October 5, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript

October 5, 2026 - Select Board

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Good evening. As chair of the select board, I'm going to call tonight's meeting on the select board to order. It is Monday, October 5th, 2026 at 6 p.m. We are in the Wayland Town, Berlin, and we are in the Wayland Commons room. The meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, it will be made available to the public on WayCamp as soon as possible after the meeting. We do have executive session this evening, and the public will be excluded from that portion of the meeting. Pursued to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with the outlook of law. One may want to participate remotely with the meeting link, but can be found on the town calendar or on the select board agenda. We require 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 town building or via remote access. Public comment we request be limited to two minutes per person. I'm going to read the agenda in a moment, but before, I want to note that all agenda items are listed, are approximate, and may not be discussed in the order that are listed, and all topics will be subject to deliberation and vote. So, joining me this evening, we have Mr. Whitney, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Fay, Mr. Levine, and myself, Aaron Martin. We will be joined by our town manager, Mr. McCall, shortly. So, after announcements and public comment, we will discuss and vote in signing an updated November 3 state election warrant. Proximately 620, we anticipate entering into executive session. Pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter 30, Section 21A3 to discuss strategy with respect to the collective bargaining units, the Whale and Police Officers Union, and the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. Also, we will pursue it in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 30, Section 1A3, and we will discuss strategy with respect to litigation on 124 Walshwood Drive. Finally, we will review and approve the executive session limits of September 8, 2026, with the intent to hold said minutes, the meetings of September 27th on the mail for this meeting. So, we participate when we return to open session at approximately 7 p.m., which will be followed by a discussion of both our last select report table to edit and send a letter of support for our grant application to restore and protect the document. On 715, we will undertake probably one of the larger components for this evening to continue our review and discussion on the selected policies and procedures document, commonly known as the select report manual. On 715, we will have an appointment, interview with the diversity of community committee, vote to transfer the remaining unused merit and rest of the plan, act on the owns our products from the snack book camp project on the previously obligated projects. That will be followed by the consent calendar, the town manager's report, minutes of September 22nd, session minutes of both September 22nd, 2026, review correspondence, and then we will discuss and possibly go to formalize the study group on the 212 Chichet Road. In Emperor 18wide. In October. October 28, 815, we have Liquid Olam caloricis hearing. Joelle� éust universit Depois Stern emoJam worldmark licholichohnes. This is afternoon and men with particular� Birazit. And then we have the two addresses mentioned that highlighted at the update discussion on the map in this. approval dispensual toilets. The proposal from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, followed by a discussion with a potential vote to authorize a town manager to send a letter of support to the Massachusetts Municipal Association on behalf of the select board regarding removal of participation. Hopefully at 840, we'll have select board members' reports and concerns with a projected adjournment of 845. Now, do we have any public comment? I don't see any other ones. I'm sorry. Do we have any public comments? I see one person online. Online, okay. Yeah, I can come back.
Hi, Becky. Hey. How are you? Good. You're recognized. I still have my work name, but Rebecca Stanizzi, chair of the Economic Development Committee, just wanted to stop by just informal update. I don't know if you guys have noticed, as you went maybe to Wayland Festival this weekend, the Route 20 corridor is really starting to clean up. You've noticed a lot of the temporary signage is now gone, abandoned cars are being removed, dumpsters are being moved out of sight, people are mowing, a little bit better attention, and importantly, some of these property owners are considering improvements to their building and signage, which is terrific. So, all of this came from a letter that we worked on with Tom and then also with Michael McCall's office. That it went to every single property owner and every single major business, just giving them an update, informational, just reaching out to them, information about terrain, about town center, about curb cut and sidewalk engineering that will happen next year, about heads up that the planning board is doing zoning and it might be of interest to them. And then trying to work together to clean up the corridor, so we've had incredibly good response, people are so grateful to have information and outreach, you know, funny, beginning people, there were a couple people who were like, what is this, like all I hear from the town are tax bills and bad news. And you kind of talk them through it and get to know them and meet them and they understand like, oh, well, everybody's pitching in, everybody's trying to get something to be better in the corridor. So, it was really good, we now have probably 90% contact information for all the property owners, we have met with in person 80% of them probably, and timeframe is we should be able to catch up with some of the other ones. And so, it's been a really great outreach process and keep an eye out for good things to come in the coming months. Thank you.
Any other public comment? I see none. Okay, thank you. Let's go back to announcements. I'm sure we all have one who would like to speak first.
Maybe we all should speak first. All right. I attended the Whalen Fest festivities on Saturday. I was fortunate to spend a good portion of the day, but unfortunately missed the morning session, but I was able to hear several acts on the stage. I was able to hear from the Master of Ceremonies throughout, but equally important, I walked the length and spoke with a number of different folks at the different tables. And I think the common theme was that this event really knocks it out of the park. The predecessor events that operated by themselves, such as the multicultural gathering, as well as Touch-A-Truck, were successful in their own right. But to bring them together, it just takes it to the next level. I also had occasion to speak with Jesse, one of the new owners of Town Center, and he couldn't have been more pleased as well. So, obviously, the weather was ideal, but kudos to Chris, Catherine Brenna, and many others who pulled together the biggest event of the year by far for our community, and we're very fortunate to have it. Anybody else? I'd just like to announce that Terrain, one of our newest business on Route 20, is having an open house on Thursday from 2 to 7 to primarily, and that people will see their event space. They'd ask the new YSVP, but for those who would have an interest in that space, just out of curiosity, not that we have an event to plan, you can do so on Thursday from 2 and 7. It's a lovely space. Mr. Whitney? Well, I, too, attended the Royal Inn Festival. I was there in the morning with a two-year-old. Very good. Were you in the bounce house? And my wife was a little older, and he was very appreciative of it. So, the band, the parade, reflecting a lot of the reading that we have been doing, a book called Hooray, which I can recommend you all. No words, but it's a wonderful book. But it was, no, it was a terrific event, just very impressed with the breadth of representation of non-profits, party groups, for-profits, food, music, to be bad. Thank you.
May I speak quickly for you on this one? Good thing. So, I attended the fest as well, and like Todd, Iowa. I have a really one of the booths. I have so many people. And my last person that I spoke to on the way out was, of course, Mr. Levine. It was me and Ed to each other. And as I, of course, it was everything. It was wonderful beyond. I met, when I was speaking with Catherine, I met Fran, the co-nail of all the booths. And this woman was like, come and pull me, collect me. I don't know, I don't know, 140 booths come in here. I was like, this is so awesome. But more interestingly, I have to say, is that trying to get a parking space, because I went around 11, 30, 12, maybe, was worse than trying to get a space at the mall once this week. It was, if you were, it was actually entertaining. It could be a movie thing. But you could see, every area was different sections, you know, like over here and over there. And there would be a line of cars, sneaking around. And somebody could finally get a space. I think it took me 12, 15 minutes to get a space. You had to hover. Oh, I had to do a three-point turn in the middle of the night.
Anyways, kudos. Kudos, it was terrific. Everybody was happy. Everybody was smiling. Everybody was. And Chris was working very hard. I was having the time of my life. And frankly, by the way, it's contagiously calm and contagiously calm and had to deal with last-minute stuff. People who wanted to get angry and they couldn't, because they didn't take care of very well. I don't want to take the group's time, but we're going to write you a letter to a lot of people. It was just a joy to work at this building. Michael McCall's office. We were joking before you walked in. Several of your colleagues there, they didn't do what I asked for. They did what I needed. And it was just great. And that's what they are like. Yeah. We've got all the agreements signed Friday afternoon. Yeah. Thank you very much. Make it time. Anyway, this is great. Everybody had it. All right. So the next time I want our agenda is going to be on the credits. It starts on page five in our pathage, and it goes on pages six through thirteen. So we'll invite our town clerk to join us, and there was an explanation, and it happened as well, but there's a change to the warrant, and she would like to explain to us, and let's see if we want to resign as well. Laura is yours. Thank you. I'm a town clerk. First of all, I'd like to say, unfortunately, I did not attend the Wayland Festival, but the town clerk's office did have a table there for the first, probably first time in ever or for many years, but we did have a table there. So thanks to Karen Blumenfeld, I believe, who gave us the invitation, and working with Chris and Tram, so Merlin from our office covered it all day. Right. Wow. I was out of town, or I would have loved to have been there. So what brings me here tonight is I attended the math clerk's conference two weeks ago and learned by talking to other town clerks that we needed to check our ballot a little more closely because we could have had extra questions on there that we were not expecting. So the state provides us the sample warrants, which we prepared for your signature several weeks ago, and after I got back to the office from the conference, I realized that on the ballot for precincts one and four, there was an extra question, 10. It's a non-binding question that the state legislation had put on. Of course, we wasn't expecting it because you didn't give us a question to put on, and we just overlooked it when we were preparing the warrant for your signature. So we have prepared, we have updated the warrant with question 10. It's marked accordingly that it's just for precincts one and four, and I confirmed with the state that it does not apply to precincts two and three, and we did a new signature page should you choose to sign it again. I don't think it's at your call if you want to, but it worked out so that it's not required if you don't want to sign it again, but you do have a new signature page if you want to do that. So it was just the legislative body of precincts one and four had initiated this non-binding question within their district and collected enough signatures, and that's why it is on Wayland's ballot, as well as the others that are in Lewinsky's, Representative Lewinsky's, sorry, his district.
Does anybody have any questions regarding this?
Isn't Representative Lewinsky's district includes two and three? Right. I must have the wrong record. Gentiles. Gentiles. Gentiles. Okay. It is precincts one and four. Right. So since you're in one, do you have any questions? I don't. I don't make sense. I don't live here. I'm sorry. I get them confused. Does anybody feel we should read all of this? We have to vote it, right? To sign? Yeah. Or will we go to vote what we did? I think it would be hard to re-vote it with the version that you've provided. My question to you, Matt, this warrant has precincts one, two, and three, and four. So what we have here is the appropriate one. The whole warrant is for all four precincts, but question 10 is only for precincts one and four. So if you look on the last page before the signature page of question 10, I'm pretty sure I marked it that it's for precincts one and four only. Yes. So I have a motion. I'm happy to move that this board vote to support and execute the warrant for the 2022-26 state election as presented by the town. Second. Did you say as a vendor or whatever? As presented tonight. As presented. Okay. Any further discussion? Since we're all here together, I just can say all those in favor. Say aye. Aye. Say aye. So the motion passes 5-0. And do we have another signature page? Do we have one that's earlier? Yes. So we'll get in with our signatures. And we'll wait two seconds before we just get it right back. I would love to wait two seconds. Right? Can we sign that fast? So the sample ballots are on the website, and we will be hanging them outside our office door. We will also post the warrant of the sample, and I'll be working with the council to get that posted in the appropriate places within the next week or so.
And if you don't mind while we're waiting, we just got the ballots in late Friday morning, so we hope to start getting them in the mail tomorrow if anybody's watching and is wondering where their ballots are. So we are working diligently to get those in the mail tomorrow and Wednesday. Perfect. We have over 3,100 ballots at the moment that's been requested for both of us. It's been a little long. We have how many? 3,100. Is it going on? 3,100? That's been requested so far. 1,11. Okay, great. Well, we will thank you for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm going to move us. I'm going to move us. What would end you into executive session? A, pursuant to Mass General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategy with respect to the collective bargaining with the Bonham Union, Royal Police Officers Union, New England Police Penelence Association, Local 176, American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, Abspring, Local 690-122, B. Pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A3, to discuss strategy with respect to litigation on 124 Lake Shore Drive. C, pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A7, to review and approve the executive session minutes of September 8, 2026, with the intent of one said minutes. Is there a second time? Thank you. Motion to enter into executive session. Second. Thank you. The chair declares that a public discussion in these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating, negotiating, or bargaining position of the town. We'll have a roll call. Bill? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. No, yes. 5-0. The chair and vice attendance by Michael McCall, Tom Manager of Jalen Granica, Management Analyst, Communications Coordinator. The board will rejoin the public meeting from the executive session, and we will turn to open session in approximately 40 minutes. I'm going to return the select board meeting to open session at 7-19. So next on our agenda will be to discuss and vote to optimize the chair to enter and send a letter of support for the grant application. It's right here. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Massachusetts, Mass D. would be section 604, section 3, water quality management planning grant program for community-led watershed-based plan to restore and protect the LePont. We had some public comment about this agenda item last week, and I'm going to have Michael speak to this, because he's a little more than I do. Since we had the meeting, we've got a copy of the proposed grant, and we reviewed the grant, and we have in the packet a draft letter that we've been sent to support this, and the task here is twofold. One is to support with the letter, and he also is to submit the grant, and I believe the deadline is Wednesday to submit. So, did you want to speak to this? Thank you, Madam Chair. As I'd mentioned previously during my office hours, members of the Dudley Pond community have come asking for our assistance, especially to sign a letter in support and help them with the application so that they can determine, you know, what's going on in the lake, which is leading towards the proliferation of these invasive plants which are choking the pond. So, this would be one way to help the folks living around Dudley Pond to ensure that we have a valuable resource that people use for recreation and contribute to the ecosystem around there. So, we, you know, there's often little we can do for some of the residents, but I think this is something that by helping them, they went on to build this, they are undertaking this initiative, and I think this is an easy request for us to act on. I think the grant, is the grant, correct? Yeah, that's 50 to 100, it's small, but we'll see if we can get it, so. Any questions on the board on this? I do want to say, you know, so the harvester is not doing the job? They are trying to keep up with the weeds, but the more I can see between climate change and what's, the makeup of the lake, it, the weeds are just growing faster, so they want to do an assessment of what is contributing to it. The, I'll say the chemical makeup of the soil and the water, which is allowing these weeds to proliferate in the other invasive species. So, that's what this, they're looking for this money so that they can make a determination as to what the cause is, and then they'll know how to treat it going forward. I think, as I was going to say, as I said, I forgot these exact numbers, but the harvester is very slow. I mean, the tortoise moves faster, I think. Somehow, I think somebody told me it picked up something like 3,000 pounds of stuff this summer, but it doesn't get all little shallow spots, so the individual homeowners and residents have gone around with these long evastics, and I think it was something like 500 or 500 for a long evastics of leaves and debris in the shallow water and along the edges. And I'm saying yesterday, the summers are, it looked lovely. But, like everything, it's just so easy for it to be a problem. So, this is a great thing. All right. Can we have a motion, please? I move this board-authorized select board chair to edit and send a letter of support for draft application of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Section 604B, Water Quality Management and Planting and Programming for the Community-Led Watershed-Based Plan to restore and protect deadly plants. Second. And do you want to submit the grant?
Yeah, submit the grant. And second. Yes, second amendment. Any further discussion? Otherwise, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries 5-0. I'll work with Abby to get the letter out in high school. Somebody will get the application in for us. Now, we're going to move item number seven is to our, can you continue our discussion we started last week of the select board policies and procedures. It's in a separate path by itself because it's quite large. After last week's discussion, what we did, just to remind everyone, is we got rid of all the reds. We can just see what the edits are on our left. We changed select men to select board. We changed town administrator, the town manager, and then all the policies that were new to the document, we changed from the red type to the black. So, I think first, and if we follow along here, some of these are the edits. Bill worked on this, so he may know what some of these edits are as well. But, to me, I think the first edit is actually on page four. I'm not sure what it is because I don't see it, but it says, the oath of office bind each select board member to adhere to the laws of the common cartel violence.
I'm going to make a note on that one because I have no idea where that one is in there. Page four, page four of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, right here it says, oh shoot, I'll just put a bit of my, do you see what it says? But, oh, yeah, right for that question. Okay, so the next one is one that I raised. It talks about the board's duties are outlined in the town's bylaws and include the following range duties. Number three was interesting because it says to sign veto items on the warrants for payments of all bills in excess of 100 unless otherwise to the town manager. Originally, or actually the bylaw says that we do sign all the items. We do sign all the warrants, what we have authorized to 100,000 for the town manager to do. So I have to really look at that wording. It says what it should say. What is a warrant for payment? It's to the bills, right? Yeah. One of the old days, the board, every meeting, come in with a sheet, we're signing a, I think that's a warrant. Mm-hmm. Do you want to change the word? I think that warrant is the technical word, though, isn't it?
Yeah. When you're paying the bills. Yes. You're wrong. The finance director prepares the warrant on a regular basis and I have to sign off with him. Right. But this is to sign or veto items on warrants for payment of all town bills in excess of $100,000 unless otherwise authorized to the town manager. So what warrants are not, does Michael not have authorization to execute? Anything over 100? My understanding, I thought it was only contracts. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, we authorize, we authorize execution contracts, but we never do warrants for payment. Right. Okay, no, it's a topic, because I think, but years ago, I think we did, and Terry was the chair, so. I think we may have, like, you know, does that part of the town manager have to be the authority in the warrant? Well, that must have it broken. So, since I've been here, my understanding was that was, it was only signing of the contracts over $100,000 that I received board approved for warrants were coming through as a matter of practice for the signature, but the town accountant slash finance director would sign the warrant, and I would just be the co-signer to that. But there's no need for the board to sign the warrants like they use them. Like, I don't believe it. Because I think we noted it. That's what number three says there, right? Well, that's why we're looking at it, because what was there, and then we added this other thing, because a lot of the board to look at this may need, to your point, some editing. Trying to find this, that's what I'm talking about.
We may need to give advice to reflect how we do it today.
We want to talk about different contracts. So, the interesting thing is, that was what I was trying to play out to us, is under the bylaw, we have the responsibility. So, you don't want to say we only do things over $100,000, because the bylaw says we do them, right? Unless this is it.
I've got to find this. Maybe I can never come back to this. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do well. The first one's already a problem. The next one is, to make appointments to town boards, committees, and commissions, hire and appoint a town manager, and confirm certain town manager appointments as provided in the town manager act. This was some, just we edited this a little bit to be more consistent with the town manager act. That's fine. Anyone see any issues with that one? Are the town manager appointments the police chief and the fire chief?
Police chief, fire chief, he does. There's a town clerk, that we confirm. I want to part the case. I've seen it somewhere. I've seen it. You ratify the police and fire chief. I think we also do. You ratify them. We ratify them. You are. Right. We ratify them. Should we say ratify and confirm?
We can say whatever we want. Sure. Fine.
Now, you just ratify a public policy group, is that a personal opinion? I actually just looked into this recently with regard to a CBA. I'll put that in a little bit. And it was actually a public policy warning of the actual definition of ratification when that came. And it turned out that we were trying to determine when the contract was ratified, and that was when the union had signed off on it, even though the legislature had not yet funded it. The language was still ratified. So, we had to find the contracts of the appointments. Not to be too particular. But it's not a police and fire, right?
Finance. So, it's Section 7E. The town manager shall appoint on the basis of merit and fitness with the ratification by not less than three members of the select board. And then it says, the police chief, fire chief, finance director, and library and town clerk.
Trustees to the interviewing and selection. I don't think town manager is. You're just looking at the town manager track language. It says in here now. It says library.
Oh, no, I think it's saying it's just the forms we use. Shall we move on? Should we say ratified and confirm applicable town manager appointments? That makes it easy. Yeah. I said phone from town manager. Yeah. I don't like that.
I don't like that. All right?
You might not like that. No, it's not in there. It must be a typo. I converted it from a PDF to text. So, I'm looking at the state legislature's version. It's just police chief, fire chief, finance director, and town clerk. Right here. That's what it says in three years. That's cool. Move on to the next page. All right. Now, there's some lines here. I don't know what they go through because nothing came through. So, I'll put a highlight to get that. Let's go to page six. The bullet that says members respect the intent of and deliberations conducted in the executive session. Should the executive session have initial caps?
I think so. No? No. Okay. All right. So, we just added in here this reference to the Mass General Laws, Chapter 38, Section 21. What page are you on again? I'm on page six. Right? What page are you on again? Yep. I got it.
Everybody good with just accepting that? Mm-hmm. Yep.
Then, down the bottom on this one, it says, this was revised and restated on date. That must be now, right? The date that we authorized this. The date that we voted. When we voted. The date that we voted. We didn't vote yet. Whoops. Okay. Let's go to the next one. Officers. Now, this one, I had made some edits, and then this morning, I was thinking about it. I think I have a different one. And it says, the select board, originally, it said we have a meeting to change, you know, leadership, the meeting right after the time meeting. But I think for the last, out of the last four years, if not all four, at least three, we didn't have all five members present. So, I pushed it. So, I wrote this, shall hold the meeting as soon as is practical. But I think it should, shall hold the meeting when all five members are present. Would you like this language? Except for the board. But time to say, I don't think we want to make a policy. Right. Because it's not, I think it's, that type of thing that you need bylaws, by the way. Right. But this is what's here. So, we're making a change. If we just want to say. You see, paragraph one.
Yeah. That's good. Okay. We'll live with that. Everybody's good with that. Soon as practical. I did like get my new idea where soon as everyone's present. But anyway, okay. Number six is, to the chairman of the serve, to continue the vice chair, become the chair. An election will be held. To choose a new vice chair, we just added an election will be held. And that's okay.
Well, what is it? Vote. Well, we still elect, don't we?
That's what was there, so it's fine. Okay.
Do you want to say vote? No, no, no. It's elected is right. Okay. Everybody's good with that? I had a question about senior elected select board member. Does that mean of the longest tenure? Does that mean the lowest? Does that mean the most wise? The best looking? The one that knows the best. I mean, she'll let her call her school.
She goes to sing to senior elected select board member. I assumed it was senior already, but should we change it? Do you want to say longest serve and consecutive terms?
Wait a minute. What happened here?
Why does I have to leave that? You don't have to juggle your schedule. Right. Sorry about that. I know. Well, this is a big thought. I gave up the half hour ago. This is a big thought. You might want to do this one class. We are. And to be honest with you, I'd be surprised. So we're going to get these now. But you're right. We are doing our parts. We did some last week. We're doing a little. We'll do a little. We're going to get the stuff soon. We're going to be very quick. Do you want to say that if the chair and vice chair cannot serve, the remaining members will elect an acting chair? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I want to say acting chair, Mr. To use chat to the team, fellow boy.
If you feed this in and ask for this and feedback, it's incredible. Oh, no, no. If we'll clean this, it'll give you the suggestions. We have to agree on some of these edits. I know. I'm just telling you, like, how we're wordsmithing. We're wasting our time tremendously because of technology. They'll do that for us. It's phenomenal. Right. But we haven't gone through this all. And it's advanced so much in the last 12 weeks. All right. That's what's happened. It's really crazy. I've just started that while we're doing it. We're wordsmithing this, but we also have to agree that we want that wordsmithing. Well, you're talking about policy. It's just that I'm telling you this will come up with what our brains may not be able to think of at 830 at night. You take the thought, tell it, change the law, do it. You ask it to suggest some clarifying language suggestions, and then we'll spit it out right away. You take a seat, but you just have it. I don't want these. So you don't have to take anything that it suggests, but it'll give you tons of food for thought. But how do I know that's what the board wants? Well, then you bring that back. Bring that back. Okay. So are you saying we're done doing this for tonight? I would give this a shot just so you can see. We've been laughed at tonight. I'd like to do a little bit more of this, please. Thank you. So, but we're how far off, am I? Only 56 pages.
No, around about page 22 is the new policy.
Excuse me. Meetings. And here we go. So these are the kinds of things we have to decide what we want. What they said at least twice a month, we changed it to Endeavor to Meet. No later than 7 p.m. because we no longer meet at 7 p.m. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we met earlier. They made me do more, so I think this is the wrong pay unless anyone has any office or complaints about these. I don't know. Lost my place here. And then the next one, we just added the word office in, number two.
All right. And then we come down. So I wonder what some of these are. I'm going to have to find out what some of these are.
And we come down to page 6, the public hearings. I don't see anything on this.
Opportunities will come to comment on regulations and fees.
Communication with the board.
The town manager and or the designee shall provide the select board copies of all relevant communications received on behalf of the board. On request, the town manager shall provide the sent board copies of all such similar committees received or sent by the town manager. We won't speak to that. We might go to the schools. I'm behind you, man and clerk, so you can have to put me on which page. You are behind you. Call me man and clerk, or you know.
I'm reading. Sorry, I couldn't say this. It'll be me, but I'm up. I'm still trying to reconcile something that we talked about. So then acknowledge we're the first one. So, I mean, the thing is, if I accept all these edits and stuff, the problem is you won't know what we accepted. So I'm a little bit... What do you mean? Well, if I just go and accept all these things and change them to chat. No, you do this. Just do it separately. You can always have this draft. You're taking a separate draft and feeding it. No, I just zoom in with you to show it carefully. No, no, Abby's going to do it. I already asked her at the last meeting, but I said, let's go through some of these first to make sure we have the right sense. Now, on page, whatever it is, nine of the document, I think it's about page 17. Did you see the purple? Mm-hmm. I talked about this last week. When I first looked at this, to me, I thought there were three different documents in this. There are formal policies like financial policies. There are select board policies of governing the town. And then there are some things that are what we call procedures that the town manager says they're not policy written by us. And finally, there are also what I call governance. And we, when we were on the board, when I first got on the board, we accepted something from my upcoming governance guidelines. And that talks about how you act and conduct yourself as a board member in general. So to me, there are three different documents. And you want to make sure you don't conflict with any of those three. You feed those three in. And it will run. So we want to move things that don't go on. For example, the signing of the lawyers and the payments of the legal service is already in the formal financial policy. So this should come out of this document. Yeah.
And notwithstanding Bill's comment that we should end up possibly with one full final document. But I wanted to kind of pull them all apart together initially so we can evaluate. Is that everybody okay with that? Well, if the board is involved in signing of the board, I'm not sure where we are. I think we're going into the authority of the time manager. If we were, I think it would be appropriate to keep this in. It's likely possible. Because if you're a new person in the sign of the board, you want them to read this and understand what your role is. Right. I think this isn't the financial, the formal policies, financial policy stuff. I know. I know. See, one baby lives, one baby. You could have it in two places. Yeah. So furthering Mr. Thay's point, I was confused as a new board member whether that was a right or an obligation. So I really like the idea of clarifying that. I understand the question, so. I apologize, Madam General. Yeah. What I'm asking is, do we have the right to hold something up? Because we can say, no, we're not clearing that matter of warrant. However, if things are streamlined, everything gets to go to the town manager most of the time. Or it could be the other way around. It could be, no, you're required to do that, which is where the things get troublesome. The language could be better, particularly for a newbie. Okay. The next one, manual checks issued by the treasurer. That's informal financial policies. That should move. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure we need that. That's already over there. The same language is already over there. That's what I'm saying. So we'll move, me and you won't be. Okay. Tell me that. So once we get it a little bit better. No, you do it. Please do it. So Doug will do it. We'll do it. Don't worry. Okay. So appointments, select was responsible for making town boards commissions, we added. So that's okay.
Town managers shall post all opportunities to boards and committee membership on the town building for your bulletin board. Do we still do that on the bulletin board? We do. We do? So, yeah. And that was my question over here. Do we do the bulletin board? Okay.
The next one is annual appointments, select board shall interview applicants seeking appointment to boards and committees who are new to town government. That's fine, right?
And then this one on the reappointments. This we don't do. I don't know that we've done this. It's a general rule because we try to be more inclusive. We have them all come into the town manager's office. When the applicants come before us, I'm seeing them for the first time as the board. And, thank God, we've been kind of implementing that procedure through the... Okay, once in a while, we have someone who wants to speech out to our chair. That's fine. But we don't have the chair reach to the applicants. So, we don't get... So, I think we want to take this out. So, this is okay. I'm glad to first speak up, everyone.
Let me finish this one, then. Thank you. The appointments. We took out the finance committee because they know it's been a finance committee planning board. I knew you were going to allow this project. Proclamation, recognition, extensive service, page 12. No, I'm on number 12. I think we... Robbie, do we have an applicant waiting to be interviewed? Just in truth. He's on right now. I see him. Okay. Does everybody mind if we just come back to this? I know this is so riveting. You can't wait to come back to this. I feel like I'm through the mud in the mire here. You should see your faces. Please, Tom's being neutral.
Sorry. This is something Michael really would like us to get done. And I promised him we would. So, there you go. Thanks, Michael. Well, as I said, there's a whole revision history out there. And what was bothering me, and I was going back, was that Tom Interact deleted two bylaws, the one that explained the duties of the slide board. Can we come back to this in just one second? My head does the work right now. It's down a rattle. Where's his information? He just wrote a paragraph. It's in the packet, and he only submitted a recommendation.
Page between the packet. Hi, Justin. How are you? Welcome to the slide board meeting. Hi, Justin. Hello. How are you? So, Justin has applied for an associate position for the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. And I think he sent in a letter. It's on page 15 in our packet. So, have you met everybody on the slide board that you've been introduced to them?
Yes. Okay. I've met Karen Blumfield. Or I think so. Yes. So, this. Go ahead, Billy. Good evening, Justin. My name is Bill Whitney. I'm a member of the board. Good evening, Justin. My name is Chris Reynolds. I'm the newest member of the select board. And I'm Tom Fay, a member of the select board. Nice to meet you, Justin. Hey, Justin. Deb Levine here. Thanks for interviewing with us. Yes. Thank you for joining us. And I'm Carol Martin. So, as I said, Justin is interested in being an associate member of the HRDEI committee. And so, what we do is you just give us a couple-minute explanation as to why you're interested in joining this committee. We'll maybe have some questions for you and go from there. How does that sound? Sure thing. All right. So, the floor is yours if you want to speak and tell us why you are interested in this committee. Okay. So, the reason why I want to join this committee is because I want to have the name of being an associate member of the HDRIC. And it would look good on a college application. And also, I would like to earn some community hours since one of the teachers I've asked said that they would let me earn some. And, mm-hmm. All right. Why don't we open it up to the board and they can ask some questions. Mr. Levine. Justin, I'm curious because I have a 7th grader, so it will be in your shoes in about a year and a half. So, there's a community service hours requirement through your time at high school. Why would you select to spend a good amount of your hours of community service serving on the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee versus doing other types of community service hours? Um, because I think this would be, like, more high class than, like, just, like, raking leaves or, like, picking up trash. And, oh, yeah. Also, this is, like, more formal so I can practice, like, being in front of, like, higher class people and sometimes talking. And my other question is, tell me what you learned about the committee after you spoke with the chair, Karen Blumenfeld. Um, I've heard that you guys, um, hold, like, festivals for human rights and, like, diversity.
Okay. Um, okay. Okay. Anybody? Mr. Whitney? Good evening, Justin. Um, you seem to be a busy fellow with, uh, your sports, uh, playing the violin, uh, in the jazz band and string ensemble, as well as your, your schoolwork. Um, and so I guess my question is whether this is the right time for you to join this committee or whether you would rather, uh, get a little more of high school under your belt before you decided to add this additional responsibility to your already busy schedule. Um, so I believe that, um, so violin, I have, I already have time for it because, uh, I usually practice and for the high school homework, so far, I, like, finished all of them before the do line. So I wouldn't have problem coming to the meetings. Okay, thank you. Yes. Justin, I'm going to vote in favor of you, but I, I have, I do have a qualm. Uh, I, I very much respect your candor and your honesty about why you're doing this, and that isn't always what we get, so I, I really want to reinforce how delighted I am by your candor. Um, but do you personally have an interest in DEI? Uh, DEI is under attack right now. Some of us are trying to defend it. Are you ready to join the fight because you believe in the fight, not just for your college application? I believe that I want to fight because since, like, I'm also Asian and, like, I've gone to, um, the Chinese Lunar Festival where, like, we've celebrate the Asian community. And I think I am willing to fight for it, D-E-I-C.
Thank you. Good evening, Justin. I have a couple of questions. My first is, of all your activities, the crew, swimming, baseball, violin, jazz band, um, which, which one do you like the most? Um, well, I have two. One is baseball because, like, I've played it for most of my life and I really like it. And jazz band because the, um, freedom of it because you can use your imagination to play solos. My next question is, as a select board, uh, in an ever-changing town, which is bettering itself, in my view, because we have people from different backgrounds, do you feel, um, that you belong to the high school that you go to, um, and do you feel you belong as a member of the town of Wayland? Um, I think I belong in Wayland and in the Wayland High School. But some people, uh, don't feel like they belong, so I want to help them. If you could do that, uh, that would be a great help to us, too. Thank you. Thank you. So, Justin, the best part of the last one to ask questions is everyone's already asked all the questions I have. So, I just want to thank you very much. I think you had some terrific answers. I like them. Very candid. And, um, with that, I'm going to ask the board for a motion, please. I move that the board appoint Justin Chu to the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee as an associate member for a term ending June 30th, 2029. That's all right. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. All those are there to say aye. Aye. All right. Motion counts, 5-0. Oh, did you, um, gets a letter, I think, even as an associate, gets information on it, so it comes electronically. Oh, good. Yeah. Justin, you will receive, congratulations, you will receive a letter via email, um, from the town manager's office, uh, indicating information about your appointment and formalizing that appointment. And what you need to do is bring a copy of that letter into the town clerk's office here at town building, and she will officially swear you in as an associate member and give you some information around conflict of interest training that all of our volunteers are required to complete, okay? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service and for stepping forward. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Good night. All right.
We have a hearing at 8.15. But what I think I'll do is I'm going to go to, since you're all so excited about the number seven, I'm going to go to number nine. Which is to vote, to transfer, unused American Rescue Plan Act, commonly known as ARPA funds, from the Snakebrook Dam project to other previously obligated ARPA projects, including, but not limited, the Massachusetts Resource Water Authority, NWA Connection. But what has this, these funds were given to us during COVID, we, the town, like everybody got some, and they have to be expended by December 31st of this year. And so Michael and Brian have done a terrific job of monitoring them, and it appears that we are not going to use all the funds that we have voted in for the Snakebrook project and let Michael speak to it, but we're going to include in motion. Yeah, and what we want to do is move this to another project so that it will get spent and we don't have to return them. So, Mr. Sir. Madam Chair, you summed that up rather nicely. We've been monitoring these funds, and I don't want to be the person leaving anything on the table. So I've been working with the finance director to routinely check in with the department heads to ensure that they've been expending all these funds. Because of the delays in the Snakebrook Dam project, Mr. Fay is informing that they will only be able to spend $165,000 of the remaining $265,000 in funds that they have from the ARPA funds. Now, they also have an additional grant from the state which will allow them to complete the project. So they will not be able to use these, and we did our own research in-house, which was confirmed by not only the final rule from the U.S. Treasury on how to use your funds, but we checked the finance director, and we have an email from our accountant, CLA, citing the same section of the frequently asked questions, what to do with these unused funds. So we have a motion for the board tonight. These are both previously obligated projects. So that means you can only transfer. You can't throw something new in the mix. You had to have had this on your list prior to December 31st, 2024. Both of these were on the list. One has unused monies. The MWRA projects, specifically the engineering that we're doing, Mr. Holder is assuring me that he can spend these funds before December 31st of this year, which is the last chance to do so. So based on all that, we have this motion for the board that we would respectfully ask that you de-obligate $100,000 from Snakebrook, and re-obligate to the MWRA project for engineering services. So any questions before we make the motion? No, I actually am concerned about the fact that there was really no information in the packet about this. I have no idea how much money is involved. I don't, not having been on the board previously, I don't know what the other projects were.
I feel it at disadvantage for me to consider this matter. Time is not of the essence. Right. Do you want us to put some information in? Maybe we put that in time. I just want to know. I have a little question. We did three sessions. So how much money is, are we talking about? $100,000. Okay. And would application of $100,000 reduce the amount that the town would otherwise spend on it? $38.6 million? It's actually that engineering and design was a capital project that was actually needed $2 million. Tom and I were simply on this for too much forever. We had $1 million that we allocated to the Office of Committee. We allocated $1 million to it and then they went to tell me anything and asked for the other million. So yes, to your point, they would apply this $100,000 cash and not have to borrow that other $100,000. So effectively, what happens to that other $100,000? Well, it would be authorized, but authorized, but I'm issued borrowing.
Right, Michael? So would we not borrow the money or does it come free cash? So I believe when we do bonding, we borrow the whole amount and then what's not left, we put it to me and say this was authorized, but I'm issued.
Yeah, so we get the authorization to borrow. Well, all right. Why don't we get some more information on this? Maybe we could put in the statistics, including the chart. That we used in prior meetings many months ago, so we wouldn't get a full day. And I think it's fine. I mean, I'm all for not leaving my own material. And, you know, there's no sense in not applying it to something where it will be spent. So I'm just curious what they're going to follow on the fact. So if we, let's say this, if we vote this now, we can expand. If we wait until October 19th to vote it, will we still be able to expand these funds by December 31? It's my understanding you can. I believe that Mr. Holder has an invoice that has come in that he can apply it to so that we would utilize the money. I'm not sure when the next invoice is coming in. We would be comfortable with supporting the information tonight and then providing the documentation for the $100,000. Sure. That'd be okay. All right. So I'll move then. I'll move then, pursuant to Section 17.19 of the Frequently Asked Questions regarding the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery of Runs Program, and move that the Board vote to authorize the reallocation of the meaning or unused American Rescue Plan Act, state and local fiscal recovery funds in the amount of $100,000 from the previously obligated Snakebrook Dam Project to reallocate or transfer those funds to cover the necessary costs in the previously obligated project, known as the Permanent MWRA Connection Project for Engineering Services, ensuring all reallocated funds are fully expended no later than December 31, 2026, provided that both projects were formally obligated on or before December 31, 2024, in accordance with the U.S. Department of Treasury guidelines, and further to authorize the Town Manager or Finance Director to execute all necessary accounting adjustments, contract amendments, and Treasury portal reporting updates to effectuate this transfer. Second. Thank you. Now, in front of a discussion?
I wonder if you would accept a friendly amendment provided that, or something to sort of reflect the notion of, you know, a subsequent report on. Does that muddy the water? This looks pretty.
Pursuant to move out of your legal language. So what is it that you want to happen on? I think what you're asking, Mr. Whitney, is that the Town Manager respect all its regulations until paperwork is forthcoming. Well, I guess I'm just particularly curious about the practical effect of substituting $100,000 of our funds for $100,000 previously authorized expenditure. And what happens to the $100,000 that EBW will not expand? Yeah. We only get a note, though, from Brian, within the packet, or off to the board, maybe. I mean, should there be something in there in that the, what is now uncommitted funds be returned, you know, as a capital turn? If not, if it was authorized but unissued, that's not a problem. But if it was issued, did that become a turn back or something? Okay, so that money just doesn't keep going to the project? Is that what you want to ensure? I just want to know what happens to the other $100,000.
Well, I think that means, though, the right to borrow up to a certain amount. So I just think the line item of people can reduce by a hundred thousand, that's my sense. Well, to Mr. Whitney's point, does that mean, trying to avoid the phrase enterprise funds, but if we get in a situation where we could avoid or not avoid an override because we need, say, $400,000, we now only need $300,000? This is a different type of funding. Yeah, so we're for clarity here, I think. I'd like to make a suggestion that maybe we get a memo put out to the board from Ms. Kamebo following the path of the funds. I'm just going to phrase it that way. Is that where? Yeah, yeah. I guess my confusion is I don't know whether the bonding has occurred, the borrowing has occurred, and the funds are on deposit or whether they have yet to be, or whether the borrowing has yet to occur. I suspect it's the former, given the point of the bills, right? Brian will be able to answer this very quickly. So my suggestion again is we stick with this motion, and then we have Brian send the board, Brian and Michael, can send the board a follow-up memo on this. And I suggest that if the chair senses that there are significant issues here, we can revisit the boat. I just want to understand, so you don't want me to authorize him to commit the transfer until you get a memo? No, no, no, this is going to go through, but we would like some follow-up information to answer this question. Yeah. Okay. So we could get that memo, and I'll obviously have it in my notes, obviously. There's a word I need to hear. They are disconnected, Michael, in a good sense. Right. Okay. All right. Having said all that, everybody, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Are we all fine? Yeah, okay, thank you. The motion passes 5-0. All right. I'll just give it that one.
I move the consent calendar. Thank you. Okay, no, I won't get that one. For October 15, 2026. Okay. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Oh, no, there's no discussion. All those in favor? All right. Aye. Just before you leave that, I would just point out on the second signature page of the Kline Felter contract, there's reference to the town administrator. Other than the town man. Okay. So Brian may have to sign that. I hope I make that correction.
Well, Michael, you're wearing my hometown picture? Yes. Oh, that's not me, no. I'm over here. All right. I'm going to move to number 13, correspondence, any comments on correspondence? Okay, great. I'm going to move to number 14. This is very, very quick. What we want to do here is we just want to take a foot in the promotion. Yeah. We're going to have a quick formalized study group that has been established through the RFP, so that we have a case for 2012 to recommend making it right to reviewing it. So if someone wants to make a motion on that, that would be great. By the way, background, what we'll be studying is the responses, if any, to the RFP for the 2012 Institute of World Project, and the RFP required the establishment of a selection committee and the selection committee to set forth in the RFP and move this board vote to establish the selection committee as part of the RFP, which will abide by the opening. Would you like to second it, Mr. Whitton? Could the questions come before or after the second? I need a second. Thank you. Go ahead. Any discussion, please? Without causing any delays or perturbing the chair, can you just summarize what happens next? By a particular, I could summarize my concern if you want to hear. So, in November, the organizations that are interested in responding to the RFP will submit their response in a confidential packet. It will be open at a particular time, a particular date. And then, the selection committee will meet after reviewing and discuss them publicly and discuss their impressions, utilize the RFP to weigh the pros and cons of different responses. Selection committee will make recommendations to this board and their thoughts on what organization or organizations could be a good fit.
So, any other questions? I have a comment. Yes? I am concerned that Mr. Faye just referred to that as the selection committee. I have been assured, I've been looking at this, studying this property for four years, I've been assured many, many times, I've got a list of things that I'm not offering right now, just to be brief, but that it would ultimately come to this whole board. It would. I want to sell this board on the idea that this is a really big decision. I bet we'd all agree that budget decisions are paramount. This is even more important than that. We're going to live with it for decades. And budget decisions would often correct in the future years and stuff. So, I'd like not to see that the selection group selects, and then there's a quick vetting, a ratification here. We should have a discussion here with it. So, I assume that's already well within what's going on. I'm just emphasizing. Right. So, I didn't get a chance to finish, but it might have helped you, is that once we do this, I then want to turn and say, does anybody know when this will be ready to come back before the board? Because I wanted to put on... Well, that's not the same. I was thinking December of this year. I'll just say, in response to Mr. Randall's point, that I think the process will include the organizations that the organizations recommended to appear before, so we can have an interview process and give it to you. And, of course, there's the contract that has to be entered into as well. So, I think the process will finally be thorough. So, the selection group is making recommendations, and there's plenty of process there, right? Thank you very much. You're welcome. And I will sleep better tonight. So, thank you, Madam Chair. All right. So, wait a minute. Before I make my call now, Chair, I'd like to vote. Thank you. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes five. So, just maybe, I mean, you and I can talk more about this offline, you know, Bill, I think you're both on that. Maybe this might be one we want to do, a separate little meeting, maybe, and a... Yeah, okay. Then Bill and I will work over the week. Okay. There's a rest of meeting until December, right? I'm up. I'm not. I'm just kidding. It's the fall of this. Okay. Is it great? Uh... It's about 8.15 now, is it? One month. 13. Another minute. Can you do the real trailer, too? Wait a second.
Like a second.
You can do it in 10 seconds.
Because this is... So, most people in the room are here for the Boomstones hearing, I think. Yeah. I was wondering what it was going to... Because it's a public hearing, I have to wait to 8.14. 15. They got one minute. Your clock says 8.15. Yeah. I didn't do it.
Right? Yeah. No, put the phone right on it. I think that's it. Yeah. And actually, while we're waiting for one minute, one thing I am going to send you up is a little notice. I was thinking to sort of, to keep, oh, I'm doing really well with every other week right now, although Mr. Faye just added an extra meeting, slipped one in there when I was looking up. I was thinking as five weeks between November 30th when we meet and January 3rd, 4th, whatever it is. And so, rather than mean on Monday the, whatever it is, 13th, 14th, which would be the two weeks, and then we'd have three weeks. I was going to suggest, I've got to look at Michael's calendar as well, that perhaps we meet like that Wednesday, instead of the Monday, we meet the Wednesday or the Thursday, so it's like two and a half, two and a half, and we don't have to meet Christmas week. I'm going to have Abby send you a note, see if you like it. I'm sorry, is this the week of the 14th we're talking about? Yeah, the week of the 14th in December, I was just sort of thinking maybe random.
That would be it was two and a half weeks. I guess, I do really, I really do prefer the Mondays. It's just a quiet night. Well, you can come here. Other meetings go on. I know. It's usually a Tuesday Wednesday. I'm trying to avoid another meeting in December. All right, so it's 8.15, and this agenda item is a, it's a discussion and possible vote to approve a liquor license amendment for Bromstones. All right. So, I declare this hearing open for the purpose of considering the application filed by Bromstones, Inc., for the application amendment to allow alcohol consumption outside in a designated area on the lawn for the premises located at one curling lane, way on mass. So, what I would like to do now is welcome to join us, I believe, is Heather Lambert here? Please join us. And do we have Samantha Brown here? Yes, please. What else? Can I also say we have our president, Mike McKenzie, and Andrea Virch in the facilities and phase. I think we're just inviting you to start with a line by, I think that's how we're going to do it. It's just not maybe that long. I don't know. If we're running into a problem, I'll tell you what we'll add in some people. But we might need another chair here if you want to just drag one up there. Guys, thanks. Can you sit here? Yeah. Yeah. We're just trying to pick you up on that microphone. Okay. So, this is a public hearing. It has to be a little formal. So, let me do the formalities and then we'll move in. So, the first thing I have to do is I have to read the notice published in the Metro West Daily newspaper, which was on Monday, September 21st, 2026. It's very similar to what I just said. Notice is hereby given that the Wayland Select Board will hold a public hearing on Monday, October 5th, 2026, beginning at 8.15 p.m. at the Wayland Town Building, 41 Conchituate Road, Wayland, Mass., and remotely for the application filed by Samantha Brown on behalf of Brewing Stones, Inc. This public hearing is for an outdoor-only alteration of premises for an annual all-alcohol liquor license. And, again, the number is ABCC, number 00012-CL-1340. Now, the hearing will be attended on Zoom, reviewed remotely on WayPan. The Zoom link has been made available today. It is on the agenda. Select Board is also on the Wayland Town calendar. It's also online. You may also come in person. So this is what we do here. What we do here is the rules of evidence will not be applied during the hearing, but the board expects the prospective licensee and any members of the public who wish to comment present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner. So what happens is when I finish talking, it will be your turn. You can explain your presentation. Then the Select Board members may have questions. We will see if there's anyone from the public who wants to offer input. You'll have an opportunity to respond. I will close the hearing. We will take the matter under advisement. Sometimes we make the decision tonight. Sometimes we defer to another meeting, and so that's how it goes. Does that sound okay? Okay. And there's nothing, not all the people who can, but I think we only need two people to go through. The information is in a path of fear. Remember, let's just please.
Page 22. 22 is the letter, and then we leave them on the seat, but I think they're just read as in page 49 of the regular package. And there's quite a few documents in here. So, Samantha. I'm Heather. This is Samantha. Did you want to explain what the purpose is? The purpose is to really give a designated area where our participants during events can have a contained location outside to enjoy fire pit, to take beverages outside with plastic classes, and sit and relax and enjoy. Did you want to add anything? There's a lot of information in the packet. I believe we went back with the police chief, or you spoke with them, and they recommended coordinating off the area, and there's a lot of, I think there's some graphics in there show where we, where it's going to be. It's going to be a table with four chairs, and then four chairs, and around deck chairs are on a fire pit, right? Correct. Okay. Questions from the board? Mr. Stolens? I don't have a question. I have a comment. I think this is a tremendous organization. It adds a lot to the town. I could give you a long list of youngsters and oldsters who have benefited from the organization, and I can think of a few organizations that I wish had well known as yours is, so I'm in favor of it. Thank you. Does anybody else want to? Yeah, I'm curious about the frequency with which you expect this to be used. I noticed that the hours of operation are fairly expansive, but there's also a reference to large groups, I guess, so could you tell me when you expect this to be used by the membership? Since we are primarily a winter-based organization, it would be more during this time of year of the late fall and early spring, but, you know, if we get lucky on those 73 February days during a tournament, we might have people go inside, but it's very limited. And could you talk about the lighting?
We have parking lights, parking lot lights that are quite... So there will be no additional lighting? No, no additional lighting.
I'm kind of curious, since the most recent Olympics, has your membership? Has the activity grown at your location? Yes, very much so. The activity has grown, but we limit our membership, so we have an extensive wait list, but we don't admit more people unless there is attrition. I'd like to, you know, echo what Chris Reynolds said, you know, you're a great asset to town, you're a quiet asset. I don't even know you're there, but we'll bring a lot of community to what you do, and keep it up for your time. Thank you. Mr. Wayne? Has this idea ever been considered before, or did this just occur this year to do this?
We wanted to codify it this year, and make sure that we were doing things correctly. Okay. Yeah. I appreciate it. I'm good. Okay.
I'm disappointed you don't remember me. I was there during the tournament, and so I'll explain to them about my first foray at the curling place with my friend, and it was 50 years ago, when I moved to Whalen, and then the crew of us promptly fell down on the ice. And then we got one of us knocked the other one over the stone, and then we decided that was it. The place is really, really, really does a wonderful job, and they are, you can see, called the Mars for Space, so it's kind of interesting. All right. Is there anybody, nobody in the room has to take a public comment, right, on this? Is there a public comment about this? Yes. Go ahead. Sorry. I'm going to bring him forward. Welcome back. Do you want to come forward so we can hear you? Sure. I don't know whether I have a public comment. I'm a neighbor, and I received a certified copy. Do you do me a favor and enable that? Do we have a seat for this, Perelman? I'll get it to you. Okay. My name is Ed Perelman, and I live at 402 Dahlia Drive, and the rear of my, as part of the meadows, and the rear of my unit is directly facing the parking lot of the broomstone, and they are wonderful neighbors, and I'm here because I'm a retired attorney, so I get involved in things, but I don't, I've never seen any documents with regard to the rules and regulations that this would apply. In other words, I don't have any idea as to the hours of operation, the type of alcohol that would be served, and how the noise level would impose upon my unit. So I'm here as a friendly neighbor to try to understand what the proposal is, and to hopefully work out something that works for a broomstone, and also works for the neighbors that are contiguous with their bills. This is exactly why we have this public hearing. So now we'll turn it back to them to respond to that, because they can address questions you asked about hours. So our normal hours, I'm going to let you talk about the normal hours of operation. So our normal hours of operation are Monday through Friday, which is 5. I connect, as I said, Monday through Friday, 6 to 11, Sunday 4 to 11, member guest events, which are roughly three times a year, sometimes four, sometimes two. They go Friday and Saturday from 10 till 11, and Sunday from 12 to 3, but as Samantha pointed out, a lot of these are in December, January, and February, and people are not outside in the blizzard, so we're talking about our events that sometimes happen in October, or the ones that happen at the end of our season in the spring, and we are closed, effectively, from the middle of April through the middle of September, so we do not curl in the summer. It's a six-month operation. Yes, and the license is applying for, I'll say, eight seats, four Adirondack chairs, a table on four chairs, and we limited the occupancy outside of 20 people. And what kind of alcohol would be served? We own a liquor license already that is beer, wine, and spirits. Do you have your questions answered? No, but yes, that answers my question. So there's another gentleman, so now, do you want everybody to come? Yeah. I need to work out. Please come up. I'll step away. Okay. I won't go to school. Thank you. Who's your name? Down Steve, beyond the Lolo, 1803 Wisteria Way, in the Meadows. Okay.
Your turn. So, question number one, where is the location precisely on the property? It is down, if you are familiar with the property. Very well. Down the hill, coming in, coming out of the Bromstones Club. Coming out of the building, so if I'm wanting to go out of the building. Yeah, coming out of the building, go down the hill. And there's a little set of stairs that goes down. Yeah. Then there's a flat area that's the designated fire pit. Got it. Adirondack Church. Front of the building, then. So it's in the front of the building, not in the rear. Nope. So I own the unit that's most negatively affected by the club in the town, so everyone knows. It took us almost three years to figure out how to remedy the incredible noise that the compressor was making. The way the building is configured shot the noise directly into our unit. It was troubling and problematic. But I'll give the club endless credit for working with me for three years, and it was Mike who worked with me, to finally get that noise under control. So then we're also the one unit that gets the parking lot really, you know, the bright lights, right? And you guys have been pretty reasonable. I also talked with Mike and a couple other guides, and they were able to get the lights dimmed down a little earlier in the evening. Otherwise, you know, we've got these, you know, if you've ever seen the lights in the park, I'll give you a white light. These are like, like, we're in a ballpark, right? So I just needed to know where it was primarily. I have no complaints or objections if that's the location. My fear was, are we going to, like, try to build a patio in the back? No. No, no, no. You know, it scares me animals, okay? So the compressor has made a little bit of a difference with animal traffic in the back, which we wish wouldn't have happened, but is what it is. You know, we get it, and, you know, you know, we think you guys run a great operation, but I needed to know where that thing was, you know, how to come and find. So there you have it. Fairly small, up front. All good. Thank you. See you again. Thank you all, sir. Thank you. Does anybody else have public comment about the project? One point. Yeah, by name. This is Ed Bromund again. Name again, please.
Your hours end at 11 o'clock at night. Does that mean the people that will be outside, sitting in the outdoor area, enjoying their drinks, will they be asked to go? Yeah, they can't be built down. Says poop.
Yeah, they can't stay open past their hours. They might be closed, but there may be people lingering for an hour or two outside, enjoying your drinks. It's just anything that I'm lingering. It's been in the club to be in violation of the license. Okay, that's fine. I just wanted to know. I didn't know. Good luck to your question. Might as well just leave the chair there. It's kind of busy.
Everybody else is good, right? All right. So now, I'm going to say that next. Do we have anybody online, Lonnie? No, there's nobody online. Okay. All right. So, what I'm going to do now is say, is there anything else that you would like to share about your application? No. I have to say, I thought the materials you presented would be a follow-up, and I'm truly appreciative. But, of course, that's consistent with how I do on your own research. So, in terms of where we're going, where we're going to stop. So, I'm going to close the hearing, and we're going to take the matter under advisement, which would be, we're deliberating now. And we consult with the town manager and town council if that's what we need to do. So, why don't I open up to Michael and see what he has to say, and we will deliberate. So, did you have any comments, Mr. McComper? I'm sorry. I'm still coming. Madam Chair, no. Other than the fact that you've had a dewey notice in a published public hearing, you've heard from the public, you've heard from the abutters, and they seem to have addressed all the issues here this evening. So, I see no reason why you can't move forward on this this evening. Thank you. So, we've received in our packet a notice from Abby Warman, our executive assistant, to the town manager. It really summarized all the action that was taken care of. And it does say that you're looking to extend the license area to cover a small portion of their lawn, allowing club members to take their alcoholic beverages and food to sit at the table chairs by a fire pit. They were only available to patrons during large events and not on a regular basis. So, per town policy and required by MGL Chapter 138 Section 15A, a notice of the abutters was sent to the abutters. And we have the legal notice posted. The police department has requested that the abutters for the board to know this applicant maintain signage on the property, that alcohol must be consumed on the premise, including new signage in the outdoor area, to say, and by the way, the chief is going to come to us to ask us to amend our outdoor dining policy next week, that all outdoor areas have signage that says no alcoholic beverages beyond this point. And I think he may have mentioned that to you because I thought I saw something. That's something we're going to be talking about next week. There was no comment from the Board of Public Works, the Planning Department Fire Department, the Health Department, and you passed your annual 304 inspection, dot, dot, dot, dot. But they did, the building inspector recommended install them in the barrier, which I think you have. You have a roped area, you have planters, those pensings. So I think they have complied with everything that we would like. Does anybody have any other comments? Are we comfortable making a decision? And do we have a motion? Happy to move this Board to approve the liquor license amendment set forth in our packet or to operation of premises and outdoorists at Boobstowns, Inkle, and Curling Lane? Thank you. Thank you. And for the discussion, we're going to relate to the vote. All those in favor. Oh, because it's a hearing, should I do a little coffee? There are you, too. I don't think so. Okay. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Congratulations. Thank you.
At the risk of being extremely popular, I'd like to be right to the manly coffee.
You're not getting very well at this. All right. On page 12 of the deck, there's one here that I want to ask you, please. Recognition policy for extensive service to the town. I'm only going to touch it a little later. I'm sorry, Carol. Page 12 of the deck. Yeah. Of the regular deck. Maybe it's not page 12. It's, uh... It was the supplemental packet. It was 15. The supplemental packet. Supplemental packet. It has the policy superseries. Basically. I'm just trying to sneak this in and so on. It sounded like there was a regular packet.
I'm easily confused as shit. It's late. Okay. So, recognition policy for extensive service to the town, right? This is... Just so it's clear, it's page 12 on the bottom of the sheet. But what page is in 15, 15, 15. I did correct myself. I didn't correct myself. I know. That's all right. That's when I was sneaking it in. Okay. So, there's one. Recognition policy for extensive service to the town. I do not understand. From the light of me, I'd like to help us. While we're looking at this, I don't understand you get recognized for 20 years if you're an employee. But you have to do 25 if you're a volunteer. So, I thought, since we're in here, we should maybe take a five-minute look at this and say, are we good the way it is? Do we want to make them consistent? Or what does it... Do we have to do it in VILA? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. Sure. Well, since you brought it up, I'm wondering if we could even have a broader discussion about adding some lesser...
I might even use the word minor, but sooner. I think it's where everybody in this room has brought up at some point. We need to encourage more volunteer and so forth. Yeah. I wasn't going to belay to that point, but since you've come to that language anyway, it deserves a note. Okay. So, what's your thought? My specific thought is, my answer to your question would be yes. They should be more consistent. And while we're making it more consistent in this area anyway, maybe we should add a category for somebody who's volunteered for, you tell me how many years, but not 25. It might be 10. And that doesn't mean we have to give it at 10. It just means we have the option readily.
I'm going to do it one at a time. You asked. I did. I'm going to do it one at a time because we're not happy about doing it. What's everybody think? Leave it the same or discuss it's making them the same? You just said we. I might be in the minority there. Okay. I understand we have a lot of these and we're trying to move things along. On the other hand, everyone in this room has said we need to encourage volunteerism. But I need to talk about the one at a time because I think they're two different things. They are. Because we currently have 20 and 25. I'd like to get some discussion with the 20 and the 25. So the question is, leave it the same, make them consistent, right? And I'll check to see if there's a problem.
I hope to have a strong feeling. My view is I'm not sure if it's really a problem needs to be fixed. I've heard people complain that it's out of sorts. I'm not sure I have a strong desire to change it. But I'm not sure if people feel otherwise, I'm not a problem. My counterpoint is that I'm in favor of anything that encourages belief in government and it reduces skepticism. And the number in item one and the number in item two just invite a perception of chaos.
Anybody else have any comments? Say you'd make them both 20. Yeah, make them both 20. And not tell people we want metric about what's 20 years worth relative to 25 and volunteers get extra time because they're times worth more or less. And they did better. It just sounds malarkey. Let's fix that. It sounds hasty. Previously, we have recognized people at 25 years, right? And so lowering the bar in some sense of recognition doesn't devalue the additional five years that I was put in. But 25 is quite extraordinary. 20 is extraordinary. 25 is quite extraordinary. Again, as Tom indicated, or I share Tom's feeling that I don't feel strongly about it, but there's a kind of a precedent for the 25. I'm not particularly troubled by the difference between the 20 and the 25. Yeah, and I'm not proposing one earlier. It's just that it struck me as all of the two different numbers. One thing that strikes me is that 20 years as an employee, people leave at 20 years often because of retirement, because of pensions. So you're saying, well, there's always like a statement. You're not tired of that. Yeah, I suppose. That was a long time. Unless you come from another time. 20 years at this time. Add it on to your previous public service.
What's the full vested period? Are you at 30? We're at 40, isn't it? It's a combination of age and years of service, but generally you use 30 years. But if you join late in life, you need a minimum of 10 years. So you started at 10 years to best, but it is a whole sliding scale. But if you were 100 years old with 10 years, you wouldn't max your pension, right? Right. No, you would just get a year. So to hit the maximum 80%, do you have to, is 30 not the minimum? If you're old enough, could you do 20?
Yeah, there's a whole matrix. Yeah, the max you have to hit for 30. Yeah, I think so.
It used to be 25 for a long time.
It's in the town code. It is? The 20 and the 25? Yeah. Okay. So that's the end of that one. Oh, I withdraw. Excuse me, I withdraw my question as well. I'll take care of that one. 30, 36-19. Yeah.
One second.
We're going to do this one way. Michael wants it done. Remember that. By the way, this is one of our objectives for this year is to get this done. We got the whole year. No. Oh, no. We're not going to put it in the whole year on this. Okay. So the next one, the investment policy, oils, OPEP. This is in the financial policies already. And this is the treasurer does this. So this one definitely belongs over there. Does anyone have any objections to that? I just had a question. Sure. I'm sorry. Go ahead. At the bottom of, in the document, page 14, and in the packet, 17, it gives a table, the OPEP. And I just want to ask, do we actually rebalance frequently and achieve these numbers? Where are you? Where are you? I'm on page 14, as it's in the document, which is 17, as it's in the packet. There's a table marked, a table A for OPEP. So, for example, 75 to 78 percent, some people would say that's tight. Do we actually, I assume they, actually I withdraw that column. Do we actually keep equities within 70 to 80 percent? That's hard to do. You get to it. I mean, we have these new financial policies that may render some of these obsolete.
If you think of it, I'd love to hear about it. Okay. We'll get to that. Thank you. Were you saying page 17 of this packet? Page 14 of the packet. I'm in a white sheet. So, page 17 on the right one on my corner. Does that help me? No. You know what? Yeah, I see it. I'll find it and get it to you. Does the whole board want to see this chart? Because I believe this is different from the financial. We have a firm that does it. We hire an investment firm. So talk. Is it civil? No. Is it civil? But again, I'm in favor of anything that improves our credibility. As I look out of the next few years. And those numbers look tight enough that somebody might say, really? Do you rebalance that all? That's curious. Okay. Sure. Carol, question. Why are the financial policies different or not included in the manual of the board policies? This was the original document. Right. And then those were created. I think Michael would like to have those separate because they were done. BID, BID, DOR, Labor Division. They have a totally different formatted look. Well, we adopted them, though. And we adopted them. But I did say at the beginning of the discussion, I'd like to get everything. Some of these things are in twice. They're here and in the financial policy. So the bottom line is I'd like to have them just one place. And then we may merge the documents. We may have a section that's the financial policies. We may have the guide to go up. We'll decide what we want to do. There's also the governance guidelines that talks about how we conduct ourselves as board members. I think, personally, that could be a separate topic. Maybe the board wants it all together. Well, again, I make the same point I made earlier. If you're a new person on the board, this really educates you pretty nicely to have us in with the select board. I love this. It was great.
And OPEB was a big deal. I mean, back in 10 to 12. It has a lovely feeling if it's nearly all in one place. So we're done with all the financial policies. Right. So now you're done with all the financial policies. And we can. But right now, I want to go through. We have not gone through these. Those four financial policies that we've pulled before, we've gone through those. So if I stick them in here, I have to say, oh, we already did this. Well, we already did that. And I want to go through this first. It's what? It's a little bit.
Oh, well, what? You're going to kill me. You're going to be a dead guy. That's right. So I have to tell you, we are going to go through this. And we're going to decide. And you're going to like it. Thank you. Ready? We're going to go through this. No, I just thought for simplicity's sake, we would go through this because we haven't gone through these edits. Figure out what we want. And then we can put them all together if we want. We can take them apart. We can do it when we want. Some of these are in two places. And so they only need to be in. So can we agree that this is a non-resolved question? Let's go. Right. Can we continue to go through this? And then I'm just thinking of Tom's point that, you know, if you're a new member, it'd be nice to have a notebook, a link, a something where everything is there. But this actually will go to everybody because this is our policies. And so, well, who would we do? I mean, who would we do? There's an entire investment policy in the new financial policies. And it specifically calls out the OPEB trust is fully invested in the state retiree benefits trust fund. Right. So some of this may be obstacles. So they may. We'll have to compare us. Just asking, as a point of intervention, I've heard that's very hard to do. I would like to circle back to Bill's point to get a document that has lots of, we incorporate this by reference or by the way, this is kind of a little bit not right. You've got to look at this other thing that's somewhere else. It'd be nice to have a goal down the road to get it in one place. But I need to merge and figure out what I'm doing first. I'm getting there. You guys just don't have faith in me today. I don't know. I'm going to have it. I have a lot of faith. All right. I think what we're going to do is we're going to stop on this one. We're losing the ground here. And we'll look at some others the next time. How's that? Good. So be ready next week. So now, I miss, what have I missed, Tom? Let's see how brief we can be.
So, Madam Chair, I will go through these as quickly as possible. Yes, thank you. So, on there is my next town manager office hours will be Tuesday, October 13th. I don't know. Well, October 13th from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. in the large hearing room. And I guess that is a Tuesday due to the holiday that we will be observing for the Columbus Day Indigenous Persons Day. Yes. There will be a household hazardous waste day run by the Whelan Health Department. It will be held on Saturday, October 17th between 8 and 11.30 a.m. for household waste collection. And this will be held at the Whelan DPW Garage at 66 River Road. As some of you know, last, actually two weeks ago on Wednesday, almost two weeks ago on Wednesday the 23rd, we had a public meeting with our consultant for the hazard mitigation plan. We expect a draft of the hazard mitigation plan coming in the next week or so, which we will post on the website. And we'll have a hard copy here at the clerk's office for review and comment. We want to thank all those residents and staff who came out on the 23rd to participate and to submit their feedback. We have noted a staffing update.
I have selected a candidate and made an offer for the assistant town manager, hopefully starting at the beginning of October. As the date draws near, I'll introduce the candidate to the board and some of the staff. I'm still working on the chief's process. I'm using one of the local chiefs to help me put together a panel. I'm just waiting to get one more chief on the panel and then we'll get that underway. And I've been working with Chief Hebert, Acting Chief Hebert, on some internal staffing changes to make them much more effective and efficient. We've also made similar types of changes here in town hall. You may start to notice, including, I was talking with Select Board Member Fay earlier, one of the things I really wanted to do was get procurement out of the assistant town manager's office, because that seems to take over and consume the previous individuals in that position. And we've been utilizing a consultant in helping us out. And one of the things we're starting to look at is whether or not we might be able to share a resource with another community. So rather than pay an individual or hire them, we could share with another community, split the cost of salary, maybe some of the benefits. So we would get a much more experienced procurement person, perhaps at a better cost to the town. So something we're looking at. Just a couple of things under our recap since our last meeting. I was out of town at a wedding on Saturday and could not attend, but I wanted to thank all of the staff that had participated. The DPW, the Recreation Department, Police Fire, and our town hall staff. As Mr. Reynolds knows, we tried to get a lot of things wrapped up. We worked very closely with Jesse Burkhan and the folks over at North Kwan to get all the documentation, permitting, and insurance all met for that. I want to remind folks, as Mr. Neasy has been working with Terrain since we did the grand opening, they are having a community open house this coming Thursday from 2 to 7, and the public is welcome. I've been continuing to meet with our chiefs in the regional dispatch. We are working on getting some important incentive grants, which will help us to continue keeping on track for the July 1, 2027 opening. So you should see a modified or an updated grant award. They're going to give us significantly more funds that we didn't get in our ask from State 911. So that would be approximately $691,000. You will also hear that we are going to get an assessment for about that same amount from the regional dispatch. So the state's going to give the towns support incentive, and then we will be assessed by the regional dispatch, and that's how we'll be paying the employees coming on board. Similarly, you will see some grant paperwork also coming through Abby Charest and applied through the one-stop program for a MassWorks grant, which we were just notified last week that we received in the amount of $495,000. This is for an infrastructure grant that will help with the design and engineering work needed to address the wastewater infrastructure in Wayland's MBTA community's district for capacity. So that should be coming before the board shortly. So I hope by the 19th to have those for you to vote and accept. And that's what I have in the chair. Does anyone have any questions? I have one team that was actually the criminal reports. I had followed up, and I mean, come to me with this, the path, because we did see, we had a preliminary presentation from the folks that are putting together as a mitigation plan, and I thought at that time in the summer I was going to come back to us before it was forwarded off to FEMA. But the listing I got said it'll go to FEMA and all of them, and once they approve them, we send it back to the select board to adopt. Somehow that seemed a little bit not the correct logic. Shouldn't we see this before it goes up to the state? Well, we will have a draft next week, so I can forward it to the board. Yeah, we should put that on there. Does that sound good?
Include it in the packet on the 19th. Oh, yes, right. The original requirements. No, I think, I just don't think we should, you know, here it is, it's all approved, won't we? I mean, we don't know what it is. What if there's some, what if there's some funds we have to, you know, we'd like to know that. So, all right, thank you very much. I think we're on the minutes now, Mr. Frank. I think we're on the minutes, the minutes are September 22, 2026. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, does anybody have any edits?
Any? Okay. We have a couple. Okay, good. Under page 2, the third paragraph, I can count on, I'll make sure, drive, if those concerns are broken, and requested, I wonder if we should insert the word that, the town under 8. Okay. Something on. I have something on 8.2, if I can hold on. Okay, yeah. So, all three of the folks who came from, there's nothing wrong with what's in the minutes. However, all three came and spoke for about two minutes, and the order becomes a lot more forever, so I just think the first one should be shorter, so it's a little more consistent, you know, or the other should be longer, one or the other. So, go ahead. Under 8.16 syndicates that Doug abstained, is that right? That's right, I highlighted that. Or was it Chris? I think it was Chris.
I don't think I'd ever abstained.
It must have been Chris. I never thought it was abstain, so.
Right, we'll ask to have that double-checked. Anything else?
And 8.9, I'll get rid of that apostrophe. Okay.
Does anybody else have any other edits? Okay. Seeing none additional things, I'll say, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. I should pass this 5-0. I don't know, I think I'm now down to number 16, but number 16 is update and the discussion on the Mass Central Rail Trail and the Mass Department of Conservation and Recreation for the purposes of the easements. I don't think there's anything in the packet on this, but I'm going to turn this over to Michael and Tom because they asked for this to be added in. So, we're going to talk with DCR regarding the completion of the rail trail between Sudbury Line and Airman. And they're anxious to get it done. And they're so anxious that they kind of want to take it away from MassDOT. And MassDOT is okay with that. But there's this little section between Russells and the library that's stoned. And they don't really have legal light to that DCR. That's the OT that was about DCR. So, the proposal with three proposals on the table basically include them completing the rail trail of the Russells. And we do the intersection of Russells to maintain, we keep the stone path as we know it today. Or maybe another two to five years until we find the money. We have about half a month to do it. Another proposal is that the town applied for a grant to pay for that section. We have to pay it. But the town would have to pony up 20% of that. And we would do the work and bid it out. Which would be $100,000.
Yeah. So, it would stay on the tip. DCR would get the property rights. MassDOT would bid with it. The other one was we get the grant. And the third one was DCR would build it themselves after they get the easements. So, options one and three would take significantly longer because parts of the current trail where you get on and off at each end is not within the MassDOT right-of-way. So, there are easements they have to get. But if we were to get the grant and build in the right-of-way and do some of this, it would be easier for us. It would get it done faster for them. But it would cost us potentially $100,000 of our money. I mean, Michael, I have discussed it as much as uniformity is great. I have been on that rail trail many times. I found no problems with the stone dust. And biking in the stone dust system. The Stan DCR likes various reasons. It's paved rail trails. But to have it on a stone for two to four years or five years until I get it done, it's a burden of the town. I'm not going to spend $100,000. For example, where is the stone dust? It's between, I'll say, Russell's and the library. If you walk the rail trail from the West, that's all stone dust. And it goes to basically the intersection. I walked last week and I couldn't tell you whether it was stone dust or asphalt. Sure. It's like four tenths of a mile. Yeah. And that might be the wrong word, but it's not asphalt. Yeah. I don't want to breach any confidences that I think some people who are near that location
take care of itself, I would urge we have to be described in what the course of time offers when they walk in. Yeah. You're right, Chris. I know there are people who are very committed to the history of the training in town. I think that area much more attractive. I'm all for that.
Michael, you want anything to add?
Well, it's okay if we let DCR know that we appreciate their options, but we're okay with maintaining the current status and let them pave it when they want to. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I'm using my head here.
I just don't feel right about spending money. We don't have to spend in the current environment, and I think the problem is going to take care of what we're talking about. That's what he said. That's what he said. He said, do we have to go home? No, because we can't. That's not the board. Okay. Does anybody have any? I agree. Okay. We all agree. We can.
It's discussed with the potential to go to authorize town management to support the Massachusetts Municipal Association on behalf of the Select Board regarding remote participation. I don't think there's anything that's happened on this. I'll turn this over to Michael and Tom as well. So, as you all know, Mr. Bernstein, who was part of Elvis, has been leading the charge to get remote participation adopted for a town meeting, not only at Wayland, but for many communities throughout the Commonwealth. And he's been making great strides and getting out there and spreading this message to different communities, I had arranged to have a Zoom meeting with Adam Chaplin, who was the head of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. And he had indicated he would try and get some exposure for this, perhaps at one of our regular meetings with the managers or maybe at the annual meeting at the end of May. And I circled back with him on one or two occasions after our meeting with Mr. Bernstein, and we really haven't moved too far with this endeavor. So, Mr. Bernstein reached out to me the other day and said, do you think it would be a good idea if maybe the board signed on to a letter or we put it on town letterhead to the MMA asking for great attraction for this effort? So, then, I think if there's no further discussion, we just need a quote, I think, and we'll motion again. Sure. I'll move with this before we go to authorize the town manager, Michael McCall, extend a letter of support to the Massachusetts Municipal Association on behalf of the Select Board, supporting remote participation. Second. Thank you. For the discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye.
And, Mr. Chris, would you like to start? I would. I'll be sending a letter to the Select Board for the next meeting to thank people for a lot of help with the Whalen Festival. And, I just want to know, Michael McCall, I know you work hard to take this place a theme. And, you're going to be reading about departments you have here that really want above and beyond. The reason I'm not thanking people verbally is I just think it would take a long time to thank them as well as I'd want to. So, please don't infer any lack of enthusiasm about them. I'm really dazzled. There was so much part of the work of the town. In fact, I will bore one thing out. If you think Whalen's a no-town or a bureaucratic path when you're listening to this, we've turned a corner. I have a concern about something going on. I don't want to give the location because I think it's actually becoming regional. But, along Gleason, there are people cutting down trees and then not only not getting permits, but I've actually heard one person brag about it, and I felt in self that it really made me want to use some strong language. Are you looking into that already, Michael? Thank you. I really like what Bill Whitney did earlier when he got a little pushy about a creative answer to a problem. I just want to encourage us all to do that. In case somebody thinks I was a little lewd, that's what I was pushing counsel about. I'm just flabbergasted that we're spending money, and I didn't like his answer, frankly. He said, yeah, we do some creative stuff, but I noticed he didn't point any of it out until I asked. Meanwhile, the clock's ticking. And then I promised to end on a light note. This is deceptively important. Joe Amishuk is just a phenomenal band. And the U.S. Army Band is a phenomenal band that plays worldwide, and they get to play wherever they want. And he has got the U.S. Army Band coming to Wayland in early November. And they're going to do a master class. And then they're going to do a concert. And it's going to be the coolest thing ever. So the reason I didn't bring this up during the announcement period is I don't have the dates straight yet. They're working some stuff out. And we'll get that out, obviously, quickly. But I think this is a big deal. And it promotes the cohesion we're all looking for as we want to engage people and consider an override, consider a new school. Maybe do or don't do the override. I'm not taking a side about it. I'm just promoting the cohesion. And so I wanted everybody to know that this is Mr. Amishuk's 28th year in the Wayland school system. And I was told I misspoke the other day. Apparently, he and I have been working together for something on the order of 14 years. The kids love him. I was invited to a class last spring where he had a nice gentleman come in who was a former student. And two weeks prior, he had conducted at Carnegie Hall. Our music program is distinctly superior. Thank you. I have seven items. No. It's yours. It's seven seats. Oh, my God. We've talked as a board in the past about town properties that may have little use. So I just ask that maybe we keep that on a close leash so we can review that and possibly have a warrant article about that. Next, I want to thank Mary Entes, who headed up the Wayland 250 Committee for the past year and a half or so. There's a page two in the packet on the activities that the Wayland 250 Committee completed to celebrate the nation's independence. And it was great working with them. There's several people on the committee. They worked really hard. And the events were very educational and entertaining. I'd like to thank Chris Reynolds for his hard work making this year's Wayland Festival so successful. I told Chris earlier today, when I was over there, I met a woman who lives in town. She's a volunteer. I met her at one of the tables. And she said, I just never seen anything. There's a new movie. And I said, well, you know, it's not the first you have had it, so I'm glad you're here. And also, you know, I've never loved designing the town center from a parking perspective. And then it's how it's designed. But on a day like Saturday, I think it's probably the envy of other towns that, including the owner of the Linden Street project program, we have so much parking, you know, at Wayland Town Center. I'm hopeful. With this new owner, that parking will be full on many other dates. Other than dates for the Linden Festival.
Next, I have a concern. I've always had a concern about sign congestion. You have so many signs in town that people don't really pay attention to anything. And so along these lines, I'm concerned about the flashing yellow lights that are being placed around town, particularly at Connecticut Avenue, at crosswalks. Do you mean they're flashing around the sign? I mean, I think because in your mind, right, let's say you travel up Route 30 near Mel's and you're heading east in the local crosswalk. That's a push button, right? And those lights go on when you push the button. In my opinion, those are much more effective. But if you have, in your mindset, you know, well, our lines are everywhere, right? If you're seeing a flashing light here and a flashing light here, but you can drive through this flashing light, but not this flashing light. So I just asked, and I've talked to Tom Andrews about this, maybe we take a review of that and maybe consider replacing the push button lines with the flashing lights. Next, I wanted to recognize Russell's 150-year anniversary as a business. Russell's is more than a business, in my view, in this town. Russell's is an institution. I can tell you it was instrumental in needing the support for the Wayland Town Center, which I consider a success, and it has to also announce it to the town. I'd like to see our board consider maybe having the owners come and present them with a citation, recognizing the 150 years. I think they deserve that. With taking down the fence at the middle school, which I think was needed. But it reveals the scab under the mandate. Yeah, I was told that that was going to be coming shortly. No, no, and that's okay, because, you know, sometimes you have to see the scab. And so, I just, we all know the status of that property, dealing with the environmental expert, but, and we all know how it takes time to get done in government. My concern is that will look like that next 10, 15 years, and I really believe that. And so, I'd ask that, I'd ask that the town consider, even though we're dealing with PFAS, and we know there's some environmental issues there, that we find a way to effectively and economically address that area so that it's attractive. Well, not only for the people who drive by, but the kids who go to school, school every day, and the teachers and the staff, and the last item for taking care of, Lina, thank you for your, thank you for listening. I mentioned already about the suggestion of December, so that we don't have a lot of meetings, though we might, it sounds like we might have to do another plan. The next few meetings are kind of full. It's nice it wasn't as full because a lot of things have shifted as they move, so be prepared for longer meetings again. Sorry about that. Veterans Day, I think Mr. FFA has volunteered to be the speaker, unless somebody else wants to do that, but then if they ask us, surely anything to decide now, to your point, then we, you know, be in the programs, and if somebody else wants to do the speaker for Veterans Day, otherwise, thank you, Tom, appreciate it. I like to spread those around. I think that's nice everyone's always to see us. I've been serving on the transfer station study many, and there's a lot of materials there. There really are. And there's some interesting things that are going to come out, but I think we may hear a little bit about it next week. Because we're also going to be hearing from the, by the majority of the public works, they would like us to look at and consider supporting the transfer station. So I just probably will refer to some of that. The study's not done, what's not quite done, but I think we can get some generalizations of what's going to come up with the study. And I think that's about it. So with that, I will take a motion to return at 9-12. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Everyone who moves and passes by. Thank you.