Street. I just had a quick comment on 195 Main Street. The fence that is in front of the property is really old. It's fallen several times and they have sort of propped it up and it's fallen again and it's in the bushes. It looks horrendous. And a suggestion could be that they just remove the fence entirety and just clean up the debris at the base of the bushes. That area would look much nicer with that removed. And if indeed a fence is needed, which I can't imagine why, then a new fence should be put in. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, everybody. Thank you for letting me join you. Sorry, I'm remote. A couple of things. I did send an email and I hope that everyone will have a chance to look at it. It's not what's on the agenda for today, but it is a request for perhaps at least matching what Sudbury is doing on their road on the other side of the bridge to our road, but at least my end of it. And I kind of would like to agree with the position stated on the town council. I certainly got misleading information from her myself, and she gave misleading information as well at the town meeting. And there was, in one of your previous meetings, an interest in getting people more involved in boards and town politics. And I have a copy of the Lincoln Select Board news, which I would like to provide to you. Since I'm not there in person, I will have to bring it down at a later time. And it has some wonderful ideas that might work from here as well. So I think that's about it for this evening. Thank you very much for letting me talk.
Thank you. Yes, thank you. Is anybody else? I see no one else on line. I'm sorry? I see no one else. Okay. Thank you, Ryan. I think I'm moving the Select Board into Executive Session A, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A-2-3, to discuss strategy with respect to litigation on 16 whispering lane. And C, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A-7, to review and approve the Executive Session Minutes of June 8, 2026 and June 15, 2026, available with intent to hold seven minutes. Is there a second to the motion to enter into Executive Session? Yes. Is that all, please? Yes. Yes, sir. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
We will have a roll call vote. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Reynolds? Yes. Mr. Ferry? Yes. Mr. LeBlanc? And Ms. Martin? That's 5-0. Yes. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, Town Manager, Council of Powers, Burlatt, Assistant Town Manager, Jalen Braddocka. No, no, sorry.
I'll ask Kate Ryan, the Director, and Dave Jenkins, Town Council from KP Law. The Committee will rejoin the public meeting from the Executive Session, and we anticipate we will return in approximately 30 minutes. Thank you. So, we, if these folks are, yeah, they're also a good meeting as well. We're going to bring the Select Board back to open session at 7-0-9. Thank you, Kim. So, the next item is going to be to look at a joint meeting with the Finance Committee, discuss with you, and a vote to approve this year's 26-year-end transfers. Can we fill up Mr. Keveney, please? And we need to fill up Mr. Keveney, and Brian, help me out if I can't see anyone with this. Bill has. Bill has. We are back on. Okay. Bill has, please. I don't know. And Mr. Keveney, I don't know if I can't see if Bill's question. Bill was connected a minute ago, but the webinar got briefly closed. So, I don't know if he's rejoining. Okay. We're sending in with each other. Okay. So, I need, um. Can't do anything until Bill comes back. No, I can't, Brian. I've got to get going here. I need Brian Keveney, though.
Now we'll email this link out to the rest of the team, see if that helps.
Hey, Brian. Hi, Brian. Mr. Gould, could you, um, get rid of your video now? We'll be with you once we're done this topic. Okay. Thank you. A couple of thoughts. So, um, so we're going to have a joint meeting with the Finance Committee.
Yeah. We'll set. Okay. We will set. Then we'll set. Take care of it. That's all I'm assuming. All right. So, I would say you're planning on, um, I'm going to call my name and go. I am. We don't perform just yet. All right. Then pause it. So, I think we're already joined. I'll tell you what. When you have one, you let me know. Okay. All right. So, joining us tonight, um, this is the end of the year. We, if we need to, we make what we call current year transfers. Um, Brian puts a list together of things that need to be moved and how they, things that need to be paid, how they can be funded or putting some of the funds around. Uh, by code, what happens is that the select board votes it and then the Finance Committee votes to be in conference with the vote from the select board. So, um, joining us, joining us in the room, we have Iris Doxer and we have, um, Mr. We hear you this morning and today and we'll run, we have Mr. Quimby and Mr. Haas was here and should he join me again, we will have the Finance Committee call to order. In the meantime, Mr. Kevin, in the floor is yours and we are on page five of the main packet to these where the, uh, series of, um, memos and charts start there. So, Brian here, the floor is yours, please. Yes. Ellie and Scott have their hand up. Is it possible that dad has missed our bus under a different unit? Yes. So anybody want to check that?
No, no, I'm robbing. Um, there's five, and, uh, yeah, we can just inquire who they are.
Hi, sorry, it's, I can't figure out how to take my daughter's name off. It's April. I'm on. Oh, okay. Thanks. Thank you. So then we inform them. We inform. Yeah, I was trying to give you a quorum. I figured that was somebody else. It was a big hand. Do you want to call Celeste? Yeah. Do you want to please? The Finance Committee calls to order at 7.14 p.m. on Monday, June 29th, 2026. We have Finance Committee member Iris Hoxha, Brian O'Hurley, April Methot, and, um, Rob Fimby. And I think for the purposes of this meeting, we'll need a temporary chair. All right. So I move that, uh, Iris Hoxha serve as temporary chair for just this meeting. Do we have a second? Seconded. Okay. Thanks, Rob. Second. And then we'll do a roll call vote. Um, Rob? Yes. April? Yes. Yes. Iris, yes. Okay. We're just joined by Mr. Huss. Oh, excellent. All right. Yeah. Mr. Kennedy, the floor is yours. Okay. So good. I'm in the packet. Okay. So good evening. So these transfers fall under chapter 44, section 33B. Uh, I believe this started about 10 years ago under the Modernization Act. In years past, when there was an appropriation deficit, before this particular master and law was adopted, towns, um, had to appropriate. Any deficits on their next year's tax recap. So what DOR did was made it easier for towns to clean up their books at the end of the year. This is, this is what we're doing here. So what you have is you have four appropriation deficits. The sum total is $681,221. It really affects the snow and ice budget, the evoke education budget, and the ask, and the school energy budget. So what I'll do is briefly talk about each one of them. I did send a memo. I do have sort of the motion already dictated in there where the monies are coming from. So the select board can actually just read the motions right off the memo. So it's snow and ice, unless you, unless you were in Florida, um, you saw that we had a pretty rough winter. Um, most notably the snow, um, sand and ice budget really went up, uh, both the payroll and the expense budget in snow and ice, which are voted independently at town meeting, both had appropriation deficits. The personal services budget deficit is $104,151. The expense budget is $515,849. Uh, in order to deal with a $620,000 deficit, Michael McCall and myself have been working with department heads for probably three months now, um, tracing where they're going to be with their turnbacks at the end of the year. And with the help of all of the various departments, I did provide a schedule, which shows 18 different departments or appropriations that are contributing $620,000 to the two separate lines. And there's a separate schedule that shows that I'm not going to go through each one, but both. Michael and myself went through numerous times with the departments and we came up with these turnbacks that can fund this budget. So the, the allocation is from 18 of these appropriations into the, both the payroll and the non-payroll budget to, um, extinguish a $620,000 deficit. So why don't I stop in that one before I jump into the next two, so we don't come back. Does anybody have any questions on the snow and ice?
Anybody on the slip? Brian, what's the distinction between personnel services and expenses? Is personnel services essentially overtime and- No, it's all, it's all payroll, any wages, payroll, regular standard salary, overtime, part-time salary. So that's how meaning we evoke a department, both a payroll budget, which we call personal services and an expense budget, which is contractual services, supplies, professional services. So that's the distinction. So- Presumably- Oh, sorry, go for it. Sorry, go ahead. So presumably the payroll services is largely overtime in this case, right? It's all overtime. And the expenses are basically contracted services, outside vendors doing this applying? Yeah, the expenses for this particular one, the snow and ice expenses would be contractual services, vehicle repairs, um, uh, gasoline and salt and sand. The salt, for example, the salt and sand budget for fiscal 26 was $198,000. We spent $588,000 just in that one line item. So the snow and ice expense budget has four line items, which I just read. And Brian, in the past, do I recall correctly that the commonwealth has made supplemental appropriations that enable towns and cities to offset some of these extraordinary expenses?
Um, I'm not sure of your question, but if you, if a town cannot fund a year-end snow and ice budget, you can raise it on next year's tax recap. I did ask DOR early on when we were getting, uh, you know, the bad winter rolling in if they would allow cities in town to amortize the deficit over, you know, two or three years, you know, you hear in the news, Worcester had a very big deficit, multi-million. You had a lot of these bigger cities that struggle with deficits much greater than ours. And the only flexibility we have with DOR is to raise it on next year's tax recap entirely 100%. So is that, is that your question, Bill? My question really was, uh, I seem to recall that in the past, the state has, uh, passed a special act to give, to basically reimburse towns for extraordinary expenses related to these kinds of events. Yeah. Usually those are for hurricanes, um, unexpected, you know, I haven't seen snow, a snow event. I've got seen, you know, FEMA will give money. We get some from the, the mass, um, emergency. Those typically fall under like a bad rainstorm, flooding, um, hurricane situation. Not so much snow and ice. Okay. So to your point, Brian, I'm going to go around the court at the table of the select board for questions to see if the FinCon members have questions on this chart. Um, and then I'm going to go, Brian, Miles, um, Bill or April or Rob, do you have questions on this chart? All right, Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. McAuliffe, yeah, yeah, one thing I wanted to add on to what Mr. Kevin indicated, when you look at the proposed transfers and the numbers we cling to, um, some of that was a result of us not filling positions that came up vacant towards the end of the fiscal year that you, you used the term pulling rabbits out of that every now and then this, you know, was an extraordinary effort. And we asked all apartment departments to forego certain expenses towards the end of the year and not hire some staff so that we could get through the remainder and take care of this deficit. This isn't something we could do every year. So I just want to make the public aware that this was an extraordinary event, uh, having such a deficit in snow and ice and there were some positions like my office is short staff, others are short staff, some people, you know, left to take new positions or whatever the case. So we had some salary and rather than fill those positions, we were going to wait till January, excuse me, July 1st so that we could get through this fiscal year. I just want to make people aware of that. I do have a question about this chart. Brian, could you explain how there is a number 12 that says we're having 10,000 from the transfer station general fund? Yeah, that's it. We have a 60 appropriation is 65,000 and that is for the treatment of the landfill down the street, down by DPW when they've had unexpected funds. Right now they have a turn back and we're going to essentially use $10,000 of that turn back to this is not the enterprise fund. It's not the enterprise fund. Okay. I was a little wondering how we were going to be able to do that. Okay. So this was just a, excuse me for one second. I just wondered how we were going to do that. Go ahead. I did have a question, Brian, just in the context of this and the other two transfers, do you have a sense of how much historically the last two, three years, the aggregate turnbacks have been that went to free cash and with these three sets of transfers, are you expecting zero turnbacks? Or is there going to still be a sizable amount going back to free cash? Yeah, I would expect just in the snow and ice alone, what you're doing is you're taking 620,000 that would normally be turned back. And you have the snow and ice budget that also has a $620,000 deficit. So there's a million dollars shortfall right there in turnbacks, just in snow and ice. I don't know yet, as we're finishing the last accounts payable, what the ultimate turnback will be for the town. Usually we shoot for about one to 1.5% of the budget comes back to free cash. This is a different year where we're losing about a million dollars just because of snow and ice. And that is the fact that other departments are contributing 620, and you've got the snow and ice returning nothing. Typically snow and ice spends, and I have a number in front of me, Brian, but, you know, a good 75% of their budget. We have not brought this budget up in many, many years. I think about three, four or five years ago, we may have brought it up $50,000. But if you look at a 10-year history of the snow and ice budget, it has barely moved. It has not grown with the cost of labor increases. It has not grown with the cost of inflation. We've kind of kept flat hoping we're not going to have the year. The last time we had this kind of year is when the Patriots beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. I remember that. So it's like once every seven years we got walloped by snow and ice. So nobody has any questions on the first transfer. Could we speak about the second one, which is the vocational education? And I think that's for $11,000, right? Right. So for vocational education, when we voted the fiscal 26 budget, there was one student attending Minuteman. In January, 2026, a family moved into town. And that student that moved into town went to Assipid Valley. So at the time this happened, we got information that that student would most likely leave Assipid Valley and go to Whelan Public. That didn't happen. The student ended up going to Keith Tech. So during the year, and I did supply a whole schedule of the spending for vocational ed. So we have two vocational ed systems we're involved with, which is Keith Tech and Minuteman. In Minuteman's case, we not only pay the tuition, but we were paying for a student all of the transportation. And you can see by the schedule, the cost of transporting these kids. So we started the fiscal 26 with one kid going to Minuteman and covering the transportation, thinking the other kid that was at Assipid Valley is going to go to Whelan Public. Well, that didn't happen. So what did happen was that two kids enrolled at Keith and then two more kids enrolled at Minuteman. The way it works is the eighth graders express an interest in going to these two vocational schools. And it's really late in spring that both of these schools accept these students and, quote, have the room for them. So typically what happens is the budget is already voted before we even get information that, you know, more kids are even going. So right now you have three kids at Minuteman, two kids at Keith. The cost of transporting the kids at Keith was covered. They may have been driven by parents down to Keith Tech. But that changed in April, May and June where we had to transport them. So the cost for the Evoke Ed that you're being asked for tonight is to cover the cost of the transportation by star voyage that amounts to $11,221. The Minuteman is completely covered there. Transportation and tuition is all accounted for as well as the tuition for Keith. Thank you, Brian. Does anybody in the select board have a question on this item? Does anybody in the finance committee have a question on this item? No? Okay. Let's go to the third one, which is the school energy. I think the school energy is good on my sheet here.
I think it's a few years back. The energy accounts of all school in the town were in the facilities budget. We moved that to unclassified and broke it out by town energy in school energy. I did put together a little paragraph. The cost of delivering the electricity and the gas and the fact that we had a very cold spells during the winter time and hitting the schools ended up resulting in the energy budget being overspent by $70,000. The school department is going to pay $20,000 towards this overage. Early on in the year when we were dealing with the snow and ice budget back in April, May, the school committee committed that they would help fund the health insurance budget if that was in deficit since significantly most of the people on the health insurance are really elated to the school. So they had committed $20,000 early on to fund the 32B account. The 32B account today has a surplus. We don't need a transfer there, but we did ask the superintendent and the school business manager to flip it from funding a potential deficit in insurance 32B to covering this snow night. So what's going to happen here is you're not going to vote the $20,000 in the school department. We're going to apply expenses directly towards their budget. So all you're being asked for tonight is to fund and transfer $50,000 from the, it would come from both the solid reserve, which has a surplus of $46,000. And again, the 32B with $3,400. Okay. Thank you, Brian. Anybody on the select board have a question about this item? Yes. Please, Mr. Wins. This is New England. Is some of this built into future years, even in just your thinking at this point? Well, for the 27 budget, we did have a 5% increase over 26. So we were seeing the trend increase in expenses. The budget for 26 was just 3% over 25. But in the, I did put in the memo, we did bring it up 5% in 27, anticipating that being large increases in electricity in particular. All set. All set. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else on the select board? Okay. Anybody on the finance committee have a question on this item? I had just a clarifying question. Your note says unregulated electric delivery charge increases. Are those the electric delivery charge increases that are? You might have to move a little closer to the bar so we can show you. Sure. Thank you. Sorry. Your note here says it's due to unregulated electric delivery charge increases. Are those the electric delivery charge increases that are voted on and approved through the state? Or is that the actual cost of the electric? I think the rates are probably approved by the state through the utilities. I think the delivery is not regulated. So that all the cities in town are exposed to this delivery charge that is not regulated by the state. I'll just like that. I'll just like that. Mr. Murray, you're all set. I'm sorry. I'm April, Bill, Rob, you're all set. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Mr. McCullough, Mr. McCullough left to speak. No, I had an answer to Mr. Whitney's question earlier that the earlier this month, Governor Healy did sign a supplemental budget, which included $100 million for this shortfall. $80 million would go to the 351 cities and towns based on the mileage. And there would be other monies for the other 20 was supposed to go to those hardest hit by the weather. There's an article in the MNA about it. Okay. So now Mr. Whitney's question is, how much are we getting? I can read his mind. That's your question.
Okay. Everybody's all set now. I think nobody has any questions. So then there are two motions. Where were the motions, Brian? It's right in the memo under each one. It's highlighted with a line under it. It says transfer 104 for the barriers and problems of snow and vice transfer. Okay. Do you see those? And where's the third one? So there's two under snow and ice. There's two different appropriations. So the motion for the snow and ice is to transfer $104,155. Do you want us to call three of them together or one at a time, Brian? Well, you can always say vote 681,221 from various appropriations as defined in the memo to the selectmen on June 22, 2026. Do moved. We'll have a second. Sergeant. Thank you. So is there any further discussion from the select board? Otherwise, we'll have all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It's 5-0. Now for the finance committee, you need to vote a current vote, right? So would you like to make a motion? Yes. I move that the finance committee concur with the select board's recommendation to make the transfers noted in Brian Keveney's memo dated June 23rd. Seconded. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion from the... Well, actually, you should say that. Yeah. Any further discussion before we take a roll call vote? All right. April? All right. Yes. He needs to be verbal. He needs to be verbal. Yes. Thank you. Phil? Aye. Rob? Yes. Thank you, Brian. Yes. Iris? Yes. Okay, great. I move that the FinCon adjourn at 731. Thank you. Do we have a second, please? Second. Thank you. Second. Hello. And apologies. We're going to have to do the roll call, but April? Yes. Phil? Yes. Rob? Yes. Brian? If I say yes, April, thanks for your service. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Iris, yes. All right. Thank you all. We're going to have a plan. And we have a plan in the next meeting. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Brian. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to make you aware that some of the people starting to show up for 730 and all the other times are here and you're queuing them up. We're about 40 minutes behind. I'm sorry. Did Brian suggest that we approach that we approach that we have a plan in the next meeting? we were doing them individually and then brian said we made a motion and we went so moved and mr mr mccall i want to make you aware that some of the people starting to show up for 7 30 and all the other times are armed here and you're queuing them up we're about 40 minutes behind i'm sorry did brian suggest that we appropriate 620 000 681 okay 681 okay that's fine want to thank you yep would you join us real quick please they've taken the chairs how are you doing well how are you thank you because um hailey has applied for a position on the cultural council for information is in our package starting on um page 10 and if you just we're running a little late no make it quick this is going to be really good for you real quick tell us what your interest is we'll see if we have a question and we'll go from there sure hi i'm hailey fuquay um my husband and i moved to wayland about a year ago right here next to the town building um i am a professional opera singer and also work in technology and i previously had a consulting business that serviced non-profits and i'm very familiar with the massachusetts cultural council and their grant making in terms of applying as well as um granting those funds and i would love the opportunity to join the wayland cultural council as i believe that the artistic fabric of any community is vital to its town and and just how our lives are shaped by art it's very nice um information to be provided for us and the faculty has there any questions from the board have you had a chance to observe the cultural council or speak with any members there i have not yet uh i saw the call in the um the town newsletter email and uh thought i would apply but no i have not yet had a chance to speak with them but um have been very familiar with the process of going through grant the grant applications through the mcc um as an artist myself thank you okay here we have any other questions should we have a motion happy rules uh appointment of haley fuqua haley fuqua yes to the cultural council from sherman in june 30th of 2021 second second um all those in favor say hi all right thank you mr levain you want to give me the spiel please so haley now that you're officially appointed um you need to be sworn in okay by the town clerk and so you'll receive a letter from the town manager's office within the next few days bring that with you down here to town building to the town clerk's account and she'll swear you in and give you some information that uh prompt of interest training that we all need to meet as well as here's welcome thank you okay i look forward to getting more involved so thank you appreciate it take care thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you proud alumno before thank you yeah nice item seven on agenda includes discussion of 195 main street well this evening is ben gould licensed site professional individual who's assisted the town over many years particularly including the site and uh you're welcome thanks for your patience and uh tell us where things are up with this property please and for those who watched page 12 in the packet right first are you able to hear me yes thank you okay good this doesn't always work well um i put together a brief memo just to say where we're at um i don't want to take too much time i won't read the memo memo to you you've read it uh in essence we have spent about three quarters of the money that was appropriated uh to do what we need to do to research 195 main street and of course a lot of it has to do with pfas contamination you've all heard of that um and the pfas contamination um is more widespread than i expected i think more widespread than anyone else expected on it so in your packet um following the memo there's nine figures um the first seven of them are basically groundwater flow uh to give you some idea what we've been up to for the past year uh we we started out all the way back in august of 22 um we just looked at the old dpw footprint building footprint um and you know we get a generic groundwater flow this is the kind of study we normally get at a relatively small property such as this an acre or two um we then went on and we realized that there's more pfas out there than we thought there was going to be so we we did another iteration of monitoring wells expanded out onto 207 main street and found that the flow was a little bit more complex and we still didn't find the ends so we we moved on again and by the uh fifth figure there which is figure six e um it shows that the this kind of a curious amount of groundwater collecting on the 195 main street property i don't know how familiar you are with reading these sort of maps um but where the concentric rings are that's actually a sink that's where the groundwater is flowing towards um and you would expect it all to be you know generically flowing towards dudley pond but uh it's a little more complicated than that so uh we kept going um next next figure shows about the same sort of thing and then we did another iteration of monitoring well installation this time we went all the way in onto the middle school property and um there was it's interesting scientifically i don't want to waste your time uh going over the details of that um but if you can notice that the contour lines are closer together um that means that the gradient is steeper and that was sort of a a wintertime phenomenon and um i believe that as the groundwater table drops that sink gets stronger and stronger and it heads towards that and i have a theory for why there is a sink there there's some storm water collection goes on there if you recall there's a couple of storm drains sort of in the middle of the 195 main street property and those are draining the area and when the water table gets lower it's more effective at draining that water so it's it's steeper towards the middle of of that property um and now going on to the next one which is figure seven um that is the results of all of our rounds of pfas testing um it's a not the way i like to do it but unfortunately pfas testing is pretty darn expensive so i'm trying to trying to help with your budget problems here um and not do a comprehensive sampling round we have not yet done a comprehensive sampling round of all the wells at the same time for pfas so this is sort of scattershot you know every time we put a new wells we test for pfas and this is the results i get from that what it shows is a little similar to the groundwater flow is that the red lines here are showing that most of the pfas is concentrating towards the middle of the 195 property um the scary part is um there's not a lot of of red lines there but the outermost red line is 50 nanograms per liter or parts per trillion um of pfas 6. the state standard is 20 parts per trillion of pfax 6. we haven't got down to that level consistently anywhere on the property or the three properties that we're looking at so far so that tells me that we have not yet found the edge of what we need to be looking for and then the final figure in there is all of the pfas numbers added together which gives a better feel for how the pfas is going and that shows more or less the same like bullseye look that in in the middle of the 195 main street property is where it's the congregating so quick summary um groundwater flow does change over the year more than most sites do um that has to do probably with the fact that it's a very sandy gravelly aquifer so water flows through it quite easily and secondarily there's um a bedrock ridge that pops up about where the east side of the wayland middle school is and it goes north and south as far as we can tell we didn't try to map it or anything but we we hit it um if you notice there's one symbol that it says b36 that's not a well uh we tried to get a well in there but we at rock and couldn't get deep enough to get a well in and uh for the the um february of 2026 measurement we did i believe it was the february one uh we actually showed groundwater flowing to the east on the east part of the property east part of the middle school property even though everything else was flowing west so it seems to be a bedrock bridge that makes a divide there although this is scientifically interesting um but i'm sure that's not really what you want to know about right now um the bottom line for where we're at what we need to do is get to what dep calls a phase two comprehensive site assessment they have a timetable for how to do that and according to the standard timetable by november 1st of this year we're supposed to have all the information in hand necessary to do a phase two comprehensive site assessment we do not yet have that information in hand there's a few outstanding points one is we don't know the full extent of pfas contamination out to at least that 20 nanogram per liter park per trillion number of what the pfas 6 is i'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to find the edge of that 20 nanogram per liter and i think the reason for that is we apparently have a source at the wayland middle school um it's a hypothesis right now we don't have it proven but it sure seems like that was where it originated at least at the highest levels but we also seem to have contribution from some other points um and those other points are likely neighborhoods where there's you know several houses that have their own leach fields and people wash clothes um the wash water gets into the leach field and if those clothes happen to have stain resistant coatings on them uh scotch guards the most famous one but there's lots of them then it's very easy to get pfas into the groundwater that way and i'm afraid what that's what we're we're seeing that even if we continue to step out i'm not sure how far we're going to have to step out before we actually find that 20 nanogram per liter edge and i don't want to waste the town's money doing wild goose chase on this but i do suggest we should do one more iteration of stepping out now the timing on that can vary and i'll get to that in a minute the second thing we do not know is we don't know the vertical flow we know the horizontal flow for groundwater we don't know the vertical the only way to check that is to put a deep well in as a couplet to one of the shallow wells or to do it a couple places and to see what the difference in elevation is if the deeper well has a lower it's called a potentiometric surface but a lower water table easy way to think of it if the water table is lower in the deeper well than it is in the higher well that means the groundwater is flowing downward not just outward and conversely if the deeper well has a higher water table than the shallow water shallow well next to it the groundwater is welling up it's as an upward vertical gradient to it so we need to have an answer to that question to fully satisfy the requirements in a phase two the third point we don't know yet with any great detail is the hydraulic conductivity that's how easy or difficult it is for water to move through the subsurface the groundwater flow and that's important to know because the speed that anything flows through the subsurface is a it's a function of first the gradient how steep the water is how steep the water table is and secondly the the permeability or the conductivity how easy it is to push through so we have to know both of those to get a handle on how fast this contamination is moving to get an accurate handle on it and we don't know that with any any certainty yet we can estimate it based on the soil types we've viewed and we do that at a lot of sites just estimate it but in this case i think it would make a lot of sense to actually measure hydraulic conductivity so those are the three things we do not yet know it is possible for us to get all that information by november but it's going to be difficult and it requires spending quite a bit of money in a short amount of time to do it and i'm not certain that that's really what the town wants us to do and it's not necessarily what we need to do um i said that november 1st deadline there is a provision in the rules we have to follow the master's contingent plan mcp those regulations have a provision that says if you are not able to meet that schedule the way they have it laid out you can request a notice where you can you can send a notice to dp requesting a delay in meeting those particular deadlines i actually recommend that that's what we should be doing at this point that rather than trying to rush everything to get a report together for november 1st of this year that we ask for another year to get that information together so that we can do it by november 1st of 2027 and that would allow us more time to get the wells in it would spread the budget auto out over another fiscal year and probably help things out for the town that way um so with all of that um what i've i've come up with um three particular options here um one thing i haven't mentioned yet i should mention now um we have a public involvement plan a pip involved with this project um they're a good thing that that's how people of the town learn about it and get a chance to voice their opinion and make suggestions and that's not common in our line of work but it's also not unheard of and certainly in wayland there's been several pip sites the raytheon site i've worked on for a lot of years and there was some before that um so it's i think you're all familiar what a pip is um the scary part is my estimate to deal with the first pip meeting we had was i said it's ballpark 10 000 to deal with that i didn't have a hard number to work with but i said i think we could probably handle this for about 10 000 as it turned out we spent a little under 24 000 of the town's money to to first run the pip meeting to send out all the notices to develop the presentation necessary and then to respond to all the questions that people had which were numerous and very good questions a lot of them and not particularly easy to answer that's one of the good things about the town of wayland you have a lot of educated and interested people um the bad part of that is it you have to spend a lot of money on someone like me to be able to answer them and hopefully satisfy them with the answers that we come up with the pip process what is a way for the public to be involved in some decision making on how to do the next steps we do have a pip meeting scheduled for july 30 so in about a month we'll be having a pip meeting it'll be a virtual meeting i'm constrained i'm sure you've all heard my wife had a stroke about 11 months ago and as a result i can't really leave her alone for long periods of time now so to accommodate that i'm going to have to run this meeting off of my laptop from home um it's it's doable that way i don't think it's going to be a big sacrifice on information but it's not the same as being able to run it face to face in person so i apologize for that but it's it's really out of my hands um so that's coming up in about a month and uh in that meeting i'm going to solicit uh public comment on what what does the public think we should be doing to get to that next point what do we need to do for that phase two comprehensive what else information do we need to draw now i've outlined the three things that i'm aware but there's some specifics on it where exactly we want to go for the next iteration of monetary wells um how many more iterations do we think we want to do and um the question is going to come up and i don't know because we don't really have the facts to guess is what if we demonstrate that the public uh or the private residents as i should say in the vicinity are contributing significantly to the pfas problem how are we going to deal with that um that's a big question i don't have an answer for it but it is a question that's going to get raised and i need to be able to address it in some fashion so that all said i have three options that i want to put forth tonight first is we do have to have the pit meeting but in option one we do the pit meeting we install another iteration of monitoring wells we do a full round of sampling of all the monitoring wells that we have in place plus the additional ones we're going to do we do the hydraulic conductivity testing we talked about and we send a notice of delay to dep to say we still need another year to provide the full report that's going to explain all of this and my budget estimate for that is about 55 000. so that would probably take us beyond what's already appropriated for this particular project option two we have to hold the pit meeting we do a full round of sampling of just the wells that we have in place now we have 16 wells that are currently in place we do the connectivity testing using existing wells we send in a notice to dep saying it's going to be another year for the full report my estimate for that is 35 000 to get that work done option three we try to close out quickly we hold a pit meeting of course and we do the connectivity testing which is the one thing we really have to have and i explained to dep in the report why we don't yet know where the 20 milligram or excuse me 20 mic nanogram 20 nanogram per liter regulatory line is and that i'm not sure that we will find it that will not satisfy dep but it's by sending in that information we we have met the requirements um it's a possibility that dp will say the report is incomplete and ask us um to provide an addendum to it um that sort of thing does happen with some frequency especially on complicated sites like this so pip meeting connectivity testing provide a phase two report with the existing data my estimate for that is about 30 000 total so um none of them are really exciting options i i can't say that that we'd be jumping up and down asking for any one of those but i want to present those three options to you and um see what your thoughts are and before we get answers for that um one other question i had that i i should know but i don't know is for the next round of installing monitoring wells my recommendation is that we start to go on to some different public properties specifically right of ways of public streets um if we can spread out from the area by doing that i am very reluctant to get access to onto public private property excuse me onto private properties to put monitoring wells for this kind of problem at least yet if the results of this next iteration show clearly that there is a source that's on a on public property excuse me i keep saying the wrong way if there's a source that's on private property um and it's obvious that that's where it's coming from then i think that's the right thing to do but i don't want to bring in homeowners um without a really good reason to say that you know you're you're likely to join us as a potentially responsible party so far this has been a municipal problem um i believe it's bigger than municipal problem but we don't have the hard facts yet to show that it is so i don't want to do that so all of that said to put wells onto uh public roads public roadways right of ways not in the road itself but on the in the right of way outside the paved area do we need to have a street opening permit and do we need a police detail so i just put that as a question and also um if you have a thought on which of those three options might be the best one to pursue so now back to you so um that's a lot thank you and again we apologize for being a little delay we have uh uh we i think we have all committed ourselves to norm um maybe we should just do we want to just start with questions and then look at the three option ideas so why don't i open it to questions doug had kind of raised his hand to be first so do you still want to be first on the question sure okay let's do that hi man doug here um looking back at my notes over the last few years and my most recent note is from last december 15th and i had jotted down that you had indicated we were approaching the end of phase the phase two process you reiterated the november 2026 deadline and you said at the time we don't know the full extent of the pfas contamination and that it doesn't make any sense to chase the pfas and that you had enough information to be able to draft a report to be responsive to the phase two requirements this sounds like the circumstances have changed somewhat since then that we have more information that leads us to seemingly require even further information to be responsive to the phase two process yes the further information i have is the concentrations of pfas um we did do two more iterations of monitoring wells in an attempt to get a handle on how big the problem is and excuse me for it while i look at my very small notes here okay i'm gonna magnify this on my screen okay so um monitoring the well mw21 we had a total pfas of 466 parts per trillion in it and the actual pfas 6 the number that's regulated was 417 parts per trillion that is 20 times the state standard um previous to that we we were talking about something that was you know ballpark 110 or so which it's scary because that's still five times the state standard but we're much higher now that tells me that the problem is is the level that deps gonna have some serious scrutiny on it there are a lot of sites that are in the 100 parts per trillion range once you get up into the 500 parts per trillion range you start to stand out of the crowd um that means that uh dp has a pfas working group in each of their four regions and the northeast working group is going to take significant interest in this site that tells me that they're not going to be satisfied with a report that has a incomplete delineation and some hand waving to say well we don't really know how big it is but we don't want to go any further because we don't want to assume that there's a private contribution to this when it was started out it appeared to be a public problem um the other half of that question is or answer the question is the the one i expected to be the smoking gun we put a monitoring well directly into one of the septic leach fields at the whaling men's school that's that's well mw 34 yeah and read my notes here that had a total pfas number of 127 which doesn't scare me that much and a pfas 6 number of 40.9 which is double the state standard which also doesn't scare me very much but from looking at the groundwater flow so i'm pretty convinced that the contamination that we're seeing at that well mw 21 that the big 500 number started out at the whaling middle school and moved in that because that's exactly the way the groundwater flows and um here again is one of those things where knowing the hydraulic connectivity will help us a lot that will tell me specifically at this location how fast does that groundwater move and if i can demonstrate it i think we can actually say that what year or range of years it was that pfas got into the ground and is now showing up in mw 21 and from mw 21 it's going to eventually get into the storm drain system again it's a deadly pond which as you know is where the one of the public water supplies for wayland is so it's it's no longer the kind of problem that i can say well it's a significant problem but i don't think the time that the state has to pay a lot of attention to it i i think now we're to the level of the state will be paying a lot of attention to it i don't think i can get by with a minimum amount of information and say we'll get back to you with more later i think we need to provide them with quite a bit right now can you explain that phase three is the remedial action plan and need to come up with a plan within a year which is essentially what is possible to address the problem and phase four you said as a remedy action plan like how will we actually address the problem are we looking at moving into phase three and four even beyond this one-year extension to november 2027 good question um yes those the deadline for the phase three and four is set and the regulations to be one year after the phase two so as part of this request for for an extension i'm going to ask um probably for a year on those as well so the phase three and phase four get pushed off to 2028 um realistically once we have the phase two information in hand now it's a matter of trying to decide what is it we can do and what is it we're going to do what can we afford to do and that answering that question when you have enough information doesn't take a full year it it generally takes a couple months to do it so i will ask the dep for um push to phase two to 2027 push to phase three and four to 2028 and um they will probably say yes to both of those but i will try to get the phase three and four done in six months or less after we get the phase two done so last question but you you were explaining also before as we're trying to get our head around this over the last couple years that it's a very different ballgame when you're talking about metals and gasoline contamination versus pfas so if if we had to do some type of remedial action for pfas i thought i can't find it in my notes right now but i thought it was at such an elevated rate compared to cleaning up the soils for the other types of contaminants that it was it's almost cost prohibitive correct um there are technologies to um collect concentrate and if you get it concentrated enough you can actually do something to destroy pfas they are prohibitively expensive you do not want to get into that that is something that when we do the phase three which is evaluation of remedial alternatives we will evaluate it and demonstrate that for this particular site it is ridiculous it's cost prohibitive and the gain you get out of it is minuscule so we can we're going to bring it up and rule it up so um i can't ignore the possibility of of it but it's very very difficult to destroy pfs compounds they you can't do it chemically you have to do it physically and the way you do it physically is basically you zap it with an incredible amount of electricity and and blow the molecules to pieces so that's you know layman's way of looking at it but that's what happens when you get there and that's not effective unless you have a really really high concentration to work with to begin with so i have seen some technologies out there in the past couple years um those are for places where there's massive amount of pfas contamination in somebody's wastewater plant and what they do is they concentrate it and they get it so concentrated that they have one drum of this you know make essentially nuclear waste a level of pfas which they can address now because it now makes sense to take that one drum and and spend twenty thousand dollars to blast that apart and and make it innocuous but to take the the hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater that went into that and address them makes no sense at all so now back to wayland the for this particular site um it's a couple things i can see we might be able to get to in in the not that distant future uh one is a temporary solution where we can demonstrate that yes there's a whole bunch of pfas in the groundwater here and it is moving in in a direction of and probably into dudley pond um i think dp is going to require us to demonstrate whether it is going into dudley pond and at what concentration um but we haven't got that far yet and let's just say it does that we've demonstrated that okay a significant amount of pfas is getting into dudley pond how is that actually affecting the dudley or the happy hollow wellfield on the other end of dudley pond and i think what we're going to show is the dilution factor of just going into all of that surface water um drops the concentration down low enough that the existing treatment plant plus the enhanced treatment plant that the water department is considering is going to be able to address that level of pfas contamination without any great duress they're building their plant big enough to handle a significant input of contamination you know pfas contamination in surface water we don't want to make it so bad going into there that that it floods their their capacity but i don't think it's going to um but in order to get there is still a long study to get that much information and and explain it to dp in a way that they're going to believe the other option is um to say that we can capture some of the groundwater that's highly contaminated and put it into some sort of containment where they can treat it possibly by transporting it over to the waste the the water treatment plant because they have that system in place that can handle it or something along that line or you know another treatment plant specifically for this particular problem those are fairly expensive options too um but again they're the idea of trying to actually remediate the site to background levels is it's a fantasy at this point um there's an awful lot of very smart people working on how to deal with the p-pass problems much smarter than me with many more degrees than i have uh and sooner or later someone's going to practice but i don't know how soon it's going to be we've we've been able to address every major problem that i've seen um i've now reached my 30th anniversary as a lsp i've seen a lot of bad problems come that looked impossible that have been solved um this one looks impossible at the moment um i predict that it will get solved i don't think it's going to be solved very quickly so um i tend to digress there have i answered your question at all yes definitely i really appreciate it um i just you know a you have to be the bearer of the bad news here where mr mccall's over they're giving me but then we're about 35 minutes behind the next time just so everyone knows just telling him before you yell at me so we but we still haven't finished questions and we still have to look at the three options that mr gould has presented so do we want to talk about the three options first or we want to still finish up the questions of course yeah okay questions okay um do we want to put a time on this or no no okay it's silence the next um agenda has to be yeah yeah go ahead who wants to be next um ben uh i infer that you are really not recommending the third as you i gather you don't think it'll apply with dep is that right i want to i'm offering that uh that third option because i think um it's something that will meet the regulations i will not make dep happy though they will come back at some point and say this is insufficient now they have several ways they can tell you that it's insufficient um one way is to say that we've received this it's not not enough information so you know we're we're requesting further information just a request for information that's a nice polite way to do it and they'll give a a timeline to say within six months provide us this additional information which you know buys you time and i think that that is a workable thing whether we can answer the questions they have within six months i don't know yet but at least it would be a delay um the second level is if they actually say this particular report does not meet the standard and therefore we're actually asking you to retract it and within you know a certain amount of time it could be six months it could be 12 months i don't know they vary um provide us with a full comprehensive phase two that does satisfy the regulations um i have gotten those they're unpleasant um and it does give you some deadlines that you really have to meet um the third way they can do it is they can actually say um we're not sure you know what you're doing and therefore we're going to put an administrative consent order in place that says you will do these certain things within these time frames i think that's highly unlikely in this situation but that's that's sort of the nuclear option that they always have available to them and unfortunately i have stepped into several projects that other firms have started and they got to that point and they the responsible party said well let's go with another firm and i've been able to get those people out of that that particular situation so far all the ones i've had had to been in so i i have some experience dealing with them they're not pleasant but those are the possibilities so am i recommending option three i'm not i don't think that's the one i would go with if it was completely up to me but it is not completely up to me obviously the town is paying for our services and if you need to know what it's going to cost and decide whether you can handle it um for a recommendation i think option two might be the best but yeah it's kind of a risk analysis but for additional five thousand uh three visa v2 doesn't seem like a lot of money um my second question is what's your degree of confidence in these estimates if we spent twenty four thousand dollars on the pip process initially and there is more bad news or more news uh that might generate more probative uh commentary and questions so you know with respect to number two your ballpark is 35 000 but if the pip cost 24 000 the first time around uh does that give you enough money to do connectivity test test existing wells do the lab work do the write-up uh file the notice of delay so what i've done this in this time originally i said i believe we can do the the first pip for 10 000 and they want to be in by 24 000. this time i'm saying we can do this second pip for 15 000. i'm i'm i bumped it up by 50 percent and and said okay um i'm going to try to hold the line and when people ask questions that seem to be esoteric i'm going to tell them that those are esoteric questions that i don't think it's in the town's interest is to pay me to answer right um and then um you know i obviously have a question about short of eliminating the source of contamination which we don't understand or doing a very expensive pump and treat um there will be i'm sure a lot of uh interesting conversation about uh where we go from here once we uh do the phase two um finally you have indicated in the past that this pfas is a significant issue but that it if we're if one were to contemplate putting a building of some description on the site you've previously indicated that you thought that could be done uh with uh the appropriate uh maybe passive venting system that could subslide uh venting system that could be made active that you've got a that you limit excavation that you have no basement and so forth do these more recent findings occasion you to question that earlier assumption okay um so at this property as you know there's three types of contamination problems we have metals contamination soil we have some volatile contamination groundwater and groundwater and we've got this whopping pfas problem groundwater the what you're mentioning about the venting system that's specifically for the volatiles um the gasoline type volatiles that are in in the groundwater and a passive ending system and a good vapor barrier should prevent it from getting in the building at all um if if you put a passive in venting system in it's pretty darn easy to turn into an active venting system if it turns out to be insufficient um an active venting system will almost always handle any kind of volatile contamination you've got it all you have to do is turn on turn the fan higher or put a bigger fan in it that those are minimal costs once you have the system in place pfas is not volatile it's not going to have volatization problems it's not part of the volatile problem um for metals it's a direct contact issue now the the soil itself is fairly deep underground it's you know i remember right it's somewhere in a vicinity to 15 feet below grade um all we have to do to protect people from from that is put a deed restriction on and says you're not going to dig down more than 15 feet unless you have adequate protection uh i don't think that's outrageous i think that's just common sense so we can deal with the metals problem very easily you're also getting into the pfas because you're going to be below the water table at that point and you don't want to be spreading the pfas any worse than you need to and if you're going to dig that deep one of the things you have to do is dewater it and now you get a pfas problem you're dewatering so yeah it all goes together to address the metals contamination to address the volatile contamination is is quite simple in in concept and not very expensive to deal with and virtually any building you want to put on this piece of property can be constructed in such a way as to address that the pfas is a drinking water problem and it's a problem because you're in a zone two for the happy hollow wellfields and that's not going to change even if we decide no to no longer use the happy hollow wellfield to to un to turn that so it's not a zone two any longer and no longer potential drinking water source area is a long long process that you probably don't want to go through because then you you've lost an area for a drinking water supply for the town which is they're hard to come by so um the pfas is is a different animal now i don't believe that it's a major problem at the moment to the happy hollow wellfields it's not right there and it's all goes into dudley pond and gets diluted massively by the water that's already in dudley pond so is it is it something we have to pay attention to do absolutely is it something that we need to worry about a loose sleepover i don't think so that we're constrained by the fact that dep's rules say that if you're in a zone two you have to meet the drinking water standard that's not really realistic but it's what they've decided is is appropriately conservative for for the good of the entire commonwealth um i just give an example that you're all probably quite familiar with on the racely on site um they have trichloroethylene in the groundwater they started out with concentrations that were close to a thousand parts per million of of trichloroethylene with the drinking water standard is five they're now down to a couple dozen at the worst wells couple dozen parts per million so billion excuse me parts per billion and that was with some aggressive remediation but they're well in the way to actually getting down to drinking water levels so and a problem like that you could address it the difference is trichloroethylene is expensive to remediate but not impossible pfas is horrendously expensive to remediate and is close to impossible so it's it's a difference in scale um but the problem itself is the same sort of thing it's not actually um harming the town at this point but if left alone it could easily be a a problem to the drinking water supply you know something yeah thank you are people in these meetings uh apprised of what the meetings cost just as you were careful tonight to tell us they were not apprised of the cost up front um we only held the initial pit meeting which is a requirement you have to hold it within 120 days of a petition to hold it so put it together as fast as i could and um one of the major expenses on that was researching the history there's the history of this was more convoluted than i expect it would be um but we unraveled it took a while but we unraveled it and then the questions that we're getting um a lot of them were were very good technical questions and a few of them were a little off-center um and my goal was to try to answer everybody adequately but um i didn't do the accounting while i was answering the questions probably should have and after having done the accounting for for what it costs to answer all of the questions i'm going to be quite clear at this next meeting that um you're welcome to ask all the questions you want but the answer might be um that's not an appropriate question thank you my second question is uh regarding the application for an extension can you it seems very likely the state's going to move some goalposts here we need more time to look into things broadly as a society um that would reinforce the need for the extension is it likely it will be granted is it a pessimistic application or an optimistic one and what are similar towns doing i'm trying to think i don't believe i've ever had dep refuse a notice when i sent any notice of delay to have them refuse and say no you can't have it oh if i may interrupt that that answers my question then thank you okay
okay so then what thank you madam good evening mr gould thanks for joining us so if you look at this site um with your own eyes it looks really like looks like a bowl if you look at your figure 6g it also kind of looks like a bowl and monitoring well um 21 on figure 7 with the highest ratio yeah monitoring 21 um suggests that might be with the uh central point right yeah we call it a sink but yeah same thing cool so could that figure 417 be representative of a long-term historical collection of pfas chemicals if you look at figure 7 and you see the the blue arrows that are pointing kind of towards it that's the groundwater flow as we map it um and my still working hypothesis is that the original major source for pfas came from the wayland middle school septic fields and and so it takes a few years there's my understanding that the school department has modified its policies relative to certain products that they use cleaning products i certainly hope that's being implemented but is it possible that if the school did modify its policy say let's say hypothetically three or four years ago that this 417 figure represents 25 30 years of using these products i think that might be a little more than it is but i think it probably represents something that happened five years ago possibly 10 years ago and okay eventually it all drains out i mean it doesn't just collect at that point it still flows out of mw21 and it will eventually make its way into doubly pond in some fashion but to me i'm guessing it's been several years five or ten years at this point that's all i have thank you thank you so now um mr bull has asked us about three options going forward and um first one was fairly comprehensive with a price tag of about 55 and somehow i think i'm looking at a film we have probably close to or michael there about 40 or 45 still available right what do we have left after what we have spent i think that's the first question we should have asked i think it is close to that 45 i think so if we went short we may have to find if we wanted to implement plan option one which seemed very full then we would have to you know find the other pennies to go with it if you will um two was a little bit more of a modified version and then three was just sort of um and let's submit and see and what happens and number three is about thirty thousand and number two is 35 so it's kind of uh almost to me probably not cost um efficient oh i like that first so i want to throw it out to the table um somebody want to start you know what option i think we should i just think this topic was uh touched upon when you were out of oh wonderful thank you mr witt i think you had uh well uh i
option three versus option two you know it's a five thousand dollar up charge five thousand dollars is not nickels but it's we might have to repeat but it sounds as though we should definitely do the notice of delight sounds as though we need to do the connectivity test uh we've got to do the pit meeting we're going to sample the existing wells and so the question is whether we do some additional wells and sample those to you know try to get a better handle on uh kind of the you know what's happening with respect to the groundwater flow in the public rights of way which there don't seem to be a water in the area and if we're avoiding private property i don't know well we have the 10 feet on each side of right we have matthews uh road a little uphill right that's a public road right and then
and then somewhere here lately but i don't think it's in the airman but if we go with option two and it turns out we needed the additional wells do we then end up spending more money then because we should have picked option one originally or are we okay to start with two and if we need to move to option one with the additional wells down the road oh i'm i wasn't sure if that question was directed to me or not okay yeah and i'm going to turn on to doug's question which option do you think we should do so uh my answer to that is um from us from a science standpoint i think you do need to go out for another iteration um i'm not sure if the next iteration would be enough i i can't tell you where the end point is until we get to it um but i can tell you what my thoughts were um i was thinking for additional wells um we'd we'd go into the right away at the south end of of keith road which is north of the william middle school to the west end of willow lane which is at the east side of william middle school to the north side of leary street which is south of 195 main street and then actually in the main street right away across the street into that sort of wet area that leads into one dudley pond uh which is also a town on property so those are the ones that i was thinking of so so what's that this for us and which option would you start you might expanding okay he's recommending number one is that what we think you want to do then we have to talk to michael make sure we're not what's the cost on that mr gold 55 okay the i can i can give you some of the detail cost um that's all right we just need to sell everyone just to make things just the 55 000 options number one correct yeah yeah number number one is to get to to do all of that right away would be 55 000. that does not all have to be done before november um if we do the notice of delay then we have a full year more to do it so and then in the next 16 months or so to do all of that well i move this board vote option one i was described by our expert mr gould uh to be spread out over over time depending on two fiscal years you know spending on uh monetary the financial ability and and uh to google's expertise recommendation so thank you is there any further discussion otherwise all those in favor say aye aye all right motion passes five zero thank you very much mr gould very informative as usual appreciate your help thank you mr gould thank you thank you very much yeah i will thank you does this feel a little bit like talking a thread on a sweater
yes ah yes it does years all right so those who are um following us in the fact that we're going to go on to they are discussing um the proposals that are in the packet from uh four separate um legal firms as um and that starts on page 22 and each one of these proposals has got multiple pages so that very long so all right let them know probably be a couple minutes for me to walk through happy to move um um happy to move appointment of in the marine kavanaugh the conservation community preservation committee for a term in june 30 2029 and i'm uh appointment of ian gordon confirmation ian gordon to design review advisory board for term in june 30 20 29. thank you any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye thank you thank you 8 15 was supposed to hang on the hearing of correspondence you have anything on correspondence no okay um michael we have a hearing schedule 8 15 do i have to we let somebody know we're running late i don't know who's out there in terms of the attendance there's a lot of people out there i'm here for the 8 15 for the license uh alex tamargo from the villa restaurant hi how are you we apologize profusely we're running a little late here understood yeah i've been kind of keeping up i have you in the background until you're ready for me okay great thank you sir absolutely hello how are you how are you folks well we're really sorry that we're running so late where would you like us just come forward please do wherever the microphones pick up that's i guess i got discount sound too okay all righty so this is uh carol murray
it's nice to see you hi how are you good how are you i'm good thanks i mean this is so this is bad anyways amy pressel carol murray and i mean amy sorry and um deborah who was with us last week and thank you so um as you know my select board is with um procuring um town council and um you have been our town council i think since 16 and then full council since 19 um but we are doing our due diligence periodic due diligence to conversation with everyone um i can assure you believe it or not with the multiple of pages you sent to the voters comes always comes from there and we've read everything in there so if you just want to give us a quick highlight um i think that would do well thank you and again i apologize profusely it's just in our worst um attendance ever totally understand so uh for the benefit of those at home for the record uh carol murray from kp law nice to see all of you again chris we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet but welcome to the board um i know you did do introductions but um as i just to sort of highlight a few things um lauren goldberg is our managing partner and amy quessel is the head of our land use practice group um and so as we were sitting as you as you were just mentioning madam chair um we have had the honor of serving as your town council for 10 years now and uh as we were preparing to come here today i was kind of reflecting on the fact that absolutely no one in this room was part of that appointment process 10 years ago but the three of us were upstairs in the school committee conference room with at least a dozen people sitting around firing off all sorts of questions and grilling us on everything and i'll speak for myself but i know when we were in the parking lot afterwards i think we felt completely spent because you had such a an engaged dedicated sophisticated group of folks who knew exactly what they were looking for and when we got the call that we had been appointed i have to say we were absolutely honored um that we that we passed what we thought was a very high standard to get here um and since then i think we have seen two town administrators we've seen an interim town manager and now your first permanent town manager it was in this very room that i met spent many nights with sherry carlson and lee anderson working on your town manager act and listening to very dedicated engaged people at that point who wanted to give as much feedback and comments as to how you wanted your government to run and i can remember a few times making a suggestion that well some other communities do it this way and they were always very gentle to remind me no no carolyn we do it the wayland way and i don't mean that in any way to be sarcastic or put or judgmental it really had to keep reminding me that you know you're right every town is unique and this is your town this is you know your form of government you're right i am just your scribe at that point or the person to tell you yes no maybe um but we have covered an awful lot of ground in those 10 years you know we um we're trying to think of just some of the things that you know we came in on sort of the tail end of the river's edge project you would hire special counsel to help you with the rezoning for that process we sort of came in at the tail end with finally getting that permitted through the the zoning board the town center project um i know it's still a work in process you know after all of these years but amy katie klein and i all have our color-coded maps of the parcels at town center which ones you know the developer retained which ones the town has acquired which ones were offered to the town um because we had to really dig into all of that to to be able to you know advise and help keep moving that forward and maybe someday it will be a completed project um we've worked with you all with the first amendment auditors you know as i walk into town hall and i see all of the half doors and the counters and the signs up about what is the public space and what is not a public space i remember exactly where that came from because the first amendment auditors were descending upon not just whalen town hall but other town halls and that was one of the ways that we sort of helped folks navigate between you know public rights to information versus sometimes some of the information that's sitting on the town clerk's counter is actually not all for public consumption um we've also had the thrill of attending every single one of your town meetings over the years and there is nothing like a whalen town meeting and you know this better than anyone i think you all feel a little bit flattered that i always ask for at least an associate or two to tag along because in our office whalen's town meeting is like legendary like you have not seen how the sausage is made so you have gone through this process and like i get more i get associates that have to turn down and say no we can't have a small entourage going to their town meeting wait till next year it'll be your turn but there's so much about what you do at town meeting and all the work in the lead up that goes into it we can't replicate that in a conference room in our offices to teach folks you have to just experience it and it truly is all about the wayland way and learning you know we've learned what the abbreviated procedure is we know who the peter gossels award is intended to honor every year and i found it very quickly that elvis being employed at town meeting does not mean that we're getting the ghost from the room of graceland to entertain us you know there's so much that i know you're interviewing tonight for town council which is typically outside council i don't think we've ever felt like outside council i think we have always felt like this is our town this is our team and we're part of that um you know we were i know you've got other firms coming in this evening and i'm sure that because we're the incumbents there might be a few criticisms perhaps launched our way you might hear somebody said they're too big they're impersonal um they come in and sell you with a team of people and they switch it up well yeah we might have 40 to 45 attorneys does that make us bigger than some of the firms you might be interviewing maybe but does that mean we have the breadth of experience i think it does it means that we can advise you on everything from um an elections issue to navigating special legislation to god only knows how many 40 b you know dispute resolution appeals levels all along the way or guiding the zba through their very first how do we handle a special permit appeal of a decision issued by the planning board um we've got the bench to do that you know and i think that if you spoke with your planning board chair your zba chair your building inspector they'd all with a with a difficult question they'd say maybe we should ask carolyn maybe we should check in with with amy first your town clerk whenever something happens to come up she will email me tree will email me and be like carolyn can you just ask lauren to please give me a call and tell me about this and you know what everybody knows who you're talking about you don't have to say we'll call council who who is council how do i get in touch with that person you know who we are because we're part of your fabric here and if that doesn't speak volumes for saying this is not an impersonal firm i will just remind you these are the same three people who sat upstairs 10 years ago and answered all of those questions and we are the same three people that are back here tonight and we look forward to another decade of being able to continue our relationship and hope that we can continue to work with all of you so with that i'll pause because i know you are trying to get through this but i don't know if you have any specific questions for us if you want to hear from from lauren and amy directly so yeah thank you we appreciate it and and thank you for coming in i i i i that's what i asked you to be first you are our current counselors about that yeah we want to tell you would have liked that but yes or not so so what we do is now we'll open up to the board to see if we happen anyone has any questions feels you want to start what i don't want to part it let's her need to start oh let's have our attorney stuff yes go watch this that's okay a couple of comments first comment is it's too bad that i mean it's public for this reason if you're so confident you really could sell tickets because we could use them you could as so many cities and towns can um let me just comment that i've had the pleasure of working with uh these three lawyers over the past several years on someone projects you mentioned the town center project the altar oxwell project um and many other smaller issues and i've always found your firm to be responsive um you are multi-service um
i find your advice you know accurate and uh advice that we can rely on because as you know you know we do and all of us have to you know but my experience is you have the background to give these um accurate responses because some you know the law is changing a lot more is asked to cities and towns today and then than in the past you know and uh and you're always up on the camera um my my question is this and we have public comments before a meeting started from dave bernstein heads up the elvis committee and dave expressed concern uh over a meeting he had attended involving the net tuckett um select board in which he presented the uh idea of oh um female participation and three goldberg you were there apparently and you gave a response that mr bernstein felt was not accurate uh so my question is would you be willing if he's willing to have maybe a meeting with you me and him to kind of chat about remote participation oh through you madam chair um uh of course i would i am i'm sorry to hear that that's how how he characterized it uh i have been involved with the concept of remote participation at representative and open town meetings since uh covid and have closely followed all the legislative progress uh i've actually worked with mr bernstein yourself some others here um to help draft the legislation that was sent to the general court um and to advocate for that uh with the general court so um you know i'm i'm certainly not pleased to hear that he thought that i said something that was inaccurate but of course i would want to talk to him about that and um i know the work that he's done all over the state to kind of sell this concept and i am fully appreciative of the effort that he makes in that regard now my own personal kind of take is that we keep trying and it keeps not happening at the state level um but you know his ideas are fantastic and we just haven't seen it come to a place where anyone can act on those ideas so it is a topic that is um yeah it's advocated by many in town and as you all know sometimes it's a long time you get something past the legislature yes we're confident we'll get it done yeah that's all i have thank you thank you and thank you for the opportunity to respond to that sure attorney levin hello everybody um so i started on the select board i think a year after you all were retained by the town so i've only known kfee law and and have no comparator um but i've enjoyed working with all of you and i've served in different capacities too because i was on the zba i was on wastewater and i was on cable advisory so i had that angle into your firm as well what i'm curious about and when people ask me what the advantage of your firm is and i tell them that you work with more than 100 municipalities and now i can see in exhibit one here you actually work with like 140 municipalities do you ever even having 40 to 50 odd attorneys have bandwidth problems where this was the first time i experienced a conflict where carolyn had competing town meetings but i understand that most municipalities are not like wayland but that just with that sheer number of towns that you represent doesn't that present bandwidth issues for you time and time again you know i think it's a fair question but um and i think you can appreciate this being an attorney yourself we are always always juggling balancing and you know i mean you don't go into this profession at least not from my perspective unless you are sort of a a very driven person um you know most of us probably only like to get you know five or six hours of sleep a night because that's just kind of part of who we are um and i think you know we we it isn't just looking at it from like you take a look at the the list of 140 and divide by say 40 45 attorneys that's not really you know the the true representation of it some of those communities are relatively quiet shall we say in some respects some might be much more needy or the frequency of of interactions sometimes it's just driven by perhaps a project you know someone gets you know a 40 b project and suddenly you know all hands on deck and you shift towards that um but as you mentioned you know in 10 years this was the first year for having a conflict at town meeting because you guys changed your date on me you know not that i wouldn't have left to have been there but you know the first monday in may is the most popular night for most um most cities and towns but i i think you know we always put a team together i know you've only got three folks here tonight we've also got you know david jenkins who does the labor work we've got katie klein who does the real estate work mark rich who does the contracts work so it isn't as though everything that comes in lands exclusively in in my lap um it it does get divvied out pretty easily with with other members of the team so that i think we we have found a way that we can keep that balance um you know and i think that you know i very much appreciate tom's comment earlier that um we we pride ourselves on being responsive to folks even if it is a you know a quick text you know saying i'm available at five and i'll give you a call as as your town manager knows our best conversations take place but either one of us is a driving home you know because that's just what you have to do to make yourself available and to make it all work um so i do think we have the bandwidth and i think we have i think we've served well fleet well over the past 10 years i'm sorry that was a Freudian slip for you i'm sorry we serve them well too but mostly wheeling um no i think i think we could there's no reason to suspect we couldn't continue to do that and then one other question that i have is again i don't really have a frame of reference but it seems like we always have multiple matters and litigation going on simultaneously and some of them seem to drag on for such a long period of time is are you finding that that's similar in other comparable municipalities just the sheer number and how long they last and is there anything we can do to be more proactive about that i don't know so as i say amy probably wants to jump in on this one yeah yeah i've had very um long litigation experience here and wayland a lot of it has to do with you know the plaintiff and sometimes the plaintiff is pro se and um that makes the matter uh much longer but um in general with regard to land use litigation um you are not um i would not classify wayland as having a lot of land use litigation that's taking a long time um you you just had some significant cases you had a telecommunications case and then you had um you know large a large 40b you then had but if you look at so for example if you look at the um the cascade 40b and then if you look at saint anne's um we were able to wrap saint anne's up with with both of you helping um we were able to wrap that up very quickly and and that was a benefit to wayland that project and we were able to make sure that it could happen so it all depends on the actual project and the litigation um where the litigation is if the litigation is in land court we can usually get a quicker result than if it's in superior court and unfortunately we don't have the choice to choose that that's the plaintiff's choice um and then just to back up real quick about you know uh bandwidth i think that i actually kind of see it opposite i see it different where i learn from other communities and then i can i can answer things much quicker and whalen because i've had it happen in another community when i get questions from the building commissioner or i get questions from the zba um and then the other thing is that we have no choice but to stay on top of legislation we are between mbta communities the new energy um you know we are just we're all the changes in 40bs we are on top of all of that because we have to wait yeah because we're inevitably going to run into it quickly thank you um mr levine asked the question i was going to ask so thank you um well thank you all for coming uh this evening um this is my second go around on the slide board and i think uh our times have uh with the exception last three years have uh with the exception last three years not coincided um but as i listen to michael and my colleagues uh i think uh people feel very well uh that you you are quite responsive one possible exception might have been the home rule petition on the millennium fund i mean uh i don't know what your perspective is on that we've certainly got one side of the story from from people here but uh i would uh hope that we can my second my question i guess is uh i notice that there are certain exceptions that you have in the proposed retainer arrangement uh specifically uh going hourly on employment and labor matters real estate construction special projects and so forth was that typical sure yeah um thank you uh so it is typical that there would be so let me back up there's several different ways of addressing legal fees one is just a straight hourly rate one is to use a fixed fee or retainer which you guys have done for a long time um and then there's this other kind of um model out there which is more of an all-in model but even with those that all-in model they're still accepted um labor and employment can be easy when things are quiet and extremely intense when they are not and so labor and employment is often outside the retainer but i think what's really important for you all to know is that we are invested in a long-term relationship and if there's a model that you prefer to explore you want to include something like labor and employment within the um fixed fee you know we're happy to talk about that um pretty much typically it's outside but we do have some municipalities where it's inside and it just changes you know our calculation on what the amount should be per month i guess my question is is why are these carved out and is it because before you get into it you just don't know how much time is going to be involved and it's going to be quicker it's going to be dragged out well most of those and i recognize especially for labor and employment sometimes it could just be a quick one-off you know we are reviewing or negotiating a new contract with your you know your police chief fire chief whatever it is that may be quick but every grievance has the problem you know has the potential to turn into well we're going to arbitration or whatever the case may be so most you know our experiences have told us that those things that we carve out those are the the types of tasks that typically it's hard it's hard to predict but it is also very labor intensive when they are active and you're you're going through them almost to um you know the the exclusion of some other things um so that's why they've been they've been called out in that way so so i wasn't doing the committee that um met the three of you and grilled you to join us however i have known carolyn since she started it because i was in the finance committee and our paths across then i will say this that um and so i haven't had the pleasure of working with probably any of the other board members uh the attorneys at the firm on a consistent basis but i think to a lot of people in town carolyn is town council that is the place of our town calls and she does a terrific job balancing us and being very patient with uh whaling with that i want to thank you very much unless you have a question for us um excuse me mr mccall did you want to say something i'm sorry um i don't have to but because you were doing this to me earlier look at me well i i've had a wonderful working relationship with all the attorneys at kpu law and i think attorney murray was being modest when she said we speak at um when we drive home when you get into this profession whether you're a town manager or a municipal attorney it's a 24-7 job there are plenty of days holidays sundays that we're laughing you know this is what we chose to do for a living but if i text on a holiday you know say you got five minutes she's usually like lol i'm working right now so she'll call me you know and you get we do have a personal relation you get to know a little about people's families when you're calling on vacation where are you now but all the attorneys here have been very responsive i want to say it's it's just an odd thing but i think there was a time where both uh attorney questell and i were attending respective funerals where we were trying to negotiate a a a a a matter at one point in time it was it wasn't the same person that no no no we were but that that's the type of responsiveness we've had so and with that i'll thank you very much and again i apologize for who's sleeper not at all we're used to that that's why yeah hope we thank you very much for your time and thank you very much thank you for coming in thank you for having us i did happen to run into the folks um and i don't apologize to leave the experience for being going so late i did happen to run into um um robbie i'm sorry mr tomorrow we're going to be a little bit more still so sorry can you hear me sir robbie what i don't think we're ready for this gentleman yet welcome welcome okay sure as we're running late and some people should i bring more to the attendees area or just social mode to the attendees area moving back to the where we um he's in the panelists he's in the thing yeah back to attendees all right back to the attendee yes thank you what happened someone's supposed to be coming michael upstairs oh hi okay well there's one upstairs let's be free attorney tomorrow we have two other firms to interview um so correct hello how are you hello how are you everything where would you like us it's right here right there right here all right so are you melissa i'm the other yeah
this is from uh north marvie hello quinn and their um information starts on gig 109 and i'm at it so um welcome and we apologize profusely this was um a number of um perfect storms here we are now running very eager to apologize profusely but we thank you for joining us absolutely um wayland has a town manager former government and under the our town manager act it is the select board that engages council so then we we um delegate the day-to-day conversations interactions and business to the town manager but this is what we are doing um and so what we'll do is have you you know have to speak for a few minutes and which you'd like to say to us board will have an opportunity to ask some questions and just very informal absolutely so that sounds good well thank you for having us um um i'm melissa murray this is antoine ferris we're from north marine pelican and so we i think are unique compared to the other firms that you're going to be hearing for tonight because we have just put in for labor and employment we are a firm that just does labor employment and school law and for schools we are primarily just labor and employment for schools too because uh collective bargaining contracts negotiations grievances that takes up a lot of time in both schools and on the town side so uh we're unique in that respect so we come to you with just experience um and specialty in labor and employment and that's what we concentrate our time in so um i graduated from uh suffolk law in 2010 but i started as a law clerk with our predecessor firm in 2008 so i've been doing this since then i do primarily collective bargaining grievances and then on the school side i do collective bargaining and i also do some special education work also do a lot of training speaking um at a lot of mma events uh massachusetts uh municipal lawyer events and then also some school law events as well so we do that both kind of publicly but then also for our clients as well so um we're really excited to be here uh labor and employment law is a specialty i mean some of you i think are attorneys so you know like every area of the law is a specialty i can't pick up and do the zoning for you i would not want to come here and advise you on your environmental law but so we do labor and employment and we do think it's a good model to have outside labor and employment law because it's something we do every day for our clients that's all we do town meeting town meeting season comes up we are not distracted by that we are right here continuing to do your labor and employment law so i'm sure you'll have some questions i'm going to let antoine introduce himself as well um so i'm antoine i'm an associate at norris marion pelican i also graduated home law school in 2019 i believe 2019 correct i concentrated in my uh studies in labor and employment practice where i got the the advantage of working um actually doing coursework and our labor and arbitration and also work investigations in in the course of practice at southclaw when i graduated law school i joined uh norris marion public win as a law clerk and i've been serving i've been i was a law clerk for a couple of years and then i became an associate and uh i'm still obviously working for the firm so i get the advantage of using the experience i've had in the past years to now serve the municipalities that we work with closely in labor and employment matters on collective bargaining issues a lot of workplace investigations and also just a variety of labor and employment thank you so when we opened up to the questions the last time we have two uh members of our board are actual practicing attorneys so i want to check in now would you like me to start with them again or are you comfortable starting this time good work go forward um good evening i'm bill whitney one of the members of the select board um what what trends have you seen uh in the course of your practice uh in the in the labor employment area are there are there uh certain kinds of issues that have uh faded more to the background and you see more of certain other kinds of things i'm just curious about what your experience with and in the general trends of labor and employment law in your practice i was actually talking uh about this with somebody yesterday i think it was something i've noticed in recent years is that there's actually a lot more litigation people are actually going to arbitration more than they have been in the past like so 10 years ago there was a little bit of a lull even with civil service cases for discipline and bypasses uh people are starting their rights whether they should be or not to go forward and cities and towns are responding not just with settling but saying we can't continue to keep settling because it's just going to we're going to kind of fall into this pattern of not standing up for ourselves or putting our foot down when someone has done something egregious or we do need to take steps to separate them so i've actually noticed that there's a lot more arbitrations going forward now all the way to arbitration in terms of discipline um and terminations um on the flip side in terms of interest arbitrations with your police and fire they're not going all the way they're typically getting right up to the finish line and then settling um so there's a lot of people filing and going through the whole process but there's only been like three arbitrary interest arbitration decisions upon two or three years so individuals are going to arbitration but the unions themselves are not necessarily going off all the way so that's something that i've noticed i don't know if you've noticed anything else that you wanted to well in in the in terms of the labor and employment side we've seen in the past couple years um trends with a lot of obviously a lot of communities have been dealing with a lot of budgeting issues and so we've been seeing a lot of the you know the layoff side which is difficult for some communities so we've been you know guiding communities in that process in that respect you know in terms of the back bargaining aspect of it and also the labor and employment side of it so thank you can still pick up on what bill said my name is chris reynolds i'm not an attorney i'm a new member okay are there things you could recommend that would help us reduce our exposure mr mccall does a great job making sure there are classes and professional development standards and um i can imagine there might be a town-wide day someday where everybody comes and learns how to avoid this kind of case or do better with that um i imagine also that many towns feel they need to do a better job with what i'll politely call preventative medicine um do you have some ideas about this um i think what you've mentioned in terms of training it is great and i think that's an important step the other piece i think would be helpful is reviewing all of your policies policies any handbooks you have any policies you have like social media policies for instance right that can make a big difference if you have a situation where an employee has posted something online either during work time or on their free time and how that impacts them in their job and whether or not you had a social media policy or an up-to-date social media policy that kind of gives them some guidance on what they can and cannot do and then even if you've had that policy if you've made them aware of that policy recently you so there's these kind of items that you can go through that is often very difficult because we're all doing more with less but taking the time to kind of go through and see what policies you have what policies you need and then making sure that they're up to date and they're in a place where employees can find them that's really important because then we have that situation where somebody has done something that you feel it's pretty egregious and either you want to separate them or discipline them um they didn't know the policy existed or it hasn't been updated in 10 years and so it still refers to just you know like sending pager messages or things like that and it doesn't address uh direct messages and text messages and social media then then it limits what you're able to do because the employees especially the unionized employees do have to have kind of notice of what the expected behavior is to be able to then be held accountable for it so thank you yeah thanks um attorney bears tom fain has to meet you why did you why did you get into this area of what interests you so when i was studying my course of work at suffolk law labor employment was was one of the concentrations where i could focus all my courses in the labor and employment field and as part of that practice i i met one of my professors who was an arbitrator actually who uh litigated he was he still actually he is no longer an arbitrator retired a couple of years ago but he he's the one who pretty much introduced me to the aspects of the public sector aspect the intersection between labor and employment and you know municipalities and in fact ended up writing me a letter of recommendation for the firm and that's um yeah that's the reason why i ultimately joined i mean you were a law clerk did you see many um labor and employment cases or not enough as a law clerk yes as a law clerk and i had the privilege as working as a law clerk for nmp because i was under supervision um i would handle a high level work as for example with private research memos i was on attended conference calls with with attorneys um i was copying on the emails where i was told to analyze certain issues uh and provide a response and and in some cases where i was even you know gave my fine research funding um to certain clients on the again on those supervision level of attorney thank you hi doug levine um we were speaking earlier this evening about the fact that we have a number of matters in litigation um and some of them especially those in spirit court just tend to drag on and on so i'm reading your firm profile and talk about the importance of kind of getting out ahead of litigation if possible and being proactive can you talk a little bit about that that success that you've had in other municipalities because we just feel sometimes like we're just bogged down in litigation and it's costly and it's timely yep so sometimes one of the hardest conversations to have with a client is they're ready to do something to take an action in our case it's usually an employment action um and they're ready to pull the trigger and they've already like we've already arranged for the final paycheck we're going to do this tomorrow and it's like okay well let's back up what happened before then you know sometimes we get the call blind or cold when we don't know anything else that that has happened before so we do what we do is we need to make sure that the client like slows down gives us all the information when i say we don't think you should do this right now unless there's something like it's 100 they've got the video they see someone stealing you know things from the dpw yard it's all on video and everything like that we do that but normally we'll ask the client to kind of slow down send us all the information and do a case assessment and see what we need so that we're not taking a step too prematurely and so we like to make sure that we've lined ourselves up and put ourselves in the best position to defend a case going forward and usually that will stop uh the other side from uh taking some new litigation or taking it all the way when they know the information that we have and the evidence that we collect in the process that we've gone through has been fair and that the employees had an opportunity to be heard we've either done an investigation we've put together all the information and we've laid it out in terms of what what we have you know this was the policy they knew it was a policy they signed off saying they read the policy all these different pieces and we put that together and so sometimes that means that we don't act like right away when the client calls and we suggest holding back a little bit so that we have the time to make sure that we're not missing a step because the worst position you can be in as you get all the way you have the situation where you are in the right in almost all aspects except procedurally maybe you've missed a step or you forgot to give a due process hearing or you forgot to send a notice of charges that included all the charges right like you've just chosen one that seems the most significant but you haven't filled in some of these other pieces that are actually really important too right like the truthfulness aspect or the the covering up something or retaliating intimidating a co-worker you should put everything in there and make sure that you have all the charges laid out and so sometimes we do have to have those difficult conversations where we say we can do this for you but we can't do it tomorrow it'd be better if you send us everything and we take a look at it and we go forward after that so we do really try to make sure that we're working with the client we do ask them to give us information early involve us along the way stay in touch with us not everyone does that or you know things to do that sometimes the uh department heads that we're dealing with get a problem late themselves right like the secondary manager has been dealing with something and then it gets to a point where it just boils over and so they're just acting to kind of um help their their um second in command um and so they want to help them and so everyone's reacting instead of taking the time to make sure that we're in the best position possible so and then again for the training right so if you train managers on how to do investigations if you train managers on how to have due process hearings or interviews with employees to get information from them and to hear their side of the story then when the client presents you with that information it's already in a really good format it's already well laid out and we have a lot to work with so thank you sure appreciate it thank you um so i liked in your cover letter that you said we observe the difference between policy and legal advice you know i'll set the policies we'll give the legal advice so this is very well done and um like you said there's more items going to arbitration and some people before the jlmc so i think this is this is something to consider that currently as you know wayland has combined we have full service we originally though five or six years ago we only had separate legal so this was a a really interesting proposal for us you know also to consider here you know as we go forward right yeah um because that's under the town manager act of course like i said we appoint council so we're working on this yeah yeah doing some due diligence so yeah unless you have any other questions i want to thank you very much for your time and um i think um tom has sent a text already to kill us all right if you need any additional information from us please feel free you know i should go forward and i know you have a lot but you're hearing from a number of different folks today but if there's anything else you need from us or any questions that come up later please feel free to get in touch thank you thank you because i've worked with attorney learned in the past um as some of you know i'm an alternate in the joint labor management committee i did participate in an arbitration with attorney mary with somerville and attorney norris for the city of woburn helped settle some cases and when i had other issues in other communities i always found attorney mary is a good resource i even though she wasn't our firm just because i knew her we all both went to suffolk i would call occasionally so i've had a relationship with them as well thank you yeah thank you thank you thank you appreciate it oh you're welcome have a good night you too right now thank you
yes thank you for coming again we're sorry we're late very late we forget forgot to bring our sleeping bags but apparently i too so please have a seat and that's going to be fondly
and michael mccarl oh yes this is murphy has two mate in the hand um and what we're doing here is very informal few ministers get acquainted um and just give a little brief conversation do what you want to address with us and then the board will ask questions if they have any um the information their proposal is on page 153 of our packet for those who are following along and um and then we'll note that they are in fact the current school council school committees uh labor council correct yes or Elizabeth full council yeah full council for the schools full council for schools uh optimize so anyways the floor is yours thank you all right excellent well i think uh kate's going to start us off and do the primary presentation here i'll tell you uh i'll let her do most of speaking but you've got three of us here tonight all sort of representing three different branches of our proposal uh kate is the lead for town council work uh pete's the lead in any sort of litigation work and i would be leading any labor council work so that's what we've got here for teams right that's that's that's in our proposal that's what we're proposing to do is i'm kate connelly um relatively new to this firm i'm in my second year but i'm not new to municipal law i've been doing it for about 34 years now i've started out at what's now kp law i was couple hundred pages at the time and uh i believe i did some representation of wayland on some of your land use issues back when i first started um i left because i got invited to join a firm by an attorney who'd been my opposing counsel for about 10 years and that was a fun experience because the idea was i would still get to do my favorite which is municipal law where i specialize in land use litigation and permitting um but i would also get to bring in private clients which i hadn't been able to do before and i brought in clients like mass audubon so that was kind of fun so i do as i said i do mainly land use from the permitting stage all the way through litigation land court superior court all administrative agencies i'm on the board of the massachusetts association of conservation commissions so i do a lot of training in those areas as well as general municipal law um open meeting a lot of public records municipal finance covering town meetings both representative and uh general and um it's it's really my favorite type of practice i do a lot of litigation though peter would be our um he does more litigation he'd be our litigation person and um mike would do the labor if we are fortunate enough to get this position um we do we offer presentations throughout the year um usually first the first year we offer a free presentation on whatever topic the town might be interested in and we also propose office hours if that's something that you'd be interested in where i do this from my towns that i represent with the firm where i go maybe once a month peter goes to one of his towns every tuesday and we just they have an agenda for us anybody who signs up with questions they want to ask and we go for you know four to eight hours whatever it is that the town wants and that's something that they've found very effective we get to meet face to face with people and people can sign up they can also just show up if they've got a big burning issue that they want handled sometimes i get the papers in advance to look at sometimes the issue just comes up while i'm there i answer the question or i say i need to do a little research take it back to give it to an associate to look into um and that sort of thing so that's sort of just the general overview of what we propose i'm happy to answer any questions um or who would like to start with you um would you like to start i have full disclosure we have two attorneys on our board plus of course mr mccall as you probably already know is also uh an attorney as well who is our town manager um so dad levine so we've heard from a number of folks that um wayland is can be a little unique a little special both in the positive and negative sense of the word in terms we have a lot of people who get deeply involved in the weeds in our town um some of those folks are litigious some just want to be heard frequently and so we're finding that we often have to be reaching out to town council for advice on a whole variety of matters and so i've been asking folks just generally about bandwidth at the firms in terms of representing a whole number of municipalities and how you're able to juggle all that if if there are towns that have competing needs on your time what we mainly do is we have a sort of a gatekeeper just like you have the town manager here be your gatekeeper so you know who from what municipal board or what department is asking questions and then we watch it from our end as well so that we don't have two different people working on the same thing or we get the exact fact situation that you want answered and we make sure that we're efficient in providing responses so we have multiple towns that we represent cities and towns and so we make sure that we've got one person who's the primary contact sometimes we'll divide up into having if there's a lot of litigation in a town we'll have somebody who's an expert in litigation and we have backup people associates who can be backup in each of the areas um and labor of course we do labor as well and we have a pretty defense within the firm from partners to some of the newer attorneys who help out with the research so that usually we can cover any and every topic and sometimes we have an issue that maybe multiple towns that we're representing are dealing with and then we can officially discuss it internally and give an answer that is helpful to every town sometimes the facts might be different for each town but that way we're able to be efficient and not starting afresh with each town that asks us this particular question and i think what i would say on that is because it's a question that you get a lot of times uh for clients right there there's always concern is you want to make sure that your client knows that we are your top priority when you have an issue um so as you're looking here you've got the gatekeepers right but we are not we're not a hot potato it's not a lawyer of the day but what we do try to utilize as kate used the term like a deep bench there's about 30 lawyers at our firm and for instance if i have a client that comes and says mike i've got a public records request from a frequent flyer in a particular town we've got a few folks in our office that they are so good they deal with the public records division they handle the public record stuff so you can very easily go to that person and say listen i'm going to put you in touch with with my colleague right here who's on the phone with uh the public records division they know how to respond they know how to handle this they've seen this request in other communities because you see a lot of that in the public records area right there so we really try to utilize the full range there's no such thing as my client at our firm it's the firm's client and we're all trying to service our clients the best that we can and kate kind of talked about the you don't try to reinvent the wheel all of our practice groups in the firm routinely meet together at least on a bi-weekly basis and we sort of round table the issues that are going on so i'm just going to continue with the public records analogy if we find that hey has anyone seen this public records uh thing that's going around this particular town and oftentimes you see it has and so we can coordinate those efforts amongst all of us so that we all know what we're doing here and that can that can be a real cost savings to our clients too if we see that so thank you um
thank you so i have a question would our town get a discount based on the precedent that we provided you and your analysis have all been waiting long yeah uh unfortunately you have set some precedent right there right uh um and i know some of that's also been on the schools there but that's okay you live and you learn right there so um thanks for coming in this evening um my only question is this um well unlike so many communities are facing budget uh issues will you see a certain type of labor issue uh more frequently or issues because of that trend or not necessarily either litigation or or employment issues or or you know i'll i'll i'll speak from the labor perspective on that right there which is i tend to think that in labor things things are bless you things are definitely cyclical you know um when the economy is going well uh it's really easy to sit back and say hey you know we've towns are flush with cash we can do that y or z but what what you do see is when one issue happens to one community you tend to see it going around to all these other communities like right now i can share with you big thing that's going on is the your health insurance dropping glp1 drugs like how is that going to affect your health insurance and your subscribers and that's something that's going all around so i think you tend to see with communities that's a benefit that you have when you represent a lot of them whether it's school districts cities towns special use districts which we do all of those issues become cyclical so i think there is some benefit to cost savings because again you're not once you start seeing it you can kind of how do you handle it for all your other clients right there oh yeah thank you yeah well hi i'm bill whitney member of the select board one of the civilians not a lawyer
uh attorney clon calmly would you handle the real estate and the uh uh land use stuff personally or how does that work definitely land use depending on what the issues are and whether i'm tied up with something else i might assign some of the land use but mostly i do my own land use work real estate we actually have some people that are pretty expert at real estate and that's um i i'll i'll handle real estate matters as they relate to a particular land use development project that i might be working on or advising the planning board or conservation commission but if it's purely transactional we've got a group of people who do just that and um have you had experience in uh working with a community that's transitioning from another firm to your firm and how do you handle um that process of getting up to speed um uh is there any consideration the fees as you get up to speed that kind of thing yeah i've got experience but both ways with that i've taken over from municipalities where um i may know the previous council i just became land use council about a year ago for a town from they had somebody else who was council and it really just needed to get some of the files from this individual but a lot of the issues i've dealt with them so many times before i don't have to train myself again like the the accessory dwelling units that came february of 2025 i've dealt with that in so many different municipalities so i know what the issues are and there are different issues that pop up all the time but that's something that's affected every city in town so nothing's really new i don't necessarily have to go into everything that was done before i don't really always need to have all of the background but it's it's relatively easy and i think a lot of the municipal attorneys we all know each other and i've never had a problem calling somebody and and saying you know why did you handle this this way or um this is what background i found about the case is there anything else you can be and they're usually pretty helpful to just forward stuff i mean i can say i can add one thing and i'm not sure if it's in our in our proposal but generally whenever i have to transition to somewhere um what i usually say is i'm hoping to build a long-term relationship with that client and i want to learn a lot about that client as much as i can so i usually give about 10 hours and i think the firm usually does this too of transition time where we don't charge you so we can come out and learn a little bit about what's going on on uh on the labor side i like to usually meet with whether it's a town manager the assistant town manager the hr director and if they can set up a day where i can meet with their chief of police the dpw director if i get them all there on one day and just spend a day learning about what has been going on what do you have do you have a lot of grievances how are your relationships with your unions you have employee issues and start that process with who's my contact going to be who do you want to have access to counsel try to get a sense of those boundaries and and do that face-to-face and all of that again we call that sort of transition time it's let's get to know you um learn what we need to start taking over what's important what's happening right away so that and i think that's usually helps a lot of times with a smooth transition when you have that thank you so um i'm carol martin i got you in the hall
um but i really like your proposal the way you put things together and talked about um you know you're very client-centric i have your book what i really liked was although the the select board from the town of wayland through the town manager does make the informing and does select council you do interact with the boys and so i appreciate that you mentioned that you've done work you know the board of assessors you've done cbas you've done work with conservation planning because those are also folks who are clients of town council besides us but although the majority of it is you know all the select board um just in general running it so i do appreciate that um it's funny that you talk about boundaries we we try to implement boundaries here and not have like an open door access to town council because obviously we're trying to uh control of course but more importantly and i think what what kate said was we don't want to be saying the same thing having the same information being simulated two or three or four different you know board members so we generally work we delegate through the town manager and we try to um have all the questions go through there so it was a very good point that you made um appreciate tremendously your time to command the time you've put into the proposals and um do you have any other um uh questions that you have for us i i feel compelled that uh please to introduce myself um so i'm peter mellow and um and what we proposed is to have sort of a three-tier arrangement uh whereby i would be uh the main point of contact with respect to any litigation um i've spent like 20 plus years um as a lawyer primarily representing municipal clients and in particular representing municipal parties in litigation of all shapes and sizes and all forms federal state level and just love it and um but also it worked in the capacity as a day-to-day advisor and city solicitor in attleboro um but also had the firm's litigation group and um and i i think it what that offers the benefit that offers or the benefit of the model proposed to the town really as efficiency um as kind of a one-stop shop experience um with respect to any litigation matters i would be the main point of contact familiar with all the town's litigation obviously would be enlisting the assistance of colleagues um and i what we try to do is keep the pool of uh colleagues who work with uh clients kind of limited and so that you get familiarity with the lawyers who will be representing um will be serving the town primarily the town of whalen specifically um that's not you know we don't necessarily do that invariably there might be uh cases that call for a special expertise that one lawyer may have um in in a certain type of case depending on the subject matter you may see it a face you aren't familiar with from time to time but for the most part you're you're working with the same team which is something that i think is really important for efficiency purposes and um institutional knowledge and i guess there's no um one-size-fits-all approach to litigation but as a as a firm we like to be proactive and um and diligent and you know i view litigation as part um legal analysis parts of the thing and a lot of a lot of times what i found a success and litigation comes down to the extent to which you're willing to dig or fodder that's helpful to the legalization so that's something we um you know put a lot of focus and emphasis on um and of course always remain mindful of the resources you know um we obviously are working within budgetary constraints we serve municipal clients and and um and you know that's always something that uh is at the forefront of our thinking throughout the case and um is something that has to be considered with respect to every uh major case and policy decision um so that's kind of a little bit about our philosophy and uh and you know would be enthusiastic for the opportunity to work with you all and uh thanks so much for having us thank you that's a highly unusual statement you just made so you you like to slew you don't mass them all together and try to make a generic or wholesale solution there are firms that will tell us they do that they what they say is it's really efficient you you actually like to slew things out dig for fodder find the occasional case that doesn't fit the rock and maybe pursue some that you might otherwise not have to do to wholesale basis yeah i it's just as a kind of an intellectual exercise i i enjoy that and uh part of why i like litigation is the competition of it and candidly when especially when you're kind of engrossed in um in you know active sophisticated litigation with sophisticated parties with which is part of the appeal to me the municipal practice because the diversity of the litigation matters you're dealing with is um is unusual i mean you're you're dealing with you might be litigating a licensing case a zoning case or a construction case you have to have a facility with a lot of different subject matters and you're often litigating against uh well-heeled um um artists with sophisticated legal representation and that's the only way to do it in my experience is um now with you know of course every case is different and some cases call for more a more awesome expenditure of resources than others um but yeah if if you're if you're at the point of of trying the case um you want to win um you know i i can i can think of any and and and also the the resources at our disposal nowadays with technology is so vast um that you can do that much more efficiently than you could years ago but you know it's i think the old adage you know you get out of what we put into it really is um it's true in litigation i had a law school professor who says the the three the three key words to any successful legal career i think it meant he was probably thinking about litigation in particular is preparation preparation preparation and that's kind of um our philosophy thank you um you've already called for the last move but i'm going to get 22 seconds if you'd like well i haven't worked with any of you directly i'm well aware of your firm's reputation i worked in chelmsford you were uh council of the school there and i know the school is like you here and i have read some of your presentations the labor updates because i've worked in the jnmc so that was one of the reasons when i was working with attorney fay um so i thought we should reach out to you folks so i appreciate hearing from you i appreciate your submission you're traveling back to chelmsford right now that's what i was thank you very much for your time thank you very much thank you thank you thank you all okay and we interlude here i'm also going to say thank you very much to tom for his work on him this we did give him this little project to help that this um my referees to yoga yeah and uh you did a great job thank you girl it's something that the board we should do periodontist right it's only been six years so we're away on the schedule thank you hello hello hello how are you tonight nice to be nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you hi please stop sorry about that that's all right no worries hi tom nice to see you i'm going to go around the other way yeah it's a chance to stretch and this was it yeah that was the goal to give you a chance yeah hi how are you hi good nice to meet nice to meet you hi how are you good to see you nice to see you nice to see you all right back then how are you good are we here so we are yes right there hello thank you for joining us and coming in um this is as you've just introduced yourself lisa mead and jane tattleman right i'm talented pasta yeah mead tattleman costa correct mead tattleman yes thank you very much so we um we have a town manager form of government as you know and under our act the town manager act it is the select board that engages hires council even though we delegate the day-to-day you know obviously through our town manager so um we haven't done this for a while but we are um reaching out and we have to be with some folks um for the for our town council positions so what we'd like to have you do is maybe chat for a couple minutes talk a little bit about you know the presentation what you would like us to know about you and then i'll open it up to questions from the board and we'll go from there all right excellent thank you all right so we kind of start at the beginning with us so we've been a law firm since 2004 i joined in 2006 i was a partner with kp law then copelman and page uh up until that that point lisa was a three-term mayor up in newbury court senate council or senate um state guards director for senator kerry and a city solicitor in somerville so we joined with mark wabrowski a prominent land use attorney and we formed a firm that was focusing a bit on land use but coming from kp law and lisa coming from the city as a chief executive we decided to maybe do a different approach to municipal law um not that there was anything particularly wrong or with the way kp and some of the other firms traditionally done did it but we felt that there was maybe a way to do it a little bit differently and both with the economic structures but more importantly with being part of the team we wanted to be the law firm that wasn't someone that you called when you had a problem we wanted to be that law firm that you could count on for being part of your team almost an in-house counsel model but not in-house where it would we could engage with you we would be involved early on before problems happen avoid litigation rather than litigating at great expense and be a trusted advisor you know still respecting the policy line for folks like you and how to how would we do that and we tried to develop different methods to be closer to our clients and be more economically um feasible for you to manage that kind of service because it's a significant expense every year and lisa having lived as a mayor with in-house counsel was instrumental in helping me and mark kind of develop this system of what we have kind of come up with today where we're now town council in 40 something towns labor council and another 30 something towns special council to a whole bunch of towns so but lisa kind of add to that sure as jay said our idea was that i wanted to put the word council back into town council services right so um you had an opportunity to bounce ideas off of your attorneys to know what your risks were right and then you could decide what risk to take but you knew what the advantages were and the disadvantages were and then when we left the room everybody left the room we were all doing it together knowing what those advantages and disadvantages were and then we had your back um and the idea was in fact to give your department heads and board chairs and the select board and town managers the ability to have access to us early without worrying about how much it was going to cost and so we developed this flat fee model we we certainly do an hourly rate if that's the way you want to go we're happy to do just an hourly rate but we do this flat fee model that we give you one day speed every month and that way it doesn't matter when it comes april or may and you think your budget's going to be low so geez you haven't matter you really want to press but you don't have any money left right but if you have a flat fee model you know what that bill is going to be every single month so as jay likes to describe it sometimes the dog eats us and sometimes we need the dog right so in april and may in particular really busy months with town meeting so our effective hourly rates lower those months august not so much right depending on what it is this model has helped us help communities keep litigation down which is really the driver of your costs typically um it also helps your boards and commissions help make decisions that they know are going to be defensible because you're the chair might call up ahead of time if they have a sticky zoning matter in front of them and not really sure what the ramifications are of the board doing one acting one way or the other or the building inspector going out wanting to do a cease and desist does he really have the legs to do that so our idea is that we offer offer office hours those are all included in the flat fee we offer office hours to all of our clients um we sit and we get to know people so they feel comfortable calling us ahead of time before they take action um and just that availability of having counsel there to bounce things off of and we've done things like create form contracts so that every time you issue an rfp you have one of the contracts that we drafted attached that rfp so we know if there's a problem with the contract in the end how we're going to defend it and we're not spending all of your money negotiating contracts in the end with every single different engineer and architect in the commonwealth massachusetts right so some of those kinds of cost saving measures and time saving measures um we also employ in our practice and the other thing and we're happy to answer questions too is we're not just folks that we do law for a living most of us or a good chunk of us have actually served in our towns i'm the moderator in my town lisa's been a mayor we have several different conservation commission members we've had all kinds of um planning board chair current so we kind of are geeky a little bit about this stuff we enjoy it um we work really hard at it to develop it and to evolve it in a way that uh allows folks to work more efficiently fight when they have to fight but also avoid that fight where at all where it's at all possible to fight without spending extra legal dollars and it's somewhat counterintuitive for a law firm to develop a model that takes a litigation out of the equation because that's where law firms make a lot of money for us we're doing just fine and every single town where we've employed our model whether it's our full flat fee or a hybrid flat fee or even our hourly rates where we still provide the same level of service litigation has gone down in every single town that we've ever represented or city and that's just because we try and get involved on the ground floor we try and know everyone on our first name basis where we can work with you to avoid problems where you'll pick up the phone and call us because it's going to be cheaper in the long run to do that than to worry about something that would be quite expensive down the road which is uh expensive and complex litigation that's been our model since for now i can't believe in 20 years 20 years so 22 actually yeah yeah um just in case anybody is following along in the packet i forgot i neglected to say the proposal starts on page 66 if that's submitted to us thank you all right now we'll open it up to questions who wants to go first i've got two quick questions i'm dad levine nice to meet you both again um my first is if you have expertise in multiple areas like it sounds like you're doing a whole general practice why do some towns only choose to use you for employment and labor law and we're hearing that from other firms as well why would a town go that route so it depends so if there's a town that has a small practice that doesn't have labor then they want to bring our firm in to do a labor law there are some uh some general practices that don't have labor um and it's funny we we were all talking in the green room earlier um the the way it's evolved is that it used to be that no general municipal law firm practiced labor law and labor was very separate i think you interviewed leo pellequin earlier so when i was mayor leo pellequin's firm phil collins was his partner at the time was my labor lawyer and i had mark wanza as one of my in-house city solicitor for a while right um he served two years with me so there was it's just a different model and what we have found um is that many of our communities like the way we practice law and so we brought on a labor lawyer who also had general municipal experience and she when she first came on she just did a little bit of labor for us but her background was really in labor law and she grew the practice because people really liked the way she practiced law and so we grew that practice and as a result um towns will hire her or are that part of our practice as opposed to the whole practice if that's only what they're looking for and some of that is is a little bit of a vestige i i feel you know having been around this kind of law for a while where it was just always kept separate i think the the question is is for a town and towns are different and they approach it differently some still like that dividing line where they're like up to fresh look we can do that we where there's a clear dividing line the way we view it and we're really proud of our labor group is that there are enough issues where it's more of a venn diagram where there's enough overlap where if your labor lawyer is in the same office and can talk to your general town meeting lawyer or whatever then there's going to be just enough synergy there to make it an advantage to doing both but some towns still like to divide it not all of the towns where we're town council have us as labor council not all the towns where we're labor council have us as town council it's just towns are have been kind of slow to evolve to that and more and more doing it i mean our the fastest component of a fastest growing component of our firm is our labor practice um it's a really strong team and there there is overlap i mean i will have uh communities that we are solely municipal general municipal but there will be something happening that they'll want to pull in our labor group even if they have separate labor council because of that because of the complexity of whatever it is that we're dealing with so there there is some crossover there too do you represent any of leon's neighboring towns right around us right now as town council we've done some special council work nearby but i don't know i don't think so not any of the towns touching so where are you areas located we have three offices a new report millis and new bedford okay all right thank you both i appreciate it of course i think i just want to get from something you said earlier i i am attracted to your model are you confident that you would save us money through the model you described earlier i think you said so here's what i would say whatever the number is that we agree to you know you you know we we did a proposal based upon what we see as your legal budget and then we kind of work backwards from there we do check on what's the litigation traffic like to see what kind of costs we're doing there here's what we can promise is that even though there are some exclusions in our flat fee we very rarely exclude anything so we think we would save your money we you know not surprising that we've seen some of the the other financial proposals for the other firms and i think just apples to oranges we're a little bit more cost effective but the important thing is you'll never go over budget so what lisa said is when in march or april when you really need to spend a bunch of time with your council you've got money left in the budget because that monthly bill is the same every month now we have found that we are more cost effective on top of that consistency that we provide the big thing is you get more hours and more attention in our model every single time that's what i'm confident i'm sorry i need to dig in with you this is a hot bug with me what you're selling me on that is it the bill may be more predictable month to month it's a million percent it's definitely save us money what will you take a stand do you think it's going to save us money if if there is any demonstrable history of you having to go to town meeting or a special town meeting to get more money because you had a hot piece of litigation that doesn't exist with us because that litigation if you went with that top uh full flat fee the all-in it's all paid for it it and i think it's the consistency as well right in the access so um i i have the clients to say to me one of the reasons they like our model and frankly this is whether it's an hourly or the flat fee is because we take the time to explain because we're not rushed right and you're not rushed lisa i've got this quick question i got to get off the phone before you bill me another six minutes right so i take the time to explain and educate whoever it is that i'm talking to about the ramifications of their decision and or different ways to do it right under the same law and so that is valuable to you um in the long run and saves you money in the long run so i i do believe that um to jay's point it's the consistency and predictability but ultimately you will also save money because those things which really pop up like the litigation or let's say you have a big zoning matter right we're going to come to that the zoning hearing and it's all it's all in you're not going to start paying an hourly rate at some higher rate for somebody who happens to be more experienced because we charge the same it's going to be the flat fee and even if you chart even if you pick the hourly model it's still going to be the same rate for everybody so you get that you get that predictability and you're able to control costs because you have advanced information and you don't have to worry about what it's going to cost you to do something right rather than cross your fingers the other thing too and i should point out is that like every law firm we raise our rates from time to time but we don't we're not putting you on a schedule or anything like that like next year is is that we look at what our effective hourly rate is for all of our towns we're not on some kind of schedule if we feel we're slipping behind in terms of what our effective hourly rate is as then yeah we that year we may go up a little bit but we're not enough bloodlust to raise our rates and keep keep up with what the other law firms are doing we know what the market is for this kind of law we charge a comparable rate i think looking at the proposals you've seen and what our other competitors that aren't even in this class are we're probably cheaper anyway we just think it's the bang for the buck that is the the best thing here thank you very much awesome um do you yourself as town council occasionally being either an advocate or a lobbyist for a legal issue that the municipality is interested in pursuing them at the state of us or is that a no-no is that something we don't get into um as an advocate or a lobbyist to for the town where a town wants to do either homo petition or some other oh well a hundred percent we see ourselves as fulfilling your policy objectives if we can do it whether it's strictly legal or acting as your advocacy arm obviously we're going to give you advice and counsel as to whether or not chances of success of something you know based upon the laws that exist or the legislation out there that that may exist has a good chance of success but it's not infrequent where we will be the advocacy arm for our communities on uh hot button um legislation so adus mbta zoning those are things where we're in constant contact with uh legislators um with um you know policy makers with the attorney general's office i'll give another example lisa and i both had an opportunity you probably read about it in the newspaper a little bit to advocate on behalf of the town of foxborough in and around the world cup those were things where lisa with her connections in state government was on the phone every day where we were we were beyond just negotiating a contract with fifa and the craft group we were working the back channels to try and make sure working the press working with everything to put foxborough in the best position possible we think that's an essential service that we can provide we don't think it's outside of the bounds you all are the policy makers and our goal is to help you achieve that and i i was saying that um that actually is one of the most recent that was the most false like that was the press and the state um leadership and um elected officials and whatnot um but in addition on i've appeared at um i've appeared at uh legislative hearings on behalf of my municipalities that we've drafted special legislation for um some unique legislation i have a economic development um special fund and a renewable energy special fund that we had to create for different towns through special legislation and i have appeared at those legislative committees to um you know present and argue for that legislation on behalf of the community thank you you're welcome thank you bill i'm interested in uh your notion of office hours and who would typically come to those would it be town staff would it be committee or board members members of the general public so not generally the ladder unless of course so we do it in all make it available in all of our towns and i would say that each town runs it a little bit differently so we have some where it's a sign-up sheet and it's staff only we have some where we show up and sit in office for three hours and it's drop-in it's some where it's less frequent or project-based where we'll come in and do it you know it's really what you all want it to be and it is less frequent than it would be for the public and i generally would never speak to the public unless like mike or the select board said no we want you to sit down with this person and try and problem solve something or a developer or something like that so you can design it however you want and we'll give you whatever three to six hours once a month where we're here if you want to set it up as signups if you want to set it up as a you know appointment based or drop-in right or well i've done uh office hours a lot where i'll come in and then i'll get in a car and we'll go to a project site where there's a big 40d project or a big wetlands dispute so it can be anything you want and ultimately will rely on on what you want to design it as right you also made reference to uh the preference to be um readily accessible for people who feel comfortable in picking up the phone and uh sometimes we found that people are quick to do that and frankly run up the bill uh so where's the right balance so i i would say that's all driven by you and the the town manager so i have some towns where there are only certain people that are permitted to call you know certainly select board members town manager maybe the planner the building commissioner depending what it is i have other towns where there are certain uh chairs of boards like the planning board chair or the zoning board chair obviously certain department heads so that's all driven by the community um it's not a free-for-all by any stretch of the imagination and if we get emails be sure that when we reply to those emails if we get the emails incoming without the town manager on those when they go back the town managers included on those emails so that communication is really important um to be inclusive particularly with the attorney for privilege right right and you know we have some iron-fisted um select boards and managers when it comes to access to council and we have some that look this is a long-standing staff member they've got some free access some towns have a form you have to fill out and we have one town where you have to demonstrate to the town manager's satisfaction that you're trying to find the answer yourself whatever your access to town council policy is we'll live by it but if i got an unsolicited email from some employee that i haven't or a staff member that i haven't really worked with much my first email before i answer that is going to be to mike say is this okay what's going on or if it's an associate member of a board that maybe represents a minority view of that board i'm going to do my due diligence before i go down a rabbit hole okay so that's me um i'm going to say thank you for coming in we are apologizing for being late not only to you but again i'm apologizing to those who uh should have already been seen and regressed and we should be home by now so thank you very much for coming in this has really been uh a very informative evening for us and i appreciate the time that you've spent with us you certainly have a unique model and perspective and i appreciate that so um unless anyone else do you want to say something as i said for every one of the the folks that came in the live room attorneys me and talamund for quite some time um turning me to faculty at such universities uh attorney talamund uh through work through the various towns but i also hired e talamund casa special counsel when i was town manager in southbridge or liquor licensing books and in terms of we had conflicts with our other councils so i've worked with them in the past thank you so much thank you very much thank you very much thank you both have a good night of course pleasure thank you mr tomorrow oh sure thanks much thanks nice to meet all of you thank you very much thanks for okay i declare i'm going to open the hearing for the legal license amendment i declare this hearing open for the purpose of considering the application filed by the constituent restaurant group llc dva villa restaurant for a transfer of license for the premises located at 120 east plain street whalen mass and it's the annual alcoholic beverages abcc number 06669-rl staff 1340 so good evening sir we are beyond sorry that we've been doing this this is a very short agenda item and um we do thank you for your patience as you're going to really wish you had the right application in because we had you on the schedule last week and we were right over that is true that is true i did do the application again after uh conferring with the attorney let me just get the formality done so we can get this moving you got it uh so we published in the metro west daily newspaper on friday june 12 2026 that basically says what it just read but there it is notice is hereby given that the whalen select board will hold a public hearing on monday june 29 2026 beginning at or after 8 15 p.m the whalen town building 41 constituent road whalen mass and also remotely for the application filed by alexander comardo on behalf of particular restaurant group again llc dba villa restaurant this public hearing is for a transfer of license from the villa restaurant llc to particular restaurant group llc and again the license number is abcc 06669-06669-rs-1840 so anybody who wants to attend the hearing can come in the room and join us where they can participate remotely and write um this this uh the rules of evidence is not a formal
however we do have the rules of evidence um are not applied but we do expect that all prospective licensees then members of the public will comment will present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner so we're going to ask you to explain the reason that you're here the board will um have questions after that we'll see if there's a public comment if there's anything there that you would like to add you may do that and then we'll close the hearing so the floor and long last is yours would you please tell us why you open for us tonight hi good evening my name is alex tamargo i'm one of the part owners of the villa restaurant in weyland uh me and my partner david rosenberg took over in 2022 as you know we've remodeled but kept the staff and kept the family friendly restaurant and family traditions going for the 75 years they've been going we're still doing it uh and i am in the process of buying out my partner and so this transfer is a request to uh have it go to my newly formed uh entity and llc and my partner will remain my landlord and it's just uh keeping it in a wayland family my wife's from wayland and that's all it is i'm the manager on record of the restaurant right now and i'm the operator as of right now thank you um just for anybody who's going to go along in the packet the materials begin on page 172 no they don't page 194 i'm reading the wrong thing okay does the board have any questions we want to have any questions from boys uh good evening i'm bill whitney member of the board evening uh are are you acquiring the business as distinguished from the business and the real estate yes correct okay so your your current partner will become your landlord and uh but not be a part of the business per se correct yep that's exactly right thank you i have a very important question i'm a musician and um my question is do you intend to continue hosting live music at the villa absolutely very pertinent very pertinent question absolutely yeah it's you know the entertainment aspect of what we're doing in that new lounge is very important to us thank you you're welcome i just have a comment mr tamargo compay nice to see you i just want to say that i really appreciate the community oriented attitude you bring to wayland um that it's it's not lost on our board and uh it's much appreciated oh thank you very much for saying that that's really what i like to hear because that's really what's important to us as well i would echo that sir and as a host of two previous holiday parties at your establishment i'm a big fan thank you very much yes i recognize some of you and um i have to tell you my husband is a frequent flyer i think he probably went there tonight since i'm here i'm not cooking that it wants so many of the entrees that you have up there he loves it up there so well thank you for the kind words i really appreciate what you've done uh and really it's become such a wonderful community i have friends who live in other communities that are coming over they say oh no i don't know i haven't done that tonight all right doesn't have any sense so now i am going to uh close the hearing right um and that's it so i moved to close the hearing did i get them happy to move with this board approve the application before us requesting license transfer to new ownership entity seeking to continue the running business as until the transfer is complete manager will stay the same as the new owner again talking about the particular restaurant group llc dba the villa restaurant that's the application set forth in our practice second second thank you um just in discussion here uh we didn't consult with the town manager but i assume there's not any issues over there and town council did we need to offline so i think we're ready to vote all those in favor say aye all right motion carries five zero thank you again for your patience sir no thank you very much have a wonderful evening really appreciate it everyone see you soon yep thank you um so let's see next on our list would be the folks of madly squiggling in the back of the room they're just trying to stay away
number 11 is that continued discussion with the town center including but not limited to shared streets and municipal fact and we invited jesse back of the room up now that's actually a lesson yeah that's good that's good good from the battle and you are joined by anthony anthony anthony so sorry um the if you're following along in the packet the information starts on page 254. that would be helpful for me to share on zoom or do you all have the materials we have the material but you're welcome to do that as well because we have people who watch our road whatever is easiest for you all i i think it's good to put it up my no great let me just get on the almost live five in one second nice to see you all town manager madam chair members the board we've been busy um
and i i will leave it in the zoom yeah yeah i have that in my calendar so our plan for tonight is really just to kind of last we met with you was probably i think it was the meeting just prior to town meeting at the beginning of may um so that would have been i think the last monday in april so you know we're at six and a half weeks plus out so i think the intent is to update you and kind of all we've done since share some of our plans around signage the way we're thinking in the public realm and then also kind of share some of the work we've been doing with the planning board um and this is particularly uh timely because we plan to move forward um with a series of amendments to the master special permit um we've had two meetings since we last met with the planning board i would say they've gone they've been very positive um and you know it's been really heartening to us um to develop like we have with you all um here we go uh what we think is a is a great working relationship with um that board so
recording in progress
got it got it okay great um and i'll be able to share yeah you should be able to do excellent it's let me just put a dude in the storm to make sure my ex from my wife wondering where i am don't come up on screen
no offense but absolutely like it's good i can't sit in that long
all right so um you remember from last time i i have a tendency to talk pretty quickly which is an advantage of this time of night so i'm going to cruise through um anthony will stop me if i go too quick but i invite all of you to stop me as well so we're showing here on screen which hopefully you saw it is just a little bit of teaser um this is our new brand uh we spend a lot of time thinking about how we do a better job with the visual identity of the place without changing the name the font is pretty similar but the actual squares in the design are inspired by kind of the legacy and history of quilting in wayland and some of the displays of the historical society as well as utilizing some folks don't see the w's and you know for us it's reflective what we have to do with this project which starts to kind of quilt things back together stitch them back together and it felt like a nice um gesture to some of the history without doing something that felt particularly heavy handed you're going to start to see this visual identity or you will see it today in fact if you go over to town center um our new website is live and um you know we plan to integrate this into the sun and the signage which we'll show you in this deck so you know prior to today the work we've been doing has really been around as we mentioned our own team building um making sure we need the team that has the ability to execute uh there is a lot of work to do as i mentioned we've done a lot of planning we've already moved forward some site beautification in addition to banners i mentioned thinking about um tree canopy thinking about moving some of the dumpsters just doing some of the low hanging fruit to make this place feel um a little bit more thoughtful to folks and a little bit more inviting a little bit more beautiful we met with the planning board in each of them in may and in june uh we feel like working with the chair um and that board we have a pretty clear um well today i feel like we have a pretty clear direction how we need to kind of move forward with phase two site plan review as well as the amendments the master special permit i will say it is very challenging and the town planner has been helpful but it is very challenging looking back over the last 20 years to understand how this thing all came together from permanent perspective um there are certain things that we plan to do work with the planning board to kind of fix some of the past oversights um there's not a consistent site plan as an example right like it exists that anyone can reference so our goal is to work with that board to kind of make sure we clean up um kind of the the the body of work that will exist and dictate the permitting moving forward and they've been great um like i said the goal for it is a pre-file discussion with you all prior to going back to the planning board we've had several pre-file discussions once we file with them we will not be able to have the same level of discourse with them um we'll have another hearing and our hope as we'll get into at the end is that we're in the position where we have the approval that we need by the fall so we can move forward and execute uh do some of the things we're discussing and by certainly by this time next year but hopefully by april of next year the site looks quite a bit different um so just to kind of frame this there's a lot of work we want to do um but we've really focused on is kind of three key improvements the first one being gateway signage which you saw in the package will go through the second one being kind of moving forward with the momentum the town has already established to pedestrianize alyssa as well as create the connection from the rail trail and the last one being how do we start to activate some of these very underutilized green spaces throughout the site so we'll go through all of them in turn um so gateway signage currently is um completely insufficient when you look at it from the perspective of folks in the community from folks that are visiting the site and most importantly for us like it does not work for the tenants on site for this place to work it has to work for the tenants right we need to have great local business here they're driving traffic um and right now you know as we're doing our tenant interviews back in november and december this is the first thing that came up so you know there is some history here the design review board did a study um which on the left side um of how the town could work with the prior land owner to improve the signage and then the prior land owner which was zurich i think you all had some dealings with them did the study on the right which unfortunately was just placed in some of the right it was just frankly placed on mbta land and was never able to move forward um we think these are okay we we have re um taken a relook at this and really believe that the scheme we have up here works for both tenants um grabs some of the natural elements that we think we're lacking in some of the other proposals features this new visual identity um and is something that we think fits really well within the context but is also very much contemporary um and will work with us as we think about kind of both not just visual identity but just the prominence of the sign quite a bit bigger um but the prominence of the signage from 20 and 27 as well as the need to create more space for tenant signage so that's the this will be the gateway on 20 very similar signage um but looking at a horizontal orientation to replace the signage that is currently on 27 and as a reminder if i just click back um this is the site on 27 it's very hard to see this is the site on 20. so we're going from that to these two uh the feedback from the planning board was quite excellent they they did have some comments that are incorporating the version that you're all seeing here today so to effectuate these changes will require and we believe we do just with the planning board an amendment to the master special permit and really swapping out the existing signage exhibit that's in the msp for this exhibit um we are currently not touching the um master special permit as related to interior directional signage and wayfinding we want to tackle gateway first so you know i'll pause there we're happy to take comments as we go through these three sections or we're also happy to just go through the whole deck and wait till the end i'm sure i don't know if you have a preference um great let's keep rolling are you reading my mind we would like to go through please great so the second element we mentioned is kind of how do we pedestrianize and make elissa avenue more usable um for the community as well as more usable for tenants so the existing condition you're seeing here um this was one of the schemes that the that the beta group that was engaged by the town um relatively recently came up with um it's quite busy these planters will not work for the fire department um there are some challenges here but the spirit of it we think is really interesting um edc did some work thinking about how they could add some play elements um they had although they were not um uniform they had at least identified the use of ballers um and we've kind of advanced what we thought were good efforts into something that we think is um realistic and will pass the muster of town from a public safety perspective we met with fire we met with police we met with building on this and despite the other two plans we believe we can accomplish this by really just creating um an at grade with the sidewalk decking structure here you're seeing my cursor move on both sides in plan the north and the south with bollards on the end pedestrianizing the street but also keeping a fire length in the middle and that was something that was really important to fire it was lacking from the other plans we are okay with this in truth we started with just closing off the street in entirety we did not have a 20 foot clear fire lane we took feedback back from the fire department and we revised it to this we feel satisfied with this um we believe we will be able to close this street off for certain special events um and programs which we will start to kind of do some demonstration projects on you know second half of this year but we feel really happy with this scheme for now given all facts and circumstances some renderings that just show um roughly kind of some of the spirit and the the potential look um we've been working with the town manager and his team on thinking about how we can finally deploy the ninety two thousand dollars they count as earmarked from the state to actually buy some of these planters tables and chairs we worked our landscape architect to actually spec them out so the town can then go and procure them and where we're at right now is currently working with the town um and michael's team and legal on a license agreement that would affect your laws the other critical part of this is just understanding this in context with the rail trail um this will not be complete unless we think about that connection our view is that there's a currently a dumpster here we're going to relocate it's just in the wrong place and in fact the current gateway on our site to the rail trail is also in the wrong place it's not a grade it's next to a big ugly transformer and it happens to be located across from the local which is also where the truck route is so when i come out to the side of my two 12 year olds on bicycles i would not want them accessing this site there i'd much prefer them accessing the site here it's going to be safer we're going to be able to control it um we're also working with dcr on some rail trail parking here to invite folks to the site for those reasons it's one of the reasons we love the site is that it has that connection to the rail trip um this is one of the schemes we've been working on we talked in the planning board about it that would create that new connection here in the data line you can see where the current trash facility is we would move that we think it's actually redundant so we will keep several of the other trash facilities and just increase the pickups so we will be taking away one of the big dumpster facilities which we think in the spirit of unification and usability is a big improvement um anything right okay um you know we've also been been talking to the planning board about um some kind of indigenous tree varietals i don't think these dogwoods or whatever they are will take on the site and this grass is quite nice but we'll have something that um is quite beautiful it's not going to necessarily be consistent with this rendering but this gives a sense of kind of some of the spirit of what we're thinking about the last element is how do we take these underutilized green spaces and use them for the benefit of the community our general approach here is that we it is not what we do as a team we've done some of this work what we do really well is find great local partners to do this with us so um as we mentioned in our last um session with you all and you know tom i believe you had some conversation with mark norton as well the goal is and we are currently negotiating um a short-term license uh or really actually at least with the eliza j norton foundation for them to operate from november to march a open to the community ice skating rink on this parcel c here which we are really really excited about uh we've been working through some of the logistics of providing the infrastructure um working with our insurance providers and then also connecting them with an operator from cambridge that we've worked with that operates two skating rinks just to make sure this thing is running away um that allows the most access and actually functions quite well you know we'll learn a lot from the first year but it's still got to be running really really well um on both a parcels we're looking at partnerships with local recreation groups um one of the schemes we thought about here is some small five-a-side soccer fields working with youth soccer here and the other a parcel we've thought about um and have been pretty far along with the operators of the current volleyball facilities the outdoor volleyball which we think will be um quite exciting at the site drive a lot of energy and then lastly we have um had i wouldn't say dozens um but i would say large handful of meetings with a very involved um group of residents who want to put a dog park somewhere inside b is the site that we've identified that makes the most sense um there's some elevation changes um it's complicated site which we do not believe we will be doing anything in the near future uh the feedback we got just generally on this approach from the planning board was that the intention long term and this is something to talk to the select board about is for future development on these sites particularly the a parcels particularly this parcel right here so these uses here are not meant to be permanent they're meant to be interim and they're meant to utilize it until it's appropriate to go vertical and for future development there it's just frankly going to be a lot better than grass that just sits there and has no real utility to anybody so that's a third element um and again the timeline this is our last slide so we are working on a master special permit amendment uh draft there will be actually plural amendments work with planning board on that um we hope to officially file in july we hope we can work expeditiously with the planning board to schedule a hearing um you know once we file there in a certain statutory requirement they schedule a hearing for we'll work with annette and her team on that we're very hopeful that we'll have a planning board decision um towards the end of the summer which would allow us to start doing some of this work in october and deliver a much more functional interesting becoming site come next spring so again these are three kind of buckets of work there's a lot more we are doing including kind of out there trying to lease the asset bringing better tenants um talk to folks in the community understand the potential for activating other parts of the site as we talked about last time um we are legally bound to certain challenging leases um that came and predated our ownership uh but we feel really confident that you know a small handful of lease deals will get done this calendar year combined with this will really change the entire feel and function of town center to make it more out there town center and from there you know we'll look forward to kind of reconnecting with you all and thinking about other civic uses on site so it's a first step for us really important one um with that i'll turn it over to you madam chair but that's where we're at currently thank you very much so this is kind of nice last but not least it's super duper thank you thank you for your patience and for waiting i'm really sorry we got really behind tonight uh questions from the board who would like to start you didn't even need to look at me nod your head i know i knew i knew i knew it's
thank you gentlemen i'm looking forward to this presentation for some time um since we met with you all a number of weeks ago the first question that comes to mind is have you had conversations among yourselves or i haven't had a chance to watch the planning board discussion about how there can be more of a symbiotic relationship with the community center and connecting it more to the town center just wondering what your thoughts are about that um amongst ourselves yes you know it's one of the first meetings we had um but i think we've been really focused on these moves candidly um so i think there's more work to be done there i think programmatically it seems like they're really ramping up to a bunch of multi-generational programming you know our sense is more is more here um but that's work we will do um but in truth we just have not spent much time with city staff over with town staff excuse me over there um but are certainly happy to and then the other what's that we missed that one i said a sky walk you know it goes right over like a children's hospital to the park and girls we're thinking more
and that actually leads to my other question is are the number of parking spots around this the the right number is it too much too little what is your assessment of that for the site i think currently with the activity level it's too much but you know you want to you want to have the marking for success right um when it's when all of these pieces are activated it it will be appropriately parked um i do think part of it is where are people parking for what part of the site right and and so i think it is important that you spread out the activities right and you have kind of a central corridor right and so i think we're really lucky in the sense that elisa ave is in the center of the site it really can be that center point right like it'd be when you look from above down you know it is the center access of the site um and i think that helps with drawing folks in not only from the community center but also from russell's and the connectivity between russell's because russell's gets a great amount of activity right especially in the winter right their winter market right and and so in meeting with them they're like well our biggest issue is there's nowhere after the winter market's over can we coordinate something so now folks finish and then come come to you guys can there be an outdoor you know um entertainment can you know can and so we're like great this is a great way to program the rink right and and then have programming around the rink food trucks and hot chocolate and that sort of thing so i think a lot of this is about creating these zones right and and understanding how to engage with the site beyond a point quick yeah i'm going to physical therapy here going to get something at stop and chop and so i think then once you have that right you have to have some activity there then it's how does it feel you enter so i do think one of the things that really and we were actually talking about it today when we're we're on site together it's just the entrance yeah right and i think the entrance has to take all these elements that we create and incorporate it yeah and and i think that will also help the center because you will have the entrance and then there'll be pathways right and there'll be then pathways into wayfinding and so it really is like a step at a time but i don't think this is probably 24 months of steps right and i feel like this is the first big one to get activity because activity then leads to getting more feedback from folks and then continuing to kind of weave it together um so no i i think the important question right is that all the elements need to play together and then i'll just leave you all with a comment which is i'm i'm very excited about how you're seeking to center the rail trail it's it's an underutilized underappreciated element of our town but i think we have a lot of avid cyclists and it obviously connects us to other communities communities and the other thing i would just put on your radar is right adjacent to the community center is the sudbury river which is beautiful scenic space as well for down the road we've always thought about being able to access that as well yeah but thank you both the one thing doug i would just say just this is a better video i understand what i was talking about earlier so truck route is in this way this is the current rail trail connection to the site this is actually a very busy moment on the site yeah for cars it's the exact moment you don't want our collective children kind of entering the site yeah um and there's a transformer here so our feelings even from a public safety perspective to create an entryway here that's shielded and guarded and well landscape is is much safer so we have to figure out how what we do here but this also is not a grade as we all know yeah downslope here yeah um but yeah we agree i mean we're super excited about this connection is one of the reasons we love the site yeah um so yeah thanks for those comments sure can you mention the relationship russles do you first yourself cultivating a relationship with the people that are coming into room for the same reasons about uh stopping place before or after an event they may have um and how that would fit into any one of the connections you're trying to make to the rail trail because i could see activity being generated over there for just an event but people who may come into town the day before stay at a hotel may want to access what you have to offer you may be able to walk back and forth so you know i thought that was very interesting that you work with russell so you may have those similar opportunities with the other new tenants coming up with yeah we met i was recently with the team from terrain um out of philly our creative team has met with their gm who they just hired a few months ago so we're actively exploring kind of collaborations with them we've met with russell's family three times now what we want to be part of their 150 year celebration um so yeah i mean all these things are the way in which we make this work but but it is fascinating just yes if you if you stand on the site and watch folks on their bikes on the rail trail and what and what happens right you get you go to the head and you get to the light look around what do we do now yeah right there's no place to park your bike right so you turn around you go back so there's no natural entry exit there's no place to stop there's nothing to explore so i think like to have you know nice portico overhead and have a really you know obvious you know here's where you leave your bike and then you know nice walk down here and hang out for a few grab a drink you grab a grab a a coffee or you know then go explore and if you actually have fields behind you and other things to explore it's like all right we can get off our bikes for an hour get some food hang out and then come back and and go on our way so it becomes like a natural and then to your point on terrain and everywhere else okay so this is it's now a natural way to get to the site without a car right and so then there's other opportunities where can you enter the rail trail and and how do you you know um inhabit you know the town center um so i think we're really lucky to have that there it's a really unique opportunity right because most you know centers like this don't have a uh a pedestrian road essentially going right to the site so i'm really excited about that and i'm excited where it lands because it's going to again right in the center tom so uh 20 years ago when town meeting voted 80 percent i mean presence for this real town center i knew the day would come when there'd be people in front of us with creative ideas energy positive attitudes to make this town center what it really was meant to be and i feel confident that you think that your group is the blue so i appreciate you coming here tonight and and and appreciate your your energy enthusiast um in your discussions with the with the planning board did you get a sense that they saw the need for a time reading vote on any of the changes they even want to make at the point of time their read has been consistent with our read which is the way in which um the master overlay use district is written and the master special permit is that everything we're talking about today we can do through work with the planning board um i think it would be there are a couple different things without getting into it that may trigger having to go to town meeting but we haven't got a sense from them that there will be the need and uh the activity and use limitations are in place and and to the extent you need um communication town council on those um obviously don't hesitate to reach out yeah we definitely want thank you okay excellent well this is a very interesting exciting proposal um in your discussions with prospective tenants what's the reaction been it's evolved um i mean it's pretty clear to the tenant and brokerage community that no one's really cared about this place for a long time um you show up on site we we when we knew we were delayed we went back to the i mean every time adrian and i walk it and our other partners it's like oh god like you know it's just there's never been an active engaged creative caring owner of wayland town 70 and can't see that um so you know feedback has largely been the things we're trying to address visibility off 20 and 27 horrible a lot of people don't even know it's here this doesn't work for retail tenants um there's nothing going on in the open space so like most of the places we all love to go to there's program there are things happening um the legibility of the site how you move around it challenging um alissa will really improve that's a non-functional street right massive a fire lane but like we can create a lot of energy there and then there are little things that we're talking to our neighbors about we had a community meeting with the two condominium with the trustees of the two condominium associations and some of their residents and you know as we all know people zip through here to get from 20 to 27 and vice versa they're going too fast so we're exploring with the town um we haven't brought it um we haven't elevated yet like are is there the ability we can add some stop signs right how do we look at crosswalks like how do we just approach this to make this place actually less convenient and harder to cut food slow people down which is good for retail and then the other thing that i think for us is that i mean i think we take a pretty entrepreneurial approach to deal making we're willing to take some risks with these tenants so you know we're willing to do percentage rent deals we're willing to do things that i just don't think the prior landlords are willing to do transactionally that i think is allowing us to generate some momentum and you know we think the first two or three deals we do have to be with absolute best-in-class local operators that will drive future leasing velocity um but yeah right now it's not great and we're spending a lot of time like the reason we did the gallery hang project spent a lot of time and energy on that was just to show that you can do some interesting things like chris and his team have already done with arts whalen people are going to show up um but we can't just rely on programs and events for that has to be driven by tenants we have 160 000 square feet of shop space here and and those shops are just volleyball is doing a nice job some of the food beverage is doing a nice job but most of the visits here are very purpose-based you're showing up for an appointment for a group you're not coming just to spend time at a place we've really got to change that that will largely be driven by food and beverage and those are going to be challenging economic deals for us to do what we're going to do yeah it's it's it's always interesting sometimes it's you know a simple connected problem right tenants want traffic right and you get traffic by having great tenants or so so it's uh and so the the question just becomes like how do you manufacture that momentum right and i and i think we believe this manufacturing momentum because we'll be able we we are very close to securing some great two or three three great tenants and we're rallying around analysts to have because it's something you can't get anywhere where can you get a space where you can you know dine dedicated area out front and create a really cool landscape in a suburban area like whalen um and the site's beautiful right but we have to just bring it out a little bit like we were walking the site today and you know full candor like a couple of the light bulbs around right and like that's unacceptable but when there was a stretch of the center that was lit perfectly right and the landscaping went great and it's beautiful the weather helped me and the weather's gorgeous but i i mean i think there's so as you guys want to know you've been in here but there's just a real opportunity so like you but there but it has you have to we have to be better right and the tenants have to hold themselves to a higher standard right and we do and we and we're and we're continuing to do that it takes a little bit of time but these sorts of projects and improvements force that momentum and allow us to bring in great tenants and we'll we'll take the risk because you know they're not going to take the risk and true you know so so i i feel really good about the direction we're going and i think we're really lucky to have the opportunity because the bones are there right and and it's it's all about kind of stitching it together well i think your idea of sort of moving the center of gravity to elissa avenue and demonstrating what's possible there uh hopefully we're going to have a spillover effect and generate excitement for us what you have you um but i i think it's a great approach and i'm particularly encouraged to hear about your recognition of the need for content management and looking for details and sort of talked you know the internal fineage when when you get to that so um first one to learn the password thanks bell yeah the other thing i would just say you know the smart tenants and those are the folks we're chasing i think what the pandemic has done for them is re-look at the landlord tenant relationship as a partnership and i don't think that there are a lot of projects that don't have a great landlord partner and it's very hard to get deals done because the tenants want to see a landlord partner that's really trying and they're not going to add a thousand right and get everything right but i think what we're trying to demonstrate to the brokerage and the tenant community is that we are trying we're knocking everything right we're spending money we're spending a lot of time and energy that means a lot so that's the way we've been able to kind of push back on some of the stigma that's existed for a long time on the side i'm overjoyed shout out to bill whitney it was just very modest i was fervent about the town center 20 years ago and helped organize the meeting mr fay referred to i by luck uh was in the room when the first owner of the town center promised bill there'd be a rink so to see that up there is is huge i hope you do that quickly um i have so many questions that i don't want to ask them the chair would hit me with this guy can i just rattle off a couple topics and if you think you have a good answer please share it if you guys fully um i thought i heard from fire there was a little bit of flexibility on southern melissa there um the safety issue jesse works both ways the street's 40 feet wide i actually measured that myself yes you'd have 20 feet down the middle there's a fire issue being able to get through but there's also a pedestrian safety issue with people going through um otherwise mayor michelle who i happen to admire a lot has had some things to say about this you'll recall in um east boston and in the north end um i would add i would suggest you push the idea of closing that road down and making it a complete pedestrian zone and i'll stop there because i suspect you've already done it but i'd ask for the week push this you just said this a minute ago that people go to the town center they've got an issue they're going to buy some pet food or they're going to buy this and they're going to go to an appointment for that and then they leave we need dynamic signing at the entrances and i know that's a difficult topic i'm not proposing neon i'm not proposing a scoreboard with um electronic signs of change but come on there's got to be an intermediate way that through um a permanent fixture for temporary banners maybe so there's always something going on at the town center there's always a gallery exhibit there's always a tour there's always a partnership with grout herd we've always got a concert your restaurants have got fire pits and little tiny stages and there's always an artist coming there's always a reason to look for something at the town center beyond getting a gallon and i'd like to see you elevate that signage need or going broaden it at communications need now this is a vibrant place and you don't go there just to get some dog food as the planning in the presentation you gave to the planning board did they see the timeline you gave and what did they think they'd like to move they'd like to move quickly as well yeah thank you so the answer your first two anything all right because i'm giving the gallon a little bit so the first one the real challenge with fire by the way this will be permanently closed off these bollards are there for a reason we just have to keep clear this fire lane it doesn't mean during certain events and programs it can't be closed off yeah it's for it's the 20 feet is for non-permanent uh furniture so we'll still it still can be programmed it just can't be like permanent decking or permanent planters that's where i think but i think the feel when you're there will be that it's a closed down street and it's fully utilized for pedestrians i think the hard part also is and i think fire has a great point one of the this would be somewhat of a different conversation but there's residential above this building that's one of the challenges and i think we're just deferential to fire and if they feel like this is really important you know maybe we go back in a few years we push a little bit but for now we feel all the way we've learned that correct we've learned that and then and then this other question we're on board with a temporary dynamic signage somewhere every year 20. drew on my team who you know is working on it great thank you in addition to the signing we shouldn't i'm being short to flatter the chair thank you very much but you know we're doing yeah i gave you the gavel a few minutes ago and nothing happened hi so this is exciting and thank you and again we apologize for being late but uh and may i mention i'm on a new world's record i'm going to make a five-hour meeting tonight for you um the one question i had to wanted to say was um uh about the traffic cut through so i have to say this i live on the other end of town i live closer to up to other shopping shops and i come down and shopping there and i do notice by the way two things one is that there is more and more traffic normal spaces you know filled in that stopper shop just about every week i go which i go and i do do multiple things when i'm in there go to aids the bank whatever you're going to do so um but the one thing i have noticed is that uh the rush out but i'm not sure the traffic just cuts through from you know 27 to 20 quite close actually but so maybe you do need some signage initially however i would imagine that once you start increasing the traffic this part won't solve itself because there'll be so many people there trying to get in the parking space and everything else it'll be not as exciting or maybe you make it one way 7 a.m you know yeah we thought a lot about this i think one of the challenges the signage is so poor that people don't realize it's a retail center especially in 27. they think of it as just a residential community they cut through better science will solve some of this which is which is kind of counterintuitive and interesting but i was very so that was one thing i had i i absolutely loved where you moved the um the entrance it made it so much more glamorous and exciting and inviting for the rail trail and connected and moving the dumpster brilliant um but my ears perked up when you said there would be some parking there associated maybe some spaces dedicated for the folks who want to use the rail trail yep because maybe people park there and go down because we have a tv that have had a conversation and an agenda item recently about there's not a lot of extra space where the other entrance is in town but i think a lot of them end up parking the library well that's what they do park in the library but you can direct them over to town center right so that's what i'm saying if you're going to have some dedicated spaces i think that's terrific i really really do um and let's see what else do i have on this but um i'm sure we'll see you again because we don't want to keep anybody any later but i really we're really excited to really say i do know oh by the way there was going to be a a skating park the uh dollar fortitude they're going to move it down here to town center or is it going to be two i didn't know about the one they did a um cpc funded an article and they were going to redo the basketball court and then put sides on it they're not doing it anymore right elsie no and then it was going to be a skating i it was explored but i don't think it's feasible because of the the degradation the okay so there was an interesting thing i've been waiting for that to show up so i'm so thankful thank you um there is one other thing that just in front of you all that i think we may need some support on we really do want to do the dog park we think it's in the right place we know this has been something that folks have been talking about for a long time there are some challenges with it um one of them has to do with insurance that we're looking into it but there there may be a scenario where the easiest fix for all of this is to actually transact with the town through recreation or otherwise you know buck a year or whatever it is so the lease is actually signed with recreation and then recreation then works with this group of volunteers to manage that space versus us trying to contract directly with those resident volunteers to do in so we're working through this actually um but i just want to put it on the radar i don't think there's anything to action right now but it may just be the easiest thing for us collectively to do um to get this dog park done so if i may just comment i i see that it's workable i would when the time comes ask the board to consider having an our piece uh issued for a non-profit to operate the dog park that way it's off the hands of the dbw off the hands of the parking rack and it would remain uh clean it would be accountability and if the if a non-profit cannot do that then it shuts down i just uh our research suggested that you don't do that it just gets dirty real fast that's another another agenda another day that's helpful so thank you for that right okay well i'm gonna thank you very much for coming in i really appreciate it um i'm sure you'll be in touch with me when you want to come back yeah for sure i'm sure we'll be happy to see you again that sounds all good right yeah all right thank you very much thank you so before we go thank you for not getting before we do um another thing i do want to give a major shout out and thanks to kelsey who playing host to our guests this evening um when i envisioned this i thought it was going to be about a half hour 45 minute time i think you were gone about three days and appreciate it because i'm sure you were very busy for me keep reading half people so do you think i go to law school now right yeah maybe take a couple law classes they were trying it they were talking me into uh you know in an mma class i was like okay so they thought it um i think what i'm going to recommend unless anyone feels strong otherwise that we table item 12 13 14. yeah we've seen a bit about that until until next
well i was going to say that next because there's two things i wanted to mention one is that i did skip the um deliberating on the rfps for legal and does the board want to take a few minutes to do that now or would you like me to add that to next week's agenda i feel like we could start the discussion bill but i i would want to have a more fulsome conversation about that i have a little bit of given that i'm fine it's do it film with me that's okay given time i would like to uh say that i think for the discussion one of the things that came clear to me as i was reading these over the weekend michael's on vacation i didn't want him but i think that um would be nice to know what we need what we pay now in our current arrangement i'm pretty sure i know what it is but let's let's get this you know what do we pay what does it include right now yeah and go from there that's what's what's the all-in cost right exactly and then maybe we have time because we've got a very short window here to get ready for the next week because it's a short week uh maybe we even be able to make a little chart of what the costs are that are proposed but we'll see with what how much time we have and we may end up having a supplemental the only other thing i want to say is the next meeting is next tuesday not next monday it is all right yes it's at the public safety building i thought you were telling me to leave you
it's the public safety building it is our annual goal setting normal retreat we do have a number of um agenda items that i'm going to have to throw in here in and around because um we're not having any other meetings and we've got some that are carrying more from tonight so i will try to keep it down to a dollar but i would really encourage us to do that i think it's important that we have an opportunity to really discuss the whole yeah i think i think we need to do it that should be i think the principal item we can't really discuss and i i hardly agree and i'll work with the chair to make sure the agenda reflects that i appreciate that the chair's desire to get certain things done another thought is to have a i mean at least three of us can attend during the week as a meeting right on small items but these are all big items and this is this is where we have all right so with that i will take a motion to adjourn at 10 51. it's my new select board meeting my record oh no no just want to remind folks that the town of offices and bpw are closed on thursday and friday this week because of right independence day celebrations and our four-day work week and wish everyone a happy healthy state of the fourth of july and 250th anniversary yeah thank you madam okay so and we have a motion to adjourn all those in favor say aye all right thank you
Anybody else in the moment? I see two people online. Okay, I don't see who that is. Gretchen Dresden. Gretchen Dresden, yes. Gretchen, I recognize you. Hi, Gretchen Dresden's, 155 Main Street. I just had a quick comment on 195 Main Street. The fence that is in front of the property is really old. It's fallen several times and they have sort of propped it up and it's fallen again and it's in the bushes. It looks horrendous. And a suggestion could be that they just remove the fence entirety and just clean up the debris at the base of the bushes. That area would look much nicer with that removed. And if indeed a fence is needed, which I can't imagine why, then a new fence should be put in. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, everybody. Thank you for letting me join you. Sorry, I'm remote. A couple of things. I did send an email and I hope that everyone will have a chance to look at it. It's not what's on the agenda for today, but it is a request for perhaps at least matching what Sudbury is doing on their road on the other side of the bridge to our road, but at least my end of it. And I kind of would like to agree with the position stated on the town council. I certainly got misleading information from her myself, and she gave misleading information as well at the town meeting. And there was, in one of your previous meetings, an interest in getting people more involved in boards and town politics. And I have a copy of the Lincoln Select Board news, which I would like to provide to you. Since I'm not there in person, I will have to bring it down at a later time. And it has some wonderful ideas that might work from here as well. So I think that's about it for this evening. Thank you very much for letting me talk.
Thank you. Yes, thank you. Is anybody else? I see no one else on line. I'm sorry? I see no one else. Okay. Thank you, Ryan. I think I'm moving the Select Board into Executive Session A, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A-2-3, to discuss strategy with respect to litigation on 16 whispering lane. And C, Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A-7, to review and approve the Executive Session Minutes of June 8, 2026 and June 15, 2026, available with intent to hold seven minutes. Is there a second to the motion to enter into Executive Session? Yes. Is that all, please? Yes. Yes, sir. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
We will have a roll call vote. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Reynolds? Yes. Mr. Ferry? Yes. Mr. LeBlanc? And Ms. Martin? That's 5-0. Yes. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, Town Manager, Council of Powers, Burlatt, Assistant Town Manager, Jalen Braddocka. No, no, sorry.
I'll ask Kate Ryan, the Director, and Dave Jenkins, Town Council from KP Law. The Committee will rejoin the public meeting from the Executive Session, and we anticipate we will return in approximately 30 minutes. Thank you. So, we, if these folks are, yeah, they're also a good meeting as well. We're going to bring the Select Board back to open session at 7-0-9. Thank you, Kim. So, the next item is going to be to look at a joint meeting with the Finance Committee, discuss with you, and a vote to approve this year's 26-year-end transfers. Can we fill up Mr. Keveney, please? And we need to fill up Mr. Keveney, and Brian, help me out if I can't see anyone with this. Bill has. Bill has. We are back on. Okay. Bill has, please. I don't know. And Mr. Keveney, I don't know if I can't see if Bill's question. Bill was connected a minute ago, but the webinar got briefly closed. So, I don't know if he's rejoining. Okay. We're sending in with each other. Okay. So, I need, um. Can't do anything until Bill comes back. No, I can't, Brian. I've got to get going here. I need Brian Keveney, though.
Now we'll email this link out to the rest of the team, see if that helps.
Hey, Brian. Hi, Brian. Mr. Gould, could you, um, get rid of your video now? We'll be with you once we're done this topic. Okay. Thank you. A couple of thoughts. So, um, so we're going to have a joint meeting with the Finance Committee.
Yeah. We'll set. Okay. We will set. Then we'll set. Take care of it. That's all I'm assuming. All right. So, I would say you're planning on, um, I'm going to call my name and go. I am. We don't perform just yet. All right. Then pause it. So, I think we're already joined. I'll tell you what. When you have one, you let me know. Okay. All right. So, joining us tonight, um, this is the end of the year. We, if we need to, we make what we call current year transfers. Um, Brian puts a list together of things that need to be moved and how they, things that need to be paid, how they can be funded or putting some of the funds around. Uh, by code, what happens is that the select board votes it and then the Finance Committee votes to be in conference with the vote from the select board. So, um, joining us, joining us in the room, we have Iris Doxer and we have, um, Mr. We hear you this morning and today and we'll run, we have Mr. Quimby and Mr. Haas was here and should he join me again, we will have the Finance Committee call to order. In the meantime, Mr. Kevin, in the floor is yours and we are on page five of the main packet to these where the, uh, series of, um, memos and charts start there. So, Brian here, the floor is yours, please. Yes. Ellie and Scott have their hand up. Is it possible that dad has missed our bus under a different unit? Yes. So anybody want to check that?
No, no, I'm robbing. Um, there's five, and, uh, yeah, we can just inquire who they are.
Hi, sorry, it's, I can't figure out how to take my daughter's name off. It's April. I'm on. Oh, okay. Thanks. Thank you. So then we inform them. We inform. Yeah, I was trying to give you a quorum. I figured that was somebody else. It was a big hand. Do you want to call Celeste? Yeah. Do you want to please? The Finance Committee calls to order at 7.14 p.m. on Monday, June 29th, 2026. We have Finance Committee member Iris Hoxha, Brian O'Hurley, April Methot, and, um, Rob Fimby. And I think for the purposes of this meeting, we'll need a temporary chair. All right. So I move that, uh, Iris Hoxha serve as temporary chair for just this meeting. Do we have a second? Seconded. Okay. Thanks, Rob. Second. And then we'll do a roll call vote. Um, Rob? Yes. April? Yes. Yes. Iris, yes. Okay. We're just joined by Mr. Huss. Oh, excellent. All right. Yeah. Mr. Kennedy, the floor is yours. Okay. So good. I'm in the packet. Okay. So good evening. So these transfers fall under chapter 44, section 33B. Uh, I believe this started about 10 years ago under the Modernization Act. In years past, when there was an appropriation deficit, before this particular master and law was adopted, towns, um, had to appropriate. Any deficits on their next year's tax recap. So what DOR did was made it easier for towns to clean up their books at the end of the year. This is, this is what we're doing here. So what you have is you have four appropriation deficits. The sum total is $681,221. It really affects the snow and ice budget, the evoke education budget, and the ask, and the school energy budget. So what I'll do is briefly talk about each one of them. I did send a memo. I do have sort of the motion already dictated in there where the monies are coming from. So the select board can actually just read the motions right off the memo. So it's snow and ice, unless you, unless you were in Florida, um, you saw that we had a pretty rough winter. Um, most notably the snow, um, sand and ice budget really went up, uh, both the payroll and the expense budget in snow and ice, which are voted independently at town meeting, both had appropriation deficits. The personal services budget deficit is $104,151. The expense budget is $515,849. Uh, in order to deal with a $620,000 deficit, Michael McCall and myself have been working with department heads for probably three months now, um, tracing where they're going to be with their turnbacks at the end of the year. And with the help of all of the various departments, I did provide a schedule, which shows 18 different departments or appropriations that are contributing $620,000 to the two separate lines. And there's a separate schedule that shows that I'm not going to go through each one, but both. Michael and myself went through numerous times with the departments and we came up with these turnbacks that can fund this budget. So the, the allocation is from 18 of these appropriations into the, both the payroll and the non-payroll budget to, um, extinguish a $620,000 deficit. So why don't I stop in that one before I jump into the next two, so we don't come back. Does anybody have any questions on the snow and ice?
Anybody on the slip? Brian, what's the distinction between personnel services and expenses? Is personnel services essentially overtime and- No, it's all, it's all payroll, any wages, payroll, regular standard salary, overtime, part-time salary. So that's how meaning we evoke a department, both a payroll budget, which we call personal services and an expense budget, which is contractual services, supplies, professional services. So that's the distinction. So- Presumably- Oh, sorry, go for it. Sorry, go ahead. So presumably the payroll services is largely overtime in this case, right? It's all overtime. And the expenses are basically contracted services, outside vendors doing this applying? Yeah, the expenses for this particular one, the snow and ice expenses would be contractual services, vehicle repairs, um, uh, gasoline and salt and sand. The salt, for example, the salt and sand budget for fiscal 26 was $198,000. We spent $588,000 just in that one line item. So the snow and ice expense budget has four line items, which I just read. And Brian, in the past, do I recall correctly that the commonwealth has made supplemental appropriations that enable towns and cities to offset some of these extraordinary expenses?
Um, I'm not sure of your question, but if you, if a town cannot fund a year-end snow and ice budget, you can raise it on next year's tax recap. I did ask DOR early on when we were getting, uh, you know, the bad winter rolling in if they would allow cities in town to amortize the deficit over, you know, two or three years, you know, you hear in the news, Worcester had a very big deficit, multi-million. You had a lot of these bigger cities that struggle with deficits much greater than ours. And the only flexibility we have with DOR is to raise it on next year's tax recap entirely 100%. So is that, is that your question, Bill? My question really was, uh, I seem to recall that in the past, the state has, uh, passed a special act to give, to basically reimburse towns for extraordinary expenses related to these kinds of events. Yeah. Usually those are for hurricanes, um, unexpected, you know, I haven't seen snow, a snow event. I've got seen, you know, FEMA will give money. We get some from the, the mass, um, emergency. Those typically fall under like a bad rainstorm, flooding, um, hurricane situation. Not so much snow and ice. Okay. So to your point, Brian, I'm going to go around the court at the table of the select board for questions to see if the FinCon members have questions on this chart. Um, and then I'm going to go, Brian, Miles, um, Bill or April or Rob, do you have questions on this chart? All right, Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. McAuliffe, yeah, yeah, one thing I wanted to add on to what Mr. Kevin indicated, when you look at the proposed transfers and the numbers we cling to, um, some of that was a result of us not filling positions that came up vacant towards the end of the fiscal year that you, you used the term pulling rabbits out of that every now and then this, you know, was an extraordinary effort. And we asked all apartment departments to forego certain expenses towards the end of the year and not hire some staff so that we could get through the remainder and take care of this deficit. This isn't something we could do every year. So I just want to make the public aware that this was an extraordinary event, uh, having such a deficit in snow and ice and there were some positions like my office is short staff, others are short staff, some people, you know, left to take new positions or whatever the case. So we had some salary and rather than fill those positions, we were going to wait till January, excuse me, July 1st so that we could get through this fiscal year. I just want to make people aware of that. I do have a question about this chart. Brian, could you explain how there is a number 12 that says we're having 10,000 from the transfer station general fund? Yeah, that's it. We have a 60 appropriation is 65,000 and that is for the treatment of the landfill down the street, down by DPW when they've had unexpected funds. Right now they have a turn back and we're going to essentially use $10,000 of that turn back to this is not the enterprise fund. It's not the enterprise fund. Okay. I was a little wondering how we were going to be able to do that. Okay. So this was just a, excuse me for one second. I just wondered how we were going to do that. Go ahead. I did have a question, Brian, just in the context of this and the other two transfers, do you have a sense of how much historically the last two, three years, the aggregate turnbacks have been that went to free cash and with these three sets of transfers, are you expecting zero turnbacks? Or is there going to still be a sizable amount going back to free cash? Yeah, I would expect just in the snow and ice alone, what you're doing is you're taking 620,000 that would normally be turned back. And you have the snow and ice budget that also has a $620,000 deficit. So there's a million dollars shortfall right there in turnbacks, just in snow and ice. I don't know yet, as we're finishing the last accounts payable, what the ultimate turnback will be for the town. Usually we shoot for about one to 1.5% of the budget comes back to free cash. This is a different year where we're losing about a million dollars just because of snow and ice. And that is the fact that other departments are contributing 620, and you've got the snow and ice returning nothing. Typically snow and ice spends, and I have a number in front of me, Brian, but, you know, a good 75% of their budget. We have not brought this budget up in many, many years. I think about three, four or five years ago, we may have brought it up $50,000. But if you look at a 10-year history of the snow and ice budget, it has barely moved. It has not grown with the cost of labor increases. It has not grown with the cost of inflation. We've kind of kept flat hoping we're not going to have the year. The last time we had this kind of year is when the Patriots beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. I remember that. So it's like once every seven years we got walloped by snow and ice. So nobody has any questions on the first transfer. Could we speak about the second one, which is the vocational education? And I think that's for $11,000, right? Right. So for vocational education, when we voted the fiscal 26 budget, there was one student attending Minuteman. In January, 2026, a family moved into town. And that student that moved into town went to Assipid Valley. So at the time this happened, we got information that that student would most likely leave Assipid Valley and go to Whelan Public. That didn't happen. The student ended up going to Keith Tech. So during the year, and I did supply a whole schedule of the spending for vocational ed. So we have two vocational ed systems we're involved with, which is Keith Tech and Minuteman. In Minuteman's case, we not only pay the tuition, but we were paying for a student all of the transportation. And you can see by the schedule, the cost of transporting these kids. So we started the fiscal 26 with one kid going to Minuteman and covering the transportation, thinking the other kid that was at Assipid Valley is going to go to Whelan Public. Well, that didn't happen. So what did happen was that two kids enrolled at Keith and then two more kids enrolled at Minuteman. The way it works is the eighth graders express an interest in going to these two vocational schools. And it's really late in spring that both of these schools accept these students and, quote, have the room for them. So typically what happens is the budget is already voted before we even get information that, you know, more kids are even going. So right now you have three kids at Minuteman, two kids at Keith. The cost of transporting the kids at Keith was covered. They may have been driven by parents down to Keith Tech. But that changed in April, May and June where we had to transport them. So the cost for the Evoke Ed that you're being asked for tonight is to cover the cost of the transportation by star voyage that amounts to $11,221. The Minuteman is completely covered there. Transportation and tuition is all accounted for as well as the tuition for Keith. Thank you, Brian. Does anybody in the select board have a question on this item? Does anybody in the finance committee have a question on this item? No? Okay. Let's go to the third one, which is the school energy. I think the school energy is good on my sheet here.
I think it's a few years back. The energy accounts of all school in the town were in the facilities budget. We moved that to unclassified and broke it out by town energy in school energy. I did put together a little paragraph. The cost of delivering the electricity and the gas and the fact that we had a very cold spells during the winter time and hitting the schools ended up resulting in the energy budget being overspent by $70,000. The school department is going to pay $20,000 towards this overage. Early on in the year when we were dealing with the snow and ice budget back in April, May, the school committee committed that they would help fund the health insurance budget if that was in deficit since significantly most of the people on the health insurance are really elated to the school. So they had committed $20,000 early on to fund the 32B account. The 32B account today has a surplus. We don't need a transfer there, but we did ask the superintendent and the school business manager to flip it from funding a potential deficit in insurance 32B to covering this snow night. So what's going to happen here is you're not going to vote the $20,000 in the school department. We're going to apply expenses directly towards their budget. So all you're being asked for tonight is to fund and transfer $50,000 from the, it would come from both the solid reserve, which has a surplus of $46,000. And again, the 32B with $3,400. Okay. Thank you, Brian. Anybody on the select board have a question about this item? Yes. Please, Mr. Wins. This is New England. Is some of this built into future years, even in just your thinking at this point? Well, for the 27 budget, we did have a 5% increase over 26. So we were seeing the trend increase in expenses. The budget for 26 was just 3% over 25. But in the, I did put in the memo, we did bring it up 5% in 27, anticipating that being large increases in electricity in particular. All set. All set. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else on the select board? Okay. Anybody on the finance committee have a question on this item? I had just a clarifying question. Your note says unregulated electric delivery charge increases. Are those the electric delivery charge increases that are? You might have to move a little closer to the bar so we can show you. Sure. Thank you. Sorry. Your note here says it's due to unregulated electric delivery charge increases. Are those the electric delivery charge increases that are voted on and approved through the state? Or is that the actual cost of the electric? I think the rates are probably approved by the state through the utilities. I think the delivery is not regulated. So that all the cities in town are exposed to this delivery charge that is not regulated by the state. I'll just like that. I'll just like that. Mr. Murray, you're all set. I'm sorry. I'm April, Bill, Rob, you're all set. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Mr. McCullough, Mr. McCullough left to speak. No, I had an answer to Mr. Whitney's question earlier that the earlier this month, Governor Healy did sign a supplemental budget, which included $100 million for this shortfall. $80 million would go to the 351 cities and towns based on the mileage. And there would be other monies for the other 20 was supposed to go to those hardest hit by the weather. There's an article in the MNA about it. Okay. So now Mr. Whitney's question is, how much are we getting? I can read his mind. That's your question.
Okay. Everybody's all set now. I think nobody has any questions. So then there are two motions. Where were the motions, Brian? It's right in the memo under each one. It's highlighted with a line under it. It says transfer 104 for the barriers and problems of snow and vice transfer. Okay. Do you see those? And where's the third one? So there's two under snow and ice. There's two different appropriations. So the motion for the snow and ice is to transfer $104,155. Do you want us to call three of them together or one at a time, Brian? Well, you can always say vote 681,221 from various appropriations as defined in the memo to the selectmen on June 22, 2026. Do moved. We'll have a second. Sergeant. Thank you. So is there any further discussion from the select board? Otherwise, we'll have all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It's 5-0. Now for the finance committee, you need to vote a current vote, right? So would you like to make a motion? Yes. I move that the finance committee concur with the select board's recommendation to make the transfers noted in Brian Keveney's memo dated June 23rd. Seconded. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion from the... Well, actually, you should say that. Yeah. Any further discussion before we take a roll call vote? All right. April? All right. Yes. He needs to be verbal. He needs to be verbal. Yes. Thank you. Phil? Aye. Rob? Yes. Thank you, Brian. Yes. Iris? Yes. Okay, great. I move that the FinCon adjourn at 731. Thank you. Do we have a second, please? Second. Thank you. Second. Hello. And apologies. We're going to have to do the roll call, but April? Yes. Phil? Yes. Rob? Yes. Brian? If I say yes, April, thanks for your service. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Iris, yes. All right. Thank you all. We're going to have a plan. And we have a plan in the next meeting. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Brian. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to make you aware that some of the people starting to show up for 730 and all the other times are here and you're queuing them up. We're about 40 minutes behind. I'm sorry. Did Brian suggest that we approach that we approach that we have a plan in the next meeting? we were doing them individually and then brian said we made a motion and we went so moved and mr mr mccall i want to make you aware that some of the people starting to show up for 7 30 and all the other times are armed here and you're queuing them up we're about 40 minutes behind i'm sorry did brian suggest that we appropriate 620 000 681 okay 681 okay that's fine want to thank you yep would you join us real quick please they've taken the chairs how are you doing well how are you thank you because um hailey has applied for a position on the cultural council for information is in our package starting on um page 10 and if you just we're running a little late no make it quick this is going to be really good for you real quick tell us what your interest is we'll see if we have a question and we'll go from there sure hi i'm hailey fuquay um my husband and i moved to wayland about a year ago right here next to the town building um i am a professional opera singer and also work in technology and i previously had a consulting business that serviced non-profits and i'm very familiar with the massachusetts cultural council and their grant making in terms of applying as well as um granting those funds and i would love the opportunity to join the wayland cultural council as i believe that the artistic fabric of any community is vital to its town and and just how our lives are shaped by art it's very nice um information to be provided for us and the faculty has there any questions from the board have you had a chance to observe the cultural council or speak with any members there i have not yet uh i saw the call in the um the town newsletter email and uh thought i would apply but no i have not yet had a chance to speak with them but um have been very familiar with the process of going through grant the grant applications through the mcc um as an artist myself thank you okay here we have any other questions should we have a motion happy rules uh appointment of haley fuqua haley fuqua yes to the cultural council from sherman in june 30th of 2021 second second um all those in favor say hi all right thank you mr levain you want to give me the spiel please so haley now that you're officially appointed um you need to be sworn in okay by the town clerk and so you'll receive a letter from the town manager's office within the next few days bring that with you down here to town building to the town clerk's account and she'll swear you in and give you some information that uh prompt of interest training that we all need to meet as well as here's welcome thank you okay i look forward to getting more involved so thank you appreciate it take care thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you proud alumno before thank you yeah nice item seven on agenda includes discussion of 195 main street well this evening is ben gould licensed site professional individual who's assisted the town over many years particularly including the site and uh you're welcome thanks for your patience and uh tell us where things are up with this property please and for those who watched page 12 in the packet right first are you able to hear me yes thank you okay good this doesn't always work well um i put together a brief memo just to say where we're at um i don't want to take too much time i won't read the memo memo to you you've read it uh in essence we have spent about three quarters of the money that was appropriated uh to do what we need to do to research 195 main street and of course a lot of it has to do with pfas contamination you've all heard of that um and the pfas contamination um is more widespread than i expected i think more widespread than anyone else expected on it so in your packet um following the memo there's nine figures um the first seven of them are basically groundwater flow uh to give you some idea what we've been up to for the past year uh we we started out all the way back in august of 22 um we just looked at the old dpw footprint building footprint um and you know we get a generic groundwater flow this is the kind of study we normally get at a relatively small property such as this an acre or two um we then went on and we realized that there's more pfas out there than we thought there was going to be so we we did another iteration of monitoring wells expanded out onto 207 main street and found that the flow was a little bit more complex and we still didn't find the ends so we we moved on again and by the uh fifth figure there which is figure six e um it shows that the this kind of a curious amount of groundwater collecting on the 195 main street property i don't know how familiar you are with reading these sort of maps um but where the concentric rings are that's actually a sink that's where the groundwater is flowing towards um and you would expect it all to be you know generically flowing towards dudley pond but uh it's a little more complicated than that so uh we kept going um next next figure shows about the same sort of thing and then we did another iteration of monitoring well installation this time we went all the way in onto the middle school property and um there was it's interesting scientifically i don't want to waste your time uh going over the details of that um but if you can notice that the contour lines are closer together um that means that the gradient is steeper and that was sort of a a wintertime phenomenon and um i believe that as the groundwater table drops that sink gets stronger and stronger and it heads towards that and i have a theory for why there is a sink there there's some storm water collection goes on there if you recall there's a couple of storm drains sort of in the middle of the 195 main street property and those are draining the area and when the water table gets lower it's more effective at draining that water so it's it's steeper towards the middle of of that property um and now going on to the next one which is figure seven um that is the results of all of our rounds of pfas testing um it's a not the way i like to do it but unfortunately pfas testing is pretty darn expensive so i'm trying to trying to help with your budget problems here um and not do a comprehensive sampling round we have not yet done a comprehensive sampling round of all the wells at the same time for pfas so this is sort of scattershot you know every time we put a new wells we test for pfas and this is the results i get from that what it shows is a little similar to the groundwater flow is that the red lines here are showing that most of the pfas is concentrating towards the middle of the 195 property um the scary part is um there's not a lot of of red lines there but the outermost red line is 50 nanograms per liter or parts per trillion um of pfas 6. the state standard is 20 parts per trillion of pfax 6. we haven't got down to that level consistently anywhere on the property or the three properties that we're looking at so far so that tells me that we have not yet found the edge of what we need to be looking for and then the final figure in there is all of the pfas numbers added together which gives a better feel for how the pfas is going and that shows more or less the same like bullseye look that in in the middle of the 195 main street property is where it's the congregating so quick summary um groundwater flow does change over the year more than most sites do um that has to do probably with the fact that it's a very sandy gravelly aquifer so water flows through it quite easily and secondarily there's um a bedrock ridge that pops up about where the east side of the wayland middle school is and it goes north and south as far as we can tell we didn't try to map it or anything but we we hit it um if you notice there's one symbol that it says b36 that's not a well uh we tried to get a well in there but we at rock and couldn't get deep enough to get a well in and uh for the the um february of 2026 measurement we did i believe it was the february one uh we actually showed groundwater flowing to the east on the east part of the property east part of the middle school property even though everything else was flowing west so it seems to be a bedrock bridge that makes a divide there although this is scientifically interesting um but i'm sure that's not really what you want to know about right now um the bottom line for where we're at what we need to do is get to what dep calls a phase two comprehensive site assessment they have a timetable for how to do that and according to the standard timetable by november 1st of this year we're supposed to have all the information in hand necessary to do a phase two comprehensive site assessment we do not yet have that information in hand there's a few outstanding points one is we don't know the full extent of pfas contamination out to at least that 20 nanogram per liter park per trillion number of what the pfas 6 is i'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to find the edge of that 20 nanogram per liter and i think the reason for that is we apparently have a source at the wayland middle school um it's a hypothesis right now we don't have it proven but it sure seems like that was where it originated at least at the highest levels but we also seem to have contribution from some other points um and those other points are likely neighborhoods where there's you know several houses that have their own leach fields and people wash clothes um the wash water gets into the leach field and if those clothes happen to have stain resistant coatings on them uh scotch guards the most famous one but there's lots of them then it's very easy to get pfas into the groundwater that way and i'm afraid what that's what we're we're seeing that even if we continue to step out i'm not sure how far we're going to have to step out before we actually find that 20 nanogram per liter edge and i don't want to waste the town's money doing wild goose chase on this but i do suggest we should do one more iteration of stepping out now the timing on that can vary and i'll get to that in a minute the second thing we do not know is we don't know the vertical flow we know the horizontal flow for groundwater we don't know the vertical the only way to check that is to put a deep well in as a couplet to one of the shallow wells or to do it a couple places and to see what the difference in elevation is if the deeper well has a lower it's called a potentiometric surface but a lower water table easy way to think of it if the water table is lower in the deeper well than it is in the higher well that means the groundwater is flowing downward not just outward and conversely if the deeper well has a higher water table than the shallow water shallow well next to it the groundwater is welling up it's as an upward vertical gradient to it so we need to have an answer to that question to fully satisfy the requirements in a phase two the third point we don't know yet with any great detail is the hydraulic conductivity that's how easy or difficult it is for water to move through the subsurface the groundwater flow and that's important to know because the speed that anything flows through the subsurface is a it's a function of first the gradient how steep the water is how steep the water table is and secondly the the permeability or the conductivity how easy it is to push through so we have to know both of those to get a handle on how fast this contamination is moving to get an accurate handle on it and we don't know that with any any certainty yet we can estimate it based on the soil types we've viewed and we do that at a lot of sites just estimate it but in this case i think it would make a lot of sense to actually measure hydraulic conductivity so those are the three things we do not yet know it is possible for us to get all that information by november but it's going to be difficult and it requires spending quite a bit of money in a short amount of time to do it and i'm not certain that that's really what the town wants us to do and it's not necessarily what we need to do um i said that november 1st deadline there is a provision in the rules we have to follow the master's contingent plan mcp those regulations have a provision that says if you are not able to meet that schedule the way they have it laid out you can request a notice where you can you can send a notice to dp requesting a delay in meeting those particular deadlines i actually recommend that that's what we should be doing at this point that rather than trying to rush everything to get a report together for november 1st of this year that we ask for another year to get that information together so that we can do it by november 1st of 2027 and that would allow us more time to get the wells in it would spread the budget auto out over another fiscal year and probably help things out for the town that way um so with all of that um what i've i've come up with um three particular options here um one thing i haven't mentioned yet i should mention now um we have a public involvement plan a pip involved with this project um they're a good thing that that's how people of the town learn about it and get a chance to voice their opinion and make suggestions and that's not common in our line of work but it's also not unheard of and certainly in wayland there's been several pip sites the raytheon site i've worked on for a lot of years and there was some before that um so it's i think you're all familiar what a pip is um the scary part is my estimate to deal with the first pip meeting we had was i said it's ballpark 10 000 to deal with that i didn't have a hard number to work with but i said i think we could probably handle this for about 10 000 as it turned out we spent a little under 24 000 of the town's money to to first run the pip meeting to send out all the notices to develop the presentation necessary and then to respond to all the questions that people had which were numerous and very good questions a lot of them and not particularly easy to answer that's one of the good things about the town of wayland you have a lot of educated and interested people um the bad part of that is it you have to spend a lot of money on someone like me to be able to answer them and hopefully satisfy them with the answers that we come up with the pip process what is a way for the public to be involved in some decision making on how to do the next steps we do have a pip meeting scheduled for july 30 so in about a month we'll be having a pip meeting it'll be a virtual meeting i'm constrained i'm sure you've all heard my wife had a stroke about 11 months ago and as a result i can't really leave her alone for long periods of time now so to accommodate that i'm going to have to run this meeting off of my laptop from home um it's it's doable that way i don't think it's going to be a big sacrifice on information but it's not the same as being able to run it face to face in person so i apologize for that but it's it's really out of my hands um so that's coming up in about a month and uh in that meeting i'm going to solicit uh public comment on what what does the public think we should be doing to get to that next point what do we need to do for that phase two comprehensive what else information do we need to draw now i've outlined the three things that i'm aware but there's some specifics on it where exactly we want to go for the next iteration of monetary wells um how many more iterations do we think we want to do and um the question is going to come up and i don't know because we don't really have the facts to guess is what if we demonstrate that the public uh or the private residents as i should say in the vicinity are contributing significantly to the pfas problem how are we going to deal with that um that's a big question i don't have an answer for it but it is a question that's going to get raised and i need to be able to address it in some fashion so that all said i have three options that i want to put forth tonight first is we do have to have the pit meeting but in option one we do the pit meeting we install another iteration of monitoring wells we do a full round of sampling of all the monitoring wells that we have in place plus the additional ones we're going to do we do the hydraulic conductivity testing we talked about and we send a notice of delay to dep to say we still need another year to provide the full report that's going to explain all of this and my budget estimate for that is about 55 000. so that would probably take us beyond what's already appropriated for this particular project option two we have to hold the pit meeting we do a full round of sampling of just the wells that we have in place now we have 16 wells that are currently in place we do the connectivity testing using existing wells we send in a notice to dep saying it's going to be another year for the full report my estimate for that is 35 000 to get that work done option three we try to close out quickly we hold a pit meeting of course and we do the connectivity testing which is the one thing we really have to have and i explained to dep in the report why we don't yet know where the 20 milligram or excuse me 20 mic nanogram 20 nanogram per liter regulatory line is and that i'm not sure that we will find it that will not satisfy dep but it's by sending in that information we we have met the requirements um it's a possibility that dp will say the report is incomplete and ask us um to provide an addendum to it um that sort of thing does happen with some frequency especially on complicated sites like this so pip meeting connectivity testing provide a phase two report with the existing data my estimate for that is about 30 000 total so um none of them are really exciting options i i can't say that that we'd be jumping up and down asking for any one of those but i want to present those three options to you and um see what your thoughts are and before we get answers for that um one other question i had that i i should know but i don't know is for the next round of installing monitoring wells my recommendation is that we start to go on to some different public properties specifically right of ways of public streets um if we can spread out from the area by doing that i am very reluctant to get access to onto public private property excuse me onto private properties to put monitoring wells for this kind of problem at least yet if the results of this next iteration show clearly that there is a source that's on a on public property excuse me i keep saying the wrong way if there's a source that's on private property um and it's obvious that that's where it's coming from then i think that's the right thing to do but i don't want to bring in homeowners um without a really good reason to say that you know you're you're likely to join us as a potentially responsible party so far this has been a municipal problem um i believe it's bigger than municipal problem but we don't have the hard facts yet to show that it is so i don't want to do that so all of that said to put wells onto uh public roads public roadways right of ways not in the road itself but on the in the right of way outside the paved area do we need to have a street opening permit and do we need a police detail so i just put that as a question and also um if you have a thought on which of those three options might be the best one to pursue so now back to you so um that's a lot thank you and again we apologize for being a little delay we have uh uh we i think we have all committed ourselves to norm um maybe we should just do we want to just start with questions and then look at the three option ideas so why don't i open it to questions doug had kind of raised his hand to be first so do you still want to be first on the question sure okay let's do that hi man doug here um looking back at my notes over the last few years and my most recent note is from last december 15th and i had jotted down that you had indicated we were approaching the end of phase the phase two process you reiterated the november 2026 deadline and you said at the time we don't know the full extent of the pfas contamination and that it doesn't make any sense to chase the pfas and that you had enough information to be able to draft a report to be responsive to the phase two requirements this sounds like the circumstances have changed somewhat since then that we have more information that leads us to seemingly require even further information to be responsive to the phase two process yes the further information i have is the concentrations of pfas um we did do two more iterations of monitoring wells in an attempt to get a handle on how big the problem is and excuse me for it while i look at my very small notes here okay i'm gonna magnify this on my screen okay so um monitoring the well mw21 we had a total pfas of 466 parts per trillion in it and the actual pfas 6 the number that's regulated was 417 parts per trillion that is 20 times the state standard um previous to that we we were talking about something that was you know ballpark 110 or so which it's scary because that's still five times the state standard but we're much higher now that tells me that the problem is is the level that deps gonna have some serious scrutiny on it there are a lot of sites that are in the 100 parts per trillion range once you get up into the 500 parts per trillion range you start to stand out of the crowd um that means that uh dp has a pfas working group in each of their four regions and the northeast working group is going to take significant interest in this site that tells me that they're not going to be satisfied with a report that has a incomplete delineation and some hand waving to say well we don't really know how big it is but we don't want to go any further because we don't want to assume that there's a private contribution to this when it was started out it appeared to be a public problem um the other half of that question is or answer the question is the the one i expected to be the smoking gun we put a monitoring well directly into one of the septic leach fields at the whaling men's school that's that's well mw 34 yeah and read my notes here that had a total pfas number of 127 which doesn't scare me that much and a pfas 6 number of 40.9 which is double the state standard which also doesn't scare me very much but from looking at the groundwater flow so i'm pretty convinced that the contamination that we're seeing at that well mw 21 that the big 500 number started out at the whaling middle school and moved in that because that's exactly the way the groundwater flows and um here again is one of those things where knowing the hydraulic connectivity will help us a lot that will tell me specifically at this location how fast does that groundwater move and if i can demonstrate it i think we can actually say that what year or range of years it was that pfas got into the ground and is now showing up in mw 21 and from mw 21 it's going to eventually get into the storm drain system again it's a deadly pond which as you know is where the one of the public water supplies for wayland is so it's it's no longer the kind of problem that i can say well it's a significant problem but i don't think the time that the state has to pay a lot of attention to it i i think now we're to the level of the state will be paying a lot of attention to it i don't think i can get by with a minimum amount of information and say we'll get back to you with more later i think we need to provide them with quite a bit right now can you explain that phase three is the remedial action plan and need to come up with a plan within a year which is essentially what is possible to address the problem and phase four you said as a remedy action plan like how will we actually address the problem are we looking at moving into phase three and four even beyond this one-year extension to november 2027 good question um yes those the deadline for the phase three and four is set and the regulations to be one year after the phase two so as part of this request for for an extension i'm going to ask um probably for a year on those as well so the phase three and phase four get pushed off to 2028 um realistically once we have the phase two information in hand now it's a matter of trying to decide what is it we can do and what is it we're going to do what can we afford to do and that answering that question when you have enough information doesn't take a full year it it generally takes a couple months to do it so i will ask the dep for um push to phase two to 2027 push to phase three and four to 2028 and um they will probably say yes to both of those but i will try to get the phase three and four done in six months or less after we get the phase two done so last question but you you were explaining also before as we're trying to get our head around this over the last couple years that it's a very different ballgame when you're talking about metals and gasoline contamination versus pfas so if if we had to do some type of remedial action for pfas i thought i can't find it in my notes right now but i thought it was at such an elevated rate compared to cleaning up the soils for the other types of contaminants that it was it's almost cost prohibitive correct um there are technologies to um collect concentrate and if you get it concentrated enough you can actually do something to destroy pfas they are prohibitively expensive you do not want to get into that that is something that when we do the phase three which is evaluation of remedial alternatives we will evaluate it and demonstrate that for this particular site it is ridiculous it's cost prohibitive and the gain you get out of it is minuscule so we can we're going to bring it up and rule it up so um i can't ignore the possibility of of it but it's very very difficult to destroy pfs compounds they you can't do it chemically you have to do it physically and the way you do it physically is basically you zap it with an incredible amount of electricity and and blow the molecules to pieces so that's you know layman's way of looking at it but that's what happens when you get there and that's not effective unless you have a really really high concentration to work with to begin with so i have seen some technologies out there in the past couple years um those are for places where there's massive amount of pfas contamination in somebody's wastewater plant and what they do is they concentrate it and they get it so concentrated that they have one drum of this you know make essentially nuclear waste a level of pfas which they can address now because it now makes sense to take that one drum and and spend twenty thousand dollars to blast that apart and and make it innocuous but to take the the hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater that went into that and address them makes no sense at all so now back to wayland the for this particular site um it's a couple things i can see we might be able to get to in in the not that distant future uh one is a temporary solution where we can demonstrate that yes there's a whole bunch of pfas in the groundwater here and it is moving in in a direction of and probably into dudley pond um i think dp is going to require us to demonstrate whether it is going into dudley pond and at what concentration um but we haven't got that far yet and let's just say it does that we've demonstrated that okay a significant amount of pfas is getting into dudley pond how is that actually affecting the dudley or the happy hollow wellfield on the other end of dudley pond and i think what we're going to show is the dilution factor of just going into all of that surface water um drops the concentration down low enough that the existing treatment plant plus the enhanced treatment plant that the water department is considering is going to be able to address that level of pfas contamination without any great duress they're building their plant big enough to handle a significant input of contamination you know pfas contamination in surface water we don't want to make it so bad going into there that that it floods their their capacity but i don't think it's going to um but in order to get there is still a long study to get that much information and and explain it to dp in a way that they're going to believe the other option is um to say that we can capture some of the groundwater that's highly contaminated and put it into some sort of containment where they can treat it possibly by transporting it over to the waste the the water treatment plant because they have that system in place that can handle it or something along that line or you know another treatment plant specifically for this particular problem those are fairly expensive options too um but again they're the idea of trying to actually remediate the site to background levels is it's a fantasy at this point um there's an awful lot of very smart people working on how to deal with the p-pass problems much smarter than me with many more degrees than i have uh and sooner or later someone's going to practice but i don't know how soon it's going to be we've we've been able to address every major problem that i've seen um i've now reached my 30th anniversary as a lsp i've seen a lot of bad problems come that looked impossible that have been solved um this one looks impossible at the moment um i predict that it will get solved i don't think it's going to be solved very quickly so um i tend to digress there have i answered your question at all yes definitely i really appreciate it um i just you know a you have to be the bearer of the bad news here where mr mccall's over they're giving me but then we're about 35 minutes behind the next time just so everyone knows just telling him before you yell at me so we but we still haven't finished questions and we still have to look at the three options that mr gould has presented so do we want to talk about the three options first or we want to still finish up the questions of course yeah okay questions okay um do we want to put a time on this or no no okay it's silence the next um agenda has to be yeah yeah go ahead who wants to be next um ben uh i infer that you are really not recommending the third as you i gather you don't think it'll apply with dep is that right i want to i'm offering that uh that third option because i think um it's something that will meet the regulations i will not make dep happy though they will come back at some point and say this is insufficient now they have several ways they can tell you that it's insufficient um one way is to say that we've received this it's not not enough information so you know we're we're requesting further information just a request for information that's a nice polite way to do it and they'll give a a timeline to say within six months provide us this additional information which you know buys you time and i think that that is a workable thing whether we can answer the questions they have within six months i don't know yet but at least it would be a delay um the second level is if they actually say this particular report does not meet the standard and therefore we're actually asking you to retract it and within you know a certain amount of time it could be six months it could be 12 months i don't know they vary um provide us with a full comprehensive phase two that does satisfy the regulations um i have gotten those they're unpleasant um and it does give you some deadlines that you really have to meet um the third way they can do it is they can actually say um we're not sure you know what you're doing and therefore we're going to put an administrative consent order in place that says you will do these certain things within these time frames i think that's highly unlikely in this situation but that's that's sort of the nuclear option that they always have available to them and unfortunately i have stepped into several projects that other firms have started and they got to that point and they the responsible party said well let's go with another firm and i've been able to get those people out of that that particular situation so far all the ones i've had had to been in so i i have some experience dealing with them they're not pleasant but those are the possibilities so am i recommending option three i'm not i don't think that's the one i would go with if it was completely up to me but it is not completely up to me obviously the town is paying for our services and if you need to know what it's going to cost and decide whether you can handle it um for a recommendation i think option two might be the best but yeah it's kind of a risk analysis but for additional five thousand uh three visa v2 doesn't seem like a lot of money um my second question is what's your degree of confidence in these estimates if we spent twenty four thousand dollars on the pip process initially and there is more bad news or more news uh that might generate more probative uh commentary and questions so you know with respect to number two your ballpark is 35 000 but if the pip cost 24 000 the first time around uh does that give you enough money to do connectivity test test existing wells do the lab work do the write-up uh file the notice of delay so what i've done this in this time originally i said i believe we can do the the first pip for 10 000 and they want to be in by 24 000. this time i'm saying we can do this second pip for 15 000. i'm i'm i bumped it up by 50 percent and and said okay um i'm going to try to hold the line and when people ask questions that seem to be esoteric i'm going to tell them that those are esoteric questions that i don't think it's in the town's interest is to pay me to answer right um and then um you know i obviously have a question about short of eliminating the source of contamination which we don't understand or doing a very expensive pump and treat um there will be i'm sure a lot of uh interesting conversation about uh where we go from here once we uh do the phase two um finally you have indicated in the past that this pfas is a significant issue but that it if we're if one were to contemplate putting a building of some description on the site you've previously indicated that you thought that could be done uh with uh the appropriate uh maybe passive venting system that could subslide uh venting system that could be made active that you've got a that you limit excavation that you have no basement and so forth do these more recent findings occasion you to question that earlier assumption okay um so at this property as you know there's three types of contamination problems we have metals contamination soil we have some volatile contamination groundwater and groundwater and we've got this whopping pfas problem groundwater the what you're mentioning about the venting system that's specifically for the volatiles um the gasoline type volatiles that are in in the groundwater and a passive ending system and a good vapor barrier should prevent it from getting in the building at all um if if you put a passive in venting system in it's pretty darn easy to turn into an active venting system if it turns out to be insufficient um an active venting system will almost always handle any kind of volatile contamination you've got it all you have to do is turn on turn the fan higher or put a bigger fan in it that those are minimal costs once you have the system in place pfas is not volatile it's not going to have volatization problems it's not part of the volatile problem um for metals it's a direct contact issue now the the soil itself is fairly deep underground it's you know i remember right it's somewhere in a vicinity to 15 feet below grade um all we have to do to protect people from from that is put a deed restriction on and says you're not going to dig down more than 15 feet unless you have adequate protection uh i don't think that's outrageous i think that's just common sense so we can deal with the metals problem very easily you're also getting into the pfas because you're going to be below the water table at that point and you don't want to be spreading the pfas any worse than you need to and if you're going to dig that deep one of the things you have to do is dewater it and now you get a pfas problem you're dewatering so yeah it all goes together to address the metals contamination to address the volatile contamination is is quite simple in in concept and not very expensive to deal with and virtually any building you want to put on this piece of property can be constructed in such a way as to address that the pfas is a drinking water problem and it's a problem because you're in a zone two for the happy hollow wellfields and that's not going to change even if we decide no to no longer use the happy hollow wellfield to to un to turn that so it's not a zone two any longer and no longer potential drinking water source area is a long long process that you probably don't want to go through because then you you've lost an area for a drinking water supply for the town which is they're hard to come by so um the pfas is is a different animal now i don't believe that it's a major problem at the moment to the happy hollow wellfields it's not right there and it's all goes into dudley pond and gets diluted massively by the water that's already in dudley pond so is it is it something we have to pay attention to do absolutely is it something that we need to worry about a loose sleepover i don't think so that we're constrained by the fact that dep's rules say that if you're in a zone two you have to meet the drinking water standard that's not really realistic but it's what they've decided is is appropriately conservative for for the good of the entire commonwealth um i just give an example that you're all probably quite familiar with on the racely on site um they have trichloroethylene in the groundwater they started out with concentrations that were close to a thousand parts per million of of trichloroethylene with the drinking water standard is five they're now down to a couple dozen at the worst wells couple dozen parts per million so billion excuse me parts per billion and that was with some aggressive remediation but they're well in the way to actually getting down to drinking water levels so and a problem like that you could address it the difference is trichloroethylene is expensive to remediate but not impossible pfas is horrendously expensive to remediate and is close to impossible so it's it's a difference in scale um but the problem itself is the same sort of thing it's not actually um harming the town at this point but if left alone it could easily be a a problem to the drinking water supply you know something yeah thank you are people in these meetings uh apprised of what the meetings cost just as you were careful tonight to tell us they were not apprised of the cost up front um we only held the initial pit meeting which is a requirement you have to hold it within 120 days of a petition to hold it so put it together as fast as i could and um one of the major expenses on that was researching the history there's the history of this was more convoluted than i expect it would be um but we unraveled it took a while but we unraveled it and then the questions that we're getting um a lot of them were were very good technical questions and a few of them were a little off-center um and my goal was to try to answer everybody adequately but um i didn't do the accounting while i was answering the questions probably should have and after having done the accounting for for what it costs to answer all of the questions i'm going to be quite clear at this next meeting that um you're welcome to ask all the questions you want but the answer might be um that's not an appropriate question thank you my second question is uh regarding the application for an extension can you it seems very likely the state's going to move some goalposts here we need more time to look into things broadly as a society um that would reinforce the need for the extension is it likely it will be granted is it a pessimistic application or an optimistic one and what are similar towns doing i'm trying to think i don't believe i've ever had dep refuse a notice when i sent any notice of delay to have them refuse and say no you can't have it oh if i may interrupt that that answers my question then thank you okay
okay so then what thank you madam good evening mr gould thanks for joining us so if you look at this site um with your own eyes it looks really like looks like a bowl if you look at your figure 6g it also kind of looks like a bowl and monitoring well um 21 on figure 7 with the highest ratio yeah monitoring 21 um suggests that might be with the uh central point right yeah we call it a sink but yeah same thing cool so could that figure 417 be representative of a long-term historical collection of pfas chemicals if you look at figure 7 and you see the the blue arrows that are pointing kind of towards it that's the groundwater flow as we map it um and my still working hypothesis is that the original major source for pfas came from the wayland middle school septic fields and and so it takes a few years there's my understanding that the school department has modified its policies relative to certain products that they use cleaning products i certainly hope that's being implemented but is it possible that if the school did modify its policy say let's say hypothetically three or four years ago that this 417 figure represents 25 30 years of using these products i think that might be a little more than it is but i think it probably represents something that happened five years ago possibly 10 years ago and okay eventually it all drains out i mean it doesn't just collect at that point it still flows out of mw21 and it will eventually make its way into doubly pond in some fashion but to me i'm guessing it's been several years five or ten years at this point that's all i have thank you thank you so now um mr bull has asked us about three options going forward and um first one was fairly comprehensive with a price tag of about 55 and somehow i think i'm looking at a film we have probably close to or michael there about 40 or 45 still available right what do we have left after what we have spent i think that's the first question we should have asked i think it is close to that 45 i think so if we went short we may have to find if we wanted to implement plan option one which seemed very full then we would have to you know find the other pennies to go with it if you will um two was a little bit more of a modified version and then three was just sort of um and let's submit and see and what happens and number three is about thirty thousand and number two is 35 so it's kind of uh almost to me probably not cost um efficient oh i like that first so i want to throw it out to the table um somebody want to start you know what option i think we should i just think this topic was uh touched upon when you were out of oh wonderful thank you mr witt i think you had uh well uh i
option three versus option two you know it's a five thousand dollar up charge five thousand dollars is not nickels but it's we might have to repeat but it sounds as though we should definitely do the notice of delight sounds as though we need to do the connectivity test uh we've got to do the pit meeting we're going to sample the existing wells and so the question is whether we do some additional wells and sample those to you know try to get a better handle on uh kind of the you know what's happening with respect to the groundwater flow in the public rights of way which there don't seem to be a water in the area and if we're avoiding private property i don't know well we have the 10 feet on each side of right we have matthews uh road a little uphill right that's a public road right and then
and then somewhere here lately but i don't think it's in the airman but if we go with option two and it turns out we needed the additional wells do we then end up spending more money then because we should have picked option one originally or are we okay to start with two and if we need to move to option one with the additional wells down the road oh i'm i wasn't sure if that question was directed to me or not okay yeah and i'm going to turn on to doug's question which option do you think we should do so uh my answer to that is um from us from a science standpoint i think you do need to go out for another iteration um i'm not sure if the next iteration would be enough i i can't tell you where the end point is until we get to it um but i can tell you what my thoughts were um i was thinking for additional wells um we'd we'd go into the right away at the south end of of keith road which is north of the william middle school to the west end of willow lane which is at the east side of william middle school to the north side of leary street which is south of 195 main street and then actually in the main street right away across the street into that sort of wet area that leads into one dudley pond uh which is also a town on property so those are the ones that i was thinking of so so what's that this for us and which option would you start you might expanding okay he's recommending number one is that what we think you want to do then we have to talk to michael make sure we're not what's the cost on that mr gold 55 okay the i can i can give you some of the detail cost um that's all right we just need to sell everyone just to make things just the 55 000 options number one correct yeah yeah number number one is to get to to do all of that right away would be 55 000. that does not all have to be done before november um if we do the notice of delay then we have a full year more to do it so and then in the next 16 months or so to do all of that well i move this board vote option one i was described by our expert mr gould uh to be spread out over over time depending on two fiscal years you know spending on uh monetary the financial ability and and uh to google's expertise recommendation so thank you is there any further discussion otherwise all those in favor say aye aye all right motion passes five zero thank you very much mr gould very informative as usual appreciate your help thank you mr gould thank you thank you very much yeah i will thank you does this feel a little bit like talking a thread on a sweater
yes ah yes it does years all right so those who are um following us in the fact that we're going to go on to they are discussing um the proposals that are in the packet from uh four separate um legal firms as um and that starts on page 22 and each one of these proposals has got multiple pages so that very long so all right let them know probably be a couple minutes for me to walk through happy to move um um happy to move appointment of in the marine kavanaugh the conservation community preservation committee for a term in june 30 2029 and i'm uh appointment of ian gordon confirmation ian gordon to design review advisory board for term in june 30 20 29. thank you any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye thank you thank you 8 15 was supposed to hang on the hearing of correspondence you have anything on correspondence no okay um michael we have a hearing schedule 8 15 do i have to we let somebody know we're running late i don't know who's out there in terms of the attendance there's a lot of people out there i'm here for the 8 15 for the license uh alex tamargo from the villa restaurant hi how are you we apologize profusely we're running a little late here understood yeah i've been kind of keeping up i have you in the background until you're ready for me okay great thank you sir absolutely hello how are you how are you folks well we're really sorry that we're running so late where would you like us just come forward please do wherever the microphones pick up that's i guess i got discount sound too okay all righty so this is uh carol murray
it's nice to see you hi how are you good how are you i'm good thanks i mean this is so this is bad anyways amy pressel carol murray and i mean amy sorry and um deborah who was with us last week and thank you so um as you know my select board is with um procuring um town council and um you have been our town council i think since 16 and then full council since 19 um but we are doing our due diligence periodic due diligence to conversation with everyone um i can assure you believe it or not with the multiple of pages you sent to the voters comes always comes from there and we've read everything in there so if you just want to give us a quick highlight um i think that would do well thank you and again i apologize profusely it's just in our worst um attendance ever totally understand so uh for the benefit of those at home for the record uh carol murray from kp law nice to see all of you again chris we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet but welcome to the board um i know you did do introductions but um as i just to sort of highlight a few things um lauren goldberg is our managing partner and amy quessel is the head of our land use practice group um and so as we were sitting as you as you were just mentioning madam chair um we have had the honor of serving as your town council for 10 years now and uh as we were preparing to come here today i was kind of reflecting on the fact that absolutely no one in this room was part of that appointment process 10 years ago but the three of us were upstairs in the school committee conference room with at least a dozen people sitting around firing off all sorts of questions and grilling us on everything and i'll speak for myself but i know when we were in the parking lot afterwards i think we felt completely spent because you had such a an engaged dedicated sophisticated group of folks who knew exactly what they were looking for and when we got the call that we had been appointed i have to say we were absolutely honored um that we that we passed what we thought was a very high standard to get here um and since then i think we have seen two town administrators we've seen an interim town manager and now your first permanent town manager it was in this very room that i met spent many nights with sherry carlson and lee anderson working on your town manager act and listening to very dedicated engaged people at that point who wanted to give as much feedback and comments as to how you wanted your government to run and i can remember a few times making a suggestion that well some other communities do it this way and they were always very gentle to remind me no no carolyn we do it the wayland way and i don't mean that in any way to be sarcastic or put or judgmental it really had to keep reminding me that you know you're right every town is unique and this is your town this is you know your form of government you're right i am just your scribe at that point or the person to tell you yes no maybe um but we have covered an awful lot of ground in those 10 years you know we um we're trying to think of just some of the things that you know we came in on sort of the tail end of the river's edge project you would hire special counsel to help you with the rezoning for that process we sort of came in at the tail end with finally getting that permitted through the the zoning board the town center project um i know it's still a work in process you know after all of these years but amy katie klein and i all have our color-coded maps of the parcels at town center which ones you know the developer retained which ones the town has acquired which ones were offered to the town um because we had to really dig into all of that to to be able to you know advise and help keep moving that forward and maybe someday it will be a completed project um we've worked with you all with the first amendment auditors you know as i walk into town hall and i see all of the half doors and the counters and the signs up about what is the public space and what is not a public space i remember exactly where that came from because the first amendment auditors were descending upon not just whalen town hall but other town halls and that was one of the ways that we sort of helped folks navigate between you know public rights to information versus sometimes some of the information that's sitting on the town clerk's counter is actually not all for public consumption um we've also had the thrill of attending every single one of your town meetings over the years and there is nothing like a whalen town meeting and you know this better than anyone i think you all feel a little bit flattered that i always ask for at least an associate or two to tag along because in our office whalen's town meeting is like legendary like you have not seen how the sausage is made so you have gone through this process and like i get more i get associates that have to turn down and say no we can't have a small entourage going to their town meeting wait till next year it'll be your turn but there's so much about what you do at town meeting and all the work in the lead up that goes into it we can't replicate that in a conference room in our offices to teach folks you have to just experience it and it truly is all about the wayland way and learning you know we've learned what the abbreviated procedure is we know who the peter gossels award is intended to honor every year and i found it very quickly that elvis being employed at town meeting does not mean that we're getting the ghost from the room of graceland to entertain us you know there's so much that i know you're interviewing tonight for town council which is typically outside council i don't think we've ever felt like outside council i think we have always felt like this is our town this is our team and we're part of that um you know we were i know you've got other firms coming in this evening and i'm sure that because we're the incumbents there might be a few criticisms perhaps launched our way you might hear somebody said they're too big they're impersonal um they come in and sell you with a team of people and they switch it up well yeah we might have 40 to 45 attorneys does that make us bigger than some of the firms you might be interviewing maybe but does that mean we have the breadth of experience i think it does it means that we can advise you on everything from um an elections issue to navigating special legislation to god only knows how many 40 b you know dispute resolution appeals levels all along the way or guiding the zba through their very first how do we handle a special permit appeal of a decision issued by the planning board um we've got the bench to do that you know and i think that if you spoke with your planning board chair your zba chair your building inspector they'd all with a with a difficult question they'd say maybe we should ask carolyn maybe we should check in with with amy first your town clerk whenever something happens to come up she will email me tree will email me and be like carolyn can you just ask lauren to please give me a call and tell me about this and you know what everybody knows who you're talking about you don't have to say we'll call council who who is council how do i get in touch with that person you know who we are because we're part of your fabric here and if that doesn't speak volumes for saying this is not an impersonal firm i will just remind you these are the same three people who sat upstairs 10 years ago and answered all of those questions and we are the same three people that are back here tonight and we look forward to another decade of being able to continue our relationship and hope that we can continue to work with all of you so with that i'll pause because i know you are trying to get through this but i don't know if you have any specific questions for us if you want to hear from from lauren and amy directly so yeah thank you we appreciate it and and thank you for coming in i i i i that's what i asked you to be first you are our current counselors about that yeah we want to tell you would have liked that but yes or not so so what we do is now we'll open up to the board to see if we happen anyone has any questions feels you want to start what i don't want to part it let's her need to start oh let's have our attorney stuff yes go watch this that's okay a couple of comments first comment is it's too bad that i mean it's public for this reason if you're so confident you really could sell tickets because we could use them you could as so many cities and towns can um let me just comment that i've had the pleasure of working with uh these three lawyers over the past several years on someone projects you mentioned the town center project the altar oxwell project um and many other smaller issues and i've always found your firm to be responsive um you are multi-service um
i find your advice you know accurate and uh advice that we can rely on because as you know you know we do and all of us have to you know but my experience is you have the background to give these um accurate responses because some you know the law is changing a lot more is asked to cities and towns today and then than in the past you know and uh and you're always up on the camera um my my question is this and we have public comments before a meeting started from dave bernstein heads up the elvis committee and dave expressed concern uh over a meeting he had attended involving the net tuckett um select board in which he presented the uh idea of oh um female participation and three goldberg you were there apparently and you gave a response that mr bernstein felt was not accurate uh so my question is would you be willing if he's willing to have maybe a meeting with you me and him to kind of chat about remote participation oh through you madam chair um uh of course i would i am i'm sorry to hear that that's how how he characterized it uh i have been involved with the concept of remote participation at representative and open town meetings since uh covid and have closely followed all the legislative progress uh i've actually worked with mr bernstein yourself some others here um to help draft the legislation that was sent to the general court um and to advocate for that uh with the general court so um you know i'm i'm certainly not pleased to hear that he thought that i said something that was inaccurate but of course i would want to talk to him about that and um i know the work that he's done all over the state to kind of sell this concept and i am fully appreciative of the effort that he makes in that regard now my own personal kind of take is that we keep trying and it keeps not happening at the state level um but you know his ideas are fantastic and we just haven't seen it come to a place where anyone can act on those ideas so it is a topic that is um yeah it's advocated by many in town and as you all know sometimes it's a long time you get something past the legislature yes we're confident we'll get it done yeah that's all i have thank you thank you and thank you for the opportunity to respond to that sure attorney levin hello everybody um so i started on the select board i think a year after you all were retained by the town so i've only known kfee law and and have no comparator um but i've enjoyed working with all of you and i've served in different capacities too because i was on the zba i was on wastewater and i was on cable advisory so i had that angle into your firm as well what i'm curious about and when people ask me what the advantage of your firm is and i tell them that you work with more than 100 municipalities and now i can see in exhibit one here you actually work with like 140 municipalities do you ever even having 40 to 50 odd attorneys have bandwidth problems where this was the first time i experienced a conflict where carolyn had competing town meetings but i understand that most municipalities are not like wayland but that just with that sheer number of towns that you represent doesn't that present bandwidth issues for you time and time again you know i think it's a fair question but um and i think you can appreciate this being an attorney yourself we are always always juggling balancing and you know i mean you don't go into this profession at least not from my perspective unless you are sort of a a very driven person um you know most of us probably only like to get you know five or six hours of sleep a night because that's just kind of part of who we are um and i think you know we we it isn't just looking at it from like you take a look at the the list of 140 and divide by say 40 45 attorneys that's not really you know the the true representation of it some of those communities are relatively quiet shall we say in some respects some might be much more needy or the frequency of of interactions sometimes it's just driven by perhaps a project you know someone gets you know a 40 b project and suddenly you know all hands on deck and you shift towards that um but as you mentioned you know in 10 years this was the first year for having a conflict at town meeting because you guys changed your date on me you know not that i wouldn't have left to have been there but you know the first monday in may is the most popular night for most um most cities and towns but i i think you know we always put a team together i know you've only got three folks here tonight we've also got you know david jenkins who does the labor work we've got katie klein who does the real estate work mark rich who does the contracts work so it isn't as though everything that comes in lands exclusively in in my lap um it it does get divvied out pretty easily with with other members of the team so that i think we we have found a way that we can keep that balance um you know and i think that you know i very much appreciate tom's comment earlier that um we we pride ourselves on being responsive to folks even if it is a you know a quick text you know saying i'm available at five and i'll give you a call as as your town manager knows our best conversations take place but either one of us is a driving home you know because that's just what you have to do to make yourself available and to make it all work um so i do think we have the bandwidth and i think we have i think we've served well fleet well over the past 10 years i'm sorry that was a Freudian slip for you i'm sorry we serve them well too but mostly wheeling um no i think i think we could there's no reason to suspect we couldn't continue to do that and then one other question that i have is again i don't really have a frame of reference but it seems like we always have multiple matters and litigation going on simultaneously and some of them seem to drag on for such a long period of time is are you finding that that's similar in other comparable municipalities just the sheer number and how long they last and is there anything we can do to be more proactive about that i don't know so as i say amy probably wants to jump in on this one yeah yeah i've had very um long litigation experience here and wayland a lot of it has to do with you know the plaintiff and sometimes the plaintiff is pro se and um that makes the matter uh much longer but um in general with regard to land use litigation um you are not um i would not classify wayland as having a lot of land use litigation that's taking a long time um you you just had some significant cases you had a telecommunications case and then you had um you know large a large 40b you then had but if you look at so for example if you look at the um the cascade 40b and then if you look at saint anne's um we were able to wrap saint anne's up with with both of you helping um we were able to wrap that up very quickly and and that was a benefit to wayland that project and we were able to make sure that it could happen so it all depends on the actual project and the litigation um where the litigation is if the litigation is in land court we can usually get a quicker result than if it's in superior court and unfortunately we don't have the choice to choose that that's the plaintiff's choice um and then just to back up real quick about you know uh bandwidth i think that i actually kind of see it opposite i see it different where i learn from other communities and then i can i can answer things much quicker and whalen because i've had it happen in another community when i get questions from the building commissioner or i get questions from the zba um and then the other thing is that we have no choice but to stay on top of legislation we are between mbta communities the new energy um you know we are just we're all the changes in 40bs we are on top of all of that because we have to wait yeah because we're inevitably going to run into it quickly thank you um mr levine asked the question i was going to ask so thank you um well thank you all for coming uh this evening um this is my second go around on the slide board and i think uh our times have uh with the exception last three years have uh with the exception last three years not coincided um but as i listen to michael and my colleagues uh i think uh people feel very well uh that you you are quite responsive one possible exception might have been the home rule petition on the millennium fund i mean uh i don't know what your perspective is on that we've certainly got one side of the story from from people here but uh i would uh hope that we can my second my question i guess is uh i notice that there are certain exceptions that you have in the proposed retainer arrangement uh specifically uh going hourly on employment and labor matters real estate construction special projects and so forth was that typical sure yeah um thank you uh so it is typical that there would be so let me back up there's several different ways of addressing legal fees one is just a straight hourly rate one is to use a fixed fee or retainer which you guys have done for a long time um and then there's this other kind of um model out there which is more of an all-in model but even with those that all-in model they're still accepted um labor and employment can be easy when things are quiet and extremely intense when they are not and so labor and employment is often outside the retainer but i think what's really important for you all to know is that we are invested in a long-term relationship and if there's a model that you prefer to explore you want to include something like labor and employment within the um fixed fee you know we're happy to talk about that um pretty much typically it's outside but we do have some municipalities where it's inside and it just changes you know our calculation on what the amount should be per month i guess my question is is why are these carved out and is it because before you get into it you just don't know how much time is going to be involved and it's going to be quicker it's going to be dragged out well most of those and i recognize especially for labor and employment sometimes it could just be a quick one-off you know we are reviewing or negotiating a new contract with your you know your police chief fire chief whatever it is that may be quick but every grievance has the problem you know has the potential to turn into well we're going to arbitration or whatever the case may be so most you know our experiences have told us that those things that we carve out those are the the types of tasks that typically it's hard it's hard to predict but it is also very labor intensive when they are active and you're you're going through them almost to um you know the the exclusion of some other things um so that's why they've been they've been called out in that way so so i wasn't doing the committee that um met the three of you and grilled you to join us however i have known carolyn since she started it because i was in the finance committee and our paths across then i will say this that um and so i haven't had the pleasure of working with probably any of the other board members uh the attorneys at the firm on a consistent basis but i think to a lot of people in town carolyn is town council that is the place of our town calls and she does a terrific job balancing us and being very patient with uh whaling with that i want to thank you very much unless you have a question for us um excuse me mr mccall did you want to say something i'm sorry um i don't have to but because you were doing this to me earlier look at me well i i've had a wonderful working relationship with all the attorneys at kpu law and i think attorney murray was being modest when she said we speak at um when we drive home when you get into this profession whether you're a town manager or a municipal attorney it's a 24-7 job there are plenty of days holidays sundays that we're laughing you know this is what we chose to do for a living but if i text on a holiday you know say you got five minutes she's usually like lol i'm working right now so she'll call me you know and you get we do have a personal relation you get to know a little about people's families when you're calling on vacation where are you now but all the attorneys here have been very responsive i want to say it's it's just an odd thing but i think there was a time where both uh attorney questell and i were attending respective funerals where we were trying to negotiate a a a a a matter at one point in time it was it wasn't the same person that no no no we were but that that's the type of responsiveness we've had so and with that i'll thank you very much and again i apologize for who's sleeper not at all we're used to that that's why yeah hope we thank you very much for your time and thank you very much thank you for coming in thank you for having us i did happen to run into the folks um and i don't apologize to leave the experience for being going so late i did happen to run into um um robbie i'm sorry mr tomorrow we're going to be a little bit more still so sorry can you hear me sir robbie what i don't think we're ready for this gentleman yet welcome welcome okay sure as we're running late and some people should i bring more to the attendees area or just social mode to the attendees area moving back to the where we um he's in the panelists he's in the thing yeah back to attendees all right back to the attendee yes thank you what happened someone's supposed to be coming michael upstairs oh hi okay well there's one upstairs let's be free attorney tomorrow we have two other firms to interview um so correct hello how are you hello how are you everything where would you like us it's right here right there right here all right so are you melissa i'm the other yeah
this is from uh north marvie hello quinn and their um information starts on gig 109 and i'm at it so um welcome and we apologize profusely this was um a number of um perfect storms here we are now running very eager to apologize profusely but we thank you for joining us absolutely um wayland has a town manager former government and under the our town manager act it is the select board that engages council so then we we um delegate the day-to-day conversations interactions and business to the town manager but this is what we are doing um and so what we'll do is have you you know have to speak for a few minutes and which you'd like to say to us board will have an opportunity to ask some questions and just very informal absolutely so that sounds good well thank you for having us um um i'm melissa murray this is antoine ferris we're from north marine pelican and so we i think are unique compared to the other firms that you're going to be hearing for tonight because we have just put in for labor and employment we are a firm that just does labor employment and school law and for schools we are primarily just labor and employment for schools too because uh collective bargaining contracts negotiations grievances that takes up a lot of time in both schools and on the town side so uh we're unique in that respect so we come to you with just experience um and specialty in labor and employment and that's what we concentrate our time in so um i graduated from uh suffolk law in 2010 but i started as a law clerk with our predecessor firm in 2008 so i've been doing this since then i do primarily collective bargaining grievances and then on the school side i do collective bargaining and i also do some special education work also do a lot of training speaking um at a lot of mma events uh massachusetts uh municipal lawyer events and then also some school law events as well so we do that both kind of publicly but then also for our clients as well so um we're really excited to be here uh labor and employment law is a specialty i mean some of you i think are attorneys so you know like every area of the law is a specialty i can't pick up and do the zoning for you i would not want to come here and advise you on your environmental law but so we do labor and employment and we do think it's a good model to have outside labor and employment law because it's something we do every day for our clients that's all we do town meeting town meeting season comes up we are not distracted by that we are right here continuing to do your labor and employment law so i'm sure you'll have some questions i'm going to let antoine introduce himself as well um so i'm antoine i'm an associate at norris marion pelican i also graduated home law school in 2019 i believe 2019 correct i concentrated in my uh studies in labor and employment practice where i got the the advantage of working um actually doing coursework and our labor and arbitration and also work investigations in in the course of practice at southclaw when i graduated law school i joined uh norris marion public win as a law clerk and i've been serving i've been i was a law clerk for a couple of years and then i became an associate and uh i'm still obviously working for the firm so i get the advantage of using the experience i've had in the past years to now serve the municipalities that we work with closely in labor and employment matters on collective bargaining issues a lot of workplace investigations and also just a variety of labor and employment thank you so when we opened up to the questions the last time we have two uh members of our board are actual practicing attorneys so i want to check in now would you like me to start with them again or are you comfortable starting this time good work go forward um good evening i'm bill whitney one of the members of the select board um what what trends have you seen uh in the course of your practice uh in the in the labor employment area are there are there uh certain kinds of issues that have uh faded more to the background and you see more of certain other kinds of things i'm just curious about what your experience with and in the general trends of labor and employment law in your practice i was actually talking uh about this with somebody yesterday i think it was something i've noticed in recent years is that there's actually a lot more litigation people are actually going to arbitration more than they have been in the past like so 10 years ago there was a little bit of a lull even with civil service cases for discipline and bypasses uh people are starting their rights whether they should be or not to go forward and cities and towns are responding not just with settling but saying we can't continue to keep settling because it's just going to we're going to kind of fall into this pattern of not standing up for ourselves or putting our foot down when someone has done something egregious or we do need to take steps to separate them so i've actually noticed that there's a lot more arbitrations going forward now all the way to arbitration in terms of discipline um and terminations um on the flip side in terms of interest arbitrations with your police and fire they're not going all the way they're typically getting right up to the finish line and then settling um so there's a lot of people filing and going through the whole process but there's only been like three arbitrary interest arbitration decisions upon two or three years so individuals are going to arbitration but the unions themselves are not necessarily going off all the way so that's something that i've noticed i don't know if you've noticed anything else that you wanted to well in in the in terms of the labor and employment side we've seen in the past couple years um trends with a lot of obviously a lot of communities have been dealing with a lot of budgeting issues and so we've been seeing a lot of the you know the layoff side which is difficult for some communities so we've been you know guiding communities in that process in that respect you know in terms of the back bargaining aspect of it and also the labor and employment side of it so thank you can still pick up on what bill said my name is chris reynolds i'm not an attorney i'm a new member okay are there things you could recommend that would help us reduce our exposure mr mccall does a great job making sure there are classes and professional development standards and um i can imagine there might be a town-wide day someday where everybody comes and learns how to avoid this kind of case or do better with that um i imagine also that many towns feel they need to do a better job with what i'll politely call preventative medicine um do you have some ideas about this um i think what you've mentioned in terms of training it is great and i think that's an important step the other piece i think would be helpful is reviewing all of your policies policies any handbooks you have any policies you have like social media policies for instance right that can make a big difference if you have a situation where an employee has posted something online either during work time or on their free time and how that impacts them in their job and whether or not you had a social media policy or an up-to-date social media policy that kind of gives them some guidance on what they can and cannot do and then even if you've had that policy if you've made them aware of that policy recently you so there's these kind of items that you can go through that is often very difficult because we're all doing more with less but taking the time to kind of go through and see what policies you have what policies you need and then making sure that they're up to date and they're in a place where employees can find them that's really important because then we have that situation where somebody has done something that you feel it's pretty egregious and either you want to separate them or discipline them um they didn't know the policy existed or it hasn't been updated in 10 years and so it still refers to just you know like sending pager messages or things like that and it doesn't address uh direct messages and text messages and social media then then it limits what you're able to do because the employees especially the unionized employees do have to have kind of notice of what the expected behavior is to be able to then be held accountable for it so thank you yeah thanks um attorney bears tom fain has to meet you why did you why did you get into this area of what interests you so when i was studying my course of work at suffolk law labor employment was was one of the concentrations where i could focus all my courses in the labor and employment field and as part of that practice i i met one of my professors who was an arbitrator actually who uh litigated he was he still actually he is no longer an arbitrator retired a couple of years ago but he he's the one who pretty much introduced me to the aspects of the public sector aspect the intersection between labor and employment and you know municipalities and in fact ended up writing me a letter of recommendation for the firm and that's um yeah that's the reason why i ultimately joined i mean you were a law clerk did you see many um labor and employment cases or not enough as a law clerk yes as a law clerk and i had the privilege as working as a law clerk for nmp because i was under supervision um i would handle a high level work as for example with private research memos i was on attended conference calls with with attorneys um i was copying on the emails where i was told to analyze certain issues uh and provide a response and and in some cases where i was even you know gave my fine research funding um to certain clients on the again on those supervision level of attorney thank you hi doug levine um we were speaking earlier this evening about the fact that we have a number of matters in litigation um and some of them especially those in spirit court just tend to drag on and on so i'm reading your firm profile and talk about the importance of kind of getting out ahead of litigation if possible and being proactive can you talk a little bit about that that success that you've had in other municipalities because we just feel sometimes like we're just bogged down in litigation and it's costly and it's timely yep so sometimes one of the hardest conversations to have with a client is they're ready to do something to take an action in our case it's usually an employment action um and they're ready to pull the trigger and they've already like we've already arranged for the final paycheck we're going to do this tomorrow and it's like okay well let's back up what happened before then you know sometimes we get the call blind or cold when we don't know anything else that that has happened before so we do what we do is we need to make sure that the client like slows down gives us all the information when i say we don't think you should do this right now unless there's something like it's 100 they've got the video they see someone stealing you know things from the dpw yard it's all on video and everything like that we do that but normally we'll ask the client to kind of slow down send us all the information and do a case assessment and see what we need so that we're not taking a step too prematurely and so we like to make sure that we've lined ourselves up and put ourselves in the best position to defend a case going forward and usually that will stop uh the other side from uh taking some new litigation or taking it all the way when they know the information that we have and the evidence that we collect in the process that we've gone through has been fair and that the employees had an opportunity to be heard we've either done an investigation we've put together all the information and we've laid it out in terms of what what we have you know this was the policy they knew it was a policy they signed off saying they read the policy all these different pieces and we put that together and so sometimes that means that we don't act like right away when the client calls and we suggest holding back a little bit so that we have the time to make sure that we're not missing a step because the worst position you can be in as you get all the way you have the situation where you are in the right in almost all aspects except procedurally maybe you've missed a step or you forgot to give a due process hearing or you forgot to send a notice of charges that included all the charges right like you've just chosen one that seems the most significant but you haven't filled in some of these other pieces that are actually really important too right like the truthfulness aspect or the the covering up something or retaliating intimidating a co-worker you should put everything in there and make sure that you have all the charges laid out and so sometimes we do have to have those difficult conversations where we say we can do this for you but we can't do it tomorrow it'd be better if you send us everything and we take a look at it and we go forward after that so we do really try to make sure that we're working with the client we do ask them to give us information early involve us along the way stay in touch with us not everyone does that or you know things to do that sometimes the uh department heads that we're dealing with get a problem late themselves right like the secondary manager has been dealing with something and then it gets to a point where it just boils over and so they're just acting to kind of um help their their um second in command um and so they want to help them and so everyone's reacting instead of taking the time to make sure that we're in the best position possible so and then again for the training right so if you train managers on how to do investigations if you train managers on how to have due process hearings or interviews with employees to get information from them and to hear their side of the story then when the client presents you with that information it's already in a really good format it's already well laid out and we have a lot to work with so thank you sure appreciate it thank you um so i liked in your cover letter that you said we observe the difference between policy and legal advice you know i'll set the policies we'll give the legal advice so this is very well done and um like you said there's more items going to arbitration and some people before the jlmc so i think this is this is something to consider that currently as you know wayland has combined we have full service we originally though five or six years ago we only had separate legal so this was a a really interesting proposal for us you know also to consider here you know as we go forward right yeah um because that's under the town manager act of course like i said we appoint council so we're working on this yeah yeah doing some due diligence so yeah unless you have any other questions i want to thank you very much for your time and um i think um tom has sent a text already to kill us all right if you need any additional information from us please feel free you know i should go forward and i know you have a lot but you're hearing from a number of different folks today but if there's anything else you need from us or any questions that come up later please feel free to get in touch thank you thank you because i've worked with attorney learned in the past um as some of you know i'm an alternate in the joint labor management committee i did participate in an arbitration with attorney mary with somerville and attorney norris for the city of woburn helped settle some cases and when i had other issues in other communities i always found attorney mary is a good resource i even though she wasn't our firm just because i knew her we all both went to suffolk i would call occasionally so i've had a relationship with them as well thank you yeah thank you thank you thank you appreciate it oh you're welcome have a good night you too right now thank you
yes thank you for coming again we're sorry we're late very late we forget forgot to bring our sleeping bags but apparently i too so please have a seat and that's going to be fondly
and michael mccarl oh yes this is murphy has two mate in the hand um and what we're doing here is very informal few ministers get acquainted um and just give a little brief conversation do what you want to address with us and then the board will ask questions if they have any um the information their proposal is on page 153 of our packet for those who are following along and um and then we'll note that they are in fact the current school council school committees uh labor council correct yes or Elizabeth full council yeah full council for the schools full council for schools uh optimize so anyways the floor is yours thank you all right excellent well i think uh kate's going to start us off and do the primary presentation here i'll tell you uh i'll let her do most of speaking but you've got three of us here tonight all sort of representing three different branches of our proposal uh kate is the lead for town council work uh pete's the lead in any sort of litigation work and i would be leading any labor council work so that's what we've got here for teams right that's that's that's in our proposal that's what we're proposing to do is i'm kate connelly um relatively new to this firm i'm in my second year but i'm not new to municipal law i've been doing it for about 34 years now i've started out at what's now kp law i was couple hundred pages at the time and uh i believe i did some representation of wayland on some of your land use issues back when i first started um i left because i got invited to join a firm by an attorney who'd been my opposing counsel for about 10 years and that was a fun experience because the idea was i would still get to do my favorite which is municipal law where i specialize in land use litigation and permitting um but i would also get to bring in private clients which i hadn't been able to do before and i brought in clients like mass audubon so that was kind of fun so i do as i said i do mainly land use from the permitting stage all the way through litigation land court superior court all administrative agencies i'm on the board of the massachusetts association of conservation commissions so i do a lot of training in those areas as well as general municipal law um open meeting a lot of public records municipal finance covering town meetings both representative and uh general and um it's it's really my favorite type of practice i do a lot of litigation though peter would be our um he does more litigation he'd be our litigation person and um mike would do the labor if we are fortunate enough to get this position um we do we offer presentations throughout the year um usually first the first year we offer a free presentation on whatever topic the town might be interested in and we also propose office hours if that's something that you'd be interested in where i do this from my towns that i represent with the firm where i go maybe once a month peter goes to one of his towns every tuesday and we just they have an agenda for us anybody who signs up with questions they want to ask and we go for you know four to eight hours whatever it is that the town wants and that's something that they've found very effective we get to meet face to face with people and people can sign up they can also just show up if they've got a big burning issue that they want handled sometimes i get the papers in advance to look at sometimes the issue just comes up while i'm there i answer the question or i say i need to do a little research take it back to give it to an associate to look into um and that sort of thing so that's sort of just the general overview of what we propose i'm happy to answer any questions um or who would like to start with you um would you like to start i have full disclosure we have two attorneys on our board plus of course mr mccall as you probably already know is also uh an attorney as well who is our town manager um so dad levine so we've heard from a number of folks that um wayland is can be a little unique a little special both in the positive and negative sense of the word in terms we have a lot of people who get deeply involved in the weeds in our town um some of those folks are litigious some just want to be heard frequently and so we're finding that we often have to be reaching out to town council for advice on a whole variety of matters and so i've been asking folks just generally about bandwidth at the firms in terms of representing a whole number of municipalities and how you're able to juggle all that if if there are towns that have competing needs on your time what we mainly do is we have a sort of a gatekeeper just like you have the town manager here be your gatekeeper so you know who from what municipal board or what department is asking questions and then we watch it from our end as well so that we don't have two different people working on the same thing or we get the exact fact situation that you want answered and we make sure that we're efficient in providing responses so we have multiple towns that we represent cities and towns and so we make sure that we've got one person who's the primary contact sometimes we'll divide up into having if there's a lot of litigation in a town we'll have somebody who's an expert in litigation and we have backup people associates who can be backup in each of the areas um and labor of course we do labor as well and we have a pretty defense within the firm from partners to some of the newer attorneys who help out with the research so that usually we can cover any and every topic and sometimes we have an issue that maybe multiple towns that we're representing are dealing with and then we can officially discuss it internally and give an answer that is helpful to every town sometimes the facts might be different for each town but that way we're able to be efficient and not starting afresh with each town that asks us this particular question and i think what i would say on that is because it's a question that you get a lot of times uh for clients right there there's always concern is you want to make sure that your client knows that we are your top priority when you have an issue um so as you're looking here you've got the gatekeepers right but we are not we're not a hot potato it's not a lawyer of the day but what we do try to utilize as kate used the term like a deep bench there's about 30 lawyers at our firm and for instance if i have a client that comes and says mike i've got a public records request from a frequent flyer in a particular town we've got a few folks in our office that they are so good they deal with the public records division they handle the public record stuff so you can very easily go to that person and say listen i'm going to put you in touch with with my colleague right here who's on the phone with uh the public records division they know how to respond they know how to handle this they've seen this request in other communities because you see a lot of that in the public records area right there so we really try to utilize the full range there's no such thing as my client at our firm it's the firm's client and we're all trying to service our clients the best that we can and kate kind of talked about the you don't try to reinvent the wheel all of our practice groups in the firm routinely meet together at least on a bi-weekly basis and we sort of round table the issues that are going on so i'm just going to continue with the public records analogy if we find that hey has anyone seen this public records uh thing that's going around this particular town and oftentimes you see it has and so we can coordinate those efforts amongst all of us so that we all know what we're doing here and that can that can be a real cost savings to our clients too if we see that so thank you um
thank you so i have a question would our town get a discount based on the precedent that we provided you and your analysis have all been waiting long yeah uh unfortunately you have set some precedent right there right uh um and i know some of that's also been on the schools there but that's okay you live and you learn right there so um thanks for coming in this evening um my only question is this um well unlike so many communities are facing budget uh issues will you see a certain type of labor issue uh more frequently or issues because of that trend or not necessarily either litigation or or employment issues or or you know i'll i'll i'll speak from the labor perspective on that right there which is i tend to think that in labor things things are bless you things are definitely cyclical you know um when the economy is going well uh it's really easy to sit back and say hey you know we've towns are flush with cash we can do that y or z but what what you do see is when one issue happens to one community you tend to see it going around to all these other communities like right now i can share with you big thing that's going on is the your health insurance dropping glp1 drugs like how is that going to affect your health insurance and your subscribers and that's something that's going all around so i think you tend to see with communities that's a benefit that you have when you represent a lot of them whether it's school districts cities towns special use districts which we do all of those issues become cyclical so i think there is some benefit to cost savings because again you're not once you start seeing it you can kind of how do you handle it for all your other clients right there oh yeah thank you yeah well hi i'm bill whitney member of the select board one of the civilians not a lawyer
uh attorney clon calmly would you handle the real estate and the uh uh land use stuff personally or how does that work definitely land use depending on what the issues are and whether i'm tied up with something else i might assign some of the land use but mostly i do my own land use work real estate we actually have some people that are pretty expert at real estate and that's um i i'll i'll handle real estate matters as they relate to a particular land use development project that i might be working on or advising the planning board or conservation commission but if it's purely transactional we've got a group of people who do just that and um have you had experience in uh working with a community that's transitioning from another firm to your firm and how do you handle um that process of getting up to speed um uh is there any consideration the fees as you get up to speed that kind of thing yeah i've got experience but both ways with that i've taken over from municipalities where um i may know the previous council i just became land use council about a year ago for a town from they had somebody else who was council and it really just needed to get some of the files from this individual but a lot of the issues i've dealt with them so many times before i don't have to train myself again like the the accessory dwelling units that came february of 2025 i've dealt with that in so many different municipalities so i know what the issues are and there are different issues that pop up all the time but that's something that's affected every city in town so nothing's really new i don't necessarily have to go into everything that was done before i don't really always need to have all of the background but it's it's relatively easy and i think a lot of the municipal attorneys we all know each other and i've never had a problem calling somebody and and saying you know why did you handle this this way or um this is what background i found about the case is there anything else you can be and they're usually pretty helpful to just forward stuff i mean i can say i can add one thing and i'm not sure if it's in our in our proposal but generally whenever i have to transition to somewhere um what i usually say is i'm hoping to build a long-term relationship with that client and i want to learn a lot about that client as much as i can so i usually give about 10 hours and i think the firm usually does this too of transition time where we don't charge you so we can come out and learn a little bit about what's going on on uh on the labor side i like to usually meet with whether it's a town manager the assistant town manager the hr director and if they can set up a day where i can meet with their chief of police the dpw director if i get them all there on one day and just spend a day learning about what has been going on what do you have do you have a lot of grievances how are your relationships with your unions you have employee issues and start that process with who's my contact going to be who do you want to have access to counsel try to get a sense of those boundaries and and do that face-to-face and all of that again we call that sort of transition time it's let's get to know you um learn what we need to start taking over what's important what's happening right away so that and i think that's usually helps a lot of times with a smooth transition when you have that thank you so um i'm carol martin i got you in the hall
um but i really like your proposal the way you put things together and talked about um you know you're very client-centric i have your book what i really liked was although the the select board from the town of wayland through the town manager does make the informing and does select council you do interact with the boys and so i appreciate that you mentioned that you've done work you know the board of assessors you've done cbas you've done work with conservation planning because those are also folks who are clients of town council besides us but although the majority of it is you know all the select board um just in general running it so i do appreciate that um it's funny that you talk about boundaries we we try to implement boundaries here and not have like an open door access to town council because obviously we're trying to uh control of course but more importantly and i think what what kate said was we don't want to be saying the same thing having the same information being simulated two or three or four different you know board members so we generally work we delegate through the town manager and we try to um have all the questions go through there so it was a very good point that you made um appreciate tremendously your time to command the time you've put into the proposals and um do you have any other um uh questions that you have for us i i feel compelled that uh please to introduce myself um so i'm peter mellow and um and what we proposed is to have sort of a three-tier arrangement uh whereby i would be uh the main point of contact with respect to any litigation um i've spent like 20 plus years um as a lawyer primarily representing municipal clients and in particular representing municipal parties in litigation of all shapes and sizes and all forms federal state level and just love it and um but also it worked in the capacity as a day-to-day advisor and city solicitor in attleboro um but also had the firm's litigation group and um and i i think it what that offers the benefit that offers or the benefit of the model proposed to the town really as efficiency um as kind of a one-stop shop experience um with respect to any litigation matters i would be the main point of contact familiar with all the town's litigation obviously would be enlisting the assistance of colleagues um and i what we try to do is keep the pool of uh colleagues who work with uh clients kind of limited and so that you get familiarity with the lawyers who will be representing um will be serving the town primarily the town of whalen specifically um that's not you know we don't necessarily do that invariably there might be uh cases that call for a special expertise that one lawyer may have um in in a certain type of case depending on the subject matter you may see it a face you aren't familiar with from time to time but for the most part you're you're working with the same team which is something that i think is really important for efficiency purposes and um institutional knowledge and i guess there's no um one-size-fits-all approach to litigation but as a as a firm we like to be proactive and um and diligent and you know i view litigation as part um legal analysis parts of the thing and a lot of a lot of times what i found a success and litigation comes down to the extent to which you're willing to dig or fodder that's helpful to the legalization so that's something we um you know put a lot of focus and emphasis on um and of course always remain mindful of the resources you know um we obviously are working within budgetary constraints we serve municipal clients and and um and you know that's always something that uh is at the forefront of our thinking throughout the case and um is something that has to be considered with respect to every uh major case and policy decision um so that's kind of a little bit about our philosophy and uh and you know would be enthusiastic for the opportunity to work with you all and uh thanks so much for having us thank you that's a highly unusual statement you just made so you you like to slew you don't mass them all together and try to make a generic or wholesale solution there are firms that will tell us they do that they what they say is it's really efficient you you actually like to slew things out dig for fodder find the occasional case that doesn't fit the rock and maybe pursue some that you might otherwise not have to do to wholesale basis yeah i it's just as a kind of an intellectual exercise i i enjoy that and uh part of why i like litigation is the competition of it and candidly when especially when you're kind of engrossed in um in you know active sophisticated litigation with sophisticated parties with which is part of the appeal to me the municipal practice because the diversity of the litigation matters you're dealing with is um is unusual i mean you're you're dealing with you might be litigating a licensing case a zoning case or a construction case you have to have a facility with a lot of different subject matters and you're often litigating against uh well-heeled um um artists with sophisticated legal representation and that's the only way to do it in my experience is um now with you know of course every case is different and some cases call for more a more awesome expenditure of resources than others um but yeah if if you're if you're at the point of of trying the case um you want to win um you know i i can i can think of any and and and also the the resources at our disposal nowadays with technology is so vast um that you can do that much more efficiently than you could years ago but you know it's i think the old adage you know you get out of what we put into it really is um it's true in litigation i had a law school professor who says the the three the three key words to any successful legal career i think it meant he was probably thinking about litigation in particular is preparation preparation preparation and that's kind of um our philosophy thank you um you've already called for the last move but i'm going to get 22 seconds if you'd like well i haven't worked with any of you directly i'm well aware of your firm's reputation i worked in chelmsford you were uh council of the school there and i know the school is like you here and i have read some of your presentations the labor updates because i've worked in the jnmc so that was one of the reasons when i was working with attorney fay um so i thought we should reach out to you folks so i appreciate hearing from you i appreciate your submission you're traveling back to chelmsford right now that's what i was thank you very much for your time thank you very much thank you thank you thank you all okay and we interlude here i'm also going to say thank you very much to tom for his work on him this we did give him this little project to help that this um my referees to yoga yeah and uh you did a great job thank you girl it's something that the board we should do periodontist right it's only been six years so we're away on the schedule thank you hello hello hello how are you tonight nice to be nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you hi please stop sorry about that that's all right no worries hi tom nice to see you i'm going to go around the other way yeah it's a chance to stretch and this was it yeah that was the goal to give you a chance yeah hi how are you hi good nice to meet nice to meet you hi how are you good to see you nice to see you nice to see you all right back then how are you good are we here so we are yes right there hello thank you for joining us and coming in um this is as you've just introduced yourself lisa mead and jane tattleman right i'm talented pasta yeah mead tattleman costa correct mead tattleman yes thank you very much so we um we have a town manager form of government as you know and under our act the town manager act it is the select board that engages hires council even though we delegate the day-to-day you know obviously through our town manager so um we haven't done this for a while but we are um reaching out and we have to be with some folks um for the for our town council positions so what we'd like to have you do is maybe chat for a couple minutes talk a little bit about you know the presentation what you would like us to know about you and then i'll open it up to questions from the board and we'll go from there all right excellent thank you all right so we kind of start at the beginning with us so we've been a law firm since 2004 i joined in 2006 i was a partner with kp law then copelman and page uh up until that that point lisa was a three-term mayor up in newbury court senate council or senate um state guards director for senator kerry and a city solicitor in somerville so we joined with mark wabrowski a prominent land use attorney and we formed a firm that was focusing a bit on land use but coming from kp law and lisa coming from the city as a chief executive we decided to maybe do a different approach to municipal law um not that there was anything particularly wrong or with the way kp and some of the other firms traditionally done did it but we felt that there was maybe a way to do it a little bit differently and both with the economic structures but more importantly with being part of the team we wanted to be the law firm that wasn't someone that you called when you had a problem we wanted to be that law firm that you could count on for being part of your team almost an in-house counsel model but not in-house where it would we could engage with you we would be involved early on before problems happen avoid litigation rather than litigating at great expense and be a trusted advisor you know still respecting the policy line for folks like you and how to how would we do that and we tried to develop different methods to be closer to our clients and be more economically um feasible for you to manage that kind of service because it's a significant expense every year and lisa having lived as a mayor with in-house counsel was instrumental in helping me and mark kind of develop this system of what we have kind of come up with today where we're now town council in 40 something towns labor council and another 30 something towns special council to a whole bunch of towns so but lisa kind of add to that sure as jay said our idea was that i wanted to put the word council back into town council services right so um you had an opportunity to bounce ideas off of your attorneys to know what your risks were right and then you could decide what risk to take but you knew what the advantages were and the disadvantages were and then when we left the room everybody left the room we were all doing it together knowing what those advantages and disadvantages were and then we had your back um and the idea was in fact to give your department heads and board chairs and the select board and town managers the ability to have access to us early without worrying about how much it was going to cost and so we developed this flat fee model we we certainly do an hourly rate if that's the way you want to go we're happy to do just an hourly rate but we do this flat fee model that we give you one day speed every month and that way it doesn't matter when it comes april or may and you think your budget's going to be low so geez you haven't matter you really want to press but you don't have any money left right but if you have a flat fee model you know what that bill is going to be every single month so as jay likes to describe it sometimes the dog eats us and sometimes we need the dog right so in april and may in particular really busy months with town meeting so our effective hourly rates lower those months august not so much right depending on what it is this model has helped us help communities keep litigation down which is really the driver of your costs typically um it also helps your boards and commissions help make decisions that they know are going to be defensible because you're the chair might call up ahead of time if they have a sticky zoning matter in front of them and not really sure what the ramifications are of the board doing one acting one way or the other or the building inspector going out wanting to do a cease and desist does he really have the legs to do that so our idea is that we offer offer office hours those are all included in the flat fee we offer office hours to all of our clients um we sit and we get to know people so they feel comfortable calling us ahead of time before they take action um and just that availability of having counsel there to bounce things off of and we've done things like create form contracts so that every time you issue an rfp you have one of the contracts that we drafted attached that rfp so we know if there's a problem with the contract in the end how we're going to defend it and we're not spending all of your money negotiating contracts in the end with every single different engineer and architect in the commonwealth massachusetts right so some of those kinds of cost saving measures and time saving measures um we also employ in our practice and the other thing and we're happy to answer questions too is we're not just folks that we do law for a living most of us or a good chunk of us have actually served in our towns i'm the moderator in my town lisa's been a mayor we have several different conservation commission members we've had all kinds of um planning board chair current so we kind of are geeky a little bit about this stuff we enjoy it um we work really hard at it to develop it and to evolve it in a way that uh allows folks to work more efficiently fight when they have to fight but also avoid that fight where at all where it's at all possible to fight without spending extra legal dollars and it's somewhat counterintuitive for a law firm to develop a model that takes a litigation out of the equation because that's where law firms make a lot of money for us we're doing just fine and every single town where we've employed our model whether it's our full flat fee or a hybrid flat fee or even our hourly rates where we still provide the same level of service litigation has gone down in every single town that we've ever represented or city and that's just because we try and get involved on the ground floor we try and know everyone on our first name basis where we can work with you to avoid problems where you'll pick up the phone and call us because it's going to be cheaper in the long run to do that than to worry about something that would be quite expensive down the road which is uh expensive and complex litigation that's been our model since for now i can't believe in 20 years 20 years so 22 actually yeah yeah um just in case anybody is following along in the packet i forgot i neglected to say the proposal starts on page 66 if that's submitted to us thank you all right now we'll open it up to questions who wants to go first i've got two quick questions i'm dad levine nice to meet you both again um my first is if you have expertise in multiple areas like it sounds like you're doing a whole general practice why do some towns only choose to use you for employment and labor law and we're hearing that from other firms as well why would a town go that route so it depends so if there's a town that has a small practice that doesn't have labor then they want to bring our firm in to do a labor law there are some uh some general practices that don't have labor um and it's funny we we were all talking in the green room earlier um the the way it's evolved is that it used to be that no general municipal law firm practiced labor law and labor was very separate i think you interviewed leo pellequin earlier so when i was mayor leo pellequin's firm phil collins was his partner at the time was my labor lawyer and i had mark wanza as one of my in-house city solicitor for a while right um he served two years with me so there was it's just a different model and what we have found um is that many of our communities like the way we practice law and so we brought on a labor lawyer who also had general municipal experience and she when she first came on she just did a little bit of labor for us but her background was really in labor law and she grew the practice because people really liked the way she practiced law and so we grew that practice and as a result um towns will hire her or are that part of our practice as opposed to the whole practice if that's only what they're looking for and some of that is is a little bit of a vestige i i feel you know having been around this kind of law for a while where it was just always kept separate i think the the question is is for a town and towns are different and they approach it differently some still like that dividing line where they're like up to fresh look we can do that we where there's a clear dividing line the way we view it and we're really proud of our labor group is that there are enough issues where it's more of a venn diagram where there's enough overlap where if your labor lawyer is in the same office and can talk to your general town meeting lawyer or whatever then there's going to be just enough synergy there to make it an advantage to doing both but some towns still like to divide it not all of the towns where we're town council have us as labor council not all the towns where we're labor council have us as town council it's just towns are have been kind of slow to evolve to that and more and more doing it i mean our the fastest component of a fastest growing component of our firm is our labor practice um it's a really strong team and there there is overlap i mean i will have uh communities that we are solely municipal general municipal but there will be something happening that they'll want to pull in our labor group even if they have separate labor council because of that because of the complexity of whatever it is that we're dealing with so there there is some crossover there too do you represent any of leon's neighboring towns right around us right now as town council we've done some special council work nearby but i don't know i don't think so not any of the towns touching so where are you areas located we have three offices a new report millis and new bedford okay all right thank you both i appreciate it of course i think i just want to get from something you said earlier i i am attracted to your model are you confident that you would save us money through the model you described earlier i think you said so here's what i would say whatever the number is that we agree to you know you you know we we did a proposal based upon what we see as your legal budget and then we kind of work backwards from there we do check on what's the litigation traffic like to see what kind of costs we're doing there here's what we can promise is that even though there are some exclusions in our flat fee we very rarely exclude anything so we think we would save your money we you know not surprising that we've seen some of the the other financial proposals for the other firms and i think just apples to oranges we're a little bit more cost effective but the important thing is you'll never go over budget so what lisa said is when in march or april when you really need to spend a bunch of time with your council you've got money left in the budget because that monthly bill is the same every month now we have found that we are more cost effective on top of that consistency that we provide the big thing is you get more hours and more attention in our model every single time that's what i'm confident i'm sorry i need to dig in with you this is a hot bug with me what you're selling me on that is it the bill may be more predictable month to month it's a million percent it's definitely save us money what will you take a stand do you think it's going to save us money if if there is any demonstrable history of you having to go to town meeting or a special town meeting to get more money because you had a hot piece of litigation that doesn't exist with us because that litigation if you went with that top uh full flat fee the all-in it's all paid for it it and i think it's the consistency as well right in the access so um i i have the clients to say to me one of the reasons they like our model and frankly this is whether it's an hourly or the flat fee is because we take the time to explain because we're not rushed right and you're not rushed lisa i've got this quick question i got to get off the phone before you bill me another six minutes right so i take the time to explain and educate whoever it is that i'm talking to about the ramifications of their decision and or different ways to do it right under the same law and so that is valuable to you um in the long run and saves you money in the long run so i i do believe that um to jay's point it's the consistency and predictability but ultimately you will also save money because those things which really pop up like the litigation or let's say you have a big zoning matter right we're going to come to that the zoning hearing and it's all it's all in you're not going to start paying an hourly rate at some higher rate for somebody who happens to be more experienced because we charge the same it's going to be the flat fee and even if you chart even if you pick the hourly model it's still going to be the same rate for everybody so you get that you get that predictability and you're able to control costs because you have advanced information and you don't have to worry about what it's going to cost you to do something right rather than cross your fingers the other thing too and i should point out is that like every law firm we raise our rates from time to time but we don't we're not putting you on a schedule or anything like that like next year is is that we look at what our effective hourly rate is for all of our towns we're not on some kind of schedule if we feel we're slipping behind in terms of what our effective hourly rate is as then yeah we that year we may go up a little bit but we're not enough bloodlust to raise our rates and keep keep up with what the other law firms are doing we know what the market is for this kind of law we charge a comparable rate i think looking at the proposals you've seen and what our other competitors that aren't even in this class are we're probably cheaper anyway we just think it's the bang for the buck that is the the best thing here thank you very much awesome um do you yourself as town council occasionally being either an advocate or a lobbyist for a legal issue that the municipality is interested in pursuing them at the state of us or is that a no-no is that something we don't get into um as an advocate or a lobbyist to for the town where a town wants to do either homo petition or some other oh well a hundred percent we see ourselves as fulfilling your policy objectives if we can do it whether it's strictly legal or acting as your advocacy arm obviously we're going to give you advice and counsel as to whether or not chances of success of something you know based upon the laws that exist or the legislation out there that that may exist has a good chance of success but it's not infrequent where we will be the advocacy arm for our communities on uh hot button um legislation so adus mbta zoning those are things where we're in constant contact with uh legislators um with um you know policy makers with the attorney general's office i'll give another example lisa and i both had an opportunity you probably read about it in the newspaper a little bit to advocate on behalf of the town of foxborough in and around the world cup those were things where lisa with her connections in state government was on the phone every day where we were we were beyond just negotiating a contract with fifa and the craft group we were working the back channels to try and make sure working the press working with everything to put foxborough in the best position possible we think that's an essential service that we can provide we don't think it's outside of the bounds you all are the policy makers and our goal is to help you achieve that and i i was saying that um that actually is one of the most recent that was the most false like that was the press and the state um leadership and um elected officials and whatnot um but in addition on i've appeared at um i've appeared at uh legislative hearings on behalf of my municipalities that we've drafted special legislation for um some unique legislation i have a economic development um special fund and a renewable energy special fund that we had to create for different towns through special legislation and i have appeared at those legislative committees to um you know present and argue for that legislation on behalf of the community thank you you're welcome thank you bill i'm interested in uh your notion of office hours and who would typically come to those would it be town staff would it be committee or board members members of the general public so not generally the ladder unless of course so we do it in all make it available in all of our towns and i would say that each town runs it a little bit differently so we have some where it's a sign-up sheet and it's staff only we have some where we show up and sit in office for three hours and it's drop-in it's some where it's less frequent or project-based where we'll come in and do it you know it's really what you all want it to be and it is less frequent than it would be for the public and i generally would never speak to the public unless like mike or the select board said no we want you to sit down with this person and try and problem solve something or a developer or something like that so you can design it however you want and we'll give you whatever three to six hours once a month where we're here if you want to set it up as signups if you want to set it up as a you know appointment based or drop-in right or well i've done uh office hours a lot where i'll come in and then i'll get in a car and we'll go to a project site where there's a big 40d project or a big wetlands dispute so it can be anything you want and ultimately will rely on on what you want to design it as right you also made reference to uh the preference to be um readily accessible for people who feel comfortable in picking up the phone and uh sometimes we found that people are quick to do that and frankly run up the bill uh so where's the right balance so i i would say that's all driven by you and the the town manager so i have some towns where there are only certain people that are permitted to call you know certainly select board members town manager maybe the planner the building commissioner depending what it is i have other towns where there are certain uh chairs of boards like the planning board chair or the zoning board chair obviously certain department heads so that's all driven by the community um it's not a free-for-all by any stretch of the imagination and if we get emails be sure that when we reply to those emails if we get the emails incoming without the town manager on those when they go back the town managers included on those emails so that communication is really important um to be inclusive particularly with the attorney for privilege right right and you know we have some iron-fisted um select boards and managers when it comes to access to council and we have some that look this is a long-standing staff member they've got some free access some towns have a form you have to fill out and we have one town where you have to demonstrate to the town manager's satisfaction that you're trying to find the answer yourself whatever your access to town council policy is we'll live by it but if i got an unsolicited email from some employee that i haven't or a staff member that i haven't really worked with much my first email before i answer that is going to be to mike say is this okay what's going on or if it's an associate member of a board that maybe represents a minority view of that board i'm going to do my due diligence before i go down a rabbit hole okay so that's me um i'm going to say thank you for coming in we are apologizing for being late not only to you but again i'm apologizing to those who uh should have already been seen and regressed and we should be home by now so thank you very much for coming in this has really been uh a very informative evening for us and i appreciate the time that you've spent with us you certainly have a unique model and perspective and i appreciate that so um unless anyone else do you want to say something as i said for every one of the the folks that came in the live room attorneys me and talamund for quite some time um turning me to faculty at such universities uh attorney talamund uh through work through the various towns but i also hired e talamund casa special counsel when i was town manager in southbridge or liquor licensing books and in terms of we had conflicts with our other councils so i've worked with them in the past thank you so much thank you very much thank you very much thank you both have a good night of course pleasure thank you mr tomorrow oh sure thanks much thanks nice to meet all of you thank you very much thanks for okay i declare i'm going to open the hearing for the legal license amendment i declare this hearing open for the purpose of considering the application filed by the constituent restaurant group llc dva villa restaurant for a transfer of license for the premises located at 120 east plain street whalen mass and it's the annual alcoholic beverages abcc number 06669-rl staff 1340 so good evening sir we are beyond sorry that we've been doing this this is a very short agenda item and um we do thank you for your patience as you're going to really wish you had the right application in because we had you on the schedule last week and we were right over that is true that is true i did do the application again after uh conferring with the attorney let me just get the formality done so we can get this moving you got it uh so we published in the metro west daily newspaper on friday june 12 2026 that basically says what it just read but there it is notice is hereby given that the whalen select board will hold a public hearing on monday june 29 2026 beginning at or after 8 15 p.m the whalen town building 41 constituent road whalen mass and also remotely for the application filed by alexander comardo on behalf of particular restaurant group again llc dba villa restaurant this public hearing is for a transfer of license from the villa restaurant llc to particular restaurant group llc and again the license number is abcc 06669-06669-rs-1840 so anybody who wants to attend the hearing can come in the room and join us where they can participate remotely and write um this this uh the rules of evidence is not a formal
however we do have the rules of evidence um are not applied but we do expect that all prospective licensees then members of the public will comment will present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner so we're going to ask you to explain the reason that you're here the board will um have questions after that we'll see if there's a public comment if there's anything there that you would like to add you may do that and then we'll close the hearing so the floor and long last is yours would you please tell us why you open for us tonight hi good evening my name is alex tamargo i'm one of the part owners of the villa restaurant in weyland uh me and my partner david rosenberg took over in 2022 as you know we've remodeled but kept the staff and kept the family friendly restaurant and family traditions going for the 75 years they've been going we're still doing it uh and i am in the process of buying out my partner and so this transfer is a request to uh have it go to my newly formed uh entity and llc and my partner will remain my landlord and it's just uh keeping it in a wayland family my wife's from wayland and that's all it is i'm the manager on record of the restaurant right now and i'm the operator as of right now thank you um just for anybody who's going to go along in the packet the materials begin on page 172 no they don't page 194 i'm reading the wrong thing okay does the board have any questions we want to have any questions from boys uh good evening i'm bill whitney member of the board evening uh are are you acquiring the business as distinguished from the business and the real estate yes correct okay so your your current partner will become your landlord and uh but not be a part of the business per se correct yep that's exactly right thank you i have a very important question i'm a musician and um my question is do you intend to continue hosting live music at the villa absolutely very pertinent very pertinent question absolutely yeah it's you know the entertainment aspect of what we're doing in that new lounge is very important to us thank you you're welcome i just have a comment mr tamargo compay nice to see you i just want to say that i really appreciate the community oriented attitude you bring to wayland um that it's it's not lost on our board and uh it's much appreciated oh thank you very much for saying that that's really what i like to hear because that's really what's important to us as well i would echo that sir and as a host of two previous holiday parties at your establishment i'm a big fan thank you very much yes i recognize some of you and um i have to tell you my husband is a frequent flyer i think he probably went there tonight since i'm here i'm not cooking that it wants so many of the entrees that you have up there he loves it up there so well thank you for the kind words i really appreciate what you've done uh and really it's become such a wonderful community i have friends who live in other communities that are coming over they say oh no i don't know i haven't done that tonight all right doesn't have any sense so now i am going to uh close the hearing right um and that's it so i moved to close the hearing did i get them happy to move with this board approve the application before us requesting license transfer to new ownership entity seeking to continue the running business as until the transfer is complete manager will stay the same as the new owner again talking about the particular restaurant group llc dba the villa restaurant that's the application set forth in our practice second second thank you um just in discussion here uh we didn't consult with the town manager but i assume there's not any issues over there and town council did we need to offline so i think we're ready to vote all those in favor say aye all right motion carries five zero thank you again for your patience sir no thank you very much have a wonderful evening really appreciate it everyone see you soon yep thank you um so let's see next on our list would be the folks of madly squiggling in the back of the room they're just trying to stay away
number 11 is that continued discussion with the town center including but not limited to shared streets and municipal fact and we invited jesse back of the room up now that's actually a lesson yeah that's good that's good good from the battle and you are joined by anthony anthony anthony so sorry um the if you're following along in the packet the information starts on page 254. that would be helpful for me to share on zoom or do you all have the materials we have the material but you're welcome to do that as well because we have people who watch our road whatever is easiest for you all i i think it's good to put it up my no great let me just get on the almost live five in one second nice to see you all town manager madam chair members the board we've been busy um
and i i will leave it in the zoom yeah yeah i have that in my calendar so our plan for tonight is really just to kind of last we met with you was probably i think it was the meeting just prior to town meeting at the beginning of may um so that would have been i think the last monday in april so you know we're at six and a half weeks plus out so i think the intent is to update you and kind of all we've done since share some of our plans around signage the way we're thinking in the public realm and then also kind of share some of the work we've been doing with the planning board um and this is particularly uh timely because we plan to move forward um with a series of amendments to the master special permit um we've had two meetings since we last met with the planning board i would say they've gone they've been very positive um and you know it's been really heartening to us um to develop like we have with you all um here we go uh what we think is a is a great working relationship with um that board so
recording in progress
got it got it okay great um and i'll be able to share yeah you should be able to do excellent it's let me just put a dude in the storm to make sure my ex from my wife wondering where i am don't come up on screen
no offense but absolutely like it's good i can't sit in that long
all right so um you remember from last time i i have a tendency to talk pretty quickly which is an advantage of this time of night so i'm going to cruise through um anthony will stop me if i go too quick but i invite all of you to stop me as well so we're showing here on screen which hopefully you saw it is just a little bit of teaser um this is our new brand uh we spend a lot of time thinking about how we do a better job with the visual identity of the place without changing the name the font is pretty similar but the actual squares in the design are inspired by kind of the legacy and history of quilting in wayland and some of the displays of the historical society as well as utilizing some folks don't see the w's and you know for us it's reflective what we have to do with this project which starts to kind of quilt things back together stitch them back together and it felt like a nice um gesture to some of the history without doing something that felt particularly heavy handed you're going to start to see this visual identity or you will see it today in fact if you go over to town center um our new website is live and um you know we plan to integrate this into the sun and the signage which we'll show you in this deck so you know prior to today the work we've been doing has really been around as we mentioned our own team building um making sure we need the team that has the ability to execute uh there is a lot of work to do as i mentioned we've done a lot of planning we've already moved forward some site beautification in addition to banners i mentioned thinking about um tree canopy thinking about moving some of the dumpsters just doing some of the low hanging fruit to make this place feel um a little bit more thoughtful to folks and a little bit more inviting a little bit more beautiful we met with the planning board in each of them in may and in june uh we feel like working with the chair um and that board we have a pretty clear um well today i feel like we have a pretty clear direction how we need to kind of move forward with phase two site plan review as well as the amendments the master special permit i will say it is very challenging and the town planner has been helpful but it is very challenging looking back over the last 20 years to understand how this thing all came together from permanent perspective um there are certain things that we plan to do work with the planning board to kind of fix some of the past oversights um there's not a consistent site plan as an example right like it exists that anyone can reference so our goal is to work with that board to kind of make sure we clean up um kind of the the the body of work that will exist and dictate the permitting moving forward and they've been great um like i said the goal for it is a pre-file discussion with you all prior to going back to the planning board we've had several pre-file discussions once we file with them we will not be able to have the same level of discourse with them um we'll have another hearing and our hope as we'll get into at the end is that we're in the position where we have the approval that we need by the fall so we can move forward and execute uh do some of the things we're discussing and by certainly by this time next year but hopefully by april of next year the site looks quite a bit different um so just to kind of frame this there's a lot of work we want to do um but we've really focused on is kind of three key improvements the first one being gateway signage which you saw in the package will go through the second one being kind of moving forward with the momentum the town has already established to pedestrianize alyssa as well as create the connection from the rail trail and the last one being how do we start to activate some of these very underutilized green spaces throughout the site so we'll go through all of them in turn um so gateway signage currently is um completely insufficient when you look at it from the perspective of folks in the community from folks that are visiting the site and most importantly for us like it does not work for the tenants on site for this place to work it has to work for the tenants right we need to have great local business here they're driving traffic um and right now you know as we're doing our tenant interviews back in november and december this is the first thing that came up so you know there is some history here the design review board did a study um which on the left side um of how the town could work with the prior land owner to improve the signage and then the prior land owner which was zurich i think you all had some dealings with them did the study on the right which unfortunately was just placed in some of the right it was just frankly placed on mbta land and was never able to move forward um we think these are okay we we have re um taken a relook at this and really believe that the scheme we have up here works for both tenants um grabs some of the natural elements that we think we're lacking in some of the other proposals features this new visual identity um and is something that we think fits really well within the context but is also very much contemporary um and will work with us as we think about kind of both not just visual identity but just the prominence of the sign quite a bit bigger um but the prominence of the signage from 20 and 27 as well as the need to create more space for tenant signage so that's the this will be the gateway on 20 very similar signage um but looking at a horizontal orientation to replace the signage that is currently on 27 and as a reminder if i just click back um this is the site on 27 it's very hard to see this is the site on 20. so we're going from that to these two uh the feedback from the planning board was quite excellent they they did have some comments that are incorporating the version that you're all seeing here today so to effectuate these changes will require and we believe we do just with the planning board an amendment to the master special permit and really swapping out the existing signage exhibit that's in the msp for this exhibit um we are currently not touching the um master special permit as related to interior directional signage and wayfinding we want to tackle gateway first so you know i'll pause there we're happy to take comments as we go through these three sections or we're also happy to just go through the whole deck and wait till the end i'm sure i don't know if you have a preference um great let's keep rolling are you reading my mind we would like to go through please great so the second element we mentioned is kind of how do we pedestrianize and make elissa avenue more usable um for the community as well as more usable for tenants so the existing condition you're seeing here um this was one of the schemes that the that the beta group that was engaged by the town um relatively recently came up with um it's quite busy these planters will not work for the fire department um there are some challenges here but the spirit of it we think is really interesting um edc did some work thinking about how they could add some play elements um they had although they were not um uniform they had at least identified the use of ballers um and we've kind of advanced what we thought were good efforts into something that we think is um realistic and will pass the muster of town from a public safety perspective we met with fire we met with police we met with building on this and despite the other two plans we believe we can accomplish this by really just creating um an at grade with the sidewalk decking structure here you're seeing my cursor move on both sides in plan the north and the south with bollards on the end pedestrianizing the street but also keeping a fire length in the middle and that was something that was really important to fire it was lacking from the other plans we are okay with this in truth we started with just closing off the street in entirety we did not have a 20 foot clear fire lane we took feedback back from the fire department and we revised it to this we feel satisfied with this um we believe we will be able to close this street off for certain special events um and programs which we will start to kind of do some demonstration projects on you know second half of this year but we feel really happy with this scheme for now given all facts and circumstances some renderings that just show um roughly kind of some of the spirit and the the potential look um we've been working with the town manager and his team on thinking about how we can finally deploy the ninety two thousand dollars they count as earmarked from the state to actually buy some of these planters tables and chairs we worked our landscape architect to actually spec them out so the town can then go and procure them and where we're at right now is currently working with the town um and michael's team and legal on a license agreement that would affect your laws the other critical part of this is just understanding this in context with the rail trail um this will not be complete unless we think about that connection our view is that there's a currently a dumpster here we're going to relocate it's just in the wrong place and in fact the current gateway on our site to the rail trail is also in the wrong place it's not a grade it's next to a big ugly transformer and it happens to be located across from the local which is also where the truck route is so when i come out to the side of my two 12 year olds on bicycles i would not want them accessing this site there i'd much prefer them accessing the site here it's going to be safer we're going to be able to control it um we're also working with dcr on some rail trail parking here to invite folks to the site for those reasons it's one of the reasons we love the site is that it has that connection to the rail trip um this is one of the schemes we've been working on we talked in the planning board about it that would create that new connection here in the data line you can see where the current trash facility is we would move that we think it's actually redundant so we will keep several of the other trash facilities and just increase the pickups so we will be taking away one of the big dumpster facilities which we think in the spirit of unification and usability is a big improvement um anything right okay um you know we've also been been talking to the planning board about um some kind of indigenous tree varietals i don't think these dogwoods or whatever they are will take on the site and this grass is quite nice but we'll have something that um is quite beautiful it's not going to necessarily be consistent with this rendering but this gives a sense of kind of some of the spirit of what we're thinking about the last element is how do we take these underutilized green spaces and use them for the benefit of the community our general approach here is that we it is not what we do as a team we've done some of this work what we do really well is find great local partners to do this with us so um as we mentioned in our last um session with you all and you know tom i believe you had some conversation with mark norton as well the goal is and we are currently negotiating um a short-term license uh or really actually at least with the eliza j norton foundation for them to operate from november to march a open to the community ice skating rink on this parcel c here which we are really really excited about uh we've been working through some of the logistics of providing the infrastructure um working with our insurance providers and then also connecting them with an operator from cambridge that we've worked with that operates two skating rinks just to make sure this thing is running away um that allows the most access and actually functions quite well you know we'll learn a lot from the first year but it's still got to be running really really well um on both a parcels we're looking at partnerships with local recreation groups um one of the schemes we thought about here is some small five-a-side soccer fields working with youth soccer here and the other a parcel we've thought about um and have been pretty far along with the operators of the current volleyball facilities the outdoor volleyball which we think will be um quite exciting at the site drive a lot of energy and then lastly we have um had i wouldn't say dozens um but i would say large handful of meetings with a very involved um group of residents who want to put a dog park somewhere inside b is the site that we've identified that makes the most sense um there's some elevation changes um it's complicated site which we do not believe we will be doing anything in the near future uh the feedback we got just generally on this approach from the planning board was that the intention long term and this is something to talk to the select board about is for future development on these sites particularly the a parcels particularly this parcel right here so these uses here are not meant to be permanent they're meant to be interim and they're meant to utilize it until it's appropriate to go vertical and for future development there it's just frankly going to be a lot better than grass that just sits there and has no real utility to anybody so that's a third element um and again the timeline this is our last slide so we are working on a master special permit amendment uh draft there will be actually plural amendments work with planning board on that um we hope to officially file in july we hope we can work expeditiously with the planning board to schedule a hearing um you know once we file there in a certain statutory requirement they schedule a hearing for we'll work with annette and her team on that we're very hopeful that we'll have a planning board decision um towards the end of the summer which would allow us to start doing some of this work in october and deliver a much more functional interesting becoming site come next spring so again these are three kind of buckets of work there's a lot more we are doing including kind of out there trying to lease the asset bringing better tenants um talk to folks in the community understand the potential for activating other parts of the site as we talked about last time um we are legally bound to certain challenging leases um that came and predated our ownership uh but we feel really confident that you know a small handful of lease deals will get done this calendar year combined with this will really change the entire feel and function of town center to make it more out there town center and from there you know we'll look forward to kind of reconnecting with you all and thinking about other civic uses on site so it's a first step for us really important one um with that i'll turn it over to you madam chair but that's where we're at currently thank you very much so this is kind of nice last but not least it's super duper thank you thank you for your patience and for waiting i'm really sorry we got really behind tonight uh questions from the board who would like to start you didn't even need to look at me nod your head i know i knew i knew i knew it's
thank you gentlemen i'm looking forward to this presentation for some time um since we met with you all a number of weeks ago the first question that comes to mind is have you had conversations among yourselves or i haven't had a chance to watch the planning board discussion about how there can be more of a symbiotic relationship with the community center and connecting it more to the town center just wondering what your thoughts are about that um amongst ourselves yes you know it's one of the first meetings we had um but i think we've been really focused on these moves candidly um so i think there's more work to be done there i think programmatically it seems like they're really ramping up to a bunch of multi-generational programming you know our sense is more is more here um but that's work we will do um but in truth we just have not spent much time with city staff over with town staff excuse me over there um but are certainly happy to and then the other what's that we missed that one i said a sky walk you know it goes right over like a children's hospital to the park and girls we're thinking more
and that actually leads to my other question is are the number of parking spots around this the the right number is it too much too little what is your assessment of that for the site i think currently with the activity level it's too much but you know you want to you want to have the marking for success right um when it's when all of these pieces are activated it it will be appropriately parked um i do think part of it is where are people parking for what part of the site right and and so i think it is important that you spread out the activities right and you have kind of a central corridor right and so i think we're really lucky in the sense that elisa ave is in the center of the site it really can be that center point right like it'd be when you look from above down you know it is the center access of the site um and i think that helps with drawing folks in not only from the community center but also from russell's and the connectivity between russell's because russell's gets a great amount of activity right especially in the winter right their winter market right and and so in meeting with them they're like well our biggest issue is there's nowhere after the winter market's over can we coordinate something so now folks finish and then come come to you guys can there be an outdoor you know um entertainment can you know can and so we're like great this is a great way to program the rink right and and then have programming around the rink food trucks and hot chocolate and that sort of thing so i think a lot of this is about creating these zones right and and understanding how to engage with the site beyond a point quick yeah i'm going to physical therapy here going to get something at stop and chop and so i think then once you have that right you have to have some activity there then it's how does it feel you enter so i do think one of the things that really and we were actually talking about it today when we're we're on site together it's just the entrance yeah right and i think the entrance has to take all these elements that we create and incorporate it yeah and and i think that will also help the center because you will have the entrance and then there'll be pathways right and there'll be then pathways into wayfinding and so it really is like a step at a time but i don't think this is probably 24 months of steps right and i feel like this is the first big one to get activity because activity then leads to getting more feedback from folks and then continuing to kind of weave it together um so no i i think the important question right is that all the elements need to play together and then i'll just leave you all with a comment which is i'm i'm very excited about how you're seeking to center the rail trail it's it's an underutilized underappreciated element of our town but i think we have a lot of avid cyclists and it obviously connects us to other communities communities and the other thing i would just put on your radar is right adjacent to the community center is the sudbury river which is beautiful scenic space as well for down the road we've always thought about being able to access that as well yeah but thank you both the one thing doug i would just say just this is a better video i understand what i was talking about earlier so truck route is in this way this is the current rail trail connection to the site this is actually a very busy moment on the site yeah for cars it's the exact moment you don't want our collective children kind of entering the site yeah um and there's a transformer here so our feelings even from a public safety perspective to create an entryway here that's shielded and guarded and well landscape is is much safer so we have to figure out how what we do here but this also is not a grade as we all know yeah downslope here yeah um but yeah we agree i mean we're super excited about this connection is one of the reasons we love the site yeah um so yeah thanks for those comments sure can you mention the relationship russles do you first yourself cultivating a relationship with the people that are coming into room for the same reasons about uh stopping place before or after an event they may have um and how that would fit into any one of the connections you're trying to make to the rail trail because i could see activity being generated over there for just an event but people who may come into town the day before stay at a hotel may want to access what you have to offer you may be able to walk back and forth so you know i thought that was very interesting that you work with russell so you may have those similar opportunities with the other new tenants coming up with yeah we met i was recently with the team from terrain um out of philly our creative team has met with their gm who they just hired a few months ago so we're actively exploring kind of collaborations with them we've met with russell's family three times now what we want to be part of their 150 year celebration um so yeah i mean all these things are the way in which we make this work but but it is fascinating just yes if you if you stand on the site and watch folks on their bikes on the rail trail and what and what happens right you get you go to the head and you get to the light look around what do we do now yeah right there's no place to park your bike right so you turn around you go back so there's no natural entry exit there's no place to stop there's nothing to explore so i think like to have you know nice portico overhead and have a really you know obvious you know here's where you leave your bike and then you know nice walk down here and hang out for a few grab a drink you grab a grab a a coffee or you know then go explore and if you actually have fields behind you and other things to explore it's like all right we can get off our bikes for an hour get some food hang out and then come back and and go on our way so it becomes like a natural and then to your point on terrain and everywhere else okay so this is it's now a natural way to get to the site without a car right and so then there's other opportunities where can you enter the rail trail and and how do you you know um inhabit you know the town center um so i think we're really lucky to have that there it's a really unique opportunity right because most you know centers like this don't have a uh a pedestrian road essentially going right to the site so i'm really excited about that and i'm excited where it lands because it's going to again right in the center tom so uh 20 years ago when town meeting voted 80 percent i mean presence for this real town center i knew the day would come when there'd be people in front of us with creative ideas energy positive attitudes to make this town center what it really was meant to be and i feel confident that you think that your group is the blue so i appreciate you coming here tonight and and and appreciate your your energy enthusiast um in your discussions with the with the planning board did you get a sense that they saw the need for a time reading vote on any of the changes they even want to make at the point of time their read has been consistent with our read which is the way in which um the master overlay use district is written and the master special permit is that everything we're talking about today we can do through work with the planning board um i think it would be there are a couple different things without getting into it that may trigger having to go to town meeting but we haven't got a sense from them that there will be the need and uh the activity and use limitations are in place and and to the extent you need um communication town council on those um obviously don't hesitate to reach out yeah we definitely want thank you okay excellent well this is a very interesting exciting proposal um in your discussions with prospective tenants what's the reaction been it's evolved um i mean it's pretty clear to the tenant and brokerage community that no one's really cared about this place for a long time um you show up on site we we when we knew we were delayed we went back to the i mean every time adrian and i walk it and our other partners it's like oh god like you know it's just there's never been an active engaged creative caring owner of wayland town 70 and can't see that um so you know feedback has largely been the things we're trying to address visibility off 20 and 27 horrible a lot of people don't even know it's here this doesn't work for retail tenants um there's nothing going on in the open space so like most of the places we all love to go to there's program there are things happening um the legibility of the site how you move around it challenging um alissa will really improve that's a non-functional street right massive a fire lane but like we can create a lot of energy there and then there are little things that we're talking to our neighbors about we had a community meeting with the two condominium with the trustees of the two condominium associations and some of their residents and you know as we all know people zip through here to get from 20 to 27 and vice versa they're going too fast so we're exploring with the town um we haven't brought it um we haven't elevated yet like are is there the ability we can add some stop signs right how do we look at crosswalks like how do we just approach this to make this place actually less convenient and harder to cut food slow people down which is good for retail and then the other thing that i think for us is that i mean i think we take a pretty entrepreneurial approach to deal making we're willing to take some risks with these tenants so you know we're willing to do percentage rent deals we're willing to do things that i just don't think the prior landlords are willing to do transactionally that i think is allowing us to generate some momentum and you know we think the first two or three deals we do have to be with absolute best-in-class local operators that will drive future leasing velocity um but yeah right now it's not great and we're spending a lot of time like the reason we did the gallery hang project spent a lot of time and energy on that was just to show that you can do some interesting things like chris and his team have already done with arts whalen people are going to show up um but we can't just rely on programs and events for that has to be driven by tenants we have 160 000 square feet of shop space here and and those shops are just volleyball is doing a nice job some of the food beverage is doing a nice job but most of the visits here are very purpose-based you're showing up for an appointment for a group you're not coming just to spend time at a place we've really got to change that that will largely be driven by food and beverage and those are going to be challenging economic deals for us to do what we're going to do yeah it's it's it's always interesting sometimes it's you know a simple connected problem right tenants want traffic right and you get traffic by having great tenants or so so it's uh and so the the question just becomes like how do you manufacture that momentum right and i and i think we believe this manufacturing momentum because we'll be able we we are very close to securing some great two or three three great tenants and we're rallying around analysts to have because it's something you can't get anywhere where can you get a space where you can you know dine dedicated area out front and create a really cool landscape in a suburban area like whalen um and the site's beautiful right but we have to just bring it out a little bit like we were walking the site today and you know full candor like a couple of the light bulbs around right and like that's unacceptable but when there was a stretch of the center that was lit perfectly right and the landscaping went great and it's beautiful the weather helped me and the weather's gorgeous but i i mean i think there's so as you guys want to know you've been in here but there's just a real opportunity so like you but there but it has you have to we have to be better right and the tenants have to hold themselves to a higher standard right and we do and we and we're and we're continuing to do that it takes a little bit of time but these sorts of projects and improvements force that momentum and allow us to bring in great tenants and we'll we'll take the risk because you know they're not going to take the risk and true you know so so i i feel really good about the direction we're going and i think we're really lucky to have the opportunity because the bones are there right and and it's it's all about kind of stitching it together well i think your idea of sort of moving the center of gravity to elissa avenue and demonstrating what's possible there uh hopefully we're going to have a spillover effect and generate excitement for us what you have you um but i i think it's a great approach and i'm particularly encouraged to hear about your recognition of the need for content management and looking for details and sort of talked you know the internal fineage when when you get to that so um first one to learn the password thanks bell yeah the other thing i would just say you know the smart tenants and those are the folks we're chasing i think what the pandemic has done for them is re-look at the landlord tenant relationship as a partnership and i don't think that there are a lot of projects that don't have a great landlord partner and it's very hard to get deals done because the tenants want to see a landlord partner that's really trying and they're not going to add a thousand right and get everything right but i think what we're trying to demonstrate to the brokerage and the tenant community is that we are trying we're knocking everything right we're spending money we're spending a lot of time and energy that means a lot so that's the way we've been able to kind of push back on some of the stigma that's existed for a long time on the side i'm overjoyed shout out to bill whitney it was just very modest i was fervent about the town center 20 years ago and helped organize the meeting mr fay referred to i by luck uh was in the room when the first owner of the town center promised bill there'd be a rink so to see that up there is is huge i hope you do that quickly um i have so many questions that i don't want to ask them the chair would hit me with this guy can i just rattle off a couple topics and if you think you have a good answer please share it if you guys fully um i thought i heard from fire there was a little bit of flexibility on southern melissa there um the safety issue jesse works both ways the street's 40 feet wide i actually measured that myself yes you'd have 20 feet down the middle there's a fire issue being able to get through but there's also a pedestrian safety issue with people going through um otherwise mayor michelle who i happen to admire a lot has had some things to say about this you'll recall in um east boston and in the north end um i would add i would suggest you push the idea of closing that road down and making it a complete pedestrian zone and i'll stop there because i suspect you've already done it but i'd ask for the week push this you just said this a minute ago that people go to the town center they've got an issue they're going to buy some pet food or they're going to buy this and they're going to go to an appointment for that and then they leave we need dynamic signing at the entrances and i know that's a difficult topic i'm not proposing neon i'm not proposing a scoreboard with um electronic signs of change but come on there's got to be an intermediate way that through um a permanent fixture for temporary banners maybe so there's always something going on at the town center there's always a gallery exhibit there's always a tour there's always a partnership with grout herd we've always got a concert your restaurants have got fire pits and little tiny stages and there's always an artist coming there's always a reason to look for something at the town center beyond getting a gallon and i'd like to see you elevate that signage need or going broaden it at communications need now this is a vibrant place and you don't go there just to get some dog food as the planning in the presentation you gave to the planning board did they see the timeline you gave and what did they think they'd like to move they'd like to move quickly as well yeah thank you so the answer your first two anything all right because i'm giving the gallon a little bit so the first one the real challenge with fire by the way this will be permanently closed off these bollards are there for a reason we just have to keep clear this fire lane it doesn't mean during certain events and programs it can't be closed off yeah it's for it's the 20 feet is for non-permanent uh furniture so we'll still it still can be programmed it just can't be like permanent decking or permanent planters that's where i think but i think the feel when you're there will be that it's a closed down street and it's fully utilized for pedestrians i think the hard part also is and i think fire has a great point one of the this would be somewhat of a different conversation but there's residential above this building that's one of the challenges and i think we're just deferential to fire and if they feel like this is really important you know maybe we go back in a few years we push a little bit but for now we feel all the way we've learned that correct we've learned that and then and then this other question we're on board with a temporary dynamic signage somewhere every year 20. drew on my team who you know is working on it great thank you in addition to the signing we shouldn't i'm being short to flatter the chair thank you very much but you know we're doing yeah i gave you the gavel a few minutes ago and nothing happened hi so this is exciting and thank you and again we apologize for being late but uh and may i mention i'm on a new world's record i'm going to make a five-hour meeting tonight for you um the one question i had to wanted to say was um uh about the traffic cut through so i have to say this i live on the other end of town i live closer to up to other shopping shops and i come down and shopping there and i do notice by the way two things one is that there is more and more traffic normal spaces you know filled in that stopper shop just about every week i go which i go and i do do multiple things when i'm in there go to aids the bank whatever you're going to do so um but the one thing i have noticed is that uh the rush out but i'm not sure the traffic just cuts through from you know 27 to 20 quite close actually but so maybe you do need some signage initially however i would imagine that once you start increasing the traffic this part won't solve itself because there'll be so many people there trying to get in the parking space and everything else it'll be not as exciting or maybe you make it one way 7 a.m you know yeah we thought a lot about this i think one of the challenges the signage is so poor that people don't realize it's a retail center especially in 27. they think of it as just a residential community they cut through better science will solve some of this which is which is kind of counterintuitive and interesting but i was very so that was one thing i had i i absolutely loved where you moved the um the entrance it made it so much more glamorous and exciting and inviting for the rail trail and connected and moving the dumpster brilliant um but my ears perked up when you said there would be some parking there associated maybe some spaces dedicated for the folks who want to use the rail trail yep because maybe people park there and go down because we have a tv that have had a conversation and an agenda item recently about there's not a lot of extra space where the other entrance is in town but i think a lot of them end up parking the library well that's what they do park in the library but you can direct them over to town center right so that's what i'm saying if you're going to have some dedicated spaces i think that's terrific i really really do um and let's see what else do i have on this but um i'm sure we'll see you again because we don't want to keep anybody any later but i really we're really excited to really say i do know oh by the way there was going to be a a skating park the uh dollar fortitude they're going to move it down here to town center or is it going to be two i didn't know about the one they did a um cpc funded an article and they were going to redo the basketball court and then put sides on it they're not doing it anymore right elsie no and then it was going to be a skating i it was explored but i don't think it's feasible because of the the degradation the okay so there was an interesting thing i've been waiting for that to show up so i'm so thankful thank you um there is one other thing that just in front of you all that i think we may need some support on we really do want to do the dog park we think it's in the right place we know this has been something that folks have been talking about for a long time there are some challenges with it um one of them has to do with insurance that we're looking into it but there there may be a scenario where the easiest fix for all of this is to actually transact with the town through recreation or otherwise you know buck a year or whatever it is so the lease is actually signed with recreation and then recreation then works with this group of volunteers to manage that space versus us trying to contract directly with those resident volunteers to do in so we're working through this actually um but i just want to put it on the radar i don't think there's anything to action right now but it may just be the easiest thing for us collectively to do um to get this dog park done so if i may just comment i i see that it's workable i would when the time comes ask the board to consider having an our piece uh issued for a non-profit to operate the dog park that way it's off the hands of the dbw off the hands of the parking rack and it would remain uh clean it would be accountability and if the if a non-profit cannot do that then it shuts down i just uh our research suggested that you don't do that it just gets dirty real fast that's another another agenda another day that's helpful so thank you for that right okay well i'm gonna thank you very much for coming in i really appreciate it um i'm sure you'll be in touch with me when you want to come back yeah for sure i'm sure we'll be happy to see you again that sounds all good right yeah all right thank you very much thank you so before we go thank you for not getting before we do um another thing i do want to give a major shout out and thanks to kelsey who playing host to our guests this evening um when i envisioned this i thought it was going to be about a half hour 45 minute time i think you were gone about three days and appreciate it because i'm sure you were very busy for me keep reading half people so do you think i go to law school now right yeah maybe take a couple law classes they were trying it they were talking me into uh you know in an mma class i was like okay so they thought it um i think what i'm going to recommend unless anyone feels strong otherwise that we table item 12 13 14. yeah we've seen a bit about that until until next
well i was going to say that next because there's two things i wanted to mention one is that i did skip the um deliberating on the rfps for legal and does the board want to take a few minutes to do that now or would you like me to add that to next week's agenda i feel like we could start the discussion bill but i i would want to have a more fulsome conversation about that i have a little bit of given that i'm fine it's do it film with me that's okay given time i would like to uh say that i think for the discussion one of the things that came clear to me as i was reading these over the weekend michael's on vacation i didn't want him but i think that um would be nice to know what we need what we pay now in our current arrangement i'm pretty sure i know what it is but let's let's get this you know what do we pay what does it include right now yeah and go from there that's what's what's the all-in cost right exactly and then maybe we have time because we've got a very short window here to get ready for the next week because it's a short week uh maybe we even be able to make a little chart of what the costs are that are proposed but we'll see with what how much time we have and we may end up having a supplemental the only other thing i want to say is the next meeting is next tuesday not next monday it is all right yes it's at the public safety building i thought you were telling me to leave you
it's the public safety building it is our annual goal setting normal retreat we do have a number of um agenda items that i'm going to have to throw in here in and around because um we're not having any other meetings and we've got some that are carrying more from tonight so i will try to keep it down to a dollar but i would really encourage us to do that i think it's important that we have an opportunity to really discuss the whole yeah i think i think we need to do it that should be i think the principal item we can't really discuss and i i hardly agree and i'll work with the chair to make sure the agenda reflects that i appreciate that the chair's desire to get certain things done another thought is to have a i mean at least three of us can attend during the week as a meeting right on small items but these are all big items and this is this is where we have all right so with that i will take a motion to adjourn at 10 51. it's my new select board meeting my record oh no no just want to remind folks that the town of offices and bpw are closed on thursday and friday this week because of right independence day celebrations and our four-day work week and wish everyone a happy healthy state of the fourth of july and 250th anniversary yeah thank you madam okay so and we have a motion to adjourn all those in favor say aye all right thank you