December 19, 2025 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
December 19, 2025 - Select Board
recording in progress select board and i'm calling the meeting of the select board to order for friday
december 19 2025 at 10 30 a.m this is a remote access only meeting via zoom and one may watch
the meeting with the link that can be found on the public body meeting calendar on the town webpage
pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025 this meeting will be conducted via remote means in
accordance with applicable law this meeting may be recorded which will be made available to the public
on wacom as soon after the meeting as is practicable when required by law or allowed by the
chair persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so
by accessing the meeting remotely as noted above we request public comment be limited to two minutes
per person so it's going to be a very quick meeting this morning we have a call to order
announcements public comment we will spend the bulk of our time reviewing four potential articles
to be submitted by the board for the annual 2026 town meeting and then we will also discuss as one
of those articles and easement for the mass real trail that will be followed by a discussion review
and potential vote on additional and new revenue generating ideas including the pilot program payment
in lieu of taxes uh or policy that and we will discuss the potential vote to vote on the amended
non-sick leave policy followed by consent there were no topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in
advance and hopefully um by noon or beforehand we will adjourn so do there any announcements first of all
uh in the room with me this morning is uh mr fey mr levine mr whitney and myself carol martin um we are
going to be joined we are currently being joined by mr keveney our finance director um are there any
announcements from the board nope okay okay there's none do we have any public comment i don't see anyone
raising their hand okay great thank you very much do you see uh katie klein from kp law um as a
participant i don't see that she has joined yet um and just as an fyi michael will be joining in the
next few minutes okay and we will be joined by our town manager michael mccall in approximately five
minutes all right um okay sheila there's somebody else came in on your name over here katie klein yeah
okay so could you bring her forward she's on okay miss klein um we are inviting attendance by katie
klein our council kp law to discuss article the first article we're going to review today which is the
acquisition of permanent easements and conveyance of the temporary easements of town center for the mass
central rail trail good morning good morning joining us appreciate it hello how are you um good
going to give the floor to you and um tom i guess who are working on these these two articles the
information is in our packet starting on page uh five i think there's a sample of the article and then
the documents associated with the easement in the uh start on page six i went back around
the rail trail extending um to whalen is not complete it's the hope of the dcr to start construction on
that remaining portion between sundry and the oil library in 2027 but in going to achieve that
they need it to secure certain rights so that when they do the construction work there'll be no issue so
we're basically talking easements involving the new owner of the wendland town center
what is the town that background i turn it over okay so uh good morning um tom and i have met on a couple of
occasions with dcr and with um the new owner of the well a representative of the new owner of the town center uh the name of which is np wayland llc
and um dcr needs to acquire both uh a permanent easement for the placement of the rail trail uh that starts in sudbury and ends at um looks like it ends at the intersection of
chituate road and um i guess it's is old sudbury road um and concord road anyway um so
there's a permanent easement that would be required um for the rail trail and dcr is the sort of the sponsor of this uh at least this portion
of the rail trail and other portions and dcr has asked the town to acquire the permanent easement from
np wayland the developer um to the extent it runs through the developer's property and the developer
is uh amenable to that and the reason that dcr doesn't for they have some type of policies or
regulations that govern when they can acquire property and apparently this doesn't meet their
um these whatever this policy is and so they've asked the town to do the to acquire it and uh the
developer np wayland is amenable to um conveying an easement to the town so the question is whether or not
the town uh is agreeable to uh obtaining that easement from np wayland and that would be documented in an
easement deed um it wouldn't be it would not be a taking of any sort it would be uh an agreement between
the town and np wayland and the other thing that uh dcr needs in order is in order to construct
the rail trail they have um they need a temporary easement on land owned by the town and the the town
land is at the eastern end of this portion of the rail trail um where old sudbury road concord road and
constituent road um you know meet um so just to the west of that it's about a 17
thousand square foot temporary easement um and i actually don't know what property this is it's
listed as one constituent road i don't know what what is on that property um is that uh infrastructure
of some sort well it's right here it's right near the wayland depot okay okay looking at the diagrams
that you that are in the packet and yeah it's the last page yeah on page 23 i'm going to bring up on
the screen if uh that works on a second thank you oh excuse me just for the record we were joined at
10 34 by our assistant telemanager calce powers perlet so uh did this help you yeah it's um it's this
parcel right to the west of the intersection and you can see down at the bottom there's a little red
where the red intersects you'll see that it's listed as town of wayland um parcel x te3 17
um 1847 square feet that would be for construction of the rail trail and it generally their temporary
construction easements are for five years um at least on mass dot projects which this is um a mass dot
project and so i've written um two documents the first document is a proposed war article that would
authorize the um that warrant article would authorize the select board in paragraph one to acquire the
permanent easement um as shown on the plans the plans are being updated we're waiting for those from dcr
um i don't think they would be um show easements in different places but there the permanent easement
was labeled as a temporary easement so that needs to be changed and then the second portion of the warrant
article would be for the town to convey to uh dcr uh a temporary construction easement as in the location
that we just uh looked at that 17 000 square feet the other thing that i document that i drafted was
a proposed letter from uh np wayland the uh developer to the town uh indicating that the uh developer is
agreeable to conveying an easement a permanent easement to the town um on terms and conditions to be
agreed upon but i think um the board um and and tom thought it would be important and i agree
for um np wayland to put in writing its intent to uh go forward with uh this um tran proposed transaction
and there i think i get the sense that they're very supportive of the um you know having the rail trail
go through this property they see it as a benefit to the development um and uh so i think what we're
looking for is for um the select board to you know say whether or not uh you know the members agree
that this is a an appropriate uh way to proceed and whether or not to put this warrant article on
to the warrant uh for next spring thank you now just for the record i'd like to note that we were
joined at 10 41 a.m by our town manager michael mccall so welcome and good morning kelsey and michael
all right so i'd like to open this up um so katie we actually have these two items listed as uh two
separate agenda items you know and then the latter um from um i'm gonna say town center for those who
are listening because it's clear of those we're talking about so first i'd like to open it up to the
the board for questions about the potential article does anyone have any questions on the article
proposal bill i have i think three questions one is uh is there a sense what the consideration would be
to the current property owner second question is um there uh what are the specific areas that are being
acquired i infer that they are uh the areas outlined in yellow on pages uh well page 20 and 21 of our
packet and the third question is um it looks to me as though the rail trail has been completed in this
area and so i'd like to understand uh whether additional construction is uh is contemplated and
uh hence the need for the uh the temporary easement um well i'll tom step in but um in terms of
consideration um i'm i'm i i think the um the town center is not looking for consideration is that was
that your question as to town center i assume it's nominal consideration just one it's nominal it's a yeah
it's a dollar or whatever um they're not looking for any uh award of damages and in terms of where the um
the rail trail the permanent easement would be it is yes it's in yellow on the plan i believe it's
listed as a temporary easement but it's actually as i suggested it's a uh it's it's actually a permanent
easement um in that area and in terms of what exists there um my understanding is that there is a trail a
walkable you know path at this point i don't know what additional consider what additional excuse me
construction is required um and uh tom do you do you do you know the answer to that question
oh my sense from dcr metham that so they appreciate the town's effort to make this area of non-pavement at
this time their intention to make it uniform throughout real care much like it is now we'll put it another
way they should pave it and so even though the town has done this already they're going to make it
uniform allow them do they have different standards of construction is that your sense yeah are you all
set bill yes thank you i think doug you had your hand raised too i did um katie a question about the
the language in the article um as i'm curious how these are drafted generally in the second paragraph
in the second item when we talk about a temporary easement do we would typically say specifically more
about that the timeline around that that it would be no more than five years or something else um that
puts a cap on that as the word temporary is just so vague or is that language not typically used
used it's not typically used um we know that it will be um we're you know i'm pretty confident it will be
five years and i don't um see any reason um we can confirm that with um you know dcr and massdot and
if it is certainly appropriate to put that in um if that would be helpful uh i'm just imagining that we
would get that question yeah and and if it's not in the language of the article itself then we would
put it in the write-up of course right um that sounds that sounds fine i don't see any reason not
to include it um because it's it's very standard um but our language does not generally um circumscribe it
you know it in terms of the term okay i was just curious about that i'm good carol thank you i'm
doug uh tom do you have anything you want to add here with doug's question i suspected that dcr
won't want to limit it but they may agree to language likely like the normal assignment yeah
but the practical effect of the easement is simply needed for construction purposes and
with i mean practically speaking they start construction on seven and i hope it's down
filled by mid-28 so we'll check with them and see what i have a second thanks um i i have one thought
on that actually and where the he's the temporary easement is going to be near the depot tom have you
looked at that spot are you familiar with that 17 000 square feet this and where i'm going with this
is i want to make sure that before we obviously we're going to go to tell me anyone who says this
article further we're only talking about submitting it today um but i think we want to make sure that
there's nothing in there involving any of those historical markers on them that's correct um i have i
have a name in that area i'm coming up on screen sorry please so i have examined that area and if you
look at it it is to the southwest of the um okay yeah i may be mistaken i suspect they want to use this
area more for staging uh for the construction and that's all okay we're just going to ask that question
because i'm sure like dr doug's prior point we may get asked that all right um unless anyone else has any
further comment about this i think i'd like to entertain a motion to submit the article we will
then you know once all the articles come forward we'll look at inserting and eventually taking a
position but i'd like to get it submit a vote for submission today um obviously the article needs a
little bit of um adjustments and cleaning up before we submit it but i'd like to
have a motion i move that the board submits what is called article y in our packet uh entitled
acquisition of permanent easements and conveyance of temporary easements of town center for the mass
central rail trail i have a second thank you three further discussion okay having none we'll take a
roll call vote bill yes doug yes tom yes carol yes so the motion passes four zero now do we need to take
a motion on the letter regarding the uh the easement or are we just acknowledging that it says vote
potential vote so would you like to take a vote on that as well yeah i think that would be that would
be good okay so that that's item number four in my um thing yeah so and we're just forward
so to construct management to authorize some letter from now so let me get back now i mean hey this is a letter um from np wayland to to the select board how about something about we authorize the town manager to negotiate the easement what do you thought well um i think right now we just need the um the board's support of submitting the letter the proposed letter to np wayland for its consideration um i i mean i think it would be the sooner the the town and np with the excuse me the uh the sooner the uh the town and the select excuse me np wayland um start negotiating the easement i think the better but i think it's um it's um it's it's premature to do that at this point so how about a vote then to authorize the town manager to submit the draft letter send the draft letter to the current owner of town center for their consideration and execution can i have a second second okay we're going to give bill a second there um but you were late so that's what happened you snoozy lose okay that's it too um do we have any discussion all right let's have a roll call vote mr levine yes bill yes um and carol yes motion passes four zero and with that we'll ask miss clinton if she has anything additional she'd like to add and if not thank you very much for coming this morning yeah no nothing further thank you thank you you submit this um draft to kelsey um i would michael do that or yeah i'll work with michael okay that sounds about i'm talking about the article right up so who are we going to send the article i'm happy to work on it okay because we need to we want to submit it okay great all right thank you very much thank you thank you very much so the next article potential article that we want to talk about is um article w issuance of pension obligation bonds this information that's in our packet was actually in our packet a couple meetings ago brian had put it in i think maybe when we looked at the tax recap but we did not discuss it we just mentioned it in briefly that this could become a tool in our toolbox so we've invited our finance director brian company to come and speak to us about this this morning and so brian the floor is yours thank you uh so good evening um i'm not sure um if you folks have any experience with pension obligation bonds this discussion came out of our budget working group over the summer and we took a look at the 10-year outlook of the town in the real possibility of of consecutive ongoing overrides which were creating a structural deficit in the town's budget so what we looked at during the budget group was possible solutions that would affect um you know the budget over a longer period of time and and some of the remedies to address an override really stem from you know collective bargaining more improved debt management and possibly issuing a pension obligation bond and when this came up um pretty much all of us started to research what this is and what it basically is and i did put in a memo and what i tried to do is explain briefly what a pension obligation bond is the pros and cons of it and what the town would need to do if they wanted to pursue it so currently um like i said this is a a tool in the toolbox as carol just said in addressing our long-term structural deficit so if we move forward with a pension obligation bond what we would first need to do is speak seek special legislation so right now in the state of massachusetts there's about eight to ten municipalities who have seeked or obtained special legislation of those this from my account from my research there's i found four that have actually issued pension obligation bonds quincy brockton worcester and andover so right now wayland is part of the middlesex retirement county we're part of a county retirement we do not do our own retirement right now based upon the last um valuation from middlesex we have a 60.6 million dollar unfunded liability middlesex is the fourth largest pension system in the state i believe the ranking is the state the teachers union the city of boston and then middlesex county middlesex county has numerous municipalities as well as they can have water departments they can have regional school systems so they have a sizable endowment i believe their total investment portfolio right now is about 2.2 billion and the majority of that is with prit the town of whalen also has about 30 million dollars of opep with prit prit is a very sound investment so um you know 100 or so of middlesex investments are with prit which again is a very respected well-run organization so right now wayland is looking at a an unfunded liability of 60.6 million we're projected to be fully funded in 2036 basically 10 years from now right now middlesex is about 60 fully funded so in the next 10 years they have to go from 60 fully funded to 100 if they don't do that then most likely they'll have to seek um from the state an extension to be fully funded now two years from now we could have a market crash and the state could step in and extend out the funding requirements of most of the retirement boards similar to what happened in 2008. so what is a pension obligation bond so a pension obligation bond would be a town invested in borrowing money through municipal bonds which are taxable they're not tax exempt so they would draw a higher investment and the whole purpose of the pension obligation bond or the theory behind why would we do this is that you would in the case of whalen i'll use whalen as an example you would seek a bond authoring of 60 million dollars by tax it by taxable bonds for the for the investors you would then take that 60 million dollars and hand it over to middlesex county your your theory is is that middlesex county is going to take that 60 million dollars and invest it properly and earn a rate of return that is greater than what the town of whalen will pay on its bond offering of 60 million that's the theory now pension obligation bonds across the country did not um were not pervasive because of that it's a high risk inherit investment there's no guarantee that by borrowing 60 million dollars and either investing it yourself or turning it over to a municipal regional county that the investment returns are going to always be greater than your expense that you're going to be paying on your debt now across the country a lot of municipalities didn't jump on board but in 2022 when interest rates were around two percent or less about a hundred municipalities in california issue pension obligation bonds their theory was probably i'm going to borrow a hundred million dollars at two percent and i have confidence that that investment is going to earn more than two percent over the life of the um obligation now pension obligation bonds usually issued around 20 years or 30 years from what i've read we currently have an immunization with middlesex that we're going to be fully funded in 10 years if all goes properly what this would do is basically change the town's budget from sending an assessment to middlesex of around seven million dollars each year and it climbs either six percent or nine percent until they're fully funded to a more fixed amount where you be paying principal and interest now many towns have not issued these because again there's no guarantee that the math is going to work on this but more recently in 2022 because interest rates were around two percent many municipalities across the country and i mentioned 100 in california thought that they had the ability to always earn an investment return greater than say the two percent so what this does is it brings a tool in the toolbox that whalen can look at as a possibility to bring down its long-term override situation by issuing this kind of debt structure now i did talk to hilltop securities and they were involved in the andover issue and over issue was around 2.6 percent that they borrowed i obviously was not involved in that but from my perspective 2.6 percent is still too high if you asked me brian how much money would be able to how much interest rate would we ever do i would think it would be two percent or less there was one town in california that borrowed at 1.6 so what's before you tonight is the memo that i provided the board describing what a pension obligation bond is and what needs to take place the whole purpose of us bringing this to you is that we're not suggesting that the town to issue a pension obligation bond now or in the future we're simply saying that maybe the town should put themselves in a position that if the stars were right they would be in a position to issue the debt if you don't if if three years from now excuse me if you could issue debt at say one and a half percent and this looked like a favorable investment the town would not be in a position to issue it because you didn't have the special legislation the town can issue and seek the special legislation at no risk and at no cost we simply would have the special legislation in the event the town ever wanted to pursue this so this before you today isn't uh an opportunity to move forward with this investment it's simply putting the position of the town so that it could react in the case it wanted to issue such a debt instrument and excuse me again and if you do read about pension obligations you will see that folks like the gfoa which is the government finance officers association does not support such a bond offering because of the inherent risk other other folks have done it well there's speculation that um rating agencies don't like it the other piece of doing this is that if we ever got the special legislation and we pursued actually issuing a bond uh pension obligation bond we would have to submit a financial plan to the state so there's a tremendous amount of oversight by the state to each municipality that would do this it's not simply hey we have a coa and we want to issue debt to pay for it you have to go through a whole series of disclosures with the state of massachusetts about how you're going to pay for us and that's really done by the administration office at the state level so there's a whole layer of things that would need to happen so again not to repeat myself all we're doing here is bringing up the possibility of putting the town in a position down the road if the stars were right to do this and that's that's what the intention was as the budget uh working group is to bring this as a possible tool down the road there's a lot of things that would take place if we ever wanted to pursue a pension obligation bond assuming we seek the special legislation we would have to do present value analysis between what the unfunded liability is right now and what the present value would be of issuing a 20 million dollar i'm sorry a 60 million dollar 20 year loan so excuse me again so there's a lot that would take place prior to the issuance of the pension obligation bond and what you're probably going to see between now and the future is a lot of creative ideas of how to address the override this is one of them so if you didn't have a lot of questions on this i would be surprised because it does draw a lot of questions as to why a municipality would do this so with that i think i covered all the big points on this um and i'm sure that you probably each have a hundred questions but i will turn it over back to carol because um again the attention is to bring this to your attention thank you thank you brian i think that was really comprehensive um i'm going to add one a couple points only because i already had a tutorial i got a little bit of this um this it was 58 now it's 60 million dollars liability is an assessment i think because in addition into our annual contribution to the pension fund correct brian so we're already making our regular pension amounts and then there's this makeup correct well the 58 million the 58 million dollar one was actually um as of 24 they were projecting the 25 to be 60. what i'm saying is 60 is in addition to our annual amount that will be in the operating budget so middlesex comes out with the assessment they use seagull wayland use seagull way back in the early days of opeb to do an actual evaluation um middlesex use a seagull they come out with that every two years so um carol's right it's around 58 60 million dollars and that we we get that informed every year middlesex gives us our assessment two years out so we knew what the 26 number was and we know what the 26 numbers was we did our own projections as what the future ones would be middlesex will not tell us what our assessments are in 20 and 29 because they simply need to do a re-evaluation on an accrual basis and a lot of the um uh actual reports are driven on investment returns if if there was um if there was a 20-year run where the markets were great then fine our assessment would come down but as we all know just less than 20 years ago we had 2008 and there was a correction in the market so we can all assume at some point along each 20 years this is going to be some kind of a correction um and to brian o'hurley his credit he actually wrote a draft article which was also included in the packet you put a lot of time into doing that and that was just a to show you what this would look like in the form of an article so i think the budget group all agreed and speaking for them that there's no harm in at least speaking seeking legislation again there's no cost uh other than you know going through the legal channels to do that it's not committing the town to do anything it's simply putting the town in a position if they ever wanted to do this they will be able to do this as opposed to waiting another year to speak that special legislation so the other thing point i wanted to make up before i open it to questions to the board and then i'll have my questions at the end is that in the fy 27 budget you know we had that forecast nine it includes the 20 the payment for next year out of this liability which is 900 000 so brian has a schedule over the next 10 years of how much we have to contribute it was a slide when we had one of the financial presentations and you can see what how it is how it is going to impact the operating budget more and more each year over the next 10 years i mean i don't understand how half these municipalities could afford can afford this but nonetheless we're looking at it so let me open it to the board for questions first i know we're trying to get out of here at 11 30 and ish and i have two more articles after this so brian can you keep your answers shorter thank you i'm sorry all right questions who wants to start doug um my question brian that i tend to ask generally when i'm learning about something new and that is about others who've gone before us so in in number six on page two of your memo you talk about that massachusetts communities a number of them obtain the special legislation but few have issued the pension obligation bonds because of the risks do you know any that have and how they've performed uh i believe quincy yeah quincy brockton worcester and indover have i know that in quincy's case now i'll say i'll hear to carol's request in in reading quincy quincy did issue a pension obligation bond i believe they could be self um you know do their own retirement so they issued the bond in thinking that they basically quote paid off their unfunded liability but along the way your unfunded liability can still go up because of other reasons besides investment returns mortality rates can go up wages can go up greater than expected so even though quincy issued a pension obligation bond and is paying debt service on that they had to also step in in future years and continue to make retirement payments because the actual reports came back with a set of data that you know identified other reasons why they had to pay more so it's not it's not like you're paying off a loan and you're done with you're paying off a loan and you're stuck with that debt service but you're also paying off a loan that could come back with future costs that you'd have to pay for that's the inherent risk in this similar to the opeb you know our unfunded liability can we keep funding we and we in our percent decreases even though we have more and more in so did you have any other questions stuck no thank you man um bill or tong okay a couple i have to go ahead and conclude this in the state and the state legislature passed this um would a town meeting both be needed in the future for this or do you keep bringing the hand of what well i think town meeting would need to vote uh for the town to speak this seek the special legislation and then like any other debt the town meeting would have to approve the authorization of the debt so my next question is are the final decisions here really based on the rate of return that would drive the decisions and yes it's it's an evaluation of interest rate risk that your um your interest rate is always going to be lower than the your returns and there's no guarantee with that that's why you you do see most towns opting like you said some have seeked the legislation i i refer it to uh you know wanting to do skydiving you go in the plane you put the parachute on the door opens and you say you know what i'm not going to do this the risk is too great it's sort of similar that these towns to their credit put themselves in a position to do it if the stars were right and like i mentioned the stars did appear to be right for 100 towns in california to address their unfunded pension liability is this a new pool no it's been it's been around for a while tom but because of the risk involved and in the lack of guarantee a lot of municipalities have not pursued it right and finally i just want to thank you for your creative thinking and um um you know ingenuity and the other our kind of fans you know uh thank you tom bill brian what relationship if any does this have to the opeb annual appropriation of a half million dollars that we routinely include in the budget yeah bill those would be separate the opeb is really for future obligations for you know retiree health insurance the pension obligation is for you know flat out pension payments that would be entitled to our retirees as you know the retirement pension is mandated by the state opeb is a voluntary contribution wayland like you said just said does about a half a million dollars there's no state mandate to do that i believe around uh 1985 the state stepped in and require towns to annually fund their pension obligation not opeb okay and the the 60 million dollars it uh is the expectation or the hope that that would uh take care of any uh existing liability we have as well as prospective liability uh on a uh on a going forward basis yeah so the 60 000 is at a point in time as of the last report if if nothing else changed in terms of investments if investments stayed the same mortality rates wages if everything stayed relatively consistent then that 60 million dollar unfunded liability would be paid off in the combination of wayland's contributions as well as the respect expected return that middlesex retirement has projected through print what's your expectation brian as to whether in the next 20 years uh investors would be attracted to a bond paying one and a half or two percent on which they'd have to pay taxes uh for a long term of 20 years uh that's a good question because a lot of the investors buy municipal bonds simply because of their exclusion from taxation now what you're doing is presenting to the market a taxable bond and it may draw a different kind of investor to do that but for a long term it's hard to imagine that people would want to lock in a one and a half percent return over 20 years yeah apparently back in 2022 people were their municipalities were getting you know interest rates around uh two percent i believe i saw one at 1.6 so there was an attraction maybe because the investor wanted a guarantee over 20 years they were going to get at least a two percent return on an investment as part of their portfolio i would assume that they that municipal investment would be a very small fraction of their allocation of their investments but maybe that's what their allocation required at the time but i i i can't identify which kind of investor would do it because when whalen goes to the market with municipal bonds as you know they're highly attractive moody's is a triple a town and one thing i forgot to mention is if we did pursue this as a pension obligation bond depending upon the current rating of each municipality the state requires different things the higher your rating the less information they would require the lower your rating the more information they will require only because you're exposed to make not make those payments thank you thank you um i would like to welcome in in brensley good morning she has joined us at 11 12 and we are on item the articles for telemeeting and we are talking about the pension obligation bond brian has already given us a fairly lengthy explanation and we're in questions i'm going to give you a second to gather your thoughts and i'm going to give my two questions and then i'll ask if you have any how does that sound great okay so brian one of the the interesting things here is i remember from the discussion that you and i had is that um there still has to be a mechanism once if we did this where the pension fund credits whalen for its um say the 60 million you know if we hand them over the check for the 60 million that i know still has to be worked out which leads me to my second point is could we do this in partial um we owe we owe 60 million so we ran them borrows you know over 10 years what if we did if we got we got the permission to have this tool in our toolbox from town meeting and then we did a series of borrowings um you know whether it's two at 30 or three at 20 or million or something like that just want to throw that out as an option yeah in doing my reading i did see that sounds did not sometimes did um issue bonds to pay off 100 of the unfunded liability and some issue to um you know to fund less than 100 so we answer the question i mean i'm sure it's possible to only do 50 now i also did mention this when uh if we did do this as a pension obligation bond and it was 60 million dollars and we turned it over to middle sex retirement we would have no control over moving that money around in dot and if you were a town that did your own retirement and and bombs bonds were favorable or not you can do your own asset allocation you can internally move your money around when you give your money to middle sex you have no control over where they invest it when middle sex gives the money to pret uh middle sex again from my understanding has no control over how pret does the asset allocation pret simply takes in everybody's funds and they generate the greatest return they can if you're familiar with doing 401ks as an employee they may ask you you may want to put your 401k investments in a fund that you're going to retire in 20 years we we would not give middle sex our money and put it in a fund that's going to be fully funded in in 10 years the money would end up going to print print would do their own asset allocation and we'd be um we would not have the ability to control our own investment which is not a bad thing it's it's the difference between doing it yourself and giving it to a county retirement and i would further add that there's no other municipality within middle sex county that is issue it drake did one that is similar to this but no other municipalities actually issued pension obligation bonds through middle sex county and then lastly i know i've seen a slide you've done on some presentation would would it be possible for you to just submit that slide to abby and i can include it in a future packet they'll show what our annual obligations are from fy27 to fy36 it's 10 years right yeah we actually pay this 58 million off i know you have had it i've seen it if we could just have that in our packet i think it would help us to see you know how it is going to impact operating budgets so that was that was done internally not by middle sex we did our own projection no and just it's just for the boys on that yeah yeah i appreciate that i think the board would like to that would be helpful for us um and did you have any questions on this topic i'm still trying to catch up so okay all right so based on all this i'm going to ask if we could have a motion to submit article y um w how about w that um i don't know if it should be called issuance of pension but it's home rule so it's um authorization i think it's going to be authorization to issue pension obligation bonds and then we're not we're not inserting we're just submitting because we'll discuss further in january if we're going to insert
so i have a meeting for legislation say that again please brian you're submitting for legislation okay so i move that the board um vote to submit article what did you say y w currently called w um um as a home rule petition to authorize um the select board authorize the select board issue of the home rule petition for the issuance of pension obligation bonds thank you do we have a second
thank you so many for the discussion on this okay yes bill uh i plan to vote against this uh i am uh appreciative of the fact that uh a lot of people put some time and effort into this i think the moment is not propitious to uh go to the town meeting uh for a 38 million dollar water bond issue and something that arguably could lead to a 60 million dollar uh additional uh cap obligation of the town i think the timing the unfortunate also i think um this approach uh constructively involves moving an operating expense to a capital cost and uh i think we're better advised to try to figure out ways in which to uh meet our operating needs uh without incurring long-term debt thank you for that and i think that when we discussed this in january um once the article submitted just been insert submitted to whether to insert this i wanted to re-bring that up because i think that's a very good point but um is there any further discussion okay i'm going to go to the vote here uh tom yeah doug yes and i'm abstaining on this yes okay and bill no okay and then i'm gonna vote yes this is just for submitting so then some help me out here doug three one one three one one thank you and thank you brian thank you everybody all right so we have two more quick items on new potential item articles and the first one is acceptance of massachusetts general law chapter 38 section 12 d um conversion of on-premise wine and malt only licenses to all alcoholic beverages licenses this actually was an insertion into the fyi 26 state the section into the state budget i don't even think it's online yet i did get a query as to where was it but we did get a white paper on this from kp law um there is a draft of this in the packet i did reach out to the finance committee chair of the potential articles we had to see which ones they thought would have little probably and they haven't voted at little or no financial impact on the town and they so that we would only write 150 word blurb around the full-fledged write-up and this was one of them so this is why you see a very short write-up um do either councilor jaylen want to speak to this i can speak to it um excuse me miss i recognize jaylen randica so the town meeting just needs to vote to accept the provisions of chapter 138 on section 12 to allow the select board to approve requests from licensees who currently have a wine and malt license um to convert that to an all alcoholic license for on-premise consumption only if one of those wine and malt licensees um returns their light all alcoholic license that is going to convert back into a wine and malt it doesn't automatically carry over um and currently um just as an fyi we only have one wine and malt license in whalen that uh at the mo at the moment that would be um able to convert to an all alcoholic license if town meeting voted to accept this okay so this is item s where am i right yes is there any uh questions on this from the board i think we talked about this briefly when um it came up back in the late summer and michael presented it to the board as a potential article so that being the case um can i have a motion please to uh submit and um okay and a second second thank you any further discussion okay all those in favor bill yes doug yes and or you moved tom and carol yes motions adopted carry on zero so in like manner there is another article that we've also seen heard of we haven't seen um it's going to be a homeroom petition for additional liquor licenses this is letter t and um i will let jaylen or kelsey speak to this well um actually madam chair uh jaylen didn't help me with it but i did the initial drafting i had uh used the similar language in two previous communities i had spoken with our legislative delegation and after we had terrain come in we gave away our last full liquor license and um i was told by the abcc i worked very closely with one of the gentlemen down there and he said once you have something like terrain you have some momentum going you want to have additional licenses in your pool and i was advised by both the uh members of our legislative delegation that i should ask for more we may not need 10 but you ask for them and maybe they get cut down um but at least you you want to have a higher initial ask and it's not that we want to turn wayland into a you know a bar community but we we already know that uh the incoming owner of uh town center would like to expand and lure some additional restaurants and we want to have these at the ready so it would help us with economic development terrific so is there any questions from the board if not because we've already heard discussed this as well when terrain came through and as michael mentioned and um we allocated our final licenses so i'll have a motion please that's in europe's submission of the article
by only time in the late 2000 that's enough
thank you bill um so if it's in discussion i want to say that when we originally set this agenda up i didn't know we were going to have a full board which is why all of these because i see tom's perplexed face i only put them for submit so that when we went back to insert the full board would be there but i don't have it on the agenda today so i'm staying with just submit that was was my logic it was good till yesterday so all right let's have a vote bill yes and yes doug yes tom and carol yes so that mass is five zero so this is terrific um obviously we will continue our discussion on articles on january 5th there's a couple more potential new ones and then there are um some regular ones i guess okay so now we're going to move to um item five which is discuss a review and potential bonus additional revenue generating ideas and i think our primary topic today is going to be the payment in lieu of taxes commonly known as pilot program policy this is in the packet as well on page 35 so um michael did you want to speak with us to this yes thank you madam chair uh what this is essentially the same draft you saw before but select board member whitney wanted some language that would try and address his concerns about the taxation uh premise uh principal portions of uh property belonging to religious institutions that were used for worship uh i there is a footnote the it references the state statute for tax-exempt uh properties which covers religious institutions and the case law that covers some of that language um i did send this out to the chair uh it can be tweaked but essentially that should address uh the the feedback from select board member whitney and it's in the blue-eyed talent says portion i still will need when we at whatever time we decide to send this out i will get the updated numbers for the yellow section from the assessor
sorry i'm gonna open it for discussion questions i know we've talked about this before um but the other thing that we've mentioned is the importance of having sit down meetings with some of the larger non-profits and i'm specifically thinking about the three that are greatly expanding their footprint in whalen which is the veritas school the carol school and the coptic church i think it will be helpful to have conversations with them um and i've had an initial conversation with one of them and i think they can potentially be very productive so i actually was um to your point doug i was going to say let's talk about the policy then i was going to say strategy and the rollout so but let's can we start with the policy first bill thank you uh first i'd like to thank the town manager for uh addressing the concern uh but as no good deed goes unpunished i would uh uh express the concern that what if uh for instance in the case of the coptic church the uh proposed residential and the the proposed new uh worship facility were on the same parcel uh that would uh uh presumably uh uh not fall into the policy because uh the uh the worship space is on the same property as uh the proposed apartment building unless i'm reading this incorrect well what what i put in there and it was uh the case law that was noted the bottom shrine of our lady of last select they looked at selected structures on the property and that's where that language says if the dominant purpose is for religious worship instruction or a related connection to religious worship or instruction so i put portions of any real property belonging to a religious institution so if you had a garden shed in the back that wasn't significantly related to the furtherance of religious worship that would not be exempt so that's what the the case in part stood for is to determining which part portions of the property were actually used for religious worship and which weren't so i think i put that in there hoping that we could go in and say you know here's your primary uh structure where you hold your regular uh worship ceremonies but this over here where you just have housing for people don't see how they have to make that nexus to how it's uh used for religious worship and i would think you can make an argument that residence is just is not uh you know part of its dominant purpose i think we would have to argue that on a case-by-case basis yeah and it just gives us some language in there to to to lay lay the groundwork for that conversation right so when you listen to counsel for the coptic church arguing the applicability of the dover amendment to the apartment building uh he would uh i think conflate uh the apartments with the worship space but given that it's voluntary uh this this at least gives us some some basis to talk about it i'm gonna if everyone will indulge me hop in i had the same question i think that bill had on that language to me i think you could argue i think we leave the door open for a lot of interpretation um because a lot of some of our uh religious facilities actually have institutions in their building where they have the worship and therefore they could argue that that is exempt when in fact that is probably a user of our services if they need the police and the fire to come uh they would probably need it for their their institution their instructional area so i i wonder if we should be saying however portions of any real property belonging to religious institution are exempt blah blah blah if their dominant purpose is religious worship period this or related connection i think also is very vague but i'm gonna throw my two cents that's the key phrase in the case law so that's why i took it yeah it's the instruction that concerns me because how do you interpret instructions and bill bill wanna hop back in please uh carol to uh talk out of the other side of my mouth uh given that this is voluntary um you know if somebody you know were to say uh you know if hypothetically the trinitarian church would say well you know our gym newly constructed gym is part of the religious instruction you know what are you going to do so uh um i think uh this is maybe as as good as it gets uh particularly if uh this cites uh the language that creates a precedent okay um does anyone else have any questions uh and any questions on this doug okay so if we don't have any and if you have one raise your hand i'll come back to you uh you know i okay i i guess i'm just i just digesting the wording and the interpretation you guys had of some of it because you guys brought up points i didn't think about so okay um so then i think to doug's point i wanted to also so we've worked on this we're interested in implementing this so we're gonna have a strategy we took doug's point we have mentioned i think both at the meeting and i think also at agenda planning meeting that um i think doug and i felt that would be appropriate for in-person meetings and um so i guess see the i guess the next question is as part of the strategy when do we plan to roll it out are we ready to go with this do we want to vote are we voting this policy today and then start rolling it out what's the board's preference i'd move that uh the select board uh adopt the proposed payment in lieu of taxes pilot policy as presented in the packet second second thank you there any further discussion all right let's vote and yes uh tom yes doug yes bill yes carol yeah so the motion passes five zero okay how how do we envision this being rolled out i mean i technically i have to say personally i'd like to see us do it of course sooner than later i'd like to see some responses and have a sense of what contributions we are going to receive as we're finalizing the fy 27 budget if that's how it's going to go
this is the most important thing the letters we sent out from the town manager's office with an invitation would set up for any person to meet on the party then you can need to tell manager that would be ready for the form of some sort of uniform of accountability and the invitation to volunteer go okay so i um as the chair i have volunteered to sit in on some of these meetings i know that doug has volunteered um if the board's comfortable with that we may either do them singly or together or michael may do them singly we'll just kind of make a list and and go from there does that work for everyone makes sense i see some yeses and you okay with that doug and i roll this out yeah michael obviously is very capable of doing it but sometimes it helps if you have more than one person in the room maybe we can lend a resonance perspective so all right thank you very much i think the next item on the agenda um this is one we've we had before and oh by the way on the revenue generating ideas i had one that i shared with michael um and i i think he thought it was a good one and we discussed it but um and this is no reflection on the assessors or the board of assessors or the department they did mention that at one time they had you know a larger staff and they did mention it because of the covet and other factors there um there's a little bit of a backlog and they worked really hard to you know chip away at it but they thought it might take another year or two to get caught up um so i mentioned to michael and of course i'm not sure where we would find such a person but we're thinking that perhaps in the next year's budget or maybe if there's some funds available this year we hire someone to kind of come in on the per diem and help with some of that backlog to see if we can get some of those billing permits processed and that new growth on our books so how's that sound that's good okay thanks all right so then on the next item we have is this this non-union police sick leave policy you'll remember that we amended this approved an amendment back i think maybe september october we accidentally i think i mentioned amended the wrong uh an older version versus the current version this is now the current version i'm going to defer this a little bit to michael though too because i believe in the interim of us going back to amend the the current version i believe the personnel board has now amended the policy themselves in november so now i'm not sure if we need to amend or not so i'm going to defer this to michael do we take a vote or not i i think the main concern was at the time when i brought this to you and asked you to make the change um miss pb brought to the attention that the version that i had used on the website was not the correct one and so they wanted me to go back um and get the most current version of the policy and amended i know uh i'm not sure if we can see her she may be a participant but um uh kate ryan is is here somewhere and she said she'd be happy to step on because she's the liaison as well to the personnel board um i think we just need to make sure if you need us to vote or not because they have something okay i think i think the personnel board would be happier if we voted to approve this one but kate is here and she could probably tell you so hi kate how are you hi sorry it took me a second to get in um yeah so they went back and reviewed um that version and they incorporated some additional changes which is what you have in front of you today this is basically what was approved a town meeting in 2016 with a few minor modifications just to update the language so that it's it's current okay and they approved this back in november um they they uh reviewed it again and and voted to approve it in november does anyone have any questions do would you like kate to give us the what the changes are
why don't you walk us through the changes real quick sure let me just if that's possible to do them on the fly here uh yeah let me just pull up the packet so i have it in front of me sorry um where am i come on computer um so overall i think the biggest change that we wanted to to make sure that it was in line with what had been approved a town meeting in 2016 um so that was um in in sorry hold on let me just pull it up um making sure that the payout for uh employees who've been here over a certain period of time i think at the cutoff is 10 years i'm sorry 20 years um right sickly payout was up to date because that was changed in 2016. we also changed the sort of layout um we added some language in here about fmla um minimum usage which is an hour now um which is you know we just wanted to make our make sure employees can actually um use their time as they need to and that's consistent with all of our other bargaining units um and then we added some additional language in the medical certification documentation just to make it clear um what is required both for fmla and just a standard uh sick leave you know five consecutive days or more if you're out then you need to give us a medical certification so i mean it's really consistent with with some of our other bargaining units specifically asked me so we it's really just updating some of the language so any any questions from the board otherwise i i'm sorry tom
do you feel awkward needs to improve this if the personnel do it already did would you like us to do that so i think the question i wasn't sure um under the town manager act the select board is the policy setting um body for the town and so i wasn't sure if that applied to personnel policies or if that was something you wanted to um you know provide you know have the town manager do with the personnel board i think that might be a discussion for the for your board to decide on next steps so that's why we we we brought it to you my question was from i can call michael oh i'm sorry yeah oh my god you're on mute and that's all i have to say about that that's for us i love that mine um
the board previously voted on this when we look to make that change as the policy setting board and i think in a you know out of abundance of caution you that is your role as policy setting board i i would suggest that we vote on the most up-to-date policy and then we'll re-display it on the website and having said that then may i have a motion please let's move to reporting report report report report particularly
thank you second any further discussion okay all those in favor and yes a bill yes yes doug yes tom yes carol yes five zero okay so we've got that done we'll move to consent consent is in a separate packet i think there are three items
can i have a motion please to approve consent that is removed
okay so it was bill says there's any further discussion okay all those in favor bill yes tom yes and yes doug yes carol yes consent passes again i don't have any topics but actually i do want to thank everybody very much for coming i know it's a challenge to do these little extra meetings i think it was really productive and helpful for us it will help us you know to be a soft landing and rather than a big rush at the end for these articles because we have so many potential new ones and i also want to wish everyone for a nice holiday if you're already celebrating celebrated or going to celebrate and i will see you all on uh early january thank you happy new year everybody thank you happy new year happy to move twitter happy to move twitter at 45 thank you okay tom yeah did i get a second on there did you thank you thank you tom yeah and yes doug yes bill yes carol five zero yes we're out thank you thank you
so to construct management to authorize some letter from now so let me get back now i mean hey this is a letter um from np wayland to to the select board how about something about we authorize the town manager to negotiate the easement what do you thought well um i think right now we just need the um the board's support of submitting the letter the proposed letter to np wayland for its consideration um i i mean i think it would be the sooner the the town and np with the excuse me the uh the sooner the uh the town and the select excuse me np wayland um start negotiating the easement i think the better but i think it's um it's um it's it's premature to do that at this point so how about a vote then to authorize the town manager to submit the draft letter send the draft letter to the current owner of town center for their consideration and execution can i have a second second okay we're going to give bill a second there um but you were late so that's what happened you snoozy lose okay that's it too um do we have any discussion all right let's have a roll call vote mr levine yes bill yes um and carol yes motion passes four zero and with that we'll ask miss clinton if she has anything additional she'd like to add and if not thank you very much for coming this morning yeah no nothing further thank you thank you you submit this um draft to kelsey um i would michael do that or yeah i'll work with michael okay that sounds about i'm talking about the article right up so who are we going to send the article i'm happy to work on it okay because we need to we want to submit it okay great all right thank you very much thank you thank you very much so the next article potential article that we want to talk about is um article w issuance of pension obligation bonds this information that's in our packet was actually in our packet a couple meetings ago brian had put it in i think maybe when we looked at the tax recap but we did not discuss it we just mentioned it in briefly that this could become a tool in our toolbox so we've invited our finance director brian company to come and speak to us about this this morning and so brian the floor is yours thank you uh so good evening um i'm not sure um if you folks have any experience with pension obligation bonds this discussion came out of our budget working group over the summer and we took a look at the 10-year outlook of the town in the real possibility of of consecutive ongoing overrides which were creating a structural deficit in the town's budget so what we looked at during the budget group was possible solutions that would affect um you know the budget over a longer period of time and and some of the remedies to address an override really stem from you know collective bargaining more improved debt management and possibly issuing a pension obligation bond and when this came up um pretty much all of us started to research what this is and what it basically is and i did put in a memo and what i tried to do is explain briefly what a pension obligation bond is the pros and cons of it and what the town would need to do if they wanted to pursue it so currently um like i said this is a a tool in the toolbox as carol just said in addressing our long-term structural deficit so if we move forward with a pension obligation bond what we would first need to do is speak seek special legislation so right now in the state of massachusetts there's about eight to ten municipalities who have seeked or obtained special legislation of those this from my account from my research there's i found four that have actually issued pension obligation bonds quincy brockton worcester and andover so right now wayland is part of the middlesex retirement county we're part of a county retirement we do not do our own retirement right now based upon the last um valuation from middlesex we have a 60.6 million dollar unfunded liability middlesex is the fourth largest pension system in the state i believe the ranking is the state the teachers union the city of boston and then middlesex county middlesex county has numerous municipalities as well as they can have water departments they can have regional school systems so they have a sizable endowment i believe their total investment portfolio right now is about 2.2 billion and the majority of that is with prit the town of whalen also has about 30 million dollars of opep with prit prit is a very sound investment so um you know 100 or so of middlesex investments are with prit which again is a very respected well-run organization so right now wayland is looking at a an unfunded liability of 60.6 million we're projected to be fully funded in 2036 basically 10 years from now right now middlesex is about 60 fully funded so in the next 10 years they have to go from 60 fully funded to 100 if they don't do that then most likely they'll have to seek um from the state an extension to be fully funded now two years from now we could have a market crash and the state could step in and extend out the funding requirements of most of the retirement boards similar to what happened in 2008. so what is a pension obligation bond so a pension obligation bond would be a town invested in borrowing money through municipal bonds which are taxable they're not tax exempt so they would draw a higher investment and the whole purpose of the pension obligation bond or the theory behind why would we do this is that you would in the case of whalen i'll use whalen as an example you would seek a bond authoring of 60 million dollars by tax it by taxable bonds for the for the investors you would then take that 60 million dollars and hand it over to middlesex county your your theory is is that middlesex county is going to take that 60 million dollars and invest it properly and earn a rate of return that is greater than what the town of whalen will pay on its bond offering of 60 million that's the theory now pension obligation bonds across the country did not um were not pervasive because of that it's a high risk inherit investment there's no guarantee that by borrowing 60 million dollars and either investing it yourself or turning it over to a municipal regional county that the investment returns are going to always be greater than your expense that you're going to be paying on your debt now across the country a lot of municipalities didn't jump on board but in 2022 when interest rates were around two percent or less about a hundred municipalities in california issue pension obligation bonds their theory was probably i'm going to borrow a hundred million dollars at two percent and i have confidence that that investment is going to earn more than two percent over the life of the um obligation now pension obligation bonds usually issued around 20 years or 30 years from what i've read we currently have an immunization with middlesex that we're going to be fully funded in 10 years if all goes properly what this would do is basically change the town's budget from sending an assessment to middlesex of around seven million dollars each year and it climbs either six percent or nine percent until they're fully funded to a more fixed amount where you be paying principal and interest now many towns have not issued these because again there's no guarantee that the math is going to work on this but more recently in 2022 because interest rates were around two percent many municipalities across the country and i mentioned 100 in california thought that they had the ability to always earn an investment return greater than say the two percent so what this does is it brings a tool in the toolbox that whalen can look at as a possibility to bring down its long-term override situation by issuing this kind of debt structure now i did talk to hilltop securities and they were involved in the andover issue and over issue was around 2.6 percent that they borrowed i obviously was not involved in that but from my perspective 2.6 percent is still too high if you asked me brian how much money would be able to how much interest rate would we ever do i would think it would be two percent or less there was one town in california that borrowed at 1.6 so what's before you tonight is the memo that i provided the board describing what a pension obligation bond is and what needs to take place the whole purpose of us bringing this to you is that we're not suggesting that the town to issue a pension obligation bond now or in the future we're simply saying that maybe the town should put themselves in a position that if the stars were right they would be in a position to issue the debt if you don't if if three years from now excuse me if you could issue debt at say one and a half percent and this looked like a favorable investment the town would not be in a position to issue it because you didn't have the special legislation the town can issue and seek the special legislation at no risk and at no cost we simply would have the special legislation in the event the town ever wanted to pursue this so this before you today isn't uh an opportunity to move forward with this investment it's simply putting the position of the town so that it could react in the case it wanted to issue such a debt instrument and excuse me again and if you do read about pension obligations you will see that folks like the gfoa which is the government finance officers association does not support such a bond offering because of the inherent risk other other folks have done it well there's speculation that um rating agencies don't like it the other piece of doing this is that if we ever got the special legislation and we pursued actually issuing a bond uh pension obligation bond we would have to submit a financial plan to the state so there's a tremendous amount of oversight by the state to each municipality that would do this it's not simply hey we have a coa and we want to issue debt to pay for it you have to go through a whole series of disclosures with the state of massachusetts about how you're going to pay for us and that's really done by the administration office at the state level so there's a whole layer of things that would need to happen so again not to repeat myself all we're doing here is bringing up the possibility of putting the town in a position down the road if the stars were right to do this and that's that's what the intention was as the budget uh working group is to bring this as a possible tool down the road there's a lot of things that would take place if we ever wanted to pursue a pension obligation bond assuming we seek the special legislation we would have to do present value analysis between what the unfunded liability is right now and what the present value would be of issuing a 20 million dollar i'm sorry a 60 million dollar 20 year loan so excuse me again so there's a lot that would take place prior to the issuance of the pension obligation bond and what you're probably going to see between now and the future is a lot of creative ideas of how to address the override this is one of them so if you didn't have a lot of questions on this i would be surprised because it does draw a lot of questions as to why a municipality would do this so with that i think i covered all the big points on this um and i'm sure that you probably each have a hundred questions but i will turn it over back to carol because um again the attention is to bring this to your attention thank you thank you brian i think that was really comprehensive um i'm going to add one a couple points only because i already had a tutorial i got a little bit of this um this it was 58 now it's 60 million dollars liability is an assessment i think because in addition into our annual contribution to the pension fund correct brian so we're already making our regular pension amounts and then there's this makeup correct well the 58 million the 58 million dollar one was actually um as of 24 they were projecting the 25 to be 60. what i'm saying is 60 is in addition to our annual amount that will be in the operating budget so middlesex comes out with the assessment they use seagull wayland use seagull way back in the early days of opeb to do an actual evaluation um middlesex use a seagull they come out with that every two years so um carol's right it's around 58 60 million dollars and that we we get that informed every year middlesex gives us our assessment two years out so we knew what the 26 number was and we know what the 26 numbers was we did our own projections as what the future ones would be middlesex will not tell us what our assessments are in 20 and 29 because they simply need to do a re-evaluation on an accrual basis and a lot of the um uh actual reports are driven on investment returns if if there was um if there was a 20-year run where the markets were great then fine our assessment would come down but as we all know just less than 20 years ago we had 2008 and there was a correction in the market so we can all assume at some point along each 20 years this is going to be some kind of a correction um and to brian o'hurley his credit he actually wrote a draft article which was also included in the packet you put a lot of time into doing that and that was just a to show you what this would look like in the form of an article so i think the budget group all agreed and speaking for them that there's no harm in at least speaking seeking legislation again there's no cost uh other than you know going through the legal channels to do that it's not committing the town to do anything it's simply putting the town in a position if they ever wanted to do this they will be able to do this as opposed to waiting another year to speak that special legislation so the other thing point i wanted to make up before i open it to questions to the board and then i'll have my questions at the end is that in the fy 27 budget you know we had that forecast nine it includes the 20 the payment for next year out of this liability which is 900 000 so brian has a schedule over the next 10 years of how much we have to contribute it was a slide when we had one of the financial presentations and you can see what how it is how it is going to impact the operating budget more and more each year over the next 10 years i mean i don't understand how half these municipalities could afford can afford this but nonetheless we're looking at it so let me open it to the board for questions first i know we're trying to get out of here at 11 30 and ish and i have two more articles after this so brian can you keep your answers shorter thank you i'm sorry all right questions who wants to start doug um my question brian that i tend to ask generally when i'm learning about something new and that is about others who've gone before us so in in number six on page two of your memo you talk about that massachusetts communities a number of them obtain the special legislation but few have issued the pension obligation bonds because of the risks do you know any that have and how they've performed uh i believe quincy yeah quincy brockton worcester and indover have i know that in quincy's case now i'll say i'll hear to carol's request in in reading quincy quincy did issue a pension obligation bond i believe they could be self um you know do their own retirement so they issued the bond in thinking that they basically quote paid off their unfunded liability but along the way your unfunded liability can still go up because of other reasons besides investment returns mortality rates can go up wages can go up greater than expected so even though quincy issued a pension obligation bond and is paying debt service on that they had to also step in in future years and continue to make retirement payments because the actual reports came back with a set of data that you know identified other reasons why they had to pay more so it's not it's not like you're paying off a loan and you're done with you're paying off a loan and you're stuck with that debt service but you're also paying off a loan that could come back with future costs that you'd have to pay for that's the inherent risk in this similar to the opeb you know our unfunded liability can we keep funding we and we in our percent decreases even though we have more and more in so did you have any other questions stuck no thank you man um bill or tong okay a couple i have to go ahead and conclude this in the state and the state legislature passed this um would a town meeting both be needed in the future for this or do you keep bringing the hand of what well i think town meeting would need to vote uh for the town to speak this seek the special legislation and then like any other debt the town meeting would have to approve the authorization of the debt so my next question is are the final decisions here really based on the rate of return that would drive the decisions and yes it's it's an evaluation of interest rate risk that your um your interest rate is always going to be lower than the your returns and there's no guarantee with that that's why you you do see most towns opting like you said some have seeked the legislation i i refer it to uh you know wanting to do skydiving you go in the plane you put the parachute on the door opens and you say you know what i'm not going to do this the risk is too great it's sort of similar that these towns to their credit put themselves in a position to do it if the stars were right and like i mentioned the stars did appear to be right for 100 towns in california to address their unfunded pension liability is this a new pool no it's been it's been around for a while tom but because of the risk involved and in the lack of guarantee a lot of municipalities have not pursued it right and finally i just want to thank you for your creative thinking and um um you know ingenuity and the other our kind of fans you know uh thank you tom bill brian what relationship if any does this have to the opeb annual appropriation of a half million dollars that we routinely include in the budget yeah bill those would be separate the opeb is really for future obligations for you know retiree health insurance the pension obligation is for you know flat out pension payments that would be entitled to our retirees as you know the retirement pension is mandated by the state opeb is a voluntary contribution wayland like you said just said does about a half a million dollars there's no state mandate to do that i believe around uh 1985 the state stepped in and require towns to annually fund their pension obligation not opeb okay and the the 60 million dollars it uh is the expectation or the hope that that would uh take care of any uh existing liability we have as well as prospective liability uh on a uh on a going forward basis yeah so the 60 000 is at a point in time as of the last report if if nothing else changed in terms of investments if investments stayed the same mortality rates wages if everything stayed relatively consistent then that 60 million dollar unfunded liability would be paid off in the combination of wayland's contributions as well as the respect expected return that middlesex retirement has projected through print what's your expectation brian as to whether in the next 20 years uh investors would be attracted to a bond paying one and a half or two percent on which they'd have to pay taxes uh for a long term of 20 years uh that's a good question because a lot of the investors buy municipal bonds simply because of their exclusion from taxation now what you're doing is presenting to the market a taxable bond and it may draw a different kind of investor to do that but for a long term it's hard to imagine that people would want to lock in a one and a half percent return over 20 years yeah apparently back in 2022 people were their municipalities were getting you know interest rates around uh two percent i believe i saw one at 1.6 so there was an attraction maybe because the investor wanted a guarantee over 20 years they were going to get at least a two percent return on an investment as part of their portfolio i would assume that they that municipal investment would be a very small fraction of their allocation of their investments but maybe that's what their allocation required at the time but i i i can't identify which kind of investor would do it because when whalen goes to the market with municipal bonds as you know they're highly attractive moody's is a triple a town and one thing i forgot to mention is if we did pursue this as a pension obligation bond depending upon the current rating of each municipality the state requires different things the higher your rating the less information they would require the lower your rating the more information they will require only because you're exposed to make not make those payments thank you thank you um i would like to welcome in in brensley good morning she has joined us at 11 12 and we are on item the articles for telemeeting and we are talking about the pension obligation bond brian has already given us a fairly lengthy explanation and we're in questions i'm going to give you a second to gather your thoughts and i'm going to give my two questions and then i'll ask if you have any how does that sound great okay so brian one of the the interesting things here is i remember from the discussion that you and i had is that um there still has to be a mechanism once if we did this where the pension fund credits whalen for its um say the 60 million you know if we hand them over the check for the 60 million that i know still has to be worked out which leads me to my second point is could we do this in partial um we owe we owe 60 million so we ran them borrows you know over 10 years what if we did if we got we got the permission to have this tool in our toolbox from town meeting and then we did a series of borrowings um you know whether it's two at 30 or three at 20 or million or something like that just want to throw that out as an option yeah in doing my reading i did see that sounds did not sometimes did um issue bonds to pay off 100 of the unfunded liability and some issue to um you know to fund less than 100 so we answer the question i mean i'm sure it's possible to only do 50 now i also did mention this when uh if we did do this as a pension obligation bond and it was 60 million dollars and we turned it over to middle sex retirement we would have no control over moving that money around in dot and if you were a town that did your own retirement and and bombs bonds were favorable or not you can do your own asset allocation you can internally move your money around when you give your money to middle sex you have no control over where they invest it when middle sex gives the money to pret uh middle sex again from my understanding has no control over how pret does the asset allocation pret simply takes in everybody's funds and they generate the greatest return they can if you're familiar with doing 401ks as an employee they may ask you you may want to put your 401k investments in a fund that you're going to retire in 20 years we we would not give middle sex our money and put it in a fund that's going to be fully funded in in 10 years the money would end up going to print print would do their own asset allocation and we'd be um we would not have the ability to control our own investment which is not a bad thing it's it's the difference between doing it yourself and giving it to a county retirement and i would further add that there's no other municipality within middle sex county that is issue it drake did one that is similar to this but no other municipalities actually issued pension obligation bonds through middle sex county and then lastly i know i've seen a slide you've done on some presentation would would it be possible for you to just submit that slide to abby and i can include it in a future packet they'll show what our annual obligations are from fy27 to fy36 it's 10 years right yeah we actually pay this 58 million off i know you have had it i've seen it if we could just have that in our packet i think it would help us to see you know how it is going to impact operating budgets so that was that was done internally not by middle sex we did our own projection no and just it's just for the boys on that yeah yeah i appreciate that i think the board would like to that would be helpful for us um and did you have any questions on this topic i'm still trying to catch up so okay all right so based on all this i'm going to ask if we could have a motion to submit article y um w how about w that um i don't know if it should be called issuance of pension but it's home rule so it's um authorization i think it's going to be authorization to issue pension obligation bonds and then we're not we're not inserting we're just submitting because we'll discuss further in january if we're going to insert
so i have a meeting for legislation say that again please brian you're submitting for legislation okay so i move that the board um vote to submit article what did you say y w currently called w um um as a home rule petition to authorize um the select board authorize the select board issue of the home rule petition for the issuance of pension obligation bonds thank you do we have a second
thank you so many for the discussion on this okay yes bill uh i plan to vote against this uh i am uh appreciative of the fact that uh a lot of people put some time and effort into this i think the moment is not propitious to uh go to the town meeting uh for a 38 million dollar water bond issue and something that arguably could lead to a 60 million dollar uh additional uh cap obligation of the town i think the timing the unfortunate also i think um this approach uh constructively involves moving an operating expense to a capital cost and uh i think we're better advised to try to figure out ways in which to uh meet our operating needs uh without incurring long-term debt thank you for that and i think that when we discussed this in january um once the article submitted just been insert submitted to whether to insert this i wanted to re-bring that up because i think that's a very good point but um is there any further discussion okay i'm going to go to the vote here uh tom yeah doug yes and i'm abstaining on this yes okay and bill no okay and then i'm gonna vote yes this is just for submitting so then some help me out here doug three one one three one one thank you and thank you brian thank you everybody all right so we have two more quick items on new potential item articles and the first one is acceptance of massachusetts general law chapter 38 section 12 d um conversion of on-premise wine and malt only licenses to all alcoholic beverages licenses this actually was an insertion into the fyi 26 state the section into the state budget i don't even think it's online yet i did get a query as to where was it but we did get a white paper on this from kp law um there is a draft of this in the packet i did reach out to the finance committee chair of the potential articles we had to see which ones they thought would have little probably and they haven't voted at little or no financial impact on the town and they so that we would only write 150 word blurb around the full-fledged write-up and this was one of them so this is why you see a very short write-up um do either councilor jaylen want to speak to this i can speak to it um excuse me miss i recognize jaylen randica so the town meeting just needs to vote to accept the provisions of chapter 138 on section 12 to allow the select board to approve requests from licensees who currently have a wine and malt license um to convert that to an all alcoholic license for on-premise consumption only if one of those wine and malt licensees um returns their light all alcoholic license that is going to convert back into a wine and malt it doesn't automatically carry over um and currently um just as an fyi we only have one wine and malt license in whalen that uh at the mo at the moment that would be um able to convert to an all alcoholic license if town meeting voted to accept this okay so this is item s where am i right yes is there any uh questions on this from the board i think we talked about this briefly when um it came up back in the late summer and michael presented it to the board as a potential article so that being the case um can i have a motion please to uh submit and um okay and a second second thank you any further discussion okay all those in favor bill yes doug yes and or you moved tom and carol yes motions adopted carry on zero so in like manner there is another article that we've also seen heard of we haven't seen um it's going to be a homeroom petition for additional liquor licenses this is letter t and um i will let jaylen or kelsey speak to this well um actually madam chair uh jaylen didn't help me with it but i did the initial drafting i had uh used the similar language in two previous communities i had spoken with our legislative delegation and after we had terrain come in we gave away our last full liquor license and um i was told by the abcc i worked very closely with one of the gentlemen down there and he said once you have something like terrain you have some momentum going you want to have additional licenses in your pool and i was advised by both the uh members of our legislative delegation that i should ask for more we may not need 10 but you ask for them and maybe they get cut down um but at least you you want to have a higher initial ask and it's not that we want to turn wayland into a you know a bar community but we we already know that uh the incoming owner of uh town center would like to expand and lure some additional restaurants and we want to have these at the ready so it would help us with economic development terrific so is there any questions from the board if not because we've already heard discussed this as well when terrain came through and as michael mentioned and um we allocated our final licenses so i'll have a motion please that's in europe's submission of the article
by only time in the late 2000 that's enough
thank you bill um so if it's in discussion i want to say that when we originally set this agenda up i didn't know we were going to have a full board which is why all of these because i see tom's perplexed face i only put them for submit so that when we went back to insert the full board would be there but i don't have it on the agenda today so i'm staying with just submit that was was my logic it was good till yesterday so all right let's have a vote bill yes and yes doug yes tom and carol yes so that mass is five zero so this is terrific um obviously we will continue our discussion on articles on january 5th there's a couple more potential new ones and then there are um some regular ones i guess okay so now we're going to move to um item five which is discuss a review and potential bonus additional revenue generating ideas and i think our primary topic today is going to be the payment in lieu of taxes commonly known as pilot program policy this is in the packet as well on page 35 so um michael did you want to speak with us to this yes thank you madam chair uh what this is essentially the same draft you saw before but select board member whitney wanted some language that would try and address his concerns about the taxation uh premise uh principal portions of uh property belonging to religious institutions that were used for worship uh i there is a footnote the it references the state statute for tax-exempt uh properties which covers religious institutions and the case law that covers some of that language um i did send this out to the chair uh it can be tweaked but essentially that should address uh the the feedback from select board member whitney and it's in the blue-eyed talent says portion i still will need when we at whatever time we decide to send this out i will get the updated numbers for the yellow section from the assessor
sorry i'm gonna open it for discussion questions i know we've talked about this before um but the other thing that we've mentioned is the importance of having sit down meetings with some of the larger non-profits and i'm specifically thinking about the three that are greatly expanding their footprint in whalen which is the veritas school the carol school and the coptic church i think it will be helpful to have conversations with them um and i've had an initial conversation with one of them and i think they can potentially be very productive so i actually was um to your point doug i was going to say let's talk about the policy then i was going to say strategy and the rollout so but let's can we start with the policy first bill thank you uh first i'd like to thank the town manager for uh addressing the concern uh but as no good deed goes unpunished i would uh uh express the concern that what if uh for instance in the case of the coptic church the uh proposed residential and the the proposed new uh worship facility were on the same parcel uh that would uh uh presumably uh uh not fall into the policy because uh the uh the worship space is on the same property as uh the proposed apartment building unless i'm reading this incorrect well what what i put in there and it was uh the case law that was noted the bottom shrine of our lady of last select they looked at selected structures on the property and that's where that language says if the dominant purpose is for religious worship instruction or a related connection to religious worship or instruction so i put portions of any real property belonging to a religious institution so if you had a garden shed in the back that wasn't significantly related to the furtherance of religious worship that would not be exempt so that's what the the case in part stood for is to determining which part portions of the property were actually used for religious worship and which weren't so i think i put that in there hoping that we could go in and say you know here's your primary uh structure where you hold your regular uh worship ceremonies but this over here where you just have housing for people don't see how they have to make that nexus to how it's uh used for religious worship and i would think you can make an argument that residence is just is not uh you know part of its dominant purpose i think we would have to argue that on a case-by-case basis yeah and it just gives us some language in there to to to lay lay the groundwork for that conversation right so when you listen to counsel for the coptic church arguing the applicability of the dover amendment to the apartment building uh he would uh i think conflate uh the apartments with the worship space but given that it's voluntary uh this this at least gives us some some basis to talk about it i'm gonna if everyone will indulge me hop in i had the same question i think that bill had on that language to me i think you could argue i think we leave the door open for a lot of interpretation um because a lot of some of our uh religious facilities actually have institutions in their building where they have the worship and therefore they could argue that that is exempt when in fact that is probably a user of our services if they need the police and the fire to come uh they would probably need it for their their institution their instructional area so i i wonder if we should be saying however portions of any real property belonging to religious institution are exempt blah blah blah if their dominant purpose is religious worship period this or related connection i think also is very vague but i'm gonna throw my two cents that's the key phrase in the case law so that's why i took it yeah it's the instruction that concerns me because how do you interpret instructions and bill bill wanna hop back in please uh carol to uh talk out of the other side of my mouth uh given that this is voluntary um you know if somebody you know were to say uh you know if hypothetically the trinitarian church would say well you know our gym newly constructed gym is part of the religious instruction you know what are you going to do so uh um i think uh this is maybe as as good as it gets uh particularly if uh this cites uh the language that creates a precedent okay um does anyone else have any questions uh and any questions on this doug okay so if we don't have any and if you have one raise your hand i'll come back to you uh you know i okay i i guess i'm just i just digesting the wording and the interpretation you guys had of some of it because you guys brought up points i didn't think about so okay um so then i think to doug's point i wanted to also so we've worked on this we're interested in implementing this so we're gonna have a strategy we took doug's point we have mentioned i think both at the meeting and i think also at agenda planning meeting that um i think doug and i felt that would be appropriate for in-person meetings and um so i guess see the i guess the next question is as part of the strategy when do we plan to roll it out are we ready to go with this do we want to vote are we voting this policy today and then start rolling it out what's the board's preference i'd move that uh the select board uh adopt the proposed payment in lieu of taxes pilot policy as presented in the packet second second thank you there any further discussion all right let's vote and yes uh tom yes doug yes bill yes carol yeah so the motion passes five zero okay how how do we envision this being rolled out i mean i technically i have to say personally i'd like to see us do it of course sooner than later i'd like to see some responses and have a sense of what contributions we are going to receive as we're finalizing the fy 27 budget if that's how it's going to go
this is the most important thing the letters we sent out from the town manager's office with an invitation would set up for any person to meet on the party then you can need to tell manager that would be ready for the form of some sort of uniform of accountability and the invitation to volunteer go okay so i um as the chair i have volunteered to sit in on some of these meetings i know that doug has volunteered um if the board's comfortable with that we may either do them singly or together or michael may do them singly we'll just kind of make a list and and go from there does that work for everyone makes sense i see some yeses and you okay with that doug and i roll this out yeah michael obviously is very capable of doing it but sometimes it helps if you have more than one person in the room maybe we can lend a resonance perspective so all right thank you very much i think the next item on the agenda um this is one we've we had before and oh by the way on the revenue generating ideas i had one that i shared with michael um and i i think he thought it was a good one and we discussed it but um and this is no reflection on the assessors or the board of assessors or the department they did mention that at one time they had you know a larger staff and they did mention it because of the covet and other factors there um there's a little bit of a backlog and they worked really hard to you know chip away at it but they thought it might take another year or two to get caught up um so i mentioned to michael and of course i'm not sure where we would find such a person but we're thinking that perhaps in the next year's budget or maybe if there's some funds available this year we hire someone to kind of come in on the per diem and help with some of that backlog to see if we can get some of those billing permits processed and that new growth on our books so how's that sound that's good okay thanks all right so then on the next item we have is this this non-union police sick leave policy you'll remember that we amended this approved an amendment back i think maybe september october we accidentally i think i mentioned amended the wrong uh an older version versus the current version this is now the current version i'm going to defer this a little bit to michael though too because i believe in the interim of us going back to amend the the current version i believe the personnel board has now amended the policy themselves in november so now i'm not sure if we need to amend or not so i'm going to defer this to michael do we take a vote or not i i think the main concern was at the time when i brought this to you and asked you to make the change um miss pb brought to the attention that the version that i had used on the website was not the correct one and so they wanted me to go back um and get the most current version of the policy and amended i know uh i'm not sure if we can see her she may be a participant but um uh kate ryan is is here somewhere and she said she'd be happy to step on because she's the liaison as well to the personnel board um i think we just need to make sure if you need us to vote or not because they have something okay i think i think the personnel board would be happier if we voted to approve this one but kate is here and she could probably tell you so hi kate how are you hi sorry it took me a second to get in um yeah so they went back and reviewed um that version and they incorporated some additional changes which is what you have in front of you today this is basically what was approved a town meeting in 2016 with a few minor modifications just to update the language so that it's it's current okay and they approved this back in november um they they uh reviewed it again and and voted to approve it in november does anyone have any questions do would you like kate to give us the what the changes are
why don't you walk us through the changes real quick sure let me just if that's possible to do them on the fly here uh yeah let me just pull up the packet so i have it in front of me sorry um where am i come on computer um so overall i think the biggest change that we wanted to to make sure that it was in line with what had been approved a town meeting in 2016 um so that was um in in sorry hold on let me just pull it up um making sure that the payout for uh employees who've been here over a certain period of time i think at the cutoff is 10 years i'm sorry 20 years um right sickly payout was up to date because that was changed in 2016. we also changed the sort of layout um we added some language in here about fmla um minimum usage which is an hour now um which is you know we just wanted to make our make sure employees can actually um use their time as they need to and that's consistent with all of our other bargaining units um and then we added some additional language in the medical certification documentation just to make it clear um what is required both for fmla and just a standard uh sick leave you know five consecutive days or more if you're out then you need to give us a medical certification so i mean it's really consistent with with some of our other bargaining units specifically asked me so we it's really just updating some of the language so any any questions from the board otherwise i i'm sorry tom
do you feel awkward needs to improve this if the personnel do it already did would you like us to do that so i think the question i wasn't sure um under the town manager act the select board is the policy setting um body for the town and so i wasn't sure if that applied to personnel policies or if that was something you wanted to um you know provide you know have the town manager do with the personnel board i think that might be a discussion for the for your board to decide on next steps so that's why we we we brought it to you my question was from i can call michael oh i'm sorry yeah oh my god you're on mute and that's all i have to say about that that's for us i love that mine um
the board previously voted on this when we look to make that change as the policy setting board and i think in a you know out of abundance of caution you that is your role as policy setting board i i would suggest that we vote on the most up-to-date policy and then we'll re-display it on the website and having said that then may i have a motion please let's move to reporting report report report report particularly
thank you second any further discussion okay all those in favor and yes a bill yes yes doug yes tom yes carol yes five zero okay so we've got that done we'll move to consent consent is in a separate packet i think there are three items
can i have a motion please to approve consent that is removed
okay so it was bill says there's any further discussion okay all those in favor bill yes tom yes and yes doug yes carol yes consent passes again i don't have any topics but actually i do want to thank everybody very much for coming i know it's a challenge to do these little extra meetings i think it was really productive and helpful for us it will help us you know to be a soft landing and rather than a big rush at the end for these articles because we have so many potential new ones and i also want to wish everyone for a nice holiday if you're already celebrating celebrated or going to celebrate and i will see you all on uh early january thank you happy new year everybody thank you happy new year happy to move twitter happy to move twitter at 45 thank you okay tom yeah did i get a second on there did you thank you thank you tom yeah and yes doug yes bill yes carol five zero yes we're out thank you thank you