September 22, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
September 22, 2026 - Select Board
Recording in progress.
Good evening. As chair of the Select Board, I'm going to call tonight's meeting to order. This is September 22, 2026. The Select Board is meeting in the Wayland Town Building in the Wayland Commons Room, and the meeting has been adjourned. I think we'll call to order at 6 p.m. The meeting is a hybrid, so we have both in-person and remote access.
The meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, it will be made available to the public in WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. We do have Executive Session on our agenda this evening, and public will be excluded from the Executive Session portion of the meeting.
Pursuing 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 webpage for the town calendar and also on the agenda link for the Select Board's agenda.
When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting, may do so here in the Wayland Commons or via remote access.
Public comment, we ask limited to two minutes per person.
I'm going to read the agenda, but before I do that, I want to acknowledge that joining me in the room is Mr. Whitney, and joining us remotely is Mr. Fay, and then myself, Carol Martin.
Mr. McCall, the town manager, will be joining us very shortly.
Tonight's agenda includes a review of the agenda of the public, announcements, and public comment.
Approximately 6-15, we will enter into Executive Session to discuss strategy with respect to a Wayland firefighter's grievance.
Step 3, we will also discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the Wayland Police Officers.
And this is on the agenda that we would be reviewing and approving Executive Session into September 8th, but I believe they are not available, so we will not be able to do that.
We anticipate returning to open session at approximately 6-55, after which we will discuss the appointment of the town manager, and I can call town planner Robin Hummel as local government representatives regarding the small clean energy infrastructure facility, siting, and permit time.
So, with that, we will meet with members of the Audit Committee to review their annual audit report and consider consolidation of their committee.
Approximately 7-30, we will discuss a funding request in the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
Then, we will discuss updates of John Ange's Memorial with Zahid's Project, about to be in the Council on the Aging Science Community Center. Approximately 7-3, we will meet with the Board of Laws, and have a discussion with the Board about some potential warrant articles that will be in the 2020 Senate annual town meeting. We will interview a candidate for the Zoning Board of Appeals, who's an associate position. We will review and vote to amend the broadband and cable advisory committee charge, October 8-15. We will discuss and review the law of the Capitol and Hidden Planning Committee that was established at the annual town meeting in 2021. We will review and discuss our page to collect board policies and procedures document, commonly known as the Select Board of the Union Rule, which was last reviewed on the last in 2022. We will review and vote to authorize the town manager, Michael McComble, sign a license agreement with the Wayland Town Center regarding the Wayland Fest for this year, followed by the town manager's report. The consent calendar, the minutes of August 31st and September 8, 2026, review correspondence, hear select board members' reports of concerns, and hopefully adjourn by November 22. So, before I ask if there are any announcements of a comment, I also want to acknowledge that Mr. Reynolds joined us at 6 o'clock, and the next will be discharging. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Any announcements from the board? No, they're not. Okay. Mr. McCall, do you have any announcements? No? I can say my town manager's announcement or whatever your preference was. Maybe you might want to do it. The board of health wanted me to let people know that they will be running a flu clinic and a COVID-19 vaccine clinic for residents. They will be running six and non-residents, six years of age and older, and town employees on October 7 at the town hall in the large hearing room from 8 a.m. to 11. And then they will be running a second one, influenza and COVID-19 vaccine clinic for residents, non-residents, town employees, ages 12 and above. And that will be a week later on Wednesday, October 14. And that will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. again in the large hearing room here at town hall. And if you have any questions, registration is required. You can go online through the town's website or you could call the Wayland Department of Health and they have a vaccine line which is 508-358-6805 and you can press number 2. You want to mention a hazard mitigation. Well, yes, tomorrow there we're having our public meeting on our hazard mitigation plan. It's going to be at the COA and live on. I believe you can get the zoom link. It's going to be from 1030 a.m. to 1130 a.m. Again, tomorrow, Wednesday, September 23rd. And this would be your opportunity to listen in to what the hazard mitigation plan proposal is and add your comments or any suggestions. Mr. Perry, you all have other announcements? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right, then, do we have any public comment this evening? I can recall if he was here with me all by myself. Do you have to identify yourself in your address, please? Of course. The room really filled out since I got here. My name is Tim DeLucre. I'm from Southboro, Massachusetts, 63 School Street. Not from Wayland, but I'm here on behalf of a coalition of retailers and legal adult consumers of smokeless nicotine products. I'm here tonight knowing that this policy isn't under your purview. It's under the Board of Health, but to flag you and make you aware of what's going on. The Wayland Board of Health recently finalized draft regulations for a nicotine pouch ban in Wayland. This is an admirable policy. It's targeted at reducing youth usage, which is a problem, right? Any number above 0% youth usage is a problem. However, it's counterintuitive in terms of meeting its public health goals. When you remove nicotine pouches from the shelf, which are 97% less harmful than smoke products, combustibles like cigarettes, you do one of two things. You reroute consumers to other towns to purchase the product. Not good for economic development, which is why I raise it to you here, right? That's an issue that is more aligned with you folks than the Board of Health. The other option is folks come in and say, what smokeless products do you have? And they hear none. We have combustibles. We have cigarettes. And in some cases, we'll switch back to these more harmful products. We believe if you do not use nicotine, you shouldn't start. If you do use nicotine and it's combustible, you should switch to non-combustibles. And if you quit, you should, right? This removes that second lane, people's ability to go and find the less harmful product. So I flag it for you tonight because obviously a decision like this has a variety of impacts, be it economic, be it people's reactions in general to finding out if this policy happens, right? I don't think all residents are monitoring the Board of Health maybe in the way they should be. And to ask if you would consider weighing in on this discussion, right? Not in any formal capacity. We understand that's what the Board of Health, but in any informal way you might. We'd be honored to work with you. We have a variety of options for alternative solutions that more directly target reducing youth usage. So I'm happy to follow up after this meeting and send along some materials. If anything sticks out to you as interesting or you'd like to engage further, be happy to make myself available as a resource. A variety of retailers here in Wayland who we have worked with, who are concerned about this issue and how it affects their business as they're already getting by on a shoestring margin. So I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Nelson. Hi, Clary. 120 Lakeshore Drive. My wife Karen is with me tonight. We're overhavening and I'm caring for Karen because she has chronic oral dementia like Bruce Willis. I've given many years of service to the town. Last week, my refrigerator died. So I called up Sears. They said, oh, yeah, they'd come out that day. And I gave them instructions, both oral and written, how to get around the Lakeshore Drive closure. And they said they'd be there by three. Well, they weren't there. I called them at five. They said, oh, look at our website. There's a picture that shows you weren't at home, which we were. The picture was the road closed signs at the bottom of Lakeshore Drive. Not a very good answer, but it happened. Not only did it happen to them, it can happen to other kinds of delivery folks, Uber drivers. It's not on the Uber. The closure isn't on the Uber map. So I lost everything in my fridge and I got an appointment for Friday and got it fixed. But what if this had been an out of town ambulance? Karen and I often have medical personnel visiting us and they get lost. This is not showing up on their driving instructions. And no matter how much you tell them, they get lost. Missed deliveries happen all the time. So I'm concerned that this situation has gone on for a long time. And I know that it's a matter that's under litigation. But I also believe the town has other avenues that you can pursue and perhaps legal obligations under an O&M plan, where it took the money from the feds to do the drainage on Lakeshore Drive. I would like to see your board think about taking some actions. It affects neighborhood property values. And I think at some point in the near future, we may have to move. And having that kind of problem by your house doesn't really bring a lot of happy people to buy your home. I think maybe I should request an abatement. Children walk and ride bikes past this hazard all the time. And we had one incident where a propane truck drove through the barriers and across this gap in the road. And there's a police report on it that I reported. This is very dangerous. PPW came along and put a great big giant rock in the middle of the road. So it fixed that problem. I have to say that most of the cause of this was stormwater coming down Beach Road. And the town did correct that. It corrected very well. That's working much better now. But still, this road is closed. And I fully expect that my wife or I will die before the town steps in, unless something starts to happen. I'd like you to please prove me wrong. I am working on two things that I hope will help you. One is a full-on chronology of when we took the money and what we were obliged to do and what we've done and when it was reported. I've been reporting this to conservation starting in 2012. But the other thing that I am going to do is a more thorough investigation of the O&M requirements that I believe were placed on the town under the Federal Clean Lakes Project. They actually placed them on the state to hand out the money. So somewhere in the FEDS file and somewhere in the MASSDQE file is the original agreement. And the terms of the O&M agreement or the O&M requirements that I believe may require the town to take some action. And I also believe that there are legal mechanisms that I wish the town could have. Thank you very much. Please help us. Good evening, everyone. Peter Dyer Vickley. Me and my father just recently acquired the property at 78 Boston Post Road, the Sunoco Station. And sorry, I apologize. I'm ill-prepared. But I got a last-minute notification of, you know, this discussion on the Board of Health's proposed changes to the nicotine pouches. From my perspective, you know, I would ask the Board to reconsider any changes to it. We're a small operator. We have multiple stations throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And everywhere that we've seen these changes happen, consumers get frustrated, residents get frustrated. It's detrimental to the businesses. And fortunately, we were able to, it took us quite a bit of time to get even a license. The former did lost his license. We were able to get a tobacco license at the property. We anticipate, we have plans to redevelop that property and develop it. But if changes continue, it'll be financially very hard for us to do that. So, I apologize that I don't have more info because it was last-minute. But I just wanted to present that to the Board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We'll close the pilot comment. I will let the select board enter into Executive Session. A. Cursuellement Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A23, to discuss strategy with respect respect to the Wayland Firefighters Local 1978 agreements number 2026-0002, step 3, and be pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 21A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the following union, the Wayland Police Officers Union, New England Police Benevolent Association Local 176. And as an order is on the agenda, there are no minutes for us to approve tonight, so we will not do that. Is there a second to the motion to enter into Executive Session? Second. Thank you. The Chair declares that a public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating, negotiating, or bargaining position of a town. Do I have a roll call vote? Yes. Thank you. Ms. Levine? Ms. Reynolds? Yes. Ms. Ridley? Yes. Ms. Martin? So that's 5-0. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, our Town Manager, Headline, Human Resources Director, Neal McPherson, Fire Chief, and David Jenkins of KP Law. The Board will rejoin the public meeting from Executive Session. The meeting will return to open session in approximately 40 minutes. Thank you. Select board is returning to open session. Recording in progress. Returning that select one to open session at 6-53 PM. Thank you. We are. Did we miss it? We did. Because I looked at the website, it said 7, the thing I looked at. Yeah. Oh, it's the board will change. True. Yes. Okay. You make me live tonight. We won't be more than one minute and 54 seconds. Oh, watch this. Good evening. Go ahead. Good evening. So the Chair recognizes his name, sir? Leif LeClaire. Leif. Gentlemen. Hi. We represent. Go ahead, please. Excellent. We represent the Dudley Pond community. As many know, Dudley Pond is facing now four different overgrowing weeds and increased algae glands. Alongside short-term management, which Towns are very supportive of, we need a comprehensive understanding of the underlying causes. We're asking the Select Board to assist us with the MAS 604B grant application seeking approximately $50,000 to develop a watershed-based plan for Dudley Pond. We're also preparing to draw the $20,000 from the Surface Water Quality Committee's Dudley Pond donations earmark fund, which has been used in the past for supplementing town funds for treatment, herbicide treatment and so on. And that would fully fund the estimated $70,000 cost for the two-year project. The watershed-based plan comprehensively quantifies nutrient sources and mitigation opportunities, enabling a strategic approach to investing in the health of Dudley Pond. We're specifically asking the Select Board to assist us by doing three simple things. Identifying stakeholders within the town who should be informed or participate. Authorize a specific town stakeholder to be the official grant submitter. Dudley Pond association can audit has to be a government agency that submits the grant. And providing a letter of support to the grant on behalf of the Town of Wayland. Grant application is due October 7th. We have a volunteer team assisted by professionals who are writing the grant. We need the above three things from the town order to complete and submit the application. Thank you. Perhaps Mr. McCall could include this in this town manager's updates, so we can have a brief discussion today. On today? Of course, about the grant? Sure. Otherwise, we have to do it. Well, we have to do it as well. All right. Thank you very much. Now, I think we're going number five, which is, um, Mr. McCullough, do I think Mr. in person? Thank you. Mr. McCullough? I'm not sure. Okay. Well, Mr. Rodney, could you check to see him running on his own line, please? Uh, no, I don't see him in the attendees area. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate. I'll follow the motion. Yes. Uh, I've moved that the board, uh, appoint, uh, non-manager of Michael McCullough, town planner, Robert Hummel, as our local government representatives regarding small clean energy infrastructure facilities, siting and permitting is required by MGL, uh, chapter 25A, sections 2-6 and L-21. Do you have a second? Second. Okay. So this is when Mr. Hummel is going to be joining us in one second to talk about this, but if you look at all this information related to this job or this project is on pages seven through 17 in the packet. Um, we have a motion on the floor, Mr. McCullough, to approve this. Are we okay with that?
Well, I, I, I, I had to get something from Mr. LeClaire, so we can, sorry. Now that we have a motion on the floor to approve the appointment of you and Mr. Hummel. Yes. I, I see no problem in that, Madam Chair. Okay. Uh, I previously discussed it with him. Okay. That's the case. And no comments from the board, no questions. I'm gonna have a roll call vote. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you entirely. Yes. That's 5-0. Okay. So the next item on our agenda is to meet with the audit committee to review. There's two things we're going to do. One is we're going to review the annual audit report and then we're going to consider suggestions regarding the structure and the shape of the committee. We'll just do one at a time. We invite attendance by Mr. Colts. I believe I will be your current chair of the committee also. And is Mr. German coming or is he online? I think the, the plan was for Michael would be. Yeah. Could you see Mr. German's in there, Mr. or Mr. Robbie? I don't see. All right. And because we might be running a few minutes early in time, as if he might not be coming on here, is Mr. Kevin here. Yeah. There's some here. All right. All right. All right, everyone. I don't see you. Yeah. I have a laptop. I can't get to the video working camera. Okay. I think we should wait like five minutes. Mr. German. You know, I think it's a good idea because the division of labor was going to be, Michael presents the annual report. Right. And I address the staffing issue. Right. Okay. Feel free to stay there, but I'm going to go to the agenda item because we'd like to move along here.
Uh, let's see. Where's Mr. Beck? How about a motion on the consent calendar?
I'd be to move the consent calendar.
Any questions about the consent calendar? I will say this if there's information for the consent calendar is in two places. This is supplemental information. And then there's the regular consent packet. Okay. Before the discussion, let's have a vote. Mr. Beck? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Mr. Whitley? Yes. Mr. Reynolds? Okay. Thank you. You want to do item 14, the licensing agreement. Did you read my mind? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Item number 14 is to review and authorize the town manager Michael McCall to sign the licensing agreement with the Whaling Town Center regarding Whaling Pest 2026, which by the way is happening on October, May day of October 4th. Um, their information for this, for those who are looking, I think the license agreement is in supplemental packet.
Any questions on this? Do I have a motion, please? Go for it, Chris. No. Oh, because he's working on it? Yeah. I'm trying to open my supplemental packet. Sorry? I want to open my supplemental packet. So I'm not going to put words into the town manager's mouth, but I believe that he told me that this contract is modeled after the same contract we just did. Shared streets, go ahead, please. Yes, Madam Chair, that is correct. I worked on this with North pond associates. We took the agreement that we previously worked on for shared streets. We modified it slightly using a licensing agreement that was previously done by KP law. I had KP law in the last 24 hours review this. This all happened in the last couple of days, just to ensure that everybody is covered in the event of any type of unforeseen incident and that we would have exclusive rights to use the town center plaza for this event. And I will say again, North pond, Jesse Burke can and his staff have been excellent to work with. Everybody is timely on everything we do. So it's come together quickly. I move approval of the license agreement between North pond, Wayland LLC and the town of Wayland as detailed in our supplemental packet number two. Second. Second. Thank you. Second. Any further discussion? All right, let's have a vote. Mr. Payne? Yes. Yes. Sorry, question. Should the motion also authorize the town manager to execute on behalf of the port? Sure. Friendly amendment accepted. Thanks. So it's still the same too. Thank you, Bill. That's good. All right. Any other further questions or comments or amendments? All right. We'll take a vote call. We'll have to all focus online. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Mr. Fay? Yes. Yes. Anybody voting against or state? State. So the vote is 4-0-1, correct? Correct. Could you let me know when Mr. German comes? Could you text him or something to see what he said? I can email him. I can't text him. Okay. But you know, if worse comes to worse, what I'll do is I'm going to assume people have read the report. We have. And then I will take questions. Okay. I'm going to keep going though. Okay. Let me just send an email. Yeah. How about number 11? This is on page. I'm so excited. I'm really ahead. This isn't going to laugh, but I'm so excited. Hang on. I've got to find my page. Amend the broadband and cable advisory committed the charge. This is on page 40 of our packet. When we reviewed the charge, we used an older model and the older models did not have the number of committee members on the term limit. So that's what's been added to this. You'll see what it is. I think it's now five for the numbers. And with the term limit is when the contract is signed. So that's the only adjustment we're making there. So I went to have Abby put out the notice that we wanted to have applicants and there was, we did not have many people to recruit. So. All right. Is there any questions? All right. We will. I need a motion, please. Move that the board approve the revised Whalen Cable Advisory Committee charge known as the Whalen Broadband and Cable Advisory Committee. Thank you. Any questions or comments? All right. Can you just make sure that she adds broadband into the title too? It isn't, isn't it? Oh, no, no. On page 40. And the heading itself. Yeah, I think I've corrected that. Oh, you know what? I think I have it corrected in my own paper. All right. Let me put that in my updates. Even better. All right. Let's have a vote then, please. Mr. Frank. Yes. Mr. Levine. Yes. Mr. Wells. Yes. Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Martin. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. You know what? I did edit that from something else, but I don't see it here, so you can make a note on that. Mr. Chairman, thank you for joining us. We're doing the other little recess of that board meeting. Like, doesn't that logical? That's what we're waiting to be. Sorry about that. No worries. Thank you for joining us. So we're going to go back now to item number six, which is meet with members of the audit committee, which is Mr. Shigley and Mr. Chairman, and also with Mr. Coveney, to hear your audit report. So the floor is yours, sir. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for having us here today.
So the information starts on our package on page 18. All right. Thanks for having us here today. I'm going to provide an overview of the audit committee's report. So to provide an overview, we reviewed the ACFER, and we provided feedback and comments to CBIS. This year, they did not identify any significant deficiencies for material weaknesses within their report. So they did not issue a management letter. As for the internal controls, the auditor does not express an opinion over internal controls. And we had asked questions about the town's internal controls. And they had mentioned that the town's controls are generally stronger than those of similar municipalities. Although there were also some opportunities for improvement that were noted. Outside of the ACFER, we also participated in the recent RFP for the town's independent auditor, which was one of our recommendations from the past fiscal year. And this was for the upcoming three fiscal years. And it was not prompted by any concerns of audit performance or quality. It was just a routine governance review. And there were two respondents. And the committee had rigorously filled out some scorecards. And we evaluated it and discussed. And we unanimously recommended that CBIS be reappointed to be the independent auditor. And the town subsequently appointed CBIS. And then to provide an update on some issues of the previous FY24 audit, which include the cash variances, the guaranteed deposits, as well as GASB 101. The cash variances, there was a balance of about $130,000, primarily related to the Student Activities Fund. And then the previous fiscal year, there were some updates made within UNIS, as well as the general ledger and that variance has been resolved. For the guaranteed deposits, which has been an ongoing issue that the town's been working to resolve, we met with the town manager, as well as a member of the conservation department, to discuss some of these unresolved issues, as well as their approach for resolution. And there was some progress made this year. In June 25, the balance was about $622,000. And then in June 26, that balance had dropped to about $503,000, with the conservation department and the building department, both representing the largest portion of those remaining balances. And through that discussion, it was mentioned that there were some constraints to the resolution, because there was incomplete or missing historical records that were kind of was kind of holding it back. But there were some potential solutions that they had discussed, which include continuing some of the investigative work that's been performed, engaging any additional support resources that may be available. And then also just evaluating any potential pathways forward that may lead to a resolution. And in order to track this progress, one of the Audit Committee's recommendations is for the department heads to provide quarterly reports and updates and submitted by the town manager to the select board.
for GASB 101, which was one of the new requirements effective in FY25, which related to compensated absences, as well as sick leave. The town successfully implemented this guidance. And this guidance, there's not a lot of impacting fund level reporting here. It was mostly increasing accruals, as well as liabilities. And it does impact primarily the government-wide financial statements. For this upcoming fiscal year, one thing to note is that GASB 103 and 104 will be expected to be implemented. And then the Audit Committee has also proposed some recommendations for the select board's consideration. One of those being to engage a third party to perform a review of internal controls over a select department. And given that the auditor does not provide an opinion over internal controls, this could help provide some additional assurance that controls are operating effectively and operations are working as they're intended. Um, I'll, I'll pause here if, uh, Klaus or Brian have any additional comment or anything to add? Brian, um, can you hear all of what's going on? Yes, I can hear everything. Okay. Do you want to add anything else to Germany? Okay. Uh, nothing other than, nothing other than historically Alina Korsak would be with us tonight. Um, CBiz was purchased recently by Grant Thornton and they've gone through a series of downsizing and part of that restructuring Alina Korsak who's been the lead auditor in Wayland for a good 15 years is no longer with CBiz. We're still using the CBiz name. It's, it's not yet the Grant Thornton, uh, another higher partner that, um, the original Melanson and Heath, uh, 15 years ago, Wayland started with the firm Melanson and Heath who's today CBiz. They've gone from a small regional accounting firm in New Hampshire, um, to now part of a national firm. Now they even getting even larger by joining Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton is not at the Ernest Young level or Deloitte or KPMG, but they are pretty big. And so we'll be doing business with one of the largest accounting firms in the country in Grant Thornton. Uh, as I was going to say, another key partner in the firm, Rob McIntyre, who is Alina's boss, who has been with the town as well for 15 years. And they've both been extremely helpful to Wayland in, you know, implementing a lot of the GASBs and working with us and working with us for some of our issues that we had. Um, they were a pleasure to work with and Scott, uh, with the downsizing, he has retired. So we have lost two key people. Um, at CBiz, they do have new people taking over. Um, in terms of adding to Michael's presentation, there's really not much further we can add. Um, you know, we're closing the books next week for fiscal 26th. We're sort of back on track where the audit should be. Uh, the, the finances really should be finalized by the end of December each year. So we're back into the timeframe where we should be. So, um, Klaus and Michael and the other fellow one did a great job this year. There was just the three of them and, um, they worked through the transition with Alina. So that's all I wanted to add, but I do want to thank those two folks from CBiz for their assistance that went on for the last 15 years. Thank you. Thank you. So did you want to address the contract thing or not? Yeah. Another recommendation that we had was to perform, to have a third party performer review over some of the top vendor contracts. Yeah. And just, you could select maybe the, some of the larger contracts uh, and just do a deeper dive of the contract as well as some procurement areas. So before we go to anything else, uh, I'm going to open it up to the board to see if, uh, thank you for the report. It's very clear, very nicely written, very easy to follow your highlights there, and you're in business. Well, we have some more questions or comments. I had a quick question. First of all, thank you a lot, especially probably looking clear that was, it may be premature to ask, but at one point you said that an outside firm would they come in and look for, look at our controls. And my, my question is, do you know yet whether they're going to look at the policies and procedures or will they actually interview employees? Yeah. I mean, I think that would depend on the scope that you agree upon, but generally if you were engaging with a third party to do a control review, they would probably look at policies and procedures and then also interview whoever you identify to, for them to interview. So thank you. Mr. Ray. Brian, do you have any concern that given that we've lost an institutional memory with our, uh, auditing firm, uh, that we are gonna have someone, uh, sufficiently experienced and senior to work on our account? No, I'm not worried about that. One of the, uh, other lead people in the, on the, um, audit team, uh, Lori, she's still with the firm. A lot of the people that came down, um, the last bunch of years is the, uh, their team of auditors, they're still with them. So we have not lost everybody. We've just lost the, um, the top ones to give you a short history. You know, 15 years ago, you were really dealing with three audit firms, Sullivan and Rogers, Powers and Sullivan, and Melanson. They were all regional large firms that specialized in municipal government auditing. Today, Powers and Sullivan and Melanson are now part of CBiz. Sullivan and Rogers is now part of CLA. We do business with CLA on a consultant basis within our treasurer's office and other things as well. So for any municipality today, you really, your options are, you're really not dealing with small regional firms anymore. You're dealing with large firms. But with respect to CBiz, I don't have any concerns about their staff staffing. They've, I've known a lot of the people that are still coming down. Um, they do have a new lead person on it that has come down to the, to Whalen and, and then met with us. And, you know, went over his background. So I, I, I really don't have any concern though at all. Thank you. Actually, I'll just add that in the private sector, they encourage a turnover of the, of the independent accountant. So we're, we're at a point where we use it. We've been using this, uh, Alina at least for 10 years. Right. So I know it points were big and I just concerned that if you're going to a big outfit, you get a junior person assigned to a, you know, comparably small community, but it sounds like that's not an issue. Mr. Faith, do you have any questions? I, I don't. Thank you. Thank you. I have a couple of things. All I want to say, major kudos, Ryan, Michael, the staff, no management letter. I mean, this is a huge call. That's very, very impressive. When I read it, I thought, no matter. I noticed, I know the last few years, there's been fewer and fewer items on them, but it's very rare, isn't it, to have no management letter. So I think we ought to take a breath and say, it's a record job there. Um, I noticed your recommendations. They're very thoughtful. I appreciate that. The one, of course, that's got my attention is the guaranteed deposits. I do.
I do believe the planning department, excuse myself.
I do believe that the planning department is always because those funds have been converted to available funds for use. But I guess my question is how close we are and how much work do we need to do on the remaining 500,000? It is a possibility that some of that may go to the general fund. I would say the biggest challenge, Madam Chair, is one of these funds have been identified by department, but it's finding the transactions or the, um, the projects and a large number of them still reside with conservation. We've asked them, uh, to work on it. Uh, the, the problem is there's just a lot, not a lot of good record keeping. And we did have, um, a summer intern that helped us clean up some of the ones in, um, building a previous year. And Mr. Hummel worked quite diligently. He didn't have as many. And there were, we often use the word crumbs around to help fund and narrow down these projects. And then I did work with Robert on some of those going through looking at old select board agendas and planning board agendas to find those. Um, I think we just may need to get some additional help and conservation, uh, that can be dedicated to tracking these down. It, it, it, it's, you know, old gumshoe sleuthing because someone has to go through and try and take a deposit record from 10, 15 years ago, and then look through to see how much was given in a particular project for a peer review and sort of, you know, it, and trying to match them up. And if you have three that night, each gave money for peer review is going to be hard to tell which one was which. Oh, no, I recognize that. But 500,000's got my attention.
I'm sure I got Mr. Close's attention as well. Okay. All right. Did you have any questions or comments, Mr. McClellan? No, I, um, we did write a letter of Mr. Kemeny off and I signed it to CBiz explaining what we were doing and how we were addressing any, um, of the issues. And I, it was our representation letter of what we will continue to do here. So that was sent out to CBiz on Friday. It was a stronger job for everybody. And perfectly an effort from the committee because it's a committee of five and they have three members and they need three members to have a quorum. And so if they've got something to do, they've got to make sure that we didn't show up, we've really been there. And that's really what I'm here to address. I know. I'm coming, teeing up him. All right. Mr. Sheeley is going to speak to us about this. He has, there's some information in the packet, and I move this starts and maybe on page 28. I gave you the wrong number before, but I think on 28, there's some information on server, a pair of terms due, and then farther down, there's four recommendations. But why don't you describe, you're all sent. Thank you. I'm going to assume that everyone has seen the material that we distributed. And, uh, basically we're a committee of five that's down to one member and we need three to make a quorum. So, and let me explain. And one of the reasons we're down to one is that my friend, Michael, is leaving town and cannot be reappointed. So, and before I proceed, I wanted to acknowledge what a nice job that he's done as our chair in this past year. So, um, moving on, the memo offers four potential fixes for our staffing woes. One is terminating the committee. Two is populate the committee with members from other committees. Three is move the function and duties of the audit committee to the FinCom. And four is step up the recruiting effort. I have a couple of thoughts. Good. In my opinion, killing the audit committee should be the last resort. Firstly, uh, the audit committee has added value. They've come up with some very good suggestions in the past. And secondly, someone besides the finance director should have the pleasure of reviewing the town's 120 page annual, uh, comprehensive financial report for which our finance director gets a, uh, an attaboy every year from, uh, from, from Gatsby. So he should be applauded as well.
So I'm also thinking that, um, the, the fourth option, more proactive recruiting, hasn't worked. You know, calls for volunteers have appeared in both the Wayland Post and in the monthly, uh, newsletter from the, from the town manager, which leaves two options, basically adding staff from other committees or transferring the duties to the FinCom. I think both are doable and adding staff from other committees is probably the simplest. That's where I sit. So we have a, so of course, I also want to just add one thing. On page 33 and 34 of our packet, we're going to see a very lovely color-coded chart. One of our objectives this year is to look at a committee issue in general, make sure that the right number of members, all those kinds of things, whatever we have within that objective. I forgot what it is for the moment. And if you'll note at the top, and then, and this is major kudos to Abby, who spent all this time doing it. And it's, it's easy, it's easy to read. The odd committee was, is a select board formulated committee. In other words, if we make any changes to it, we do not have to go to town meeting to make the changes, I don't believe. You notice it right on the top. It was established in January 9, 2012. And you can see that over here on the key on the side, this is a select board vote. So as we evaluate these four options, I also want to say, we'll see this chart again every time we look at, you know, talk about committees, but I think it's a wonderful resource now that they've put together for us. So I'm going to open it to the floor, have a discussion about the four options. One is to eliminate the odd committee, one is to maintain it, but staff it perhaps with, you know, a representative from other committees, fold the duties into the finance committee or even another committee, and then try to have some more proactive recruiting. So I'll open it to the floor and we'll start with new whistleblowers. An audit committee was created, I'm just looking at the charge, by the select board in 2012. Yeah. So it's the select board that can make any changes on its own. But I understand. Do you think that we would find some folks from the finance committee to be able to staff this committee and serve on two boards simultaneously? So the interesting people said, yeah, the proposal was really to get one member from the finance committee, another member from select board, and one from the school committee. So if, you know, getting one member from each of those might be doable. Or they're designated, but you see, once you say we're designated, then we get back to the recruiting. So as Steve Martin said, we're back and forth, you know. I have a comment. I served on several audit committees, excuse me, not in municipal finance, but in the private sector. And I'm averse to populating an audit committee members of the finance committee. I think we need to get members from other committees. So I will say this. I believe you have spoken to the finance committee, or they've at least had this conversation at one of their meetings. And I don't think they felt that they wanted to have the audit committee duties folded into the finance committee's responsibilities. That certainly is an option. So anyway, back to you, Doug. I mean, we're having this issue with a handful of committees. Well, we're finding perennial vacancies. So I think this is a larger conversation that we probably need to have as a full agenda item. Because this has been an ongoing problem for some time. It's a major problem right now because we have one person with Mr. Shigley on the committee, but I don't disagree. But I think they asked if we could have this as part of tonight's audit report review. If I could make another very quick comment. I had trouble populating an audit committee once before when we asked you, what was the problem? And the answer was not the usual stuff of just being busy in life and all. It was that there's a, that everything happens once a year up to a certain deadline, and it's a crescendo and dense work. We just couldn't do that. So when we found a way to spread out the work and schedule it differently, all of a sudden we leave. In the material we have, I think, Klaus addresses how much is it? Four to six times a year. Right, right. The process starts once the annual comprehensive financial report is done. And that has been somewhat variable. I mean, we'd like to see it. Brian can address it better, but you'd like to see it come around in December maybe. But there have been years when it hasn't arrived until, you know, so. But okay, so it starts with the ACFER, and then it proceeds pretty quickly, and that we review that, and maybe the management letter, meet with the independent auditor to our report. So it can be done pretty quickly. Ideally, it's done in December or January, maybe February. If it's ideal, that's, you can squeeze it into that time frame. Okay. And then that's it for the year? Yep. We do two reports, one to the select board, and one for the booklet published for the town. So it's about four to six meetings a year, you think? And then who writes the report? Well, collectively we do that. We vote on it as a committee. So, Chris, does that answer your question? Is there a crunch to write that report? Or is there a time crunch that would dissuade people to get that report out? Or is it usually a team effort very small? I think usually it's the chair that will write the report, discuss it at the, at the, at the, at a meeting, vote on it. And so it's not a lot of work for most of the committee. It's, it's work for probably one, I withdraw. Thank you. It's about five, six pages because this is, the report we're discussing is the one that's in the pages about 18 to 24 or 20, I think I've read it wrong, 24 to 31, it's about six pages. I saw the pages. My curiosity was whether we actually do what it's. Yes, as I mentioned this year, it would have been Michael who prepared the bulk of it, and the rest of it would comment. Thank you. Tom? I tend to agree with Doug's comment that an agenda item where we discuss the overall issue of committee vacancies and maybe include in the same discussion, one of the goals of the Town Managers Act, and that is to eliminate some boards and committees or combine them and, and, and, um, uh, to make the Town Managers Act that much more efficient. And I'm not suggesting that we, that's not a plug for eliminating the audit committee because I, I, I, yeah, but I just think it's a, it's worth a greater, a more expansive discussion. By the way, that's the reason that we, uh, included the, the survey that we did in, in 23, is that it is a viable solution to kill the audit committee because it's a, of, of, of the 11 towns that we looked at, only three of them had an audit committee. So it's a doable solution. Mr. Whitney? I think the notion of killing a committee, uh, is, uh, difficult. Um, I wondered if another possibility would be to have the FinCom, the school committee, and the select board, each appoints someone the way we do, and with other committees where there are appointees. Uh, so it's not necessarily a member of those. Well, that's actually the process that we have now. Right. Right. So that's not working. It's just a recruitment issue, an underlying recruitment issue. We're back to recruiting again then. How's it? Well, if it, if the charge is fine, one or two people versus four people, maybe that's, uh, an easier bill to swallow. Right now, we need to find four. I understand. Okay. But you know, if the school, if we said to the school committee, you know, come on, find somebody and come as well, and maybe one of the members would volunteer perhaps not, um, but, uh, as an alternative to having a member of a board or a committee, that's probably already pretty busy. Um, maybe that's my turn about that. Well, Klaus, as you can see, and it was just no easy, clear solution. Even you had four or five recommendations. So I think that the board is interested. As Tom mentioned, I think he summed it up pretty well. And we had this conversation when we did our goals for the fiscal 27 year and said, you know, one of the things we want to step back just because things are the way they are. I mean, we look at our policies and we've been making some adjustments. So they're more in the current. And, and so this probably is, does belong in that greater, greater discussions. My only concern now is, into Chris's point, you have finished your work for a while, right? So we have a little time. We have time. So we have time. Okay. So the fact that we have time, I'm going to say, we'll put this, this will be part of another, um, larger discussion on another agenda. I mean, probably not too far, um, probably within the next four or five meetings or so, we'll probably have a look at this, kind of fit everything. Does that work for you? Oh, sure. Okay. That sounds reasonable. Thank you so much. We're sorry you're leaving us. We should reconsider and stay. Okay. No, I wouldn't ask Michael, how did you get, um, become aware? Because that might be a recruiting technique. Um, I just, or someone told me that joining, like I wanted to be involved in doing something outside of work. And someone had told me that joining like a town's committee is, is an option that you could do. So I looked and I saw that there was some openings and applied for it. I mean, I will give a little teeny plug. If you have any whaling resident friends, who have the appropriate skill set, please feel free to recommend that they apply. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Brian, Ms. Johan. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate it. It's me? I'm going to go to you next, because I don't know if anyone's up to you. So, we're going to go skip up to number eight, because Mr. Reitman going to join us. She had joined us in the spring or the summer, maybe, and talking about the John Empties Memorial Museum project at the Council on Aging Community Center. There's been a couple of design changes, and she wasn't sure, and neither was I, that perhaps we ought to just run these by the board, so we're all aware of them. And so, here she is. And I think this information is in our packet on page 35. So, thank you for inviting me back. Just to refresh your memories, this is a privately funded tribute memorial to John Empties, who was a super volunteer for the Council on Aging for many, many years. And there is a Wayland resident whose idea this was, and who is funding it. This person wishes to remain anonymous, so I am working in their behalf to get this done. And the idea that we came up with as we thought about what would be an appropriate tribute, we wanted it to be outdoors, we wanted it to be associated with the community center, and so it is a mosaic, which is 24 inches in diameter. It's a beautiful outdoor piece of art that depicts a man in a canoe on the river, and it's surrounded by trees. It's lovely. And the challenge for us has been to figure out on what that mosaic would rest. So that's where Carol's referring to some design changes, we've gone through a lot of thinking about what to how to do it. But where we've ended up is very similar to where we started, which is, it will be a concrete block, if you will. Let me stop before I go on and say that Bill Sterling, who I think most of you probably know, has been working closely with me. So that's where our design expertise comes in. And we have a mason on board who's going to cast this cement block, it's going to be about 30 inches wide, 34 inches deep, the back will be higher, the back will be about 34 inches, the front will be about 15. So there'll be about a 25 degrees slope. That's where the mosaic will be set in. So that it's easier to view it. And also there's runoff of snow and rain on the front piece. The front vertical piece will be a bronze plaque that reads, in loving memory of John Antti's 1936 to 2019, with deep gratitude for his legacy of volunteer service to Wayland's seniors, he enriched our community with his kindness, generosity and good humor. So we have a mason who's standing at the ready to build this thing. The concrete will be mixed with a pigment so that it won't look like a sidewalk. So it'll have a little tone to it. And then it will be sandblasted after it's cast so that it also has a nicer surface to it and look more like a work of art than a piece of utility. And the DPW is also involved, they will build the foundation for this piece. And they're ready to do that sometime in the next few weeks. So that'll be about a 10 to 12 inch deep gravel foundation that will have drainage and support the weight of the concrete. So that's where we are. And I'm hoping this has been a long process. But I'm hoping this will be complete in the next month. And once it is complete, we will have some sort of a dedication ceremony that you will all be invited to. Thank you. So at first we thought there was some changes that needed to come before the board. And then as it went on, there weren't that many, but we'd already made the decision to come in. Does anyone have any comments or questions? I love the photo. Yes. Oh, good. We're all set. Thank you so much for the update. Thank you. We'll look forward to coming from again to say it's fun. I'm looking forward to that too. Thank you so much. All right. Number seven is Miss. How are you? Karen's up there. Hi, Sarah. Um, we're going to skip something.
All right. Discuss some funding requests from the AGR, DEI committee for program support with the pretension to vote. Um, we're inviting Karen, as I said, as the chairman and then Heather as well. How are you? Did you want to, uh, describe your request to us, please? Yes. Um, and so just to be clear, I'm the chair and Heather is the vice chair of the human rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. Thank you so much for including us tonight. We'd like to make a very brief presentation because we know we have only a short time on your agenda and then, um, ask what questions you have for us. So we're here to ask for your support for two new programs designed to help community members talk about complex topics at home, in school, and across generations. We're really excited to be partnering this year with the Wayland Public Schools and with Caroline Hahn, the district's director of diversity, equity, and belonging. The two new programs speak directly to priorities that were named in the town's, um, community life and engagement study around trust, belonging, and school town connections. Um, the first program is called Curious Kids, Confident Caregivers. And some of you probably know this feeling. You're standing in the supermarket and a toddler says to their caregiver, why does that person look the way they look in a really loud voice? Or a middle schooler comes to you and asks for advice about dealing with a peer who's making jokes about someone who has a different gender or a different or a disability? And this program, this two-part workshop is designed for to help adult caregivers address exactly those kinds of questions. Um, it'll be led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes, who many of you know, a social psychologist and Wayland resident, building on the conversation series she led last year at the library. It'll be split into two sessions, one for caregivers of small, younger kids, and one for caregivers of older kids. And by caregivers, we mean parents, guardians, grandparents, teachers, anybody who cares for kids. Um, participants will leave the sessions with, um, practical ways to help kids grow up to be kind and curious and inclusive and with language that they can use to talk with kids about these kinds of topics that may be uncomfortable to talk about. Uh, the second program is tentatively called Conversations That Matter. And this one will be a once a month dialogue series running for four months, led by Jamil Adams, um, an educator and equity strategist. The program will bring together Wayland students and adults, um, to, for structured, moderated conversations on local issues that matter most to people. And this will help build communication skills that people can then carry back to their families, to their schools, and into everyday life, and will help create, build bridges across the generations. And this work builds on the work that Jamil Adams did last year with us and on his ongoing work with the Wayland High School community. So the total cost for both programs is $8,000. And we're really excited to share that the Wayland Public Schools has agreed to contribute $2,000. So we're asking the select board for $6,000 to, um, bring both of these programs to our community. And please tell us what questions you have. All we have to questions from the board if you would like to start. I've got a question for you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that presentation. Can you talk a little bit, um, about the two programs last year by Jamil Adams and Dr. Eden Renee Hayes and how these might differ from last year's programs? Yes. So, uh, Heather, do you actually, I don't want to take all the air. Do you want to speak to that? No, it's okay. Go ahead. I'm here. I, uh, we're not there in person because I have my annual back to school cold and, uh, didn't want to infect everybody with my middle school germs. So go ahead, Karen. Thank you. We appreciate that.
So, um, let's see. So, so Dr. Hayes program last year at the library, it was for adults and it didn't have to do with kids. Um, it had to do with talking about issues around, um, American history and race, um, and it was really an amazing series of six programs on all different topics using, um, literature and other, um, speeches and other things as the basis for really interesting and important conversations. Um, and similarly, Jamil Adams program, although we did have a high school student come to one of the sessions, it was also for adults, um, and adults were learning particular skills for having complex conversations, um, with other people, but not necessarily with kids. So both of these programs in the coming year will be different in that the topics really pertain to kids. Um, and, um, Dr. Hayes program will, I mean, excuse me, um, Jamil Adams program will include kids in the conversations. And so they're intergenerational, um, and we very much hope to broaden the audience even more, the participation even more than last year and to bring in, we hope, families, um, with kids, younger kids and that sort of thing. So broader, broader, different, slightly different scope and, and broader participation is what our hope is. I appreciate that. And I'm, one comment that I just want to add is that we've obviously had folks come before this board for a civil discourse initiative. And while there's some overlap here with these two programs, I would say that the, the civil discourse initiative varies significantly in that it will cover a whole broad range of topics and more importantly, it will train up to 24 Waylanders to serve as facilitators for dialogues as they come up three or so times, three to four times a year is the goal. And, uh, I'll give a further update about that during my reports and concerns. Thank you, Karen and Heather. Yeah. And, and we'll be coordinating, you know, our topics will also be broad and will include, um, you know, various aspects of, of human identity, whether it's, you know, race or religion or disability or whatever it might be. Um, and we will coordinate closely with Doug and his colleagues to make sure that we're, that we're, you know, not overlapping and, and making, making meaningful contributions to the community. One to the, Mr. Whitney. Uh, two questions. One is what would the source of the funding be? And secondly, uh, Doug, you sort of touched on my question, which is how does this dovetail with the, the work of, uh, the reflective structured dialogue training we talked about at a previous meeting? And, and, and would this, would these kinds of, uh, questions or discussions, uh, be something that, uh, uh, a trained volunteer could do on, for going, on a going forward basis? So I was thinking of an example, though it may not happen this year, is what it's sounding like. Uh, our first structured dialogue was going to be around the override, for example, where I don't think it would be appropriate, uh, under these two programs that Heather and, uh, Karen are explaining to have a program and structure on, uh, the override. But for example, you know, we're reaching town issues that, that they may not be touching on, but certainly that there, there is some overlap here. Um, but I think the more opportunity we have to have some of these dialogues, uh, the more proactive we're being in building this community. So I'm looking forward to seeing how both interact in the coming year. May I hop in and answer the question? So we, um, actually had this conversation with, um, the chair of Wilma Bell and said that the select one, I may have mentioned this last week on passing. Unfortunately, we have a very small expense budget this year. We only have $32,000, which is why we were really, really, really, really, well, mostly I was very excited that we had access to those guaranteed, uh, deposits and were able to support a couple other projects, including the Constructive Dialogue Program. So my thought was, and I talked to Michael, and I think we, we agreed that we would take the, what was the eight, and I think now we're down to six from our $32,000 expense budget. I did explain that because we have such a small budget this year that to be really sure this is the programs you want for the year because likely we may not be able to fund something else. So we have that conversation. That answers your question.
Thanks, Sue. Mr. Craig? Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so to follow up on, um, the chair's point a moment ago, Karen and Heather, do you anticipate programs like these annually? And, and does it make sense to have some sort of a line item in the town budget, um, uh, where the town can especially support these programs? And Michael McCall, you may have a comment on that. I mean, this board is an advisory board to the select board, so it may not be appropriate. But, uh, what, what are your thoughts? I can't see anybody's smirking. Um, I'm always cautious about making certain commitments and setting precedent in what I would have said prior to you mentioning it is this is an advisory board. We have other advisory boards that have asked for similar, um, types of requests for regular funding. So I, I, I don't know if I would recommend to the board that we make this a regular budget item, but I think, you know, supporting from time to time, uh, events or endeavors by some of these is not a problem. But I think if we start the process of creating a line item or a recurring budget expense for certain, um, advisory boards or other boards in town that others will then follow suit. So given that comment, no doubt, Karen and Heather, you keep an eye out for grant monies for programs that you'd like, you can't even like to pursue. And I'd encourage you to continue that effort. And, um, but I do support your ask this evening. I support this. I have no questions. You know, I really liked the idea, um, that you tied this back in to some of the objectives from the equity assessment, because that's, you know, we spent some time and after putting that up. And I really liked that in particular, this is working with schools on a couple of, because a couple of the recommendations were pretty much school-based. So I really think this is a, is a nice focus. Um, and, um, if everybody is comfortable with the 6,000 coming from our very minuscule expense budget, I'll take a motion, please. I move that we approve the human rights, diversity, equity, inclusion committees, uh, requests for program support for two programs for the upcoming year, uh, totaling $6,000. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. We'll have a roll call vote. Chris? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. And Carol. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. See, we are now going to speak to Mr. Corey. Um, good evening. Good. How are you? Thank you. Um, he has applied for a position, um, for the Zoning Board of Appeals. We know what it is the CBA. This is an associate position. We determined in June 30, the 20, 29, he has submitted a letter of interest and information and that is in the, um, packet on page 38. So we're very, very involved here when we do our interviews. It will probably last about three minutes or five minutes, whatever. Um, you may not be familiar with everyone on the board. So we'll have everyone introduce themselves first, please. Good evening. My name is Chris Reynolds. I'm going to do a select board. Nice to meet you. Hi, I'm, uh, Bill Brittany. Hey, James. Doug Levine. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Chair Tom Fay member. I'm vice chair of the select board. And I'm Carol Martin and I'm the chair this year. How are you? So if you would like to just tell us briefly a couple minutes of, you know, like Dr. Gene to apply for the ZBA, then we'll ask a couple of questions and go from there. Okay. Does that sound okay? Okay. What was yours? Um, well, I've been, I've been reading about all these vacancies on town boards and committees. Um, I'm a, um, in a master's program at Fairfield, uh, in public administration. I just started that. Well, I actually started two years ago, but I'm a little bit behind. I was going to get two classes done. Um, and I've been living in Wayland for 10 years. We moved here in 2016. My wife passed away in 2018. So just me and my daughter. So we were kind of isolated for a few years and I thought town government would be a pretty good way to like feel more part of the town. Um, my daughter's in school now. She's a Holy Cross. Um, I live on old Connecticut path. Just me and the dog. Um, my family has a long history of public service. My mother was an alderman in Somerville for 10 years. Um, they're now called the city council, but they were called aldermen back then. She was, uh, alderman at large from 85 to 95. Um, my brother's very active in politics. My sisters are active. Um, I've worked on various things, campaigns, but I've never had an official town role. So I thought it'd be interesting to try and it would tie in nicely with my education, um, which can be kind of vague, uh, just general. Um, here I am. Thank you. I'm gonna open it up to the board for questions. Crystal, would you like to start? Well, first, thank you very much for your willingness to serve. Um, I am particularly interested in, uh, which neighborhood newspaper you worked on in Boston. Uh, but also, um, as, uh, particularly Doug knows as a former member of the zoning board of appeal, uh, it's a, uh, kind of real estate centric committee. So, uh, curious how, uh, how you feel your interest dovetails with, with, uh, that kind of work. I'm sorry. How many dovetails with the zoning board? Right. Right. Uh, you know, the, the zoning board tends to deal with a lot of real estate matters. Uh, in looking at your impressive resume, I don't see a lot of reference to that. So I'm interested in, in why you're interested in the zoning board of appeal. Well, honestly, the library would have been my first choice. Um, but that was bold. The available options were, um, more finance related, which I don't really have the expertise for that. Um, wastewater management was another one and I didn't feel particularly well versed in that. Um, well, I mean, it'd be interesting. It's obviously conceptual. Um, I thought zoning was the most general options that would also have impact. So that's why I settled on that. Okay. Thank you. What I can share with you, sir, as a former member of the ZBA is there are at least a couple of members on that board who have served a number of years, who I think will do a good job of taking you under their wing or just a replete with experience of all different kinds of matters that have appeared before that board. We also have a very strong building department and it's actually an interesting way to learn aspects about the town that you otherwise wouldn't without serving on that board. And on occasion, there are more complex larger hearings when there are larger developments happening, such as these 40 B developments that happen from time to time in our town, uh, or other large projects. But, uh, I think coming in as an associate member is a good move and try that for a couple of years. And then maybe we'll get you over to the library board of trustees. Thank you for your service. Actually, the, uh, the chair of the library trustees, as long as K realizes that the base of experience and the data are going around the public policy policy is I have no questions or comments. I thought your letter was well written. Thank you sir. Mr. Nice to meet you. Mr. Corrigan. If our board chooses to appoint you any recommend if you haven't already. Maybe checking out. some of the meetings that uh have been particularly interesting or what else well possibly even controversial on certain projects in town going back i don't know five or seven years if you can find them so you can appreciate you know the uh the balancing act that that um um that's probably a poor choice of words but the balancing of of uh asks and interests um i think people on that board need to have a good temperament because sometimes tempers can get high when people um um are seeking variances or looking for approval of projects um but your interest in municipal uh government i think you know um um is an asset for you to be on this committee and and uh um look forward to supporting your your ask thank you so thank you i appreciate the look and hope municipal certainly municipal government sorry certainly the municipal capacity is absolutely a huge a huge level of love it really is and dba is a really important community like doug said and the associates although they are not voting should somebody not be able to sit on a case then you move up and you become the voting member for that case it isn't a question of you're not voting you know for the term you know they are in case somebody's not able to sit or be available for the meetings and the hearings and the discussions of a particular case so it's really very exciting and this talks that there's a lot of people who've been on the committee with a lot of experience and that to be honest with me is how we all have learned because none of these jobs come with manuals so yes that is christmas i'll tell you so i really appreciate this your interest it's really terrific and i think the fact that you are dealing with you know scheduling appointments and something is detailed in the health industry and and that field just shows us that's the kind of work we need for zba is really detailed work so i do appreciate your involvement going so with that i will unless you have another comment i'm going to take a motion i move that we appoint jim corrigan as an associate member of the zoning board of appeals for a term expiring june 30th 2029 second thank you very much any further discussion otherwise we'll call hold chris yes yes yes yes yes and carol yes motion passes bottom zero congratulations a little one second mr ravine you're on the app sir you will receive a letter from the clerk's office or the town town manager's office noting your appointment and at that point take that letter come into the town clerk's office here and they will officially swear you in and provide you some information around conflict of interest and other training that you'll be required to do i have just come to recently i believe understand that the letters often come through the email oh it's an email then yes okay rather than they uh how efficient all right whatever it's not printed out
yeah yeah you'll be able to see you can reach out to the chair and speak to them great thank you so much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you thank you um thank you sir um robbie is miranda jones still here with me yeah she's on here right i don't see a little i'm around i'm here thank you item number nine is 2027 annual call meetings will have a review potential warrant articles but in fiscal year 27 warrant obviously including but not limited to staff participation of the atm reducing atm quorum and cable franchise fees so we have talked about a couple of these briefly the last meeting and we thought maybe we'd like to get have you know a discussion with the moderator so i've invited her and i don't see you miranda you i saw you well um here we go that they had blanked me out there here we are hi everyone thank you thank you for joining us yeah my pleasure so miranda and i did have a a conversation about the two items that um staff participation and reducing the quorum and if you notice on page 41 there's two sets of code um printed on the page the bottom of the page 36 section 12 says quorum and it states the presence of 100 voters at a town meeting the transaction ambitious so constituted a quorum except for a motion to adjourn for which no quorum shall be required so i put that there that's our current code that we need a hundred and then i'm going to turn that over to miranda because i think she did a little bit of research on this and then we can open it up to questions and see if we want to pursue this great okay sounds good so yep at carol's request i um i sent an email out to my moderators in the massachusetts moderators association through gaveline and asked them what their uh for open town meetings what their quorums are and then i also was directed i actually have access to every um an excel spreadsheet that shows a quorum for every single town um in the state as well as sort of what the what the most common quorums are um and a couple things i would um suggest to you number one a lot of the moderators who responded there about 19 that responded to me said that they felt that the the quorum that the town has has no impact on attendance rather it's the the warrant articles that do um and then in terms of um sort of what's the popular quorum right now zero is the most popular quorum for open town meeting towns 66 open town meeting towns have zero quorum however as a couple moderators pointed out um you can't really have a meeting without anybody i mean the moderator has to be a member has to be a voter but um other than that you need to have at least one person to show up um the next popular was a hundred which is what we have um and then it's all over the it's really all over the map and it's actually it was kind of surprising to get some of the information how some towns that have much fewer registered voters actually have higher quorums than we do um some towns will have no quorum for annual town meeting but have a quorum for a special town meeting um so and then carol specifically asked me about what about having a quorum to start town meeting and then dropping it for the rest of town meeting and i will let you know that that came up quite a few times that a couple of towns like willington and wellfleet both have a quorum at the beginning to open town meeting and then there's zero quorum for the rest of town meeting so it just doesn't matter how many people you have left um so some people even said having zero quorum just allows the meeting to start right on time and just keep moving uh moving along so i think i was the one who raised the issue of having the quorum quite frankly the only issue about a quorum is if somebody raises the issue you probably have noticed at the end of town meeting as we're going through um warrant articles rather quickly i will dispense with the electronic voting just to speed up the process because i worry about the quorum technically it doesn't matter under town meeting time it doesn't matter if there's a quorum or not unless somebody raises the issue and one of my moderators said that somebody in their town i don't recall which one it was somebody one of the voters tried to raise the issue of a quorum and got booed so badly by the rest of town meeting that they they took it back so um as you can see the general feeling seems to be and and also the attitude was that you know what if i i know that people feel that if there's only a few people who are showing up for town meeting to make these decisions these huge decisions for the town um so be it if if you know if you if you if you want to make decisions and come and participate and maybe someday we'll be able to participate from home or from wherever we are for traveling like tom faye always is or if we are traveling or if we have to work if we have child care issues or parental care issues but i i we're all over the map and i think some way the quorum kind of handcuffs us a little bit unnecessarily um and so similar to a lot of other procedural issues with town meeting i find that every town does town meeting just a little bit differently and this is what this is proof of it so again there's that phrase at the bottom we don't need a quorum to adjourn but we need a hundred right now in our code to conduct business which is why when marina and i was speaking and i said i know this sounds odd but could we reduce the quorum once we get yeah open i think that was yep one of the objectives we heard when we had our discussion was you know come on we gotta have a hundred people to i mean i think when i felt that we need at least can't we find a hundred people to come to open it um anyway let me open it up to the board i'm going to start with bill on this one please uh good evening miranda i'm the applying the ointment um uh i am uh very appreciative of the work you do it's uh you you really do a terrific job and i do and i do recall one of your predecessors uh having someone raise the question of uh uh whether the town meeting saw a quorum and uh that moderator uh chose not to hear that question yep so there are ways around it i i you know just sort of philosophically um you know given that we have i think truly told me 13 400 registered voters you know no that's the population that's the yeah that's the pop we've around 10 000 registered voters okay no problems uh so so if if we can't get 0.1 percent of the voting population there uh maybe we ought to think about a representative town meeting where people would uh have a little more maybe motivation to show up if they felt they were representing their 17 neighbors or something um so you know i i uh recognize that you uh are very good at trying to get through the agendas uh expeditiously as possible while still providing ample opportunity for uh debate but i think my personal preference would be to stick with 100 as a minimum what about this idea of establishing um a lesser or quorum the issue seems to be at the end of the meeting we don't seem to have a problem and it's almost like it's past 10 or something like that i don't know so do we want to that was why i had suggested as a as a compromise so you need 100 to open you don't need it you need zero one one one you don't need any to adjourn right well you have to have one because someone had to make it um and then could we establish another number like 75 for articles or something i don't know what the language would be i'd be looking over here for a phrase i i think uh if we rely on on the art of the moderator to with a quick gavel again i think 100 is uh is a pretty small sample mr rose could you comment a little more on zero uh in particular uh the thing you made me think when you gave your summary earlier is it it may slight the people who bother to show up uh to have a forum that's low and then they bother to show up and they've got not to show for it i compressed my question into asking i'm not i'm having trouble figuring out what the concept of a forum does in a town meeting it's pretty easy to see what it does in a committee but in a town meeting um i find myself suddenly not surprised that so many towns have zero yeah 66 open town meeting towns of zero it's a lot it's the highest number of course in terms of what the quorum is it's the most popular is having zero i think it's just to get the town business done and not and just dispense with the need to have bodies there if people care enough they'll come as i think probably that those towns attitudes so um with well then i'll make a comment philosophically i like mr whitney's idea of 100 and practically i like the idea of having zero show up period that's just you gotta look to make you feel all bad the town of dover has 2 600 registered voters and their quorum is 175. they must get it business yeah um they had a football coach though who mentioned that in dover the voters are outnumbered by horses that was probably a long time ago yeah so so mr frank um madam moderator um is there a consistency in 14 um thousand um town populations towns with population 14 000 relative to their um quorum number well that would that would cause me to dig a little deeper into the statistics mr fey which is not exactly my idea of a great time but you know what i could do is i could send you the information because i do have every single town listed and then what was given to me on some of the tabs in this spreadsheet is um not delving into how many what the town populations are but just what's what's the uh most most popular number of quorums and then the listing of number of towns that have it but i haven't looked into it that extensively to find peer communities towns that are around our size to see what they typically do for for quorum however my feeling is that really what's important is what does wayland want to do because um uh whalen does things differently than other towns every time does something just a little bit differently so while you could look to see what other towns do it's really you know well before electronic voting whalen dragged out for three nights the town of concord is a is a peer community for us they have zero quorum so um and they routinely have town meeting at about three nights a week and and they do a lot of deliberation at their town meetings town of ashland gets gets town meeting done typically in one night so every town's just a little bit different what they've expected so um i suppose it depends on what your comfort level is but you as a board if you want you would have to change the bylaw should we change the quorum and um you as a board as a board would have to be on the same page so if you'd like me to do it alternative research i can or additional research i can um if you want to give me a couple of different scenarios like what was raised with uh that carol raised with me it was what about having a quorum to start the meeting and then what if it tails off and some some moderators volunteered that to me that they it can actually drop off to zero so they just use the quorum to get the meeting started and then they let it go so is there an ask from you madam moderator at this meeting or do you just want us to discuss the topic like are you seeking a particular number no i'm not seeking a particular number i had brought up raise the issue because we do seem to panic through it um uh towards the end of it and and again as long as nobody raises the issue according to our you know our rules i kind of i can let it go of course with electronic voting it could it can be very obvious if there's no quorum and while town meeting time tells me that's okay so long as nobody challenges it um once you have electronic voting and you see that there's no longer a quorum then somebody very well could challenge it so that's why i don't use electronic voting just to do the shout out but um i'm just trying to make things as as um uh efficient as possible and i find that perhaps the quorum is an issue that can just maybe um get in the way a little bit well i don't believe with this but two things number one dover probably can pull off 175 quorum because they probably do their time meeting one night and and finally i kind of share your concern if there's an important warrant article that really impacts the town or particular residents and it can't be uh addressed because there are not enough people in the room and they say that you're typically the second night um it's really unfair to them um on the other hand you know they can work to get people in the seats for their issue which which of course does happen so um it happens that that happens in every town and one of my moderators who is also um uh he's been involved with this for over 30 years because he also does municipal he's an attorney does municipal law he has said that he was one of the first to say i see absolutely no correlation between quorum and getting bodies in the seats it really is whatever the warrant articles are and a lot of the moderators agreed with that if i may interject i'm worried what happens when we look stupid
this is the optics of this and respect for government are a real bugaboo with me that if you achieve a quorum and then there's a big topic such as mr faye just summarized so i won't repeat it and then everybody leave almost everybody leaves and you go sub quorum and now you're in a tizzy i think rightly so that somebody may ask after the quorum or not we we are making ourselves uh look less than efficient and less than cogent so i repeat my question what is the point of a form it just doesn't seem to make sense well to miranda's point i think i've heard her say a couple times this is the articles that are of interest will get people to come to town meeting which is why when you do out the order of the articles and go on and put something that's going to keep people in the seats yep to the last or the next to last article you know if you have 31 articles and number 27 is one that's is very very interesting you get them from the horrendous point to say the last three or more articles because they go over quick so it really i think that's a part of the strategy of of the link i'm very sensitive to skepticism about government these days and i would urge that we pick a number that helps people understand the hard work you do and that we are cogent so if i may not come here i never tell you thinking of optics this code has literally one sentence this 3612 so if we were to adjust it now we've got to get up and explain that we're concerned about not having a quorum and tell me which is why we're we're presenting this article i think tomorrow at this point we should we can we can adjust the way we put the order of the articles in to help resolve some of this potential forum yeah that's one way and i think if you wanted to speak if you decide this is what you want to do and you want an article um if you're proposing a warrant article and you want to speak in favor of it we can look at the statistics statewide and talk about what some of the other towns do and and why some of the comments i got from the 19 moderators as to why they have dispensed with um having quorums so it might be something that all of a sudden makes sense to some of our voters like well yeah that okay if nobody else is doing it why are we bothering with it but um i mean i haven't you know in my in my brief tenure as the moderator i haven't we haven't been challenged on a quorum at all and as somebody mentioned one of my predecessors just ignored the question so i am it's it i i have no problem with supporting changing the quorum and lowering it i i think it's probably as you know my goal has been to make town meeting more efficient and i also have no problem with changing the i mean it's up to the select board how are you you put um the warrant articles in order personally there's a lot at the end of the warrant that are ones that we can get through very briefly a lot of those i if if they could go on a consent calendar you know i'm a very big proponent of the consent calendar the town of stoke and put 30 articles on a one consent calendar but that's what their town is used to and so they welcome it and um i'm hoping over time our town will get used to the consent and we can put more and more onto it so we are more efficient and maybe we would get more bodies at town meeting because it isn't dragging out for eight nine hours over two nights i think it's very arbitrary to have the number set at 100 you know to bill's point if we have 100 it means 99.9 of voters didn't show up and so what is the difference at that point if it's 99.9 or 99.95 so for me it's almost a nerve-wracking experience when we dip below a quorum and all it takes is this time somebody was yelling from the chair do we have a quorum and you didn't have to recognize that person because they were sitting in their chair but it just takes one person to come up to the microphone and challenge the quorum and then what are we going to do we have to have finish our business on another night right and to me that that would be a shame so great i like the fact of if you want to have a quorum to start the business of town meeting and we could tweak it from there but i would cut it in half or i would reduce it significantly because i don't like to be on pins and needles because it seems that it really falls off at the end of town meeting keep my thought and you'll follow up fix the language here the presence of 100 voters at the town meeting uh to constitute a quorum to open the meeting and then silent on the rest of me you don't have to say well i've got so i've got some language just hold on a second please so yeah but the transaction of the business shall constitute a crime but to open the meeting we need 100 people to open the meeting how's that and that's it you just have to open it for 100. and is that for each night of town meeting or just the first night of town meeting every time you opened it right well some more than towns do it differently that's a good point so because i have language from one town that does this transaction of business is that what do you think yeah trying to look up and see what other types of things okay so the bottom line is i'm hearing a sense that we're interested maybe in still pursuing this so maybe we'll have someone want to look into this um okay good all right so we're ready then we have the other one we have was and this was my oh sorry could we also look into bill's point about representative government is that a topic that well that's a different that's a whole different government so you know i i personally have no objection to putting something on the warrant that's different from this uh i think this discussion points out the fact that this will generate 45 minutes of conversation on the town on the uh floor of town meeting and maybe someone would seek to extend the debate so it's it's kind of a tough one to say you know we're dropping the the quorum to zero or and why is that a good idea right madam chair so we can finish the town's business
this must have happened before it wasn't just this last town meeting right no no well we don't even know if it fell below even then because once you counted that apple was wrong we have uh we have seen don't ask don't tell policy about quorums at time meeting okay so we're good for now on this one we're going to look at this again i think this i just agree with you i think i said that earlier presenting this at town meeting will be generating a lot of it may or may not you you may not have any discussion okay mr feng sorry yes so to your point madam to your point madam chair may be worthwhile to have a 30 to 45 minute public forum on the topic so people who feel um very strongly about the topic can come and let us know their thoughts okay we can have a public once we determine what we're recommending well not necessarily you have it you have a public forum on the topic this is what we're thinking about and what do you all think maybe no one will show
okay so then michael then asked um about we currently have and miranda and i talked about this one as well we currently have in our bylaws that certain staff members automatically can answer questions rather than having you know it expedites the things that michael brian there's quite a few of them tom holder i think might say all of them but the question was michael wanted um to have staff being able to participate in the debate and when i mentioned this to miranda she said basically you're asking for non-residents to participate in the debate so go ahead miranda you want to talk about okay so i don't sure so i don't know that this is necessarily bylaw it's definitely in the moderator's rules and that's in rules that i i expanded um in terms of who's allowed to um answer questions such as the town manager assistant town manager clerk council police chief fire chief finance director dpw director public buildings director and superintendent schools and i expanded that in my moderator's rules so i asked that question to moderators i got fewer responses for whatever reason but i will tell you that the overall um opinion was this is that um a lot of towns allow uh town staff to to part to answer questions factual questions but participating in debate was a big no-no was um it was more yep factual questions make sense if they're the experts for lack of a better word who can speak to any questions that get asked at town meeting um and you you we see that our own town meeting that we need we need the town staff there uh to help answer questions and and give as much information as possible at town meeting and so um but the issue about having them participate in debate was a no unless they are a registered voter of the town then in that capacity they are more than welcome to participate in debate but not as a as a as a town employee the deliberative process is intended for the voter not for staff thank you for reminding me and read advising me about the third time but that that that information is in the moderator's rules not in the code and i keep saying that i'm sorry about that okay don't worry like this was one you you asked us to look at so you should probably hop in here too but do we need to really expand the list with this song from do we need to expand the list who can answer questions at town meeting that's on the staff to department heads or something like that or what the right word is so that we do save that time and not have to have and so and so speak and then we vote that does does that solve what your concern was i don't think and i go to tell me in my hometown that staff participates in the debate i think they're participating in debate to the extent they're answering questions as residents are debating but i think we had a short list of people but i think it would be beneficial if it extended maybe to department heads because you know more often than not there's a question about say wreck and i need katherine brenner or i need the hr director or somebody um come up and if they were just on a short list maintained maybe by the moderator promulgates a list of people that she will permit in advance so people know yeah michael what i could do is work with you on um what would make the most sense i'm happy to expand the list certainly last the last time meeting the it department was really important so um um after you know after we called somebody from his sick bed to come in to town meeting and answer questions so um i have no problem with that expanding the list for for town meeting for town staff to come in and answer questions that's that to me the the point is to make the voters as informed as possible if they have questions the questions should be answered so that they can make informed decisions before they vote and so i i'm happy to expand the list and so if you give me a list of people i can just make under the moderator's rules since that's how we do it in in wayland it's been a hub if the moderator lets them then i can just expand the list just so you know i send out an email ahead of time meeting every year to all the department heads of senior staff and i indicate that if you have a warrant article there will be questions and or you're there's something in your budget that the finance committee others have asked you need to be a town meeting okay to be prepared so i can share with you kind of that that yeah yeah that'd be great senior staff and department heads that i anticipate would have to be there in the wings great so we we do that thank you maranda that's terrific if michael's happy with that then we don't need to have an article because it wasn't even in the code to begin yeah so we'll put on that one okay so before maranda leaves us i want you to put your attention to the top of this page which talks about 36 for resolutions and this is when like i just said a few minutes ago these jobs don't come with me on news this was like the thing the new thing i learned for the week when i read this so i put this in the packet if you look at item b and i want to believe it it's just a couple points here because we'll visit this a couple times but under section b it says when we close the warrant for any annual or special town meeting they shall insert an article to see whether the town will act on resolutions not within the scope of other articles the article on resolution shall be the last article in the warrant so far so good ready and all resolutions which are submitted shall appear under this article one article so if there's more than one resolution they all belong in the same article which i believe to be honest with you when we had multiple resolution articles last time was probably the first time i ever saw that but so now we all know this is the rules of the world here for this shared it with miranda we talked about it and we were we're good to go on that um i do also wanted to share real quickly i took this resolutions under advisement said you know we need to have it better more fluid easier system than we had last year and had a conversation with um with with the moderator and also with town council and i think what we're going to do for next year is we're going to have uh offer our petitioner article sponsors if there are any and zoom meeting at least we'll have the moderator the town council the select release on a member of the staff and maybe the first just for the first year the chair just to see how this flows if the side deal works and have the petitioner present their information to town council in that one group meeting and then everybody in that room here's the same answer at the same time as to whether it's an article or a resolution at which time we the board if it's we are told it's a resolution versus an article we will make a decision to treat it as a resolution and then advise the petitioner and if it's an article it's an article so does it sound that's where we're at right miranda yep it sounds right because we had a lot of emails going back and forth you know telling everyone this is what town council said oh ask that to do to do so this i think is what we've come up with and i think it will hopefully uh be a smoother process should we have multiple petitioner articles but but carol but based on that but based on that bylaw you would have one warrant article you could have multiple resolutions and i would they could be on very a variety of topics you would have to have i would recommend and that would be ultimately be the moderator's decision is to vote on each resolution individually if they're all under one warrant article a series of motions right exactly under under one warrant article yep right we do with the cpa when they have multiple yep uh grants yep that category of a funding source right uh we would do on that way as well yeah um since doug and i were front center on uh last year i had this idea about him as well and i you were pretty comfortable with this new process right yeah we'll try it but anyway this is much this so i took care of that one then for the moment we can see what that was okay miranda thank you so much do you have anything no thanks for having me thank you for all your work everybody thank you so much thank you um and then the last one we have is that michael wants to talk to us about a possible article for cable franchise fee so the floor is yours sir oh thank you madam chair i don't have anything in uh the packet this evening and i will be working with town council i recently shared some emails with uh jim malane over at wakeham and i believe i may have copied select board member levine on at least one of them what what transpired is the way we have over the years in our contract passed the cable fees through to um wakeham who does our cable service for us their our cable company for lack of better words what was permissible in the past in our previous contract was we just essentially assigned the checks over to them we'd send an email to verizon comcast and just say you can direct these to wake camp um unbeknownst to us when we reviewed the contracts uh select board member levine and i as well as mr malane and somebody from there an igr came out from the department of revenue saying that that was no longer permissible because they are technically town funds they should go to the town first and to be appropriated by town meeting back to whether it's a town apartment or a third party that we contract with and so there is at least one mechanism that's been mentioned which is to have well there's two i think we could have a special account for this or we could have an enterprise account and i've been talking to ap law about this they provided me a a new template for an updated contract which was your some of these but then we would have to put an article before town meeting to create this type of account and have an annual article that appropriates those funds that go into this either special revenue to the enterprise fund or over for we can so uh i know mr malane had asked for the igr this informational guideline from the department of revenue and the new contract i sent that to him about a week ago i'm looking to see what they you know feel about it and then i just paid working with town council to create an article to create the account and then we'll have an annual motion i looked at some other towns do this you know what it came up during uh one of the questions about the money transferring mr maline came up quarterly i was looking into how we do this uh how we just brought the monies in previously and um talking with somebody said oh you have to use an enterprise account now that's one of my one of the people i was speaking to and i looked into it and this came up so what you're actually saying is for 27 we like to have two articles one to establish the special slash enterprise account and then the other would do the annual yeah there'll be a creation yeah right and then go put so doug you're the uh the liaison and you've been involved with this do you want to add anything here no i think you covered it an action that we probably need to take we have to take that action and i would anticipate it's almost like a consent agenda item every year they can just transfer the nba um franchise it'll be two separates because it'll be different and then but um i i have one quick question here do we have it we don't have any funding to put into it funds to put into the the transfer article for next year i think prospectively we would have to say that all the inbound uh franchise fees they come in quarterly we'll go into that okay okay does anyone have any questions or comments on that all right so you'll i'll keep that i'll work on the getting a draft yeah okay all right i think we'll finish with that for a while um all right so i think the next item is going to be in the supplemental packet might be supplemental two packet it is a copy of the of the program is um discussion review of the role of the capital improvement planning committee and uh what i put in the packet was the actual article that we voted on the 2025 annual time meeting uh article 17 establishment for the captain who was in the committee chapter 20 so that we know what what we voted into place here so does everybody find that all right i think bill you had asked for this topic right so i put this on here that reason thank you i appreciate that so um when we first i think talked about the notion of a long-term capital improvement from many advisory committee uh my sense was that if you're going to look at longer term projects um you know we know we've got a significant amount of debt that's going to be in part with respect to the water project we know the school committee is proposing replacement of uh a lot of facilities uh we know that something's going to happen uh to town offices and you know there are the usual capital improvement projects that are advanced by markets and so forth um last year as i recall the uh capital improvement planning committee did an excellent job of uh looking at various potential projects came up with a list of recommended projects that differed materially i think from of the uh 2026 uh five-year capital plan and as i recall there's some back and forth uh between uh or among michael uh brian and the cipc about which projects go in and which projects come out uh it then goes to the finance committee and the finance committee then looks at uh questions of uh not only the operating budget capital budget so it seems that we've got a number of layers here and uh last year the the cipc had just been formed and they didn't really have time i think to do the longer term
respective planning so it just strikes me that we're missing that longer term view of things and a lot of attention uh by the town manager the finance director the capital improvement planning committee and the finance committee of the the term or the coming years of capital uh improvements and it just strikes me as um perhaps too many eyes on the next year's budget and not not really looking but i think it's a lot of things they're understanding kind of the long-term needs and the long-term capacity for capital projects uh troubles so
speakers if i may then i am just like turning like this so you're absolutely right i mean they had they got established in september and right they did what and they they actually worked hard and they're a very capable group of people so what their function is when you read through this they recommend to the town manager because that's the town manager bylaw michael is the one that prepares the capital budget so then goes to the finance committee they actually have um and then this year they are currently working on just the first five years however they have created they've gone through and reconciled because there were a couple things in there that went twice or whatever or the monies which whatever so they've done all the reconciling they've now gone forth and michael can speak to this better than i can they've gone back and they revised the submission process so that it's all electronic and if you make any changes to the plan because often you know someone will have something in this year and then they decide i'm going to move it forward but they don't flag it as such so that now flags and also uh so with the new floor that went into place uh the decision was made that this until they did the report in october they will only focus on the years two five then the department heads are going to go back and fill in the later years so they are going to start working on that once their report's doing october 14 on october 15th is that your understanding michael yes so i think you have to go back when they came on board they wanted to take fresh approach to this so um i thought they were going to look at just that first year capital plan but they decided to take the full five year um plan and not just uh or the full program so i guess we we have two different terms the the capital plan is for the next fiscal year and the capital improvement program is the five-year plan and uh the chair and i were involved on the working group to help come up with this and we did talk about extending this out further years which is why in section 20-3 it says the a term of years shall be determined by the town manager but no less than five years we want to start our five once they got themselves established discuss creating maybe upwards of a 10-year capital plan so that's why it gives room to to grow but i anticipate that they will be starting to talk about things that are further on out that is in part why they pushed the some of the improvements on this building out uh the other year because they want to look at the long-term capital needs of the town um this year i think the process is going to be much more smooth because they already established the five-year plan and the idea is my department heads are now supposed to be um establishing the the request for the years at the end so the outer years so if we're at we're doing 20 29 30 31 32 up around 33 and those are then supposed to slide down this committee is also looking at unanticipated needs um i don't want to give some specifics but that occasionally there is a department says you know our priorities have changed we need to change the order but to your point select board member whitney they are starting to look and the plan was eventually to expand this beyond five years so that they're looking at at least 10 and maybe further um i just think because they're brand new we haven't got to that point so so who owns the excuse me the five-year capital plan well they make a recommendation to me and then mr kevin and i would review that and then we take their in theory if it's all going according to plan and we give input and i talk to my department heads their recommendation is something that we should be comfortable with and we pass over to finance the finance committee and they make the final recommendation to tell me um yeah i've been talking with mr kevin and my department heads about this and so far everything appears to be very straightforward there's probably not going to be a lot of conflict and that was in theory what we had hoped to achieve by this that we build some consensus and we have different eyes from the town so it is a process they make a recommendation to me i present it to all the town boards and the finance committee and they can either adopt it or send it back to us for change so they make a recommendation to you you then make a recommendation to the finance committee they make a recommendation yes well who prior to the establishment of this committee who who did the five year capital plan the finance director and i did and other towns that have capital and capital improvement planning committees have a very similar model where i know in my hometown we have a capital improving planning committee they make recommendations actually directly to town meeting but it's the town manager's budget in that town um the finance committee is advisory um but it's it's almost the same number of eyes and steps the reason i was in favor of the capital improvement planning committee is because you have people that live in the town and and have been interested in finance that would devote uh additional time in delving into these meetings where the town manager given all the other duties doesn't always have the time to do the in-depth review um so we participate i may not always go to these meetings but i'm talking with my department heads base we review the minutes we have conversation about the questions i meet with mr keveney i can't be at every meeting but we do um through email communications make sure that things are moving along and um they have the time to do um you know analysis and question of department heads and i i don't think it's a bad process i do think it gets much more thoroughly vetted this way um and you you know just having the additional eyes on it so to what degree does the finance committee then dig into something that has been recommended to you by the cipc and then you send along to the finance committee do they regard it as cooked for one of a better term um not necessarily because i think last year when we got there there was some changes there was questions about uh adding additional projects on whether how we were going to finance them um ideally did you want some checks and balances i know because we've been short on people that we have i think madam check and correct me one person is serving on both committees correct so ideally you would almost want an independent body with no guys the finance committee working with the town staff uh to reach a consensus and give it over uh i i i wouldn't say it's cooked because you know we've talked about our financial planning um you know we may produce a recommendation that exceeds what they like to see in terms of increases year over year we have our financial guidelines there may be exceptions where we ask for additional things and i i know one department is asking for more than they have in the past um there's going to be some questions coming from the cipc and if they adopt that recommendation they will get again questioned at fincom so i i don't think you know probably a majority of the items there are probably good requests but there's always going to be a handful like last year at the last minute the um the ball fields down it and some of the repairs to the wastewater those those were the outliers i think you raise a really good point though because when we were in when you said it and michael said the working group reminded me we spent a long time discussing on the the length of the capital plan and we recognized it was a lot to be done to get make sure we're on a solid foundation with the first five years but i have actually spoken to them uh the committee and what have you been on and like i said once this reports in and the recommendation goes to michael for this town meeting they then are planning to turn their attention to the other years i think last year we had an article at town meeting a little bit about this that we needed to uh again something else was even more long term and i said don't support this give us a year because i think the sipsy will start to produce it i really feel that they um as a former finance committee remember i can tell you there was a there was almost like the squeakiest wheel sometimes projects they weren't because the time frame to look at them were so short you didn't have time to really put a full analysis and this group is doing it and they've got a prioritization scale but like michael said they're flexible because they're focusing on making sure we're getting the best bang for the buck i think i don't know if i'm making this sound better or not but no they will get there i just don't know no i i appreciate that and you know in honor to have a very good group of course i'm just curious the degree to which of the recommendations about spending are informed or constrained by the amount of debt service that we think we can afford in view of you know the bonding that we're going to be doing for the wastewater uh perhaps for the schools since we're going forward apparently with a request or two million dollars of the town meeting is there is there a debt service number that we don't want to exceed that informs the the recommendations about the projects balancing the sources and the use yeah right i know every time they adjust the plans kevin has to go back and look at all the funding sources we do have and i don't have it committed to memory in our financial policies some guidelines about how much um yeah we should be a budget spend plan during the top of my head so it's four to six on levy but i think we've gone back on levy because we don't have any unused levy there's this is also dovetails with we need that threshold for what's a debt exclusion you know the article there's on about two two million two two two somewhere around there so three cash there's a surplus or close
and then there's now we're actually using someone from the cap stabilization fund because that's now going to want that's kind of balance we're able to try to slowly roll that in um this is one of the reasons last year there was a lot of the wrong word is growing pains but you know getting off off to a good start and i think that this year to me i haven't had as many um
conversations that things weren't going smoothly as last year but i do think it's take a couple years i'm doing a great job myself but i'm upset but i do think you're absolutely right we want to keep our eye on this because we've put two reasons one we want to make sure that the capital spend plant is within the guidelines of what maybe we need to have a conversation you know an agenda item about that as we go on what is the white capital spend plant um i can put that down if you like oh if other members aren't concerned about it i don't i don't wish them about it oh they're interested i'm sorry if i seem quiet don't be it's only this is very important to me and i hear about it a lot i just have to listen but i do hear that a lot of people i hear from who like tell me they vote feel that planning ahead is not one of our strengths that's what we're hoping to kiss the committee dies right but but to your point because perhaps we haven't done as much planning ahead they kind of had to go back and put the ducks in order if you will it's a big topic yeah um and i think that that's one thing maybe we need to look at the spend plan um i think we the board to your point you need to keep an eye on to make sure that we are expanding beyond the five years and it does say in here that the term is is identified by the town manager so you know we can say to michael we want to see the 10 years out we want to see the 12 years out we want to see the four years out whatever it is so anyways doug or um do you have any comments here well um i appreciate um bill whitney raising the issue my sense is this that the bylaw has them really do two main things right study the current and long-term proposed capital projects and number two prepare this report um uh relative to long-term capital planning before october 15th i get a sense that that the committee is is still working through its charge and um i think this process should be watched closely and maybe we have a meeting with them you know in six to eight months or something and uh um but um you know they're they're a pop in a committee i don't think anyone disagrees about that and they um they've been working hard but i really i do appreciate the whitney's points my hope is this this will work out and there'll be some predictability and and uh flow
so we did have um just want to wrap this up and say that we did actually have the chair of the sipsy committee come to us last year and provided us with their recommended report um that's coming out in october we could do that or we could wait a little bit later maybe more twisty summer because by then they will probably have started working on a little more in the long term that would give us could give us a flavor if we think we like that plan how's that sound a little bit later bill was there ever a previous iteration of the sipsy committee in prior years what we can learn it from when i was on the board many years ago town didn't have a five-year capital plan and so that was one of the things that we instituted and so that's that sort of like frame of reference that that there has been this five-year capital plan and then place that the current year is is sort of uh capital spending is sort of gauged against the the five-year plan and isn't consistent there's something moving up and if so you know does something slide back so uh but we were kind of missing the longer term right thing which i had a sense that uh this committee might basically confine itself to but uh that's obviously not complete the one the one the one article says so my sole purpose of participating in that working group was exactly what you said i think that's you know one thing in the finance committee you know previous is that things really weren't always that as we weren't really getting the priorities done always you know maybe 90 hit it but you know some of it wasn't the last minute oh can i also have and so i feel really comfortable with what you've done but i really truly will not feel comfortable with the work is being done until we know in year blah blah whatever it is 2030 2032 we might have this expense for example for a school building we need to know that we need to know that as we're going forward actually i have to tell you part of what's informed a lot of discussions is knowing that in fy29 we're all going to be having our first payments due for this mwra construction project and so we've been having these financial planning discussions that has come up a couple times so we as of town i'm starting to have those discussions we just have to be hopeful that they're going to continue all right should we move to the next item also okay the next one is um not meant to be a long discussion tonight i just want to get this started it is the um review and discuss the updates so the select board policies and procedures document which we call the select board manual it says we last reviewed it in 22 i don't know if we did or not um and the second thing we'll do there's a minor amendment to the social media policy this isn't a supplemental packet by itself because it's a fairly lengthy document and i will say this i know bill started working on this he was the chair we worked under a bunch michael has worked on it i think some of the staff has worked turned abby has also worked and i've worked on this and the goal here is to make michael have his happy face on and get this done no i didn't finish so what i'm hoping that we do tonight is we start to look at it it's a really big big document but i would like to recommend three things that so that we can really narrow on what we have to discuss is first of all you allow us to make the edits to change select mend select board and then you allow us to change the word town administrator to town manager and then you allow us to change i think it stops on page 42 and goes to the end of the document all the new policies that we have done in the last couple years they're highlighted in red because they're new additions to the document if we could just have the permission for starters to do that then i think it will narrow in on what we really have left to do and quite frankly i don't think it's that much so um i believe that um in the packet abby also gave you sheep a little uh you know little cliff notes here that most of the red text inserts for all the new policies which are now you know listed on this sheet and um before we get into anything in so is everybody good with that those three little edits coming on in the next and we see the document i think it'll just be set down and be so much clearer for where we're at um i want to let michael have a word because he's raising his hand at me so thank you madam chair um how this started when i first got here this was on our website the select board manual and when i was looking at it most of these glaring hadn't been addressed uh select men versus select board town administrator and as i started delving deeper into it i i realized that there were actually two versions of this it was one that was on the website and one published elsewhere and uh as policies were being added they went to one another so we had like two branches of the same thing so i think madam chair and abby and i are working on version six of this because i had version one i found version two i merged those then i started making my edits to bring it into line with the town manager act then we met with bill around version four then we met with carol around version five and then we got some other staff input to make version six which i think incorporates some of our new financial policies as well so it's been a labor of love over the last couple of years and every time we try to get it to the point we bring it to the board something comes up or a new policy gets added but um carol and i discussed excuse me madam chair and i discussed over the summer that it was time to get this to the board because it was on as madam chair and indicated it was on one of these lists of uh goals that we wanted to get an updated manual for the board and published with all of our policies on the website i mean i think at this point we're really close to the goal line on this one and i think we look at it over a couple a couple more meetings we could really get this done i have to tell you a piece of advice that that can really help you and will save you a huge amount of time because i've been doing it at work recently if you feed the policies into an ai platform like chat gpt and ask it to look for any conflicts with this document and it will spit it out instantly if you've missed anything and it will also suggest language improvements and it will give it to you right away i mean i can't keep up with this system it's just next level and we need to talk to someone else really and i would like it we started doing it making sure it was an index document maybe with html so that when you go to the index you can just click the policy you want to see it'll jump down with references a lot of documents will do that and so i think there's a lot of those things that ai could just it's a catch-all it'll find stuff that you just might have missed because it's such a long document i will tell you this there's a couple items i just want to give another little thing as we created we formalized our financial policies last year right and when i'm reading this document i've been saying this yeah this stuff in here i don't think belongs in here there's a couple that are the financial policies so they should go over there and i'll i will take that and between now and the next minute to compare to make sure what's here is in there and what's all one the other thing is interesting is there's one in here near the end that says then hiring of the staff under the jurisdiction of a select board first of all we don't hire any of the staff the only person we hire is the town manager so this is what i refer to as a procedure in other words something that michael creates you know probably doesn't belong in the document either so um before we go off does anyone have any just real quick high level things or any immediate edits they want to add in and well i was curious why the financial policies weren't part of this
we can i don't know if you want to incorporate them by reference it was just that we had the help from the state come in and develop those and they drafted a lot of that for us i suppose we could add them into the bottom and have one large document one document i don't know and i didn't have the benefit of artificial intelligence but i did notice in one place uh it talks about how uh no alcohol can be consumed on town property in another instance it talks about uh the fact that one can uh seek permission to have uh malta in the line at the uh uh at the town building you know i saw that too and i thought well how come we can't get a permission only the permission give us so that's one of the things that okay let me look at that any type of internal contact will be caught instantly anything like that what's the name of the thing in your prison chat gpt it's incredible you know what i'm going to do with this i'm calling up annie yeah it's all about to do this in two seconds it's really user friendly i do not no thank you sir no thank you madam chairman excuse me did you have any more comments okay i do want to bring your attention though on the document to the social media policy which i think is on uh let's just think of page 42 and when we talked about revising some of our policies doug uh doug tom took the uh social media policy right and he had an edit which is now in here and it's on page 42 if i can find 42 will be in business um did you want to speak to this sure so this is on paragraph 16 of section roman numeral 4 and i insert a phrase other than is provided by mgl chapter 53 section 18b and that um has to do with ballot questions and the um effort to uh permit the town to comment on ballot questions um to give some perspective so um that's uh why i inserted that phrase there so from you're in the social media policy yeah that's supposed to be in the social media policy am i in the right page yeah so it has to do with town and department so it has to do with the regular packet sorry to give back okay all right go ahead i'm sorry tom so this has to do with uh town department uh town town employees or department uh including department personnel these are social media to endorse or otherwise uh site you know vendors suppliers clients stakeholders employees may not engage in political activity during working hours so um 5318b is under the umbrella of political activity right because ballot questions typically have not included commentary uh or explanation in the past um are you concerned that that first line won't apply to the whole paragraph and would only apply to that first sentence well that's a good point first line to apply to the whole paragraph that's a good point um you've got two sentences there that talk about political activity political posts um yeah that's a good point maybe that phrase should go at the end maybe um yeah all right so you're thinking maybe at the end put something like um notwithstanding before going yeah right maybe um you know to the extent as provided under mgl yeah right that's correct yes because i read the second sentence is not related to mgl 5318b yeah that's fine you wanted to apply to that all right all right so so um we can make that amendment connect and come back another meeting or uh or just authorize the town manager and me to revise it pursuant to your point
okay now i'm gonna i think do we have to vote this right the whole document or just the end no we're just voting the amendment policy right paragraph 16 right yeah social media policy we're going to amend that we'll make the amendment and then that will not be read anymore
but we wanted to amend it such that we go off and you give authorization to tweak it as necessary uh tom do you want to make the motion uh tom do you want to make the motion then please no i move this board uh authorize the town manager and myself to edit paragraph 16 of the social media policy under section 4 um consistent with uh the board member levine's comments uh relative to chapter 53 section 18b so that well that revision can be made second does anybody want to make that admit that motion any longer no
mr faye yes miss larry yes mr reynolds yes mr whitney yes mr martin yes that's gonna be five zero now i want to ask a question here i thought that the amendment
the social media policy was going to be about the use of ai why did i think that what not
i'm sorry no that's not my memory
because that's not what you put out but that's what we would do so i've said staff is looking in i.t about an internal you know policies about ai okay so i don't have any more to do with this one okay so we'll we'll see this from again and we'll have some it'll be a little cleaner to read and we'll move along and see if we can't get this done in a couple meetings okay i think we are now on number 15. i haven't skipped any heaven tell me and this is your report thank you madam chair uh we only have a couple items um as i mentioned at the beginning of meeting we'll mention it a couple leaves again because they're on the agenda uh the hazard mitigation plan update public meeting is scheduled for tomorrow wednesday the 23rd from 10 30 a.m to 11 30 a.m it will be online but i know that there may be some folks over at the community center but this is the opportunity um for the town of wayland to have its residents businesses and community members come in and help shape our hazard mitigation plan which is a critical document that i find natural hazards and risk facing the community and outlines the strategies to help reduce damage to the people property and infrastructure in our environment so if you wish to participate we encourage you to do so you can check on the website for the link or you can be there in person as i understand as for a financial planning update we continue to meet on a regular basis we met last week to go over some of the numbers that are changing as you know we've we've talked about where we are with the levy and you know we're encouraging departments to look for savings going forward every time we get a little bit of good news we also get some news that isn't always great as i mentioned to the board previously our the price of energy has been going up we met last week with our energy consultants and there had been a dip in the electricity uh last friday so they advised and we had already been given authorization by this board um the consultant recommended we buy and we bought a contract for one year for electricity um just so we can see where we are rather than buy a two or three year contract so um energy is up as i've indicated over 20 percent um so that is one thing we weren't planning on but we've started to see some savings and we'll continue to meet regularly and i'll when we have uh a formal presentation i'll bring it back to the board as to what um where we are with regard to fy28 um vaccine clinics i mentioned earlier there's going to be two different ones one for residents and non-residents over 60 years in age that will be held on october 7th from 8 a.m to 11 a.m in the morning here in the town hall in the large hearing room and then for residents non-residents and town employees over the age of 12 there'll be a separate one on october 14th between 3 p.m and 7 p.m again in the large hearing room um recap from our last meeting there's been a couple things um we did have our 9 11 celebration memorial that occurred over at the public safety attended uh following that i did have my town manager office hours and the two biggest topics there um resident came in was concerned especially with this being um overdose and opioid awareness at the time of year that the town look into getting uh much like aed boxes at various town facilities and recreation areas narcan boxes so that um they've asked if there was any way they could get cpa funding or or work with recreation so we're going to look at that and then um leif mclair who was here earlier he came along with uh someone else from the dudley pond association um asking for assistance with this commonwealth of massachusetts a 640b grant to get money for an environmental study as to uh what's going into dudley pond causing the the the bloom of all these uh invasive plants and he was here as you know this evening and you would ask me to mention that um when i came around um to uh my announcements so uh they they have come just as they did this evening looking for assistance from the town on applying for the grant um there were also two other events that we attended last week we attended the planting of the liberty tree as part of the america 250th celebration uh i know select board chair and vice chair um martin and faye were there i'll let them address it in their comments and then there was a well-attended event called coffee with a cop at the community center on friday it was went on for a couple of hours and it was different than usual chief ebert brought over about a half dozen different officers from different disciplines and he put them at tables and we put up they put up information showing what each officer did so that people could learn about what the different disciplines they had a detective they had the sergeants and people who are on our tactical unit so it was very good and uh i went over for a while talked to a lot of residents they were very well received people i would say a good time meeting our officers and i'm sure we'll host that again and that's what i have yeah anybody have any questions for me mr mccoll i have two if i may so it has a mitigation this occurred to me today as a mitigation or they came with us and then they go and they gather information but then they have a final report so they'll be coming back to the board do we have a sense of when that would be i can get that information tomorrow but i would imagine it'll be a couple of weeks after you know i'll i'll ask abby to follow up on that for me thank you the other question i have is is that the w1 association that you mentioned and they came in at the public comment the grant is due october 7th remaining on the 5th that looking for support should we put together an agenda item or is that something that i'm not sure how do you propose we handle that request um they really told me the other night that they would be coming tonight um i knew they wanted money they proposed the grant um i would say put it on for discussion they probably need us to to endorse write a letter or something along those lines i i will have to look into what the 640b grant requirement the application requirements are from us um they're a non-profit they're seeking the money but i i need to know when our commitment we have a draft letter in the package that the board could look at this which one wants to go forward all right um thank you very much didn't anybody else have any questions i'm going to move along we did the concerns i think we're on the minutes the minutes are on page 52 minutes of 831 and then we have the minutes of 98. a motion please approval of the minutes of uh august 31st 2006 as amended thank you thank you do anybody have any evidence to the minister 31st
i do go ahead please a 15 there's a sentence that reads the um the consensus from that working group was that the town building should continue that should read um if it is if it is the consensus from that working group that the town building should continue to house town offices and the buses uh then possibly the buses could continue to be parked at town building and the reason is because the working group um i'm not sure it's met yet and i don't believe any consensus and any topics has been achieved yet although i haven't attended any meetings but um so i just ask that chances be revised thank you you don't have any others do there's minutes um no i have
okay page 55 first paragraph and that lewis chair of the planning board should be comma strike the word planning planning i have um ace do you have any things like a six deal of evil seconded by t-pay to reappoint david larry i think his name is as it's spelled as it is up above vi as opposed to va um um an 8 15 oh that's the one that you just talked about tom i i like that one too um and i think that's it isn't it all right so that's it all those in favor of the minutes of 831 as amended we'll say i that's good chris hi um bill yes yes yes and carol yes the motion passes five zero minutes of nine eight please approval of minutes of september the 8th 2026 is amended thank you second thank you anybody have any edits okay i have one fill it to test it i want you to look at it it's an a11 the paragraph down the bottom it says c martin will second by the teeth bay to close the hearing because the applicant has withdrawn the application with intent to reapply her later david next fan let's go for work period w whitney question whether what was near if the chair could simply close the hearing and then we didn't mention that language was found so the board could proceed and we need to add that in then it says see i almost know that there was a double form of 30 that need to be addressed are you okay with that addition okay and then i think it says pointing in the correspondence
anybody else all right all those in favor say i tom yes doug yes um bill yes yes yes yes yes motion passes five zero you want to correspondents anybody have any comments about the correspondence all right there ain't none let's move to select boards reports and concerns who would like to start this i have not bill uh at the risk of stealing some of tom's thunder i would uh indicate that the uh rfp for 212 kachichua is is available and uh so we have a number of people who picked up information but more the merrier mr living um we have had some luck recruiting speaking of recruiting several folks for the organizing committee for the civil discourse initiative so we have a representative from wayland community action network from uh the metco board from hrdei and from the whalen chinese american association and i will turn those names over to michael shortly and okay and are we still on target for the um the meeting 14 14. to meet with the board yeah um i'll chat with you about that offline okay um mr frank do you have any reports three items um i'd like to thank the dbw for their assistance in the planting of the liberty tree which occurred a few days ago michael mentioned that uh great to have carol there and and um members of the whalen 250 committee so as you drive by the um melon law office you'll uh you'll see it uh on route 20 just to the right if you're heading west um number two i wanted to acknowledge mike lowry's comments relative to the unsafe uh road conditions um near his near his home during this long-standing issue i won't comment further because the matters in litigation and three uh there has been a sharp increase in the state um where younger young people particularly children and teens have suffered severe injuries due to e-scooters and um scrambler motorbikes um and there's only so much we can do as a community to uh address this this issue but i do i am hopeful that we can continue to explore that and to the extent we can as a community whether it be enforce speed limits or enforce whatever rules are relative to kids wearing bike helmets or simply just um unsafe operation i think we should do that um i'm just concerned that um we're going to have more more incidents than we've had already that's all i have thank you thank you i have a couple items first i want to say that um i know everybody's aware of it it's not really so much for the board as i'm just advising those who are listening the town manager's office it is now has three people doing four jobs until we've been finally filled up positions with assistant managers um i think everyone to just be mindful of that that you know there's something going on a request that is a more of an urgent nature i mean they're doing they're doing a terrific job keeping things going but you know i just bear that in mind the other thing i want to mention is and i keep meaning to ask michael to put this on account manager update so maybe you could do this is that as i make this mistake too um everybody's so nice and in the town manager's office that if you ask for something they'll kind of attend to it rather than ask if it's not their area responsibility so i would like us to have maybe a brief conversation of who does what uh so that we can kind of be mindful and respectful of the positions the um the boston um oh damn i can't remember right anyways regional mpo um has uh elections every year and they have a regional at large uh position for which concord has applied and they've asked for uh whalen's support and it's a very interesting situation because they look to speak to the town manager and then they want this letter of support just from the chair it doesn't have to be the board devoted i did endorse that on as the chair but i wanted to know that i did that it's a lot of work according to mr hummel so i'm very thrilled on our behalf that concrete is stepping up and we are in some regional programs with concord so we have a good working history so i just want everyone to know that i endorsed that nomination basically let someone else do that wonderful work on our behalf all right and then finally i have an article that was in the globe on 921 at holly at holy cross they have a program well they have small galleries of students to talk about other topics that they normally would not talk to one another about and they go to dialogue dinners food for thought where they have constructive discourse and i wanted to mention that that we are in good company because the holy cross is doing it and i think so kudos to wayland for you know being in the forefront of yet another exciting program that's going to well serve the community and uh with that i will say i will take the motion to adjourn at 9 31. so moved thank you thank you two seconds thank you all right all in favor uh chris yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you very much thank you very much thank you everyone good night recording stopped
Then, we will discuss updates of John Ange's Memorial with Zahid's Project, about to be in the Council on the Aging Science Community Center. Approximately 7-3, we will meet with the Board of Laws, and have a discussion with the Board about some potential warrant articles that will be in the 2020 Senate annual town meeting. We will interview a candidate for the Zoning Board of Appeals, who's an associate position. We will review and vote to amend the broadband and cable advisory committee charge, October 8-15. We will discuss and review the law of the Capitol and Hidden Planning Committee that was established at the annual town meeting in 2021. We will review and discuss our page to collect board policies and procedures document, commonly known as the Select Board of the Union Rule, which was last reviewed on the last in 2022. We will review and vote to authorize the town manager, Michael McComble, sign a license agreement with the Wayland Town Center regarding the Wayland Fest for this year, followed by the town manager's report. The consent calendar, the minutes of August 31st and September 8, 2026, review correspondence, hear select board members' reports of concerns, and hopefully adjourn by November 22. So, before I ask if there are any announcements of a comment, I also want to acknowledge that Mr. Reynolds joined us at 6 o'clock, and the next will be discharging. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Any announcements from the board? No, they're not. Okay. Mr. McCall, do you have any announcements? No? I can say my town manager's announcement or whatever your preference was. Maybe you might want to do it. The board of health wanted me to let people know that they will be running a flu clinic and a COVID-19 vaccine clinic for residents. They will be running six and non-residents, six years of age and older, and town employees on October 7 at the town hall in the large hearing room from 8 a.m. to 11. And then they will be running a second one, influenza and COVID-19 vaccine clinic for residents, non-residents, town employees, ages 12 and above. And that will be a week later on Wednesday, October 14. And that will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. again in the large hearing room here at town hall. And if you have any questions, registration is required. You can go online through the town's website or you could call the Wayland Department of Health and they have a vaccine line which is 508-358-6805 and you can press number 2. You want to mention a hazard mitigation. Well, yes, tomorrow there we're having our public meeting on our hazard mitigation plan. It's going to be at the COA and live on. I believe you can get the zoom link. It's going to be from 1030 a.m. to 1130 a.m. Again, tomorrow, Wednesday, September 23rd. And this would be your opportunity to listen in to what the hazard mitigation plan proposal is and add your comments or any suggestions. Mr. Perry, you all have other announcements? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right, then, do we have any public comment this evening? I can recall if he was here with me all by myself. Do you have to identify yourself in your address, please? Of course. The room really filled out since I got here. My name is Tim DeLucre. I'm from Southboro, Massachusetts, 63 School Street. Not from Wayland, but I'm here on behalf of a coalition of retailers and legal adult consumers of smokeless nicotine products. I'm here tonight knowing that this policy isn't under your purview. It's under the Board of Health, but to flag you and make you aware of what's going on. The Wayland Board of Health recently finalized draft regulations for a nicotine pouch ban in Wayland. This is an admirable policy. It's targeted at reducing youth usage, which is a problem, right? Any number above 0% youth usage is a problem. However, it's counterintuitive in terms of meeting its public health goals. When you remove nicotine pouches from the shelf, which are 97% less harmful than smoke products, combustibles like cigarettes, you do one of two things. You reroute consumers to other towns to purchase the product. Not good for economic development, which is why I raise it to you here, right? That's an issue that is more aligned with you folks than the Board of Health. The other option is folks come in and say, what smokeless products do you have? And they hear none. We have combustibles. We have cigarettes. And in some cases, we'll switch back to these more harmful products. We believe if you do not use nicotine, you shouldn't start. If you do use nicotine and it's combustible, you should switch to non-combustibles. And if you quit, you should, right? This removes that second lane, people's ability to go and find the less harmful product. So I flag it for you tonight because obviously a decision like this has a variety of impacts, be it economic, be it people's reactions in general to finding out if this policy happens, right? I don't think all residents are monitoring the Board of Health maybe in the way they should be. And to ask if you would consider weighing in on this discussion, right? Not in any formal capacity. We understand that's what the Board of Health, but in any informal way you might. We'd be honored to work with you. We have a variety of options for alternative solutions that more directly target reducing youth usage. So I'm happy to follow up after this meeting and send along some materials. If anything sticks out to you as interesting or you'd like to engage further, be happy to make myself available as a resource. A variety of retailers here in Wayland who we have worked with, who are concerned about this issue and how it affects their business as they're already getting by on a shoestring margin. So I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Nelson. Hi, Clary. 120 Lakeshore Drive. My wife Karen is with me tonight. We're overhavening and I'm caring for Karen because she has chronic oral dementia like Bruce Willis. I've given many years of service to the town. Last week, my refrigerator died. So I called up Sears. They said, oh, yeah, they'd come out that day. And I gave them instructions, both oral and written, how to get around the Lakeshore Drive closure. And they said they'd be there by three. Well, they weren't there. I called them at five. They said, oh, look at our website. There's a picture that shows you weren't at home, which we were. The picture was the road closed signs at the bottom of Lakeshore Drive. Not a very good answer, but it happened. Not only did it happen to them, it can happen to other kinds of delivery folks, Uber drivers. It's not on the Uber. The closure isn't on the Uber map. So I lost everything in my fridge and I got an appointment for Friday and got it fixed. But what if this had been an out of town ambulance? Karen and I often have medical personnel visiting us and they get lost. This is not showing up on their driving instructions. And no matter how much you tell them, they get lost. Missed deliveries happen all the time. So I'm concerned that this situation has gone on for a long time. And I know that it's a matter that's under litigation. But I also believe the town has other avenues that you can pursue and perhaps legal obligations under an O&M plan, where it took the money from the feds to do the drainage on Lakeshore Drive. I would like to see your board think about taking some actions. It affects neighborhood property values. And I think at some point in the near future, we may have to move. And having that kind of problem by your house doesn't really bring a lot of happy people to buy your home. I think maybe I should request an abatement. Children walk and ride bikes past this hazard all the time. And we had one incident where a propane truck drove through the barriers and across this gap in the road. And there's a police report on it that I reported. This is very dangerous. PPW came along and put a great big giant rock in the middle of the road. So it fixed that problem. I have to say that most of the cause of this was stormwater coming down Beach Road. And the town did correct that. It corrected very well. That's working much better now. But still, this road is closed. And I fully expect that my wife or I will die before the town steps in, unless something starts to happen. I'd like you to please prove me wrong. I am working on two things that I hope will help you. One is a full-on chronology of when we took the money and what we were obliged to do and what we've done and when it was reported. I've been reporting this to conservation starting in 2012. But the other thing that I am going to do is a more thorough investigation of the O&M requirements that I believe were placed on the town under the Federal Clean Lakes Project. They actually placed them on the state to hand out the money. So somewhere in the FEDS file and somewhere in the MASSDQE file is the original agreement. And the terms of the O&M agreement or the O&M requirements that I believe may require the town to take some action. And I also believe that there are legal mechanisms that I wish the town could have. Thank you very much. Please help us. Good evening, everyone. Peter Dyer Vickley. Me and my father just recently acquired the property at 78 Boston Post Road, the Sunoco Station. And sorry, I apologize. I'm ill-prepared. But I got a last-minute notification of, you know, this discussion on the Board of Health's proposed changes to the nicotine pouches. From my perspective, you know, I would ask the Board to reconsider any changes to it. We're a small operator. We have multiple stations throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And everywhere that we've seen these changes happen, consumers get frustrated, residents get frustrated. It's detrimental to the businesses. And fortunately, we were able to, it took us quite a bit of time to get even a license. The former did lost his license. We were able to get a tobacco license at the property. We anticipate, we have plans to redevelop that property and develop it. But if changes continue, it'll be financially very hard for us to do that. So, I apologize that I don't have more info because it was last-minute. But I just wanted to present that to the Board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We'll close the pilot comment. I will let the select board enter into Executive Session. A. Cursuellement Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A23, to discuss strategy with respect respect to the Wayland Firefighters Local 1978 agreements number 2026-0002, step 3, and be pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 21A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the following union, the Wayland Police Officers Union, New England Police Benevolent Association Local 176. And as an order is on the agenda, there are no minutes for us to approve tonight, so we will not do that. Is there a second to the motion to enter into Executive Session? Second. Thank you. The Chair declares that a public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating, negotiating, or bargaining position of a town. Do I have a roll call vote? Yes. Thank you. Ms. Levine? Ms. Reynolds? Yes. Ms. Ridley? Yes. Ms. Martin? So that's 5-0. The Chair invites attendance by Michael McCall, our Town Manager, Headline, Human Resources Director, Neal McPherson, Fire Chief, and David Jenkins of KP Law. The Board will rejoin the public meeting from Executive Session. The meeting will return to open session in approximately 40 minutes. Thank you. Select board is returning to open session. Recording in progress. Returning that select one to open session at 6-53 PM. Thank you. We are. Did we miss it? We did. Because I looked at the website, it said 7, the thing I looked at. Yeah. Oh, it's the board will change. True. Yes. Okay. You make me live tonight. We won't be more than one minute and 54 seconds. Oh, watch this. Good evening. Go ahead. Good evening. So the Chair recognizes his name, sir? Leif LeClaire. Leif. Gentlemen. Hi. We represent. Go ahead, please. Excellent. We represent the Dudley Pond community. As many know, Dudley Pond is facing now four different overgrowing weeds and increased algae glands. Alongside short-term management, which Towns are very supportive of, we need a comprehensive understanding of the underlying causes. We're asking the Select Board to assist us with the MAS 604B grant application seeking approximately $50,000 to develop a watershed-based plan for Dudley Pond. We're also preparing to draw the $20,000 from the Surface Water Quality Committee's Dudley Pond donations earmark fund, which has been used in the past for supplementing town funds for treatment, herbicide treatment and so on. And that would fully fund the estimated $70,000 cost for the two-year project. The watershed-based plan comprehensively quantifies nutrient sources and mitigation opportunities, enabling a strategic approach to investing in the health of Dudley Pond. We're specifically asking the Select Board to assist us by doing three simple things. Identifying stakeholders within the town who should be informed or participate. Authorize a specific town stakeholder to be the official grant submitter. Dudley Pond association can audit has to be a government agency that submits the grant. And providing a letter of support to the grant on behalf of the Town of Wayland. Grant application is due October 7th. We have a volunteer team assisted by professionals who are writing the grant. We need the above three things from the town order to complete and submit the application. Thank you. Perhaps Mr. McCall could include this in this town manager's updates, so we can have a brief discussion today. On today? Of course, about the grant? Sure. Otherwise, we have to do it. Well, we have to do it as well. All right. Thank you very much. Now, I think we're going number five, which is, um, Mr. McCullough, do I think Mr. in person? Thank you. Mr. McCullough? I'm not sure. Okay. Well, Mr. Rodney, could you check to see him running on his own line, please? Uh, no, I don't see him in the attendees area. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate. I'll follow the motion. Yes. Uh, I've moved that the board, uh, appoint, uh, non-manager of Michael McCullough, town planner, Robert Hummel, as our local government representatives regarding small clean energy infrastructure facilities, siting and permitting is required by MGL, uh, chapter 25A, sections 2-6 and L-21. Do you have a second? Second. Okay. So this is when Mr. Hummel is going to be joining us in one second to talk about this, but if you look at all this information related to this job or this project is on pages seven through 17 in the packet. Um, we have a motion on the floor, Mr. McCullough, to approve this. Are we okay with that?
Well, I, I, I, I had to get something from Mr. LeClaire, so we can, sorry. Now that we have a motion on the floor to approve the appointment of you and Mr. Hummel. Yes. I, I see no problem in that, Madam Chair. Okay. Uh, I previously discussed it with him. Okay. That's the case. And no comments from the board, no questions. I'm gonna have a roll call vote. Tom? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you entirely. Yes. That's 5-0. Okay. So the next item on our agenda is to meet with the audit committee to review. There's two things we're going to do. One is we're going to review the annual audit report and then we're going to consider suggestions regarding the structure and the shape of the committee. We'll just do one at a time. We invite attendance by Mr. Colts. I believe I will be your current chair of the committee also. And is Mr. German coming or is he online? I think the, the plan was for Michael would be. Yeah. Could you see Mr. German's in there, Mr. or Mr. Robbie? I don't see. All right. And because we might be running a few minutes early in time, as if he might not be coming on here, is Mr. Kevin here. Yeah. There's some here. All right. All right. All right, everyone. I don't see you. Yeah. I have a laptop. I can't get to the video working camera. Okay. I think we should wait like five minutes. Mr. German. You know, I think it's a good idea because the division of labor was going to be, Michael presents the annual report. Right. And I address the staffing issue. Right. Okay. Feel free to stay there, but I'm going to go to the agenda item because we'd like to move along here.
Uh, let's see. Where's Mr. Beck? How about a motion on the consent calendar?
I'd be to move the consent calendar.
Any questions about the consent calendar? I will say this if there's information for the consent calendar is in two places. This is supplemental information. And then there's the regular consent packet. Okay. Before the discussion, let's have a vote. Mr. Beck? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Mr. Whitley? Yes. Mr. Reynolds? Okay. Thank you. You want to do item 14, the licensing agreement. Did you read my mind? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Item number 14 is to review and authorize the town manager Michael McCall to sign the licensing agreement with the Whaling Town Center regarding Whaling Pest 2026, which by the way is happening on October, May day of October 4th. Um, their information for this, for those who are looking, I think the license agreement is in supplemental packet.
Any questions on this? Do I have a motion, please? Go for it, Chris. No. Oh, because he's working on it? Yeah. I'm trying to open my supplemental packet. Sorry? I want to open my supplemental packet. So I'm not going to put words into the town manager's mouth, but I believe that he told me that this contract is modeled after the same contract we just did. Shared streets, go ahead, please. Yes, Madam Chair, that is correct. I worked on this with North pond associates. We took the agreement that we previously worked on for shared streets. We modified it slightly using a licensing agreement that was previously done by KP law. I had KP law in the last 24 hours review this. This all happened in the last couple of days, just to ensure that everybody is covered in the event of any type of unforeseen incident and that we would have exclusive rights to use the town center plaza for this event. And I will say again, North pond, Jesse Burke can and his staff have been excellent to work with. Everybody is timely on everything we do. So it's come together quickly. I move approval of the license agreement between North pond, Wayland LLC and the town of Wayland as detailed in our supplemental packet number two. Second. Second. Thank you. Second. Any further discussion? All right, let's have a vote. Mr. Payne? Yes. Yes. Sorry, question. Should the motion also authorize the town manager to execute on behalf of the port? Sure. Friendly amendment accepted. Thanks. So it's still the same too. Thank you, Bill. That's good. All right. Any other further questions or comments or amendments? All right. We'll take a vote call. We'll have to all focus online. Mr. Whitney? Yes. Mr. Levine? Yes. Mr. Fay? Yes. Yes. Anybody voting against or state? State. So the vote is 4-0-1, correct? Correct. Could you let me know when Mr. German comes? Could you text him or something to see what he said? I can email him. I can't text him. Okay. But you know, if worse comes to worse, what I'll do is I'm going to assume people have read the report. We have. And then I will take questions. Okay. I'm going to keep going though. Okay. Let me just send an email. Yeah. How about number 11? This is on page. I'm so excited. I'm really ahead. This isn't going to laugh, but I'm so excited. Hang on. I've got to find my page. Amend the broadband and cable advisory committed the charge. This is on page 40 of our packet. When we reviewed the charge, we used an older model and the older models did not have the number of committee members on the term limit. So that's what's been added to this. You'll see what it is. I think it's now five for the numbers. And with the term limit is when the contract is signed. So that's the only adjustment we're making there. So I went to have Abby put out the notice that we wanted to have applicants and there was, we did not have many people to recruit. So. All right. Is there any questions? All right. We will. I need a motion, please. Move that the board approve the revised Whalen Cable Advisory Committee charge known as the Whalen Broadband and Cable Advisory Committee. Thank you. Any questions or comments? All right. Can you just make sure that she adds broadband into the title too? It isn't, isn't it? Oh, no, no. On page 40. And the heading itself. Yeah, I think I've corrected that. Oh, you know what? I think I have it corrected in my own paper. All right. Let me put that in my updates. Even better. All right. Let's have a vote then, please. Mr. Frank. Yes. Mr. Levine. Yes. Mr. Wells. Yes. Mr. Whitney. Yes. Mr. Martin. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. You know what? I did edit that from something else, but I don't see it here, so you can make a note on that. Mr. Chairman, thank you for joining us. We're doing the other little recess of that board meeting. Like, doesn't that logical? That's what we're waiting to be. Sorry about that. No worries. Thank you for joining us. So we're going to go back now to item number six, which is meet with members of the audit committee, which is Mr. Shigley and Mr. Chairman, and also with Mr. Coveney, to hear your audit report. So the floor is yours, sir. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for having us here today.
So the information starts on our package on page 18. All right. Thanks for having us here today. I'm going to provide an overview of the audit committee's report. So to provide an overview, we reviewed the ACFER, and we provided feedback and comments to CBIS. This year, they did not identify any significant deficiencies for material weaknesses within their report. So they did not issue a management letter. As for the internal controls, the auditor does not express an opinion over internal controls. And we had asked questions about the town's internal controls. And they had mentioned that the town's controls are generally stronger than those of similar municipalities. Although there were also some opportunities for improvement that were noted. Outside of the ACFER, we also participated in the recent RFP for the town's independent auditor, which was one of our recommendations from the past fiscal year. And this was for the upcoming three fiscal years. And it was not prompted by any concerns of audit performance or quality. It was just a routine governance review. And there were two respondents. And the committee had rigorously filled out some scorecards. And we evaluated it and discussed. And we unanimously recommended that CBIS be reappointed to be the independent auditor. And the town subsequently appointed CBIS. And then to provide an update on some issues of the previous FY24 audit, which include the cash variances, the guaranteed deposits, as well as GASB 101. The cash variances, there was a balance of about $130,000, primarily related to the Student Activities Fund. And then the previous fiscal year, there were some updates made within UNIS, as well as the general ledger and that variance has been resolved. For the guaranteed deposits, which has been an ongoing issue that the town's been working to resolve, we met with the town manager, as well as a member of the conservation department, to discuss some of these unresolved issues, as well as their approach for resolution. And there was some progress made this year. In June 25, the balance was about $622,000. And then in June 26, that balance had dropped to about $503,000, with the conservation department and the building department, both representing the largest portion of those remaining balances. And through that discussion, it was mentioned that there were some constraints to the resolution, because there was incomplete or missing historical records that were kind of was kind of holding it back. But there were some potential solutions that they had discussed, which include continuing some of the investigative work that's been performed, engaging any additional support resources that may be available. And then also just evaluating any potential pathways forward that may lead to a resolution. And in order to track this progress, one of the Audit Committee's recommendations is for the department heads to provide quarterly reports and updates and submitted by the town manager to the select board.
for GASB 101, which was one of the new requirements effective in FY25, which related to compensated absences, as well as sick leave. The town successfully implemented this guidance. And this guidance, there's not a lot of impacting fund level reporting here. It was mostly increasing accruals, as well as liabilities. And it does impact primarily the government-wide financial statements. For this upcoming fiscal year, one thing to note is that GASB 103 and 104 will be expected to be implemented. And then the Audit Committee has also proposed some recommendations for the select board's consideration. One of those being to engage a third party to perform a review of internal controls over a select department. And given that the auditor does not provide an opinion over internal controls, this could help provide some additional assurance that controls are operating effectively and operations are working as they're intended. Um, I'll, I'll pause here if, uh, Klaus or Brian have any additional comment or anything to add? Brian, um, can you hear all of what's going on? Yes, I can hear everything. Okay. Do you want to add anything else to Germany? Okay. Uh, nothing other than, nothing other than historically Alina Korsak would be with us tonight. Um, CBiz was purchased recently by Grant Thornton and they've gone through a series of downsizing and part of that restructuring Alina Korsak who's been the lead auditor in Wayland for a good 15 years is no longer with CBiz. We're still using the CBiz name. It's, it's not yet the Grant Thornton, uh, another higher partner that, um, the original Melanson and Heath, uh, 15 years ago, Wayland started with the firm Melanson and Heath who's today CBiz. They've gone from a small regional accounting firm in New Hampshire, um, to now part of a national firm. Now they even getting even larger by joining Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton is not at the Ernest Young level or Deloitte or KPMG, but they are pretty big. And so we'll be doing business with one of the largest accounting firms in the country in Grant Thornton. Uh, as I was going to say, another key partner in the firm, Rob McIntyre, who is Alina's boss, who has been with the town as well for 15 years. And they've both been extremely helpful to Wayland in, you know, implementing a lot of the GASBs and working with us and working with us for some of our issues that we had. Um, they were a pleasure to work with and Scott, uh, with the downsizing, he has retired. So we have lost two key people. Um, at CBiz, they do have new people taking over. Um, in terms of adding to Michael's presentation, there's really not much further we can add. Um, you know, we're closing the books next week for fiscal 26th. We're sort of back on track where the audit should be. Uh, the, the finances really should be finalized by the end of December each year. So we're back into the timeframe where we should be. So, um, Klaus and Michael and the other fellow one did a great job this year. There was just the three of them and, um, they worked through the transition with Alina. So that's all I wanted to add, but I do want to thank those two folks from CBiz for their assistance that went on for the last 15 years. Thank you. Thank you. So did you want to address the contract thing or not? Yeah. Another recommendation that we had was to perform, to have a third party performer review over some of the top vendor contracts. Yeah. And just, you could select maybe the, some of the larger contracts uh, and just do a deeper dive of the contract as well as some procurement areas. So before we go to anything else, uh, I'm going to open it up to the board to see if, uh, thank you for the report. It's very clear, very nicely written, very easy to follow your highlights there, and you're in business. Well, we have some more questions or comments. I had a quick question. First of all, thank you a lot, especially probably looking clear that was, it may be premature to ask, but at one point you said that an outside firm would they come in and look for, look at our controls. And my, my question is, do you know yet whether they're going to look at the policies and procedures or will they actually interview employees? Yeah. I mean, I think that would depend on the scope that you agree upon, but generally if you were engaging with a third party to do a control review, they would probably look at policies and procedures and then also interview whoever you identify to, for them to interview. So thank you. Mr. Ray. Brian, do you have any concern that given that we've lost an institutional memory with our, uh, auditing firm, uh, that we are gonna have someone, uh, sufficiently experienced and senior to work on our account? No, I'm not worried about that. One of the, uh, other lead people in the, on the, um, audit team, uh, Lori, she's still with the firm. A lot of the people that came down, um, the last bunch of years is the, uh, their team of auditors, they're still with them. So we have not lost everybody. We've just lost the, um, the top ones to give you a short history. You know, 15 years ago, you were really dealing with three audit firms, Sullivan and Rogers, Powers and Sullivan, and Melanson. They were all regional large firms that specialized in municipal government auditing. Today, Powers and Sullivan and Melanson are now part of CBiz. Sullivan and Rogers is now part of CLA. We do business with CLA on a consultant basis within our treasurer's office and other things as well. So for any municipality today, you really, your options are, you're really not dealing with small regional firms anymore. You're dealing with large firms. But with respect to CBiz, I don't have any concerns about their staff staffing. They've, I've known a lot of the people that are still coming down. Um, they do have a new lead person on it that has come down to the, to Whalen and, and then met with us. And, you know, went over his background. So I, I, I really don't have any concern though at all. Thank you. Actually, I'll just add that in the private sector, they encourage a turnover of the, of the independent accountant. So we're, we're at a point where we use it. We've been using this, uh, Alina at least for 10 years. Right. So I know it points were big and I just concerned that if you're going to a big outfit, you get a junior person assigned to a, you know, comparably small community, but it sounds like that's not an issue. Mr. Faith, do you have any questions? I, I don't. Thank you. Thank you. I have a couple of things. All I want to say, major kudos, Ryan, Michael, the staff, no management letter. I mean, this is a huge call. That's very, very impressive. When I read it, I thought, no matter. I noticed, I know the last few years, there's been fewer and fewer items on them, but it's very rare, isn't it, to have no management letter. So I think we ought to take a breath and say, it's a record job there. Um, I noticed your recommendations. They're very thoughtful. I appreciate that. The one, of course, that's got my attention is the guaranteed deposits. I do.
I do believe the planning department, excuse myself.
I do believe that the planning department is always because those funds have been converted to available funds for use. But I guess my question is how close we are and how much work do we need to do on the remaining 500,000? It is a possibility that some of that may go to the general fund. I would say the biggest challenge, Madam Chair, is one of these funds have been identified by department, but it's finding the transactions or the, um, the projects and a large number of them still reside with conservation. We've asked them, uh, to work on it. Uh, the, the problem is there's just a lot, not a lot of good record keeping. And we did have, um, a summer intern that helped us clean up some of the ones in, um, building a previous year. And Mr. Hummel worked quite diligently. He didn't have as many. And there were, we often use the word crumbs around to help fund and narrow down these projects. And then I did work with Robert on some of those going through looking at old select board agendas and planning board agendas to find those. Um, I think we just may need to get some additional help and conservation, uh, that can be dedicated to tracking these down. It, it, it, it's, you know, old gumshoe sleuthing because someone has to go through and try and take a deposit record from 10, 15 years ago, and then look through to see how much was given in a particular project for a peer review and sort of, you know, it, and trying to match them up. And if you have three that night, each gave money for peer review is going to be hard to tell which one was which. Oh, no, I recognize that. But 500,000's got my attention.
I'm sure I got Mr. Close's attention as well. Okay. All right. Did you have any questions or comments, Mr. McClellan? No, I, um, we did write a letter of Mr. Kemeny off and I signed it to CBiz explaining what we were doing and how we were addressing any, um, of the issues. And I, it was our representation letter of what we will continue to do here. So that was sent out to CBiz on Friday. It was a stronger job for everybody. And perfectly an effort from the committee because it's a committee of five and they have three members and they need three members to have a quorum. And so if they've got something to do, they've got to make sure that we didn't show up, we've really been there. And that's really what I'm here to address. I know. I'm coming, teeing up him. All right. Mr. Sheeley is going to speak to us about this. He has, there's some information in the packet, and I move this starts and maybe on page 28. I gave you the wrong number before, but I think on 28, there's some information on server, a pair of terms due, and then farther down, there's four recommendations. But why don't you describe, you're all sent. Thank you. I'm going to assume that everyone has seen the material that we distributed. And, uh, basically we're a committee of five that's down to one member and we need three to make a quorum. So, and let me explain. And one of the reasons we're down to one is that my friend, Michael, is leaving town and cannot be reappointed. So, and before I proceed, I wanted to acknowledge what a nice job that he's done as our chair in this past year. So, um, moving on, the memo offers four potential fixes for our staffing woes. One is terminating the committee. Two is populate the committee with members from other committees. Three is move the function and duties of the audit committee to the FinCom. And four is step up the recruiting effort. I have a couple of thoughts. Good. In my opinion, killing the audit committee should be the last resort. Firstly, uh, the audit committee has added value. They've come up with some very good suggestions in the past. And secondly, someone besides the finance director should have the pleasure of reviewing the town's 120 page annual, uh, comprehensive financial report for which our finance director gets a, uh, an attaboy every year from, uh, from, from Gatsby. So he should be applauded as well.
So I'm also thinking that, um, the, the fourth option, more proactive recruiting, hasn't worked. You know, calls for volunteers have appeared in both the Wayland Post and in the monthly, uh, newsletter from the, from the town manager, which leaves two options, basically adding staff from other committees or transferring the duties to the FinCom. I think both are doable and adding staff from other committees is probably the simplest. That's where I sit. So we have a, so of course, I also want to just add one thing. On page 33 and 34 of our packet, we're going to see a very lovely color-coded chart. One of our objectives this year is to look at a committee issue in general, make sure that the right number of members, all those kinds of things, whatever we have within that objective. I forgot what it is for the moment. And if you'll note at the top, and then, and this is major kudos to Abby, who spent all this time doing it. And it's, it's easy, it's easy to read. The odd committee was, is a select board formulated committee. In other words, if we make any changes to it, we do not have to go to town meeting to make the changes, I don't believe. You notice it right on the top. It was established in January 9, 2012. And you can see that over here on the key on the side, this is a select board vote. So as we evaluate these four options, I also want to say, we'll see this chart again every time we look at, you know, talk about committees, but I think it's a wonderful resource now that they've put together for us. So I'm going to open it to the floor, have a discussion about the four options. One is to eliminate the odd committee, one is to maintain it, but staff it perhaps with, you know, a representative from other committees, fold the duties into the finance committee or even another committee, and then try to have some more proactive recruiting. So I'll open it to the floor and we'll start with new whistleblowers. An audit committee was created, I'm just looking at the charge, by the select board in 2012. Yeah. So it's the select board that can make any changes on its own. But I understand. Do you think that we would find some folks from the finance committee to be able to staff this committee and serve on two boards simultaneously? So the interesting people said, yeah, the proposal was really to get one member from the finance committee, another member from select board, and one from the school committee. So if, you know, getting one member from each of those might be doable. Or they're designated, but you see, once you say we're designated, then we get back to the recruiting. So as Steve Martin said, we're back and forth, you know. I have a comment. I served on several audit committees, excuse me, not in municipal finance, but in the private sector. And I'm averse to populating an audit committee members of the finance committee. I think we need to get members from other committees. So I will say this. I believe you have spoken to the finance committee, or they've at least had this conversation at one of their meetings. And I don't think they felt that they wanted to have the audit committee duties folded into the finance committee's responsibilities. That certainly is an option. So anyway, back to you, Doug. I mean, we're having this issue with a handful of committees. Well, we're finding perennial vacancies. So I think this is a larger conversation that we probably need to have as a full agenda item. Because this has been an ongoing problem for some time. It's a major problem right now because we have one person with Mr. Shigley on the committee, but I don't disagree. But I think they asked if we could have this as part of tonight's audit report review. If I could make another very quick comment. I had trouble populating an audit committee once before when we asked you, what was the problem? And the answer was not the usual stuff of just being busy in life and all. It was that there's a, that everything happens once a year up to a certain deadline, and it's a crescendo and dense work. We just couldn't do that. So when we found a way to spread out the work and schedule it differently, all of a sudden we leave. In the material we have, I think, Klaus addresses how much is it? Four to six times a year. Right, right. The process starts once the annual comprehensive financial report is done. And that has been somewhat variable. I mean, we'd like to see it. Brian can address it better, but you'd like to see it come around in December maybe. But there have been years when it hasn't arrived until, you know, so. But okay, so it starts with the ACFER, and then it proceeds pretty quickly, and that we review that, and maybe the management letter, meet with the independent auditor to our report. So it can be done pretty quickly. Ideally, it's done in December or January, maybe February. If it's ideal, that's, you can squeeze it into that time frame. Okay. And then that's it for the year? Yep. We do two reports, one to the select board, and one for the booklet published for the town. So it's about four to six meetings a year, you think? And then who writes the report? Well, collectively we do that. We vote on it as a committee. So, Chris, does that answer your question? Is there a crunch to write that report? Or is there a time crunch that would dissuade people to get that report out? Or is it usually a team effort very small? I think usually it's the chair that will write the report, discuss it at the, at the, at the, at a meeting, vote on it. And so it's not a lot of work for most of the committee. It's, it's work for probably one, I withdraw. Thank you. It's about five, six pages because this is, the report we're discussing is the one that's in the pages about 18 to 24 or 20, I think I've read it wrong, 24 to 31, it's about six pages. I saw the pages. My curiosity was whether we actually do what it's. Yes, as I mentioned this year, it would have been Michael who prepared the bulk of it, and the rest of it would comment. Thank you. Tom? I tend to agree with Doug's comment that an agenda item where we discuss the overall issue of committee vacancies and maybe include in the same discussion, one of the goals of the Town Managers Act, and that is to eliminate some boards and committees or combine them and, and, and, um, uh, to make the Town Managers Act that much more efficient. And I'm not suggesting that we, that's not a plug for eliminating the audit committee because I, I, I, yeah, but I just think it's a, it's worth a greater, a more expansive discussion. By the way, that's the reason that we, uh, included the, the survey that we did in, in 23, is that it is a viable solution to kill the audit committee because it's a, of, of, of the 11 towns that we looked at, only three of them had an audit committee. So it's a doable solution. Mr. Whitney? I think the notion of killing a committee, uh, is, uh, difficult. Um, I wondered if another possibility would be to have the FinCom, the school committee, and the select board, each appoints someone the way we do, and with other committees where there are appointees. Uh, so it's not necessarily a member of those. Well, that's actually the process that we have now. Right. Right. So that's not working. It's just a recruitment issue, an underlying recruitment issue. We're back to recruiting again then. How's it? Well, if it, if the charge is fine, one or two people versus four people, maybe that's, uh, an easier bill to swallow. Right now, we need to find four. I understand. Okay. But you know, if the school, if we said to the school committee, you know, come on, find somebody and come as well, and maybe one of the members would volunteer perhaps not, um, but, uh, as an alternative to having a member of a board or a committee, that's probably already pretty busy. Um, maybe that's my turn about that. Well, Klaus, as you can see, and it was just no easy, clear solution. Even you had four or five recommendations. So I think that the board is interested. As Tom mentioned, I think he summed it up pretty well. And we had this conversation when we did our goals for the fiscal 27 year and said, you know, one of the things we want to step back just because things are the way they are. I mean, we look at our policies and we've been making some adjustments. So they're more in the current. And, and so this probably is, does belong in that greater, greater discussions. My only concern now is, into Chris's point, you have finished your work for a while, right? So we have a little time. We have time. So we have time. Okay. So the fact that we have time, I'm going to say, we'll put this, this will be part of another, um, larger discussion on another agenda. I mean, probably not too far, um, probably within the next four or five meetings or so, we'll probably have a look at this, kind of fit everything. Does that work for you? Oh, sure. Okay. That sounds reasonable. Thank you so much. We're sorry you're leaving us. We should reconsider and stay. Okay. No, I wouldn't ask Michael, how did you get, um, become aware? Because that might be a recruiting technique. Um, I just, or someone told me that joining, like I wanted to be involved in doing something outside of work. And someone had told me that joining like a town's committee is, is an option that you could do. So I looked and I saw that there was some openings and applied for it. I mean, I will give a little teeny plug. If you have any whaling resident friends, who have the appropriate skill set, please feel free to recommend that they apply. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Brian, Ms. Johan. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate it. It's me? I'm going to go to you next, because I don't know if anyone's up to you. So, we're going to go skip up to number eight, because Mr. Reitman going to join us. She had joined us in the spring or the summer, maybe, and talking about the John Empties Memorial Museum project at the Council on Aging Community Center. There's been a couple of design changes, and she wasn't sure, and neither was I, that perhaps we ought to just run these by the board, so we're all aware of them. And so, here she is. And I think this information is in our packet on page 35. So, thank you for inviting me back. Just to refresh your memories, this is a privately funded tribute memorial to John Empties, who was a super volunteer for the Council on Aging for many, many years. And there is a Wayland resident whose idea this was, and who is funding it. This person wishes to remain anonymous, so I am working in their behalf to get this done. And the idea that we came up with as we thought about what would be an appropriate tribute, we wanted it to be outdoors, we wanted it to be associated with the community center, and so it is a mosaic, which is 24 inches in diameter. It's a beautiful outdoor piece of art that depicts a man in a canoe on the river, and it's surrounded by trees. It's lovely. And the challenge for us has been to figure out on what that mosaic would rest. So that's where Carol's referring to some design changes, we've gone through a lot of thinking about what to how to do it. But where we've ended up is very similar to where we started, which is, it will be a concrete block, if you will. Let me stop before I go on and say that Bill Sterling, who I think most of you probably know, has been working closely with me. So that's where our design expertise comes in. And we have a mason on board who's going to cast this cement block, it's going to be about 30 inches wide, 34 inches deep, the back will be higher, the back will be about 34 inches, the front will be about 15. So there'll be about a 25 degrees slope. That's where the mosaic will be set in. So that it's easier to view it. And also there's runoff of snow and rain on the front piece. The front vertical piece will be a bronze plaque that reads, in loving memory of John Antti's 1936 to 2019, with deep gratitude for his legacy of volunteer service to Wayland's seniors, he enriched our community with his kindness, generosity and good humor. So we have a mason who's standing at the ready to build this thing. The concrete will be mixed with a pigment so that it won't look like a sidewalk. So it'll have a little tone to it. And then it will be sandblasted after it's cast so that it also has a nicer surface to it and look more like a work of art than a piece of utility. And the DPW is also involved, they will build the foundation for this piece. And they're ready to do that sometime in the next few weeks. So that'll be about a 10 to 12 inch deep gravel foundation that will have drainage and support the weight of the concrete. So that's where we are. And I'm hoping this has been a long process. But I'm hoping this will be complete in the next month. And once it is complete, we will have some sort of a dedication ceremony that you will all be invited to. Thank you. So at first we thought there was some changes that needed to come before the board. And then as it went on, there weren't that many, but we'd already made the decision to come in. Does anyone have any comments or questions? I love the photo. Yes. Oh, good. We're all set. Thank you so much for the update. Thank you. We'll look forward to coming from again to say it's fun. I'm looking forward to that too. Thank you so much. All right. Number seven is Miss. How are you? Karen's up there. Hi, Sarah. Um, we're going to skip something.
All right. Discuss some funding requests from the AGR, DEI committee for program support with the pretension to vote. Um, we're inviting Karen, as I said, as the chairman and then Heather as well. How are you? Did you want to, uh, describe your request to us, please? Yes. Um, and so just to be clear, I'm the chair and Heather is the vice chair of the human rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. Thank you so much for including us tonight. We'd like to make a very brief presentation because we know we have only a short time on your agenda and then, um, ask what questions you have for us. So we're here to ask for your support for two new programs designed to help community members talk about complex topics at home, in school, and across generations. We're really excited to be partnering this year with the Wayland Public Schools and with Caroline Hahn, the district's director of diversity, equity, and belonging. The two new programs speak directly to priorities that were named in the town's, um, community life and engagement study around trust, belonging, and school town connections. Um, the first program is called Curious Kids, Confident Caregivers. And some of you probably know this feeling. You're standing in the supermarket and a toddler says to their caregiver, why does that person look the way they look in a really loud voice? Or a middle schooler comes to you and asks for advice about dealing with a peer who's making jokes about someone who has a different gender or a different or a disability? And this program, this two-part workshop is designed for to help adult caregivers address exactly those kinds of questions. Um, it'll be led by Dr. Eden Renee Hayes, who many of you know, a social psychologist and Wayland resident, building on the conversation series she led last year at the library. It'll be split into two sessions, one for caregivers of small, younger kids, and one for caregivers of older kids. And by caregivers, we mean parents, guardians, grandparents, teachers, anybody who cares for kids. Um, participants will leave the sessions with, um, practical ways to help kids grow up to be kind and curious and inclusive and with language that they can use to talk with kids about these kinds of topics that may be uncomfortable to talk about. Uh, the second program is tentatively called Conversations That Matter. And this one will be a once a month dialogue series running for four months, led by Jamil Adams, um, an educator and equity strategist. The program will bring together Wayland students and adults, um, to, for structured, moderated conversations on local issues that matter most to people. And this will help build communication skills that people can then carry back to their families, to their schools, and into everyday life, and will help create, build bridges across the generations. And this work builds on the work that Jamil Adams did last year with us and on his ongoing work with the Wayland High School community. So the total cost for both programs is $8,000. And we're really excited to share that the Wayland Public Schools has agreed to contribute $2,000. So we're asking the select board for $6,000 to, um, bring both of these programs to our community. And please tell us what questions you have. All we have to questions from the board if you would like to start. I've got a question for you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that presentation. Can you talk a little bit, um, about the two programs last year by Jamil Adams and Dr. Eden Renee Hayes and how these might differ from last year's programs? Yes. So, uh, Heather, do you actually, I don't want to take all the air. Do you want to speak to that? No, it's okay. Go ahead. I'm here. I, uh, we're not there in person because I have my annual back to school cold and, uh, didn't want to infect everybody with my middle school germs. So go ahead, Karen. Thank you. We appreciate that.
So, um, let's see. So, so Dr. Hayes program last year at the library, it was for adults and it didn't have to do with kids. Um, it had to do with talking about issues around, um, American history and race, um, and it was really an amazing series of six programs on all different topics using, um, literature and other, um, speeches and other things as the basis for really interesting and important conversations. Um, and similarly, Jamil Adams program, although we did have a high school student come to one of the sessions, it was also for adults, um, and adults were learning particular skills for having complex conversations, um, with other people, but not necessarily with kids. So both of these programs in the coming year will be different in that the topics really pertain to kids. Um, and, um, Dr. Hayes program will, I mean, excuse me, um, Jamil Adams program will include kids in the conversations. And so they're intergenerational, um, and we very much hope to broaden the audience even more, the participation even more than last year and to bring in, we hope, families, um, with kids, younger kids and that sort of thing. So broader, broader, different, slightly different scope and, and broader participation is what our hope is. I appreciate that. And I'm, one comment that I just want to add is that we've obviously had folks come before this board for a civil discourse initiative. And while there's some overlap here with these two programs, I would say that the, the civil discourse initiative varies significantly in that it will cover a whole broad range of topics and more importantly, it will train up to 24 Waylanders to serve as facilitators for dialogues as they come up three or so times, three to four times a year is the goal. And, uh, I'll give a further update about that during my reports and concerns. Thank you, Karen and Heather. Yeah. And, and we'll be coordinating, you know, our topics will also be broad and will include, um, you know, various aspects of, of human identity, whether it's, you know, race or religion or disability or whatever it might be. Um, and we will coordinate closely with Doug and his colleagues to make sure that we're, that we're, you know, not overlapping and, and making, making meaningful contributions to the community. One to the, Mr. Whitney. Uh, two questions. One is what would the source of the funding be? And secondly, uh, Doug, you sort of touched on my question, which is how does this dovetail with the, the work of, uh, the reflective structured dialogue training we talked about at a previous meeting? And, and, and would this, would these kinds of, uh, questions or discussions, uh, be something that, uh, uh, a trained volunteer could do on, for going, on a going forward basis? So I was thinking of an example, though it may not happen this year, is what it's sounding like. Uh, our first structured dialogue was going to be around the override, for example, where I don't think it would be appropriate, uh, under these two programs that Heather and, uh, Karen are explaining to have a program and structure on, uh, the override. But for example, you know, we're reaching town issues that, that they may not be touching on, but certainly that there, there is some overlap here. Um, but I think the more opportunity we have to have some of these dialogues, uh, the more proactive we're being in building this community. So I'm looking forward to seeing how both interact in the coming year. May I hop in and answer the question? So we, um, actually had this conversation with, um, the chair of Wilma Bell and said that the select one, I may have mentioned this last week on passing. Unfortunately, we have a very small expense budget this year. We only have $32,000, which is why we were really, really, really, really, well, mostly I was very excited that we had access to those guaranteed, uh, deposits and were able to support a couple other projects, including the Constructive Dialogue Program. So my thought was, and I talked to Michael, and I think we, we agreed that we would take the, what was the eight, and I think now we're down to six from our $32,000 expense budget. I did explain that because we have such a small budget this year that to be really sure this is the programs you want for the year because likely we may not be able to fund something else. So we have that conversation. That answers your question.
Thanks, Sue. Mr. Craig? Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so to follow up on, um, the chair's point a moment ago, Karen and Heather, do you anticipate programs like these annually? And, and does it make sense to have some sort of a line item in the town budget, um, uh, where the town can especially support these programs? And Michael McCall, you may have a comment on that. I mean, this board is an advisory board to the select board, so it may not be appropriate. But, uh, what, what are your thoughts? I can't see anybody's smirking. Um, I'm always cautious about making certain commitments and setting precedent in what I would have said prior to you mentioning it is this is an advisory board. We have other advisory boards that have asked for similar, um, types of requests for regular funding. So I, I, I don't know if I would recommend to the board that we make this a regular budget item, but I think, you know, supporting from time to time, uh, events or endeavors by some of these is not a problem. But I think if we start the process of creating a line item or a recurring budget expense for certain, um, advisory boards or other boards in town that others will then follow suit. So given that comment, no doubt, Karen and Heather, you keep an eye out for grant monies for programs that you'd like, you can't even like to pursue. And I'd encourage you to continue that effort. And, um, but I do support your ask this evening. I support this. I have no questions. You know, I really liked the idea, um, that you tied this back in to some of the objectives from the equity assessment, because that's, you know, we spent some time and after putting that up. And I really liked that in particular, this is working with schools on a couple of, because a couple of the recommendations were pretty much school-based. So I really think this is a, is a nice focus. Um, and, um, if everybody is comfortable with the 6,000 coming from our very minuscule expense budget, I'll take a motion, please. I move that we approve the human rights, diversity, equity, inclusion committees, uh, requests for program support for two programs for the upcoming year, uh, totaling $6,000. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. We'll have a roll call vote. Chris? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. And Carol. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. See, we are now going to speak to Mr. Corey. Um, good evening. Good. How are you? Thank you. Um, he has applied for a position, um, for the Zoning Board of Appeals. We know what it is the CBA. This is an associate position. We determined in June 30, the 20, 29, he has submitted a letter of interest and information and that is in the, um, packet on page 38. So we're very, very involved here when we do our interviews. It will probably last about three minutes or five minutes, whatever. Um, you may not be familiar with everyone on the board. So we'll have everyone introduce themselves first, please. Good evening. My name is Chris Reynolds. I'm going to do a select board. Nice to meet you. Hi, I'm, uh, Bill Brittany. Hey, James. Doug Levine. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Chair Tom Fay member. I'm vice chair of the select board. And I'm Carol Martin and I'm the chair this year. How are you? So if you would like to just tell us briefly a couple minutes of, you know, like Dr. Gene to apply for the ZBA, then we'll ask a couple of questions and go from there. Okay. Does that sound okay? Okay. What was yours? Um, well, I've been, I've been reading about all these vacancies on town boards and committees. Um, I'm a, um, in a master's program at Fairfield, uh, in public administration. I just started that. Well, I actually started two years ago, but I'm a little bit behind. I was going to get two classes done. Um, and I've been living in Wayland for 10 years. We moved here in 2016. My wife passed away in 2018. So just me and my daughter. So we were kind of isolated for a few years and I thought town government would be a pretty good way to like feel more part of the town. Um, my daughter's in school now. She's a Holy Cross. Um, I live on old Connecticut path. Just me and the dog. Um, my family has a long history of public service. My mother was an alderman in Somerville for 10 years. Um, they're now called the city council, but they were called aldermen back then. She was, uh, alderman at large from 85 to 95. Um, my brother's very active in politics. My sisters are active. Um, I've worked on various things, campaigns, but I've never had an official town role. So I thought it'd be interesting to try and it would tie in nicely with my education, um, which can be kind of vague, uh, just general. Um, here I am. Thank you. I'm gonna open it up to the board for questions. Crystal, would you like to start? Well, first, thank you very much for your willingness to serve. Um, I am particularly interested in, uh, which neighborhood newspaper you worked on in Boston. Uh, but also, um, as, uh, particularly Doug knows as a former member of the zoning board of appeal, uh, it's a, uh, kind of real estate centric committee. So, uh, curious how, uh, how you feel your interest dovetails with, with, uh, that kind of work. I'm sorry. How many dovetails with the zoning board? Right. Right. Uh, you know, the, the zoning board tends to deal with a lot of real estate matters. Uh, in looking at your impressive resume, I don't see a lot of reference to that. So I'm interested in, in why you're interested in the zoning board of appeal. Well, honestly, the library would have been my first choice. Um, but that was bold. The available options were, um, more finance related, which I don't really have the expertise for that. Um, wastewater management was another one and I didn't feel particularly well versed in that. Um, well, I mean, it'd be interesting. It's obviously conceptual. Um, I thought zoning was the most general options that would also have impact. So that's why I settled on that. Okay. Thank you. What I can share with you, sir, as a former member of the ZBA is there are at least a couple of members on that board who have served a number of years, who I think will do a good job of taking you under their wing or just a replete with experience of all different kinds of matters that have appeared before that board. We also have a very strong building department and it's actually an interesting way to learn aspects about the town that you otherwise wouldn't without serving on that board. And on occasion, there are more complex larger hearings when there are larger developments happening, such as these 40 B developments that happen from time to time in our town, uh, or other large projects. But, uh, I think coming in as an associate member is a good move and try that for a couple of years. And then maybe we'll get you over to the library board of trustees. Thank you for your service. Actually, the, uh, the chair of the library trustees, as long as K realizes that the base of experience and the data are going around the public policy policy is I have no questions or comments. I thought your letter was well written. Thank you sir. Mr. Nice to meet you. Mr. Corrigan. If our board chooses to appoint you any recommend if you haven't already. Maybe checking out. some of the meetings that uh have been particularly interesting or what else well possibly even controversial on certain projects in town going back i don't know five or seven years if you can find them so you can appreciate you know the uh the balancing act that that um um that's probably a poor choice of words but the balancing of of uh asks and interests um i think people on that board need to have a good temperament because sometimes tempers can get high when people um um are seeking variances or looking for approval of projects um but your interest in municipal uh government i think you know um um is an asset for you to be on this committee and and uh um look forward to supporting your your ask thank you so thank you i appreciate the look and hope municipal certainly municipal government sorry certainly the municipal capacity is absolutely a huge a huge level of love it really is and dba is a really important community like doug said and the associates although they are not voting should somebody not be able to sit on a case then you move up and you become the voting member for that case it isn't a question of you're not voting you know for the term you know they are in case somebody's not able to sit or be available for the meetings and the hearings and the discussions of a particular case so it's really very exciting and this talks that there's a lot of people who've been on the committee with a lot of experience and that to be honest with me is how we all have learned because none of these jobs come with manuals so yes that is christmas i'll tell you so i really appreciate this your interest it's really terrific and i think the fact that you are dealing with you know scheduling appointments and something is detailed in the health industry and and that field just shows us that's the kind of work we need for zba is really detailed work so i do appreciate your involvement going so with that i will unless you have another comment i'm going to take a motion i move that we appoint jim corrigan as an associate member of the zoning board of appeals for a term expiring june 30th 2029 second thank you very much any further discussion otherwise we'll call hold chris yes yes yes yes yes and carol yes motion passes bottom zero congratulations a little one second mr ravine you're on the app sir you will receive a letter from the clerk's office or the town town manager's office noting your appointment and at that point take that letter come into the town clerk's office here and they will officially swear you in and provide you some information around conflict of interest and other training that you'll be required to do i have just come to recently i believe understand that the letters often come through the email oh it's an email then yes okay rather than they uh how efficient all right whatever it's not printed out
yeah yeah you'll be able to see you can reach out to the chair and speak to them great thank you so much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you thank you um thank you sir um robbie is miranda jones still here with me yeah she's on here right i don't see a little i'm around i'm here thank you item number nine is 2027 annual call meetings will have a review potential warrant articles but in fiscal year 27 warrant obviously including but not limited to staff participation of the atm reducing atm quorum and cable franchise fees so we have talked about a couple of these briefly the last meeting and we thought maybe we'd like to get have you know a discussion with the moderator so i've invited her and i don't see you miranda you i saw you well um here we go that they had blanked me out there here we are hi everyone thank you thank you for joining us yeah my pleasure so miranda and i did have a a conversation about the two items that um staff participation and reducing the quorum and if you notice on page 41 there's two sets of code um printed on the page the bottom of the page 36 section 12 says quorum and it states the presence of 100 voters at a town meeting the transaction ambitious so constituted a quorum except for a motion to adjourn for which no quorum shall be required so i put that there that's our current code that we need a hundred and then i'm going to turn that over to miranda because i think she did a little bit of research on this and then we can open it up to questions and see if we want to pursue this great okay sounds good so yep at carol's request i um i sent an email out to my moderators in the massachusetts moderators association through gaveline and asked them what their uh for open town meetings what their quorums are and then i also was directed i actually have access to every um an excel spreadsheet that shows a quorum for every single town um in the state as well as sort of what the what the most common quorums are um and a couple things i would um suggest to you number one a lot of the moderators who responded there about 19 that responded to me said that they felt that the the quorum that the town has has no impact on attendance rather it's the the warrant articles that do um and then in terms of um sort of what's the popular quorum right now zero is the most popular quorum for open town meeting towns 66 open town meeting towns have zero quorum however as a couple moderators pointed out um you can't really have a meeting without anybody i mean the moderator has to be a member has to be a voter but um other than that you need to have at least one person to show up um the next popular was a hundred which is what we have um and then it's all over the it's really all over the map and it's actually it was kind of surprising to get some of the information how some towns that have much fewer registered voters actually have higher quorums than we do um some towns will have no quorum for annual town meeting but have a quorum for a special town meeting um so and then carol specifically asked me about what about having a quorum to start town meeting and then dropping it for the rest of town meeting and i will let you know that that came up quite a few times that a couple of towns like willington and wellfleet both have a quorum at the beginning to open town meeting and then there's zero quorum for the rest of town meeting so it just doesn't matter how many people you have left um so some people even said having zero quorum just allows the meeting to start right on time and just keep moving uh moving along so i think i was the one who raised the issue of having the quorum quite frankly the only issue about a quorum is if somebody raises the issue you probably have noticed at the end of town meeting as we're going through um warrant articles rather quickly i will dispense with the electronic voting just to speed up the process because i worry about the quorum technically it doesn't matter under town meeting time it doesn't matter if there's a quorum or not unless somebody raises the issue and one of my moderators said that somebody in their town i don't recall which one it was somebody one of the voters tried to raise the issue of a quorum and got booed so badly by the rest of town meeting that they they took it back so um as you can see the general feeling seems to be and and also the attitude was that you know what if i i know that people feel that if there's only a few people who are showing up for town meeting to make these decisions these huge decisions for the town um so be it if if you know if you if you if you want to make decisions and come and participate and maybe someday we'll be able to participate from home or from wherever we are for traveling like tom faye always is or if we are traveling or if we have to work if we have child care issues or parental care issues but i i we're all over the map and i think some way the quorum kind of handcuffs us a little bit unnecessarily um and so similar to a lot of other procedural issues with town meeting i find that every town does town meeting just a little bit differently and this is what this is proof of it so again there's that phrase at the bottom we don't need a quorum to adjourn but we need a hundred right now in our code to conduct business which is why when marina and i was speaking and i said i know this sounds odd but could we reduce the quorum once we get yeah open i think that was yep one of the objectives we heard when we had our discussion was you know come on we gotta have a hundred people to i mean i think when i felt that we need at least can't we find a hundred people to come to open it um anyway let me open it up to the board i'm going to start with bill on this one please uh good evening miranda i'm the applying the ointment um uh i am uh very appreciative of the work you do it's uh you you really do a terrific job and i do and i do recall one of your predecessors uh having someone raise the question of uh uh whether the town meeting saw a quorum and uh that moderator uh chose not to hear that question yep so there are ways around it i i you know just sort of philosophically um you know given that we have i think truly told me 13 400 registered voters you know no that's the population that's the yeah that's the pop we've around 10 000 registered voters okay no problems uh so so if if we can't get 0.1 percent of the voting population there uh maybe we ought to think about a representative town meeting where people would uh have a little more maybe motivation to show up if they felt they were representing their 17 neighbors or something um so you know i i uh recognize that you uh are very good at trying to get through the agendas uh expeditiously as possible while still providing ample opportunity for uh debate but i think my personal preference would be to stick with 100 as a minimum what about this idea of establishing um a lesser or quorum the issue seems to be at the end of the meeting we don't seem to have a problem and it's almost like it's past 10 or something like that i don't know so do we want to that was why i had suggested as a as a compromise so you need 100 to open you don't need it you need zero one one one you don't need any to adjourn right well you have to have one because someone had to make it um and then could we establish another number like 75 for articles or something i don't know what the language would be i'd be looking over here for a phrase i i think uh if we rely on on the art of the moderator to with a quick gavel again i think 100 is uh is a pretty small sample mr rose could you comment a little more on zero uh in particular uh the thing you made me think when you gave your summary earlier is it it may slight the people who bother to show up uh to have a forum that's low and then they bother to show up and they've got not to show for it i compressed my question into asking i'm not i'm having trouble figuring out what the concept of a forum does in a town meeting it's pretty easy to see what it does in a committee but in a town meeting um i find myself suddenly not surprised that so many towns have zero yeah 66 open town meeting towns of zero it's a lot it's the highest number of course in terms of what the quorum is it's the most popular is having zero i think it's just to get the town business done and not and just dispense with the need to have bodies there if people care enough they'll come as i think probably that those towns attitudes so um with well then i'll make a comment philosophically i like mr whitney's idea of 100 and practically i like the idea of having zero show up period that's just you gotta look to make you feel all bad the town of dover has 2 600 registered voters and their quorum is 175. they must get it business yeah um they had a football coach though who mentioned that in dover the voters are outnumbered by horses that was probably a long time ago yeah so so mr frank um madam moderator um is there a consistency in 14 um thousand um town populations towns with population 14 000 relative to their um quorum number well that would that would cause me to dig a little deeper into the statistics mr fey which is not exactly my idea of a great time but you know what i could do is i could send you the information because i do have every single town listed and then what was given to me on some of the tabs in this spreadsheet is um not delving into how many what the town populations are but just what's what's the uh most most popular number of quorums and then the listing of number of towns that have it but i haven't looked into it that extensively to find peer communities towns that are around our size to see what they typically do for for quorum however my feeling is that really what's important is what does wayland want to do because um uh whalen does things differently than other towns every time does something just a little bit differently so while you could look to see what other towns do it's really you know well before electronic voting whalen dragged out for three nights the town of concord is a is a peer community for us they have zero quorum so um and they routinely have town meeting at about three nights a week and and they do a lot of deliberation at their town meetings town of ashland gets gets town meeting done typically in one night so every town's just a little bit different what they've expected so um i suppose it depends on what your comfort level is but you as a board if you want you would have to change the bylaw should we change the quorum and um you as a board as a board would have to be on the same page so if you'd like me to do it alternative research i can or additional research i can um if you want to give me a couple of different scenarios like what was raised with uh that carol raised with me it was what about having a quorum to start the meeting and then what if it tails off and some some moderators volunteered that to me that they it can actually drop off to zero so they just use the quorum to get the meeting started and then they let it go so is there an ask from you madam moderator at this meeting or do you just want us to discuss the topic like are you seeking a particular number no i'm not seeking a particular number i had brought up raise the issue because we do seem to panic through it um uh towards the end of it and and again as long as nobody raises the issue according to our you know our rules i kind of i can let it go of course with electronic voting it could it can be very obvious if there's no quorum and while town meeting time tells me that's okay so long as nobody challenges it um once you have electronic voting and you see that there's no longer a quorum then somebody very well could challenge it so that's why i don't use electronic voting just to do the shout out but um i'm just trying to make things as as um uh efficient as possible and i find that perhaps the quorum is an issue that can just maybe um get in the way a little bit well i don't believe with this but two things number one dover probably can pull off 175 quorum because they probably do their time meeting one night and and finally i kind of share your concern if there's an important warrant article that really impacts the town or particular residents and it can't be uh addressed because there are not enough people in the room and they say that you're typically the second night um it's really unfair to them um on the other hand you know they can work to get people in the seats for their issue which which of course does happen so um it happens that that happens in every town and one of my moderators who is also um uh he's been involved with this for over 30 years because he also does municipal he's an attorney does municipal law he has said that he was one of the first to say i see absolutely no correlation between quorum and getting bodies in the seats it really is whatever the warrant articles are and a lot of the moderators agreed with that if i may interject i'm worried what happens when we look stupid
this is the optics of this and respect for government are a real bugaboo with me that if you achieve a quorum and then there's a big topic such as mr faye just summarized so i won't repeat it and then everybody leave almost everybody leaves and you go sub quorum and now you're in a tizzy i think rightly so that somebody may ask after the quorum or not we we are making ourselves uh look less than efficient and less than cogent so i repeat my question what is the point of a form it just doesn't seem to make sense well to miranda's point i think i've heard her say a couple times this is the articles that are of interest will get people to come to town meeting which is why when you do out the order of the articles and go on and put something that's going to keep people in the seats yep to the last or the next to last article you know if you have 31 articles and number 27 is one that's is very very interesting you get them from the horrendous point to say the last three or more articles because they go over quick so it really i think that's a part of the strategy of of the link i'm very sensitive to skepticism about government these days and i would urge that we pick a number that helps people understand the hard work you do and that we are cogent so if i may not come here i never tell you thinking of optics this code has literally one sentence this 3612 so if we were to adjust it now we've got to get up and explain that we're concerned about not having a quorum and tell me which is why we're we're presenting this article i think tomorrow at this point we should we can we can adjust the way we put the order of the articles in to help resolve some of this potential forum yeah that's one way and i think if you wanted to speak if you decide this is what you want to do and you want an article um if you're proposing a warrant article and you want to speak in favor of it we can look at the statistics statewide and talk about what some of the other towns do and and why some of the comments i got from the 19 moderators as to why they have dispensed with um having quorums so it might be something that all of a sudden makes sense to some of our voters like well yeah that okay if nobody else is doing it why are we bothering with it but um i mean i haven't you know in my in my brief tenure as the moderator i haven't we haven't been challenged on a quorum at all and as somebody mentioned one of my predecessors just ignored the question so i am it's it i i have no problem with supporting changing the quorum and lowering it i i think it's probably as you know my goal has been to make town meeting more efficient and i also have no problem with changing the i mean it's up to the select board how are you you put um the warrant articles in order personally there's a lot at the end of the warrant that are ones that we can get through very briefly a lot of those i if if they could go on a consent calendar you know i'm a very big proponent of the consent calendar the town of stoke and put 30 articles on a one consent calendar but that's what their town is used to and so they welcome it and um i'm hoping over time our town will get used to the consent and we can put more and more onto it so we are more efficient and maybe we would get more bodies at town meeting because it isn't dragging out for eight nine hours over two nights i think it's very arbitrary to have the number set at 100 you know to bill's point if we have 100 it means 99.9 of voters didn't show up and so what is the difference at that point if it's 99.9 or 99.95 so for me it's almost a nerve-wracking experience when we dip below a quorum and all it takes is this time somebody was yelling from the chair do we have a quorum and you didn't have to recognize that person because they were sitting in their chair but it just takes one person to come up to the microphone and challenge the quorum and then what are we going to do we have to have finish our business on another night right and to me that that would be a shame so great i like the fact of if you want to have a quorum to start the business of town meeting and we could tweak it from there but i would cut it in half or i would reduce it significantly because i don't like to be on pins and needles because it seems that it really falls off at the end of town meeting keep my thought and you'll follow up fix the language here the presence of 100 voters at the town meeting uh to constitute a quorum to open the meeting and then silent on the rest of me you don't have to say well i've got so i've got some language just hold on a second please so yeah but the transaction of the business shall constitute a crime but to open the meeting we need 100 people to open the meeting how's that and that's it you just have to open it for 100. and is that for each night of town meeting or just the first night of town meeting every time you opened it right well some more than towns do it differently that's a good point so because i have language from one town that does this transaction of business is that what do you think yeah trying to look up and see what other types of things okay so the bottom line is i'm hearing a sense that we're interested maybe in still pursuing this so maybe we'll have someone want to look into this um okay good all right so we're ready then we have the other one we have was and this was my oh sorry could we also look into bill's point about representative government is that a topic that well that's a different that's a whole different government so you know i i personally have no objection to putting something on the warrant that's different from this uh i think this discussion points out the fact that this will generate 45 minutes of conversation on the town on the uh floor of town meeting and maybe someone would seek to extend the debate so it's it's kind of a tough one to say you know we're dropping the the quorum to zero or and why is that a good idea right madam chair so we can finish the town's business
this must have happened before it wasn't just this last town meeting right no no well we don't even know if it fell below even then because once you counted that apple was wrong we have uh we have seen don't ask don't tell policy about quorums at time meeting okay so we're good for now on this one we're going to look at this again i think this i just agree with you i think i said that earlier presenting this at town meeting will be generating a lot of it may or may not you you may not have any discussion okay mr feng sorry yes so to your point madam to your point madam chair may be worthwhile to have a 30 to 45 minute public forum on the topic so people who feel um very strongly about the topic can come and let us know their thoughts okay we can have a public once we determine what we're recommending well not necessarily you have it you have a public forum on the topic this is what we're thinking about and what do you all think maybe no one will show
okay so then michael then asked um about we currently have and miranda and i talked about this one as well we currently have in our bylaws that certain staff members automatically can answer questions rather than having you know it expedites the things that michael brian there's quite a few of them tom holder i think might say all of them but the question was michael wanted um to have staff being able to participate in the debate and when i mentioned this to miranda she said basically you're asking for non-residents to participate in the debate so go ahead miranda you want to talk about okay so i don't sure so i don't know that this is necessarily bylaw it's definitely in the moderator's rules and that's in rules that i i expanded um in terms of who's allowed to um answer questions such as the town manager assistant town manager clerk council police chief fire chief finance director dpw director public buildings director and superintendent schools and i expanded that in my moderator's rules so i asked that question to moderators i got fewer responses for whatever reason but i will tell you that the overall um opinion was this is that um a lot of towns allow uh town staff to to part to answer questions factual questions but participating in debate was a big no-no was um it was more yep factual questions make sense if they're the experts for lack of a better word who can speak to any questions that get asked at town meeting um and you you we see that our own town meeting that we need we need the town staff there uh to help answer questions and and give as much information as possible at town meeting and so um but the issue about having them participate in debate was a no unless they are a registered voter of the town then in that capacity they are more than welcome to participate in debate but not as a as a as a town employee the deliberative process is intended for the voter not for staff thank you for reminding me and read advising me about the third time but that that that information is in the moderator's rules not in the code and i keep saying that i'm sorry about that okay don't worry like this was one you you asked us to look at so you should probably hop in here too but do we need to really expand the list with this song from do we need to expand the list who can answer questions at town meeting that's on the staff to department heads or something like that or what the right word is so that we do save that time and not have to have and so and so speak and then we vote that does does that solve what your concern was i don't think and i go to tell me in my hometown that staff participates in the debate i think they're participating in debate to the extent they're answering questions as residents are debating but i think we had a short list of people but i think it would be beneficial if it extended maybe to department heads because you know more often than not there's a question about say wreck and i need katherine brenner or i need the hr director or somebody um come up and if they were just on a short list maintained maybe by the moderator promulgates a list of people that she will permit in advance so people know yeah michael what i could do is work with you on um what would make the most sense i'm happy to expand the list certainly last the last time meeting the it department was really important so um um after you know after we called somebody from his sick bed to come in to town meeting and answer questions so um i have no problem with that expanding the list for for town meeting for town staff to come in and answer questions that's that to me the the point is to make the voters as informed as possible if they have questions the questions should be answered so that they can make informed decisions before they vote and so i i'm happy to expand the list and so if you give me a list of people i can just make under the moderator's rules since that's how we do it in in wayland it's been a hub if the moderator lets them then i can just expand the list just so you know i send out an email ahead of time meeting every year to all the department heads of senior staff and i indicate that if you have a warrant article there will be questions and or you're there's something in your budget that the finance committee others have asked you need to be a town meeting okay to be prepared so i can share with you kind of that that yeah yeah that'd be great senior staff and department heads that i anticipate would have to be there in the wings great so we we do that thank you maranda that's terrific if michael's happy with that then we don't need to have an article because it wasn't even in the code to begin yeah so we'll put on that one okay so before maranda leaves us i want you to put your attention to the top of this page which talks about 36 for resolutions and this is when like i just said a few minutes ago these jobs don't come with me on news this was like the thing the new thing i learned for the week when i read this so i put this in the packet if you look at item b and i want to believe it it's just a couple points here because we'll visit this a couple times but under section b it says when we close the warrant for any annual or special town meeting they shall insert an article to see whether the town will act on resolutions not within the scope of other articles the article on resolution shall be the last article in the warrant so far so good ready and all resolutions which are submitted shall appear under this article one article so if there's more than one resolution they all belong in the same article which i believe to be honest with you when we had multiple resolution articles last time was probably the first time i ever saw that but so now we all know this is the rules of the world here for this shared it with miranda we talked about it and we were we're good to go on that um i do also wanted to share real quickly i took this resolutions under advisement said you know we need to have it better more fluid easier system than we had last year and had a conversation with um with with the moderator and also with town council and i think what we're going to do for next year is we're going to have uh offer our petitioner article sponsors if there are any and zoom meeting at least we'll have the moderator the town council the select release on a member of the staff and maybe the first just for the first year the chair just to see how this flows if the side deal works and have the petitioner present their information to town council in that one group meeting and then everybody in that room here's the same answer at the same time as to whether it's an article or a resolution at which time we the board if it's we are told it's a resolution versus an article we will make a decision to treat it as a resolution and then advise the petitioner and if it's an article it's an article so does it sound that's where we're at right miranda yep it sounds right because we had a lot of emails going back and forth you know telling everyone this is what town council said oh ask that to do to do so this i think is what we've come up with and i think it will hopefully uh be a smoother process should we have multiple petitioner articles but but carol but based on that but based on that bylaw you would have one warrant article you could have multiple resolutions and i would they could be on very a variety of topics you would have to have i would recommend and that would be ultimately be the moderator's decision is to vote on each resolution individually if they're all under one warrant article a series of motions right exactly under under one warrant article yep right we do with the cpa when they have multiple yep uh grants yep that category of a funding source right uh we would do on that way as well yeah um since doug and i were front center on uh last year i had this idea about him as well and i you were pretty comfortable with this new process right yeah we'll try it but anyway this is much this so i took care of that one then for the moment we can see what that was okay miranda thank you so much do you have anything no thanks for having me thank you for all your work everybody thank you so much thank you um and then the last one we have is that michael wants to talk to us about a possible article for cable franchise fee so the floor is yours sir oh thank you madam chair i don't have anything in uh the packet this evening and i will be working with town council i recently shared some emails with uh jim malane over at wakeham and i believe i may have copied select board member levine on at least one of them what what transpired is the way we have over the years in our contract passed the cable fees through to um wakeham who does our cable service for us their our cable company for lack of better words what was permissible in the past in our previous contract was we just essentially assigned the checks over to them we'd send an email to verizon comcast and just say you can direct these to wake camp um unbeknownst to us when we reviewed the contracts uh select board member levine and i as well as mr malane and somebody from there an igr came out from the department of revenue saying that that was no longer permissible because they are technically town funds they should go to the town first and to be appropriated by town meeting back to whether it's a town apartment or a third party that we contract with and so there is at least one mechanism that's been mentioned which is to have well there's two i think we could have a special account for this or we could have an enterprise account and i've been talking to ap law about this they provided me a a new template for an updated contract which was your some of these but then we would have to put an article before town meeting to create this type of account and have an annual article that appropriates those funds that go into this either special revenue to the enterprise fund or over for we can so uh i know mr malane had asked for the igr this informational guideline from the department of revenue and the new contract i sent that to him about a week ago i'm looking to see what they you know feel about it and then i just paid working with town council to create an article to create the account and then we'll have an annual motion i looked at some other towns do this you know what it came up during uh one of the questions about the money transferring mr maline came up quarterly i was looking into how we do this uh how we just brought the monies in previously and um talking with somebody said oh you have to use an enterprise account now that's one of my one of the people i was speaking to and i looked into it and this came up so what you're actually saying is for 27 we like to have two articles one to establish the special slash enterprise account and then the other would do the annual yeah there'll be a creation yeah right and then go put so doug you're the uh the liaison and you've been involved with this do you want to add anything here no i think you covered it an action that we probably need to take we have to take that action and i would anticipate it's almost like a consent agenda item every year they can just transfer the nba um franchise it'll be two separates because it'll be different and then but um i i have one quick question here do we have it we don't have any funding to put into it funds to put into the the transfer article for next year i think prospectively we would have to say that all the inbound uh franchise fees they come in quarterly we'll go into that okay okay does anyone have any questions or comments on that all right so you'll i'll keep that i'll work on the getting a draft yeah okay all right i think we'll finish with that for a while um all right so i think the next item is going to be in the supplemental packet might be supplemental two packet it is a copy of the of the program is um discussion review of the role of the capital improvement planning committee and uh what i put in the packet was the actual article that we voted on the 2025 annual time meeting uh article 17 establishment for the captain who was in the committee chapter 20 so that we know what what we voted into place here so does everybody find that all right i think bill you had asked for this topic right so i put this on here that reason thank you i appreciate that so um when we first i think talked about the notion of a long-term capital improvement from many advisory committee uh my sense was that if you're going to look at longer term projects um you know we know we've got a significant amount of debt that's going to be in part with respect to the water project we know the school committee is proposing replacement of uh a lot of facilities uh we know that something's going to happen uh to town offices and you know there are the usual capital improvement projects that are advanced by markets and so forth um last year as i recall the uh capital improvement planning committee did an excellent job of uh looking at various potential projects came up with a list of recommended projects that differed materially i think from of the uh 2026 uh five-year capital plan and as i recall there's some back and forth uh between uh or among michael uh brian and the cipc about which projects go in and which projects come out uh it then goes to the finance committee and the finance committee then looks at uh questions of uh not only the operating budget capital budget so it seems that we've got a number of layers here and uh last year the the cipc had just been formed and they didn't really have time i think to do the longer term
respective planning so it just strikes me that we're missing that longer term view of things and a lot of attention uh by the town manager the finance director the capital improvement planning committee and the finance committee of the the term or the coming years of capital uh improvements and it just strikes me as um perhaps too many eyes on the next year's budget and not not really looking but i think it's a lot of things they're understanding kind of the long-term needs and the long-term capacity for capital projects uh troubles so
speakers if i may then i am just like turning like this so you're absolutely right i mean they had they got established in september and right they did what and they they actually worked hard and they're a very capable group of people so what their function is when you read through this they recommend to the town manager because that's the town manager bylaw michael is the one that prepares the capital budget so then goes to the finance committee they actually have um and then this year they are currently working on just the first five years however they have created they've gone through and reconciled because there were a couple things in there that went twice or whatever or the monies which whatever so they've done all the reconciling they've now gone forth and michael can speak to this better than i can they've gone back and they revised the submission process so that it's all electronic and if you make any changes to the plan because often you know someone will have something in this year and then they decide i'm going to move it forward but they don't flag it as such so that now flags and also uh so with the new floor that went into place uh the decision was made that this until they did the report in october they will only focus on the years two five then the department heads are going to go back and fill in the later years so they are going to start working on that once their report's doing october 14 on october 15th is that your understanding michael yes so i think you have to go back when they came on board they wanted to take fresh approach to this so um i thought they were going to look at just that first year capital plan but they decided to take the full five year um plan and not just uh or the full program so i guess we we have two different terms the the capital plan is for the next fiscal year and the capital improvement program is the five-year plan and uh the chair and i were involved on the working group to help come up with this and we did talk about extending this out further years which is why in section 20-3 it says the a term of years shall be determined by the town manager but no less than five years we want to start our five once they got themselves established discuss creating maybe upwards of a 10-year capital plan so that's why it gives room to to grow but i anticipate that they will be starting to talk about things that are further on out that is in part why they pushed the some of the improvements on this building out uh the other year because they want to look at the long-term capital needs of the town um this year i think the process is going to be much more smooth because they already established the five-year plan and the idea is my department heads are now supposed to be um establishing the the request for the years at the end so the outer years so if we're at we're doing 20 29 30 31 32 up around 33 and those are then supposed to slide down this committee is also looking at unanticipated needs um i don't want to give some specifics but that occasionally there is a department says you know our priorities have changed we need to change the order but to your point select board member whitney they are starting to look and the plan was eventually to expand this beyond five years so that they're looking at at least 10 and maybe further um i just think because they're brand new we haven't got to that point so so who owns the excuse me the five-year capital plan well they make a recommendation to me and then mr kevin and i would review that and then we take their in theory if it's all going according to plan and we give input and i talk to my department heads their recommendation is something that we should be comfortable with and we pass over to finance the finance committee and they make the final recommendation to tell me um yeah i've been talking with mr kevin and my department heads about this and so far everything appears to be very straightforward there's probably not going to be a lot of conflict and that was in theory what we had hoped to achieve by this that we build some consensus and we have different eyes from the town so it is a process they make a recommendation to me i present it to all the town boards and the finance committee and they can either adopt it or send it back to us for change so they make a recommendation to you you then make a recommendation to the finance committee they make a recommendation yes well who prior to the establishment of this committee who who did the five year capital plan the finance director and i did and other towns that have capital and capital improvement planning committees have a very similar model where i know in my hometown we have a capital improving planning committee they make recommendations actually directly to town meeting but it's the town manager's budget in that town um the finance committee is advisory um but it's it's almost the same number of eyes and steps the reason i was in favor of the capital improvement planning committee is because you have people that live in the town and and have been interested in finance that would devote uh additional time in delving into these meetings where the town manager given all the other duties doesn't always have the time to do the in-depth review um so we participate i may not always go to these meetings but i'm talking with my department heads base we review the minutes we have conversation about the questions i meet with mr keveney i can't be at every meeting but we do um through email communications make sure that things are moving along and um they have the time to do um you know analysis and question of department heads and i i don't think it's a bad process i do think it gets much more thoroughly vetted this way um and you you know just having the additional eyes on it so to what degree does the finance committee then dig into something that has been recommended to you by the cipc and then you send along to the finance committee do they regard it as cooked for one of a better term um not necessarily because i think last year when we got there there was some changes there was questions about uh adding additional projects on whether how we were going to finance them um ideally did you want some checks and balances i know because we've been short on people that we have i think madam check and correct me one person is serving on both committees correct so ideally you would almost want an independent body with no guys the finance committee working with the town staff uh to reach a consensus and give it over uh i i i wouldn't say it's cooked because you know we've talked about our financial planning um you know we may produce a recommendation that exceeds what they like to see in terms of increases year over year we have our financial guidelines there may be exceptions where we ask for additional things and i i know one department is asking for more than they have in the past um there's going to be some questions coming from the cipc and if they adopt that recommendation they will get again questioned at fincom so i i don't think you know probably a majority of the items there are probably good requests but there's always going to be a handful like last year at the last minute the um the ball fields down it and some of the repairs to the wastewater those those were the outliers i think you raise a really good point though because when we were in when you said it and michael said the working group reminded me we spent a long time discussing on the the length of the capital plan and we recognized it was a lot to be done to get make sure we're on a solid foundation with the first five years but i have actually spoken to them uh the committee and what have you been on and like i said once this reports in and the recommendation goes to michael for this town meeting they then are planning to turn their attention to the other years i think last year we had an article at town meeting a little bit about this that we needed to uh again something else was even more long term and i said don't support this give us a year because i think the sipsy will start to produce it i really feel that they um as a former finance committee remember i can tell you there was a there was almost like the squeakiest wheel sometimes projects they weren't because the time frame to look at them were so short you didn't have time to really put a full analysis and this group is doing it and they've got a prioritization scale but like michael said they're flexible because they're focusing on making sure we're getting the best bang for the buck i think i don't know if i'm making this sound better or not but no they will get there i just don't know no i i appreciate that and you know in honor to have a very good group of course i'm just curious the degree to which of the recommendations about spending are informed or constrained by the amount of debt service that we think we can afford in view of you know the bonding that we're going to be doing for the wastewater uh perhaps for the schools since we're going forward apparently with a request or two million dollars of the town meeting is there is there a debt service number that we don't want to exceed that informs the the recommendations about the projects balancing the sources and the use yeah right i know every time they adjust the plans kevin has to go back and look at all the funding sources we do have and i don't have it committed to memory in our financial policies some guidelines about how much um yeah we should be a budget spend plan during the top of my head so it's four to six on levy but i think we've gone back on levy because we don't have any unused levy there's this is also dovetails with we need that threshold for what's a debt exclusion you know the article there's on about two two million two two two somewhere around there so three cash there's a surplus or close
and then there's now we're actually using someone from the cap stabilization fund because that's now going to want that's kind of balance we're able to try to slowly roll that in um this is one of the reasons last year there was a lot of the wrong word is growing pains but you know getting off off to a good start and i think that this year to me i haven't had as many um
conversations that things weren't going smoothly as last year but i do think it's take a couple years i'm doing a great job myself but i'm upset but i do think you're absolutely right we want to keep our eye on this because we've put two reasons one we want to make sure that the capital spend plant is within the guidelines of what maybe we need to have a conversation you know an agenda item about that as we go on what is the white capital spend plant um i can put that down if you like oh if other members aren't concerned about it i don't i don't wish them about it oh they're interested i'm sorry if i seem quiet don't be it's only this is very important to me and i hear about it a lot i just have to listen but i do hear that a lot of people i hear from who like tell me they vote feel that planning ahead is not one of our strengths that's what we're hoping to kiss the committee dies right but but to your point because perhaps we haven't done as much planning ahead they kind of had to go back and put the ducks in order if you will it's a big topic yeah um and i think that that's one thing maybe we need to look at the spend plan um i think we the board to your point you need to keep an eye on to make sure that we are expanding beyond the five years and it does say in here that the term is is identified by the town manager so you know we can say to michael we want to see the 10 years out we want to see the 12 years out we want to see the four years out whatever it is so anyways doug or um do you have any comments here well um i appreciate um bill whitney raising the issue my sense is this that the bylaw has them really do two main things right study the current and long-term proposed capital projects and number two prepare this report um uh relative to long-term capital planning before october 15th i get a sense that that the committee is is still working through its charge and um i think this process should be watched closely and maybe we have a meeting with them you know in six to eight months or something and uh um but um you know they're they're a pop in a committee i don't think anyone disagrees about that and they um they've been working hard but i really i do appreciate the whitney's points my hope is this this will work out and there'll be some predictability and and uh flow
so we did have um just want to wrap this up and say that we did actually have the chair of the sipsy committee come to us last year and provided us with their recommended report um that's coming out in october we could do that or we could wait a little bit later maybe more twisty summer because by then they will probably have started working on a little more in the long term that would give us could give us a flavor if we think we like that plan how's that sound a little bit later bill was there ever a previous iteration of the sipsy committee in prior years what we can learn it from when i was on the board many years ago town didn't have a five-year capital plan and so that was one of the things that we instituted and so that's that sort of like frame of reference that that there has been this five-year capital plan and then place that the current year is is sort of uh capital spending is sort of gauged against the the five-year plan and isn't consistent there's something moving up and if so you know does something slide back so uh but we were kind of missing the longer term right thing which i had a sense that uh this committee might basically confine itself to but uh that's obviously not complete the one the one the one article says so my sole purpose of participating in that working group was exactly what you said i think that's you know one thing in the finance committee you know previous is that things really weren't always that as we weren't really getting the priorities done always you know maybe 90 hit it but you know some of it wasn't the last minute oh can i also have and so i feel really comfortable with what you've done but i really truly will not feel comfortable with the work is being done until we know in year blah blah whatever it is 2030 2032 we might have this expense for example for a school building we need to know that we need to know that as we're going forward actually i have to tell you part of what's informed a lot of discussions is knowing that in fy29 we're all going to be having our first payments due for this mwra construction project and so we've been having these financial planning discussions that has come up a couple times so we as of town i'm starting to have those discussions we just have to be hopeful that they're going to continue all right should we move to the next item also okay the next one is um not meant to be a long discussion tonight i just want to get this started it is the um review and discuss the updates so the select board policies and procedures document which we call the select board manual it says we last reviewed it in 22 i don't know if we did or not um and the second thing we'll do there's a minor amendment to the social media policy this isn't a supplemental packet by itself because it's a fairly lengthy document and i will say this i know bill started working on this he was the chair we worked under a bunch michael has worked on it i think some of the staff has worked turned abby has also worked and i've worked on this and the goal here is to make michael have his happy face on and get this done no i didn't finish so what i'm hoping that we do tonight is we start to look at it it's a really big big document but i would like to recommend three things that so that we can really narrow on what we have to discuss is first of all you allow us to make the edits to change select mend select board and then you allow us to change the word town administrator to town manager and then you allow us to change i think it stops on page 42 and goes to the end of the document all the new policies that we have done in the last couple years they're highlighted in red because they're new additions to the document if we could just have the permission for starters to do that then i think it will narrow in on what we really have left to do and quite frankly i don't think it's that much so um i believe that um in the packet abby also gave you sheep a little uh you know little cliff notes here that most of the red text inserts for all the new policies which are now you know listed on this sheet and um before we get into anything in so is everybody good with that those three little edits coming on in the next and we see the document i think it'll just be set down and be so much clearer for where we're at um i want to let michael have a word because he's raising his hand at me so thank you madam chair um how this started when i first got here this was on our website the select board manual and when i was looking at it most of these glaring hadn't been addressed uh select men versus select board town administrator and as i started delving deeper into it i i realized that there were actually two versions of this it was one that was on the website and one published elsewhere and uh as policies were being added they went to one another so we had like two branches of the same thing so i think madam chair and abby and i are working on version six of this because i had version one i found version two i merged those then i started making my edits to bring it into line with the town manager act then we met with bill around version four then we met with carol around version five and then we got some other staff input to make version six which i think incorporates some of our new financial policies as well so it's been a labor of love over the last couple of years and every time we try to get it to the point we bring it to the board something comes up or a new policy gets added but um carol and i discussed excuse me madam chair and i discussed over the summer that it was time to get this to the board because it was on as madam chair and indicated it was on one of these lists of uh goals that we wanted to get an updated manual for the board and published with all of our policies on the website i mean i think at this point we're really close to the goal line on this one and i think we look at it over a couple a couple more meetings we could really get this done i have to tell you a piece of advice that that can really help you and will save you a huge amount of time because i've been doing it at work recently if you feed the policies into an ai platform like chat gpt and ask it to look for any conflicts with this document and it will spit it out instantly if you've missed anything and it will also suggest language improvements and it will give it to you right away i mean i can't keep up with this system it's just next level and we need to talk to someone else really and i would like it we started doing it making sure it was an index document maybe with html so that when you go to the index you can just click the policy you want to see it'll jump down with references a lot of documents will do that and so i think there's a lot of those things that ai could just it's a catch-all it'll find stuff that you just might have missed because it's such a long document i will tell you this there's a couple items i just want to give another little thing as we created we formalized our financial policies last year right and when i'm reading this document i've been saying this yeah this stuff in here i don't think belongs in here there's a couple that are the financial policies so they should go over there and i'll i will take that and between now and the next minute to compare to make sure what's here is in there and what's all one the other thing is interesting is there's one in here near the end that says then hiring of the staff under the jurisdiction of a select board first of all we don't hire any of the staff the only person we hire is the town manager so this is what i refer to as a procedure in other words something that michael creates you know probably doesn't belong in the document either so um before we go off does anyone have any just real quick high level things or any immediate edits they want to add in and well i was curious why the financial policies weren't part of this
we can i don't know if you want to incorporate them by reference it was just that we had the help from the state come in and develop those and they drafted a lot of that for us i suppose we could add them into the bottom and have one large document one document i don't know and i didn't have the benefit of artificial intelligence but i did notice in one place uh it talks about how uh no alcohol can be consumed on town property in another instance it talks about uh the fact that one can uh seek permission to have uh malta in the line at the uh uh at the town building you know i saw that too and i thought well how come we can't get a permission only the permission give us so that's one of the things that okay let me look at that any type of internal contact will be caught instantly anything like that what's the name of the thing in your prison chat gpt it's incredible you know what i'm going to do with this i'm calling up annie yeah it's all about to do this in two seconds it's really user friendly i do not no thank you sir no thank you madam chairman excuse me did you have any more comments okay i do want to bring your attention though on the document to the social media policy which i think is on uh let's just think of page 42 and when we talked about revising some of our policies doug uh doug tom took the uh social media policy right and he had an edit which is now in here and it's on page 42 if i can find 42 will be in business um did you want to speak to this sure so this is on paragraph 16 of section roman numeral 4 and i insert a phrase other than is provided by mgl chapter 53 section 18b and that um has to do with ballot questions and the um effort to uh permit the town to comment on ballot questions um to give some perspective so um that's uh why i inserted that phrase there so from you're in the social media policy yeah that's supposed to be in the social media policy am i in the right page yeah so it has to do with town and department so it has to do with the regular packet sorry to give back okay all right go ahead i'm sorry tom so this has to do with uh town department uh town town employees or department uh including department personnel these are social media to endorse or otherwise uh site you know vendors suppliers clients stakeholders employees may not engage in political activity during working hours so um 5318b is under the umbrella of political activity right because ballot questions typically have not included commentary uh or explanation in the past um are you concerned that that first line won't apply to the whole paragraph and would only apply to that first sentence well that's a good point first line to apply to the whole paragraph that's a good point um you've got two sentences there that talk about political activity political posts um yeah that's a good point maybe that phrase should go at the end maybe um yeah all right so you're thinking maybe at the end put something like um notwithstanding before going yeah right maybe um you know to the extent as provided under mgl yeah right that's correct yes because i read the second sentence is not related to mgl 5318b yeah that's fine you wanted to apply to that all right all right so so um we can make that amendment connect and come back another meeting or uh or just authorize the town manager and me to revise it pursuant to your point
okay now i'm gonna i think do we have to vote this right the whole document or just the end no we're just voting the amendment policy right paragraph 16 right yeah social media policy we're going to amend that we'll make the amendment and then that will not be read anymore
but we wanted to amend it such that we go off and you give authorization to tweak it as necessary uh tom do you want to make the motion uh tom do you want to make the motion then please no i move this board uh authorize the town manager and myself to edit paragraph 16 of the social media policy under section 4 um consistent with uh the board member levine's comments uh relative to chapter 53 section 18b so that well that revision can be made second does anybody want to make that admit that motion any longer no
mr faye yes miss larry yes mr reynolds yes mr whitney yes mr martin yes that's gonna be five zero now i want to ask a question here i thought that the amendment
the social media policy was going to be about the use of ai why did i think that what not
i'm sorry no that's not my memory
because that's not what you put out but that's what we would do so i've said staff is looking in i.t about an internal you know policies about ai okay so i don't have any more to do with this one okay so we'll we'll see this from again and we'll have some it'll be a little cleaner to read and we'll move along and see if we can't get this done in a couple meetings okay i think we are now on number 15. i haven't skipped any heaven tell me and this is your report thank you madam chair uh we only have a couple items um as i mentioned at the beginning of meeting we'll mention it a couple leaves again because they're on the agenda uh the hazard mitigation plan update public meeting is scheduled for tomorrow wednesday the 23rd from 10 30 a.m to 11 30 a.m it will be online but i know that there may be some folks over at the community center but this is the opportunity um for the town of wayland to have its residents businesses and community members come in and help shape our hazard mitigation plan which is a critical document that i find natural hazards and risk facing the community and outlines the strategies to help reduce damage to the people property and infrastructure in our environment so if you wish to participate we encourage you to do so you can check on the website for the link or you can be there in person as i understand as for a financial planning update we continue to meet on a regular basis we met last week to go over some of the numbers that are changing as you know we've we've talked about where we are with the levy and you know we're encouraging departments to look for savings going forward every time we get a little bit of good news we also get some news that isn't always great as i mentioned to the board previously our the price of energy has been going up we met last week with our energy consultants and there had been a dip in the electricity uh last friday so they advised and we had already been given authorization by this board um the consultant recommended we buy and we bought a contract for one year for electricity um just so we can see where we are rather than buy a two or three year contract so um energy is up as i've indicated over 20 percent um so that is one thing we weren't planning on but we've started to see some savings and we'll continue to meet regularly and i'll when we have uh a formal presentation i'll bring it back to the board as to what um where we are with regard to fy28 um vaccine clinics i mentioned earlier there's going to be two different ones one for residents and non-residents over 60 years in age that will be held on october 7th from 8 a.m to 11 a.m in the morning here in the town hall in the large hearing room and then for residents non-residents and town employees over the age of 12 there'll be a separate one on october 14th between 3 p.m and 7 p.m again in the large hearing room um recap from our last meeting there's been a couple things um we did have our 9 11 celebration memorial that occurred over at the public safety attended uh following that i did have my town manager office hours and the two biggest topics there um resident came in was concerned especially with this being um overdose and opioid awareness at the time of year that the town look into getting uh much like aed boxes at various town facilities and recreation areas narcan boxes so that um they've asked if there was any way they could get cpa funding or or work with recreation so we're going to look at that and then um leif mclair who was here earlier he came along with uh someone else from the dudley pond association um asking for assistance with this commonwealth of massachusetts a 640b grant to get money for an environmental study as to uh what's going into dudley pond causing the the the bloom of all these uh invasive plants and he was here as you know this evening and you would ask me to mention that um when i came around um to uh my announcements so uh they they have come just as they did this evening looking for assistance from the town on applying for the grant um there were also two other events that we attended last week we attended the planting of the liberty tree as part of the america 250th celebration uh i know select board chair and vice chair um martin and faye were there i'll let them address it in their comments and then there was a well-attended event called coffee with a cop at the community center on friday it was went on for a couple of hours and it was different than usual chief ebert brought over about a half dozen different officers from different disciplines and he put them at tables and we put up they put up information showing what each officer did so that people could learn about what the different disciplines they had a detective they had the sergeants and people who are on our tactical unit so it was very good and uh i went over for a while talked to a lot of residents they were very well received people i would say a good time meeting our officers and i'm sure we'll host that again and that's what i have yeah anybody have any questions for me mr mccoll i have two if i may so it has a mitigation this occurred to me today as a mitigation or they came with us and then they go and they gather information but then they have a final report so they'll be coming back to the board do we have a sense of when that would be i can get that information tomorrow but i would imagine it'll be a couple of weeks after you know i'll i'll ask abby to follow up on that for me thank you the other question i have is is that the w1 association that you mentioned and they came in at the public comment the grant is due october 7th remaining on the 5th that looking for support should we put together an agenda item or is that something that i'm not sure how do you propose we handle that request um they really told me the other night that they would be coming tonight um i knew they wanted money they proposed the grant um i would say put it on for discussion they probably need us to to endorse write a letter or something along those lines i i will have to look into what the 640b grant requirement the application requirements are from us um they're a non-profit they're seeking the money but i i need to know when our commitment we have a draft letter in the package that the board could look at this which one wants to go forward all right um thank you very much didn't anybody else have any questions i'm going to move along we did the concerns i think we're on the minutes the minutes are on page 52 minutes of 831 and then we have the minutes of 98. a motion please approval of the minutes of uh august 31st 2006 as amended thank you thank you do anybody have any evidence to the minister 31st
i do go ahead please a 15 there's a sentence that reads the um the consensus from that working group was that the town building should continue that should read um if it is if it is the consensus from that working group that the town building should continue to house town offices and the buses uh then possibly the buses could continue to be parked at town building and the reason is because the working group um i'm not sure it's met yet and i don't believe any consensus and any topics has been achieved yet although i haven't attended any meetings but um so i just ask that chances be revised thank you you don't have any others do there's minutes um no i have
okay page 55 first paragraph and that lewis chair of the planning board should be comma strike the word planning planning i have um ace do you have any things like a six deal of evil seconded by t-pay to reappoint david larry i think his name is as it's spelled as it is up above vi as opposed to va um um an 8 15 oh that's the one that you just talked about tom i i like that one too um and i think that's it isn't it all right so that's it all those in favor of the minutes of 831 as amended we'll say i that's good chris hi um bill yes yes yes and carol yes the motion passes five zero minutes of nine eight please approval of minutes of september the 8th 2026 is amended thank you second thank you anybody have any edits okay i have one fill it to test it i want you to look at it it's an a11 the paragraph down the bottom it says c martin will second by the teeth bay to close the hearing because the applicant has withdrawn the application with intent to reapply her later david next fan let's go for work period w whitney question whether what was near if the chair could simply close the hearing and then we didn't mention that language was found so the board could proceed and we need to add that in then it says see i almost know that there was a double form of 30 that need to be addressed are you okay with that addition okay and then i think it says pointing in the correspondence
anybody else all right all those in favor say i tom yes doug yes um bill yes yes yes yes yes motion passes five zero you want to correspondents anybody have any comments about the correspondence all right there ain't none let's move to select boards reports and concerns who would like to start this i have not bill uh at the risk of stealing some of tom's thunder i would uh indicate that the uh rfp for 212 kachichua is is available and uh so we have a number of people who picked up information but more the merrier mr living um we have had some luck recruiting speaking of recruiting several folks for the organizing committee for the civil discourse initiative so we have a representative from wayland community action network from uh the metco board from hrdei and from the whalen chinese american association and i will turn those names over to michael shortly and okay and are we still on target for the um the meeting 14 14. to meet with the board yeah um i'll chat with you about that offline okay um mr frank do you have any reports three items um i'd like to thank the dbw for their assistance in the planting of the liberty tree which occurred a few days ago michael mentioned that uh great to have carol there and and um members of the whalen 250 committee so as you drive by the um melon law office you'll uh you'll see it uh on route 20 just to the right if you're heading west um number two i wanted to acknowledge mike lowry's comments relative to the unsafe uh road conditions um near his near his home during this long-standing issue i won't comment further because the matters in litigation and three uh there has been a sharp increase in the state um where younger young people particularly children and teens have suffered severe injuries due to e-scooters and um scrambler motorbikes um and there's only so much we can do as a community to uh address this this issue but i do i am hopeful that we can continue to explore that and to the extent we can as a community whether it be enforce speed limits or enforce whatever rules are relative to kids wearing bike helmets or simply just um unsafe operation i think we should do that um i'm just concerned that um we're going to have more more incidents than we've had already that's all i have thank you thank you i have a couple items first i want to say that um i know everybody's aware of it it's not really so much for the board as i'm just advising those who are listening the town manager's office it is now has three people doing four jobs until we've been finally filled up positions with assistant managers um i think everyone to just be mindful of that that you know there's something going on a request that is a more of an urgent nature i mean they're doing they're doing a terrific job keeping things going but you know i just bear that in mind the other thing i want to mention is and i keep meaning to ask michael to put this on account manager update so maybe you could do this is that as i make this mistake too um everybody's so nice and in the town manager's office that if you ask for something they'll kind of attend to it rather than ask if it's not their area responsibility so i would like us to have maybe a brief conversation of who does what uh so that we can kind of be mindful and respectful of the positions the um the boston um oh damn i can't remember right anyways regional mpo um has uh elections every year and they have a regional at large uh position for which concord has applied and they've asked for uh whalen's support and it's a very interesting situation because they look to speak to the town manager and then they want this letter of support just from the chair it doesn't have to be the board devoted i did endorse that on as the chair but i wanted to know that i did that it's a lot of work according to mr hummel so i'm very thrilled on our behalf that concrete is stepping up and we are in some regional programs with concord so we have a good working history so i just want everyone to know that i endorsed that nomination basically let someone else do that wonderful work on our behalf all right and then finally i have an article that was in the globe on 921 at holly at holy cross they have a program well they have small galleries of students to talk about other topics that they normally would not talk to one another about and they go to dialogue dinners food for thought where they have constructive discourse and i wanted to mention that that we are in good company because the holy cross is doing it and i think so kudos to wayland for you know being in the forefront of yet another exciting program that's going to well serve the community and uh with that i will say i will take the motion to adjourn at 9 31. so moved thank you thank you two seconds thank you all right all in favor uh chris yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you very much thank you very much thank you everyone good night recording stopped