December 3, 2025 – Historical Commission – Video & Transcript
December 3, 2025 - Historical Commission
So I will call the meeting to order. It's one o'clock. I assume this is what I'm supposed to read out loud.
The part that's on, um, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person, and via remote means, in accordance with applicable law, this meeting may be reported, which will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon after the meeting 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 in-person attendance or by accessing the meeting remotely, as known for the budget.
We request public comment be limited to two minutes per person.
So our first agenda item is public comment.
And, um, I don't see anybody in person, Jalen, any follow-up.
So no public comment.
Um, you know, it could be tricky for me to both run the meeting and take the notes.
Um, so the minutes, I sent you all the minutes, and I did get comments back from some of you.
And those are reflected in the copy I just gave you.
Um, on to .
It's written on my screen, but when I print it out, it's very hard to read.
It's very hard to read.
Oh, you've got the original.
I printed it at home.
You want this?
No, no.
But printing it here, it's hard to read, so I apologize for that.
But, um, Sherri-Ann, uh, did ask how much money is left in the cemetery, um, fund.
And, um, um, uh, if the remaining money is designated for cemetery work.
I will say that in both cases where there is addition to the minutes, these are areas where I was doing a lot of the talking, and so I'm not very good at capturing everything when I'm talking.
So I apologize, it's both .
And the other one is page four, talking about the sign.
Um.
I missed what was on page three.
Well, it's right, um, here.
It's an edition.
Okay.
Well, it's, yeah, I just feel here.
But Sherri-Ann, talk louder.
I will do my best.
Okay.
Um, Sherri-Ann added this, wanted me to add that sentence.
Right.
And on page four, um, under the Castlegate and Dudley Woods signs, uh, an addition that, um, Kay had mentioned, she had scanned all the photos for those signs at a higher DBI and sent them to Carol.
So are there other changes or additions to those links?
Anyone?
The only thing-
I don't think the-
I'll just say I don't think we ought to cut that display in pieces.
Well, this is not to talk about the contents, since are the minutes accurate.
Okay.
The only thing I was going to suggest is after my question, you did remark that, uh, until we had final invoices, we, or at the point at which everything is cleared with payments out, we would then have an idea of how much money is left in the account.
Right.
I watched the tape and, uh, the video and, um, what I said was, I don't know, I didn't calculate it.
By our last meeting, all the invoices were in.
Okay.
We knew, we knew all that information.
I just didn't have it.
Okay.
But I do today.
That's fine.
I do today.
Okay.
I'm going to make a motion that we accept it.
Well, they're not corrected because we haven't accepted.
Well, yes.
I guess they are corrected.
Corrected, uh, uh, minutes for November 17th, 2025.
I second.
All in favor?
We have to go around and invite-
No, I found out since then, if there's nobody online, we don't have to do that.
Oh, great.
Isn't that nice?
So all in favor of accepting the corrective minutes?
Yes.
Yes.
Do you have a question?
Yes.
No, I'm just going to say that's all.
Yes.
So, but we don't have anybody zooming in for questions or discussion.
I'm not, I can't hear in this room.
And my hearing is bad enough to start with.
Oh, all I hear is-
Well, as the group gets smaller, we might start meeting in the, uh, uh, historical commission meeting office,
except that you can't do any zooming that way too.
Yeah.
If, but we don't have to zoom either.
That's the other thing.
All right.
So our first, our next item is house flag.
And, uh, Brad is not here.
So does anybody else have anything to say about house flags?
Okay.
Sorry, project.
So today I am prepared to share with you all the information we have about where things stand.
So on this page, you'll see the breakdown of the money extent, the percentage of the project that's completed, and the breakdown of that work by priority.
So, um, one of the things to notice is that the percentage of the work that's completed, 35%, is the same as the percentage of the money we have spent.
So that is a very good thing.
Um, and you can see the amount remaining as $155,400.
So the, this is just to bring you up to date on where things stand now.
Um, and, you know, conversations about how to move forward, uh, need to obviously involve Brad.
Um, I have shared with him all of the, um, spreadsheets that I have from Epic, which shows exactly what stones have been done and what stones remain.
Uh, it's a ton of information that can't possibly be printed out by me.
Um, but he has all that.
And, um, and of course I'm not going anywhere.
So if he needs information from me, I'll be here.
Um, and then also the invoices, um, I have a file of all the invoices and a spreadsheet that tracks them.
Um, and, um, that I will, Brad was going to speak with Kelsey.
I don't know whether he's done that or not, but I will make sure that that gets printed out for your files.
And those invoices all include before and after photos.
So they're pretty detailed.
Great job.
Thank you very much.
Any questions on, um,
No, this is a good, uh, summary of what's happened.
So, um, to your knowledge, Brad has not discussed with Kelsey or anyone where we go from here, whether the contract needs to be rebid or.
I don't, I'm not aware if he has.
We were talking about that at our last meeting.
Yes.
And our last meeting was only two weeks ago.
Yeah.
Right.
Thanksgiving happened.
So I imagine he and Kelsey may not have connected.
Um, but I know that's on his to be list.
It's interesting that priority three gravestones, more of them were complete than the priority two.
Well, priority three was just the cleaning of stones.
So that goes so much faster than repair.
Okay.
That explains it.
And they hired, they hired a person to remember that specifically on that.
Anything else on cemeteries?
I don't think we have anything to ask until we hear from Brad.
Okay.
Do we have an archeology report?
Well, we do.
Um, going along the usual way in the lab.
Oh, that's good.
Now we do have to say our names.
Because Amanda is on.
Because she's on remote.
Okay.
Oh, wait a minute.
Maybe, but she's a member.
She, it doesn't count.
She knew.
She knew.
She knew.
We have to say our name and how we vote.
If it's a commissioner that's on the zoom rather than the public.
You should.
So state.
Okay.
Okay.
I, I, I have been on the whole time.
So.
I don't know if why you guys didn't know that I was here.
Alright.
well i'm glad you you we don't have to catch you up on things but ann is the chair today i saw
okay thank you we're just getting to the archaeology report i heard
do you have anything i don't have anything to add last time we were there we stayed very late
tanya remember yeah well we're down to just basically two of us rick and me and the lab
and margaret's been away so she's probably back by now they left in december 1st so i don't know
maybe three or four days cross country especially with the snowstorm yeah so we have we've just been
there um i've made some calls to try to find a place for the display but kay has had a good idea
and she asked the police if they would be interested in it so i think we're waiting to see yeah they
didn't want it right away because they have the collection for uh children's gifts in their lobby
and they felt they didn't have a place for it but maybe after the new year he would consider it i gave
him the um dimensions of the display case i mentioned that we probably need to put in a plexiglass top
and um so anyway uh facilities has suggested that we just get a whole new case they feel the
case that's there is pretty needs love i guess is the way they phrase it needs love so anyway that's
um we're waiting for him to decide whether or not they have a place in their lobby or foyer that they
could put it they have space for it it's and they have school children that take tours and so forth so
i think it's a nice thing to have there so i had called the uh curator over at the sunbury historical
society right about his wife had a baby and um he heard my call and then he he called jane ziaka
and asked jane to call me back and he said in a message he called me as soon as he could but i haven't
heard anything from him well let's wait and see whether the police will take it and then if not
we'll do a reminder call maybe that's my suggestion what did you say i said as a suggestion that we wait
and see whether the police will take it if they don't then you can give him a reminder paul yes
because i'm sure he has many things on his mind i know and i have and he's the director now
right historical society so otherwise things are just moving along okay i do have some questions
know about the community preservation committee i got i looked at the amended agenda now they're
they're planning to do some work at herd farm they call it a large tree preservation
hamlin woods boardwalk cow common and sedge meadow so i don't have any
particular concern about the boardwalk unless they're going to build a boardwalk but i'd like
to know what's going on because we haven't heard anything about it and there are those are all
archaeologically sensitive places right the um large tree is they're planning on planting some trees
over at sedge meadow sort of as a nursery until they can be moved to their final location all right
that is very sensitive sedge meadow is i think that you need to be at the meeting tonight
yeah that's what i was afraid of and you need to uh i would send an email to susan i don't have
her address that's well you know it's s um s weinstein weinstein at wayland.ma.us okay that's
pretty easy to know yeah um so you i of your concerns and then if you can i would suggest
very strongly that you'd be at the meeting tonight well i will try i don't have any other plans for
tonight but usually curling up and resting would you like to come with me it's in person it's not on
zoom it is also on zoom yeah but it's on person too right it is in person that's right yeah it'd be
better for me if i could go in person what time is it 6 30 so it's early but if you email susan
and ask her if they can move that up early so that you can leave early who knows okay i'm not getting
guaranteed that that anything will happen but you can always ask yeah it's at 7 44 p.m
the amended agenda that may be when the this item comes up well agenda 6 40 right so 10 minutes after
6 30 they have to go okay i didn't see that well i'll see if i can get there would you like a ride
tanya if i pick you up that would be nice okay i will plan on doing okay will you say yeah um
say 6 10 6 15 i could pick you up at your house okay that would be very nice thank you anything else
going on in the lab well the uh books that margaret has been putting into the plastic binder
there's been a lot of progress on that so that's good uh amanda saw that last time she came to the lab
looking good amanda if you didn't hear me yes sorry i did hear you i just my audio was off um yeah so tanya and i we we were able to get rid of a lot of boxes because um there there's quite a bit of charcoal and soil that was from disturbed places so we we were able to easily look back at the um locus you know the site the site um surveys and make sure that everything was documented correctly and before we we were able to remove some of the charcoal and things like that um yeah so that was quite helpful and i have to say the binders it all looked beautiful and came in handy it was very easy to access very easy to find what we needed um and kudos to um the excavators they took very good notes so um it was it was it was successful it's just it's just time consuming but it's it's worth it yeah what i've been doing is what amanda was helping she looked up in the books where where the records are and if they're just incidental charcoal and not in a feature we've been discarding them because they're probably out of context or they may have been something that filtered down you know there was a lot of burning going on in the old days thousands of years ago and uh a lot of that charcoal could be not in a cultural feature so that's what we started to look at yeah i have a question um i should look back at the minutes i forgot i don't think it was we talked about it in the last minutes the um no we did the human rights diversity equity and inclusion committee had reached out have you done any more thinking about what we might do with them to uh highlight native american um we discussed the seal k remember you and i discussed the possibility of proposing research on the seal that's incorrectly the new seal that's displayed in the front entry hall well i've been going to the meetings which i find very interesting well i can hear what people are saying that they could help help with lobbying to fix that problem i'm sorry i didn't hear what you said um there's a new seal that must have cost something that's appearing right in the front entry hall and you and i discussed k um that that might be a good project for them be if they could lobby to correct that seal because um quite a bit of time and effort was put into and again thank thanks to the local police that they put in so much effort to include the nitmo can create a an appropriate seal that represented everybody the way everybody wanted to be represented um and then to see this seal put up with the tps is it's quite offensive actually and should have been corrected um and this might be something that they might want to work on i don't know a project for them if they're looking for a project okay no i'm sorry i'm not here that's my fault i forgot my hearing aid of this can somebody summarize for us so in the lobby is a copy of the town seal oh yes the town seal and the town seal as you know has some imagery on it that is out of date and possibly offensive and so amanda's suggesting says that you had a conversation with her about um maybe that's a project that they could look on or lead is to um create a new town seal okay thank you for the reminder marinda yeah that's that's uh that's an interesting idea it's given out i think so any more that particular topic or any connection archaeology not that i can think of is there anything you can think of well we did have um now this is going back a few months we didn't have uh somebody that i know who dug who had dug with paul at sandhill and she did a test pit in the bank of property next to her and she found one definite flake and maybe a few others but that's hard to say because they're quartz and they could have just chipped off or something and i called the natic historical society and i said we'd like to return them to them but i haven't got over there yet
so we've been trying to return artifacts to different towns um that had been given to us over time and we're not through with that yet are you saying she this person found it on the vacant property near her home yeah she dug a test pit because she'd been digging with paul she's our daughter does that go back to natick if she found them in wayland well i you can ask amanda because we have fight orders with boxes and to store things we're trying to give them back to the town that they were founded did this lady live in natick the lady she does oh so she didn't live in wayland no that's why it's going back to me oh yeah i've known her for a long time and she was interested in archaeology so she spent quite a bit of time with the rest of the volunteers and and paul so she just decided she didn't need them she gave up to us but she contacted you when she came over yeah she came here and brought them over okay because she knew you had a lab right yes she knew we had the lab got it
anything else on archaeology or we tried to go see not this much the lab okay rick well if i go to the cpc meeting tonight i can discuss with them the status of the rail rest posts we have three posts i have not found any more but whether we contract have the town contract to install the three that we've found and then a separate contract to install the others if we get others or whether just to wait um until we try to find two sets so i maybe if that's an opportunity to discuss with the cpc tonight do they typically get into that level of detail on ongoing projects no not really they um they do inquire how things are going along but and if i have the knowledge which is why i asked for the second team on the cemetery to share with them where we were on the cemetery um they're interested in hearing it but they don't necessarily make it a topic on the agenda okay well they may be concerned with the timeliness of the completion of the projects well that they are playing that about you're absolutely right um so on the rail trail signs we were supposed to have another zoom meeting this morning at 11 o'clock but it was canceled because uh uh kelsey could not she had a conflict so to my knowledge the meeting hasn't been rescheduled yet um i did receive a another version of the rail trail signs um dated november 21st from bonnie i don't know if anyone else has seen those she sent them to me and to tom fay and i spent part of my thanksgiving away reviewing them and um overall they're a big improvement over the earlier version but i still have some comments detailed comments so i had hoped to have my comments ready for today's meeting but i couldn't get finished in time so i would like to finish those up and have other people review them to get other input and ideas
bonnie has asked that all comments be consolidated into a single document before it gets sent to carol holtz the graphic designer so i would like to get all comments together in in a single document um i have made a few comments already i have provided a image of the rail rest posts uh that i understand that uh have been put on the on the google drive and also i asked a question about one of the images that was reversed and um so sir it's reversed yes okay so um if i can get my comments completed could i come over to the drought herd house tomorrow and share things so have you thought about are you asking the whole board to make comments on the signs i would welcome comments well then i would suggest you email it out to everyone with your comments and then they can um this is my suggestion and then they can email directly back to you so you can put it all into one document we have to be able to see what what we're looking at well yeah he's gonna send the the revised version plus your comments right yes yeah good okay because how else can we comment if we can't see them right and i found my russell's book about russell's and i didn't see anything in it about the uh i'll take another close look but i didn't see anything in it about the railroad crossing there okay if i pick you up tonight could i borrow that bus book sure from you that would be great that i haven't had a chance to get to the library to which russell's book is that the history of russell's garden center the russell wrote it back oh years decades ago about his his almost biography it's a paperback yeah yeah it's a small paperback yeah i've read it okay i don't remember anything about the railroad about it so there there are really two basic issues with the rail signs rail trail signs as i see them one is that when images get scanned the metadata associated with those images gets lost if you're dealing with a photographic print people can flip it over and see what's written on the back the caption information the credits the dates all that information but when things get scanned that gets lost so that's that's one problem the other problem is more of a communication issue where things go through bonnie and then get passed on to carol and then from carol back to bonnie and then to others and things are getting lost in that communications chain so those are the two biggest issues as i see them with the rail trail signs so um although carol holtz's latest version is is a big improvement there are still issues with captioning credits uh selection of photos that i think would be better if some images were chosen instead of other images and i would like other people's thoughts i don't want to be the only person that makes comments to bonnie that get passed on to carol uh there there was a statement in one of the signs about wayland being a if i could find it in my notes um i don't want to blog this meeting down in detail but um entering wayland science says wayland was a large town with major highways and thriving industry when the railroad was built i think that's worth discussing the cachituate had thriving industry with the shoe factory but the part of wayland that the railroad went through i think of as more of a rural farming community and the roads were unpaved i i wouldn't call them major highways so some of the wording i i can use some advice from historical society experts on maybe improving some of that that's just an example um i i think what she was thinking is boston post road goes through and there were three boston post roads going through uh one was old connecticut path one is route 20 and one is 27 so it was a major intersection of of travel um there was industry along route 20 where the safety building is now there were several suit manufacturers there which i didn't realize until i went through hudson's and looked at his map and i agree uh there was something about the trolley lines and all the major industry and it made it sound like people were coming in on the train to take the trolley to go to the shoe manufacturer which may have been a few people but i don't think it was a large crowd most of the people lived either in native or they lived in cachituate they didn't travel to go to work like they do today so without a consideration i think what she was trying to point out is that the wagons came down these roads on their way to boston uh and to the markets areas for a long time watertown was the only one that had a bridge over the charles river that allowed them to cross over and continue on out to the peninsula known as boston so um they and and certainly the farmers took their their uh farming goods their products in that way and and it made it much easier when the train came through to get their products into boston i think that's her intent in trying to apply but perhaps a different wording might still get it across without indicating that it was more major than it really was well and i have said i have sent her several different choices of sentences for that but she's chosen not to use them okay well i just throw that out as an example when when you mentioned um other images that you would prefer to say on the signs can you include that in your uh email to us because we can't we won't know what images you're talking about unless you say maybe this would be a better image or we could put this in instead of that one or whatever it would be helpful for us to understand what images you're talking about okay maybe i could insert a thumbnail image so yes
well one one issue with some of the credits was for example if i donated a print to the historical society 10 or 15 years ago carol has credited it to the historical society rather than to the original source uh that's um that's ownership um that's ownership that's why she did that because the historical society is now the owner of that print it may have been taken by red connard but it it's owned by the historical society but my my preference and the usual practice is to credit the original photographer if known and then the collection of the negative holder rather than who owns a print because multiple prints could be owned by different people that's correct and and one of the things that i'm i'm sure carol is concerned about is how much space does it take to put your name and the wayland museum and historical society society or is she putting in wayland historical society you know they're different lengths different amount of space for each letter and so forth so that may be a concern of hers i don't know i'm just suggesting that there's a lot of empty space between the photos on the side so that's something we can we can well is it going to take two lines to say all that is it going to take one line to say all that or are they're saying the reason why there's she's suggesting the wayland uh museum and historical society is if people are interested they contact us and then we can tell them who took it and the provenance of the picture and give them permission to reuse it which is basically what it is yeah in a couple of cases the prints that i obtained said on the back reproduction prohibited without permission so we need to contact the source and i can contact the source as we did with the tower hill photos that were used on the cabinet i contacted the sources of the photos to obtain their permission and we we need to do that once the final selection of images okay is made so perhaps the ones that you're happy with you could start doing that sooner if tom say is concerned about how long this process is taking that he wants to finish it rather than later well the signs aren't going to be installed between now and our next most one one so i think we have ample time i know there is a lead time in manufacturing the signs once the final design is selected but i think we have how much time does it take for you to contact these people to get permission usually just an email okay i just thought if you the ones that you're satisfied with you go ahead and just do that then that's one less thing we have to do at the last minute well there may be several images from the same source and there may be questions of whether to use one image or another image so i would rather okay wait until things gel a little bit more yep so unless anybody has any other questions that's all i have download great thank you rick um next item is the it's also signage that castle gate and duffy wood signs i don't think you knew to report on that since our last meeting but i am trying to get access to those photos which i've asked you about oh yeah you need to know which photos you're talking about all of them or whatever i thought i had emailed you i put you on the um the share with carol both of them no and that's what i need and i often work with her on which photos she wants to use and i just need are you going to continue to work on that after the end of this month tend to but i mean i intend to finish it this month but i need access okay and uh we haven't heard as long as we're talking about this um i have not heard back from minnesota yet i had expected to hear but maybe thanksgiving interfered sometimes places like that are closed thursday friday and on the and the weekend so maybe i was going to send a reminder to them okay because that was the uh younger version of evangelion yes so if you need access to that photophile asap i can get going but i've been not kind of a standstill waiting for that so how did you feel about um exchanging the younger version of michael simpson for the older version you know i think it's hard to say without out of context like i'd like to see what she puts together in a sign it seems to me that showing the older version of him this is who she married the older version not the younger version and um then showing her years her yeah just kind of emphasizes the age difference right it's so true that's all i have i love it so and i asked you for um uh a copy of the letter about sherman bridge that was not a pdf i sent it to you i didn't see it okay i looked again well i wasn't going to ask you to do it but you've already done it um i wanted to send them out as separate um letters to each of the people that you cc'd and then put a list of cc people underneath which is the way i was taught to do business letters so what it said um let's see who did we send it to uh doug stokes and then underneath was a list after the signature is a list of cc so you're going to send everybody the letter a second time no i'm not now that you sent it that's why i asked for it in for so that i could copy and paste and move the the senders nothing about the letter just the senders but you sent out the letter so now it's just i'll say but i wanted it for the records okay any new business but it's not on an agenda i did think of something on the way over here now what was it that i wanted to talk about do you want any more go ahead no i'm just thinking the stones bridge sign which facilities is doing is there any more word on that well i that's where you found me i was going to ask about that but there's nobody in the office to ask um i did talk to the young lady that's in charge of that a couple weeks ago and i think they're waiting for funding the approval by the select board funding for the the uh and they too as she far she knows they're going to be using carol holtz for that as well just to keep the continuity of uh signage in town and um yeah but she wasn't in today for me to ask that does bring up a thought on the signage it says um historical commission on it and what else did they have on the top of this of the sign which what's that about the um castle gate and dudley woods sign i haven't seen anything oh i thought they were i thought we had an image that just said historical i didn't know no i haven't seen anything maybe i'm confusing it with the real trail she's waiting for me to help her sort through the photos and decide okay what we want to use well the photo yeah i found the one i sent you those photos let me ask though do we know who's going to um actually for the foundation and are we expecting the town to do that for the we're putting the signs actually in place and it was there money in our budget to cover that part we've we've only talked about sign design and not installation i thought that um let's see they had two contracts one was with the sign company and one was with uh and i thought that they said that the dpw was putting in all the uh concrete bases that's for the real that isn't that the real trail no that's going out to contract as far as i understand the dpw said that there were too many foundations for the signs for them to do themselves so they recommended that it go out to bid that's my understanding so we need to know more about foundation right well so this because now the rest of the money from the two signs that didn't get made for the rail trail are now ours right does that mean the installation is going to be part of the rail trail contracts and we have to find out uh we have to call chelsea and find out whether or not the contract the rfp went out for um 13 signs or went out for 10 signs that's what we have to find out before we start worrying about our budget which has been pretty well spent for this year except that we did have money for the signs before this the race came along oh then we had there was money in the rec budget for the dudley wood signs and there was cpc money yeah for the castle gate signs so i'll have to ask um go back in the minutes well no i was going to say i started at cpc and find out whether or not um how much money is left because there wasn't enough money even combined to do what we're all to do them all so i don't know that there's enough money there to do all the foundation so whether it would be just one or two foundations so what we had originally from um from cpc was um 1800 about 1900 dollars for castle gate and what we had from the rec department but this goes back a couple of years now so who knows if it's still in their budget was 2500. no they spent uh that's for dudley woods yes they spent some of that to put up the kiosk that's there so i sincerely doubt that there's that much money there but we can ask tonight at the uh at the meeting and whatever maybe extra we needed we could get from the rfp that they're doing for the rail signs we'll see what kelsey has how kelsey has written up the rv for the um foundation and it seems to me wouldn't it be easier to use the money from the rail trail signs or the foundations and return cpa money back to cpa we'll find out i'll go down kelsey was not in our office before the meeting but i will before i leave i'll walk down there and see what she has to say this is a follow-up or do you want to do that trying to see your signs to ask her uh what is the uh pouring of the foundation for the signs of are included in the rfp that they're doing for the real on the restaurant okay so the money for the rail trail signs that we are now getting for castle gate did that include the designing as well yes so that was supposed to be kind of a whole package except we're not sure about the installation part well they had signed two contracts one was for 13 signs to be designed by carol holds and one was for 13 signs to be manufactured okay so when they limited it to 10 signs on the rail trail we got the three signs that were left over that they had already contracted for that they were going to have to pay for even if they didn't do it so we got it and then um but since this is a new rfp that's going out for the foundations the question is are they doing it for 10 or are they doing it for 13
and the reason i would encourage if if the rfp hasn't gone out already to do it for the 13 is because the funds for the signage is already there and and being paid for and initially they were going to do 13 signs so why wouldn't they also do the 13 foundations for this foundation okay for that many okay anything else under new business party time where's amanda um our next meeting your next meeting uh stick with the pattern of the first wednesday would be wednesday january 7th
i think you need to also get a new chair and someone to hook the room and so forth anything else to be said well yeah you need a chair for next meeting i've already volunteered to do that based on a rotating basis which i sent out to everybody um i said i would start the first three months that's january february march and then someone else of our team has to pick up for the next three and we just keep that going until we finally get a permanent chairperson so i want to tell you about booking and so forth yes yes there are special instructions for booking which i found out in hindsight but anyway we'll learn we'll all learn how to do it uh question for ann how do you post minutes well so i have access to our website um but i think what most and and i won't after um i leave i think what most committees do is send the minutes to whoever it is in the select in the town manager's office i don't know if it's jaylen or some but there's a new new one person since i left um who will post them for you abby warren yeah do they get sent to the town clerk as well i have never sent them to the town court the file was supposed to be i did not know well i remember when i worked in the town clerk's office i mentioned that they have a file where they have all the printed um minutes of all the boards are kept now i assume because they're electronically someplace in the town website that maybe proofing them out was it necessary but i remember at the time several years had gone by and you said that you weren't you didn't want to do that and i didn't push it and so we just left it go well i can check in with trudy when i i need to go to her to resign um so i'll find out what is required and make sure that we do that i also do have a thumb drive with all the cemetery invoices on it but i will get to uh somebody here to print out right yes you shouldn't be doing anything the printing that should be the time right you know what i've been thinking about about myself with my hearing problem and my fatigue problem i've been thinking about resigning from the commission and still going into the lab because i can do that and uh i don't know if amanda can take over that part but i just get very tired and i can't hear so that's a problem i mean even with these earring aids in a noisy room like this i have a lot of trouble so i've been on the commission probably twice as long as you i'm sure you have so i think it might be easier for me just to resign from the commission and continue on in the lab when is your when is your uh time i think it's in june this coming june 2026 would you be staying on till june i probably could but when you started talking about jaring the meetings that you did a great job today but i don't think i've got the stamina to do it you also need a secretary yeah i mean it takes a lot of stamina to be able to do that sort of thing i've done it in my day i was the first president of the organization for the azabet river and i had 17 commissioners to get to know and do and we did it you know but at my age now i think it's too hard oh this is so if i if i could stay on until june without having to chair something i would do it but otherwise
it was somebody else can share the next three months after sherry ann right and then that was that's april may and june that's it then that's in yeah because i really hate to leave because for the archaeology lab i've got the institutional memory that's right someday that's going to be a moot question well think about it i've been thinking about in a couple of months i can tell you have yeah but i think i should say something now because uh
yeah tempest fugit yeah that's so true absolutely well i just want to say again for the record um how much i appreciate working with all of new for these years and all that i've learned um as a result um the fun we've had um doing projects and making progress and protecting the town's special historical assets um it's really been a pleasure and an honor to work alongside you so thank you for all you've given me and all you've taught me well we certainly feel that your leadership your your special skills that we have depended upon year after year yes annual meeting annual reports will be coming up as well as the minutes every every month and so forth that it's been our privilege to have you on board and we're so pleased that you decided to try this area of expertise but also your leadership your thoughtfulness your consideration that you think things through and try to look at it from every aspect that's been really helpful thank you they keep us all on track right well i'll certainly miss you that's for sure well i'm not going anywhere so i hope
now you'll be attending co8's activities yeah i'm a senior so i'll be a user now so you expect to lose your town email address um email address i think so so we'll have to find a way to communicate right yes i'll certainly give you all my own email but one of the things i want to do before they cut me off is go through all my email files that are pertinent to the historical commission and make sure that if there's anything that would be useful for the files um that i will find that and make sure you have it yes that's that's thanks thank you for that because as we discovered with sherman bridge if we don't have a paper trail um it's lost and when i went back trying to find the minutes i'm missing the minutes of the 1990s and it was we have 2000 on we're we're doing really better but um it's really important to have a paper trail so thank you for it's such that you oh yeah and the detail you know that's invaluable you do the best minutes of anybody honest goodness well that's because my own memory is cool if i don't write it down as long as you're typing it up at the time i know but i would never that is one no i do not have not one it's one of many girls i did not have but i'm so bad at it even taking notes in class was difficult so much much appreciated and sad to let you go yeah have we our choice we would not thank you oh my god see even here
hi did you hear something somebody else somebody on the hall
so after we officially adjourn and we turn off yes we're gonna have a party oh yes yes so put on your coat and come back down amanda enjoying the party so do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second second all 30 and all those in favor aye so we are adjourned we are adjourned at 204. oh
looking good amanda if you didn't hear me yes sorry i did hear you i just my audio was off um yeah so tanya and i we we were able to get rid of a lot of boxes because um there there's quite a bit of charcoal and soil that was from disturbed places so we we were able to easily look back at the um locus you know the site the site um surveys and make sure that everything was documented correctly and before we we were able to remove some of the charcoal and things like that um yeah so that was quite helpful and i have to say the binders it all looked beautiful and came in handy it was very easy to access very easy to find what we needed um and kudos to um the excavators they took very good notes so um it was it was it was successful it's just it's just time consuming but it's it's worth it yeah what i've been doing is what amanda was helping she looked up in the books where where the records are and if they're just incidental charcoal and not in a feature we've been discarding them because they're probably out of context or they may have been something that filtered down you know there was a lot of burning going on in the old days thousands of years ago and uh a lot of that charcoal could be not in a cultural feature so that's what we started to look at yeah i have a question um i should look back at the minutes i forgot i don't think it was we talked about it in the last minutes the um no we did the human rights diversity equity and inclusion committee had reached out have you done any more thinking about what we might do with them to uh highlight native american um we discussed the seal k remember you and i discussed the possibility of proposing research on the seal that's incorrectly the new seal that's displayed in the front entry hall well i've been going to the meetings which i find very interesting well i can hear what people are saying that they could help help with lobbying to fix that problem i'm sorry i didn't hear what you said um there's a new seal that must have cost something that's appearing right in the front entry hall and you and i discussed k um that that might be a good project for them be if they could lobby to correct that seal because um quite a bit of time and effort was put into and again thank thanks to the local police that they put in so much effort to include the nitmo can create a an appropriate seal that represented everybody the way everybody wanted to be represented um and then to see this seal put up with the tps is it's quite offensive actually and should have been corrected um and this might be something that they might want to work on i don't know a project for them if they're looking for a project okay no i'm sorry i'm not here that's my fault i forgot my hearing aid of this can somebody summarize for us so in the lobby is a copy of the town seal oh yes the town seal and the town seal as you know has some imagery on it that is out of date and possibly offensive and so amanda's suggesting says that you had a conversation with her about um maybe that's a project that they could look on or lead is to um create a new town seal okay thank you for the reminder marinda yeah that's that's uh that's an interesting idea it's given out i think so any more that particular topic or any connection archaeology not that i can think of is there anything you can think of well we did have um now this is going back a few months we didn't have uh somebody that i know who dug who had dug with paul at sandhill and she did a test pit in the bank of property next to her and she found one definite flake and maybe a few others but that's hard to say because they're quartz and they could have just chipped off or something and i called the natic historical society and i said we'd like to return them to them but i haven't got over there yet
so we've been trying to return artifacts to different towns um that had been given to us over time and we're not through with that yet are you saying she this person found it on the vacant property near her home yeah she dug a test pit because she'd been digging with paul she's our daughter does that go back to natick if she found them in wayland well i you can ask amanda because we have fight orders with boxes and to store things we're trying to give them back to the town that they were founded did this lady live in natick the lady she does oh so she didn't live in wayland no that's why it's going back to me oh yeah i've known her for a long time and she was interested in archaeology so she spent quite a bit of time with the rest of the volunteers and and paul so she just decided she didn't need them she gave up to us but she contacted you when she came over yeah she came here and brought them over okay because she knew you had a lab right yes she knew we had the lab got it
anything else on archaeology or we tried to go see not this much the lab okay rick well if i go to the cpc meeting tonight i can discuss with them the status of the rail rest posts we have three posts i have not found any more but whether we contract have the town contract to install the three that we've found and then a separate contract to install the others if we get others or whether just to wait um until we try to find two sets so i maybe if that's an opportunity to discuss with the cpc tonight do they typically get into that level of detail on ongoing projects no not really they um they do inquire how things are going along but and if i have the knowledge which is why i asked for the second team on the cemetery to share with them where we were on the cemetery um they're interested in hearing it but they don't necessarily make it a topic on the agenda okay well they may be concerned with the timeliness of the completion of the projects well that they are playing that about you're absolutely right um so on the rail trail signs we were supposed to have another zoom meeting this morning at 11 o'clock but it was canceled because uh uh kelsey could not she had a conflict so to my knowledge the meeting hasn't been rescheduled yet um i did receive a another version of the rail trail signs um dated november 21st from bonnie i don't know if anyone else has seen those she sent them to me and to tom fay and i spent part of my thanksgiving away reviewing them and um overall they're a big improvement over the earlier version but i still have some comments detailed comments so i had hoped to have my comments ready for today's meeting but i couldn't get finished in time so i would like to finish those up and have other people review them to get other input and ideas
bonnie has asked that all comments be consolidated into a single document before it gets sent to carol holtz the graphic designer so i would like to get all comments together in in a single document um i have made a few comments already i have provided a image of the rail rest posts uh that i understand that uh have been put on the on the google drive and also i asked a question about one of the images that was reversed and um so sir it's reversed yes okay so um if i can get my comments completed could i come over to the drought herd house tomorrow and share things so have you thought about are you asking the whole board to make comments on the signs i would welcome comments well then i would suggest you email it out to everyone with your comments and then they can um this is my suggestion and then they can email directly back to you so you can put it all into one document we have to be able to see what what we're looking at well yeah he's gonna send the the revised version plus your comments right yes yeah good okay because how else can we comment if we can't see them right and i found my russell's book about russell's and i didn't see anything in it about the uh i'll take another close look but i didn't see anything in it about the railroad crossing there okay if i pick you up tonight could i borrow that bus book sure from you that would be great that i haven't had a chance to get to the library to which russell's book is that the history of russell's garden center the russell wrote it back oh years decades ago about his his almost biography it's a paperback yeah yeah it's a small paperback yeah i've read it okay i don't remember anything about the railroad about it so there there are really two basic issues with the rail signs rail trail signs as i see them one is that when images get scanned the metadata associated with those images gets lost if you're dealing with a photographic print people can flip it over and see what's written on the back the caption information the credits the dates all that information but when things get scanned that gets lost so that's that's one problem the other problem is more of a communication issue where things go through bonnie and then get passed on to carol and then from carol back to bonnie and then to others and things are getting lost in that communications chain so those are the two biggest issues as i see them with the rail trail signs so um although carol holtz's latest version is is a big improvement there are still issues with captioning credits uh selection of photos that i think would be better if some images were chosen instead of other images and i would like other people's thoughts i don't want to be the only person that makes comments to bonnie that get passed on to carol uh there there was a statement in one of the signs about wayland being a if i could find it in my notes um i don't want to blog this meeting down in detail but um entering wayland science says wayland was a large town with major highways and thriving industry when the railroad was built i think that's worth discussing the cachituate had thriving industry with the shoe factory but the part of wayland that the railroad went through i think of as more of a rural farming community and the roads were unpaved i i wouldn't call them major highways so some of the wording i i can use some advice from historical society experts on maybe improving some of that that's just an example um i i think what she was thinking is boston post road goes through and there were three boston post roads going through uh one was old connecticut path one is route 20 and one is 27 so it was a major intersection of of travel um there was industry along route 20 where the safety building is now there were several suit manufacturers there which i didn't realize until i went through hudson's and looked at his map and i agree uh there was something about the trolley lines and all the major industry and it made it sound like people were coming in on the train to take the trolley to go to the shoe manufacturer which may have been a few people but i don't think it was a large crowd most of the people lived either in native or they lived in cachituate they didn't travel to go to work like they do today so without a consideration i think what she was trying to point out is that the wagons came down these roads on their way to boston uh and to the markets areas for a long time watertown was the only one that had a bridge over the charles river that allowed them to cross over and continue on out to the peninsula known as boston so um they and and certainly the farmers took their their uh farming goods their products in that way and and it made it much easier when the train came through to get their products into boston i think that's her intent in trying to apply but perhaps a different wording might still get it across without indicating that it was more major than it really was well and i have said i have sent her several different choices of sentences for that but she's chosen not to use them okay well i just throw that out as an example when when you mentioned um other images that you would prefer to say on the signs can you include that in your uh email to us because we can't we won't know what images you're talking about unless you say maybe this would be a better image or we could put this in instead of that one or whatever it would be helpful for us to understand what images you're talking about okay maybe i could insert a thumbnail image so yes
well one one issue with some of the credits was for example if i donated a print to the historical society 10 or 15 years ago carol has credited it to the historical society rather than to the original source uh that's um that's ownership um that's ownership that's why she did that because the historical society is now the owner of that print it may have been taken by red connard but it it's owned by the historical society but my my preference and the usual practice is to credit the original photographer if known and then the collection of the negative holder rather than who owns a print because multiple prints could be owned by different people that's correct and and one of the things that i'm i'm sure carol is concerned about is how much space does it take to put your name and the wayland museum and historical society society or is she putting in wayland historical society you know they're different lengths different amount of space for each letter and so forth so that may be a concern of hers i don't know i'm just suggesting that there's a lot of empty space between the photos on the side so that's something we can we can well is it going to take two lines to say all that is it going to take one line to say all that or are they're saying the reason why there's she's suggesting the wayland uh museum and historical society is if people are interested they contact us and then we can tell them who took it and the provenance of the picture and give them permission to reuse it which is basically what it is yeah in a couple of cases the prints that i obtained said on the back reproduction prohibited without permission so we need to contact the source and i can contact the source as we did with the tower hill photos that were used on the cabinet i contacted the sources of the photos to obtain their permission and we we need to do that once the final selection of images okay is made so perhaps the ones that you're happy with you could start doing that sooner if tom say is concerned about how long this process is taking that he wants to finish it rather than later well the signs aren't going to be installed between now and our next most one one so i think we have ample time i know there is a lead time in manufacturing the signs once the final design is selected but i think we have how much time does it take for you to contact these people to get permission usually just an email okay i just thought if you the ones that you're satisfied with you go ahead and just do that then that's one less thing we have to do at the last minute well there may be several images from the same source and there may be questions of whether to use one image or another image so i would rather okay wait until things gel a little bit more yep so unless anybody has any other questions that's all i have download great thank you rick um next item is the it's also signage that castle gate and duffy wood signs i don't think you knew to report on that since our last meeting but i am trying to get access to those photos which i've asked you about oh yeah you need to know which photos you're talking about all of them or whatever i thought i had emailed you i put you on the um the share with carol both of them no and that's what i need and i often work with her on which photos she wants to use and i just need are you going to continue to work on that after the end of this month tend to but i mean i intend to finish it this month but i need access okay and uh we haven't heard as long as we're talking about this um i have not heard back from minnesota yet i had expected to hear but maybe thanksgiving interfered sometimes places like that are closed thursday friday and on the and the weekend so maybe i was going to send a reminder to them okay because that was the uh younger version of evangelion yes so if you need access to that photophile asap i can get going but i've been not kind of a standstill waiting for that so how did you feel about um exchanging the younger version of michael simpson for the older version you know i think it's hard to say without out of context like i'd like to see what she puts together in a sign it seems to me that showing the older version of him this is who she married the older version not the younger version and um then showing her years her yeah just kind of emphasizes the age difference right it's so true that's all i have i love it so and i asked you for um uh a copy of the letter about sherman bridge that was not a pdf i sent it to you i didn't see it okay i looked again well i wasn't going to ask you to do it but you've already done it um i wanted to send them out as separate um letters to each of the people that you cc'd and then put a list of cc people underneath which is the way i was taught to do business letters so what it said um let's see who did we send it to uh doug stokes and then underneath was a list after the signature is a list of cc so you're going to send everybody the letter a second time no i'm not now that you sent it that's why i asked for it in for so that i could copy and paste and move the the senders nothing about the letter just the senders but you sent out the letter so now it's just i'll say but i wanted it for the records okay any new business but it's not on an agenda i did think of something on the way over here now what was it that i wanted to talk about do you want any more go ahead no i'm just thinking the stones bridge sign which facilities is doing is there any more word on that well i that's where you found me i was going to ask about that but there's nobody in the office to ask um i did talk to the young lady that's in charge of that a couple weeks ago and i think they're waiting for funding the approval by the select board funding for the the uh and they too as she far she knows they're going to be using carol holtz for that as well just to keep the continuity of uh signage in town and um yeah but she wasn't in today for me to ask that does bring up a thought on the signage it says um historical commission on it and what else did they have on the top of this of the sign which what's that about the um castle gate and dudley woods sign i haven't seen anything oh i thought they were i thought we had an image that just said historical i didn't know no i haven't seen anything maybe i'm confusing it with the real trail she's waiting for me to help her sort through the photos and decide okay what we want to use well the photo yeah i found the one i sent you those photos let me ask though do we know who's going to um actually for the foundation and are we expecting the town to do that for the we're putting the signs actually in place and it was there money in our budget to cover that part we've we've only talked about sign design and not installation i thought that um let's see they had two contracts one was with the sign company and one was with uh and i thought that they said that the dpw was putting in all the uh concrete bases that's for the real that isn't that the real trail no that's going out to contract as far as i understand the dpw said that there were too many foundations for the signs for them to do themselves so they recommended that it go out to bid that's my understanding so we need to know more about foundation right well so this because now the rest of the money from the two signs that didn't get made for the rail trail are now ours right does that mean the installation is going to be part of the rail trail contracts and we have to find out uh we have to call chelsea and find out whether or not the contract the rfp went out for um 13 signs or went out for 10 signs that's what we have to find out before we start worrying about our budget which has been pretty well spent for this year except that we did have money for the signs before this the race came along oh then we had there was money in the rec budget for the dudley wood signs and there was cpc money yeah for the castle gate signs so i'll have to ask um go back in the minutes well no i was going to say i started at cpc and find out whether or not um how much money is left because there wasn't enough money even combined to do what we're all to do them all so i don't know that there's enough money there to do all the foundation so whether it would be just one or two foundations so what we had originally from um from cpc was um 1800 about 1900 dollars for castle gate and what we had from the rec department but this goes back a couple of years now so who knows if it's still in their budget was 2500. no they spent uh that's for dudley woods yes they spent some of that to put up the kiosk that's there so i sincerely doubt that there's that much money there but we can ask tonight at the uh at the meeting and whatever maybe extra we needed we could get from the rfp that they're doing for the rail signs we'll see what kelsey has how kelsey has written up the rv for the um foundation and it seems to me wouldn't it be easier to use the money from the rail trail signs or the foundations and return cpa money back to cpa we'll find out i'll go down kelsey was not in our office before the meeting but i will before i leave i'll walk down there and see what she has to say this is a follow-up or do you want to do that trying to see your signs to ask her uh what is the uh pouring of the foundation for the signs of are included in the rfp that they're doing for the real on the restaurant okay so the money for the rail trail signs that we are now getting for castle gate did that include the designing as well yes so that was supposed to be kind of a whole package except we're not sure about the installation part well they had signed two contracts one was for 13 signs to be designed by carol holds and one was for 13 signs to be manufactured okay so when they limited it to 10 signs on the rail trail we got the three signs that were left over that they had already contracted for that they were going to have to pay for even if they didn't do it so we got it and then um but since this is a new rfp that's going out for the foundations the question is are they doing it for 10 or are they doing it for 13
and the reason i would encourage if if the rfp hasn't gone out already to do it for the 13 is because the funds for the signage is already there and and being paid for and initially they were going to do 13 signs so why wouldn't they also do the 13 foundations for this foundation okay for that many okay anything else under new business party time where's amanda um our next meeting your next meeting uh stick with the pattern of the first wednesday would be wednesday january 7th
i think you need to also get a new chair and someone to hook the room and so forth anything else to be said well yeah you need a chair for next meeting i've already volunteered to do that based on a rotating basis which i sent out to everybody um i said i would start the first three months that's january february march and then someone else of our team has to pick up for the next three and we just keep that going until we finally get a permanent chairperson so i want to tell you about booking and so forth yes yes there are special instructions for booking which i found out in hindsight but anyway we'll learn we'll all learn how to do it uh question for ann how do you post minutes well so i have access to our website um but i think what most and and i won't after um i leave i think what most committees do is send the minutes to whoever it is in the select in the town manager's office i don't know if it's jaylen or some but there's a new new one person since i left um who will post them for you abby warren yeah do they get sent to the town clerk as well i have never sent them to the town court the file was supposed to be i did not know well i remember when i worked in the town clerk's office i mentioned that they have a file where they have all the printed um minutes of all the boards are kept now i assume because they're electronically someplace in the town website that maybe proofing them out was it necessary but i remember at the time several years had gone by and you said that you weren't you didn't want to do that and i didn't push it and so we just left it go well i can check in with trudy when i i need to go to her to resign um so i'll find out what is required and make sure that we do that i also do have a thumb drive with all the cemetery invoices on it but i will get to uh somebody here to print out right yes you shouldn't be doing anything the printing that should be the time right you know what i've been thinking about about myself with my hearing problem and my fatigue problem i've been thinking about resigning from the commission and still going into the lab because i can do that and uh i don't know if amanda can take over that part but i just get very tired and i can't hear so that's a problem i mean even with these earring aids in a noisy room like this i have a lot of trouble so i've been on the commission probably twice as long as you i'm sure you have so i think it might be easier for me just to resign from the commission and continue on in the lab when is your when is your uh time i think it's in june this coming june 2026 would you be staying on till june i probably could but when you started talking about jaring the meetings that you did a great job today but i don't think i've got the stamina to do it you also need a secretary yeah i mean it takes a lot of stamina to be able to do that sort of thing i've done it in my day i was the first president of the organization for the azabet river and i had 17 commissioners to get to know and do and we did it you know but at my age now i think it's too hard oh this is so if i if i could stay on until june without having to chair something i would do it but otherwise
it was somebody else can share the next three months after sherry ann right and then that was that's april may and june that's it then that's in yeah because i really hate to leave because for the archaeology lab i've got the institutional memory that's right someday that's going to be a moot question well think about it i've been thinking about in a couple of months i can tell you have yeah but i think i should say something now because uh
yeah tempest fugit yeah that's so true absolutely well i just want to say again for the record um how much i appreciate working with all of new for these years and all that i've learned um as a result um the fun we've had um doing projects and making progress and protecting the town's special historical assets um it's really been a pleasure and an honor to work alongside you so thank you for all you've given me and all you've taught me well we certainly feel that your leadership your your special skills that we have depended upon year after year yes annual meeting annual reports will be coming up as well as the minutes every every month and so forth that it's been our privilege to have you on board and we're so pleased that you decided to try this area of expertise but also your leadership your thoughtfulness your consideration that you think things through and try to look at it from every aspect that's been really helpful thank you they keep us all on track right well i'll certainly miss you that's for sure well i'm not going anywhere so i hope
now you'll be attending co8's activities yeah i'm a senior so i'll be a user now so you expect to lose your town email address um email address i think so so we'll have to find a way to communicate right yes i'll certainly give you all my own email but one of the things i want to do before they cut me off is go through all my email files that are pertinent to the historical commission and make sure that if there's anything that would be useful for the files um that i will find that and make sure you have it yes that's that's thanks thank you for that because as we discovered with sherman bridge if we don't have a paper trail um it's lost and when i went back trying to find the minutes i'm missing the minutes of the 1990s and it was we have 2000 on we're we're doing really better but um it's really important to have a paper trail so thank you for it's such that you oh yeah and the detail you know that's invaluable you do the best minutes of anybody honest goodness well that's because my own memory is cool if i don't write it down as long as you're typing it up at the time i know but i would never that is one no i do not have not one it's one of many girls i did not have but i'm so bad at it even taking notes in class was difficult so much much appreciated and sad to let you go yeah have we our choice we would not thank you oh my god see even here
hi did you hear something somebody else somebody on the hall
so after we officially adjourn and we turn off yes we're gonna have a party oh yes yes so put on your coat and come back down amanda enjoying the party so do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second second all 30 and all those in favor aye so we are adjourned we are adjourned at 204. oh