January 29, 2026 – Recreation Commission – Video & Transcript
January 29, 2026 - Recreation Commission
I'll call the meeting to order at the State Committee room on January 29th at 2026 at 10 a.m.
We're going to review the agenda.
First public comment, then minutes. Review and approved minutes if available for December 3rd, 2025. Commissioner announcements, reports, concerns. A, general announcements. E, Route 20, the Landfill Visioning Committee. C, Community Preservation Committee. Number five is a park naming policy discussion and develop a park naming policy review and vote to approve new sign proposed for baseball field at Riverview Ave. Number six is ice rinks. Discuss requests to install ice rink skating, ice skating rink, including not limited to plumbing, operating, and staffing. Number seven is recreation projects that could be taken on by the members of the Scouts of America. Number eight, field updates. Discuss fields and facilities, including but not limited to the use of Waylon High School restroom building. Number nine, recreation director's winter report. Number 10, schedule the next meeting date and potential agenda items. Number 11, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. Forty hours in advance of the meeting, if any. And number 12, June. And we will have a hard stop, I believe, by noontime. Is that right? Is that okay? Some people believe it 20 out of them, I think. I believe it. At 11.40? Yeah. Let's see if we can have a hard stop at 11.40.
Okay. Do we have any public comment?
Either on here or here? No, since not recently, it's been around. I don't know the name. Yeah, Joe. We did receive a letter, a comment, from youthful ball last night, which I forwarded to you all. I mean, I don't necessarily know if that's public comment or if that's part of an agenda item. Well, let's see. Okay. It's on the agenda. We could just address that when it comes up. Okay. So, no public comment. Minutes? Review?
I think I was absent at the last meeting. I don't know. Who else? Yeah. I don't have minutes. You do not have minutes, so we will pass that one over. Number four is commission announcements, reports, and concerns, general announcements.
No general. No general announcements. Okay. Route 20 landfill visioning committee. It's advancing. Did you have a meeting last night? We did not. You did not? No. So, there's going to be two meetings in February. We are, there's going to be a public forum, and then I believe a follow-up meeting of the committee. Do you know what the public forum is? Tuesday, February 17th at 6 p.m. I emailed you against him. February 16th? Yeah. That's correct. 6 p.m. Catherine. 6 p.m. I got a text from Tom. Yeah. But I, but talking about a meeting, but I don't think there was a date attached, but that is, that's from. That must be, and we can catch up on this later. I'm actually flying back that day. Okay. So, I may, if I could make it, it's calling in from the gate. Okay. So, I might need help for that. Okay. Let me know. It comes with that situation. And when is the, what is the other? Did we post it yet? I think it's like the 24th. I don't think they've posted it yet. So, the, the forum on the 17th, the consultant is going to present to the community and to the board, the options, I think. And then, then the board posted another meeting to discuss that. Yeah. Okay. But that's after the forum. Okay. And so, that's the process. And like, I think our objective is to wrap up the decision and recommendation in February. Okay. I think there's a hard date that we need to perform that. Okay. Do you have any, any, any insight in terms of where, where, we are currently headed? Yeah. Yeah.
There was discussion about the dog park, discussion about fields, discussion about bus parking.
So, it's, the consultants can provide, you know, how much can we pack into the envelope? Um, and how much can we get as a community out of that? Um, I believe solar may have been discussed as well. So, that's what the, what was that? Solar. Okay. I think it, uh, over parking. Okay. I was going to get here, ahead here. Yeah. Okay. So, all of that, I think, is on the table. That'll be presented. And that's where we'll review. Um, because at this point, it was difficult just to, there's so many different competing factors for the space. Uh, I do think that the most practical use is fields. And I, I think that's, um, going to be a component of the final design. Okay. But we'll, we'll see after the. There's no housing in this current proposal. I think it's, we looked really hard at that. Um, and I know prior to my involvement, um, you know, that was the focus. I think just with the soils, it's prohibitive. Um, so. You know, you know that. Um, yeah, cause it's an old, yeah. It's an old. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, so that's what all the study has been about is the quality of the soils and the ability to do housing there. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, community preservation committee. Yep. Um, so we have wrapped up for the year and, um, we're just finalizing for the town, uh, meeting. Um, we did not. Have a lot of recreation items. Um, a lot of them were, were trail heads and signage and, um, repairing, uh, boardwalks. And, uh, the biggest project that somewhat falls into recreation is the, uh, a very large span project surrounding Dudley Pond, um, where they're looking to expand trail access and, um, improve the water quality, kind of understand the limitations and problems within the area and then see how best to use it. Um, this is through, um, this is through, I believe the town engineer. Um, and so, um, that seems exciting and something to look forward to, uh, hearing more about. Um, one of the, uh, one of our unsuccessful bids was, um, because, was the constituent ballpark and they, um, I'll talk with that committee later about how they were kind of confused with how the numbers matched up and, um, how, you know, prior expenditures and prior promises didn't quite match up to the, uh, uh, list they were looking at and, um, uh, you know, there were a lot of hopes at the end of the meeting that, um, the next year would be the one that they can resolve those issues and, and perhaps have a larger kitty to, to, to deal with. So, will that, will this be a topic of discussion with number eight? Till news updates and... Um, not really. Okay. Um, okay. Um, would, would pilots also be part of the, the, uh, recreation projects that could be taken on by members of, of, uh, Scouts of America or some other volunteer?
Um, I think that could be really interesting, um, for, for the, a few of them, um, perhaps Dudley Pond, perhaps the Boardwalk project. Um, there's a couple of them, one, um, over by York Road and one, uh, it's called the Conservation Properties Boardwalks. Um, there's one they're planning at Hamlin Woods Trail and, uh, they expanded it to also include York, uh, Road. So, um, so that's, um, the Hamlin Woods Road Trail is at 80 Rice Road. Um, and there, there's other interesting opportunities that, that I think would have to liaise with conservation, um, you know, removing, uh, invasive, you know, purple loose strife at Cow Common. Um, and then also those types of projects are sometimes, uh, with historical, just for, uh, any digging purposes could, could, um, found something particularly interesting. So, okay. Okay. Okay. Um, so we'll move on to number five, which is the park naming policy, discuss and develop a park naming policy review and vote to approve new sign proposed, uh, for the baseball field on Riverview Ave. Um, you, Leslie, you would send out the park naming policy, uh, discuss and some research with. Yeah. Is this my attachment or is this yours? No, that's mine. Okay. I also included kind of a framework to help lead the discussion through that policy. Great. Behind the policy. Yeah. Yeah. So what I had done is I had, um, uh, you know, what, what's the phrase? Um, uh, but, but it ends with genius steals. So I've stolen this from other recreation departments, um, and around the country really actually. Um, and I have added everything that I thought was relevant for discussion here and, and was, and I added more than we needed in the hopes that we could cross things off. Um, and, and then also added some things that maybe didn't necessarily apply just for, you know, just to make sure we were totally understanding what sort of situations came up in other districts. Yeah. So, so that is what, what that is. Um, I don't know how we, how do we do this? Well, we, my assumption here is that we can set a, a quote unquote policy that, that we would recommend the town fall. However, the final determination regarding the naming of a field, uh, probably lies with a selection. So that's, I think that's, what's up for discussion. I think that our policy needs to determine where, who has authority and where they can implement it. Because there are properties that are strictly recreation properties, say like constituent ballpark. And then there's some, you know, a lot of our rec facilities are on school property or shared property. Uh, Alpine is technically a school property. So I think that, and then who has the authority? Is it this board that renames the field? Is it the select board? Is it town meeting? Um, I think there's a lot of layers to it and it depends on the property. And so I think that one of the things that we need to talk about as you build this policy is. You know, the, the request process. So how does somebody who wants to rename a site in Wayland, where do they start? Do they fill out an application that goes to this board? What are the criteria? Um, you know, we can set the parameters, but I think we first have to figure out like why and how and where it gets done. Um, and then you start getting into the nitty gritty of like the criteria of the, the name. You know, if it's a, like a corporation or a business, is it, there's copyright or trademark implications. There's all kinds of layers to it. And each element of building this policy has its own set of. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I wonder if historically we could go back and look how our King field was, was renamed in honor of our King. Now I was engaged with that. I mean, he was, I grew up with him and he, you know, we're best friends, best men in each other's weddings and all that stuff. Um, and the, the field was actually named Busick Field. And the reason it was named Busick Field was because Johnny Busick, who was a, people know he was a, you know, one of the all time great Bruins players. Johnny Busick never set foot on this property and it was named because, because I think my recollection is correct. He was the primary source of funding for it. So it was named Busick Field. So when Art died, um, there was a, uh, some interest in renaming the field for, in honor of Art King, because he had been, um, very much involved with oil and recreation for a number of years. So, and, you know, I was serving on the commission at the time and, and so, um, I was the one who was, was behind the spearhead of that, that whole time. And I, but I can't recall all of the ins and outs of, of how that actually happened, but there was no, there was no pushback in terms of, of anybody, as far as, as renaming Busick Field, who, you know, Johnny Busick, uh, was the funding source. But other than that, I don't even know if he ever saw it. Was the field being revamped at that point? No, no. Was there like a, there was no new signage being added? Well, yeah, well, yes, there was, because there was a signage, there was, there was a sign that it still exists today, you know, naming the field Art King, or after Art King. But, um, in terms of, of renovations of the field at the time, my recollection is there were nothing, there was nothing that was, there was nothing that was going on at the field other than adding signage to it and officially renaming it. So I think a great place to start is the where. And so the question about Art King, who's the owner of Art King? Is that Recreations? Yes. It is? Okay. Yeah. So I think that's an easy baseline for us to establish. Like we shouldn't be renaming schools, or school fields. Um, like, well, I would agree with that. Yeah, we have a, I think, yeah, I think it'd probably be a significant amount of pushback from the school committee. That's my guess, I don't know. Yeah. Can I ask a question on there? So then, potentially the Rec Commission would have a naming policy for recreation properties and the school department or other departments in this town would have different policies related to name, like conservation has properties, or DPW has properties, that each entity will have their own process for naming? Or is it like a recommendation to the select board that says this is how we think it should work for all properties? See, my opinion on that is that, ultimately, it would be nice if everybody had his or her own or their or their own policies. However, that, as rare as this occurs, it's still, it's still, you're still in a situation where you'd like to have an overall policy that, that, ultimately, one entity would be responsible for the final decision. Mm-hmm. And I think the final decision would be with a select board. That, that would be, because, yeah, if you, if, you know, if it's going to be a school that's going to do it, it's going to be recreation that does it, it's going to be conservation that does it, whatever. I think you might wind up with a situation where there are, there may not be agreement from all, all different parties. And so you get into a situation where it becomes rather unwieldy, although, as I said, it's not something that's done on a regular basis. Yeah. Same with the different elements related to naming of other, like, how the schools are named, how the, like, conservation areas are named, and how that would be different from recreation properties. Yeah. I mean, I don't, as, as, as, as, as, as this, as this, as this risen, uh, as, as anybody aware of this, um, issue being, being, uh, up front in terms of, of other properties? That aren't recreation properties? Yeah. I think so. I think that, like, in my time here, we probably get a request about once a year, potentially, to rename properties. And I know that it does happen for other departments, conservation areas. I think they did rename the DPW building when they built it after the former DPW director, is that right? So, I think there are entities in this town that have names that have been bestowed on them by the people of Wayland. Um. But has it been done by, has it been done by a, a, a, uh, a certain commission? I don't think there's a formal process in any department, honestly, or any board or commission. So, that's, the question is, do, do we just focus on REC and make a REC policy for REC properties? Or is it a bigger issue that goes beyond that? Yeah. And there are a lot of shared properties. And ultimately, is it the select board's responsibility, which I don't, I don't know of any written policy anyway that says it's the select board's responsibility. I don't know, I know there are sign signage bylaws about, you know, how and where you can place signs in this town. There's, you know, historic districts that dictate some of the signage too. And I know naming of a location is more than just a sign, but then there's also costs associated with renaming a field too. So, I think we have to think about all those things as we put together policy. Do we know if school or DPW have a policy? Not that I'm aware of. The school, I believe, I have never seen it, but I've heard that the schools have a policy about not naming buildings after people. Oh. Which is a common element to naming policies in other towns when you make a living, especially living people. So, I don't think that they do currently. But does that extend to fields that the school owns or schools own? I don't think so. I think it's specific to buildings. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I know of any school fields that are named. I don't think there are. Most of them are named after the road that they're on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Albine. Yeah. Should we, should we bring this to the select board before we spend too much time on it? Maybe ask them their opinion if they want to have full control or to pass it down? It could be worth it. It could be worth it. Yeah. And then, because, you know, maybe they'll want to take this up on their own and create their own form. And this is what they're all about. Yeah. Well, if that is the case, then I think the first step would be for us to super the liaison. And we look forward for us from the select board and pursue that. Then if we get some guidelines from the select board, then we can go about the fact of initiating our loan costs, if that's the direction that they would like us to go. And then the other thing is, how do you address properties that have already been named? Like, are those locked in for eternity? Or, like, at what point can you rename a field after the abusive source? You know what I mean? Like, take a name off of it. Yeah. I think that was kind of a, sort of a no-brainer in that. The field was named after someone who had literally nothing to do with other than writing a check. Yeah. So the other elements of this agenda item is that the Schwartz family has made a request to change the existing Eric Schwartz ball field sign at the field at Riverview. And so they've sent an iteration of what they would like it to look like and are looking for approval on that. And so I don't think that we need to wait for a new naming policy in order to allow them to change an existing sign that already has the name on it. Oh, no. I completely do that. As long as the sign that they're proposing meets with the rules and, quote-unquote, rules and regulations that the town has already... Yeah. It's not widely different than what's there now. And I sent, and my 9 o'clock email had... Actually, yeah, my email this week had what they are for approval on. There's two different versions. Yeah. Do they bear the expense of that change? They are willing to. Yeah. Interesting. Isn't that right? Yes. Yeah. So, are they looking to us to approve the design? At this point, with the lack of a policy, I recommended that this board just look at it and approve it. I agree. Apart from... That's what... When the first sign went up, it went before the speech. And so, I think it only makes sense to have it with the lack of a policy and that's how it happened before to keep going that way. Yeah. I assume that they would want to have this done in the spring. Yeah. Yeah. I would have... I personally would have no problem with us, you know, voting to... If... If... Voting on us. Whether we approve it or not, that's not a story. Sally, question. Do we have, like, a database of photos of our signs? Like, do we know... Is there a standard? There's not really a standard. In the last probably 10 years, I've tried to standardize some of the signs with some of the other properties in Wayland, like North Cemetery right here. It just says North Cemetery and it has the town seal on a white board, which is how most of the signs are. That's kind of one type of sign. There's another sign that's usually... You see it at a local in Oxbow. It's on brown with white text engraved into the wood. Similar, like a normal kind of state park kind of looking sign. There was a committee back in the pre-pandemic. There were some grant funds set aside to, like, standardize the signs all across Wayland. And I don't think anything ever happened with that. Or there just wasn't a consensus on what those signs would look like. So, no. Right now, we have signs at all of our parks and they are all very different. The school's a different job. Like, Wayland High School and Vail School signs look different from the elementary schools. Library's different. So, will we look at this image next time? I can jaunt around town and make my pictures of the ballpark. I can send you the ones that we have. Like, I do have pictures of a lot of our properties. Some have no signs at all. I don't think it's just a ballpark. Is it a label? It's not. Town Building Field, doesn't it? And as our king, but not Town Building Field. I don't think. Oxford's different. Oxford, yeah. Loker's different. They're all different. And we looked at this about standardizing all the signs at, at least recreation properties. It's pretty expensive when we take. Yeah. So, we could work it into a capital plan if that is something we wish to do in the future. But in terms of voting on this, but also from the Schwartz sign, I think. Yeah. I would recommend we just go for it. They're pretty much just swimming on the sign. Yeah. So, would someone make a motion to go forward with the Schwartz? Shouldn't we have to see it? Right. Is it in here? Oh, I sent it. I'm looking at it. I think it's my email. Let's see. You sent it. I sent two emails with documents. Yeah. Did they have a preference for it? Oh, yeah. And then you forwarded it at 858. At least that's the one I'm looking at. It has some pictures of an attachment with signage. Yes. So, is the Riverview ball field sign there now? No. That was the original. And that got replaced. It got replaced with the one that you see in the second there, which has the Little League logo, and it says Eric Schwartz ball field. And it's wearing down a little bit. Yeah. And then they want to replace it with kind of a more substantial post sign. I think the difference between the two images they sent is the materials used. Okay. And it's a little bigger. It's 60 inches by 30 inches. Is this in the document titled Packet 2? Yep. Agenda recognition? Yep. I'm just trying to bring it up. I tried to have the ability to show things on the screen, but we're still working on that from an IT standpoint. We'll have a share screen. Let's open. There you go. Two of them are connected to that screen. So, they're looking for this. Yep. That's the one. Thank you. That's the one they want? Yes. The difference between the two images. The sign is the same. I think the materials used to build the sign is the difference. One is... I don't know the difference. What is the difference? What is the difference? What is the difference? I guess this is... Single sided one inch PVC with faux carved applied print. The other one is single sided and quarter. Who's the first one? One inch PVC. Versus quarter inch ACM. And the posts are the same either way. What are the posts made though? BBC sleeves and caps. PT post. Yeah, it's a marked improvement. And the previous sign was... They took the standard town white sign with the... And they just affixed a new sign to the existing posts. Which are similar to the posts that would hold like a handicap parking sign. They're just like the metal sleeves. Oh, okay. Yeah. So nothing fancy. And so I think they're looking just to upgrade it. Yeah. To a more substantial sign. Is that W in the prior one a antiqued kind of font? Yeah. Okay. So it's not like... It's not worn out. That's by design. That's Little Leeds logo. And they're removing the town of Wayland emblem and the recreation emblem? Or is that... It looks like they are. Okay. Are they opposed to including? I have not asked that question, but we can ask that question. If you think there's room for it on here somehow. And how much they add? Yeah. Do you think that you want to play? No, I've looked at it before. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't look like it doesn't look like there's a lot of room to add anything else to that particular sign. Yeah. Unless they shrunk the font, but I don't know. You're right. What does it add? Yeah. I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't... Yeah. Does recreation want branding on there? Not necessarily. I mean, I think, you know, when I think about other cities and towns, it usually says, like, the town of Wayland or the record department on the side. I think that as we go through this process and determine some sense of uniformity, that potentially that would be included. I mean, it does kind of tell you, like, under whose jurisdiction. Yeah. And who to contact, but... Yeah. But I do think that the town ceiling and the town ceiling... Yeah. Do you want branding on there? Not necessarily. I mean, I think, you know, when I think about other cities and towns, it usually says, like, the town of Wayland or the record department on the side. I think that as we go through this process and determine some sense of uniformity, that potentially that would be included. I mean, it does kind of tell you, like, under whose jurisdiction and who to contact, but... And I do think the town ceiling and the record department logo is maybe redundant, that we could just use one or the other. Yeah. Well, I forget whether... Like not working? But yeah, I agree. I don't think you can see it. I don't know if you can see it. I don't know if you can see it in that place. It's bringing in vernacular. I... Well, you can't see it this way. It was not competition, no, we didn't. You're a little weak. Yeah. So, is there a consensus here that we would want to include that? I think it would be nice to include one or the other. Maybe they could shimmy the words left or right and put it in the home of Wayland baseball and then put the either town of Wayland insignia or the recreation insignia. But I don't think it would clash. I would just take a look at this sign because if this sign doesn't have it, then you could... The argument could be made well. You allowed that sign to be put up without it. Yeah. So it's a requirement now. Why wasn't it a requirement then? Yeah. Well, there's just text. It says, Arcane Memorial Field. Similar signposts, similar texts. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. I would say... I would say probably the way this... And if someone else, you know, another sign was to be made by someone else, rename the field, and they wanted to include it, include it. But, you know, it's not a quote-unquote requirement. So, I would proceed. All right. Motion to approve the sign proposed by the Schwartz panel, whatever you could give. Yeah. And if... Do we... Do we then allow them to make the determination in terms of which one they want? They can choose either the one inch or the... What was the thickness of the other one? A quarter inch? A quarter inch? Yeah. So... Yeah. Motion to approve... Either version A or version B. Yeah. As presented. Second. All those in favor? Four, zero, zero. Okay. Okay. And the next step on building this naming policy is to consult with the select board liaison and how she... Yep. Yep. Okay. Are you going to consult or ASA or somebody? Generally, I think it's the board to the select board member. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay. And it's done? Yeah. I can call that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Number six. Ice Rink. Assess request to install ice rinks. I'm speaking of concluding, but not limited to swimming, operating, staffing, blah, blah, blah. Do, do any of us recall previous ice rink situations in the town or whatever? I am too young. I'm too young. I'm too young. You're fine. And the issue we're going to run into is one with the DPW. I think the DPW is not favorably disposed to erecting or maintaining this. And one of the reasons for it is to look outside. And the second reason for it is when the ground, if the ground is not frozen, an ice rink doesn't work because until the ground is thoroughly frozen, you will get no ice. It will last any good thing. So you can go through an enormous expense in terms of trying to erect the rink. Because we've had it. We had it for a couple of years. We had it. We had ice rinks. Before my time here. So in the last 10 years, we haven't offered ice skating in Whiteland. There was a period of time before I started here that we were offered it at Mill Pond. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. But an artificial rink. Oh. So, yeah. They did one here in town. They didn't remember that. She's been here longer than me. There was one here, too. It was problematic for DPW. They cite a number of reasons why it is problematic. I do as other towns do it. But in terms of maintenance and labor and materials and storage and security. And water. And water. And water. In this town. It's also an issue. I sent a note from the finance director who told us that this year our water charges are going up at least 28%. Um, and so we would be responsible to pay for the water in the ice rink. Um, but also that's where the irrigation for all fields across the board. It's probably like a $40,000 to $50,000 increase for us. Um, so we do have to think about that. I think for the ice rinks, there are other areas in Wayland currently right now that are frozen that people are using to achieve the skating experience at Mill Pond, at Dudley Pond, at Herb Pond, even Lake Achichuit. Um, but this is the first year in the 10 years that the ice has frozen to a level that I think the town would endorse public skating on. Um, that's not to say it won't happen, you know, every year for the next 10 years, but it is, the REC Department will struggle with this because it takes a lot of resources and the outcomes are pretty unpredictable. Um, very much so. You just look at it, look at the situation we're in now. If we had an ice rink right now, the weather would have been perfectly fine in terms of, uh, in terms of the temperature to support it. However, how are you going to get, how are you going to get two feet of snow off an ice rink? And alternatively, back in 2019, every year we get a few requests from residents, to bring back the ice rinks. I looked at bringing in artificial ice rink services, um, which they do have, you know, they can come in, they set it up. It's like a synthetic material that acts like ice. It's pretty expensive. It's about $5,000 a day to offer ice skating. And then people think that's not that. I can't imagine. $5,000 a day. For like a six hour ice skating. For like staff and skate rentals and all the whole business. Like to offer like legitimate ice skating. But then the show up, drop off. Set up. Set up. And then also leave at the end of, pop it all up and leave at the end of the day. Yeah. Um, I obviously support it. Um, and I obviously recognize the issues with it. And I think it's something that isn't possible this year. But, um, I've been thinking quite a bit about how to do that in town. And where, um, 5,000 a day sounds like a lot, but that's in and out in the same day. Yeah. Kind of longer term sustained solutions. Um, I think are potentially available, but are going to take a lot more thought and partnership to execute against. Where would you consider? Um, I think we need to look into that. Do we know if a basketball court freezes earlier than ground, than, than grass? Because that would, that would make it possibly more successful over the longer season. That's where I set mine up in my backyard on like an asphalt. Yeah. Although I will say I just have two feet of snow on it right now. Yeah. A lot of people in band do have them in their backyard. So I, I did a little bit of research where I looked at Concord, Wellesley, and Lincoln to see where they each put theirs. Um, and, uh, Lincoln seems to be the only one to have placed it on grass. They have theirs behind the town building, you know, they do the setup, um, which is, you know, supported by volunteers of the local youth hockey, uh, organizations filled by the DP, not as filled by the fire fire department. Um, and then the upkeep and snow removal is done by the volunteers. I know that I think Wellesley does it through the department, the, you know, the DPW. Um, I have notes. Um, where are the notes? Um, but they have it at, uh, gosh, I can't remember the name. Um. Honeywell? I can't. Honeywell? Yes. Honeywell. And then Concord was at Emerson and they also had theirs at Rideout. Um, those are both basketball courts. Um, Rideout and Emerson, I know, have since been closed. Wellesley, people are pretty excited to have it back. Um, but so do we, do we have any of those old pieces of equipment left? Do we have, do we have a tarp or, or do we have a frame? Is that from what I understand that this was before my time, DPW had invested in tarps and, and then when the ice rinks are unattended, users would attempt to use it when the ice wasn't quite ready and sliced, you know, skates through the tarps and ruining the tarps and then uniquely tarps. Um, so I think that we do need to like, think about like, if we're going to do this, like how to make it secure. So that doesn't happen. Um, because not only did he ruin the tarp with a slice, but then all the water leaked into the town building parking lot. There was more ice in the town building parking lot than there was on the ice rink. That was brilliant. Um, from here, from here. I love two aspects of it. And I guess it'd be nice to maybe talk to some folks about what their expectations are. I love the idea of just being able to go out and skate. I mean, we do that on the ponds, like it's, I haven't done it in years, but, um, like we would go skate on the ponds and that was awesome. Pick up like, what are we going to do? Um, I think that'd be really neat, but also folks up Dudley in that neighborhood to go down there and skate. And if you drove by in the last few weeks, like you've seen clear clear screen areas. Yeah. They're, they're playing there. Um, so I wonder if it's, uh, for pickup purposes where I think the ponds are sufficing or if it's something more structured where, yeah, don't go out there. There's nobody around because we're trying to create an experience where you can enjoy skating here. Um, and if you just go out there, you're going to slice through the tarp, but that's going to ruin it for everybody. I think if that's what we're looking for here, a more formalized experience. Um, Kichituit is a really interesting park from all seasons. I, it's the front door to our neighbor to our town. And it's so well situated from a proximity perspective with the pike and one 28 and just all the communities and access. Um, I think it's a really interesting piece of property and opportunity for us to take advantage of it where it's not being utilized through the winter. Um, but it would require more formalized. I think the DPW is being clear, like they can't do it. So we need somebody to come in and shovel snow and literally take care of it. And there's a cost to that. Um, and I think that also there's a demand for it where I can't think of another outdoor skating rink that is in this area in Metro West. That is a true outdoor skating rink where there's games and, you know, it's treated like an indoor rink. Um, if that's what folks are thinking about, I think that's interesting. It's a lot of work. Yeah. It's all enough. I'm confused. I figured it was more of a one time cost. And then, and then, and then the future costs would be manpower. The water. And like research. Yeah. I think it requires daily maintenance. Like manual labor in, in, because we don't have a Zamboni, you have to go out there and treat the ice. Yeah. I have to set up assuming you can preserve the tarp. You're right. That's kind of like a sunk cost that you should, and tarps not crazy expensive. It's not cheap if you get a huge one, but yeah, it's the, it's the water that I think is the big, big ticket item. Yeah. And the weather has a, has a tremendous impact on this too, because you know, you, you put all your effort in, into doing this and it's really, it's really cold. So it's no, it's, it's 20 degrees. It's 10 degrees. You get a, you, you get, you get a, uh, a situation which you get a three or four days is 40 degrees. Well, right. Yeah. So there are temporary chiller solutions. Um, and that's where it's a couple hundred thousand for a season. And it's a lot of money, but you're then, if you're going to be running a formal platform, can you make your money back? And that's. Okay. That's another, that's an, yeah. So is this going to be a quote unquote fee based type of situation? Well, that's what I think is all up for discussion is what, what do you want? Do you want to be able to go skate? Like we've got some funds for that. Like we've got some funds for that. If you're looking for a centerpiece opportunity, then you're going to have to pay for that. Like a field, if you rent a field. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you want to run Thursday through Sunday, open skate from six to 10. Like, is there a demand for that? Yeah. Well, of course, if it, if it takes a teacher, you already have the lights. Mm-hm. So, you know, that's, that's an expense that you don't have to, that's already some funds. Yeah. Yeah. You still have to pay for the lights, but yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, there's no question. I mean, but, but the infrastructure is already. Yeah. You don't have to track in lights. So, so you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is substantial. Yeah. If you were trying to do that at some, at some other location, you're going to let it. Right. Right. And it's a, yeah, it's a great park. It's, oh yeah. It's got a lot of bones already. Yeah. Can we take the call? The what? Can we take our raised hand? Yeah. I think it wasn't after a public comment, but the chair. So I'm glad that there's a gentleman who raised his hand. Oh, sure. Raise your hand. Come in and speak. Please. Hello. Hello. Hi. Can you guys hear me? Yep. Yeah, we can. Yeah. So I just want to say, my name's Joe Palazzotti. I live at 16 Indian Road. Um, I'm part of the Wayland Hockey Association. And I just want to say that, um, we certainly, um, endorse or, uh, support the idea of, um, you know, like an outdoor rink or public skating or something of that nature. Um, I do want to, uh, just mention that I, I've actually been maintaining a very large ice rink in my backyard since about 2009. Um, and all the items you're saying are true. Um, you know, as soon as it snows, you've got to get the snow off there. Um, you've got to maintain it. You've got to, you know, flood it after skating. Um, the tarps are unusable after, uh, a season. I, I think if, if someone's saying you can reuse tarps, um, I would vehemently disagree with that. Um, and then, you know, leaves and sticks and, and all that are, are an issue. And then you also have, if this is out at Kachituit, I, I have been in town long enough to remember when we had an ice rink out there. And we did have a couple of just unbelievable nights with the lights out lights on and, you know, pond hockey games, if you will. But, you know, if it's just out in the open, um, unfortunately kids, you know, break the ice. If, if, you know, you get a, a, a snap of cold and then all of a sudden it's 45 degrees and kids are down there, you know, with sticks smashing the ice, it's really tough to get it back. Um, you know, so trying to just be cognizant of that and trying to figure out a way to deal with that is what I would consider critically important. Um, I did have some questions like, where did that frame go? Um, I assume the frame and the brackets are still around somewhere maybe. Um, and that would maybe help defray some of the costs. Um, and then the, the comment that somebody made about putting it on pavement. Um, I do not support that. And, um, I would recommend that it's placed on the grass because the reason is, is when the sun comes out, even when it's 20 degrees, it heats up the asphalt. And then the asphalt melts the ice from the bottom up. So I would not recommend doing that. I think putting it on the grass, um, I've had major success with, and I would stay away from pavement. Even though like the basketball court might be in theory, a good idea because you could maybe lock the gate, um, and keep kids or at least discourage kids from getting on it. Um, when temperatures are not, uh, appropriate, but I guess the basic thing is the whale and hockey association would, um, be supportive and want to help in any way that we could, um, you know, to try to get something like this, uh, up and running. And, and I think the lights are a huge thing because as we know in the winter, it gets dark at four o'clock and it's tough to skate on a pond. Um, although people have told me that at one time the town did have a light at Mill Pond. Uh, but, but I, I, I wasn't around for that, but the lighting piece of it is, is certainly attractive. I don't hear any question on that. Yeah. In fact, the lights are already there, as I mentioned before, I think you're right, Jim. Just to answer your question, I, I asked DPW if they still have the materials from the previous ice rams and he said that they had rotted out. So that they were, they're gone. Right. I don't know if you can still hear me, but I would assume they bought pressure treated lumber. If they didn't, that was a massive mistake.
It wouldn't be rotten. If it's just regular kiln dried lumber, then there's a possibility that could happen. Yeah. Well, Captain, you, you spoke with them and they're gone. Yeah. We don't have any of the materials left. I don't, I know what they were. Um, but it was also more than 15 years ago. So I don't know. Who knows? Silly, but are the tarps able to be reused by other departments? Like could DPW use it to cover a sand pile or something? Or is it the total waste after? I'm not speaking. I don't, it might be picking up some other background noise in my office, but I can't figure out how to mute myself here. Actually, Joe, the question was, can you reuse the tarps for alternative uses like covering sand piles with other departments? Understanding you can't use it for the rink again, but how beat up is it? How beat up is it? Is that question back to me, Mark? Yeah. If you have any idea. I have no idea what DPW could do with a tarp, but I'm sure there's like, if you just, if the specific question is, could you use the tarp to cover a sand or salt pile? My answer would be yes, even if there's little rips in it from skates or pocks or sticks, it would still do the lion's share of the job. But depending on what they needed a tarp for, I would say you could use it unless you needed it to be weather tight, because there will be nicks and holes in it. Like I never use the same tarp year to year, just because, just because of the use. Yep. In terms of maintaining it, you know, I think somebody would definitely need to be in charge. I don't know who that somebody is. And then, you know, maybe if there's a large snow event, you're enlisting, you know, the girls and boys, varsity hockey teams, the boys, JV teams, the middle school, maybe the, the, um, boy scouts or something. If people need community service hours, but that is something that needs to be thought about because when it snows, the snow needs to be removed immediately. If it stays on there, I know this is going to sound odd, but it actually warms up. And then the layer between the ice and the snow becomes slush. And then it's a major problem. Yep. Now with a snow event that we had this, this past week, that would have been a huge drop in terms of if you had an ice rink this year. Yeah. Yeah, because it was a, that was a 24 hour storm plus, and you'd be out there, you'd be out there, you know, removing two inches of snow at a time. And it could be, you have different shifts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like for mine, um, you know, I went out at like nine o'clock at night and was snow blowing probably about, I don't know, 12 to 15 inches of snow. And then in the morning it was, you know, another three to six inches. So yeah, it's, it's definitely work for sure. For sure. I actually had one of my clients who, who used it because the snow was so light, used a leaf blower to blow the snow. Oh yeah. Yeah. It worked, if I were, it worked beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Do we ever have corporate partners or partnerships like, um, Ace Hardware or something like that, that could help us with this? Cause I mean, I keep thinking about, I'm desperate to do something with that little grassy area right behind, um, Ace Hardware. First I wanted to put a dark park there. Now I want to put the ice rink there. Um, because it's right in the town center, it's accessible to ample parking. You know, people will go use our vendor or our town center for hot chocolate. Um, but I was just wondering if, if there could be maybe, maybe not recreation or town owned, but privately owned. And, and we find a way to encourage them on their journey. Yeah. The only issue, one of the issues you would have there is respect, with respect to the light side. Yeah. Because so, so much of this, so, so much of this activity would be done or could be done, you know, after work. Yeah. And so you, in, in the wintertime, as I think Joe mentioned, uh, you know, sun, sun's down by, by, you know, 415. It's getting, getting lighter, lighter now, but you're still in a situation where you definitely would need lights. Guys, I'm sorry, but I, I have to jump to another meeting, but, um, I appreciate you, uh, listening to my comments. And, uh, if anyone has questions or needs any help or, or needs help from the Whale and Hockey Association, uh, just please let me know. We're happy to jump in. Great. Thank you very much, Joe, for your comment. Thanks, Joe. I mean, do we need to research more of what other towns are spending on this? And, or... I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how many, you, you mentioned, you know, Wellesley. It's got something. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Columford had one. Lincoln has one. Um, so I looked at Lincoln's costs and they use $3,500 from their celebrations fund from the recreation department to buy it. And, um, this was a few years ago. And, um, it, it's maintained by volunteers and filled by the fire department. But I, I have no understanding of how you do it, you know, that costs for the fire department to be dropping water by every time. Yeah. I mean, I can call over to some other rec departments and get some ideas on what it's costing then. Yeah. And also if they charge. Yeah. If they charge it. Yeah. I keep thinking that it would be so much better if a private, like the new person, the new company that's going into Whole Foods, could put it there to bolster their winter market. They have ice games sometimes at like shopping centers, like Market Street. I've been shredding. They have an ice game in the middle of like their town. Yeah. But what is our town center, but it's privately operated. I believe it's lit too. It's what? Lit. Oh yeah. Okay. But it's more of like an economic development initiative. I don't think they're charging. Okay. I like putting that to the new owners of town center. Yeah. Or next one. I think that back screen area would be, it's gotta be something. There are lights in the parking lot behind the hardware store. Do you know? There are. Yeah. Like standard parking lot lights there. Yeah. Like that would be great. And you go to 110. Or look, the local. It's right there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I know the economic development committee has been talking to the new owners of town center about these kinds of initiatives at town center, just to boost the economic situation. Right. Both in the winter and in the office. So what do we do now? Just, uh, accumulate more information? Yeah. We could look, I could look at least at what other rec departments are doing. I don't know. Like, I love this idea of like making this a destination for constituent, but that's a big operation and that we need to snap up and do some serious research. I think it's fully outsourced. You just rent the property. There's parties that will do it. Um, cause I, I agree. I think it's too heavy for us to take up. Yeah. I don't know. Like I can't. Okay. Heather, you said rec used to do something with mill pond, but not anymore. Not anymore. Is it like a safety liability thing that the town doesn't endorse per se? Yeah. I think the fire department would kind of give the okay. They would measure the ice. Um, it is hard to get consistent, you know, at least in the 10 years I've been here, mill pond never froze to the level that the fire department needed it to be, to bring the lights up there. Um, and so we were keeping in the budget probably about 10 or 15 grand every year to rent lights and bring them up to mill pond. And we never used that money because it never froze to a safe bet. But ice skating is happening in bodies of water in Wayland. And in the last 10 years, it has happened. Um, but not to the level that the fire department was comfortable giving the thumbs up on. Mm hmm. And I think, yeah, there's a liability there. Yeah. Could this be like a 15 to $20,000 ask to CPC next year? To as a, how far 15 or $20,000? Yes. I don't know. I mean, it could be for like synthetic guys to come in and just get set it up for, you know, a couple of weekends. Um, and it's all weather. Yeah. Well, artificial ice is not. But I think that if some research is done on this and we find out what the costs would be associated with that research, do it. Then I think that if we have, you know, much more information than we could approach the CPC with it, then I think you might get a more positive read from them in terms of supporting. Can we divvy up reaching out to recreation departments? Like, could you tell us what information you'd like us to acquire and we could each take a town and figure that out and compile it for you? That would be fair. If this doesn't fall on you? Yeah. We do have monthly meetings with other rec departments in the Metro West area. And so I can, I can easily reach them and get some information, but, um, yeah, I would definitely welcome. Yeah. I know you, you're the one who knows best how to compute the information received. So I wouldn't want to take that. What specific information we're looking for. But yeah. Who maintains it? Who owns it? How's it? Yeah. How's it insured? Stuff like that. Yeah. Because we're in the middle of this type of situation is something that we would point to doing, you know, next year or the end of this year. All right. I can wonder. All right. Um, I think that wraps up. If there's anything else on, on, on the answer. Okay. Number seven of recreation projects that could be taken on by members of the Scouts of America. Um, I think there are lots of projects that, that, uh, Eagle Scouts and, and other folks do around town. But you think anybody thinking of anything in particular? Kachacho Park storage. Uh, Kachacho Park storage. Well, you had mentioned like boardwalks. Um, and I envision like hike on hiking trails and trail heads. If you know, you're building any kind of entrance way or something like that. Um, but yeah, Kachacho with storage, um, could be a great thing. Um, Greg Chittum, he's on, um, Oxbow road. He's one of the kind of assistant scout leaders right now. And he had reached out, um, to the neighbors, uh, and said there are probably eight to 10, um, scouts that are looking for projects to do for community service hours and such. Well, they always, they always do a great job. I heard. In terms of the, the, the walks. I haven't been to walk. Yeah. They do a terrific job. Yeah. In terms of the, the boardwalks, they, they connect the entrance to, to the trails. Yeah. And they maintain them very well. There's a problem with the bay when they fix them. So that's an area that I'm sure would be applicable. You know, as you mentioned, Mike, in terms of, uh, different, different parks. Mm-hmm. I mean, is it just physical labor? Are there other objectives they're hoping to, like, is it, they want to interact with the community or? I think that could be within scope. Um. Well, I mean, what happens is they get community service. I, I, I, I, schools offer, you know, some type of community service type situation. Yeah. But, but in terms of the scouting, um, their, their, uh, their requirements are that they do some type of community service in the, uh, projects. That either they get, they get, uh, you know, medals or badges or whatever. Yeah. They're successfully completing those, those projects. Okay. So I'm not sure how we pursue that. As you mentioned, uh, your friend on the sort of biological. Yeah. The scouts are specifically looking for projects to undertake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we could help coordinate that, essentially asking the community at large for projects that they see there's a need for, and then pairing them up with the right type of scout to make it happen. We've actually had, um, young people come and speak to us about particular projects that they're interested in doing. Yeah. We had specific locations. Eagle scouts came and did, you know, the, the hot, that town beach was built by one of the Eagle scouts. So it is, I think often we get contacted by scouts going for Eagle or, or what have you. Um, and then people needing projects and it's how, how to marry them, get them, get them at the, or even just the timing. So I, I wonder if we just kept kind of a rolling list of projects that could be undertaken really by any volunteer in the community. Um, and then, you know, I'm sure the scouts have a mechanism for this. Already to, you know, solicit things that need to be done and then assign scouts to them. But I think, but, but I think that might be your point in terms of, if you, when you speak to your neighbor, um, that, that you could, they certainly could come in and make some type of presentation to us. Yeah. And then we would say, yeah, that's a great, we, we would underwrite that, you know, them doing, okay. Build an ice rink. Yeah. Build an ice rink. Yeah. There you go. And maintain it. Yeah. Your career is, is all set and strong. Yeah. What about picnic benches? Like how are we, how are benches at, at the town, um, at the town beach? Like those, or the, um, they've almost all been converted to the metal ones. Um, mostly because the wooden ones end up in the lake. Um. Oh really? Oh. Yeah. Okay. A lot of furniture in that lake. Um, which are pretty low maintenance, but not absent of maintenance. Um, yeah, I, I would say in recent history too, like a lot, like scouts used to come and paint fences and things like that, but they've all been kind of upgraded to maintenance free functions. But like Mark said, potentially, um, storage units that are needed in different places. Our king too needs storage, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Desperately. By the back side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think all, all of these groups need, um, storage solutions at different sites. I think La Crosse was looking for one recently. Has anything happened with the storage stuff over at Petitube? Yeah. Nothing. Or we're, I think we're working with a consultant to move along some of the phases of the bigger plan. I know the CPC didn't approve the most recent requests, but we do still have the money from the last request. Um, what's, what, what's the holdup in terms of the, the backstops? Um, I don't know necessarily what the holdup is. We are moving forward with defining the specifications to put up to bid in the next month. Yeah. Because Tom Bay has sent me a text saying there's been some holdup in terms of the backstops. I think that- Or is not specific in terms of- It, it, it's not clear to me what the holdup was, but we, the wheels are moving as of yesterday. So. Okay. Well, that was, I got, that's when I got the text, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I, I, yeah, I've had folks that were there too. From? Uh, conservation commission? Just ask it once. Okay. Yeah. They have that, they have the, um, trail building under their jurisdiction. Okay. Who would be a good contact? Um. Where? Linda, the- Conservation. Conservation. Yeah. Yeah. She's so fun. She'll look fun, but then you know, Linda Brinson. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's S-E-N I think. Yes. Okay. Um, field updates, uh, field facilities. This is when we're going to talk about the request to use the restroom building, which I think will be a good part of it. I sent in the materials. DPW sent out a release in December, just updating about the progress of Alpine Field. Um, they were kind of regrading new irrigation system there that should be closed this spring, open next fall. Uh, they did some work in the new irrigation system at the High School Girls softball field. The High School Varsity Baseball field will get, uh, some field work this spring, as soon as the- Yeah, that's the problem, because they start very early. Um, Clayton Hill will get irrigation at five and six this spring. Um. Yeah. What was the one before Clayton Hill? Uh, at Alpine Field High School Varsity softball field High School Varsity Baseball field. Um, Pandora's work, have a project to replace the wall pads in the gym. Um, we're doing some repairs to the height adjusters in the gym, done basketball hoops, and working on replacing the floor in our classroom that we have here at Town Building. Um, like I said, we're still working behind the scenes on this pitch to a ballpark, uh, CPC appropriation from last, uh, town meeting, by the skating rinks. Um, we still have some CPC funds to spend at the Town Beach, uh, on the entryway that's going to happen this spring. How much? Um, I don't know what the balance is right now on spending, but we have just a little, uh, like the upgrade, uh, where the trash receptacles are held, some landscaping, and even the funding. Yeah, we, we have plenty. And we, it will actually result in probably a turn back back to the CPC. Um, I think the, the, the, the big part of that project was the new fence that is in front of the Town Beach and the entryway. And those pits came in way lower than we anticipated. So there'll be a turn back there, which is great. And those are some of the projects that we're working on. I sent a little update. It's in my director's report. Um, and then obviously we received these several requests since the last meeting. Um, to open the high school restroom building that was recently built, not recently now, but, uh, as part of the stadium projects. Um, the building is there. It is open during high school activities. I have talked to other rec departments and their facilities operate similarly. Some, some keep it open, some don't. Um, the issue here in Wayland is cost, um, to maintain and open the facility. Um, I think the solution is to talk. If we want to actually open it, then we need to talk, the school committee and the custodians need to work out some kind of agreement with that collective bargaining unit. Um, cause that's what's causing the costs to be so high on it right now. I did calculate to open the restrooms for what we need for youth groups. It's about five or six different youth groups that use that property on the weekends. It'd be about $37,000 a year. Is that for the full year or just for the portion of the season that they're there? So I did it for on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays for about an eight hour day from March 15th to June 30th. And then from August 15th to November 15th. Um, if you do more than that, like weeknights and the whole, all season and summer, it came out to $87,000. So minimally we're at. I'll do it. 37. I was like, where do I have to be a custodian? Um. Is there an open job record? I'm with it. Um, the alternative, so that's, uh, option one is to staff it with a custodian as you would at any school rental. Um, alternatively, with Christine and I already planned to increase the number of portable toilets at Wayland High School and increase the frequency of the service there to, um, change the experience there. Some of the letters you received from the residents were saying it was pretty bad there. Um, one of the issues with the site at the high school is when they company comes to service the units that are at the high school. If there are, if there's a game going on, if there's too many people around, they can't service it. And so they leave. Those ones, it's a very busy property. I would say probably missed a service or two during the week that caused an unpleasant experience for the users. But I think if we are more strategic about where we place them and the frequency that we service them, then it, then it might go away. And the cost of doing that, um, we can absorb with our field account. Um, like if we need to absorb this $37,000 to pay custodians to open that facility on the weekends, we're going to have to increase the user fees that we charge. What are alternative locations? At the high school. Um, so right now there's just two kind of at the base of the stadium. We were thinking that potentially we get some over by the baseball fields. Um, or so the issue is the, the unit has to be within 10 feet of pavement. So it's tough to get them up to wetlands or vented or anywhere like that. So, um, just kind of moving them throughout the property. Could they go to the other side of the ball wall area? If there's pavement. Yeah. Yeah. So we could put us, you know, two over there, two at the base and two somewhere else, and then increase the frequency that we service them. That might get us there for, for no money. Um, but I do understand that the plea is like, we, we just built this building. We pay taxes. Why isn't it open? Yeah. I'm just curious. There's cost. Our inability to, to service the ones that are right next to the turf. Would, would that still be the same situation if we move them to those other locations? It's possible. It's, it's really the timing of when they show up. Um, and I, we don't have a lot of control over it because it's just a contract with a boardroom. It happens at the elementary schools too, but the ones at the elementary schools don't get, uh, quite as much usage. It just can't, it just can't be serviced when students are in what type, like a close proximity. Yeah. I don't know. They don't even go in. They don't. It's a freestanding building. What is it? The restroom. Hmm. It's a portable toilet. Oh yeah. No, no, no. I'm familiar with that concept. I'm thinking that the building is a freestanding. Yeah. It's separate from the concessions. It's cute. Hmm. And yeah, it's open on school day. Like custodians are at the high school full time until 10 o'clock every night. And so those custodians manage it during high school athletic events and they lock it when they leave. And so typically when our youth groups are at the high school, the high school athletics groups are not. Um, and so the building is generally locked when they're there. So it is possible to open it. We just have to pass the charges on to the users and the charges are pretty steep just because of the collective bargaining unit. And we have to have a custodian there while it's open or could we have periods of time where there's no custodian? I think the custodian would have to be, so here's the contract that we're talking about to get a custodian to come open the building and then lock it at the end of the night and clean it. They have a five hour minimum essentially. It's three hours plus two hours travel. Um, and all of the shifts are overtime. Um, so it's about $275 a day at a minimum. And that's the other thing is, so we're talking about a five hour minimum. Youth soccer sometimes has a 90 minute game in the morning at 10 AM and one at 6 PM. And now you're talking about paying 10 hours of custodian services to manage three hours of a soccer game. Yeah. But do we have a heat map of like when our hot times are like, yeah, I would think football, youth football would have like a massive draw, whereas soccer might not. And, and, you know, if you're, if you're servicing the most people, then, then the problem doesn't trickle down. Right. Mary. Um, so we looked at it, I, we did a lot of kind of digging into what the reservations are. Sometimes like youth soccer is there alone. Sometimes when youth football is there, like lacrosse, baseball, and soccer are also on the property. How do you share those costs? Um, and then I think potentially, like we, we have user groups that use the high school property. Like, uh, we have a women's soccer league and they would never, they would just say, we'll just use the port-a-potty. They don't want to pay to, to have the bathrooms open. And so we have to kind of navigate how those costs are shared across the groups. You know, and like, there's multiple fields at Wayland High School. So let's say on a Saturday afternoon, five are you being used by winning new soccer. One is lacrosse and two are baseball. Like how do you split those charges? Unless you just bake it into the user piece. Could you add a surcharge like you do for lighting? We could, it would be very, very complicated. I mean, it's possible. I mean, it is possible, but it's a lot of work. Um, my recommendation would be just for the spring season to try that. Increase of the port-a-potties and the frequency. And then we can potentially talk to whoever negotiates the custodial contract. If there's a way around it, but I suspect they're not interested in getting paid less to do what they're doing. I like that idea. And add a couple, um, to test it out and increase the frequency. And can we build something in to our agreement with whoever the vendor is in terms of like, you have to do X number of times or else we get to hold back. Because they know when people are going to be there generally, you know? Well, that's the tough part about it, especially at the schools, is there's always somebody there. And so it is hard to get in and service. It's especially like, you know, by the time they get to the schools, it's the middle of the day and recess is happening. And it's like, you know, DPW has the same problem with trying to work on site at schools during the school day. A lot of times they try to get in before school opens, but it's hard to do at all the different locations that we have. So, yeah, we could, we can talk to the vendor. And I think I've asked this and you've answered it, but the high school, the high school bathrooms that that building is open while practice is going. So the high schoolers are using that one and not going to the port-a-potties instead during times when it's supposed to be used. It's supposed to be available. You mean the bathrooms inside the building? Outside the building? No, outside the standalone. The restroom building. The restroom building. Yeah. Like that is certainly unlocked and used for high school, high school athletics while it's supposed to be. But the school building is typically open too. So I don't know. People have preferences. They have locker rooms and things like that. So I think they have lots of options when high school athletics is going on. Not so much. And even like when we have, we have soccer games here at this town building soccer field all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and they don't have access to this building. They use the port party. That's it. But are we not just talking about, this is a lot of conversation about this topic, but it is very nice. I'm going to tell myself what my adult life. I spend time with four books. I'm sorry. I know. So are we not just talking about Saturday and Sunday? So the high school athletics uses their property until 7 p.m. every single night, and then the youth groups use it from 7 to 10 every night. But custodian services are at the school until 10 p.m. every day. Right. Yes. And I talked to the school department at length about this, and I got two different answers. One was that we had to pay custodians from 7 to 10 separately because it's considered a private rental, according to the custodial contract. But then another person in the department told me that probably not, that we could get away with not factoring in weeknights. And so my $37,000 is not factor in the 7 to 10 p.m. timeframe on weeknights. It's just Saturdays and Sundays. It's just Saturdays and Sundays. It's about an eight-hour day on Saturday and Sunday, which doesn't even cover all of our uses because we go from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. essentially. But those eight hours, because of the travel time and the overtime are paid, it's a 10-hour day, and on Sundays it's $730 a day. And there's about five major groups that we're talking about here that would share these costs. It's youth soccer, youth football, league, lacrosse. So we are just talking about two days a week and 37,000 hours. What about just Saturdays? With that number, it would more than half because of the double time factor on Sundays. Right. I think more, like you said, I think the biggest benefactor of having those open would be youth football just because of the length of time that they're there. Like I said, like soccer games are typically not committed in two hours. They're there for a six-hour period, and it's usually the same people that are there. And they're the ones that would have to pay the most because they rent on Sunday. And then we're going to have an issue where people, groups, are all competing to get everything in on Saturday because it's more portable. Like we have this problem with the lights on the fields. People want to rent the fields before the sun goes down because it's cheaper than waiting until the lights come on. And so it's almost like people are getting taxed by, you know, trying to run their program on the way that they need. I personally would think that it would be, it would just be logical that if the concessions were open, the restrooms would be open. I thought about this too. And I, you know, like the boosters run the concession stand and they have a key. So I'm like, can we just get a group of volunteers to do it? The difference is that the people who have access to actually enter the building, like we know who they are and we know when they're going to be there. And we don't have that same ability to know who's using the bathroom. Like if the door is unlocked, anybody, if we actually had somebody living in the concessions well park bathrooms at one point. So it's like, if they're open to the public. I didn't think you'd talk about that. It was a tough time. It was the chills. So, you know what I mean? Like, if the door's open, anybody's going to go in there and use the bathroom. If the doors are open to the concession stand, just the workers will run in the kitchen. So it is a little different. And you wouldn't believe what happened with these buildings. It's not this. Everybody's nice and normal and uses it like it's the bathroom in their house. Is there a benefit to boosters and that concessions building to having custodians or facilities available to them during that time too? I don't know. I think like at least we have a similar concessions at the beach and our staff, like our kitchen staff are the ones who are mainly like keep it clean and, you know, to the food service conditions. I don't know that like ours don't need custodial support really. Is the decision. Well, I'm sorry. I just keep talking. Is the decision really the school committee's decision? And we're just here to mull it over. Yeah. Well, the request came to us. And I think the re the answer is the reason why we don't use those bathrooms is because we can't afford the fees that we take to pay a custodian. And I don't personally know if it's worth it when we have portable toilets available. I personally would prefer a restroom building over a portable toilet, but not at $37,000 a year. But again, like it's not my building and I don't have any control over the people who manage the school property. I'd really be interested to know what just the Saturday figure is because I feel like that is still a lot of bodies. And then, and then, and then, you know, the porta potties on Sunday wouldn't be as bad. And like the Saturdays there, there are a lot of bodies sometimes like, you know, in that 11 to one timeframe, there's a lot of, and then there's kind of a break in the day and then back six to eight o'clock at night. And so it's like, do you staff it from eight in the morning to eight o'clock at night? Do you have a break in the day? But at some point, some user group who is potentially paying for this isn't going to have access to the bathrooms unless you just staff it all the way through. But there is the benefit of sharing the cost with the other groups. Like if the big five youth groups all paid. I think what I calculated is that we would have to increase the user fees. Right now, all these groups paid $40 a player. It would have to be $50 a player in order to make this happen. But then like, what do you do? What other, the adult groups are going to benefit from this and are essentially paying unless we bank it into the adult fees as well. Most other rentals at the William of High School on the weekends were kind of one-offs like events or tournaments or, you know, private clubs would come in sporadically. Women's soccer games and men's soccer games would be sporadic too. And so you said, did you say the per day cost was $275 for a Saturday? Ah, Saturday... Nope, it was $550. That must be like $700. No, it's a 10 hour day. 10 hours per hour. Still in? Still just trying to understand. You can move out of that. Right.
That two hour travel time is amazing. Right, the five hour minimum is a lot. But like I said, these custodians have full-time jobs within the school building. And so all of these shifts would be above and beyond what they normally do. I did ask if they thought they would have trouble filling these shifts and they said they wouldn't. Obviously. And then I asked if I did. Yes, no, that is it. It's a weird kind of whistling. Yeah, that's weird. That's a weird conversation. Yeah. Well, it's not at all like they are overpaid. Their base rate on their normal 40 hour of the week is not exorbitant. It's the extras. Yeah. The extra shifts. So I think that we should try the port-a-party route for the spring and see how it goes. Right. Unless we think that the user groups are going to be willing to pay for this. How difficult is like an adult on that? Okay, football, if you want this to be open, here's the charge. No, we could absolutely do that. I think administratively, it's a little tedious because like the, you know, the group will say on this Sunday, we want to open them up. Some of this, we might not, depending on like who they're playing and what they're doing. Um, we could do it like, like we do charge the lights, but it's an, it's administratively it's. Would it be easier if you just said start of the year, you let me know. Like you can't call me up in April and say, I need it this Saturday. Right. But if you tell me, Hey, we're putting in our applications for these dates and we want. Then that's the charge. Yeah. We could do it that way. Um, there is no opportunity for savings. Like we do that with the lights and the light schedule changes every day. The field schedule changes every day, like in terms of pickup games or, you know, what have you. And we get it all the time. People book, we book the lights, we turn them on, we schedule them and they say, Oh, it's raining tonight. We shut off the lights. Um, which is fine. It's usually after hours work for us. You know, we're getting text messages at 10 PM about lights. Yeah. Um, it's not, it's not impossible to do it that way. And I think, you know, the add on for one group would open the restrooms for everybody that's there. So you football is going to pay and there's five other groups out there. You just, I mean, you just got to wear that. Like it, it just, unfortunately, I mean, if you. So what youth group is the first one that's going to be like, okay, we'll pay to open the bathrooms on Saturday morning. Could, could we do like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a, just a fall. Saturday. Trial. Yeah. I mean, I just. Or spring. The spring work. I was just, cause I, I don't know, you guys probably know the numbers better than I do, but I just keep thinking those football brings in so many more people, so many more kids and parents and concessions that, um, they're the one, they're the biggest users. So, so just where, you know, we're going to have a hundred people per event on, on their events, but you go to soccer, there's 50, you know, I'm just wondering like where, where, what days do we have the most people there? Sunday. It's eight to two. Yeah. All the time. Sunday. And what we were looking at, it looked like football and Little League generally were never there alone so that they would potentially share the costs in ways most often when they were there, they were there alone. So like the six to eight times a lot. And so if they want the bathrooms over six to eight on a weekend, they're paying the full fee opposed to sharing it with another group. Little League, they're using the softball field or the baseball. Softball, baseball, and JB. Spring, summer, and fall. They have three seasons where like the cross only has one season. So how do you balance how you, you know, it'd have to be kind of careful assessment on how the charges get distributed because like, like I said, Little League's playing for three seasons in lacrosse and field hockey with one. And so do they pay the same share? Yeah. Yeah. It's a similar obligated process just to determine the field fees, you know? So it's like, to me, I think it would make the most sense just to bake in our costs into our field fees. Mm-hmm. The same way we do right now with the port-a-potties and the irrigation charges and all the other costs that go into the field account. Yeah. But water's going up 28%, which is like I said, between 30 and 50, depending on the weather, another that we have to eat in a revolving account. And now this would be another 30,000. So at some point we'd have to look at raising the user fees. Mm-hmm. The water charge was expected. And so when we recently went through the process of setting the fees, it was with that charge in mind. I kind of want to send it to the users and see if they would be, if they are eager to pay to have that open or not. Otherwise I think more portable toilets, but I also just still worry they won't be able to dump them. And what they do is they just add more solvent or whatever air freshener to it. And it's just, it's just Stephen smelling. It was bad. It was embarrassing. It was bad. Yeah. We saw pictures. Just at that site, like all of our other sites generally get serviced pretty regularly and we don't get complaints about them, but that one was bad. Yeah. Could we put two up by the parking lot and then two down? Yeah. Spreading them out and increasing the frequency, I think. We can have them serviced up to three times a week. Which would be, they don't do weekends, so Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Sunday is still going to be smelly. Yeah. I think we could put it out to the user group. If there's been a request to open up the restrooms on Saturdays, this is what it's going to cost. And based on like whatever your permit is, if it's a five hour permit, this is what the cost that you're going to pay or share it or not. But I know most ways in La Crosse specifically have come to us in recent years and asking for a break on the user fee. So I don't think there's an appetite for it to go up. There's no breaks anymore. Yeah. And I missed the email. Was it football then? Is there an email then? A representative from youth football requested and a woman from the boosters requested it. I mean, those are the two requests we received in writing, but we've heard before that people are like, why aren't those buildings open? Yeah. Well, for rec, do we want to do an increase in the portable facilities and increase the frequency for the spring and then take the temperature or the fall season on potentially increasing fees? I think that was the problem. I do. We could see after the spring season. Yeah. The problem then. Is it, did that help? Did it not? Because I guess fall is probably the busiest, right? I was going to say, I think spring, you're probably going to be fine because football's not out there in spring, are they? Yeah. No. And field hockey's not there either. Yeah. The spring is, yeah, it's soccer, literally, and lacrosse that are used in the field. Apart from the high school. Yeah. And to your point, all those users are in and out and they're lower density. This problem that we had that people are referring to was in the fall line. And it wasn't just normal usage. It was done intentionally. It was. Okay. Yeah. There was like some kind of vandalism that is happening at these portables. Yeah. According to the people who are servicing it, for which we are indebted. Oh, that's the rabbit hole I don't want to go further down. Yeah. Nobody was living this. Well, that's. Okay. But so if we were to consider the restroom building on in the fall only, that, I mean, that would reduce the cost. I mean, but still apply it to those user groups. But it, we'd be looking at, you know, 17,000 annually instead of 33. Yeah. 18. Yeah. So yeah, we could spread it across the five or six groups that are going to be there. So we spent a lot of time on this. Should we just hold up the idea for the spring and then have these conversations as we think about the fall? Yes. Because I don't think we're going to have a problem with the spring. Would we agree you're probably not going to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe, maybe we need to consider moving them to a, or asking if there's a more serviceable area. Yeah. For the current one. Yeah. And we can work with the athletic director too, to figure out where. So that. And sorry for spending so much time on it. It is a shame that we have the building there. And that we had those problems. Right. Right. It's crazy. It is. Yeah. Most towns that are in the same boat though, that they're only open during school bunkers. Yeah. This building too, but it's long for the weekends. Yeah. It's the people's building. Oh, it's the people's house. It's freezing. Jeez. Okay. Well. Oh. You are over there. I am. So, what we got left? I submitted my director's report in writing, which I'm sure you all read off by now. So, we could just skip that one. Good. Okay. We have to schedule our next meeting. What works for people in terms of, is it, is 1030 still? Okay. So, 1030. And what do we got for dates? Catherine, is there anything that we need to be? Are we looking at February? There is a February school vacation in the week of the 16th, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm probably going to be on vacation the week to ask. Oh, jeez. I booked it the week before that, but I've already had to cancel this month. You're going to Aruba? No. I'm going to Denham. Oh, you're going to Denham? Oh. Maybe. I'm just not coming here. I'm just not coming here. Yeah. This is going to be a vacation. You're not coming here at all? I'm going to try. I've got to burn some vacation days before it's done. We don't take vacation on the summer. Well, it's done. From like April 15th to October 15th. Right. When I don't take them. So I've got to squeeze on on vacation. All right. So what are we looking at? First week of March? Yeah. So it's not Thursday. Hmm? It's not Thursday. It's not Thursday. My Thursday doesn't work. I will Friday. Friday work. Friday doesn't. What's the first Friday? So doesn't Jeff Bergeron have trouble with Fridays? No. I think that's right. We do Tuesday or Wednesday. Do we do Tuesday? The 3rd? Is that too early from your return? I think Asia can do Tuesdays. Tuesday. I can't do it. No, I can't do it at 10. 10. 10. I have a scheduled appointment every week at 10. Wednesday, March 4th? Works for me. 10 a.m. or 10.30? Either one works. Forget no matter what. So you want to do 10? I like 10. 10 in March 4th. And for agenda items, we're going to put the restroom issue back on the agenda. Revisit that with the information we've been given from other groups. Yep. From the groups. And then also ice skating rinks from other towns. Yep. And potentially, if we get more information from the select board about naming parks, we'll have some more information from the group group then. Correct. Anything else? Should be on the item. We have time. Yep. Motion to adjourn. Motion approved. Second? Second. All in favor? We're good. We're good. We're good. We're good.
First public comment, then minutes. Review and approved minutes if available for December 3rd, 2025. Commissioner announcements, reports, concerns. A, general announcements. E, Route 20, the Landfill Visioning Committee. C, Community Preservation Committee. Number five is a park naming policy discussion and develop a park naming policy review and vote to approve new sign proposed for baseball field at Riverview Ave. Number six is ice rinks. Discuss requests to install ice rink skating, ice skating rink, including not limited to plumbing, operating, and staffing. Number seven is recreation projects that could be taken on by the members of the Scouts of America. Number eight, field updates. Discuss fields and facilities, including but not limited to the use of Waylon High School restroom building. Number nine, recreation director's winter report. Number 10, schedule the next meeting date and potential agenda items. Number 11, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. Forty hours in advance of the meeting, if any. And number 12, June. And we will have a hard stop, I believe, by noontime. Is that right? Is that okay? Some people believe it 20 out of them, I think. I believe it. At 11.40? Yeah. Let's see if we can have a hard stop at 11.40.
Okay. Do we have any public comment?
Either on here or here? No, since not recently, it's been around. I don't know the name. Yeah, Joe. We did receive a letter, a comment, from youthful ball last night, which I forwarded to you all. I mean, I don't necessarily know if that's public comment or if that's part of an agenda item. Well, let's see. Okay. It's on the agenda. We could just address that when it comes up. Okay. So, no public comment. Minutes? Review?
I think I was absent at the last meeting. I don't know. Who else? Yeah. I don't have minutes. You do not have minutes, so we will pass that one over. Number four is commission announcements, reports, and concerns, general announcements.
No general. No general announcements. Okay. Route 20 landfill visioning committee. It's advancing. Did you have a meeting last night? We did not. You did not? No. So, there's going to be two meetings in February. We are, there's going to be a public forum, and then I believe a follow-up meeting of the committee. Do you know what the public forum is? Tuesday, February 17th at 6 p.m. I emailed you against him. February 16th? Yeah. That's correct. 6 p.m. Catherine. 6 p.m. I got a text from Tom. Yeah. But I, but talking about a meeting, but I don't think there was a date attached, but that is, that's from. That must be, and we can catch up on this later. I'm actually flying back that day. Okay. So, I may, if I could make it, it's calling in from the gate. Okay. So, I might need help for that. Okay. Let me know. It comes with that situation. And when is the, what is the other? Did we post it yet? I think it's like the 24th. I don't think they've posted it yet. So, the, the forum on the 17th, the consultant is going to present to the community and to the board, the options, I think. And then, then the board posted another meeting to discuss that. Yeah. Okay. But that's after the forum. Okay. And so, that's the process. And like, I think our objective is to wrap up the decision and recommendation in February. Okay. I think there's a hard date that we need to perform that. Okay. Do you have any, any, any insight in terms of where, where, we are currently headed? Yeah. Yeah.
There was discussion about the dog park, discussion about fields, discussion about bus parking.
So, it's, the consultants can provide, you know, how much can we pack into the envelope? Um, and how much can we get as a community out of that? Um, I believe solar may have been discussed as well. So, that's what the, what was that? Solar. Okay. I think it, uh, over parking. Okay. I was going to get here, ahead here. Yeah. Okay. So, all of that, I think, is on the table. That'll be presented. And that's where we'll review. Um, because at this point, it was difficult just to, there's so many different competing factors for the space. Uh, I do think that the most practical use is fields. And I, I think that's, um, going to be a component of the final design. Okay. But we'll, we'll see after the. There's no housing in this current proposal. I think it's, we looked really hard at that. Um, and I know prior to my involvement, um, you know, that was the focus. I think just with the soils, it's prohibitive. Um, so. You know, you know that. Um, yeah, cause it's an old, yeah. It's an old. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, so that's what all the study has been about is the quality of the soils and the ability to do housing there. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, community preservation committee. Yep. Um, so we have wrapped up for the year and, um, we're just finalizing for the town, uh, meeting. Um, we did not. Have a lot of recreation items. Um, a lot of them were, were trail heads and signage and, um, repairing, uh, boardwalks. And, uh, the biggest project that somewhat falls into recreation is the, uh, a very large span project surrounding Dudley Pond, um, where they're looking to expand trail access and, um, improve the water quality, kind of understand the limitations and problems within the area and then see how best to use it. Um, this is through, um, this is through, I believe the town engineer. Um, and so, um, that seems exciting and something to look forward to, uh, hearing more about. Um, one of the, uh, one of our unsuccessful bids was, um, because, was the constituent ballpark and they, um, I'll talk with that committee later about how they were kind of confused with how the numbers matched up and, um, how, you know, prior expenditures and prior promises didn't quite match up to the, uh, uh, list they were looking at and, um, uh, you know, there were a lot of hopes at the end of the meeting that, um, the next year would be the one that they can resolve those issues and, and perhaps have a larger kitty to, to, to deal with. So, will that, will this be a topic of discussion with number eight? Till news updates and... Um, not really. Okay. Um, okay. Um, would, would pilots also be part of the, the, uh, recreation projects that could be taken on by members of, of, uh, Scouts of America or some other volunteer?
Um, I think that could be really interesting, um, for, for the, a few of them, um, perhaps Dudley Pond, perhaps the Boardwalk project. Um, there's a couple of them, one, um, over by York Road and one, uh, it's called the Conservation Properties Boardwalks. Um, there's one they're planning at Hamlin Woods Trail and, uh, they expanded it to also include York, uh, Road. So, um, so that's, um, the Hamlin Woods Road Trail is at 80 Rice Road. Um, and there, there's other interesting opportunities that, that I think would have to liaise with conservation, um, you know, removing, uh, invasive, you know, purple loose strife at Cow Common. Um, and then also those types of projects are sometimes, uh, with historical, just for, uh, any digging purposes could, could, um, found something particularly interesting. So, okay. Okay. Okay. Um, so we'll move on to number five, which is the park naming policy, discuss and develop a park naming policy review and vote to approve new sign proposed, uh, for the baseball field on Riverview Ave. Um, you, Leslie, you would send out the park naming policy, uh, discuss and some research with. Yeah. Is this my attachment or is this yours? No, that's mine. Okay. I also included kind of a framework to help lead the discussion through that policy. Great. Behind the policy. Yeah. Yeah. So what I had done is I had, um, uh, you know, what, what's the phrase? Um, uh, but, but it ends with genius steals. So I've stolen this from other recreation departments, um, and around the country really actually. Um, and I have added everything that I thought was relevant for discussion here and, and was, and I added more than we needed in the hopes that we could cross things off. Um, and, and then also added some things that maybe didn't necessarily apply just for, you know, just to make sure we were totally understanding what sort of situations came up in other districts. Yeah. So, so that is what, what that is. Um, I don't know how we, how do we do this? Well, we, my assumption here is that we can set a, a quote unquote policy that, that we would recommend the town fall. However, the final determination regarding the naming of a field, uh, probably lies with a selection. So that's, I think that's, what's up for discussion. I think that our policy needs to determine where, who has authority and where they can implement it. Because there are properties that are strictly recreation properties, say like constituent ballpark. And then there's some, you know, a lot of our rec facilities are on school property or shared property. Uh, Alpine is technically a school property. So I think that, and then who has the authority? Is it this board that renames the field? Is it the select board? Is it town meeting? Um, I think there's a lot of layers to it and it depends on the property. And so I think that one of the things that we need to talk about as you build this policy is. You know, the, the request process. So how does somebody who wants to rename a site in Wayland, where do they start? Do they fill out an application that goes to this board? What are the criteria? Um, you know, we can set the parameters, but I think we first have to figure out like why and how and where it gets done. Um, and then you start getting into the nitty gritty of like the criteria of the, the name. You know, if it's a, like a corporation or a business, is it, there's copyright or trademark implications. There's all kinds of layers to it. And each element of building this policy has its own set of. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I wonder if historically we could go back and look how our King field was, was renamed in honor of our King. Now I was engaged with that. I mean, he was, I grew up with him and he, you know, we're best friends, best men in each other's weddings and all that stuff. Um, and the, the field was actually named Busick Field. And the reason it was named Busick Field was because Johnny Busick, who was a, people know he was a, you know, one of the all time great Bruins players. Johnny Busick never set foot on this property and it was named because, because I think my recollection is correct. He was the primary source of funding for it. So it was named Busick Field. So when Art died, um, there was a, uh, some interest in renaming the field for, in honor of Art King, because he had been, um, very much involved with oil and recreation for a number of years. So, and, you know, I was serving on the commission at the time and, and so, um, I was the one who was, was behind the spearhead of that, that whole time. And I, but I can't recall all of the ins and outs of, of how that actually happened, but there was no, there was no pushback in terms of, of anybody, as far as, as renaming Busick Field, who, you know, Johnny Busick, uh, was the funding source. But other than that, I don't even know if he ever saw it. Was the field being revamped at that point? No, no. Was there like a, there was no new signage being added? Well, yeah, well, yes, there was, because there was a signage, there was, there was a sign that it still exists today, you know, naming the field Art King, or after Art King. But, um, in terms of, of renovations of the field at the time, my recollection is there were nothing, there was nothing that was, there was nothing that was going on at the field other than adding signage to it and officially renaming it. So I think a great place to start is the where. And so the question about Art King, who's the owner of Art King? Is that Recreations? Yes. It is? Okay. Yeah. So I think that's an easy baseline for us to establish. Like we shouldn't be renaming schools, or school fields. Um, like, well, I would agree with that. Yeah, we have a, I think, yeah, I think it'd probably be a significant amount of pushback from the school committee. That's my guess, I don't know. Yeah. Can I ask a question on there? So then, potentially the Rec Commission would have a naming policy for recreation properties and the school department or other departments in this town would have different policies related to name, like conservation has properties, or DPW has properties, that each entity will have their own process for naming? Or is it like a recommendation to the select board that says this is how we think it should work for all properties? See, my opinion on that is that, ultimately, it would be nice if everybody had his or her own or their or their own policies. However, that, as rare as this occurs, it's still, it's still, you're still in a situation where you'd like to have an overall policy that, that, ultimately, one entity would be responsible for the final decision. Mm-hmm. And I think the final decision would be with a select board. That, that would be, because, yeah, if you, if, you know, if it's going to be a school that's going to do it, it's going to be recreation that does it, it's going to be conservation that does it, whatever. I think you might wind up with a situation where there are, there may not be agreement from all, all different parties. And so you get into a situation where it becomes rather unwieldy, although, as I said, it's not something that's done on a regular basis. Yeah. Same with the different elements related to naming of other, like, how the schools are named, how the, like, conservation areas are named, and how that would be different from recreation properties. Yeah. I mean, I don't, as, as, as, as, as, as this, as this, as this risen, uh, as, as anybody aware of this, um, issue being, being, uh, up front in terms of, of other properties? That aren't recreation properties? Yeah. I think so. I think that, like, in my time here, we probably get a request about once a year, potentially, to rename properties. And I know that it does happen for other departments, conservation areas. I think they did rename the DPW building when they built it after the former DPW director, is that right? So, I think there are entities in this town that have names that have been bestowed on them by the people of Wayland. Um. But has it been done by, has it been done by a, a, a, uh, a certain commission? I don't think there's a formal process in any department, honestly, or any board or commission. So, that's, the question is, do, do we just focus on REC and make a REC policy for REC properties? Or is it a bigger issue that goes beyond that? Yeah. And there are a lot of shared properties. And ultimately, is it the select board's responsibility, which I don't, I don't know of any written policy anyway that says it's the select board's responsibility. I don't know, I know there are sign signage bylaws about, you know, how and where you can place signs in this town. There's, you know, historic districts that dictate some of the signage too. And I know naming of a location is more than just a sign, but then there's also costs associated with renaming a field too. So, I think we have to think about all those things as we put together policy. Do we know if school or DPW have a policy? Not that I'm aware of. The school, I believe, I have never seen it, but I've heard that the schools have a policy about not naming buildings after people. Oh. Which is a common element to naming policies in other towns when you make a living, especially living people. So, I don't think that they do currently. But does that extend to fields that the school owns or schools own? I don't think so. I think it's specific to buildings. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I know of any school fields that are named. I don't think there are. Most of them are named after the road that they're on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Albine. Yeah. Should we, should we bring this to the select board before we spend too much time on it? Maybe ask them their opinion if they want to have full control or to pass it down? It could be worth it. It could be worth it. Yeah. And then, because, you know, maybe they'll want to take this up on their own and create their own form. And this is what they're all about. Yeah. Well, if that is the case, then I think the first step would be for us to super the liaison. And we look forward for us from the select board and pursue that. Then if we get some guidelines from the select board, then we can go about the fact of initiating our loan costs, if that's the direction that they would like us to go. And then the other thing is, how do you address properties that have already been named? Like, are those locked in for eternity? Or, like, at what point can you rename a field after the abusive source? You know what I mean? Like, take a name off of it. Yeah. I think that was kind of a, sort of a no-brainer in that. The field was named after someone who had literally nothing to do with other than writing a check. Yeah. So the other elements of this agenda item is that the Schwartz family has made a request to change the existing Eric Schwartz ball field sign at the field at Riverview. And so they've sent an iteration of what they would like it to look like and are looking for approval on that. And so I don't think that we need to wait for a new naming policy in order to allow them to change an existing sign that already has the name on it. Oh, no. I completely do that. As long as the sign that they're proposing meets with the rules and, quote-unquote, rules and regulations that the town has already... Yeah. It's not widely different than what's there now. And I sent, and my 9 o'clock email had... Actually, yeah, my email this week had what they are for approval on. There's two different versions. Yeah. Do they bear the expense of that change? They are willing to. Yeah. Interesting. Isn't that right? Yes. Yeah. So, are they looking to us to approve the design? At this point, with the lack of a policy, I recommended that this board just look at it and approve it. I agree. Apart from... That's what... When the first sign went up, it went before the speech. And so, I think it only makes sense to have it with the lack of a policy and that's how it happened before to keep going that way. Yeah. I assume that they would want to have this done in the spring. Yeah. Yeah. I would have... I personally would have no problem with us, you know, voting to... If... If... Voting on us. Whether we approve it or not, that's not a story. Sally, question. Do we have, like, a database of photos of our signs? Like, do we know... Is there a standard? There's not really a standard. In the last probably 10 years, I've tried to standardize some of the signs with some of the other properties in Wayland, like North Cemetery right here. It just says North Cemetery and it has the town seal on a white board, which is how most of the signs are. That's kind of one type of sign. There's another sign that's usually... You see it at a local in Oxbow. It's on brown with white text engraved into the wood. Similar, like a normal kind of state park kind of looking sign. There was a committee back in the pre-pandemic. There were some grant funds set aside to, like, standardize the signs all across Wayland. And I don't think anything ever happened with that. Or there just wasn't a consensus on what those signs would look like. So, no. Right now, we have signs at all of our parks and they are all very different. The school's a different job. Like, Wayland High School and Vail School signs look different from the elementary schools. Library's different. So, will we look at this image next time? I can jaunt around town and make my pictures of the ballpark. I can send you the ones that we have. Like, I do have pictures of a lot of our properties. Some have no signs at all. I don't think it's just a ballpark. Is it a label? It's not. Town Building Field, doesn't it? And as our king, but not Town Building Field. I don't think. Oxford's different. Oxford, yeah. Loker's different. They're all different. And we looked at this about standardizing all the signs at, at least recreation properties. It's pretty expensive when we take. Yeah. So, we could work it into a capital plan if that is something we wish to do in the future. But in terms of voting on this, but also from the Schwartz sign, I think. Yeah. I would recommend we just go for it. They're pretty much just swimming on the sign. Yeah. So, would someone make a motion to go forward with the Schwartz? Shouldn't we have to see it? Right. Is it in here? Oh, I sent it. I'm looking at it. I think it's my email. Let's see. You sent it. I sent two emails with documents. Yeah. Did they have a preference for it? Oh, yeah. And then you forwarded it at 858. At least that's the one I'm looking at. It has some pictures of an attachment with signage. Yes. So, is the Riverview ball field sign there now? No. That was the original. And that got replaced. It got replaced with the one that you see in the second there, which has the Little League logo, and it says Eric Schwartz ball field. And it's wearing down a little bit. Yeah. And then they want to replace it with kind of a more substantial post sign. I think the difference between the two images they sent is the materials used. Okay. And it's a little bigger. It's 60 inches by 30 inches. Is this in the document titled Packet 2? Yep. Agenda recognition? Yep. I'm just trying to bring it up. I tried to have the ability to show things on the screen, but we're still working on that from an IT standpoint. We'll have a share screen. Let's open. There you go. Two of them are connected to that screen. So, they're looking for this. Yep. That's the one. Thank you. That's the one they want? Yes. The difference between the two images. The sign is the same. I think the materials used to build the sign is the difference. One is... I don't know the difference. What is the difference? What is the difference? What is the difference? I guess this is... Single sided one inch PVC with faux carved applied print. The other one is single sided and quarter. Who's the first one? One inch PVC. Versus quarter inch ACM. And the posts are the same either way. What are the posts made though? BBC sleeves and caps. PT post. Yeah, it's a marked improvement. And the previous sign was... They took the standard town white sign with the... And they just affixed a new sign to the existing posts. Which are similar to the posts that would hold like a handicap parking sign. They're just like the metal sleeves. Oh, okay. Yeah. So nothing fancy. And so I think they're looking just to upgrade it. Yeah. To a more substantial sign. Is that W in the prior one a antiqued kind of font? Yeah. Okay. So it's not like... It's not worn out. That's by design. That's Little Leeds logo. And they're removing the town of Wayland emblem and the recreation emblem? Or is that... It looks like they are. Okay. Are they opposed to including? I have not asked that question, but we can ask that question. If you think there's room for it on here somehow. And how much they add? Yeah. Do you think that you want to play? No, I've looked at it before. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't look like it doesn't look like there's a lot of room to add anything else to that particular sign. Yeah. Unless they shrunk the font, but I don't know. You're right. What does it add? Yeah. I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't... I wouldn't... Yeah. Does recreation want branding on there? Not necessarily. I mean, I think, you know, when I think about other cities and towns, it usually says, like, the town of Wayland or the record department on the side. I think that as we go through this process and determine some sense of uniformity, that potentially that would be included. I mean, it does kind of tell you, like, under whose jurisdiction. Yeah. And who to contact, but... Yeah. But I do think that the town ceiling and the town ceiling... Yeah. Do you want branding on there? Not necessarily. I mean, I think, you know, when I think about other cities and towns, it usually says, like, the town of Wayland or the record department on the side. I think that as we go through this process and determine some sense of uniformity, that potentially that would be included. I mean, it does kind of tell you, like, under whose jurisdiction and who to contact, but... And I do think the town ceiling and the record department logo is maybe redundant, that we could just use one or the other. Yeah. Well, I forget whether... Like not working? But yeah, I agree. I don't think you can see it. I don't know if you can see it. I don't know if you can see it in that place. It's bringing in vernacular. I... Well, you can't see it this way. It was not competition, no, we didn't. You're a little weak. Yeah. So, is there a consensus here that we would want to include that? I think it would be nice to include one or the other. Maybe they could shimmy the words left or right and put it in the home of Wayland baseball and then put the either town of Wayland insignia or the recreation insignia. But I don't think it would clash. I would just take a look at this sign because if this sign doesn't have it, then you could... The argument could be made well. You allowed that sign to be put up without it. Yeah. So it's a requirement now. Why wasn't it a requirement then? Yeah. Well, there's just text. It says, Arcane Memorial Field. Similar signposts, similar texts. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. I would say... I would say probably the way this... And if someone else, you know, another sign was to be made by someone else, rename the field, and they wanted to include it, include it. But, you know, it's not a quote-unquote requirement. So, I would proceed. All right. Motion to approve the sign proposed by the Schwartz panel, whatever you could give. Yeah. And if... Do we... Do we then allow them to make the determination in terms of which one they want? They can choose either the one inch or the... What was the thickness of the other one? A quarter inch? A quarter inch? Yeah. So... Yeah. Motion to approve... Either version A or version B. Yeah. As presented. Second. All those in favor? Four, zero, zero. Okay. Okay. And the next step on building this naming policy is to consult with the select board liaison and how she... Yep. Yep. Okay. Are you going to consult or ASA or somebody? Generally, I think it's the board to the select board member. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay. And it's done? Yeah. I can call that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Number six. Ice Rink. Assess request to install ice rinks. I'm speaking of concluding, but not limited to swimming, operating, staffing, blah, blah, blah. Do, do any of us recall previous ice rink situations in the town or whatever? I am too young. I'm too young. I'm too young. You're fine. And the issue we're going to run into is one with the DPW. I think the DPW is not favorably disposed to erecting or maintaining this. And one of the reasons for it is to look outside. And the second reason for it is when the ground, if the ground is not frozen, an ice rink doesn't work because until the ground is thoroughly frozen, you will get no ice. It will last any good thing. So you can go through an enormous expense in terms of trying to erect the rink. Because we've had it. We had it for a couple of years. We had it. We had ice rinks. Before my time here. So in the last 10 years, we haven't offered ice skating in Whiteland. There was a period of time before I started here that we were offered it at Mill Pond. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. But an artificial rink. Oh. So, yeah. They did one here in town. They didn't remember that. She's been here longer than me. There was one here, too. It was problematic for DPW. They cite a number of reasons why it is problematic. I do as other towns do it. But in terms of maintenance and labor and materials and storage and security. And water. And water. And water. In this town. It's also an issue. I sent a note from the finance director who told us that this year our water charges are going up at least 28%. Um, and so we would be responsible to pay for the water in the ice rink. Um, but also that's where the irrigation for all fields across the board. It's probably like a $40,000 to $50,000 increase for us. Um, so we do have to think about that. I think for the ice rinks, there are other areas in Wayland currently right now that are frozen that people are using to achieve the skating experience at Mill Pond, at Dudley Pond, at Herb Pond, even Lake Achichuit. Um, but this is the first year in the 10 years that the ice has frozen to a level that I think the town would endorse public skating on. Um, that's not to say it won't happen, you know, every year for the next 10 years, but it is, the REC Department will struggle with this because it takes a lot of resources and the outcomes are pretty unpredictable. Um, very much so. You just look at it, look at the situation we're in now. If we had an ice rink right now, the weather would have been perfectly fine in terms of, uh, in terms of the temperature to support it. However, how are you going to get, how are you going to get two feet of snow off an ice rink? And alternatively, back in 2019, every year we get a few requests from residents, to bring back the ice rinks. I looked at bringing in artificial ice rink services, um, which they do have, you know, they can come in, they set it up. It's like a synthetic material that acts like ice. It's pretty expensive. It's about $5,000 a day to offer ice skating. And then people think that's not that. I can't imagine. $5,000 a day. For like a six hour ice skating. For like staff and skate rentals and all the whole business. Like to offer like legitimate ice skating. But then the show up, drop off. Set up. Set up. And then also leave at the end of, pop it all up and leave at the end of the day. Yeah. Um, I obviously support it. Um, and I obviously recognize the issues with it. And I think it's something that isn't possible this year. But, um, I've been thinking quite a bit about how to do that in town. And where, um, 5,000 a day sounds like a lot, but that's in and out in the same day. Yeah. Kind of longer term sustained solutions. Um, I think are potentially available, but are going to take a lot more thought and partnership to execute against. Where would you consider? Um, I think we need to look into that. Do we know if a basketball court freezes earlier than ground, than, than grass? Because that would, that would make it possibly more successful over the longer season. That's where I set mine up in my backyard on like an asphalt. Yeah. Although I will say I just have two feet of snow on it right now. Yeah. A lot of people in band do have them in their backyard. So I, I did a little bit of research where I looked at Concord, Wellesley, and Lincoln to see where they each put theirs. Um, and, uh, Lincoln seems to be the only one to have placed it on grass. They have theirs behind the town building, you know, they do the setup, um, which is, you know, supported by volunteers of the local youth hockey, uh, organizations filled by the DP, not as filled by the fire fire department. Um, and then the upkeep and snow removal is done by the volunteers. I know that I think Wellesley does it through the department, the, you know, the DPW. Um, I have notes. Um, where are the notes? Um, but they have it at, uh, gosh, I can't remember the name. Um. Honeywell? I can't. Honeywell? Yes. Honeywell. And then Concord was at Emerson and they also had theirs at Rideout. Um, those are both basketball courts. Um, Rideout and Emerson, I know, have since been closed. Wellesley, people are pretty excited to have it back. Um, but so do we, do we have any of those old pieces of equipment left? Do we have, do we have a tarp or, or do we have a frame? Is that from what I understand that this was before my time, DPW had invested in tarps and, and then when the ice rinks are unattended, users would attempt to use it when the ice wasn't quite ready and sliced, you know, skates through the tarps and ruining the tarps and then uniquely tarps. Um, so I think that we do need to like, think about like, if we're going to do this, like how to make it secure. So that doesn't happen. Um, because not only did he ruin the tarp with a slice, but then all the water leaked into the town building parking lot. There was more ice in the town building parking lot than there was on the ice rink. That was brilliant. Um, from here, from here. I love two aspects of it. And I guess it'd be nice to maybe talk to some folks about what their expectations are. I love the idea of just being able to go out and skate. I mean, we do that on the ponds, like it's, I haven't done it in years, but, um, like we would go skate on the ponds and that was awesome. Pick up like, what are we going to do? Um, I think that'd be really neat, but also folks up Dudley in that neighborhood to go down there and skate. And if you drove by in the last few weeks, like you've seen clear clear screen areas. Yeah. They're, they're playing there. Um, so I wonder if it's, uh, for pickup purposes where I think the ponds are sufficing or if it's something more structured where, yeah, don't go out there. There's nobody around because we're trying to create an experience where you can enjoy skating here. Um, and if you just go out there, you're going to slice through the tarp, but that's going to ruin it for everybody. I think if that's what we're looking for here, a more formalized experience. Um, Kichituit is a really interesting park from all seasons. I, it's the front door to our neighbor to our town. And it's so well situated from a proximity perspective with the pike and one 28 and just all the communities and access. Um, I think it's a really interesting piece of property and opportunity for us to take advantage of it where it's not being utilized through the winter. Um, but it would require more formalized. I think the DPW is being clear, like they can't do it. So we need somebody to come in and shovel snow and literally take care of it. And there's a cost to that. Um, and I think that also there's a demand for it where I can't think of another outdoor skating rink that is in this area in Metro West. That is a true outdoor skating rink where there's games and, you know, it's treated like an indoor rink. Um, if that's what folks are thinking about, I think that's interesting. It's a lot of work. Yeah. It's all enough. I'm confused. I figured it was more of a one time cost. And then, and then, and then the future costs would be manpower. The water. And like research. Yeah. I think it requires daily maintenance. Like manual labor in, in, because we don't have a Zamboni, you have to go out there and treat the ice. Yeah. I have to set up assuming you can preserve the tarp. You're right. That's kind of like a sunk cost that you should, and tarps not crazy expensive. It's not cheap if you get a huge one, but yeah, it's the, it's the water that I think is the big, big ticket item. Yeah. And the weather has a, has a tremendous impact on this too, because you know, you, you put all your effort in, into doing this and it's really, it's really cold. So it's no, it's, it's 20 degrees. It's 10 degrees. You get a, you, you get, you get a, uh, a situation which you get a three or four days is 40 degrees. Well, right. Yeah. So there are temporary chiller solutions. Um, and that's where it's a couple hundred thousand for a season. And it's a lot of money, but you're then, if you're going to be running a formal platform, can you make your money back? And that's. Okay. That's another, that's an, yeah. So is this going to be a quote unquote fee based type of situation? Well, that's what I think is all up for discussion is what, what do you want? Do you want to be able to go skate? Like we've got some funds for that. Like we've got some funds for that. If you're looking for a centerpiece opportunity, then you're going to have to pay for that. Like a field, if you rent a field. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you want to run Thursday through Sunday, open skate from six to 10. Like, is there a demand for that? Yeah. Well, of course, if it, if it takes a teacher, you already have the lights. Mm-hm. So, you know, that's, that's an expense that you don't have to, that's already some funds. Yeah. Yeah. You still have to pay for the lights, but yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, there's no question. I mean, but, but the infrastructure is already. Yeah. You don't have to track in lights. So, so you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is substantial. Yeah. If you were trying to do that at some, at some other location, you're going to let it. Right. Right. And it's a, yeah, it's a great park. It's, oh yeah. It's got a lot of bones already. Yeah. Can we take the call? The what? Can we take our raised hand? Yeah. I think it wasn't after a public comment, but the chair. So I'm glad that there's a gentleman who raised his hand. Oh, sure. Raise your hand. Come in and speak. Please. Hello. Hello. Hi. Can you guys hear me? Yep. Yeah, we can. Yeah. So I just want to say, my name's Joe Palazzotti. I live at 16 Indian Road. Um, I'm part of the Wayland Hockey Association. And I just want to say that, um, we certainly, um, endorse or, uh, support the idea of, um, you know, like an outdoor rink or public skating or something of that nature. Um, I do want to, uh, just mention that I, I've actually been maintaining a very large ice rink in my backyard since about 2009. Um, and all the items you're saying are true. Um, you know, as soon as it snows, you've got to get the snow off there. Um, you've got to maintain it. You've got to, you know, flood it after skating. Um, the tarps are unusable after, uh, a season. I, I think if, if someone's saying you can reuse tarps, um, I would vehemently disagree with that. Um, and then, you know, leaves and sticks and, and all that are, are an issue. And then you also have, if this is out at Kachituit, I, I have been in town long enough to remember when we had an ice rink out there. And we did have a couple of just unbelievable nights with the lights out lights on and, you know, pond hockey games, if you will. But, you know, if it's just out in the open, um, unfortunately kids, you know, break the ice. If, if, you know, you get a, a, a snap of cold and then all of a sudden it's 45 degrees and kids are down there, you know, with sticks smashing the ice, it's really tough to get it back. Um, you know, so trying to just be cognizant of that and trying to figure out a way to deal with that is what I would consider critically important. Um, I did have some questions like, where did that frame go? Um, I assume the frame and the brackets are still around somewhere maybe. Um, and that would maybe help defray some of the costs. Um, and then the, the comment that somebody made about putting it on pavement. Um, I do not support that. And, um, I would recommend that it's placed on the grass because the reason is, is when the sun comes out, even when it's 20 degrees, it heats up the asphalt. And then the asphalt melts the ice from the bottom up. So I would not recommend doing that. I think putting it on the grass, um, I've had major success with, and I would stay away from pavement. Even though like the basketball court might be in theory, a good idea because you could maybe lock the gate, um, and keep kids or at least discourage kids from getting on it. Um, when temperatures are not, uh, appropriate, but I guess the basic thing is the whale and hockey association would, um, be supportive and want to help in any way that we could, um, you know, to try to get something like this, uh, up and running. And, and I think the lights are a huge thing because as we know in the winter, it gets dark at four o'clock and it's tough to skate on a pond. Um, although people have told me that at one time the town did have a light at Mill Pond. Uh, but, but I, I, I wasn't around for that, but the lighting piece of it is, is certainly attractive. I don't hear any question on that. Yeah. In fact, the lights are already there, as I mentioned before, I think you're right, Jim. Just to answer your question, I, I asked DPW if they still have the materials from the previous ice rams and he said that they had rotted out. So that they were, they're gone. Right. I don't know if you can still hear me, but I would assume they bought pressure treated lumber. If they didn't, that was a massive mistake.
It wouldn't be rotten. If it's just regular kiln dried lumber, then there's a possibility that could happen. Yeah. Well, Captain, you, you spoke with them and they're gone. Yeah. We don't have any of the materials left. I don't, I know what they were. Um, but it was also more than 15 years ago. So I don't know. Who knows? Silly, but are the tarps able to be reused by other departments? Like could DPW use it to cover a sand pile or something? Or is it the total waste after? I'm not speaking. I don't, it might be picking up some other background noise in my office, but I can't figure out how to mute myself here. Actually, Joe, the question was, can you reuse the tarps for alternative uses like covering sand piles with other departments? Understanding you can't use it for the rink again, but how beat up is it? How beat up is it? Is that question back to me, Mark? Yeah. If you have any idea. I have no idea what DPW could do with a tarp, but I'm sure there's like, if you just, if the specific question is, could you use the tarp to cover a sand or salt pile? My answer would be yes, even if there's little rips in it from skates or pocks or sticks, it would still do the lion's share of the job. But depending on what they needed a tarp for, I would say you could use it unless you needed it to be weather tight, because there will be nicks and holes in it. Like I never use the same tarp year to year, just because, just because of the use. Yep. In terms of maintaining it, you know, I think somebody would definitely need to be in charge. I don't know who that somebody is. And then, you know, maybe if there's a large snow event, you're enlisting, you know, the girls and boys, varsity hockey teams, the boys, JV teams, the middle school, maybe the, the, um, boy scouts or something. If people need community service hours, but that is something that needs to be thought about because when it snows, the snow needs to be removed immediately. If it stays on there, I know this is going to sound odd, but it actually warms up. And then the layer between the ice and the snow becomes slush. And then it's a major problem. Yep. Now with a snow event that we had this, this past week, that would have been a huge drop in terms of if you had an ice rink this year. Yeah. Yeah, because it was a, that was a 24 hour storm plus, and you'd be out there, you'd be out there, you know, removing two inches of snow at a time. And it could be, you have different shifts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like for mine, um, you know, I went out at like nine o'clock at night and was snow blowing probably about, I don't know, 12 to 15 inches of snow. And then in the morning it was, you know, another three to six inches. So yeah, it's, it's definitely work for sure. For sure. I actually had one of my clients who, who used it because the snow was so light, used a leaf blower to blow the snow. Oh yeah. Yeah. It worked, if I were, it worked beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Do we ever have corporate partners or partnerships like, um, Ace Hardware or something like that, that could help us with this? Cause I mean, I keep thinking about, I'm desperate to do something with that little grassy area right behind, um, Ace Hardware. First I wanted to put a dark park there. Now I want to put the ice rink there. Um, because it's right in the town center, it's accessible to ample parking. You know, people will go use our vendor or our town center for hot chocolate. Um, but I was just wondering if, if there could be maybe, maybe not recreation or town owned, but privately owned. And, and we find a way to encourage them on their journey. Yeah. The only issue, one of the issues you would have there is respect, with respect to the light side. Yeah. Because so, so much of this, so, so much of this activity would be done or could be done, you know, after work. Yeah. And so you, in, in the wintertime, as I think Joe mentioned, uh, you know, sun, sun's down by, by, you know, 415. It's getting, getting lighter, lighter now, but you're still in a situation where you definitely would need lights. Guys, I'm sorry, but I, I have to jump to another meeting, but, um, I appreciate you, uh, listening to my comments. And, uh, if anyone has questions or needs any help or, or needs help from the Whale and Hockey Association, uh, just please let me know. We're happy to jump in. Great. Thank you very much, Joe, for your comment. Thanks, Joe. I mean, do we need to research more of what other towns are spending on this? And, or... I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how many, you, you mentioned, you know, Wellesley. It's got something. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Sudbury has one. Columford had one. Lincoln has one. Um, so I looked at Lincoln's costs and they use $3,500 from their celebrations fund from the recreation department to buy it. And, um, this was a few years ago. And, um, it, it's maintained by volunteers and filled by the fire department. But I, I have no understanding of how you do it, you know, that costs for the fire department to be dropping water by every time. Yeah. I mean, I can call over to some other rec departments and get some ideas on what it's costing then. Yeah. And also if they charge. Yeah. If they charge it. Yeah. I keep thinking that it would be so much better if a private, like the new person, the new company that's going into Whole Foods, could put it there to bolster their winter market. They have ice games sometimes at like shopping centers, like Market Street. I've been shredding. They have an ice game in the middle of like their town. Yeah. But what is our town center, but it's privately operated. I believe it's lit too. It's what? Lit. Oh yeah. Okay. But it's more of like an economic development initiative. I don't think they're charging. Okay. I like putting that to the new owners of town center. Yeah. Or next one. I think that back screen area would be, it's gotta be something. There are lights in the parking lot behind the hardware store. Do you know? There are. Yeah. Like standard parking lot lights there. Yeah. Like that would be great. And you go to 110. Or look, the local. It's right there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I know the economic development committee has been talking to the new owners of town center about these kinds of initiatives at town center, just to boost the economic situation. Right. Both in the winter and in the office. So what do we do now? Just, uh, accumulate more information? Yeah. We could look, I could look at least at what other rec departments are doing. I don't know. Like, I love this idea of like making this a destination for constituent, but that's a big operation and that we need to snap up and do some serious research. I think it's fully outsourced. You just rent the property. There's parties that will do it. Um, cause I, I agree. I think it's too heavy for us to take up. Yeah. I don't know. Like I can't. Okay. Heather, you said rec used to do something with mill pond, but not anymore. Not anymore. Is it like a safety liability thing that the town doesn't endorse per se? Yeah. I think the fire department would kind of give the okay. They would measure the ice. Um, it is hard to get consistent, you know, at least in the 10 years I've been here, mill pond never froze to the level that the fire department needed it to be, to bring the lights up there. Um, and so we were keeping in the budget probably about 10 or 15 grand every year to rent lights and bring them up to mill pond. And we never used that money because it never froze to a safe bet. But ice skating is happening in bodies of water in Wayland. And in the last 10 years, it has happened. Um, but not to the level that the fire department was comfortable giving the thumbs up on. Mm hmm. And I think, yeah, there's a liability there. Yeah. Could this be like a 15 to $20,000 ask to CPC next year? To as a, how far 15 or $20,000? Yes. I don't know. I mean, it could be for like synthetic guys to come in and just get set it up for, you know, a couple of weekends. Um, and it's all weather. Yeah. Well, artificial ice is not. But I think that if some research is done on this and we find out what the costs would be associated with that research, do it. Then I think that if we have, you know, much more information than we could approach the CPC with it, then I think you might get a more positive read from them in terms of supporting. Can we divvy up reaching out to recreation departments? Like, could you tell us what information you'd like us to acquire and we could each take a town and figure that out and compile it for you? That would be fair. If this doesn't fall on you? Yeah. We do have monthly meetings with other rec departments in the Metro West area. And so I can, I can easily reach them and get some information, but, um, yeah, I would definitely welcome. Yeah. I know you, you're the one who knows best how to compute the information received. So I wouldn't want to take that. What specific information we're looking for. But yeah. Who maintains it? Who owns it? How's it? Yeah. How's it insured? Stuff like that. Yeah. Because we're in the middle of this type of situation is something that we would point to doing, you know, next year or the end of this year. All right. I can wonder. All right. Um, I think that wraps up. If there's anything else on, on, on the answer. Okay. Number seven of recreation projects that could be taken on by members of the Scouts of America. Um, I think there are lots of projects that, that, uh, Eagle Scouts and, and other folks do around town. But you think anybody thinking of anything in particular? Kachacho Park storage. Uh, Kachacho Park storage. Well, you had mentioned like boardwalks. Um, and I envision like hike on hiking trails and trail heads. If you know, you're building any kind of entrance way or something like that. Um, but yeah, Kachacho with storage, um, could be a great thing. Um, Greg Chittum, he's on, um, Oxbow road. He's one of the kind of assistant scout leaders right now. And he had reached out, um, to the neighbors, uh, and said there are probably eight to 10, um, scouts that are looking for projects to do for community service hours and such. Well, they always, they always do a great job. I heard. In terms of the, the, the walks. I haven't been to walk. Yeah. They do a terrific job. Yeah. In terms of the, the boardwalks, they, they connect the entrance to, to the trails. Yeah. And they maintain them very well. There's a problem with the bay when they fix them. So that's an area that I'm sure would be applicable. You know, as you mentioned, Mike, in terms of, uh, different, different parks. Mm-hmm. I mean, is it just physical labor? Are there other objectives they're hoping to, like, is it, they want to interact with the community or? I think that could be within scope. Um. Well, I mean, what happens is they get community service. I, I, I, I, schools offer, you know, some type of community service type situation. Yeah. But, but in terms of the scouting, um, their, their, uh, their requirements are that they do some type of community service in the, uh, projects. That either they get, they get, uh, you know, medals or badges or whatever. Yeah. They're successfully completing those, those projects. Okay. So I'm not sure how we pursue that. As you mentioned, uh, your friend on the sort of biological. Yeah. The scouts are specifically looking for projects to undertake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we could help coordinate that, essentially asking the community at large for projects that they see there's a need for, and then pairing them up with the right type of scout to make it happen. We've actually had, um, young people come and speak to us about particular projects that they're interested in doing. Yeah. We had specific locations. Eagle scouts came and did, you know, the, the hot, that town beach was built by one of the Eagle scouts. So it is, I think often we get contacted by scouts going for Eagle or, or what have you. Um, and then people needing projects and it's how, how to marry them, get them, get them at the, or even just the timing. So I, I wonder if we just kept kind of a rolling list of projects that could be undertaken really by any volunteer in the community. Um, and then, you know, I'm sure the scouts have a mechanism for this. Already to, you know, solicit things that need to be done and then assign scouts to them. But I think, but, but I think that might be your point in terms of, if you, when you speak to your neighbor, um, that, that you could, they certainly could come in and make some type of presentation to us. Yeah. And then we would say, yeah, that's a great, we, we would underwrite that, you know, them doing, okay. Build an ice rink. Yeah. Build an ice rink. Yeah. There you go. And maintain it. Yeah. Your career is, is all set and strong. Yeah. What about picnic benches? Like how are we, how are benches at, at the town, um, at the town beach? Like those, or the, um, they've almost all been converted to the metal ones. Um, mostly because the wooden ones end up in the lake. Um. Oh really? Oh. Yeah. Okay. A lot of furniture in that lake. Um, which are pretty low maintenance, but not absent of maintenance. Um, yeah, I, I would say in recent history too, like a lot, like scouts used to come and paint fences and things like that, but they've all been kind of upgraded to maintenance free functions. But like Mark said, potentially, um, storage units that are needed in different places. Our king too needs storage, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Desperately. By the back side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think all, all of these groups need, um, storage solutions at different sites. I think La Crosse was looking for one recently. Has anything happened with the storage stuff over at Petitube? Yeah. Nothing. Or we're, I think we're working with a consultant to move along some of the phases of the bigger plan. I know the CPC didn't approve the most recent requests, but we do still have the money from the last request. Um, what's, what, what's the holdup in terms of the, the backstops? Um, I don't know necessarily what the holdup is. We are moving forward with defining the specifications to put up to bid in the next month. Yeah. Because Tom Bay has sent me a text saying there's been some holdup in terms of the backstops. I think that- Or is not specific in terms of- It, it, it's not clear to me what the holdup was, but we, the wheels are moving as of yesterday. So. Okay. Well, that was, I got, that's when I got the text, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I, I, yeah, I've had folks that were there too. From? Uh, conservation commission? Just ask it once. Okay. Yeah. They have that, they have the, um, trail building under their jurisdiction. Okay. Who would be a good contact? Um. Where? Linda, the- Conservation. Conservation. Yeah. Yeah. She's so fun. She'll look fun, but then you know, Linda Brinson. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's S-E-N I think. Yes. Okay. Um, field updates, uh, field facilities. This is when we're going to talk about the request to use the restroom building, which I think will be a good part of it. I sent in the materials. DPW sent out a release in December, just updating about the progress of Alpine Field. Um, they were kind of regrading new irrigation system there that should be closed this spring, open next fall. Uh, they did some work in the new irrigation system at the High School Girls softball field. The High School Varsity Baseball field will get, uh, some field work this spring, as soon as the- Yeah, that's the problem, because they start very early. Um, Clayton Hill will get irrigation at five and six this spring. Um. Yeah. What was the one before Clayton Hill? Uh, at Alpine Field High School Varsity softball field High School Varsity Baseball field. Um, Pandora's work, have a project to replace the wall pads in the gym. Um, we're doing some repairs to the height adjusters in the gym, done basketball hoops, and working on replacing the floor in our classroom that we have here at Town Building. Um, like I said, we're still working behind the scenes on this pitch to a ballpark, uh, CPC appropriation from last, uh, town meeting, by the skating rinks. Um, we still have some CPC funds to spend at the Town Beach, uh, on the entryway that's going to happen this spring. How much? Um, I don't know what the balance is right now on spending, but we have just a little, uh, like the upgrade, uh, where the trash receptacles are held, some landscaping, and even the funding. Yeah, we, we have plenty. And we, it will actually result in probably a turn back back to the CPC. Um, I think the, the, the, the big part of that project was the new fence that is in front of the Town Beach and the entryway. And those pits came in way lower than we anticipated. So there'll be a turn back there, which is great. And those are some of the projects that we're working on. I sent a little update. It's in my director's report. Um, and then obviously we received these several requests since the last meeting. Um, to open the high school restroom building that was recently built, not recently now, but, uh, as part of the stadium projects. Um, the building is there. It is open during high school activities. I have talked to other rec departments and their facilities operate similarly. Some, some keep it open, some don't. Um, the issue here in Wayland is cost, um, to maintain and open the facility. Um, I think the solution is to talk. If we want to actually open it, then we need to talk, the school committee and the custodians need to work out some kind of agreement with that collective bargaining unit. Um, cause that's what's causing the costs to be so high on it right now. I did calculate to open the restrooms for what we need for youth groups. It's about five or six different youth groups that use that property on the weekends. It'd be about $37,000 a year. Is that for the full year or just for the portion of the season that they're there? So I did it for on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays for about an eight hour day from March 15th to June 30th. And then from August 15th to November 15th. Um, if you do more than that, like weeknights and the whole, all season and summer, it came out to $87,000. So minimally we're at. I'll do it. 37. I was like, where do I have to be a custodian? Um. Is there an open job record? I'm with it. Um, the alternative, so that's, uh, option one is to staff it with a custodian as you would at any school rental. Um, alternatively, with Christine and I already planned to increase the number of portable toilets at Wayland High School and increase the frequency of the service there to, um, change the experience there. Some of the letters you received from the residents were saying it was pretty bad there. Um, one of the issues with the site at the high school is when they company comes to service the units that are at the high school. If there are, if there's a game going on, if there's too many people around, they can't service it. And so they leave. Those ones, it's a very busy property. I would say probably missed a service or two during the week that caused an unpleasant experience for the users. But I think if we are more strategic about where we place them and the frequency that we service them, then it, then it might go away. And the cost of doing that, um, we can absorb with our field account. Um, like if we need to absorb this $37,000 to pay custodians to open that facility on the weekends, we're going to have to increase the user fees that we charge. What are alternative locations? At the high school. Um, so right now there's just two kind of at the base of the stadium. We were thinking that potentially we get some over by the baseball fields. Um, or so the issue is the, the unit has to be within 10 feet of pavement. So it's tough to get them up to wetlands or vented or anywhere like that. So, um, just kind of moving them throughout the property. Could they go to the other side of the ball wall area? If there's pavement. Yeah. Yeah. So we could put us, you know, two over there, two at the base and two somewhere else, and then increase the frequency that we service them. That might get us there for, for no money. Um, but I do understand that the plea is like, we, we just built this building. We pay taxes. Why isn't it open? Yeah. I'm just curious. There's cost. Our inability to, to service the ones that are right next to the turf. Would, would that still be the same situation if we move them to those other locations? It's possible. It's, it's really the timing of when they show up. Um, and I, we don't have a lot of control over it because it's just a contract with a boardroom. It happens at the elementary schools too, but the ones at the elementary schools don't get, uh, quite as much usage. It just can't, it just can't be serviced when students are in what type, like a close proximity. Yeah. I don't know. They don't even go in. They don't. It's a freestanding building. What is it? The restroom. Hmm. It's a portable toilet. Oh yeah. No, no, no. I'm familiar with that concept. I'm thinking that the building is a freestanding. Yeah. It's separate from the concessions. It's cute. Hmm. And yeah, it's open on school day. Like custodians are at the high school full time until 10 o'clock every night. And so those custodians manage it during high school athletic events and they lock it when they leave. And so typically when our youth groups are at the high school, the high school athletics groups are not. Um, and so the building is generally locked when they're there. So it is possible to open it. We just have to pass the charges on to the users and the charges are pretty steep just because of the collective bargaining unit. And we have to have a custodian there while it's open or could we have periods of time where there's no custodian? I think the custodian would have to be, so here's the contract that we're talking about to get a custodian to come open the building and then lock it at the end of the night and clean it. They have a five hour minimum essentially. It's three hours plus two hours travel. Um, and all of the shifts are overtime. Um, so it's about $275 a day at a minimum. And that's the other thing is, so we're talking about a five hour minimum. Youth soccer sometimes has a 90 minute game in the morning at 10 AM and one at 6 PM. And now you're talking about paying 10 hours of custodian services to manage three hours of a soccer game. Yeah. But do we have a heat map of like when our hot times are like, yeah, I would think football, youth football would have like a massive draw, whereas soccer might not. And, and, you know, if you're, if you're servicing the most people, then, then the problem doesn't trickle down. Right. Mary. Um, so we looked at it, I, we did a lot of kind of digging into what the reservations are. Sometimes like youth soccer is there alone. Sometimes when youth football is there, like lacrosse, baseball, and soccer are also on the property. How do you share those costs? Um, and then I think potentially, like we, we have user groups that use the high school property. Like, uh, we have a women's soccer league and they would never, they would just say, we'll just use the port-a-potty. They don't want to pay to, to have the bathrooms open. And so we have to kind of navigate how those costs are shared across the groups. You know, and like, there's multiple fields at Wayland High School. So let's say on a Saturday afternoon, five are you being used by winning new soccer. One is lacrosse and two are baseball. Like how do you split those charges? Unless you just bake it into the user piece. Could you add a surcharge like you do for lighting? We could, it would be very, very complicated. I mean, it's possible. I mean, it is possible, but it's a lot of work. Um, my recommendation would be just for the spring season to try that. Increase of the port-a-potties and the frequency. And then we can potentially talk to whoever negotiates the custodial contract. If there's a way around it, but I suspect they're not interested in getting paid less to do what they're doing. I like that idea. And add a couple, um, to test it out and increase the frequency. And can we build something in to our agreement with whoever the vendor is in terms of like, you have to do X number of times or else we get to hold back. Because they know when people are going to be there generally, you know? Well, that's the tough part about it, especially at the schools, is there's always somebody there. And so it is hard to get in and service. It's especially like, you know, by the time they get to the schools, it's the middle of the day and recess is happening. And it's like, you know, DPW has the same problem with trying to work on site at schools during the school day. A lot of times they try to get in before school opens, but it's hard to do at all the different locations that we have. So, yeah, we could, we can talk to the vendor. And I think I've asked this and you've answered it, but the high school, the high school bathrooms that that building is open while practice is going. So the high schoolers are using that one and not going to the port-a-potties instead during times when it's supposed to be used. It's supposed to be available. You mean the bathrooms inside the building? Outside the building? No, outside the standalone. The restroom building. The restroom building. Yeah. Like that is certainly unlocked and used for high school, high school athletics while it's supposed to be. But the school building is typically open too. So I don't know. People have preferences. They have locker rooms and things like that. So I think they have lots of options when high school athletics is going on. Not so much. And even like when we have, we have soccer games here at this town building soccer field all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and they don't have access to this building. They use the port party. That's it. But are we not just talking about, this is a lot of conversation about this topic, but it is very nice. I'm going to tell myself what my adult life. I spend time with four books. I'm sorry. I know. So are we not just talking about Saturday and Sunday? So the high school athletics uses their property until 7 p.m. every single night, and then the youth groups use it from 7 to 10 every night. But custodian services are at the school until 10 p.m. every day. Right. Yes. And I talked to the school department at length about this, and I got two different answers. One was that we had to pay custodians from 7 to 10 separately because it's considered a private rental, according to the custodial contract. But then another person in the department told me that probably not, that we could get away with not factoring in weeknights. And so my $37,000 is not factor in the 7 to 10 p.m. timeframe on weeknights. It's just Saturdays and Sundays. It's just Saturdays and Sundays. It's about an eight-hour day on Saturday and Sunday, which doesn't even cover all of our uses because we go from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. essentially. But those eight hours, because of the travel time and the overtime are paid, it's a 10-hour day, and on Sundays it's $730 a day. And there's about five major groups that we're talking about here that would share these costs. It's youth soccer, youth football, league, lacrosse. So we are just talking about two days a week and 37,000 hours. What about just Saturdays? With that number, it would more than half because of the double time factor on Sundays. Right. I think more, like you said, I think the biggest benefactor of having those open would be youth football just because of the length of time that they're there. Like I said, like soccer games are typically not committed in two hours. They're there for a six-hour period, and it's usually the same people that are there. And they're the ones that would have to pay the most because they rent on Sunday. And then we're going to have an issue where people, groups, are all competing to get everything in on Saturday because it's more portable. Like we have this problem with the lights on the fields. People want to rent the fields before the sun goes down because it's cheaper than waiting until the lights come on. And so it's almost like people are getting taxed by, you know, trying to run their program on the way that they need. I personally would think that it would be, it would just be logical that if the concessions were open, the restrooms would be open. I thought about this too. And I, you know, like the boosters run the concession stand and they have a key. So I'm like, can we just get a group of volunteers to do it? The difference is that the people who have access to actually enter the building, like we know who they are and we know when they're going to be there. And we don't have that same ability to know who's using the bathroom. Like if the door is unlocked, anybody, if we actually had somebody living in the concessions well park bathrooms at one point. So it's like, if they're open to the public. I didn't think you'd talk about that. It was a tough time. It was the chills. So, you know what I mean? Like, if the door's open, anybody's going to go in there and use the bathroom. If the doors are open to the concession stand, just the workers will run in the kitchen. So it is a little different. And you wouldn't believe what happened with these buildings. It's not this. Everybody's nice and normal and uses it like it's the bathroom in their house. Is there a benefit to boosters and that concessions building to having custodians or facilities available to them during that time too? I don't know. I think like at least we have a similar concessions at the beach and our staff, like our kitchen staff are the ones who are mainly like keep it clean and, you know, to the food service conditions. I don't know that like ours don't need custodial support really. Is the decision. Well, I'm sorry. I just keep talking. Is the decision really the school committee's decision? And we're just here to mull it over. Yeah. Well, the request came to us. And I think the re the answer is the reason why we don't use those bathrooms is because we can't afford the fees that we take to pay a custodian. And I don't personally know if it's worth it when we have portable toilets available. I personally would prefer a restroom building over a portable toilet, but not at $37,000 a year. But again, like it's not my building and I don't have any control over the people who manage the school property. I'd really be interested to know what just the Saturday figure is because I feel like that is still a lot of bodies. And then, and then, and then, you know, the porta potties on Sunday wouldn't be as bad. And like the Saturdays there, there are a lot of bodies sometimes like, you know, in that 11 to one timeframe, there's a lot of, and then there's kind of a break in the day and then back six to eight o'clock at night. And so it's like, do you staff it from eight in the morning to eight o'clock at night? Do you have a break in the day? But at some point, some user group who is potentially paying for this isn't going to have access to the bathrooms unless you just staff it all the way through. But there is the benefit of sharing the cost with the other groups. Like if the big five youth groups all paid. I think what I calculated is that we would have to increase the user fees. Right now, all these groups paid $40 a player. It would have to be $50 a player in order to make this happen. But then like, what do you do? What other, the adult groups are going to benefit from this and are essentially paying unless we bank it into the adult fees as well. Most other rentals at the William of High School on the weekends were kind of one-offs like events or tournaments or, you know, private clubs would come in sporadically. Women's soccer games and men's soccer games would be sporadic too. And so you said, did you say the per day cost was $275 for a Saturday? Ah, Saturday... Nope, it was $550. That must be like $700. No, it's a 10 hour day. 10 hours per hour. Still in? Still just trying to understand. You can move out of that. Right.
That two hour travel time is amazing. Right, the five hour minimum is a lot. But like I said, these custodians have full-time jobs within the school building. And so all of these shifts would be above and beyond what they normally do. I did ask if they thought they would have trouble filling these shifts and they said they wouldn't. Obviously. And then I asked if I did. Yes, no, that is it. It's a weird kind of whistling. Yeah, that's weird. That's a weird conversation. Yeah. Well, it's not at all like they are overpaid. Their base rate on their normal 40 hour of the week is not exorbitant. It's the extras. Yeah. The extra shifts. So I think that we should try the port-a-party route for the spring and see how it goes. Right. Unless we think that the user groups are going to be willing to pay for this. How difficult is like an adult on that? Okay, football, if you want this to be open, here's the charge. No, we could absolutely do that. I think administratively, it's a little tedious because like the, you know, the group will say on this Sunday, we want to open them up. Some of this, we might not, depending on like who they're playing and what they're doing. Um, we could do it like, like we do charge the lights, but it's an, it's administratively it's. Would it be easier if you just said start of the year, you let me know. Like you can't call me up in April and say, I need it this Saturday. Right. But if you tell me, Hey, we're putting in our applications for these dates and we want. Then that's the charge. Yeah. We could do it that way. Um, there is no opportunity for savings. Like we do that with the lights and the light schedule changes every day. The field schedule changes every day, like in terms of pickup games or, you know, what have you. And we get it all the time. People book, we book the lights, we turn them on, we schedule them and they say, Oh, it's raining tonight. We shut off the lights. Um, which is fine. It's usually after hours work for us. You know, we're getting text messages at 10 PM about lights. Yeah. Um, it's not, it's not impossible to do it that way. And I think, you know, the add on for one group would open the restrooms for everybody that's there. So you football is going to pay and there's five other groups out there. You just, I mean, you just got to wear that. Like it, it just, unfortunately, I mean, if you. So what youth group is the first one that's going to be like, okay, we'll pay to open the bathrooms on Saturday morning. Could, could we do like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a, just a fall. Saturday. Trial. Yeah. I mean, I just. Or spring. The spring work. I was just, cause I, I don't know, you guys probably know the numbers better than I do, but I just keep thinking those football brings in so many more people, so many more kids and parents and concessions that, um, they're the one, they're the biggest users. So, so just where, you know, we're going to have a hundred people per event on, on their events, but you go to soccer, there's 50, you know, I'm just wondering like where, where, what days do we have the most people there? Sunday. It's eight to two. Yeah. All the time. Sunday. And what we were looking at, it looked like football and Little League generally were never there alone so that they would potentially share the costs in ways most often when they were there, they were there alone. So like the six to eight times a lot. And so if they want the bathrooms over six to eight on a weekend, they're paying the full fee opposed to sharing it with another group. Little League, they're using the softball field or the baseball. Softball, baseball, and JB. Spring, summer, and fall. They have three seasons where like the cross only has one season. So how do you balance how you, you know, it'd have to be kind of careful assessment on how the charges get distributed because like, like I said, Little League's playing for three seasons in lacrosse and field hockey with one. And so do they pay the same share? Yeah. Yeah. It's a similar obligated process just to determine the field fees, you know? So it's like, to me, I think it would make the most sense just to bake in our costs into our field fees. Mm-hmm. The same way we do right now with the port-a-potties and the irrigation charges and all the other costs that go into the field account. Yeah. But water's going up 28%, which is like I said, between 30 and 50, depending on the weather, another that we have to eat in a revolving account. And now this would be another 30,000. So at some point we'd have to look at raising the user fees. Mm-hmm. The water charge was expected. And so when we recently went through the process of setting the fees, it was with that charge in mind. I kind of want to send it to the users and see if they would be, if they are eager to pay to have that open or not. Otherwise I think more portable toilets, but I also just still worry they won't be able to dump them. And what they do is they just add more solvent or whatever air freshener to it. And it's just, it's just Stephen smelling. It was bad. It was embarrassing. It was bad. Yeah. We saw pictures. Just at that site, like all of our other sites generally get serviced pretty regularly and we don't get complaints about them, but that one was bad. Yeah. Could we put two up by the parking lot and then two down? Yeah. Spreading them out and increasing the frequency, I think. We can have them serviced up to three times a week. Which would be, they don't do weekends, so Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Sunday is still going to be smelly. Yeah. I think we could put it out to the user group. If there's been a request to open up the restrooms on Saturdays, this is what it's going to cost. And based on like whatever your permit is, if it's a five hour permit, this is what the cost that you're going to pay or share it or not. But I know most ways in La Crosse specifically have come to us in recent years and asking for a break on the user fee. So I don't think there's an appetite for it to go up. There's no breaks anymore. Yeah. And I missed the email. Was it football then? Is there an email then? A representative from youth football requested and a woman from the boosters requested it. I mean, those are the two requests we received in writing, but we've heard before that people are like, why aren't those buildings open? Yeah. Well, for rec, do we want to do an increase in the portable facilities and increase the frequency for the spring and then take the temperature or the fall season on potentially increasing fees? I think that was the problem. I do. We could see after the spring season. Yeah. The problem then. Is it, did that help? Did it not? Because I guess fall is probably the busiest, right? I was going to say, I think spring, you're probably going to be fine because football's not out there in spring, are they? Yeah. No. And field hockey's not there either. Yeah. The spring is, yeah, it's soccer, literally, and lacrosse that are used in the field. Apart from the high school. Yeah. And to your point, all those users are in and out and they're lower density. This problem that we had that people are referring to was in the fall line. And it wasn't just normal usage. It was done intentionally. It was. Okay. Yeah. There was like some kind of vandalism that is happening at these portables. Yeah. According to the people who are servicing it, for which we are indebted. Oh, that's the rabbit hole I don't want to go further down. Yeah. Nobody was living this. Well, that's. Okay. But so if we were to consider the restroom building on in the fall only, that, I mean, that would reduce the cost. I mean, but still apply it to those user groups. But it, we'd be looking at, you know, 17,000 annually instead of 33. Yeah. 18. Yeah. So yeah, we could spread it across the five or six groups that are going to be there. So we spent a lot of time on this. Should we just hold up the idea for the spring and then have these conversations as we think about the fall? Yes. Because I don't think we're going to have a problem with the spring. Would we agree you're probably not going to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe, maybe we need to consider moving them to a, or asking if there's a more serviceable area. Yeah. For the current one. Yeah. And we can work with the athletic director too, to figure out where. So that. And sorry for spending so much time on it. It is a shame that we have the building there. And that we had those problems. Right. Right. It's crazy. It is. Yeah. Most towns that are in the same boat though, that they're only open during school bunkers. Yeah. This building too, but it's long for the weekends. Yeah. It's the people's building. Oh, it's the people's house. It's freezing. Jeez. Okay. Well. Oh. You are over there. I am. So, what we got left? I submitted my director's report in writing, which I'm sure you all read off by now. So, we could just skip that one. Good. Okay. We have to schedule our next meeting. What works for people in terms of, is it, is 1030 still? Okay. So, 1030. And what do we got for dates? Catherine, is there anything that we need to be? Are we looking at February? There is a February school vacation in the week of the 16th, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm probably going to be on vacation the week to ask. Oh, jeez. I booked it the week before that, but I've already had to cancel this month. You're going to Aruba? No. I'm going to Denham. Oh, you're going to Denham? Oh. Maybe. I'm just not coming here. I'm just not coming here. Yeah. This is going to be a vacation. You're not coming here at all? I'm going to try. I've got to burn some vacation days before it's done. We don't take vacation on the summer. Well, it's done. From like April 15th to October 15th. Right. When I don't take them. So I've got to squeeze on on vacation. All right. So what are we looking at? First week of March? Yeah. So it's not Thursday. Hmm? It's not Thursday. It's not Thursday. My Thursday doesn't work. I will Friday. Friday work. Friday doesn't. What's the first Friday? So doesn't Jeff Bergeron have trouble with Fridays? No. I think that's right. We do Tuesday or Wednesday. Do we do Tuesday? The 3rd? Is that too early from your return? I think Asia can do Tuesdays. Tuesday. I can't do it. No, I can't do it at 10. 10. 10. I have a scheduled appointment every week at 10. Wednesday, March 4th? Works for me. 10 a.m. or 10.30? Either one works. Forget no matter what. So you want to do 10? I like 10. 10 in March 4th. And for agenda items, we're going to put the restroom issue back on the agenda. Revisit that with the information we've been given from other groups. Yep. From the groups. And then also ice skating rinks from other towns. Yep. And potentially, if we get more information from the select board about naming parks, we'll have some more information from the group group then. Correct. Anything else? Should be on the item. We have time. Yep. Motion to adjourn. Motion approved. Second? Second. All in favor? We're good. We're good. We're good. We're good.