January 27, 2026 – 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee – Video & Transcript
January 27, 2026 - 212 Cochituate Road Advisory Committee
call to order through the bill.
The meeting of the 212th
of the Advisory Committee for
January 27th, 2026.
It is 6.03pm.
Our agenda is with us in person.
I am
Dean Milburn,
Bill Adams.
On Zoom we have John Thomas
and Stephanie
Tonight's meeting is being recorded. People can watch it later on Wacom. They can watch it now on Zoom if they like. We'll welcome public comment. Then we'll listen to and answer questions from neighbors of the property. Then we'll hear from members of the Wayland Human Rights Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee. Then we'll consider minutes for January 7th meeting of this year. And we will then consider the draft report in our packet and then we propose and hopefully we'll see before. We want them to public comment. We'll move on to the next portion of our meeting. We invite neighbors to discuss the work we're doing and the discussion we're going to have. You may have some neighbors here and also online. So if you could help bring over people from the attendee list to the Zoom meeting. Who do you see them? Who would you like to bring me over? Allen. Allen's phone? Allen here. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see Allen. Allen declined. Oh, okay. He declined. And we have some folks here from the neighborhood. Come on up. Good evening. Since it's the three of you, why don't each of you just give your name and address and then we can complete. Amy, do you want to start? Say something, Amy. Amy, if you could introduce yourself, that'd be great. Yes. Amy Adams, 19 Woodridge Road. Good. Welcome. Amy, gentlemen. Mark, 13 High Rock Road. Matthew, gentlemen, 15 Woodridge Road. Welcome. So it's good to see you again. You were able to join us a few meetings ago and since then with our committee's continued to meet, listening to other organizations and professionals in the field, all from dentistry to stay upon the topic that we're pursuing. And the report has been drafted. Maybe we saw that there's a great effort in putting together what we've heard and where our committee's thinking. And you may have heard from a member of the committee. I don't think that committee is going to be recommending a particular size of house with a particular number of homes with a particular number of residents. But I think this, and I invite other members of the committee to comment or correct me, but I think the sense of the committee is that we recommend in bending this lifeboard that the structures be, structures that fit well into the neighborhood and not too many in number and not too many in individuals. I mean by that latter point is what we've learned from the individuals who have come to speak to us is the value of a home field for the residents, resident adults with disability, as opposed to an institution. And that's one of the goals of this committee, reflecting that in our report this life. I think one of the concerns of ideas we raised last time was the idea of a step back. And I sense committee members is certainly open to that. I think that's mentioned at the end of the night. So that is some background that I open it up to you all. If you have questions or comments on what you've seen or heard, feel free to ask away. I guess after reading, nothing in it was very surprising to me. The question I still have is the process of the town getting really kind of heavily involved in trying to designate what's used and done with the space. And yet I feel like what we're going to actually do is sell the property. You're going to be thoughtful about choosing who buys it, but it just doesn't feel like there's a lot of ability to really direct once you sell it. You might pick the right partner and they might develop it great. And three years later, they might go bankrupt. And then where are you as a family? You know, maybe another 10 years. Well, that person struggles to pay taxes, get out of bankruptcy, you know? So I guess that's the part that's still sort of mysterious for me is at what point does the town just say, okay, we organized the committee. We back find it. We chose somebody to sell it to. They're going to honor what the town meeting said, which is, well, I'm not really sure. Because in the town meeting, we said if you sell it for market rates, then some portion of it has to be for affordable housing. So are we selling it for market rates is one question, right? Or are we sort of granting it to a nonprofit perhaps if we think it's the best solution for the property or what we're trying to accomplish in terms of the type of housing? Sure. So in your question, I heard three issues. The first is ownership versus lease. I think our report to the select board leaves that open as far as recommendations that the town makes you, select board may choose in the end to lease it to organizations or to sell it. or to sell it. Some organizations don't want to lease it. They want to own it. Possibly for loans purposes and maybe other reasons as well. But in the end, the town may continue to own the land. Concerning your comments about organization maybe not having capital or financial stability to continue for a long period of time, that's a point that we made clear in our report that any RFP would require that the organization that submits or responds to it demonstrate financial strength and ability to be with us for a long period of time. Because you're right, Mark. It's not only in the town's interest to have multiple organizations there over a short period of time. I think ideally with multiple organizations that is stable financially quite stable in the community where relationships can develop and bonds can be established not only with neighbors who choose to be in touch with residents and staff but with residents of the town and organizations. And I think Yeah, I think the third piece was more what did the town actually vote for? Like it seems like the only binding amendment was the if-then as opposed to this is more of a desired outcome as opposed to a mandated outcome from the town. So as I understand the Warren article it amended the select board to utilize the four acres for a minimum for housing for adults with disabilities. It doesn't say the entire four acres for adults with disabilities but at least a portion of it. I thought so you're saying that the amendment was for folks with disabilities? No. It was for affordable housing. The amendment had to do with affordable housing. And I think I think that's right. That's right. That's right. And the affordable housing aspect would be kind of subsumed into the type of housing most likely that adults with disabilities would be utilized. Am I right, Blaine? That's right. Yeah. Support of housing I think that would be clear in the article but I think that the last minute there was an amendment to the article to make sure that some form of affordable housing was built on the site. Could you expound on the the RFP process and the you know I just what rights the town would have in enforcing or I mean is there an enforcement component in terms of you know binding the developer to tenure requirements in the RFP what does that look like how does that work? You know the RFP is basically an invitation for organizations to respond to the proposal of the town but Bill did draft an RFP and I would call it pretty tight but An RFP for what? RFP for a draft RFP which was in the in the draft report the draft RFP is an example of what the select board may choose to follow or utilize or expand upon but the answer is yes the RFP invites organizations to respond but in the end there'll be an agreement right between the town and the organization that outlines what we expect from them and what they may expect from us which would be pretty much responsibility and telling us I guess so would we the town encumber the land or would this be a contractual obligation and in which case it doesn't like I'm just going down the line here but the you know if somebody doesn't you know we had some sort of claim against the developer you know for hypothetical purposes they turn 180 degrees and do whatever they want or just sell the property you know what is the the what rights I mean what yeah damages are even would be available to the town because there's not anything coming flowing back to the town in this you know scenario so if the town leased the property it wouldn't be an issue of value taking from the town if they got up and left if the town goes selectively chose to sell the property to an organization we would make sure that the property the property limits the use to to certain individual Okay so it would be encumbered in the land as opposed to a civil suit that was being fired and regarding democracy in organizations that might not be in a position to stay alone it's likely to make sure it doesn't happen yeah I get that yeah I think the other piece just I mean I didn't get the impression reading the report and I'll be quite honest you know it didn't do a thorough reading of it this afternoon but I got the impression that the town really didn't have much this advisory committee didn't have much interest in the town owning the property it seemed to highlight mostly at least risk in all of the scenario towards ownership and you know distancing the the town from any risk and ownership in the land that's a good that's interesting I'm not sure exactly you know well I think that's what the draft reflects but you know the committee's still has to kind of review the latest draft I think you know the call will be made by the select board but my personal view is that the select board ought to be open to a ground lease or to a sale depending on the developer is and the service provider is as well as what the project will look like as Tom indicated there in either event there would be either a ground lease which would set for certain standards and if a lessee didn't adhere to those standards that's a default and the alternative if there was a sale there was to be a sale there would be an executed agreement but we would want to make sure that for a building permit issues that what is being applied for is reflected in in the agreement also it may be possible for the town to require that in the event of a sale the town gets a right of first offer or a right of first refusal so if as you suggest there is as the hypothetical plan that someone decided to or you know act with us we'll turn around and sell it for three McMansions then I think the town would be in a position to step in um is there any scenario where the town through the RFP process identifies is what you might consider an ideal partner but the finances are tougher because they're a nonprofit and the town would grant let's say you know rent-free 30-year lease as a contribution to the project well it's quite possible to select what would given the nature of the nonprofits and choose um not to ask for any compensation by use of the land um for example impossible um another I've had that if Tom were sitting close to me he would kick me on the table but uh if as you said the perfect project the perfect partner and the numbers didn't quite work I think uh there is the ability to go to the town meeting and seek some funding for contributing in some way to the development through the community preservation act perhaps the access road perhaps the utilities normal kind of public sector sorts of uh investments but again it's I think we're able to be open-minded and to uh work with the selected team to find the best possible project that has a good long-term economy I mean you know short of just this was talked about a town meeting you just dispose of the property to developers you put a couple million bucks in the town coffers and call it a day right but all you're really giving up if you don't do that is a year in taxes from two properties or 50 grand a year in taxes from two properties so you know it's not like by granting tax-free access I guess if it's non-profit they don't pay property taxes perhaps anyway but also just in the acquiring of the property um not having to have that capital layout would be huge for you know non-profits it just seems like a an easy way to make a contribution to a project without actually costing the town anything the cost of building materials and so forth and and these projects are difficult to put together Jean in her draft is laid out a number of tons of financing sources that non-profits typically have to knit together in order to make one of these things work and I would hope that the town would be in a position to do its part to again ensure long-term liability questions or comments Amy yeah thank you um for letting us speak um um I I appreciated in the report that there was a discussion about the natural environment in the neighborhood and I just wanted to speak to that and then ask a question um uh that one of the reasons that Bill and I moved to Wayland is it seemed to have you know high impact human factor with low impact on the environment and the those are like the two ideals that we we found the town constantly returning to um and so this property and uh this neighborhood as the town notes has a lot of sensitive environmental spaces in it that we really feel strongly that we'd like to preserve and I hope that the partners will and the town will support that um this the 212 you know backs into um really important habitat for a lot of animals um plants and beneficial insects uh that connect to the Hamlin conservation property uh which then connects to Turkey Hill the aqueduct so it's kind of a little bit of a Wayland's emerald necklace uh we would hate to have a project uh destroy that that ecosystem um so I guess my question is looking at appendix six uh appendix e sorry that some of these examples seem to be quite large um and housing I think anywhere between twenty and forty people um I'm concerned I know there's been a lot of conversation about concerns for the human neighborhood but I'm concerned about the impact on the natural environment um um and hoping that um the town and any developer will sort of take on that Wayland responsibility for treating the natural world gently um um but I wonder if a um housing um cluster with forty residents is able to do that and I'd love to hear your thoughts about that uh the site visit that we did and uh uh jasmineville was there and uh lapiers were there but it um um the woods there are very nice I think that's what you're referring to the back part of the market and um I can't predict um how this property will end up but uh I'll just say this I appreciate and uh I appreciate your comment about what you said about the habitat and uh um and how the animals slow through there so I I'm I'm sympathetic to that and I'll leave a comment there at this point I invite others to comment yeah and I'll just add that um you know when you live in Wayland you know the woods they're not they're not manicured woods some people might not say they're beautiful um and we have to um uh you know tolerate some animals more than others you know it's not bucolic all the time um but I think we um that anyone joining uh the town and the neighborhood would kind of take that on in a way that you know there's just some woods you don't touch uh there's trees you don't cut down or pick up um and that's what we've learned living here and what we get is this uh very complex and delicate ecosystem that I think is um you know biodiverse and really impressive um and if you've lived anywhere else you'll see that it doesn't always exist in other places um so just just speaking for the trees the trees thank you any other comments John yeah I had a question I guess it kind of stems from the question that is posed to the select board regarding the ability to direct or control the number who the residents are of these uh group homes um I I guess the question I would have is does this committee on the extreme end you know if the answer to that is no that Wayland does not have the ability to direct or you know prefer Wayland residents does this committee still support this project in in that scenario I mean it's it's a very different project at that point and it's not what was presented into the town one of the organizations that we've heard from was the organization down situate and uh what they did was when the parents got together we bought a building they invited um adult with disabilities to live there who lived within 15 mile radius and one of the uh legal questions that is mentioned in the report concerns um and the league can you limit or require actually can you require that a certain percentage of residents be from Wayland and the answer is continue that it does impact how those residents accounted in the affordable housing um form in other words you may have heard 10% 10% 10% of the housing in the town it's affordable for the redevelopments can't come in never quite a few and so that's a that's a factor i'm not sure is this your first question though but your first question is the large committee recommending that a certain type of development disability be residing at 212 you do not get that specific no that i think you your first point is touching on what i'm you know curious about and i noted you know that distinction though i don't have any clarity on it uh you know myself i don't know that you'd be able to to to do that here um in terms of you know you know if what scenario under what scenarios the town can direct the the uh in the residence or the makeup or that you know percentage in my my i guess initial reading was that it related to the i guess whether or not it being you know funded through this THS or is that what it was it was it was another there was an acronym with the acronym yeah DDS DDS whether or not it was being funded through DDS was the decision there and i thought that all the the scenarios that were presented included reference to DDS funding so in that scenario i don't know you know it seems somewhat of a red hair i mean maybe it is a potential but i mean in the react if if is that even a factor here is that does that a scenario that we're you know contemplating or does that conflict with other interests that this town that this committee is pursuing well i think the thing depends on when your organization must end up agreeing to work with the town on the project and the rfp will also impact what organizations might even submit for example if the rfp said by 70% of the residents must be from whalen what organizations may choose not to submit to respond but that's not their business right right any thoughts any thoughts yeah i know i know DDS has restrictions on the number of what we wanted our goal is to serve as many local residents as as possible so we all came together about but you know it all depends on the funding if it's DDS they have um it may not be they can prioritize whalen residents but not guaranteed um that they'll be placed in that house so it depends on which which model is chosen but i think you're i think you're right though matthew that um if it's a DDS facility they have um lots say which individuals will live there and i i don't i don't my my sense is that DDS facility would be less more difficult to have percentages decent sized percentages that having said that i think it's something we can discuss with the state it seems like there would be a lot of objection if i put myself in a developer's shoes you know being held accountable to some kind of number but i would think we could hold somebody accountable to a prioritization process that said once you are ready to open and you are advertising six beds eight beds sixteen beds you first open it up to whalen residents for a period of time and allow only rail and residents to submit for those spots and once that time has ended then you can open it up and fill your framework i mean it's a complex issue too i mean DDS has a for example has a list of clients and people waiting for replacement and you know they have a list and there's compatibility with the other clients who are living in the development so you have to put people with certain disabilities don't mix so they have to factor all that in so i think they would try and place whalen families in there but there's no guarantee of that i'd like to see some you know in your report or this committee you know dig on this further and you know condition some limitation of conditions because i think i'm the the long you know the the you know outlier here is is a scenario you know where you know we don't have whalen residents and we've taken a revenue producing property tax revenue producing property and while you say you know maybe it's one or two houses you know we're in a point where you know if it's not typical this year we're looking for the you know a budget exception next year it's going to be a budget override so we're all looking at more taxes from an already incredibly high tax rate so i i don't think it's a non issue you know you know it removing tax revenue from the town but beyond that removing you know tax revenue and not providing any you know it i guess it's not for the benefit of the residents of the town and it seems tenuous the the connection or the the ability for the select board of this board to say that you know this process is in the interest of the town it becomes a social project as opposed to really a uh a town project so well think of myself matthew i really couldn't agree with you more i really think that um sorry for your view there i'll lean over for you a lot of years are listening but they can't somehow get in i think deb we're trying to let deb in but i think it's coming over now okay okay yeah but uh my sense from the committee is that we'd like to make sure that of course it's an avenue for well and residents to be able to live at 212. but as brian said it is tricky that's something we can't achieve it it is tricky because of the funding sources and um we also see it is a regional you know wayland is down an island and we see that um you know our neighbors this is a facility that will benefit a lot of a lot of people not just people in wayland but uh surrounding towns right well there is a practicality and you mentioned a 15 mile circle where somebody you know somebody placing somebody an opportunity like this is most likely a family giving up an adult child to a new living arrangement they're not going to want it to be 50 miles away they don't want it to be somewhere they can visit regularly so i mean i i think we're splitting here a little because i think it seems like everybody has the same general sense i think one thing maybe we could ask as neighbors is and as residents is in your recommendation to the select ward to favor rfp folks who aren't tied to some funding sources that could prevent us from adding some covenants like that right you know so not favor dds for instance if they're the toughest ones to wrangle into having the bets go to break the wave of residents challenge of course is they're sometimes in the most secure financially in terms of funding schemes yeah i know nice to know that the money's coming from the government it's never going to go well it's also no it's it's also nice to know that the operational dollars are going to be there in 10 years so you're not as neighbors worried about the turnover that you've expressed so that that's sort of the plus and the minus of having a more stable operating funding source i wanted to welcome the a lot of years uh alan deb good to see you uh understand you've been listening i wanted to give you an opportunity to make any comments or ask any questions no i'm you but that he's trying to get it i think it's fair i'm here he's trying to get it get off now it says muted on dev can you unmute her i think it's on the phone if you tap on the picture then the the menu pops up from the bottom hey there okay so you can speak to us through the phone here sounds great yeah we are having we're having a technical difficulty yeah we don't have good uh um and then can everybody hear us now bill yes yes your volume is maxed out so yep all right great first of all thank you uh to the committee for allowing us to speak and thank you for the neighbors who have already spoken a lot of issues have been um that we want i we too have not had a chance to we too have not had a chance to digest but i'm just curious can you get specific on what recommendations that the abutters were looking for like for instance hearing 20 um 20 people i'm concerned that this can grow to something like um that's on off of west plain street like on bent aft and that's not what i had envisioned from what i've heard before i kept talking about two buildings down with five or six people in each building so we're looking at 10 to 12 um residents with plus uh caretakers i mean that sounds fantastic for and obviously again it can be for wayland residents that would be perfect but as this project starts to grow i think that that really changes the look and the feel of this this program and this project and why can't the committee put these specific recommendations in the letter well uh we're still working on a draft report and in it there are um um i think five particular examples um but those are still in discussion and so until the final report comes out um it's premature for us to me to say as chair that we're going to be recommending certain numbers here or there but i i uh understand your point now yeah i can appreciate that i mean the other thing we talked about as far as in amy's point about the space behind the property uh you know we kind of coined the phrase or build it as far as green space um it would be ideal to maintain that kind of that type of space and also um certain setbacks and as far as making recommendations along those lines to me it would seem like that would be worthwhile to get on the record and not leave it up to another body such as the board of selectmen with all due respect i i i respect them i think there is a good board but you guys are charged with setting some standards here but setting for some standards i would think that this would be a good time to kind of lay this out in the initial groundwork so somebody else doesn't go in a different direction when it gets handed off well we do mention setbacks in the report and um when bill and i present this to the select board that that'll certainly part of the discussion i'm not sure it's prudent for our committee to be specific on where setbacks would be but i think the report will reflect your uh your desires neighbors to uh have the rfp uh establish setbacks so that any applicant will understand what's it you know that's what's just that that's what it's likely to choose yeah i could add something here and if i was uh amy i was looking at you when i thought of this um one of my nicknames around town is the native plant lady i run around teaching people about how to establish pollinator pathways and things like that so anyway i've thought a lot about the project footprint and how much impermeable surface would have to be constructed and i did spend time running some scenarios looking at building footprints and parking lot footprints and driveways and trying to figure out for these various size scenarios that we describe you know how much of the the block would end up uh under a building or a driveway um i'm feeling comfortable with what you know we're suggesting as viable options here in part because when i did that it left a lot of green space that you know i could see there would be a big area where native things could grow on this site so that's why i can be comfortable with green areas they don't have to cover the ground and take away the habitat
but i'll also just put the human factor in if 40 individuals are living um there that is not just about the size of a house or where the parking lots in are and depending on who those individuals are uh there could be you know a lot of activity on that property that certainly wouldn't um i don't know i'm not sure how much it would protect what's there already in terms of um letting nature to have its own space too so i i agree with the other neighbors that a smaller model is is better uh septic issues you put 40 people on four acres too right yes yeah final five other questions or comments um one of the things um tom and then to the board for the committee you mentioned that the the traffic would impact would be negligible negligible wasn't the word but not highly impacted um i think that it may be a misnomer i'm not sure that you might want that you might want to consider either some additional language it really depends on what you put in there if you put in a building that houses 20 people and and they and the and and they they need it's just a living space and they have to be um vanned and um have transportation to go off premise to go to work but to go to other um activities it's all there could be a lot of um van and then traffic activity come to and from that facility expect not only just vans but also family members but if this is the type of facility that has 10 10 12 10 to 12 or 15 but most um habitants and and it's in this this events that are occurring on this property it could prevent that could reduce the traffic flow so i think traffic flow could quite well be impacted depending on what's put in there and then the other thing that i'm not sure if it was mentioned in the the document about screening of you know plantings to kind of prevent the you know light pollution or reduce light pollution from vans coming in at night and so forth to the neighbor you know affecting the neighbor neighboring homes um alan i have to say i agree with you on the traffic point um wayland's always been a town that's taken a serious look at traffic and
the impacts of development so i i i do think the report um will be in uh longer on that point i think the select board will uh certainly take that seriously as well even if it is minor you're still my opinion one would stop that through an expert so that there's no there's no question i would also reiterate on that point that you know it's also worth considering not today but tomorrow because we now have 400 students new students that are coming in at the intersection a quarter of a mile away at theratus so you know that's already which hasn't been accounted for which wasn't addressed which was never planned for right you know given the what was submitted originally so you know we have a major traffic issue you know at a quarter of a mile there at the feeder intersection at the exact same time that you're proposing a lot of traffic coming in and out of these residents so it is it's not a non-issue and and i would also you know you know champion that the sentence that the report as it currently stands you know it leans towards suggesting that it is a non-issue i don't know the exact wording but it certainly is is you know a would lead you to believe that that's not something that's of any concern to anybody is there some civic definition of what increase in traffic is negligible or meaningful in other words do we know that you know 300 cars pass down route 27 every day and if if 20 more did that's three percent and that's not negligible i'm just asking like i'm not a traffic city planning expert yeah i would imagine they would do something like that if a you know new major school or plant was going into an area that was going to have you know a thousand new cars a day or something typically what we do is we have a individual who works in the town really regularly who evaluates initially likely impacted traffic and then as a project develops that vendor or some other companies do a formal traffic study and provide opinions as to the actual there is a uh a formal process where uh a traffic engineer can establish the level of service and uh it's typically at intersections and they are grades a b c d f and so uh typically what happens is the uh the engineer would take account at the current time they would project forward uh at the time that the project would come online what what's the background growth apt to be and what's the level of service at that time and so that is compared with the projected level of service with the project and so you look at the different and you see a passing grade or a failing grade some other comments or questions john yeah i just uh i wanted to chime in um so just to be clear we're actually we're talking about housing okay we're talking about housing for adults with disabilities for the town of wayland we're also not necessarily talking about uh i i heard something to the effect of a a social services um sort of project this is actually something that's specifically identified in the wayland housing production plan that's a town document uh that plan makes explicit recommendations that are aimed at increasing housing options for people with disabilities um it identifies a gap in housing for people with physical developmental and mental health disabilities uh between the number of those opportunities that exist for people with disabilities and people without disabilities in the town and i just wanted to point out the fact that there are currently five units five beds within one group home located on route 20 in wayland so you juxtapose five beds of dedicated housing for people with disabilities versus the rest of the beds which presumably provide how uh are you know could be counted for non-disabled housing in the town of wayland and that gives you a sense of what the housing opportunities are for people with disabilities which i think is the reason why uh that content exists in in the wayland housing production plan that plan also specifically calls for the development of group homes uh it it calls for building relationships with service providers including the state it specifically mentions dmhdds um and there there's a recognition in that production plan that you know there there are high land and acquisition costs uh and that the town really ought to do what it can to offset those costs so i just wanted to throw that out there for a little context thank you i appreciate that that one of the things that we talked about as neighbors is it is housing but if if it's housing that's developed at a level where the folks who live there need a lot of medical help and there are a lot of them but say 20 it's also a place of business right because there's going to be at least that many caregivers on a 24-hour shift coming in and out so yes it's housing but depending on the nature of the housing it's also a place where several people work and have to come to work in and out all the time so i appreciate you folks joining us tonight uh we have another group coming in after this to chat about the project but um it's a fluid process we have maybe two more meetings left and then our board will our committee will vote on the report and bill and i will meet the select board and that will be a public hearing and looking ahead once an rfp is issued and response is received um that will be further opportunity for you and other members of the public to uh to give proposals and will there be an opportunity to weigh in on the rfp if if when it gets that stage i understand that that's the select boards you know and outside of this this committee but possibly be up the select board but um i don't see why not you mean selection of the final well i i think that there's just so much that's up in the air and that's deferred to it depends on what we you know what the rp looks like and what proposals we receive so i i think that you know i appreciate the the report it is you know important and you know it's a a frame of the current state but you know as we move along it'd be great to be you know continue to be involved and have another touch more no yeah we'll keep in touch
we appreciate it we appreciate you put one of our neighbors on the committee thank you thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you sure thanks um next on our agenda we've invited members of the ukulele and human rights diversity equity inclusion committee to join us to chat about their thoughts and answer questions they may have i'd ask that robbie moved some folks over um we have um we have um we have um karen how are you karen how are you anybody else that we're not that's uh
no just the three just the three of us well thanks for uh joining us uh i'll just ask that you can go around and introduce yourselves and where you live we can go from there uh i can start um go alphabetically how about um so karen lumenfeld 113 oxbow road marianne burkowski 251 lakeshore drive
i guess it's me uh giano mendler de suarez and i'm 56 orchard but um i'm also part of the constituent road neighborhood because i own the property where i grew up at um 60 shaw drive which also has a right of way out to um woodridge fairly close to the um the property in question so my comments will be um i'll try to distinguish um as a contribution from um serving the needs of the town through the committee and as a neighborhood member well welcome uh thanks for joining us and appreciate the patience uh thus far i think the three of you are familiar with the work our committee has done so i'm not going to go through um our charge or work we've done and maybe you've had a chance to review the draft report online i'm not sure but um we just wanted to give you folks an opportunity to uh comment on the work we're doing and if you had questions or um ask away and do our best the internet so did you want to start karen or i'd be happy um to jump in so i i do appreciate and agree with a lot of the points that were raised by um the the neighbors the people in the wider neighborhood um but i think one thing that we haven't really talked much about and i think is of great concern um is is the quality of life for um people who will be living here um i am all for a focus on um young adults i think that is a tremendous need i know many many families in wayland um will be faced with where are their adult children going to go and to to know that there is at least one um um we could call it a facility or we could call it a program in the town of wayland um that people could aspire to or maybe you know get on a waiting list for um years before they may even um need that um that option for their child i think would be a huge um value maybe not uh easy to quantify uh uh monetarily but a huge value um to the the town of wayland and the community of wayland but also you know in this vein of the you know the quality of life and of the programming that is offered um i think that um we have the opportunity to um to define in a very broad way in the rfp um some of the goals and objectives and objectives that we would like to see um we would like it to be um above all um a dignified life we would like it to be integrated in the community we'd like to preserve um or find the strike the right balance between um privacy for the residents and the staff that are helping them and integration into the into the community and i think that um the proposal that was um that was made in you know one of the one of the meetings um this um high spirit approach really struck me as potentially um meeting a lot of um criteria that have been important over a long period of time in the town of wayland um to conserve um something of an agricultural way of life but beyond that to offer um a constructive and productive way of life um for young adults where they're um in touch with nature they're um they're outdoors a lot of the time they are the stewards of a property um part of that can be um you know i mean we have the ability to specifically um i like you know you could put it restricted or we could say to guide it um that we would prefer to see you know regenerative farming kinds of techniques that if there's going to be landscaping and screening in the buffer zone the setbacks that we would prefer that they are sourced from the native plant list um to you know to maintain the character um of the land but also um a way of life that is really reflective of the values that you know attract people to the town of wayland and make these residents um part of um that their contribution to the the culture and the climate of the community um is um is recognized um through the the way of life um uh i also um want to just highlight that well i mean it would be wonderful to serve a large number of people um i think the you know i think the property itself should dictate some limits and septic is a huge concern um you know i mean if we're talking about you know 20 or more people um we're talking about you know a lot of bedrooms a lot of bleach field we're talking about disrupting a huge percentage of the property there um just to accommodate you know a functioning septic system and that may limit other uses of the property as well but um going back to the relationship between you know the style of life and the quality of life i think that um residential pods where people can form relationships and trust each other and feel safe um and have minimal um round the clock support um could in a way echo the sort of conservation cluster idea that if there are multiple pods they don't have to be in a separate footprint um the you know the the building itself could be constructed if you think of the new england big house little house back house barn kind of a construction um and even if there are you know are uh is if we do go in some kind of you know high spirit type of direction even if there are barns um the way that the footprint um is designed could um could really respect um minimal disruption of the property and again um looking at um impermeability and minimal disruption um we can also consider things like if we wanted to have um a farm like appeal farmhouse uh farm like appeal those roads and parking areas do not have to actually be paved that would reduce the impervious surface there are environmentally engineered ways of doing things um but the additional benefit that makes this particular suggestion i think worth considering for me is that it is the best way to maintain very very low rolling speeds for traffic coming in and out um so those are um those are my main uh contributions for your consideration thank you sorry i was muted marianne would you like to go next i'm sure um first um uh i really appreciate all the work that went into this report um you know we're really breaking new ground here about um really thinking organically about how to create housing um that um serves the needs of of a of a group that um has really been ignored um so i really appreciate the the breadth of um the different options that were out there that you looked at um and also recognize that no this is um that's one of the reasons we're looking at it and you have all these diverse ideas is because it is really this is new we're breaking new ground here and so um but we shouldn't we shouldn't pull back from that because this is a real need um as janelle mentioned i mean um um the need for uh families um and individuals in our community um that that need to feel like they have a valuable life um uh that they want to live where they have choices is something that should be you know very high on the list here about things we want to meet and in fact um i really appreciate um your section where you talk about visions and objectives that it's like jano must have read from it um you know the supports dignity autonomy and quality of life um and integrates the residents with the broader whelan community i have um a good friend who's um has a daughter um with downs and you know that is so critical um and how uh difficult that can be to be integrated in the broader community and how much better to be integrated to be in the middle of our community um and uh so anyhow i appreciate that work and i i i appreciate the vision that it it showed and and i appreciate all the things that have been done you know that you had looked at that shows that people are really trying to think out of the box and answer the need that's here um the um so when i think about the proposals um and and you know i heard the abutters and i i i can understand it's hard to you know this this isn't going to be something you're going to say well this is what the proposal or what the rfp is going to look like and it's hard to move in to say okay we have to leave how much all this you know kind of up in the air because because this is so newly developing and and how what will work with this property um so uh i don't have an answer about how to fix that um other than uh we shouldn't make that make us afraid to make that step but um how do we um you know create that list of things that um because actually even even if we had things that we wanted to see done i mean maybe that in the trade-off we would choose something different so uh you know at some point there will be some rfps there will be actual materials that people will have to look at and and you know then we have something more concrete to make decisions about um relative to the space that's there um i will say because we've heard a lot about green space um that um um it's uh the property offers uh opportunity because of its topography and um you know for um creative um development and um and that's what can that um it's not just a flat space that you're going to be sticking a piece of property on and putting a few trees that you hope are gonna you know will take you know two generations to grow um so there is already the possibility you know the the promise of being able to be selective about what is being left in the green space and um i am going to remember uh dick shea um when he was doing one of the renovations at the middle school and um he actually allocated he before they even started doing anything in the building he did the the large now granted there um you know the arborvities in front of the high the middle school he put them in then because he didn't want to run out of money um because you run out of money at the end and you never get your landscaping in so i would um encourage um so that we do keep um our uh the residents of this community in an environment that looks you know one of the reasons that we love living in weyland is is to make that a really high priority in the rfp that um that that is developed in terms of um so that landscaping isn't at the end and and what what trees and greenery is saved isn't you know it's too late after you cut down that that uh 50 year old tree um to wish that you had kept it um so but so i'm i really appreciate the vision and objectives here um this is um a need that time has come and i i'm proud that my community wants to address it and um i want to support um your efforts to continue um along you know in and finish bringing this this job to completion i think we've got you know some time and and issues to work out um together but i'd like to think that uh as a community we can work together to come up with a solution that will um answer the needs of of this important community that has not had choices um and uh and actually enhance uh the community of weyland so thank you so much for letting me speak a pleasure marianne thank you for your comments karen yeah i want to echo marianne's appreciation for the amazing work you all have done um excuse me and you know for the comprehensive and clear report that um is in front of us tonight uh i come to this from a value standpoint and so i'm gonna say some things that are gonna be um maybe a little bit different than uh what other members of the community might feel but i'm just gonna put it out there because i think weyland is community where we say we want to be in an inclusive community where everyone feels they belong and everyone includes people with disabilities i mean is there a family in weyland who hasn't been affected one way or another by a physical disability a mental health condition you know something that makes it a little bit harder for a family member to um you know to whatever to fit in or to or to um do the things that other people can do i mean who's unaffected so i feel like it just it's so important that we embrace this project um it said it speaks so well to the community that you all have been empowered to to write this report to study this issue and to promote this project so i have four things that i'm going to say um one is i'd like to see us and by the way each of us we are all members of the human rights diversity equity inclusion committee we're all speaking for ourselves tonight we're not speaking for the committee because we haven't voted on this we're just bringing our perspective so number one i would like to see you include as many affordable units as you can um in this project number two i'd like to see you accommodate as many people as you reasonably can while keeping the home feel that you talked about earlier um i'd like the project to be environmentally and energy sustainable um which has already been spoken about um and i'd like you to consider as you talked about at the very end of the draft um reducing or modifying the local preference requirement and the reason i'm saying that is that when you have a local preference requirement what you do is you ensure that you're going to repeat the demographics that you already have in the town so if you already have say a predominantly white town and you give local preference it it ensures that you maintain a predominantly white town just as an example um and so i i would encourage you as you talked about at the end of the draft to consider um the way brookline did um reducing the local preference requirement or expanding it as you talked about to 15 miles um so that we can have have a variety of of people in wayland um and not necessarily have everybody look the same way that everyone who's already here looks um and and i don't know if this part is even appropriate to say but it's hard not to be thinking about so i live in a part of town where when i first moved in 30 years ago we had nike missiles a quarter of a mile from where i live and honestly at first we were like nike missiles we're going to move into a neighborhood with nike missiles well they were defunct by then but still they were under the ground and everyone in the neighborhood said you know what we're kind of used to it this is what's in the neighborhood and and we kind of got used to it too and then they took out the nike missiles and then they said oh we're on that site we're going to build some affordable housing units and we said great and they built these affordable housing units which are beautiful um across the street from that there are these these very small houses um that natick labs staff used to live in and then those houses got abandoned and there were these tiny houses abandoned down the road for years actually and we kind of got used to it and it was like yeah you know it's not the it's kind of an eyesore but whatever it's our neighborhood i mean you get used to what's in your neighborhood we got used to what's in our neighborhood and now those houses have been rehabbed they're still small um and beautiful homes for people to have recently moved into um and so i you know i want to say we we don't generally get to choose our neighbors i mean you move into a place you have what you have in your neighborhood and you get used to what's there that that's my feeling um and finally we do have some written comments from one of our human rights committee members who lives with a disability uh a physical disability kevin goodwin and i don't know tom whether the committee has has been able to see those comments but i want to make sure they get incorporated into your considerations yeah and you sent those to me correct i did so what i'll do is i'll make sure they go in the packet for our next meeting so um the board and the public can see them that would be great and if you wanted i could read them out but i don't i'll defer to you if if you just want to have them no um by all means you can read them okay so this is from kevin goodwin who um is lives with a physical disability he grew up in wayland he's an adult now who still lives here in town and he's a wonderful member of our committee um and he had some questions as well as some comments he said number one who are they planning to serve and with what disabilities that was a question another question number two was how many floors are they planning for um and then his comments he said number three physically disabled people should be on the first floor for safety and easy evacuation this includes people in wheelchairs number four he said kitchens should be designed with pull-down shelves and counters should have brackets so that the counters can be raised and lowered to accommodate the tenant number five he said bathrooms should have higher toilets and grab bars to help with transfers um and to help with sitting down and getting up from the toilet there should also be grab bars next to the sink for safety and balance and then number six and the last one he said the bathroom should have showers and not tubs they should be roll-in showers with bath seat for bathing the shower should also have grab bars for safety and balance so those are his thoughts and he's available to answer any questions that people might have and he shared his phone number i'll reach out to kevin and acknowledge his email and do my best to answer some of his questions and i appreciate him doing that thanks i appreciate you joining us this evening it's been very helpful great to hear your comments and kind words and um look forward to work with you as this process continues once our committee does its work and the select board will be addressing this topic in more detail thank you have a great night you too thanks for having us um could i ask could i offer one more comment yes you know sorry um obviously it's going to be part of the rfp to you know ascertain financial sustainability and relationships with dmh and dds are going to be important but i would just like um as a person i have several decades of experience with a family member who has been in um sheltered housing and um i would i would um take a very very close look at um larger conglomerates like vinfen um my mother was in vinfen's care and um there were repeated extremely extremely dangerous and serious breaches of care um and that um is my personal experience that um i just would like to share so i think that um when looking for rfps we want to look for um people who are really taking an interest and have a vested interest in the well-being um of the of the residents thank you thank you you know appreciate that move on to the next agenda item which is items four consider approval of minutes the only minutes we have in our pack that's been generally seven um 26 and entertain emotions for two more of the athletes thank you um any discussion those in favor of the motion uh john yes yes yes yes yes and tom that's a vote of banana sort of six um right moving on now to item five and it's stephanie says yes too oh yeah all seven zero thank you definitely didn't know you were with us appreciate it um so um dean has been up every night the past seven nights putting this together and that's a little bit of exaggeration but it has been a lot of work and it and it shows and uh um i appreciate it and a lot of members of the committee as well um i'm thinking about how best to go about this round of review um and i think maybe one way to go about it is give kind of a macro reaction from each member on where we're at and get my macro is kind of a theme that maybe you like you think missing or you might be too much of which we love um then and then from there maybe going to specific pages and the chat with that people okay with that plan maybe i'll start with
any macro thoughts on your fourth best run well i think it's a remarkable document i think you've obviously put into it um i guess one thought i had is that there is uh some information here which is very interesting and useful but is i don't think it really has been discussed by the committee in any uh depth and uh and my personal view is that the final report on it reflect the deliberations of the committee and so to the extent that there's information which is amplifying certain things uh or represents uh frankly gene your views uh that may not be shared with everyone i think that we should have a discussion about those um so at a high level so also impressive work it's a lot and um a lot of really really good stuff um at a very high level um i i don't take away from this report a clear sense of what the committee recommends i think we could be clear on our recommendations and which which of the scenarios we we think would work best for the town um we could have a net that's wider than one or two options but we should be clear about why we like certain things and why we think others are tricky and the tables help a lot with that but i think we could say it clearly um i would love a formal recommendation to preserve some green space or limit the ability to build in some portion of the land of course we can't say how much or and or mandate it but a formal recommendation um i think the the gist of the traffic was mentioned earlier i think we could be clear that that's still a concern but maybe it's a manageable concern or something like that um and then um near the end there's um some examples where the the simplest and most accessible answers still examples don't have an example of what we have in the post road place so being able to describe that that that's been in existence for a while it's very successful it's small it does what it does really well and we could add that it is in the scenarios but it's not in the those descriptive parts where people probably are going to be reading the narrative and trying to learn about what's possible um so you want to describe the existing facility just where you well we're going to go through in detail but like where you describe examples of what's out there everything you mentioned is 20 to 30 units there's no discussion of the smaller types until the scenarios part um it's then i i should also say unfortunately well it's good for my patients but i have to see them on thursday night i'm working so this will be my last meeting i can type anything up tomorrow but i won't be here on thursday so i'm so just so we're clear my um objective of thursday being the last meeting um was a goal but it's like it might not be granted but it's not true if you'll ask me so i'll try that just you may want to be alive i'll come back
a question so when you're talking about uh appendix e the examples of housing developed by organizations that visited us yes and so what you want is examples from other organizations that have smaller facilities well like a one like a one-story group home um which is what's on post road right like the um now that is that is a scenario that's scenario number one right but like in this narrative we'll be here i wanted to ask like um with north east arc uh which has a building kind of one story so what it is is clustered ranch style homes okay that add up to a total population that you know it's like what like the cul-de-sac model where you have several little homes together gotcha um does that does that doesn't so if we need something that says you know one house with five residents to get the distribution right then i'll look for one from the representative organizations right or do all the select board know that like the the place on post roads is an example of a home and we might have two of those so if two of those on the property would that be like the northy stark well they have more than two i think i'd have to go back and and yeah on this one yeah but but let's something something that would give people a sense for post road and and high spirit like those smaller communities that um something that that's my suggestion yeah so you guys can talk more about it yeah i mean high spirit is here at the end of the list of it may not be on your version i apologize i i i've continued working on it after i had to get it into tom so high spirit is on this list now i've pulled out one of the big ones that put high spirit again okay but if that's still not small something that reflects that smaller community feeling that we heard a lot of good things about today too in the in the introductory section there um and then when you get into the scenarios and all the pros and cons that's really good too uh i have a question um on page five of the report under section one but you suggest it might be helpful for the reader to think if we stuck a sentence in along the lines of um for example in whalen's on new 20 there's a you know single family home that houses five residents with disability yeah it it is in there it is in there i guess what i'm going to ask you go through what you thought it's important to learn that early on in the okay so in the executive summary actually no on section one second paragraph page five okay well my favorite my historically were housed in large residents typically could say something like and you know whalen has limited experience in this area yeah and just like a woman and substantial need um but but this one particular place has been operating for three or four years or five years and always been there so long and how long i'd say 15 years yeah all right time's moving faster faster um okay but um and we'll come back we'll come back i just don't know how the select court is going to absorb all this it's so much like and that will be the other challenge one of the ways i was thinking about this document is a lot of the members of the select board have no background in an area like this at all so all of a sudden they're going to have to turn their attention to this project and i thought about it as kind of a primer it's like a training material to give them a first pass so that with all this language like all these funding organizations we sat and listened to all these groups who rattled off all these funding organizations but we never sat down and said amongst ourselves you know what are they we didn't make our own list but as i think about what person now having to prepare to wade into this rfp process thought well what tools are they going to need so that you know like they stack some of this information in their brain so what you know like list of regulations that define types of disability housing for a lot of them this might be the first time they ever saw this information so kind of the way i think about how i'm doing this is i want to include everything that we heard and learned but there were all these little things that came through the process like references to all these regulations which we kind of heard in passing but if we build it in then the select board member will say oh there's an organized way of thinking about this these are problem into this group of laws or velcro to that so that's why some of this stuff is in here if you don't want it in here i got my pen i'll take it out but that's that's why there's stuff in here that doesn't reflect us talking to each other i'll say this you know i i um i have to tell you this report i think would be a great resource um not only for the town but even some other communities they would do so i'm uh uh i'll be following with all the details and trying to find regulations things like that organizations i think it's it reminds me of a rap report that we've done a few years ago of all public land in town that that rap report is still referred to i mean i'm using it for work with the the south wind film you know and and and the select board is about to use it because we need to explore possibly selling some of these possibly very tiny ones to help defray our um budget
to help help with the town but i want to buy one so my point is that uh i think the added benefit of what you put together this is a resource for the future and for other organizations well i hope it more days it will it would be better but we're getting there brian what are your thoughts yeah gene thank you for doing this it's an excellent document and i think it can be a model for other other talents i i agree with what bob is saying that i wish we could narrow this down to what exactly we're asking for to be developed on the site but i always felt from the beginning that a developer in an agency are going to tell us what's what's financially feasible but i also worry about like the neighbors were saying losing control of the process and you know we want to make sure that that what is built there is is what what we intended to and what fits the framework of this document so but i think it's the framework is open enough that allows it plenty of flexibility for an rfp i think when we evaluate the rfps we have to set up a report card and what and how we're going to measure which proposals uh we like and which ones we're not so in favor of uh stephanie hi everyone uh some very thoughtful ideas that i agree um i'd love to be able to put an emphasis which i think a lot of us felt that one or two smaller uh buildings would be better um that i like the idea of making it a 15 mile radius because that uh that covers covers a lot and just kind of um encouraging what what the committee seems to feel you know different members have have felt encouraging that one and two options one and two a little higher than just making them even with the uh larger um the larger idea um the more residents is something i i did i really didn't want to emphasize either i don't think it would fit for a lot of reasons um but um i guess that's a that's about what i'd add i like i like the uh the smaller one one or two buildings and those ideas and that maybe we would encourage that you know seem to fit with whale and more of it we do have an opinion um on that thanks um i'm gonna hear from john and then john after that uh i'm gonna i see hope for dow grows and raise their hands not probably caring but i'm happy to have hope comment but john why don't you go next um gene i just really want to thank you obviously i mean it's really clear based on the the previous draft and this draft that you you have put a lot of effort into um making edits and i i really appreciate that so um yeah i i unfortunately i haven't had a chance to really dive into it because i just uh opened up the document this afternoon um and just uh scan through it really briefly but um so sort of my very top level thoughts are um well while i think of it so i was mentioning the housing production plan earlier um i think it would be helpful to uh reference that document just for context to um provide the board with uh that added bit of um ammunition to sort of explain the rationale as to why this is important and necessary beyond the fact that uh we had a town meeting vote on it um so i just thought i'd mention that um at a very sort of high level i guess i go back to my concern and i i know i'm repeating what what a few other people have already said i think it would be really helpful excuse me helpful to uh provide some upfront upfront um um maybe introductory narrative to try to uh explain where this committee uh started and where it ended up and what have we learned um in that process and specifically how that might help inform the select board in terms of what they may be uh asked to consider um through the rfp process and i guess i go back gene to the the comments that i had sent to you um and tom sort of my i i think i characterized it as a brain dump um it it was sort of just i i think two or three paragraphs talking about you know what kind of proposals uh will the board likely uh see you know what what kinds of terminology i think i i referenced uh all the different types of disabilities i asked the question um that that i would suggest the select board consider which is what does disability mean and why does that matter well that matters because you're going to be uh asked to consider numerous proposals to serve numerous types of individuals with numerous types of disabilities and you want to start to think about that because um for for most people that aren't in the field of disability services the terminology can be uh you know very vexing just like uh when i sit at the uh board of um whalen housing authority commissioners and i listen to uh brian brian and and mary and diane talk about hud housing regulations and law and uh things that i have a cursory knowledge of but i i'm not in the weeds like they are uh so i think just again giving the the select board the tools uh to have a little bit better cursory at least understanding of the types of uh of proposals that they're going to be asked to consider um would be helpful for them and and again i think i also mentioned in in uh gene in the comments that i sent you just suggestions i wasn't asking that you necessarily incorporate them verbatim but i think that again i i touched upon this um something that describes what what what have we learned as a committee in terms of um what what are some of the features what are some of the characteristics of a proposal that we would suggest would be positives that the select board would want to look for uh or encourage in terms of the long-term sustainability of the project you know what what types of programmatic services um you know uh are are we looking for uh a provider agency for example if that's what um they're going to be looking at a proposal from that has a a strong uh track record is is that a value and and why is that a value um we heard from one of the neighbors tonight that was talking about well um are we looking for people that are served by dds or we and and i know you you did a good job of um listing all all of the sort of you know the state agencies that could be at play but how does for example a provider that does business with dds providing say group home services how would they differ from a provider uh that is proposing a project for uh say a micro unit uh development like the one that uh andy from minuteman arc uh is involved with how is that different what are the pros what are the minuses uh beyond just a simple description which again you've done a fantastic job i think of trying to to capture that in in the um in the latter part of the document so those are my sort of initial uh thoughts again i'd really welcome the opportunity to dive a little bit further in and i probably would have more detailed uh suggestions after i've done that so your comment john with the value of you trying to put pen to paper on or you know two or three pages on what the possible inclusion in the report it's almost like you want to put together a kind of combination with the executive summary in one part and a examples of teaching the select board how the government agencies interact that summarize that yeah like i guess i i if if if you're asking me where where the various sort of uh points that i just made would would uh end up in the document again i i yeah i think there there could be some value into adding some material to the upfront portion sort of as you put it an executive summary uh but just yeah just sort of sort of preparing the the board for what what they might uh uh you know be expected to to consider when the rfps start to come in so that they're not sort of uh you know left with questions that you know we we have the benefit of uh having listened to these numerous presentations um so i just think um having a little bit more contextual uh narrative up front to sort of let them know you know what these are the types of things that you may encounter uh these are some and again i think i mentioned uh in my comments that i sent earlier just asking providing them with some questions that they may want to consider and yeah um some some additional information in the body of the report just to clarify maybe enhance beef up a little bit uh the the um descriptions about uh yeah the different uh operating funding sources operating budget funding sources for example um just again i'm sort of just reacting to the document at a very high level so i if you're asking for specificity i'm not going to be able to deliver it right now i'll just say uh you consider putting together two or three pages for insertion um to to summarize what i just said yeah
and the chunk i did about what we learned is pretty long if you wanted to pulse a little bit out of there and put it into your section and um you know tighten it up a little bit that might be another thought as well because that was a brain dump on my part that we learned part so come up i'm going with you home
i'd be happy to shorten up i didn't because no i wanted to say those things the group last meeting people said well we want to see what you think first and make our suggestions right so people can look at it and tweak it we'll get to the specifics and then it could be moved into into an intro section with john some of that what we learned too it would be taken out of there so whatever tightens it up a little bit i um usually 12 to 15 drafts on my grants and stuff so this is just one ground it's early on um so so exhibiting dependency rather um i think it's helpful for the select board to appreciate the different types that concern is that the that the report may not reflect the committee's uh desire for kind of a small scale neighborhood based living whether it's integration with the surrounding community to avoid an institutional feel to um avoid isolation for the residents but i do think the report does a good job of telling the select board that we really really want a place where people feel at home a home type of environment um i appreciate james um decision to put in the high spirit model because i think the values i just listed um are values that that that organization does appreciates well and i didn't see the word innovative i don't think i did in the report and that it's in there it is okay you know what it is in there no it doesn't do it and uh i think that's important because i think that's a thing that um the commissioner mentioned that i really would like to see the end product here being uh unique but extremely um positive for the residents i really appreciate gene toddler one other quick thought and a model that other people would want to copy like if we show that we could do this well in affluent town and other towns might you know replicate the model and address the need that way by spreading so i'm going to ask um hope odell to uh join us you bring hope over i think she has a very pain raised very patient all honors they come back and uh good evening oh hi hope odell 7 jennison road um i'm i feel badly i haven't read the whole report i have been part of this from the very beginning it was talked about um as my husband and i would drove by from the very beginning when the house we said oh they didn't pay their taxes what's going to happen with that house um i have to tell all of you that you have done with just listening tonight an amazing job the feat that what was asked of you in an advisory capacity it's just incredible um everybody's opinions and uh tom the the contribution you've made in writing up the report and i think that was that was that was that was jean's jean did a report who was it jean oh jean a terrific jean i i could have expected that um i want to just go over something quickly i won't spend a lot of your time what all of you know is that there are five members on the select board two of which are part of your um group and um then there's ann and carol and doug um they're not going to be doing they're going to ask questions and then they have the assistance of within the staff different things that they're going to ask other people to go find out like specifics about within the mental health field and uh what the basic requirements are i was listening also to the uh human rights um people tonight and uh this is just something i've observed in my professional career in working with uh boards is that um you you can't uh satisfy all of the people all of the time and um it's very hard because it's not as individuals they're working obviously as you know as a board and they have to meet certain needs to start out with is like a variety of disabilities and there are i mean it's written down if you're going to do this and there are other towns that have done like things i i don't i just don't want each of you to feel like you have to get every nano point across to the select board particularly you have people that have been involved for years in different things like tom bill and carol and doug different times but that know so much about the committee system in wayland sometimes great sometimes but this is obviously a major undertaking and uh the thing is i listen to the um people on the human rights etc i can't always remember it is that they have great great wonderful thoughts thoughts visions and ideas that anybody building anything for a population as diverse as disabilities um it's going to be hard to match like i said you can't satisfy all the people all the time and then do you want to you know two floors or and four little houses or all of those things everybody and the the abutters um someone's gonna have to spend a lot of time enlightening them because i listened to one guy and i said to myself does he think this is just going to be like an affordable housing for you know adult people with some disabilities who has no idea or understanding nothing bad about him it's just a matter of have they have people spoken to as many as want to come in that are abutters i learned this when the church was trying to get the uh property for the 60 residents um is that starting out the abutters don't know much so they have to become informed otherwise they're going to try to get into every select board meeting and ask questions not the two minutes they're going to have because it has to be a public hearing at some point tom is that correct on this there has to be well the select board can choose how they want to proceed but i suspect that there'll be public input on the process yes okay um i just want you to know that you're not meant to be decision makers which is obvious to you but to try to get every nano thing in there the select board okay um i want you to realize that the job that you've all done it's it's not a little something and i want you to recognize you deserve credit for the effort you've been putting forward um basically is what i want to say to you so you know that thank you thank you very much um i'd like to continue our discussion on the report but before i go there i want to read an email from town council on one question that we put in the report that concerns the credit uh the setting aside certain units for whale and residents so um this is what john south council said he says i assume the preference for whale and residents would apply to affordable dwelling units and that the goal is for those affordable units to be included in the town and subsidized housing inventory shi if this assumption is correct the executive office of housing and the liberal communities which oversees local action units and maintains the fh so that doesn't allow local preference for up to 70 percent of the affordable units for the initial lottery and selection of tenants the town may need to provide some documentation to substantiate the need for local departments to deal hlc in order for them to approve local presence if the local preference is intended for the affordable units but the town is not requiring the units to be local action that's eligible for including the shi and the town may dictate whatever rules they want the rsp and the land development agreement to develop the site including local preference in hunting okay so it sounds like it could be done either way maybe a little bit difficult um in one scenario but um it's not uh not an impossible job okay all right so will i take that question out of the report i think so yeah but but i think the information i think the information i'll give us to you um would be would might be helpful because that may be a question the select board has okay well if we go this room um will these units um can whale residents live there is always known how does it affect and how is it uh 10 percent affected so that might give information right um i ask a related question when i read over the report i was confused about affordable housing and disability and to me it wasn't clear here that the vast majority of housing for disabled people qualifies as some as shi is that what it's called yeah and i think we could say that more clearly um up front are we right on that mind yeah it's true no it is true because we use the child's account so maybe not every single one but the vast majority yeah right yeah all right so let's go back to uh bill whitney's comment about i'm sorry talk tom can i just jump in just really quickly well yeah go for it john thanks um so i yeah i just just to emphasize that point i i would suggest that we we include i know we're not wordsmithing but i'm i'm gonna wordsmith here but because you guys brought it up um dds licensed group home units i.e beds are counted okay period and then i i agree with bill's point that uh we should provide a little bit more emphasis that suggests that in addition the vast majority of housing uh for individuals with disabilities would would qualify so here in the executive summary in the front in the key findings um what page page four the recommendation uh key findings i don't see key findings i think you're working on your recommendations recommendations executive summary okay i reformatted this this is why we don't see key findings i apologize but the the same point exists in here um housing design for adults with disabilities can when properly be structured also qualify for inclusion on the subsidized housing inventory under massachusetts law affordability not disability status controls shi eligibility so i was trying to signal there but sounds like it feels strong enough and it doesn't it it doesn't feel strong enough to me gene i mean i i i understand you're you did a great job uh explaining the reality but i think the additional reality is what we what uh bill and and uh brian just said which is the the vast majority would would in fact qualify i was thinking something like disability status alone does not qualify you for subsidized housing however the majority of substantially disabled people are eligible for shi or something like that or uh uh let's bring a little bit about uh a scenario where the homes that may not be included for example if it's private if one more private okay if you use the art you might not you might run into a problem they would not be if it's a full profit it's the full profit um i still but the funding source is is uh ssi and even yes for example the road family mom i think you get credit they count you know well that's specific to the individual right to the stranger that's right so does that mean that someone who has a low income if so facto occupies us and assist and a uh an affordable unit that that that's a common denominator fine is what the level of income of the of the investment well there are a number of conditions that the state puts on for two in order for a year to count the shi so i mean it's one of them it has to be selected by lottery they have to meet the the income requirements could we say brian that in the majority of instances of um homes for adults with disabilities but that those units are counted the majority i mean if i think if you have a contract with dbs that all like john says those units will count right but if the dbs isn't involved like high spirit if they're not right they're not going to say that people that is questionable yeah okay but are we are we about the business of creating housing for people with disabilities who would likely have incomes that are below 80 percent of the area median household income or are we about the business of creating affordable housing into which we hope that uh people with disabilities will are yeah i i don't think that's the driving force about shi and it's a consideration point yeah just a matter of structuring it right it's almost like having your cake and eating it too you do your project for disabled community and you take care of them and because you've structured it in a certain way then you also have the affordable designation but i suggest that we not try to get too far into the weeds because we don't even know what specific types of rfps are are going to be put on the table i i think this is my just my thought if we could make a declarative statement which is based in fact which states something to the effect that most uh most housing in massachusetts serving the needs of adults with disabilities qualifies uh for the asset shi and and all group home units overseen by dds or all dds licensed uh group homes count as per state regulations something just very general like that um i i just just to sort of drive home the fact that this is an advantage this is something that is a likely uh to to bill whitney's point this isn't the reason why we're here but this is a likely positive uh you know uh uh ancillary benefit of what it is that we're doing here and something that that could could benefit the whole town
well it strikes me that i'd be surprised if one out of ten uh residents of a uh housing for people with disabilities does not qualify for ssi and for ssdi and so forth and that they don't have more than two thousand dollars in their bank account that came with everything and so forth so i think families can structure these things so that their local one is so i think and to gene's point i think why not structure in the way that it also accounts uh for the inventory but i heard you say the town council says well to the extent that you have a preference for more than 70 percent way of the residents that it does the challenge um what does that give you up to 70 percent that'd be fine with 70 percent of my other residents i think that'd be awesome so i'm going to search okay sometimes inventory uh i mean if this assumption is correct the executive office eeo hlc will which oversees the local action units and maintains the shi does allow local preference for up to 70 percent of the affordability units for the the initial lottery right i i i agree now council talks about a lottery this was a private non-profit they got the two people who are going to play the family members if they're coordinators unless unless the power of peter talked about a lottery that's sort of implied that they might be okay with half of family members and half from the town or something like that like it might be a partnership but but but but we won't let that drive the process i think that's the point right don't let the strike don't let that issue guide the process right but you mean what we think is the best standard for the best the town of secondary if i can be so fine on that issue compared to the well being and all my gap is can i go back to the earlier discussion about the desire from your specificity i'm concerned that we get a number of responses here and i don't limit the number of responses by being completely specific you know worry for instance about citing the high spirit query will someone else see that as a dominant scale since high spirit east is one of two people who responded to where i lie so my preference i think is to be a little goosey-goosey which probably makes the neighbors somewhat nervous and uh but but i just worry that you know earlier on we talked about casting and that if we had a problem with having to sort through several proposals that would be an awfully nice problem to have i i don't disagree with you phil but would it be helpful to the select board to have a set of bad values that this committee recommended sure and um which brings me to your first point for whitney and that is um the information in the report that you felt was not necessarily um product of the committee but more information than yeah i guess um i mean i have a number of specific comments um toward the end of uh the first section page six
these frameworks make clear that one is defined by appearance and by would experience this context in addition to the fact personal emotions sorry i can't hear you so this is middle of page six uh the paragraph begins taken together this is the last paragraph gene for the beginning of section two the end of section one okay um where we list autonomy privacy agency stability i i wouldn't list that
i'm sorry i i didn't hear what bill whitney said we're looking on page six uh yep i'm i'm with you i just can't i did not hear what he just said john i said that uh at the end of the first section where we list uh i see i see the term autonomy privacy agency and so forth yep i don't know what that adds frankly i will say that the dei people highlighted that as something they liked about it yeah yeah um i think it would be important that whoever proposes to build these things or service these people have this as part of their mission now yeah i'm not sure if it's i hope that nothing there is a strategy to value as yeah yeah i hope nothing on this list is a stretch for any of these providers i would think the vast majority of providers that would potentially provide a bid on this project would have those terms as part of their bread and butter i don't see i don't see them as a barrier i guess my my general uh approach on on the uh report is to make it a bit more concise uh this is contrary to what thomas said which is this will serve as primer and a model for others and so forth um i i spent 45 years in my career sitting in meetings that were too long and reading materials that were too lengthy
it's maybe my uh congratulations to bill's point uh the charge of this committee is not to create a primer for other communities it's to provide recommendations so i'm certainly agree with bill that if a shorter report achieves the end charge that that that is that's the goal so the and i mean it's a fundamental question right i mean there's a section five regulatory landscape this is all very interesting and useful information uh this background but is it pertinent to the recommendation and it's just a question of what is the committee so comfortable with what are you there and putting this forward with with a lot of this stuff um you know i i pushed a lot of it into the appendices in the first round and my general instruction was to pull it out of the appendices and put it up so i can take a lot of this stuff and push it back into appendices if you can tell me what you think needs to be in the main body what's in the summary what's in the appendices and what you want me to throw out you know if we can get on it um well we met last really like offered to uh drive hands to work on this effect that's blocked on this question sure if i had mentioned that to gene yeah and um one thought would be to forego our meeting on thursday and and you can work on it and maybe have well i think this is just kind of a and maybe i'm the only person who feels this right uh but it just kind of gets to the question of what's the sense of the committee yeah would they like this background information or would they prefer to be more focused it's good stuff yeah some piece some members of the committee are more excited about details about regulation and things like that others are more to see that others oh i'm sorry the board is likely i'm more excited about and others are less so so um
but what are your thoughts uh stephanie on the level of detail and report and the length if you want um i like the idea of putting some of that in the appendices but keeping it as a as a reference and then putting our recommendation the things that we found a little more the values we found more toward the front how about you john oh i i think i and again i i apologize for not having uh spent more time focusing on this but it's 44 pages and i guess what what what the question is do we want to do do we want to firm up the the narrative portion of the set of recommendation recommendations with references to the appendices um i mean getting back to um what bill adam said at the um at the top of this discussion i i think it would be a little bit more helpful if if we could just tighten up the the actual set of recommendations that we're we're giving the um the board what what are we suggesting that they do as opposed to handing them um information i think to the extent that we can move that up to the front of the document i think that would be help more helpful and if there are uh other portions of of this content that could be pushed down um either into appendices or footnotes i mean i i to to uh bill whitney's point maybe that's something that we could do with the the the the bulleted principles maybe we could move that down and say look uh the the the committee uh made a decision that uh these guiding principles are very important uh for uh the future of of this development and then we we could we could bump those uh those terms and uh definitions down further um beneath the narrative but if if again i'm i'm not i don't sit on the select board i i i would find it more helpful i think particularly if i wasn't familiar with the background of what all of this this is uh to to have probably a little bit more clear um narrative set of recommendations up front again we're i you know we're wordsmithing this a little bit and uh i'm just trying to take in the whole format here and it's a little daunting um without having spent a little bit more time with it the um before this report was drafted bill whitney put together the rfp and you never remember reading it but it kind of echo it kind of mirrors what bill said a moment ago about
throwing out the invitation to these organizations and see what comes back at us without having too much submitting language all right and then we contrast uh your comment john about this report being having a flavor of with what this committee feels would be both profitable so my question is can those two ideas be married i think one of the things we could say we discovered to add to that is that there is a wealth of excellent vendors in this area i mean that would be the first thing to warn a select board about is if we went out and and interviewed all these people and looked at their credentials and how many buildings they've built how they funded how many had failed we could be living in a metro area that had very few good choices and we'd just be hanging out of big red flags and you can't find anybody here who's going to do a good job for you i think our first finding is this area is rich in many good providers uh built builders financiers everybody and that if we get our if we write our rfp to reflect what the town really wants to do we have a high probability of getting some really suitable responses i mean maybe that just seems too obvious but i think you can never assume that you know your environment it's going to support this this effort maybe that's what you're saying bill is that if we say the committee really wants two small units with exactly this number of people a lot of people will say well why would i even submit a proposal because they're pretty clear that that's what they want so they'll never select me and we don't do that so so being sure to leave it open enough that you get a diverse group and that so maybe like ranking the scenarios by what the committee thought would be a really bad idea because it would it would steer people away right but maybe reducing the number of scenarios to really reflect their range of possible projects or something that would give people some idea of their proposal would need a little positive review or something like that like if they know enough right to say it's worth their time to spend a week writing a proposal i agree with that i think that would encourage people who do if it's too general um the people we want may not even think it's worth um trying because it it could be something else they want yeah so for example in a prior meeting uh we talked about number of buildings some of structures we can talk it would means you mentioned something maybe as high as four um is that a smooth of a barn that might be community-oriented in the residence community for maybe town residents to engage that would make it five so for example with the rp say no more than an extraction no more than so many vehicles in each in each home i don't think i'm wrong but i what i'm hearing we heard from so many um individuals that came with us is you know three to eight backs really sort of for the house depending on the size of the residence i'm talking about do we want to could we could we say that we didn't want the the buildings the party wants to cover more than x percent of the land as sort of a proxy for how built out it is
by doing that we would i think um educate organizations that might otherwise finish it but realize that you know that's not going to make a business model which by the way i look at the bad thing you give some some some parameters are you comfortable with them um let me let me respond to the question i wish you asked all right okay
the the r the draft rfp that we looked at previously uh tried uh to signal to project proponents uh the sort of uh things that the town is really looking for and and it was general and if you don't indulge me let me read the five or six bullets uh of particular interest to the select board our development proposals that will provide for long-term residential placements for adults with autism intellectual developmental and or physical disabilities in a caring and supportive environment environment will provide for on-site support for residents health and wellness including as appropriate systems addressing bathing administration of medication as well as cooking cleaning other life skills training and instructional and vocational programming appropriate to the needs of its residents will be designed so as to accommodate physical needs of future developed residents whose challenges may differ from those of former residents eg sufficiently wide doorways to accommodate electric wheelchairs walk-in showers at alia will be well designed will be a well-designed will be a well-designed landscape project of a scale massing design and placement of structures to complement and to mitigate impacts to neighbors of the site and will to the greatest degree possible for placement opportunities for family members with disabilities of waiting with residents so can we talk about the number of structures and we can talk about the number of people so so bill let's talk about the process let's say the rlp goes out and the organization's uh cement the process says that the select board chooses one and attempts to arrive at a contract right with them that that reflects the value of select board at that time and uh um so there's a lot of a lot of control it'll be a negotiation sure and um i guess the question is
uh comments made earlier how specific did we want to be in things like innovative you mentioned the home the home home feeling it's okay i think that's just too subjective i would expect yeah trying to get at it with the caring and supportive environment but you can go further uh but again you know should we talk about a modestly scale development should we talk about limited lot coverage should we talk about
i mean screening and the landscaping but if i'm a if i'm an organization that thinks big the things you know 30 to 40 units because when i come in and build a concrete structure i might i might respond not knowing right that where you may have a recycler may have a different field and these organizations put in a fair amount of time and effort and only turn out i think it provides that we reserve the right to reject or modify annual off proposals again it talks about scale massing design and place of construction to complement and mitigate impacts to neighbors so i don't again what is the this is one person's opinion yeah i wouldn't say that your opinion though isn't consistent with this if we tighten it up a bit like i think we could clearly say that it should be modest in scale and not have an institutional coherence um and fit into the natural landscape you know uh and that that would be a recommendation of the committee that we should prioritize proposals that do that um but we but that doesn't get into the numbers and everything um i agree i agree and i think bill whitney your your um your language i think i think that covers it and this goes back to a discussion that we had before when we were talking about numbers numbers numbers of uh of units and how i i think i was talking about how we we really ought to allow the people that are going to be bidding on this project to come to the cup come and put a proposal on the table and we we shouldn't be in the business of trying to dictate what types of residents are going into this program that's that's backwards and we shouldn't be getting into the business of dictating to the developer exactly what uh the numbers are up to a point and i think bill adams that that's when you and i were talking a little bit and you said well do you mean then that somebody could come in if if the proposal uh if if they wanted to and build a 30 40 unit apartment and i i said no no absolutely and and i i think i deferred back to the type of language that bill whitney was referencing which was that that would be in excess of the scale uh of of the neighborhood and i think that provides some protection that provides some guidance and i i think that's all we can do as a committee i mean we're making recommendations yeah i think bill whitney's language sets the table as to what our sensibilities are and what our priorities are without banging them over the head with it you know there's a to argue against my own case uh there's a virtue in sort of signaling in clearer terms what it is that we're looking for right you don't want to you don't want to scare away anybody but uh the the eight story developers they're not coming and bidding on this project if they're really smart and they've done their homework and the provider agencies that might bid on this project we've heard from how many how many agencies have talked about their work in in coming into communities working with neighbors working with sometimes hostile municipal uh folks that that really aren't that thrilled about the fact that they've come in to to a community i mean they're they're used to doing this type of work uh so i mean famous last words i know but you i don't think we're going to see these these outrageous uh proposals uh that are going to be coming through the door i just don't yeah everything we've looked at they've been very sensible developments um what people have presented to us in their sense of them they seem we all seem to be on the same page my sense is the report should be the evidence that supports the rfp like ultimately it should be the background information what do we learn and it should be 100 consistent with the rfp and it should give the select board confidence that they understand enough in a pretty short period of time to feel that this is a really good rfp and that they could work for this and maybe answer questions they might have but so i think we could do better in this big report in being more focused in that space but you know another way to think about it is that this could signal to the select board what we think they should be looking for in the responses exactly it gives me one more important section of this reports appendix f on page 27 we call a proposed scenario so curious people's stocks on that portion of the report what what page is that uh talking 20 thanks 27 or put it another way if i were considering responding to an rfp i was doing my homework i found this report online and went to this page and like okay this is what they're really like right the select board hasn't told us anything but the committee has indicated the select board that this is coming and uh so i guess my question are people comfortable with trying to tell them is it reflected well what um and all the key considerations i wrote one and two one was kind of the post road model um two was more of the high spirit model and we tried to outline i used the word several to not lock it down but it wouldn't be hopefully wouldn't be four but it could be two or three um but it could be four um and then um the larger ones that we heard about follow so i don't know if we actually need five scenarios right um well let's get right to it section paragraph scenario three are people comfortable with structures with that would total 36 apart which would be if you did average of five five apartments per house right um well if you had nine apartments which would include staff that would be approximately four higher residency buildings tend to have fewer staff because they're higher functioning people disabled people yeah so sure so i am comfortable with that model um i have a hard time not considering how enormous the aid is i know and this is such an extraordinary opportunity to help a grossly underserved population i just the only thing that seems to be driving the the small size is looking at the underlying zoning and for me that isn't that doesn't compel me yeah well team the reason why i have a problem with those numbers you say a single residential building or two smaller buildings contains up to 36 apartments to me that isn't consistent with kind of a home you feel that that you're hearing from providers that innovates that is innovative and makes people feel well public community right something that helps me with this is having been in now many assisted living homes in this area they are beautiful they are enriched people have communities they have activities just visited any of our beautiful assisted living facilities in waymont you know my garden club is in there teaching people how to do flower arrangements in the community group um you know i can see that number and much larger numbers people living together in one of these assisted living facilities they are clean they are neat they are busy they have friends they make plans together i mean i don't know if when you look at that model and say okay but these feelings other people are in a wheelchair why wouldn't it be a rich and happy life for them as well you know i just don't know what happens with the building size i think the problem with the big institutional buildings was the assumptions about how they treated people they treated them like sick people like a hospital it wasn't the size of the building it was the idea about how you create culture and we've done beautiful job with assisted livings and making a beautiful happy home life culture and most of them are living in a pretty small space um but life is good you know i'd i'd add though that um that they need a space they need to feel that each individual needs to feel they have their own home and i think just a room um is not going to do that no i'm much more in favor of an apartment i was just using it as a general case example how you could put people together but make different culture i also think i also think that an assisted living or an independent living community uh can be a wonderful place or or it can be a a horrible place and not all the time but most of the time what makes the difference is the cost right because if you're talking about a a very um inexpensive uh poorly run assisted living facility uh it can be a pretty depressing place and i think one of the the concerns for housing that number of uh adults with disabilities in in this day and age in in a single setting is uh that you're you're risking putting a lot of people together that may not have the kind of uh sort of cadillac of funding uh that you you would hope they would have but they they may not have and you're you're going to be looking at people that are either private pay or people that are going to be ssi eligible and ssi i can tell you is is not going to pay for very much on on its face that's just my practical uh sort of real world um experience talking i guess
another way though to think about helping disabled people and is to create a model that is wonderful and spreadable so that other people copy and if you create an approach that's sustainable and acceptable and comfortable all these things that we care about other people will want to do it too and so you could have a multiplier effect by building a successful model that that spreads and so doing it really well in a way that is attracted to other towns could accomplish some of your goals to house more disabled people than just building 10 more units in one piece of land land this property is in a uh a residential zoning district with a minimum wide area of 60 000 square feet that was the most restrictive snob zoning zone that we have in time so i think that creating a lot of density uh in in the immediate vicinity of uh similar zoning properties uh really kind of doesn't respect the uh the development context um i have a suggestion which uh consider i would suggest with respect to section three to describe the first sentence description the scenario since there's a single residential building to produce
scenario three description so from page 30 you're on page 30 delete the first sentence this scenario consists of a single residential building or two smaller buildings containing up to 36 gardens okay in my fashion i would eliminate the word several the scenario from the head of scenario one
description on scenario two just say just talk about the qualities of the buildings that are built fair enough i'm sorry i'm sure you take a hundred descriptions and several resident others those are into the rooms there's only terrible yeah okay okay with that fill out brian yeah yeah so with each of these i could make the description much smaller and it just depends on how much detail you want there's a pretty general sense that there's too much information in there i'm really happy to cut stuff out that's easy really you know i like the key consideration it's an appendix so i think it's fine i think it's
trying to keep peace in the family all right so if you think three four and five are all necessary or then can you have like sub options like in this one there might be this and there might be that or i don't know because they really need to increase everything i'm okay with really i guess i'm not that comfortable with or um gee i love to work calling it a problem it's my favorite i can call it something else um uh you know community building i think the scenario um yeah it just it i just don't think it's reflective of the neighborhood and the homie type atmosphere that we're trying to provide the rest i mean a multi-unit apartment building up to 24 units i don't think what we have in town that might be uh might be in that um how many units are on 30 there that one next to god's goal 56 yeah it's 56 years that would be a good example of a building half of that right half of half of them there's four stories um so that's up to so it could be less um but i really love the idea i really worry about the isolation of severely disabled people in these small group homes i i know it was thought of to be a wonderful idea to get rid of the big residential um facilities but i think they end up isolated and a lot of them can't move very far i mean just literally if you want to have coffee with a friend you can't move very far um so the idea that they have their group within a community that's right there that if they have any ability to get around then they can have friends at the other end of the same floor or friends of the floor up or down or you know it i think they're less isolated if they have a community right there around them i'm also not sure that's what we heard from the visitors to the committee that these small group homes with a vibrant program and transportation to go to date programs and all the stuff that's in there that those buildings small buildings located together are a community they're a small community but they're a community and i didn't hear those people feel isolated i i like to where i heard they did a three or four and a cul-de-sac kind of thing i thought okay there's magic in that their proximity is good they can have a community but i don't think we heard from anybody who had a successful example of a substantially disabled population living in a 30-unit apartment building located a mile and a half from towns a non-walkable apartment building well a number of these groups talked about how they arrange for transportation and yeah that would have to be part of it and maybe that needs to be in the rnp that we want to hear a solution to address possible isolation tell us how you'll help them get around and you know i i have to tell you um if we if we think about that we need people with disabilities i don't want to center this in the meantime it's like huge wave coming upon us sure and i think all of us would love to help as many people as we if we can but our charge is to recommend to the select board how we can provide housing for adults with disabilities in in these four years in this neighborhood and i just think that my problem apartment building doesn't achieve time and i agree and that's and i agree with the point that phil adams made that um models that seem to be on the upswing are models where you know four or five you know residents went home in the community area where they took together in community space and they feel like it's really part of quality and i and um i just don't think that that that is achieved in in twenty three million apartment based based on my you know 25 percent of americans live in apartment buildings and those are their homes i mean we we have a model for home that is a single family dwelling that is you know it requires trying to break out of that model to think about somebody can't have a home in apartment building i think the question is not whether an apartment building is a good or a bad place with disabilities i think the question is whether this is the right site for such a development i personally don't think so i tend to agree i think that when jason was at plowshare farm a lot of his life was in his little home with the few with a few people that lived there and yes they did get together with the other communities at times but but it was a family type of a setting which is a small setting you're also you're you're also um serving on on average you're you're serving people in apartment type settings that are much higher functioning people that uh take public transportation some folks may even drive um but most people probably would be reliant upon somebody else to get from point a to point b and it wouldn't be um on site staff by very nature of the fact that you're you're looking at an apartment situation whereas i think we heard this from um deb johnson the area director from dds a group home that's serving the types of folks that dds is looking to serve these days those folks are going to be wholly reliant upon staff or transportation vendors to get them back and forth to a day program so in her estimation and i know we heard this from uh some of the the vendors that um presented the the fact that this parcel is located in a residential neighborhood kind of far away from uh you know the downtown area from stores um it's it's not a terribly accessible location so um in their estimation that's not necessarily a negative because a group home is going to have a dedicated van uh they're going to have dedicated staff to get people back and forth um again if if they attend a day program or they go to a vocational program they're going to have dedicated transportation as part of their uh programming through dds and their funding to get them back and forth so that's not so much a concern if somebody's high functioning and relying upon public transportation and they're at 212 that's going to be tough something committee about the leading scenario four from the recent scenarios we land the appendix um yeah people comfortable doing that
i'm sorry tom could you repeat that i'm having a hard time hearing sorry i'm asking for a sense of the committee about deleting scenario four from appendix f apologies to gene i would suggest that we do not include scenario four as presently drafted anyone else opinion i would be okay with that or or making an effort to combine it with with either um scenario combine the two john well they're both kind of hybrid descriptions of things that we've heard so if you're talking about sort of a hybrid uh if it walks and talks like a duck i mean i you know i i can understand why gene uh you you uh created the the two distinct descriptions but i think you could also if if you're really looking to provide that as a uh as a scenario i i i think those two could be combined i mean i i i think we we have we heard from some of the presenters that described uh scenario five scenario two very distinct um presentations that that outline those types of proposals and certainly scenario one is the traditional dds group home again uh going back to scenario one not to get off track but i think we ought to uh eliminate the word several group homes if we're talking about multiple i think we ought to stick to one one to two or or three perhaps but i don't think dds is going to approve that um um bill bill i think bill would you suggest that we take out the first sentence uh scenario three if you did that that's going to be a question what's the difference between a 36 unit risk right scenario four is included right because it doesn't it doesn't quantify the number of buildings it doesn't quantify the number of apartments so i would say three includes four if you take out that yeah i concur 24 7 like is that okay someone had a subset of that's a time for your question i know it's not okay but thank you let's move on but but just to for number three it says no on-site 24 7 care so do we want to say that or if someone had a group of a smaller group of residents who had extra needs but not i would i did i was concerned about that too okay you know these people some of them will need it yeah i'll strike it it might be an option yeah it might be an option or like it would be more like four right why why uh why rule it out right so perhaps what we're getting to is that these scenarios are not useful that the construction of the rfp is what's needed i mean they really were intended you know to try to somehow take all the noise out of all this data from all these different organizations and try to show um you know that's out of the things that they offer that might be reasonable not to interrupt well to interrupt but i think they do though i think with your four scenarios and aligning the language and the and the considerations to match the rfp you could imagine that that rfp could be applied to all four of these scenarios and a different vendor could propose a solution that honors all that stuff that's in bill whitney's list there um and um and also um
as long as you take away the huge size type you know could be scaled to match the neighborhoods so i think it and i think it's really helpful to outline our scenarios because it really describes to people what you're trying to say and it might even be one of the most important parts because that's what people want to know like what are you planning i i agree with i think i think it's very helpful in the context and uh okay i think it's been a roadmap for the first election i do have a question though in the description of scenarios we we talk about uh adults with severe development with disability with without but we're also talking about um people with autism and people with physical disabilities uh so somebody has cp a good point well just looking at scenario the description of scenario one is group homes for adults with severe development disabilities okay i consider autism a severe developmental disability but you're right about cp and some of the yeah physical stuff physical stuff or other yeah you know progressive degenerative diseases that you know yeah any of us around the table so i wouldn't want to preclude that's important how would you add that i think we could mention mention services needed rather than particular type of disability well if we're talking about a dds group home just to be clear you you do need to have a primary diagnosis of what their eligibility is which is an intellectual disability there can be other disabilities on top of that primary criteria that allows the person to be deemed eligible for dds services so they could have cp they could have down syndrome they could have other physical disabilities they could have um they could be on the spectrum um but i'm just saying for for purposes for example of scenario one if if you're going to be in a dds group home you have to be eligible for dds services and dds uh eligibility is predicated on the level of your intellectual disability well i'm not going to go down from it then i'm going to um close down the meeting after we have a brief discussion on schedule super great just so calling that out i think will be helpful for the dds only one there would be some constraints like this approach would only help this this group of people whereas the other ones could accommodate a broader array of disabilities including xyz we could say that to be clear um so looking ahead we have a schedule yeah um what i wanted to talk about is uh this site can be divided into two lots and so in the language i put that if somebody wanted to apply only to use one lot then they should come to the select board with a partner organization that has a complementary project for the other lot um i didn't know if that's what anybody wanted or not just we hadn't addressed it so i had no information so i had to make up something so you know are you going to accept an application for one of the two lots and without any idea what would go on the other one or are we going to only talk to people who are going to apply for use of all four well in fact i understand what it's going by and the town planner is a kind of uh that it could be you wanted to sell it right you could yeah provided somebody that was a rogue storm drink okay utility poles and stuff uh okay where they might reasonably work to the town to say hey let's do this okay so so you so give me give me so i can change you know you could say something about uh proposals for all or a portion of the site okay yeah i mean gene i'd i'd be supportive of scenario three and four if if we just eliminated the the numbers the the 24 and you know in scenario scenario four and the 36 and scenario three uh and you you just uh mentioned that uh you know a multi-unit uh apartment program something to that effect that respects and then you insert uh bill whitney's language that respects the the scale and if that's if if you know i i'm comfortable if if if we could do that i'd have to disagree um john i think that scenario three covers that if you don't it if if um well first of all scenario these scenarios aren't um going to be part of the rfp but to the extent a organization may look to these for some guidance they just don't want the word apartment in this in this um in this document because i don't think i'm sorry apartment building because um it conjures up a view that i think some of these organizations but oh awesome and and i i don't think an apartment building um okay i take your point how about if we strike the word apartment and just say a multi-unit building but i thought we agreed that if we take out scenario four that by taking out the first sentence of scenario three um the residential building yeah residential building is included in right if some if some um organization responds to the rfp with an apartment type building um then the select board will consider it um but but the way the rfp is written now it's so broad that um well it is broad and maybe we'll get such a proposal and then the select board will will consider it but i just um i just think four is included in three with our first sentence out and i think we agreed that last sentence no one site 24 7 might be taken out right so i need to move on now to scheduling so right now we're going to be scheduled for thursday we've had a long discussion gene's had a spinning and uh and um i think at this point she she regrets putting her hand up to author this document but when you have the opening law and you have uh editing by committee unfortunately this is the process we have to call so based on what you've heard um would it be more comfortable for you to let's try to meet next week instead of thursday for you to modify the report maybe have to go in a little bit and then send it send it to me and then i can send it to the group between now and thursday it's kind of a tightening so are you saying you only want to have one more meeting no i'm not saying that at all what i'm saying is when will be our next meeting and based on what you heard tonight and your your um the amount of time you think you would take modify this request based on what you heard um this thursday two children well it's not so much me getting it done as it's all you having time to read it before next meeting right so if you've got it to us by uh this isn't very unfair but like tomorrow night i mean that's i think that's a lot of work between now and tomorrow i i think i can do that you do yeah and then i'll i'll shoot out thursday morning okay people hear that because i i think we still have a lot of unresolved issues so i need to um spend time talking to each other because we haven't talked to each other that much we've had so many guests and presentations and public comment and it's all wonderful i agree but we need more processing time as a group but today can john get his preamble maybe john can can pretend the paper sometime tomorrow if not john we'll do it uh because thursday will not be our last week um and i'll send out an email to try to schedule um maybe two more meetings and maybe we can do a prior to make time on thursday i'm happy to i'm happy to put a preamble together how who should i send that to so that i'm not um breaking any rules you can send it to gene send it to gene okay um so people want more brevity so i am going to shorten this thing up a lot and distill a lot of things uh what i think i'm hearing is that the amount of information rather than being a useful printer will overwhelm the select one and make it harder for them to figure out how to take action in a expedient sort of way so that's fine all this we're pushing more of it to the appendices notwithstanding any early comment brings up it back
right why should this committee be any different
you feel like there's not that much i would delete so but so moving it to the appendix i know we said the opposite that's all right so with that i'll entertain a motion to adjourn at nine and one second right uh motion to adjourn by bill i mean it's not yes dr bryan right and second by dean are those in favor bryan all right i don't hear so hi stephanie stephanie yes and john yes yes yes that was great thank you all very much yeah stephanie i hope things get better soon we'll be thinking of you thank yeah thanks for recording stopped
Tonight's meeting is being recorded. People can watch it later on Wacom. They can watch it now on Zoom if they like. We'll welcome public comment. Then we'll listen to and answer questions from neighbors of the property. Then we'll hear from members of the Wayland Human Rights Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee. Then we'll consider minutes for January 7th meeting of this year. And we will then consider the draft report in our packet and then we propose and hopefully we'll see before. We want them to public comment. We'll move on to the next portion of our meeting. We invite neighbors to discuss the work we're doing and the discussion we're going to have. You may have some neighbors here and also online. So if you could help bring over people from the attendee list to the Zoom meeting. Who do you see them? Who would you like to bring me over? Allen. Allen's phone? Allen here. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see Allen. Allen declined. Oh, okay. He declined. And we have some folks here from the neighborhood. Come on up. Good evening. Since it's the three of you, why don't each of you just give your name and address and then we can complete. Amy, do you want to start? Say something, Amy. Amy, if you could introduce yourself, that'd be great. Yes. Amy Adams, 19 Woodridge Road. Good. Welcome. Amy, gentlemen. Mark, 13 High Rock Road. Matthew, gentlemen, 15 Woodridge Road. Welcome. So it's good to see you again. You were able to join us a few meetings ago and since then with our committee's continued to meet, listening to other organizations and professionals in the field, all from dentistry to stay upon the topic that we're pursuing. And the report has been drafted. Maybe we saw that there's a great effort in putting together what we've heard and where our committee's thinking. And you may have heard from a member of the committee. I don't think that committee is going to be recommending a particular size of house with a particular number of homes with a particular number of residents. But I think this, and I invite other members of the committee to comment or correct me, but I think the sense of the committee is that we recommend in bending this lifeboard that the structures be, structures that fit well into the neighborhood and not too many in number and not too many in individuals. I mean by that latter point is what we've learned from the individuals who have come to speak to us is the value of a home field for the residents, resident adults with disability, as opposed to an institution. And that's one of the goals of this committee, reflecting that in our report this life. I think one of the concerns of ideas we raised last time was the idea of a step back. And I sense committee members is certainly open to that. I think that's mentioned at the end of the night. So that is some background that I open it up to you all. If you have questions or comments on what you've seen or heard, feel free to ask away. I guess after reading, nothing in it was very surprising to me. The question I still have is the process of the town getting really kind of heavily involved in trying to designate what's used and done with the space. And yet I feel like what we're going to actually do is sell the property. You're going to be thoughtful about choosing who buys it, but it just doesn't feel like there's a lot of ability to really direct once you sell it. You might pick the right partner and they might develop it great. And three years later, they might go bankrupt. And then where are you as a family? You know, maybe another 10 years. Well, that person struggles to pay taxes, get out of bankruptcy, you know? So I guess that's the part that's still sort of mysterious for me is at what point does the town just say, okay, we organized the committee. We back find it. We chose somebody to sell it to. They're going to honor what the town meeting said, which is, well, I'm not really sure. Because in the town meeting, we said if you sell it for market rates, then some portion of it has to be for affordable housing. So are we selling it for market rates is one question, right? Or are we sort of granting it to a nonprofit perhaps if we think it's the best solution for the property or what we're trying to accomplish in terms of the type of housing? Sure. So in your question, I heard three issues. The first is ownership versus lease. I think our report to the select board leaves that open as far as recommendations that the town makes you, select board may choose in the end to lease it to organizations or to sell it. or to sell it. Some organizations don't want to lease it. They want to own it. Possibly for loans purposes and maybe other reasons as well. But in the end, the town may continue to own the land. Concerning your comments about organization maybe not having capital or financial stability to continue for a long period of time, that's a point that we made clear in our report that any RFP would require that the organization that submits or responds to it demonstrate financial strength and ability to be with us for a long period of time. Because you're right, Mark. It's not only in the town's interest to have multiple organizations there over a short period of time. I think ideally with multiple organizations that is stable financially quite stable in the community where relationships can develop and bonds can be established not only with neighbors who choose to be in touch with residents and staff but with residents of the town and organizations. And I think Yeah, I think the third piece was more what did the town actually vote for? Like it seems like the only binding amendment was the if-then as opposed to this is more of a desired outcome as opposed to a mandated outcome from the town. So as I understand the Warren article it amended the select board to utilize the four acres for a minimum for housing for adults with disabilities. It doesn't say the entire four acres for adults with disabilities but at least a portion of it. I thought so you're saying that the amendment was for folks with disabilities? No. It was for affordable housing. The amendment had to do with affordable housing. And I think I think that's right. That's right. That's right. And the affordable housing aspect would be kind of subsumed into the type of housing most likely that adults with disabilities would be utilized. Am I right, Blaine? That's right. Yeah. Support of housing I think that would be clear in the article but I think that the last minute there was an amendment to the article to make sure that some form of affordable housing was built on the site. Could you expound on the the RFP process and the you know I just what rights the town would have in enforcing or I mean is there an enforcement component in terms of you know binding the developer to tenure requirements in the RFP what does that look like how does that work? You know the RFP is basically an invitation for organizations to respond to the proposal of the town but Bill did draft an RFP and I would call it pretty tight but An RFP for what? RFP for a draft RFP which was in the in the draft report the draft RFP is an example of what the select board may choose to follow or utilize or expand upon but the answer is yes the RFP invites organizations to respond but in the end there'll be an agreement right between the town and the organization that outlines what we expect from them and what they may expect from us which would be pretty much responsibility and telling us I guess so would we the town encumber the land or would this be a contractual obligation and in which case it doesn't like I'm just going down the line here but the you know if somebody doesn't you know we had some sort of claim against the developer you know for hypothetical purposes they turn 180 degrees and do whatever they want or just sell the property you know what is the the what rights I mean what yeah damages are even would be available to the town because there's not anything coming flowing back to the town in this you know scenario so if the town leased the property it wouldn't be an issue of value taking from the town if they got up and left if the town goes selectively chose to sell the property to an organization we would make sure that the property the property limits the use to to certain individual Okay so it would be encumbered in the land as opposed to a civil suit that was being fired and regarding democracy in organizations that might not be in a position to stay alone it's likely to make sure it doesn't happen yeah I get that yeah I think the other piece just I mean I didn't get the impression reading the report and I'll be quite honest you know it didn't do a thorough reading of it this afternoon but I got the impression that the town really didn't have much this advisory committee didn't have much interest in the town owning the property it seemed to highlight mostly at least risk in all of the scenario towards ownership and you know distancing the the town from any risk and ownership in the land that's a good that's interesting I'm not sure exactly you know well I think that's what the draft reflects but you know the committee's still has to kind of review the latest draft I think you know the call will be made by the select board but my personal view is that the select board ought to be open to a ground lease or to a sale depending on the developer is and the service provider is as well as what the project will look like as Tom indicated there in either event there would be either a ground lease which would set for certain standards and if a lessee didn't adhere to those standards that's a default and the alternative if there was a sale there was to be a sale there would be an executed agreement but we would want to make sure that for a building permit issues that what is being applied for is reflected in in the agreement also it may be possible for the town to require that in the event of a sale the town gets a right of first offer or a right of first refusal so if as you suggest there is as the hypothetical plan that someone decided to or you know act with us we'll turn around and sell it for three McMansions then I think the town would be in a position to step in um is there any scenario where the town through the RFP process identifies is what you might consider an ideal partner but the finances are tougher because they're a nonprofit and the town would grant let's say you know rent-free 30-year lease as a contribution to the project well it's quite possible to select what would given the nature of the nonprofits and choose um not to ask for any compensation by use of the land um for example impossible um another I've had that if Tom were sitting close to me he would kick me on the table but uh if as you said the perfect project the perfect partner and the numbers didn't quite work I think uh there is the ability to go to the town meeting and seek some funding for contributing in some way to the development through the community preservation act perhaps the access road perhaps the utilities normal kind of public sector sorts of uh investments but again it's I think we're able to be open-minded and to uh work with the selected team to find the best possible project that has a good long-term economy I mean you know short of just this was talked about a town meeting you just dispose of the property to developers you put a couple million bucks in the town coffers and call it a day right but all you're really giving up if you don't do that is a year in taxes from two properties or 50 grand a year in taxes from two properties so you know it's not like by granting tax-free access I guess if it's non-profit they don't pay property taxes perhaps anyway but also just in the acquiring of the property um not having to have that capital layout would be huge for you know non-profits it just seems like a an easy way to make a contribution to a project without actually costing the town anything the cost of building materials and so forth and and these projects are difficult to put together Jean in her draft is laid out a number of tons of financing sources that non-profits typically have to knit together in order to make one of these things work and I would hope that the town would be in a position to do its part to again ensure long-term liability questions or comments Amy yeah thank you um for letting us speak um um I I appreciated in the report that there was a discussion about the natural environment in the neighborhood and I just wanted to speak to that and then ask a question um uh that one of the reasons that Bill and I moved to Wayland is it seemed to have you know high impact human factor with low impact on the environment and the those are like the two ideals that we we found the town constantly returning to um and so this property and uh this neighborhood as the town notes has a lot of sensitive environmental spaces in it that we really feel strongly that we'd like to preserve and I hope that the partners will and the town will support that um this the 212 you know backs into um really important habitat for a lot of animals um plants and beneficial insects uh that connect to the Hamlin conservation property uh which then connects to Turkey Hill the aqueduct so it's kind of a little bit of a Wayland's emerald necklace uh we would hate to have a project uh destroy that that ecosystem um so I guess my question is looking at appendix six uh appendix e sorry that some of these examples seem to be quite large um and housing I think anywhere between twenty and forty people um I'm concerned I know there's been a lot of conversation about concerns for the human neighborhood but I'm concerned about the impact on the natural environment um um and hoping that um the town and any developer will sort of take on that Wayland responsibility for treating the natural world gently um um but I wonder if a um housing um cluster with forty residents is able to do that and I'd love to hear your thoughts about that uh the site visit that we did and uh uh jasmineville was there and uh lapiers were there but it um um the woods there are very nice I think that's what you're referring to the back part of the market and um I can't predict um how this property will end up but uh I'll just say this I appreciate and uh I appreciate your comment about what you said about the habitat and uh um and how the animals slow through there so I I'm I'm sympathetic to that and I'll leave a comment there at this point I invite others to comment yeah and I'll just add that um you know when you live in Wayland you know the woods they're not they're not manicured woods some people might not say they're beautiful um and we have to um uh you know tolerate some animals more than others you know it's not bucolic all the time um but I think we um that anyone joining uh the town and the neighborhood would kind of take that on in a way that you know there's just some woods you don't touch uh there's trees you don't cut down or pick up um and that's what we've learned living here and what we get is this uh very complex and delicate ecosystem that I think is um you know biodiverse and really impressive um and if you've lived anywhere else you'll see that it doesn't always exist in other places um so just just speaking for the trees the trees thank you any other comments John yeah I had a question I guess it kind of stems from the question that is posed to the select board regarding the ability to direct or control the number who the residents are of these uh group homes um I I guess the question I would have is does this committee on the extreme end you know if the answer to that is no that Wayland does not have the ability to direct or you know prefer Wayland residents does this committee still support this project in in that scenario I mean it's it's a very different project at that point and it's not what was presented into the town one of the organizations that we've heard from was the organization down situate and uh what they did was when the parents got together we bought a building they invited um adult with disabilities to live there who lived within 15 mile radius and one of the uh legal questions that is mentioned in the report concerns um and the league can you limit or require actually can you require that a certain percentage of residents be from Wayland and the answer is continue that it does impact how those residents accounted in the affordable housing um form in other words you may have heard 10% 10% 10% of the housing in the town it's affordable for the redevelopments can't come in never quite a few and so that's a that's a factor i'm not sure is this your first question though but your first question is the large committee recommending that a certain type of development disability be residing at 212 you do not get that specific no that i think you your first point is touching on what i'm you know curious about and i noted you know that distinction though i don't have any clarity on it uh you know myself i don't know that you'd be able to to to do that here um in terms of you know you know if what scenario under what scenarios the town can direct the the uh in the residence or the makeup or that you know percentage in my my i guess initial reading was that it related to the i guess whether or not it being you know funded through this THS or is that what it was it was it was another there was an acronym with the acronym yeah DDS DDS whether or not it was being funded through DDS was the decision there and i thought that all the the scenarios that were presented included reference to DDS funding so in that scenario i don't know you know it seems somewhat of a red hair i mean maybe it is a potential but i mean in the react if if is that even a factor here is that does that a scenario that we're you know contemplating or does that conflict with other interests that this town that this committee is pursuing well i think the thing depends on when your organization must end up agreeing to work with the town on the project and the rfp will also impact what organizations might even submit for example if the rfp said by 70% of the residents must be from whalen what organizations may choose not to submit to respond but that's not their business right right any thoughts any thoughts yeah i know i know DDS has restrictions on the number of what we wanted our goal is to serve as many local residents as as possible so we all came together about but you know it all depends on the funding if it's DDS they have um it may not be they can prioritize whalen residents but not guaranteed um that they'll be placed in that house so it depends on which which model is chosen but i think you're i think you're right though matthew that um if it's a DDS facility they have um lots say which individuals will live there and i i don't i don't my my sense is that DDS facility would be less more difficult to have percentages decent sized percentages that having said that i think it's something we can discuss with the state it seems like there would be a lot of objection if i put myself in a developer's shoes you know being held accountable to some kind of number but i would think we could hold somebody accountable to a prioritization process that said once you are ready to open and you are advertising six beds eight beds sixteen beds you first open it up to whalen residents for a period of time and allow only rail and residents to submit for those spots and once that time has ended then you can open it up and fill your framework i mean it's a complex issue too i mean DDS has a for example has a list of clients and people waiting for replacement and you know they have a list and there's compatibility with the other clients who are living in the development so you have to put people with certain disabilities don't mix so they have to factor all that in so i think they would try and place whalen families in there but there's no guarantee of that i'd like to see some you know in your report or this committee you know dig on this further and you know condition some limitation of conditions because i think i'm the the long you know the the you know outlier here is is a scenario you know where you know we don't have whalen residents and we've taken a revenue producing property tax revenue producing property and while you say you know maybe it's one or two houses you know we're in a point where you know if it's not typical this year we're looking for the you know a budget exception next year it's going to be a budget override so we're all looking at more taxes from an already incredibly high tax rate so i i don't think it's a non issue you know you know it removing tax revenue from the town but beyond that removing you know tax revenue and not providing any you know it i guess it's not for the benefit of the residents of the town and it seems tenuous the the connection or the the ability for the select board of this board to say that you know this process is in the interest of the town it becomes a social project as opposed to really a uh a town project so well think of myself matthew i really couldn't agree with you more i really think that um sorry for your view there i'll lean over for you a lot of years are listening but they can't somehow get in i think deb we're trying to let deb in but i think it's coming over now okay okay yeah but uh my sense from the committee is that we'd like to make sure that of course it's an avenue for well and residents to be able to live at 212. but as brian said it is tricky that's something we can't achieve it it is tricky because of the funding sources and um we also see it is a regional you know wayland is down an island and we see that um you know our neighbors this is a facility that will benefit a lot of a lot of people not just people in wayland but uh surrounding towns right well there is a practicality and you mentioned a 15 mile circle where somebody you know somebody placing somebody an opportunity like this is most likely a family giving up an adult child to a new living arrangement they're not going to want it to be 50 miles away they don't want it to be somewhere they can visit regularly so i mean i i think we're splitting here a little because i think it seems like everybody has the same general sense i think one thing maybe we could ask as neighbors is and as residents is in your recommendation to the select ward to favor rfp folks who aren't tied to some funding sources that could prevent us from adding some covenants like that right you know so not favor dds for instance if they're the toughest ones to wrangle into having the bets go to break the wave of residents challenge of course is they're sometimes in the most secure financially in terms of funding schemes yeah i know nice to know that the money's coming from the government it's never going to go well it's also no it's it's also nice to know that the operational dollars are going to be there in 10 years so you're not as neighbors worried about the turnover that you've expressed so that that's sort of the plus and the minus of having a more stable operating funding source i wanted to welcome the a lot of years uh alan deb good to see you uh understand you've been listening i wanted to give you an opportunity to make any comments or ask any questions no i'm you but that he's trying to get it i think it's fair i'm here he's trying to get it get off now it says muted on dev can you unmute her i think it's on the phone if you tap on the picture then the the menu pops up from the bottom hey there okay so you can speak to us through the phone here sounds great yeah we are having we're having a technical difficulty yeah we don't have good uh um and then can everybody hear us now bill yes yes your volume is maxed out so yep all right great first of all thank you uh to the committee for allowing us to speak and thank you for the neighbors who have already spoken a lot of issues have been um that we want i we too have not had a chance to we too have not had a chance to digest but i'm just curious can you get specific on what recommendations that the abutters were looking for like for instance hearing 20 um 20 people i'm concerned that this can grow to something like um that's on off of west plain street like on bent aft and that's not what i had envisioned from what i've heard before i kept talking about two buildings down with five or six people in each building so we're looking at 10 to 12 um residents with plus uh caretakers i mean that sounds fantastic for and obviously again it can be for wayland residents that would be perfect but as this project starts to grow i think that that really changes the look and the feel of this this program and this project and why can't the committee put these specific recommendations in the letter well uh we're still working on a draft report and in it there are um um i think five particular examples um but those are still in discussion and so until the final report comes out um it's premature for us to me to say as chair that we're going to be recommending certain numbers here or there but i i uh understand your point now yeah i can appreciate that i mean the other thing we talked about as far as in amy's point about the space behind the property uh you know we kind of coined the phrase or build it as far as green space um it would be ideal to maintain that kind of that type of space and also um certain setbacks and as far as making recommendations along those lines to me it would seem like that would be worthwhile to get on the record and not leave it up to another body such as the board of selectmen with all due respect i i i respect them i think there is a good board but you guys are charged with setting some standards here but setting for some standards i would think that this would be a good time to kind of lay this out in the initial groundwork so somebody else doesn't go in a different direction when it gets handed off well we do mention setbacks in the report and um when bill and i present this to the select board that that'll certainly part of the discussion i'm not sure it's prudent for our committee to be specific on where setbacks would be but i think the report will reflect your uh your desires neighbors to uh have the rfp uh establish setbacks so that any applicant will understand what's it you know that's what's just that that's what it's likely to choose yeah i could add something here and if i was uh amy i was looking at you when i thought of this um one of my nicknames around town is the native plant lady i run around teaching people about how to establish pollinator pathways and things like that so anyway i've thought a lot about the project footprint and how much impermeable surface would have to be constructed and i did spend time running some scenarios looking at building footprints and parking lot footprints and driveways and trying to figure out for these various size scenarios that we describe you know how much of the the block would end up uh under a building or a driveway um i'm feeling comfortable with what you know we're suggesting as viable options here in part because when i did that it left a lot of green space that you know i could see there would be a big area where native things could grow on this site so that's why i can be comfortable with green areas they don't have to cover the ground and take away the habitat
but i'll also just put the human factor in if 40 individuals are living um there that is not just about the size of a house or where the parking lots in are and depending on who those individuals are uh there could be you know a lot of activity on that property that certainly wouldn't um i don't know i'm not sure how much it would protect what's there already in terms of um letting nature to have its own space too so i i agree with the other neighbors that a smaller model is is better uh septic issues you put 40 people on four acres too right yes yeah final five other questions or comments um one of the things um tom and then to the board for the committee you mentioned that the the traffic would impact would be negligible negligible wasn't the word but not highly impacted um i think that it may be a misnomer i'm not sure that you might want that you might want to consider either some additional language it really depends on what you put in there if you put in a building that houses 20 people and and they and the and and they they need it's just a living space and they have to be um vanned and um have transportation to go off premise to go to work but to go to other um activities it's all there could be a lot of um van and then traffic activity come to and from that facility expect not only just vans but also family members but if this is the type of facility that has 10 10 12 10 to 12 or 15 but most um habitants and and it's in this this events that are occurring on this property it could prevent that could reduce the traffic flow so i think traffic flow could quite well be impacted depending on what's put in there and then the other thing that i'm not sure if it was mentioned in the the document about screening of you know plantings to kind of prevent the you know light pollution or reduce light pollution from vans coming in at night and so forth to the neighbor you know affecting the neighbor neighboring homes um alan i have to say i agree with you on the traffic point um wayland's always been a town that's taken a serious look at traffic and
the impacts of development so i i i do think the report um will be in uh longer on that point i think the select board will uh certainly take that seriously as well even if it is minor you're still my opinion one would stop that through an expert so that there's no there's no question i would also reiterate on that point that you know it's also worth considering not today but tomorrow because we now have 400 students new students that are coming in at the intersection a quarter of a mile away at theratus so you know that's already which hasn't been accounted for which wasn't addressed which was never planned for right you know given the what was submitted originally so you know we have a major traffic issue you know at a quarter of a mile there at the feeder intersection at the exact same time that you're proposing a lot of traffic coming in and out of these residents so it is it's not a non-issue and and i would also you know you know champion that the sentence that the report as it currently stands you know it leans towards suggesting that it is a non-issue i don't know the exact wording but it certainly is is you know a would lead you to believe that that's not something that's of any concern to anybody is there some civic definition of what increase in traffic is negligible or meaningful in other words do we know that you know 300 cars pass down route 27 every day and if if 20 more did that's three percent and that's not negligible i'm just asking like i'm not a traffic city planning expert yeah i would imagine they would do something like that if a you know new major school or plant was going into an area that was going to have you know a thousand new cars a day or something typically what we do is we have a individual who works in the town really regularly who evaluates initially likely impacted traffic and then as a project develops that vendor or some other companies do a formal traffic study and provide opinions as to the actual there is a uh a formal process where uh a traffic engineer can establish the level of service and uh it's typically at intersections and they are grades a b c d f and so uh typically what happens is the uh the engineer would take account at the current time they would project forward uh at the time that the project would come online what what's the background growth apt to be and what's the level of service at that time and so that is compared with the projected level of service with the project and so you look at the different and you see a passing grade or a failing grade some other comments or questions john yeah i just uh i wanted to chime in um so just to be clear we're actually we're talking about housing okay we're talking about housing for adults with disabilities for the town of wayland we're also not necessarily talking about uh i i heard something to the effect of a a social services um sort of project this is actually something that's specifically identified in the wayland housing production plan that's a town document uh that plan makes explicit recommendations that are aimed at increasing housing options for people with disabilities um it identifies a gap in housing for people with physical developmental and mental health disabilities uh between the number of those opportunities that exist for people with disabilities and people without disabilities in the town and i just wanted to point out the fact that there are currently five units five beds within one group home located on route 20 in wayland so you juxtapose five beds of dedicated housing for people with disabilities versus the rest of the beds which presumably provide how uh are you know could be counted for non-disabled housing in the town of wayland and that gives you a sense of what the housing opportunities are for people with disabilities which i think is the reason why uh that content exists in in the wayland housing production plan that plan also specifically calls for the development of group homes uh it it calls for building relationships with service providers including the state it specifically mentions dmhdds um and there there's a recognition in that production plan that you know there there are high land and acquisition costs uh and that the town really ought to do what it can to offset those costs so i just wanted to throw that out there for a little context thank you i appreciate that that one of the things that we talked about as neighbors is it is housing but if if it's housing that's developed at a level where the folks who live there need a lot of medical help and there are a lot of them but say 20 it's also a place of business right because there's going to be at least that many caregivers on a 24-hour shift coming in and out so yes it's housing but depending on the nature of the housing it's also a place where several people work and have to come to work in and out all the time so i appreciate you folks joining us tonight uh we have another group coming in after this to chat about the project but um it's a fluid process we have maybe two more meetings left and then our board will our committee will vote on the report and bill and i will meet the select board and that will be a public hearing and looking ahead once an rfp is issued and response is received um that will be further opportunity for you and other members of the public to uh to give proposals and will there be an opportunity to weigh in on the rfp if if when it gets that stage i understand that that's the select boards you know and outside of this this committee but possibly be up the select board but um i don't see why not you mean selection of the final well i i think that there's just so much that's up in the air and that's deferred to it depends on what we you know what the rp looks like and what proposals we receive so i i think that you know i appreciate the the report it is you know important and you know it's a a frame of the current state but you know as we move along it'd be great to be you know continue to be involved and have another touch more no yeah we'll keep in touch
we appreciate it we appreciate you put one of our neighbors on the committee thank you thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you sure thanks um next on our agenda we've invited members of the ukulele and human rights diversity equity inclusion committee to join us to chat about their thoughts and answer questions they may have i'd ask that robbie moved some folks over um we have um we have um we have um karen how are you karen how are you anybody else that we're not that's uh
no just the three just the three of us well thanks for uh joining us uh i'll just ask that you can go around and introduce yourselves and where you live we can go from there uh i can start um go alphabetically how about um so karen lumenfeld 113 oxbow road marianne burkowski 251 lakeshore drive
i guess it's me uh giano mendler de suarez and i'm 56 orchard but um i'm also part of the constituent road neighborhood because i own the property where i grew up at um 60 shaw drive which also has a right of way out to um woodridge fairly close to the um the property in question so my comments will be um i'll try to distinguish um as a contribution from um serving the needs of the town through the committee and as a neighborhood member well welcome uh thanks for joining us and appreciate the patience uh thus far i think the three of you are familiar with the work our committee has done so i'm not going to go through um our charge or work we've done and maybe you've had a chance to review the draft report online i'm not sure but um we just wanted to give you folks an opportunity to uh comment on the work we're doing and if you had questions or um ask away and do our best the internet so did you want to start karen or i'd be happy um to jump in so i i do appreciate and agree with a lot of the points that were raised by um the the neighbors the people in the wider neighborhood um but i think one thing that we haven't really talked much about and i think is of great concern um is is the quality of life for um people who will be living here um i am all for a focus on um young adults i think that is a tremendous need i know many many families in wayland um will be faced with where are their adult children going to go and to to know that there is at least one um um we could call it a facility or we could call it a program in the town of wayland um that people could aspire to or maybe you know get on a waiting list for um years before they may even um need that um that option for their child i think would be a huge um value maybe not uh easy to quantify uh uh monetarily but a huge value um to the the town of wayland and the community of wayland but also you know in this vein of the you know the quality of life and of the programming that is offered um i think that um we have the opportunity to um to define in a very broad way in the rfp um some of the goals and objectives and objectives that we would like to see um we would like it to be um above all um a dignified life we would like it to be integrated in the community we'd like to preserve um or find the strike the right balance between um privacy for the residents and the staff that are helping them and integration into the into the community and i think that um the proposal that was um that was made in you know one of the one of the meetings um this um high spirit approach really struck me as potentially um meeting a lot of um criteria that have been important over a long period of time in the town of wayland um to conserve um something of an agricultural way of life but beyond that to offer um a constructive and productive way of life um for young adults where they're um in touch with nature they're um they're outdoors a lot of the time they are the stewards of a property um part of that can be um you know i mean we have the ability to specifically um i like you know you could put it restricted or we could say to guide it um that we would prefer to see you know regenerative farming kinds of techniques that if there's going to be landscaping and screening in the buffer zone the setbacks that we would prefer that they are sourced from the native plant list um to you know to maintain the character um of the land but also um a way of life that is really reflective of the values that you know attract people to the town of wayland and make these residents um part of um that their contribution to the the culture and the climate of the community um is um is recognized um through the the way of life um uh i also um want to just highlight that well i mean it would be wonderful to serve a large number of people um i think the you know i think the property itself should dictate some limits and septic is a huge concern um you know i mean if we're talking about you know 20 or more people um we're talking about you know a lot of bedrooms a lot of bleach field we're talking about disrupting a huge percentage of the property there um just to accommodate you know a functioning septic system and that may limit other uses of the property as well but um going back to the relationship between you know the style of life and the quality of life i think that um residential pods where people can form relationships and trust each other and feel safe um and have minimal um round the clock support um could in a way echo the sort of conservation cluster idea that if there are multiple pods they don't have to be in a separate footprint um the you know the the building itself could be constructed if you think of the new england big house little house back house barn kind of a construction um and even if there are you know are uh is if we do go in some kind of you know high spirit type of direction even if there are barns um the way that the footprint um is designed could um could really respect um minimal disruption of the property and again um looking at um impermeability and minimal disruption um we can also consider things like if we wanted to have um a farm like appeal farmhouse uh farm like appeal those roads and parking areas do not have to actually be paved that would reduce the impervious surface there are environmentally engineered ways of doing things um but the additional benefit that makes this particular suggestion i think worth considering for me is that it is the best way to maintain very very low rolling speeds for traffic coming in and out um so those are um those are my main uh contributions for your consideration thank you sorry i was muted marianne would you like to go next i'm sure um first um uh i really appreciate all the work that went into this report um you know we're really breaking new ground here about um really thinking organically about how to create housing um that um serves the needs of of a of a group that um has really been ignored um so i really appreciate the the breadth of um the different options that were out there that you looked at um and also recognize that no this is um that's one of the reasons we're looking at it and you have all these diverse ideas is because it is really this is new we're breaking new ground here and so um but we shouldn't we shouldn't pull back from that because this is a real need um as janelle mentioned i mean um um the need for uh families um and individuals in our community um that that need to feel like they have a valuable life um uh that they want to live where they have choices is something that should be you know very high on the list here about things we want to meet and in fact um i really appreciate um your section where you talk about visions and objectives that it's like jano must have read from it um you know the supports dignity autonomy and quality of life um and integrates the residents with the broader whelan community i have um a good friend who's um has a daughter um with downs and you know that is so critical um and how uh difficult that can be to be integrated in the broader community and how much better to be integrated to be in the middle of our community um and uh so anyhow i appreciate that work and i i i appreciate the vision that it it showed and and i appreciate all the things that have been done you know that you had looked at that shows that people are really trying to think out of the box and answer the need that's here um the um so when i think about the proposals um and and you know i heard the abutters and i i i can understand it's hard to you know this this isn't going to be something you're going to say well this is what the proposal or what the rfp is going to look like and it's hard to move in to say okay we have to leave how much all this you know kind of up in the air because because this is so newly developing and and how what will work with this property um so uh i don't have an answer about how to fix that um other than uh we shouldn't make that make us afraid to make that step but um how do we um you know create that list of things that um because actually even even if we had things that we wanted to see done i mean maybe that in the trade-off we would choose something different so uh you know at some point there will be some rfps there will be actual materials that people will have to look at and and you know then we have something more concrete to make decisions about um relative to the space that's there um i will say because we've heard a lot about green space um that um um it's uh the property offers uh opportunity because of its topography and um you know for um creative um development and um and that's what can that um it's not just a flat space that you're going to be sticking a piece of property on and putting a few trees that you hope are gonna you know will take you know two generations to grow um so there is already the possibility you know the the promise of being able to be selective about what is being left in the green space and um i am going to remember uh dick shea um when he was doing one of the renovations at the middle school and um he actually allocated he before they even started doing anything in the building he did the the large now granted there um you know the arborvities in front of the high the middle school he put them in then because he didn't want to run out of money um because you run out of money at the end and you never get your landscaping in so i would um encourage um so that we do keep um our uh the residents of this community in an environment that looks you know one of the reasons that we love living in weyland is is to make that a really high priority in the rfp that um that that is developed in terms of um so that landscaping isn't at the end and and what what trees and greenery is saved isn't you know it's too late after you cut down that that uh 50 year old tree um to wish that you had kept it um so but so i'm i really appreciate the vision and objectives here um this is um a need that time has come and i i'm proud that my community wants to address it and um i want to support um your efforts to continue um along you know in and finish bringing this this job to completion i think we've got you know some time and and issues to work out um together but i'd like to think that uh as a community we can work together to come up with a solution that will um answer the needs of of this important community that has not had choices um and uh and actually enhance uh the community of weyland so thank you so much for letting me speak a pleasure marianne thank you for your comments karen yeah i want to echo marianne's appreciation for the amazing work you all have done um excuse me and you know for the comprehensive and clear report that um is in front of us tonight uh i come to this from a value standpoint and so i'm gonna say some things that are gonna be um maybe a little bit different than uh what other members of the community might feel but i'm just gonna put it out there because i think weyland is community where we say we want to be in an inclusive community where everyone feels they belong and everyone includes people with disabilities i mean is there a family in weyland who hasn't been affected one way or another by a physical disability a mental health condition you know something that makes it a little bit harder for a family member to um you know to whatever to fit in or to or to um do the things that other people can do i mean who's unaffected so i feel like it just it's so important that we embrace this project um it said it speaks so well to the community that you all have been empowered to to write this report to study this issue and to promote this project so i have four things that i'm going to say um one is i'd like to see us and by the way each of us we are all members of the human rights diversity equity inclusion committee we're all speaking for ourselves tonight we're not speaking for the committee because we haven't voted on this we're just bringing our perspective so number one i would like to see you include as many affordable units as you can um in this project number two i'd like to see you accommodate as many people as you reasonably can while keeping the home feel that you talked about earlier um i'd like the project to be environmentally and energy sustainable um which has already been spoken about um and i'd like you to consider as you talked about at the very end of the draft um reducing or modifying the local preference requirement and the reason i'm saying that is that when you have a local preference requirement what you do is you ensure that you're going to repeat the demographics that you already have in the town so if you already have say a predominantly white town and you give local preference it it ensures that you maintain a predominantly white town just as an example um and so i i would encourage you as you talked about at the end of the draft to consider um the way brookline did um reducing the local preference requirement or expanding it as you talked about to 15 miles um so that we can have have a variety of of people in wayland um and not necessarily have everybody look the same way that everyone who's already here looks um and and i don't know if this part is even appropriate to say but it's hard not to be thinking about so i live in a part of town where when i first moved in 30 years ago we had nike missiles a quarter of a mile from where i live and honestly at first we were like nike missiles we're going to move into a neighborhood with nike missiles well they were defunct by then but still they were under the ground and everyone in the neighborhood said you know what we're kind of used to it this is what's in the neighborhood and and we kind of got used to it too and then they took out the nike missiles and then they said oh we're on that site we're going to build some affordable housing units and we said great and they built these affordable housing units which are beautiful um across the street from that there are these these very small houses um that natick labs staff used to live in and then those houses got abandoned and there were these tiny houses abandoned down the road for years actually and we kind of got used to it and it was like yeah you know it's not the it's kind of an eyesore but whatever it's our neighborhood i mean you get used to what's in your neighborhood we got used to what's in our neighborhood and now those houses have been rehabbed they're still small um and beautiful homes for people to have recently moved into um and so i you know i want to say we we don't generally get to choose our neighbors i mean you move into a place you have what you have in your neighborhood and you get used to what's there that that's my feeling um and finally we do have some written comments from one of our human rights committee members who lives with a disability uh a physical disability kevin goodwin and i don't know tom whether the committee has has been able to see those comments but i want to make sure they get incorporated into your considerations yeah and you sent those to me correct i did so what i'll do is i'll make sure they go in the packet for our next meeting so um the board and the public can see them that would be great and if you wanted i could read them out but i don't i'll defer to you if if you just want to have them no um by all means you can read them okay so this is from kevin goodwin who um is lives with a physical disability he grew up in wayland he's an adult now who still lives here in town and he's a wonderful member of our committee um and he had some questions as well as some comments he said number one who are they planning to serve and with what disabilities that was a question another question number two was how many floors are they planning for um and then his comments he said number three physically disabled people should be on the first floor for safety and easy evacuation this includes people in wheelchairs number four he said kitchens should be designed with pull-down shelves and counters should have brackets so that the counters can be raised and lowered to accommodate the tenant number five he said bathrooms should have higher toilets and grab bars to help with transfers um and to help with sitting down and getting up from the toilet there should also be grab bars next to the sink for safety and balance and then number six and the last one he said the bathroom should have showers and not tubs they should be roll-in showers with bath seat for bathing the shower should also have grab bars for safety and balance so those are his thoughts and he's available to answer any questions that people might have and he shared his phone number i'll reach out to kevin and acknowledge his email and do my best to answer some of his questions and i appreciate him doing that thanks i appreciate you joining us this evening it's been very helpful great to hear your comments and kind words and um look forward to work with you as this process continues once our committee does its work and the select board will be addressing this topic in more detail thank you have a great night you too thanks for having us um could i ask could i offer one more comment yes you know sorry um obviously it's going to be part of the rfp to you know ascertain financial sustainability and relationships with dmh and dds are going to be important but i would just like um as a person i have several decades of experience with a family member who has been in um sheltered housing and um i would i would um take a very very close look at um larger conglomerates like vinfen um my mother was in vinfen's care and um there were repeated extremely extremely dangerous and serious breaches of care um and that um is my personal experience that um i just would like to share so i think that um when looking for rfps we want to look for um people who are really taking an interest and have a vested interest in the well-being um of the of the residents thank you thank you you know appreciate that move on to the next agenda item which is items four consider approval of minutes the only minutes we have in our pack that's been generally seven um 26 and entertain emotions for two more of the athletes thank you um any discussion those in favor of the motion uh john yes yes yes yes yes and tom that's a vote of banana sort of six um right moving on now to item five and it's stephanie says yes too oh yeah all seven zero thank you definitely didn't know you were with us appreciate it um so um dean has been up every night the past seven nights putting this together and that's a little bit of exaggeration but it has been a lot of work and it and it shows and uh um i appreciate it and a lot of members of the committee as well um i'm thinking about how best to go about this round of review um and i think maybe one way to go about it is give kind of a macro reaction from each member on where we're at and get my macro is kind of a theme that maybe you like you think missing or you might be too much of which we love um then and then from there maybe going to specific pages and the chat with that people okay with that plan maybe i'll start with
any macro thoughts on your fourth best run well i think it's a remarkable document i think you've obviously put into it um i guess one thought i had is that there is uh some information here which is very interesting and useful but is i don't think it really has been discussed by the committee in any uh depth and uh and my personal view is that the final report on it reflect the deliberations of the committee and so to the extent that there's information which is amplifying certain things uh or represents uh frankly gene your views uh that may not be shared with everyone i think that we should have a discussion about those um so at a high level so also impressive work it's a lot and um a lot of really really good stuff um at a very high level um i i don't take away from this report a clear sense of what the committee recommends i think we could be clear on our recommendations and which which of the scenarios we we think would work best for the town um we could have a net that's wider than one or two options but we should be clear about why we like certain things and why we think others are tricky and the tables help a lot with that but i think we could say it clearly um i would love a formal recommendation to preserve some green space or limit the ability to build in some portion of the land of course we can't say how much or and or mandate it but a formal recommendation um i think the the gist of the traffic was mentioned earlier i think we could be clear that that's still a concern but maybe it's a manageable concern or something like that um and then um near the end there's um some examples where the the simplest and most accessible answers still examples don't have an example of what we have in the post road place so being able to describe that that that's been in existence for a while it's very successful it's small it does what it does really well and we could add that it is in the scenarios but it's not in the those descriptive parts where people probably are going to be reading the narrative and trying to learn about what's possible um so you want to describe the existing facility just where you well we're going to go through in detail but like where you describe examples of what's out there everything you mentioned is 20 to 30 units there's no discussion of the smaller types until the scenarios part um it's then i i should also say unfortunately well it's good for my patients but i have to see them on thursday night i'm working so this will be my last meeting i can type anything up tomorrow but i won't be here on thursday so i'm so just so we're clear my um objective of thursday being the last meeting um was a goal but it's like it might not be granted but it's not true if you'll ask me so i'll try that just you may want to be alive i'll come back
a question so when you're talking about uh appendix e the examples of housing developed by organizations that visited us yes and so what you want is examples from other organizations that have smaller facilities well like a one like a one-story group home um which is what's on post road right like the um now that is that is a scenario that's scenario number one right but like in this narrative we'll be here i wanted to ask like um with north east arc uh which has a building kind of one story so what it is is clustered ranch style homes okay that add up to a total population that you know it's like what like the cul-de-sac model where you have several little homes together gotcha um does that does that doesn't so if we need something that says you know one house with five residents to get the distribution right then i'll look for one from the representative organizations right or do all the select board know that like the the place on post roads is an example of a home and we might have two of those so if two of those on the property would that be like the northy stark well they have more than two i think i'd have to go back and and yeah on this one yeah but but let's something something that would give people a sense for post road and and high spirit like those smaller communities that um something that that's my suggestion yeah so you guys can talk more about it yeah i mean high spirit is here at the end of the list of it may not be on your version i apologize i i i've continued working on it after i had to get it into tom so high spirit is on this list now i've pulled out one of the big ones that put high spirit again okay but if that's still not small something that reflects that smaller community feeling that we heard a lot of good things about today too in the in the introductory section there um and then when you get into the scenarios and all the pros and cons that's really good too uh i have a question um on page five of the report under section one but you suggest it might be helpful for the reader to think if we stuck a sentence in along the lines of um for example in whalen's on new 20 there's a you know single family home that houses five residents with disability yeah it it is in there it is in there i guess what i'm going to ask you go through what you thought it's important to learn that early on in the okay so in the executive summary actually no on section one second paragraph page five okay well my favorite my historically were housed in large residents typically could say something like and you know whalen has limited experience in this area yeah and just like a woman and substantial need um but but this one particular place has been operating for three or four years or five years and always been there so long and how long i'd say 15 years yeah all right time's moving faster faster um okay but um and we'll come back we'll come back i just don't know how the select court is going to absorb all this it's so much like and that will be the other challenge one of the ways i was thinking about this document is a lot of the members of the select board have no background in an area like this at all so all of a sudden they're going to have to turn their attention to this project and i thought about it as kind of a primer it's like a training material to give them a first pass so that with all this language like all these funding organizations we sat and listened to all these groups who rattled off all these funding organizations but we never sat down and said amongst ourselves you know what are they we didn't make our own list but as i think about what person now having to prepare to wade into this rfp process thought well what tools are they going to need so that you know like they stack some of this information in their brain so what you know like list of regulations that define types of disability housing for a lot of them this might be the first time they ever saw this information so kind of the way i think about how i'm doing this is i want to include everything that we heard and learned but there were all these little things that came through the process like references to all these regulations which we kind of heard in passing but if we build it in then the select board member will say oh there's an organized way of thinking about this these are problem into this group of laws or velcro to that so that's why some of this stuff is in here if you don't want it in here i got my pen i'll take it out but that's that's why there's stuff in here that doesn't reflect us talking to each other i'll say this you know i i um i have to tell you this report i think would be a great resource um not only for the town but even some other communities they would do so i'm uh uh i'll be following with all the details and trying to find regulations things like that organizations i think it's it reminds me of a rap report that we've done a few years ago of all public land in town that that rap report is still referred to i mean i'm using it for work with the the south wind film you know and and and the select board is about to use it because we need to explore possibly selling some of these possibly very tiny ones to help defray our um budget
to help help with the town but i want to buy one so my point is that uh i think the added benefit of what you put together this is a resource for the future and for other organizations well i hope it more days it will it would be better but we're getting there brian what are your thoughts yeah gene thank you for doing this it's an excellent document and i think it can be a model for other other talents i i agree with what bob is saying that i wish we could narrow this down to what exactly we're asking for to be developed on the site but i always felt from the beginning that a developer in an agency are going to tell us what's what's financially feasible but i also worry about like the neighbors were saying losing control of the process and you know we want to make sure that that what is built there is is what what we intended to and what fits the framework of this document so but i think it's the framework is open enough that allows it plenty of flexibility for an rfp i think when we evaluate the rfps we have to set up a report card and what and how we're going to measure which proposals uh we like and which ones we're not so in favor of uh stephanie hi everyone uh some very thoughtful ideas that i agree um i'd love to be able to put an emphasis which i think a lot of us felt that one or two smaller uh buildings would be better um that i like the idea of making it a 15 mile radius because that uh that covers covers a lot and just kind of um encouraging what what the committee seems to feel you know different members have have felt encouraging that one and two options one and two a little higher than just making them even with the uh larger um the larger idea um the more residents is something i i did i really didn't want to emphasize either i don't think it would fit for a lot of reasons um but um i guess that's a that's about what i'd add i like i like the uh the smaller one one or two buildings and those ideas and that maybe we would encourage that you know seem to fit with whale and more of it we do have an opinion um on that thanks um i'm gonna hear from john and then john after that uh i'm gonna i see hope for dow grows and raise their hands not probably caring but i'm happy to have hope comment but john why don't you go next um gene i just really want to thank you obviously i mean it's really clear based on the the previous draft and this draft that you you have put a lot of effort into um making edits and i i really appreciate that so um yeah i i unfortunately i haven't had a chance to really dive into it because i just uh opened up the document this afternoon um and just uh scan through it really briefly but um so sort of my very top level thoughts are um well while i think of it so i was mentioning the housing production plan earlier um i think it would be helpful to uh reference that document just for context to um provide the board with uh that added bit of um ammunition to sort of explain the rationale as to why this is important and necessary beyond the fact that uh we had a town meeting vote on it um so i just thought i'd mention that um at a very sort of high level i guess i go back to my concern and i i know i'm repeating what what a few other people have already said i think it would be really helpful excuse me helpful to uh provide some upfront upfront um um maybe introductory narrative to try to uh explain where this committee uh started and where it ended up and what have we learned um in that process and specifically how that might help inform the select board in terms of what they may be uh asked to consider um through the rfp process and i guess i go back gene to the the comments that i had sent to you um and tom sort of my i i think i characterized it as a brain dump um it it was sort of just i i think two or three paragraphs talking about you know what kind of proposals uh will the board likely uh see you know what what kinds of terminology i think i i referenced uh all the different types of disabilities i asked the question um that that i would suggest the select board consider which is what does disability mean and why does that matter well that matters because you're going to be uh asked to consider numerous proposals to serve numerous types of individuals with numerous types of disabilities and you want to start to think about that because um for for most people that aren't in the field of disability services the terminology can be uh you know very vexing just like uh when i sit at the uh board of um whalen housing authority commissioners and i listen to uh brian brian and and mary and diane talk about hud housing regulations and law and uh things that i have a cursory knowledge of but i i'm not in the weeds like they are uh so i think just again giving the the select board the tools uh to have a little bit better cursory at least understanding of the types of uh of proposals that they're going to be asked to consider um would be helpful for them and and again i think i also mentioned in in uh gene in the comments that i sent you just suggestions i wasn't asking that you necessarily incorporate them verbatim but i think that again i i touched upon this um something that describes what what what have we learned as a committee in terms of um what what are some of the features what are some of the characteristics of a proposal that we would suggest would be positives that the select board would want to look for uh or encourage in terms of the long-term sustainability of the project you know what what types of programmatic services um you know uh are are we looking for uh a provider agency for example if that's what um they're going to be looking at a proposal from that has a a strong uh track record is is that a value and and why is that a value um we heard from one of the neighbors tonight that was talking about well um are we looking for people that are served by dds or we and and i know you you did a good job of um listing all all of the sort of you know the state agencies that could be at play but how does for example a provider that does business with dds providing say group home services how would they differ from a provider uh that is proposing a project for uh say a micro unit uh development like the one that uh andy from minuteman arc uh is involved with how is that different what are the pros what are the minuses uh beyond just a simple description which again you've done a fantastic job i think of trying to to capture that in in the um in the latter part of the document so those are my sort of initial uh thoughts again i'd really welcome the opportunity to dive a little bit further in and i probably would have more detailed uh suggestions after i've done that so your comment john with the value of you trying to put pen to paper on or you know two or three pages on what the possible inclusion in the report it's almost like you want to put together a kind of combination with the executive summary in one part and a examples of teaching the select board how the government agencies interact that summarize that yeah like i guess i i if if if you're asking me where where the various sort of uh points that i just made would would uh end up in the document again i i yeah i think there there could be some value into adding some material to the upfront portion sort of as you put it an executive summary uh but just yeah just sort of sort of preparing the the board for what what they might uh uh you know be expected to to consider when the rfps start to come in so that they're not sort of uh you know left with questions that you know we we have the benefit of uh having listened to these numerous presentations um so i just think um having a little bit more contextual uh narrative up front to sort of let them know you know what these are the types of things that you may encounter uh these are some and again i think i mentioned uh in my comments that i sent earlier just asking providing them with some questions that they may want to consider and yeah um some some additional information in the body of the report just to clarify maybe enhance beef up a little bit uh the the um descriptions about uh yeah the different uh operating funding sources operating budget funding sources for example um just again i'm sort of just reacting to the document at a very high level so i if you're asking for specificity i'm not going to be able to deliver it right now i'll just say uh you consider putting together two or three pages for insertion um to to summarize what i just said yeah
and the chunk i did about what we learned is pretty long if you wanted to pulse a little bit out of there and put it into your section and um you know tighten it up a little bit that might be another thought as well because that was a brain dump on my part that we learned part so come up i'm going with you home
i'd be happy to shorten up i didn't because no i wanted to say those things the group last meeting people said well we want to see what you think first and make our suggestions right so people can look at it and tweak it we'll get to the specifics and then it could be moved into into an intro section with john some of that what we learned too it would be taken out of there so whatever tightens it up a little bit i um usually 12 to 15 drafts on my grants and stuff so this is just one ground it's early on um so so exhibiting dependency rather um i think it's helpful for the select board to appreciate the different types that concern is that the that the report may not reflect the committee's uh desire for kind of a small scale neighborhood based living whether it's integration with the surrounding community to avoid an institutional feel to um avoid isolation for the residents but i do think the report does a good job of telling the select board that we really really want a place where people feel at home a home type of environment um i appreciate james um decision to put in the high spirit model because i think the values i just listed um are values that that that organization does appreciates well and i didn't see the word innovative i don't think i did in the report and that it's in there it is okay you know what it is in there no it doesn't do it and uh i think that's important because i think that's a thing that um the commissioner mentioned that i really would like to see the end product here being uh unique but extremely um positive for the residents i really appreciate gene toddler one other quick thought and a model that other people would want to copy like if we show that we could do this well in affluent town and other towns might you know replicate the model and address the need that way by spreading so i'm going to ask um hope odell to uh join us you bring hope over i think she has a very pain raised very patient all honors they come back and uh good evening oh hi hope odell 7 jennison road um i'm i feel badly i haven't read the whole report i have been part of this from the very beginning it was talked about um as my husband and i would drove by from the very beginning when the house we said oh they didn't pay their taxes what's going to happen with that house um i have to tell all of you that you have done with just listening tonight an amazing job the feat that what was asked of you in an advisory capacity it's just incredible um everybody's opinions and uh tom the the contribution you've made in writing up the report and i think that was that was that was that was jean's jean did a report who was it jean oh jean a terrific jean i i could have expected that um i want to just go over something quickly i won't spend a lot of your time what all of you know is that there are five members on the select board two of which are part of your um group and um then there's ann and carol and doug um they're not going to be doing they're going to ask questions and then they have the assistance of within the staff different things that they're going to ask other people to go find out like specifics about within the mental health field and uh what the basic requirements are i was listening also to the uh human rights um people tonight and uh this is just something i've observed in my professional career in working with uh boards is that um you you can't uh satisfy all of the people all of the time and um it's very hard because it's not as individuals they're working obviously as you know as a board and they have to meet certain needs to start out with is like a variety of disabilities and there are i mean it's written down if you're going to do this and there are other towns that have done like things i i don't i just don't want each of you to feel like you have to get every nano point across to the select board particularly you have people that have been involved for years in different things like tom bill and carol and doug different times but that know so much about the committee system in wayland sometimes great sometimes but this is obviously a major undertaking and uh the thing is i listen to the um people on the human rights etc i can't always remember it is that they have great great wonderful thoughts thoughts visions and ideas that anybody building anything for a population as diverse as disabilities um it's going to be hard to match like i said you can't satisfy all the people all the time and then do you want to you know two floors or and four little houses or all of those things everybody and the the abutters um someone's gonna have to spend a lot of time enlightening them because i listened to one guy and i said to myself does he think this is just going to be like an affordable housing for you know adult people with some disabilities who has no idea or understanding nothing bad about him it's just a matter of have they have people spoken to as many as want to come in that are abutters i learned this when the church was trying to get the uh property for the 60 residents um is that starting out the abutters don't know much so they have to become informed otherwise they're going to try to get into every select board meeting and ask questions not the two minutes they're going to have because it has to be a public hearing at some point tom is that correct on this there has to be well the select board can choose how they want to proceed but i suspect that there'll be public input on the process yes okay um i just want you to know that you're not meant to be decision makers which is obvious to you but to try to get every nano thing in there the select board okay um i want you to realize that the job that you've all done it's it's not a little something and i want you to recognize you deserve credit for the effort you've been putting forward um basically is what i want to say to you so you know that thank you thank you very much um i'd like to continue our discussion on the report but before i go there i want to read an email from town council on one question that we put in the report that concerns the credit uh the setting aside certain units for whale and residents so um this is what john south council said he says i assume the preference for whale and residents would apply to affordable dwelling units and that the goal is for those affordable units to be included in the town and subsidized housing inventory shi if this assumption is correct the executive office of housing and the liberal communities which oversees local action units and maintains the fh so that doesn't allow local preference for up to 70 percent of the affordable units for the initial lottery and selection of tenants the town may need to provide some documentation to substantiate the need for local departments to deal hlc in order for them to approve local presence if the local preference is intended for the affordable units but the town is not requiring the units to be local action that's eligible for including the shi and the town may dictate whatever rules they want the rsp and the land development agreement to develop the site including local preference in hunting okay so it sounds like it could be done either way maybe a little bit difficult um in one scenario but um it's not uh not an impossible job okay all right so will i take that question out of the report i think so yeah but but i think the information i think the information i'll give us to you um would be would might be helpful because that may be a question the select board has okay well if we go this room um will these units um can whale residents live there is always known how does it affect and how is it uh 10 percent affected so that might give information right um i ask a related question when i read over the report i was confused about affordable housing and disability and to me it wasn't clear here that the vast majority of housing for disabled people qualifies as some as shi is that what it's called yeah and i think we could say that more clearly um up front are we right on that mind yeah it's true no it is true because we use the child's account so maybe not every single one but the vast majority yeah right yeah all right so let's go back to uh bill whitney's comment about i'm sorry talk tom can i just jump in just really quickly well yeah go for it john thanks um so i yeah i just just to emphasize that point i i would suggest that we we include i know we're not wordsmithing but i'm i'm gonna wordsmith here but because you guys brought it up um dds licensed group home units i.e beds are counted okay period and then i i agree with bill's point that uh we should provide a little bit more emphasis that suggests that in addition the vast majority of housing uh for individuals with disabilities would would qualify so here in the executive summary in the front in the key findings um what page page four the recommendation uh key findings i don't see key findings i think you're working on your recommendations recommendations executive summary okay i reformatted this this is why we don't see key findings i apologize but the the same point exists in here um housing design for adults with disabilities can when properly be structured also qualify for inclusion on the subsidized housing inventory under massachusetts law affordability not disability status controls shi eligibility so i was trying to signal there but sounds like it feels strong enough and it doesn't it it doesn't feel strong enough to me gene i mean i i i understand you're you did a great job uh explaining the reality but i think the additional reality is what we what uh bill and and uh brian just said which is the the vast majority would would in fact qualify i was thinking something like disability status alone does not qualify you for subsidized housing however the majority of substantially disabled people are eligible for shi or something like that or uh uh let's bring a little bit about uh a scenario where the homes that may not be included for example if it's private if one more private okay if you use the art you might not you might run into a problem they would not be if it's a full profit it's the full profit um i still but the funding source is is uh ssi and even yes for example the road family mom i think you get credit they count you know well that's specific to the individual right to the stranger that's right so does that mean that someone who has a low income if so facto occupies us and assist and a uh an affordable unit that that that's a common denominator fine is what the level of income of the of the investment well there are a number of conditions that the state puts on for two in order for a year to count the shi so i mean it's one of them it has to be selected by lottery they have to meet the the income requirements could we say brian that in the majority of instances of um homes for adults with disabilities but that those units are counted the majority i mean if i think if you have a contract with dbs that all like john says those units will count right but if the dbs isn't involved like high spirit if they're not right they're not going to say that people that is questionable yeah okay but are we are we about the business of creating housing for people with disabilities who would likely have incomes that are below 80 percent of the area median household income or are we about the business of creating affordable housing into which we hope that uh people with disabilities will are yeah i i don't think that's the driving force about shi and it's a consideration point yeah just a matter of structuring it right it's almost like having your cake and eating it too you do your project for disabled community and you take care of them and because you've structured it in a certain way then you also have the affordable designation but i suggest that we not try to get too far into the weeds because we don't even know what specific types of rfps are are going to be put on the table i i think this is my just my thought if we could make a declarative statement which is based in fact which states something to the effect that most uh most housing in massachusetts serving the needs of adults with disabilities qualifies uh for the asset shi and and all group home units overseen by dds or all dds licensed uh group homes count as per state regulations something just very general like that um i i just just to sort of drive home the fact that this is an advantage this is something that is a likely uh to to bill whitney's point this isn't the reason why we're here but this is a likely positive uh you know uh uh ancillary benefit of what it is that we're doing here and something that that could could benefit the whole town
well it strikes me that i'd be surprised if one out of ten uh residents of a uh housing for people with disabilities does not qualify for ssi and for ssdi and so forth and that they don't have more than two thousand dollars in their bank account that came with everything and so forth so i think families can structure these things so that their local one is so i think and to gene's point i think why not structure in the way that it also accounts uh for the inventory but i heard you say the town council says well to the extent that you have a preference for more than 70 percent way of the residents that it does the challenge um what does that give you up to 70 percent that'd be fine with 70 percent of my other residents i think that'd be awesome so i'm going to search okay sometimes inventory uh i mean if this assumption is correct the executive office eeo hlc will which oversees the local action units and maintains the shi does allow local preference for up to 70 percent of the affordability units for the the initial lottery right i i i agree now council talks about a lottery this was a private non-profit they got the two people who are going to play the family members if they're coordinators unless unless the power of peter talked about a lottery that's sort of implied that they might be okay with half of family members and half from the town or something like that like it might be a partnership but but but but we won't let that drive the process i think that's the point right don't let the strike don't let that issue guide the process right but you mean what we think is the best standard for the best the town of secondary if i can be so fine on that issue compared to the well being and all my gap is can i go back to the earlier discussion about the desire from your specificity i'm concerned that we get a number of responses here and i don't limit the number of responses by being completely specific you know worry for instance about citing the high spirit query will someone else see that as a dominant scale since high spirit east is one of two people who responded to where i lie so my preference i think is to be a little goosey-goosey which probably makes the neighbors somewhat nervous and uh but but i just worry that you know earlier on we talked about casting and that if we had a problem with having to sort through several proposals that would be an awfully nice problem to have i i don't disagree with you phil but would it be helpful to the select board to have a set of bad values that this committee recommended sure and um which brings me to your first point for whitney and that is um the information in the report that you felt was not necessarily um product of the committee but more information than yeah i guess um i mean i have a number of specific comments um toward the end of uh the first section page six
these frameworks make clear that one is defined by appearance and by would experience this context in addition to the fact personal emotions sorry i can't hear you so this is middle of page six uh the paragraph begins taken together this is the last paragraph gene for the beginning of section two the end of section one okay um where we list autonomy privacy agency stability i i wouldn't list that
i'm sorry i i didn't hear what bill whitney said we're looking on page six uh yep i'm i'm with you i just can't i did not hear what he just said john i said that uh at the end of the first section where we list uh i see i see the term autonomy privacy agency and so forth yep i don't know what that adds frankly i will say that the dei people highlighted that as something they liked about it yeah yeah um i think it would be important that whoever proposes to build these things or service these people have this as part of their mission now yeah i'm not sure if it's i hope that nothing there is a strategy to value as yeah yeah i hope nothing on this list is a stretch for any of these providers i would think the vast majority of providers that would potentially provide a bid on this project would have those terms as part of their bread and butter i don't see i don't see them as a barrier i guess my my general uh approach on on the uh report is to make it a bit more concise uh this is contrary to what thomas said which is this will serve as primer and a model for others and so forth um i i spent 45 years in my career sitting in meetings that were too long and reading materials that were too lengthy
it's maybe my uh congratulations to bill's point uh the charge of this committee is not to create a primer for other communities it's to provide recommendations so i'm certainly agree with bill that if a shorter report achieves the end charge that that that is that's the goal so the and i mean it's a fundamental question right i mean there's a section five regulatory landscape this is all very interesting and useful information uh this background but is it pertinent to the recommendation and it's just a question of what is the committee so comfortable with what are you there and putting this forward with with a lot of this stuff um you know i i pushed a lot of it into the appendices in the first round and my general instruction was to pull it out of the appendices and put it up so i can take a lot of this stuff and push it back into appendices if you can tell me what you think needs to be in the main body what's in the summary what's in the appendices and what you want me to throw out you know if we can get on it um well we met last really like offered to uh drive hands to work on this effect that's blocked on this question sure if i had mentioned that to gene yeah and um one thought would be to forego our meeting on thursday and and you can work on it and maybe have well i think this is just kind of a and maybe i'm the only person who feels this right uh but it just kind of gets to the question of what's the sense of the committee yeah would they like this background information or would they prefer to be more focused it's good stuff yeah some piece some members of the committee are more excited about details about regulation and things like that others are more to see that others oh i'm sorry the board is likely i'm more excited about and others are less so so um
but what are your thoughts uh stephanie on the level of detail and report and the length if you want um i like the idea of putting some of that in the appendices but keeping it as a as a reference and then putting our recommendation the things that we found a little more the values we found more toward the front how about you john oh i i think i and again i i apologize for not having uh spent more time focusing on this but it's 44 pages and i guess what what what the question is do we want to do do we want to firm up the the narrative portion of the set of recommendation recommendations with references to the appendices um i mean getting back to um what bill adam said at the um at the top of this discussion i i think it would be a little bit more helpful if if we could just tighten up the the actual set of recommendations that we're we're giving the um the board what what are we suggesting that they do as opposed to handing them um information i think to the extent that we can move that up to the front of the document i think that would be help more helpful and if there are uh other portions of of this content that could be pushed down um either into appendices or footnotes i mean i i to to uh bill whitney's point maybe that's something that we could do with the the the the bulleted principles maybe we could move that down and say look uh the the the committee uh made a decision that uh these guiding principles are very important uh for uh the future of of this development and then we we could we could bump those uh those terms and uh definitions down further um beneath the narrative but if if again i'm i'm not i don't sit on the select board i i i would find it more helpful i think particularly if i wasn't familiar with the background of what all of this this is uh to to have probably a little bit more clear um narrative set of recommendations up front again we're i you know we're wordsmithing this a little bit and uh i'm just trying to take in the whole format here and it's a little daunting um without having spent a little bit more time with it the um before this report was drafted bill whitney put together the rfp and you never remember reading it but it kind of echo it kind of mirrors what bill said a moment ago about
throwing out the invitation to these organizations and see what comes back at us without having too much submitting language all right and then we contrast uh your comment john about this report being having a flavor of with what this committee feels would be both profitable so my question is can those two ideas be married i think one of the things we could say we discovered to add to that is that there is a wealth of excellent vendors in this area i mean that would be the first thing to warn a select board about is if we went out and and interviewed all these people and looked at their credentials and how many buildings they've built how they funded how many had failed we could be living in a metro area that had very few good choices and we'd just be hanging out of big red flags and you can't find anybody here who's going to do a good job for you i think our first finding is this area is rich in many good providers uh built builders financiers everybody and that if we get our if we write our rfp to reflect what the town really wants to do we have a high probability of getting some really suitable responses i mean maybe that just seems too obvious but i think you can never assume that you know your environment it's going to support this this effort maybe that's what you're saying bill is that if we say the committee really wants two small units with exactly this number of people a lot of people will say well why would i even submit a proposal because they're pretty clear that that's what they want so they'll never select me and we don't do that so so being sure to leave it open enough that you get a diverse group and that so maybe like ranking the scenarios by what the committee thought would be a really bad idea because it would it would steer people away right but maybe reducing the number of scenarios to really reflect their range of possible projects or something that would give people some idea of their proposal would need a little positive review or something like that like if they know enough right to say it's worth their time to spend a week writing a proposal i agree with that i think that would encourage people who do if it's too general um the people we want may not even think it's worth um trying because it it could be something else they want yeah so for example in a prior meeting uh we talked about number of buildings some of structures we can talk it would means you mentioned something maybe as high as four um is that a smooth of a barn that might be community-oriented in the residence community for maybe town residents to engage that would make it five so for example with the rp say no more than an extraction no more than so many vehicles in each in each home i don't think i'm wrong but i what i'm hearing we heard from so many um individuals that came with us is you know three to eight backs really sort of for the house depending on the size of the residence i'm talking about do we want to could we could we say that we didn't want the the buildings the party wants to cover more than x percent of the land as sort of a proxy for how built out it is
by doing that we would i think um educate organizations that might otherwise finish it but realize that you know that's not going to make a business model which by the way i look at the bad thing you give some some some parameters are you comfortable with them um let me let me respond to the question i wish you asked all right okay
the the r the draft rfp that we looked at previously uh tried uh to signal to project proponents uh the sort of uh things that the town is really looking for and and it was general and if you don't indulge me let me read the five or six bullets uh of particular interest to the select board our development proposals that will provide for long-term residential placements for adults with autism intellectual developmental and or physical disabilities in a caring and supportive environment environment will provide for on-site support for residents health and wellness including as appropriate systems addressing bathing administration of medication as well as cooking cleaning other life skills training and instructional and vocational programming appropriate to the needs of its residents will be designed so as to accommodate physical needs of future developed residents whose challenges may differ from those of former residents eg sufficiently wide doorways to accommodate electric wheelchairs walk-in showers at alia will be well designed will be a well-designed will be a well-designed landscape project of a scale massing design and placement of structures to complement and to mitigate impacts to neighbors of the site and will to the greatest degree possible for placement opportunities for family members with disabilities of waiting with residents so can we talk about the number of structures and we can talk about the number of people so so bill let's talk about the process let's say the rlp goes out and the organization's uh cement the process says that the select board chooses one and attempts to arrive at a contract right with them that that reflects the value of select board at that time and uh um so there's a lot of a lot of control it'll be a negotiation sure and um i guess the question is
uh comments made earlier how specific did we want to be in things like innovative you mentioned the home the home home feeling it's okay i think that's just too subjective i would expect yeah trying to get at it with the caring and supportive environment but you can go further uh but again you know should we talk about a modestly scale development should we talk about limited lot coverage should we talk about
i mean screening and the landscaping but if i'm a if i'm an organization that thinks big the things you know 30 to 40 units because when i come in and build a concrete structure i might i might respond not knowing right that where you may have a recycler may have a different field and these organizations put in a fair amount of time and effort and only turn out i think it provides that we reserve the right to reject or modify annual off proposals again it talks about scale massing design and place of construction to complement and mitigate impacts to neighbors so i don't again what is the this is one person's opinion yeah i wouldn't say that your opinion though isn't consistent with this if we tighten it up a bit like i think we could clearly say that it should be modest in scale and not have an institutional coherence um and fit into the natural landscape you know uh and that that would be a recommendation of the committee that we should prioritize proposals that do that um but we but that doesn't get into the numbers and everything um i agree i agree and i think bill whitney your your um your language i think i think that covers it and this goes back to a discussion that we had before when we were talking about numbers numbers numbers of uh of units and how i i think i was talking about how we we really ought to allow the people that are going to be bidding on this project to come to the cup come and put a proposal on the table and we we shouldn't be in the business of trying to dictate what types of residents are going into this program that's that's backwards and we shouldn't be getting into the business of dictating to the developer exactly what uh the numbers are up to a point and i think bill adams that that's when you and i were talking a little bit and you said well do you mean then that somebody could come in if if the proposal uh if if they wanted to and build a 30 40 unit apartment and i i said no no absolutely and and i i think i deferred back to the type of language that bill whitney was referencing which was that that would be in excess of the scale uh of of the neighborhood and i think that provides some protection that provides some guidance and i i think that's all we can do as a committee i mean we're making recommendations yeah i think bill whitney's language sets the table as to what our sensibilities are and what our priorities are without banging them over the head with it you know there's a to argue against my own case uh there's a virtue in sort of signaling in clearer terms what it is that we're looking for right you don't want to you don't want to scare away anybody but uh the the eight story developers they're not coming and bidding on this project if they're really smart and they've done their homework and the provider agencies that might bid on this project we've heard from how many how many agencies have talked about their work in in coming into communities working with neighbors working with sometimes hostile municipal uh folks that that really aren't that thrilled about the fact that they've come in to to a community i mean they're they're used to doing this type of work uh so i mean famous last words i know but you i don't think we're going to see these these outrageous uh proposals uh that are going to be coming through the door i just don't yeah everything we've looked at they've been very sensible developments um what people have presented to us in their sense of them they seem we all seem to be on the same page my sense is the report should be the evidence that supports the rfp like ultimately it should be the background information what do we learn and it should be 100 consistent with the rfp and it should give the select board confidence that they understand enough in a pretty short period of time to feel that this is a really good rfp and that they could work for this and maybe answer questions they might have but so i think we could do better in this big report in being more focused in that space but you know another way to think about it is that this could signal to the select board what we think they should be looking for in the responses exactly it gives me one more important section of this reports appendix f on page 27 we call a proposed scenario so curious people's stocks on that portion of the report what what page is that uh talking 20 thanks 27 or put it another way if i were considering responding to an rfp i was doing my homework i found this report online and went to this page and like okay this is what they're really like right the select board hasn't told us anything but the committee has indicated the select board that this is coming and uh so i guess my question are people comfortable with trying to tell them is it reflected well what um and all the key considerations i wrote one and two one was kind of the post road model um two was more of the high spirit model and we tried to outline i used the word several to not lock it down but it wouldn't be hopefully wouldn't be four but it could be two or three um but it could be four um and then um the larger ones that we heard about follow so i don't know if we actually need five scenarios right um well let's get right to it section paragraph scenario three are people comfortable with structures with that would total 36 apart which would be if you did average of five five apartments per house right um well if you had nine apartments which would include staff that would be approximately four higher residency buildings tend to have fewer staff because they're higher functioning people disabled people yeah so sure so i am comfortable with that model um i have a hard time not considering how enormous the aid is i know and this is such an extraordinary opportunity to help a grossly underserved population i just the only thing that seems to be driving the the small size is looking at the underlying zoning and for me that isn't that doesn't compel me yeah well team the reason why i have a problem with those numbers you say a single residential building or two smaller buildings contains up to 36 apartments to me that isn't consistent with kind of a home you feel that that you're hearing from providers that innovates that is innovative and makes people feel well public community right something that helps me with this is having been in now many assisted living homes in this area they are beautiful they are enriched people have communities they have activities just visited any of our beautiful assisted living facilities in waymont you know my garden club is in there teaching people how to do flower arrangements in the community group um you know i can see that number and much larger numbers people living together in one of these assisted living facilities they are clean they are neat they are busy they have friends they make plans together i mean i don't know if when you look at that model and say okay but these feelings other people are in a wheelchair why wouldn't it be a rich and happy life for them as well you know i just don't know what happens with the building size i think the problem with the big institutional buildings was the assumptions about how they treated people they treated them like sick people like a hospital it wasn't the size of the building it was the idea about how you create culture and we've done beautiful job with assisted livings and making a beautiful happy home life culture and most of them are living in a pretty small space um but life is good you know i'd i'd add though that um that they need a space they need to feel that each individual needs to feel they have their own home and i think just a room um is not going to do that no i'm much more in favor of an apartment i was just using it as a general case example how you could put people together but make different culture i also think i also think that an assisted living or an independent living community uh can be a wonderful place or or it can be a a horrible place and not all the time but most of the time what makes the difference is the cost right because if you're talking about a a very um inexpensive uh poorly run assisted living facility uh it can be a pretty depressing place and i think one of the the concerns for housing that number of uh adults with disabilities in in this day and age in in a single setting is uh that you're you're risking putting a lot of people together that may not have the kind of uh sort of cadillac of funding uh that you you would hope they would have but they they may not have and you're you're going to be looking at people that are either private pay or people that are going to be ssi eligible and ssi i can tell you is is not going to pay for very much on on its face that's just my practical uh sort of real world um experience talking i guess
another way though to think about helping disabled people and is to create a model that is wonderful and spreadable so that other people copy and if you create an approach that's sustainable and acceptable and comfortable all these things that we care about other people will want to do it too and so you could have a multiplier effect by building a successful model that that spreads and so doing it really well in a way that is attracted to other towns could accomplish some of your goals to house more disabled people than just building 10 more units in one piece of land land this property is in a uh a residential zoning district with a minimum wide area of 60 000 square feet that was the most restrictive snob zoning zone that we have in time so i think that creating a lot of density uh in in the immediate vicinity of uh similar zoning properties uh really kind of doesn't respect the uh the development context um i have a suggestion which uh consider i would suggest with respect to section three to describe the first sentence description the scenario since there's a single residential building to produce
scenario three description so from page 30 you're on page 30 delete the first sentence this scenario consists of a single residential building or two smaller buildings containing up to 36 gardens okay in my fashion i would eliminate the word several the scenario from the head of scenario one
description on scenario two just say just talk about the qualities of the buildings that are built fair enough i'm sorry i'm sure you take a hundred descriptions and several resident others those are into the rooms there's only terrible yeah okay okay with that fill out brian yeah yeah so with each of these i could make the description much smaller and it just depends on how much detail you want there's a pretty general sense that there's too much information in there i'm really happy to cut stuff out that's easy really you know i like the key consideration it's an appendix so i think it's fine i think it's
trying to keep peace in the family all right so if you think three four and five are all necessary or then can you have like sub options like in this one there might be this and there might be that or i don't know because they really need to increase everything i'm okay with really i guess i'm not that comfortable with or um gee i love to work calling it a problem it's my favorite i can call it something else um uh you know community building i think the scenario um yeah it just it i just don't think it's reflective of the neighborhood and the homie type atmosphere that we're trying to provide the rest i mean a multi-unit apartment building up to 24 units i don't think what we have in town that might be uh might be in that um how many units are on 30 there that one next to god's goal 56 yeah it's 56 years that would be a good example of a building half of that right half of half of them there's four stories um so that's up to so it could be less um but i really love the idea i really worry about the isolation of severely disabled people in these small group homes i i know it was thought of to be a wonderful idea to get rid of the big residential um facilities but i think they end up isolated and a lot of them can't move very far i mean just literally if you want to have coffee with a friend you can't move very far um so the idea that they have their group within a community that's right there that if they have any ability to get around then they can have friends at the other end of the same floor or friends of the floor up or down or you know it i think they're less isolated if they have a community right there around them i'm also not sure that's what we heard from the visitors to the committee that these small group homes with a vibrant program and transportation to go to date programs and all the stuff that's in there that those buildings small buildings located together are a community they're a small community but they're a community and i didn't hear those people feel isolated i i like to where i heard they did a three or four and a cul-de-sac kind of thing i thought okay there's magic in that their proximity is good they can have a community but i don't think we heard from anybody who had a successful example of a substantially disabled population living in a 30-unit apartment building located a mile and a half from towns a non-walkable apartment building well a number of these groups talked about how they arrange for transportation and yeah that would have to be part of it and maybe that needs to be in the rnp that we want to hear a solution to address possible isolation tell us how you'll help them get around and you know i i have to tell you um if we if we think about that we need people with disabilities i don't want to center this in the meantime it's like huge wave coming upon us sure and i think all of us would love to help as many people as we if we can but our charge is to recommend to the select board how we can provide housing for adults with disabilities in in these four years in this neighborhood and i just think that my problem apartment building doesn't achieve time and i agree and that's and i agree with the point that phil adams made that um models that seem to be on the upswing are models where you know four or five you know residents went home in the community area where they took together in community space and they feel like it's really part of quality and i and um i just don't think that that that is achieved in in twenty three million apartment based based on my you know 25 percent of americans live in apartment buildings and those are their homes i mean we we have a model for home that is a single family dwelling that is you know it requires trying to break out of that model to think about somebody can't have a home in apartment building i think the question is not whether an apartment building is a good or a bad place with disabilities i think the question is whether this is the right site for such a development i personally don't think so i tend to agree i think that when jason was at plowshare farm a lot of his life was in his little home with the few with a few people that lived there and yes they did get together with the other communities at times but but it was a family type of a setting which is a small setting you're also you're you're also um serving on on average you're you're serving people in apartment type settings that are much higher functioning people that uh take public transportation some folks may even drive um but most people probably would be reliant upon somebody else to get from point a to point b and it wouldn't be um on site staff by very nature of the fact that you're you're looking at an apartment situation whereas i think we heard this from um deb johnson the area director from dds a group home that's serving the types of folks that dds is looking to serve these days those folks are going to be wholly reliant upon staff or transportation vendors to get them back and forth to a day program so in her estimation and i know we heard this from uh some of the the vendors that um presented the the fact that this parcel is located in a residential neighborhood kind of far away from uh you know the downtown area from stores um it's it's not a terribly accessible location so um in their estimation that's not necessarily a negative because a group home is going to have a dedicated van uh they're going to have dedicated staff to get people back and forth um again if if they attend a day program or they go to a vocational program they're going to have dedicated transportation as part of their uh programming through dds and their funding to get them back and forth so that's not so much a concern if somebody's high functioning and relying upon public transportation and they're at 212 that's going to be tough something committee about the leading scenario four from the recent scenarios we land the appendix um yeah people comfortable doing that
i'm sorry tom could you repeat that i'm having a hard time hearing sorry i'm asking for a sense of the committee about deleting scenario four from appendix f apologies to gene i would suggest that we do not include scenario four as presently drafted anyone else opinion i would be okay with that or or making an effort to combine it with with either um scenario combine the two john well they're both kind of hybrid descriptions of things that we've heard so if you're talking about sort of a hybrid uh if it walks and talks like a duck i mean i you know i i can understand why gene uh you you uh created the the two distinct descriptions but i think you could also if if you're really looking to provide that as a uh as a scenario i i i think those two could be combined i mean i i i think we we have we heard from some of the presenters that described uh scenario five scenario two very distinct um presentations that that outline those types of proposals and certainly scenario one is the traditional dds group home again uh going back to scenario one not to get off track but i think we ought to uh eliminate the word several group homes if we're talking about multiple i think we ought to stick to one one to two or or three perhaps but i don't think dds is going to approve that um um bill bill i think bill would you suggest that we take out the first sentence uh scenario three if you did that that's going to be a question what's the difference between a 36 unit risk right scenario four is included right because it doesn't it doesn't quantify the number of buildings it doesn't quantify the number of apartments so i would say three includes four if you take out that yeah i concur 24 7 like is that okay someone had a subset of that's a time for your question i know it's not okay but thank you let's move on but but just to for number three it says no on-site 24 7 care so do we want to say that or if someone had a group of a smaller group of residents who had extra needs but not i would i did i was concerned about that too okay you know these people some of them will need it yeah i'll strike it it might be an option yeah it might be an option or like it would be more like four right why why uh why rule it out right so perhaps what we're getting to is that these scenarios are not useful that the construction of the rfp is what's needed i mean they really were intended you know to try to somehow take all the noise out of all this data from all these different organizations and try to show um you know that's out of the things that they offer that might be reasonable not to interrupt well to interrupt but i think they do though i think with your four scenarios and aligning the language and the and the considerations to match the rfp you could imagine that that rfp could be applied to all four of these scenarios and a different vendor could propose a solution that honors all that stuff that's in bill whitney's list there um and um and also um
as long as you take away the huge size type you know could be scaled to match the neighborhoods so i think it and i think it's really helpful to outline our scenarios because it really describes to people what you're trying to say and it might even be one of the most important parts because that's what people want to know like what are you planning i i agree with i think i think it's very helpful in the context and uh okay i think it's been a roadmap for the first election i do have a question though in the description of scenarios we we talk about uh adults with severe development with disability with without but we're also talking about um people with autism and people with physical disabilities uh so somebody has cp a good point well just looking at scenario the description of scenario one is group homes for adults with severe development disabilities okay i consider autism a severe developmental disability but you're right about cp and some of the yeah physical stuff physical stuff or other yeah you know progressive degenerative diseases that you know yeah any of us around the table so i wouldn't want to preclude that's important how would you add that i think we could mention mention services needed rather than particular type of disability well if we're talking about a dds group home just to be clear you you do need to have a primary diagnosis of what their eligibility is which is an intellectual disability there can be other disabilities on top of that primary criteria that allows the person to be deemed eligible for dds services so they could have cp they could have down syndrome they could have other physical disabilities they could have um they could be on the spectrum um but i'm just saying for for purposes for example of scenario one if if you're going to be in a dds group home you have to be eligible for dds services and dds uh eligibility is predicated on the level of your intellectual disability well i'm not going to go down from it then i'm going to um close down the meeting after we have a brief discussion on schedule super great just so calling that out i think will be helpful for the dds only one there would be some constraints like this approach would only help this this group of people whereas the other ones could accommodate a broader array of disabilities including xyz we could say that to be clear um so looking ahead we have a schedule yeah um what i wanted to talk about is uh this site can be divided into two lots and so in the language i put that if somebody wanted to apply only to use one lot then they should come to the select board with a partner organization that has a complementary project for the other lot um i didn't know if that's what anybody wanted or not just we hadn't addressed it so i had no information so i had to make up something so you know are you going to accept an application for one of the two lots and without any idea what would go on the other one or are we going to only talk to people who are going to apply for use of all four well in fact i understand what it's going by and the town planner is a kind of uh that it could be you wanted to sell it right you could yeah provided somebody that was a rogue storm drink okay utility poles and stuff uh okay where they might reasonably work to the town to say hey let's do this okay so so you so give me give me so i can change you know you could say something about uh proposals for all or a portion of the site okay yeah i mean gene i'd i'd be supportive of scenario three and four if if we just eliminated the the numbers the the 24 and you know in scenario scenario four and the 36 and scenario three uh and you you just uh mentioned that uh you know a multi-unit uh apartment program something to that effect that respects and then you insert uh bill whitney's language that respects the the scale and if that's if if you know i i'm comfortable if if if we could do that i'd have to disagree um john i think that scenario three covers that if you don't it if if um well first of all scenario these scenarios aren't um going to be part of the rfp but to the extent a organization may look to these for some guidance they just don't want the word apartment in this in this um in this document because i don't think i'm sorry apartment building because um it conjures up a view that i think some of these organizations but oh awesome and and i i don't think an apartment building um okay i take your point how about if we strike the word apartment and just say a multi-unit building but i thought we agreed that if we take out scenario four that by taking out the first sentence of scenario three um the residential building yeah residential building is included in right if some if some um organization responds to the rfp with an apartment type building um then the select board will consider it um but but the way the rfp is written now it's so broad that um well it is broad and maybe we'll get such a proposal and then the select board will will consider it but i just um i just think four is included in three with our first sentence out and i think we agreed that last sentence no one site 24 7 might be taken out right so i need to move on now to scheduling so right now we're going to be scheduled for thursday we've had a long discussion gene's had a spinning and uh and um i think at this point she she regrets putting her hand up to author this document but when you have the opening law and you have uh editing by committee unfortunately this is the process we have to call so based on what you've heard um would it be more comfortable for you to let's try to meet next week instead of thursday for you to modify the report maybe have to go in a little bit and then send it send it to me and then i can send it to the group between now and thursday it's kind of a tightening so are you saying you only want to have one more meeting no i'm not saying that at all what i'm saying is when will be our next meeting and based on what you heard tonight and your your um the amount of time you think you would take modify this request based on what you heard um this thursday two children well it's not so much me getting it done as it's all you having time to read it before next meeting right so if you've got it to us by uh this isn't very unfair but like tomorrow night i mean that's i think that's a lot of work between now and tomorrow i i think i can do that you do yeah and then i'll i'll shoot out thursday morning okay people hear that because i i think we still have a lot of unresolved issues so i need to um spend time talking to each other because we haven't talked to each other that much we've had so many guests and presentations and public comment and it's all wonderful i agree but we need more processing time as a group but today can john get his preamble maybe john can can pretend the paper sometime tomorrow if not john we'll do it uh because thursday will not be our last week um and i'll send out an email to try to schedule um maybe two more meetings and maybe we can do a prior to make time on thursday i'm happy to i'm happy to put a preamble together how who should i send that to so that i'm not um breaking any rules you can send it to gene send it to gene okay um so people want more brevity so i am going to shorten this thing up a lot and distill a lot of things uh what i think i'm hearing is that the amount of information rather than being a useful printer will overwhelm the select one and make it harder for them to figure out how to take action in a expedient sort of way so that's fine all this we're pushing more of it to the appendices notwithstanding any early comment brings up it back
right why should this committee be any different
you feel like there's not that much i would delete so but so moving it to the appendix i know we said the opposite that's all right so with that i'll entertain a motion to adjourn at nine and one second right uh motion to adjourn by bill i mean it's not yes dr bryan right and second by dean are those in favor bryan all right i don't hear so hi stephanie stephanie yes and john yes yes yes that was great thank you all very much yeah stephanie i hope things get better soon we'll be thinking of you thank yeah thanks for recording stopped