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Try: Select Board School Committee Real Estate Town Meeting Budget

March 13, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

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March 13, 2026 - School Committee

 
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Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting. It is 4.47 on Friday, March 13th, and we are being recorded by WACAM. We have Christina Rodrigo, Erin Muller, Kate Sambuco, and Erin Gibbons present. Betsy Cullen will be absent, and we do not have any administrators here. Do you guys want to take this in order, and we will go to discussion around Article D.D., and I would potentially invite Mr. Whitney, should he want to join us to discuss it. But to recap, in your email that I sent you, you have the proposed further revisions to the Article D.D. that we had discussed. So we're doing A first? Yeah. D.D., okay. Betsy and I did meet with the select board and had the discussion on Monday night, and I think the biggest thing was we wanted to make sure that it was a joint proposal. Um, as this parcel is under the school committee's care, custody, and control, and that it specifically listed the exploration of the property being used as a school. Um, my one comment is that in the proposed revision from you, Mr. Whitney, it has reuse as a school. Um, so I'm thinking we should just delete the RE and have use as a school. That's fine. Okay. The notion of reuse was, reuse it from its current use. Got it. Right. Okay. When I read it, I read it as that it was already being used as a school, and we were going to repurpose it for school purposes. So I, that was, okay. Um, okay. One other question to you, Mr. Whitney, is, we had proposed that in the proposed by line that we add, school committee, were you, okay, is that still okay? That way it's a joint. Sure. Um, okay. Um, those were my two questions. Um, I, I only have one. Yeah, go ahead. Um, just in the, the line where it says, the parcel is currently held in the care and custody of the school committee, period, rather than requested transfer of property, the select board prefers to perform, perform site analysis, so on and so forth. Or, I guess, do we, do we need that rather than request a transfer of property, is that something that was being considered and that, I guess, why do we need that? Um, in fact, I think that whole background information section will change. That's really where the finance committee is right up. My intention here was to really sort of focus on the specific, the article per se. So, the above the, above the, above the background information. Yeah. About that. But I guess that, that was my question though. Okay. So, it's not in the. Oh, it's not going to be published. It's not in the article. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, that's fine. And I'm sure that language will change. Yeah. Based on the finance committee's right. Okay. Anybody else have any other comments? No, your two questions are my two questions. Okay. Sorry. I, I'm not as familiar with this as others are. Are we going to vote to recommend this or not recommend it or we are just doing the wording and we are proposing this with the select? Both. It just seems a bit premature to me to be studying it for so many different purposes. Um, like it just seems like a large sum of money and it just seems very premature to me. I don't know. Like that's just my reading. Like we don't know if we'd want it for our swing space while we do our stuff. We don't know if we'd need it for fields. Like I just, sorry, I feel like I'm missing. Did you miss the meeting where Carol and Bill came and talked with us? Yes. Got it. Okay. I didn't watch it. Do you want to read? No, that's okay. Do you want to rejoin us, Bill, and just give a quick recap of that? I think that would be helpful for Christina. Yes. So my question. Sorry. And I think like I get the sense the public also has my question. So maybe it would be helpful to recap. Sure. So, um, very briefly, the genesis of this article is that, you know, there's this 13.7 acre parcel which was acquired in 1956 by the town for school purposes. Um, it hasn't been so used for the last 70 years. Um, the town is, um, you know, facing, uh, significant financial challenges. And, uh, this parcel was identified in the 2017 RAP Wayland Real Estate Asset Planning Committee report is one that should be considered for better use, uh, other than open, uh, other than its current better term. And so the notion here is to very preliminary, uh, due diligence kinds of information that would be useful to the school committee, uh, and its consultants should a school be determined by the town to be preferable there or, uh, or housing or another use. Uh, some of the work that I would envision would be done with, uh, which again would be useful to whomever would be a site survey. And some preliminary site engineering that would, uh, determine the adequacy or sufficiency of utilities to the site. Geotechnical engineering, which would determine the bearing capacity of the soil, which, uh, informs foundation recommendations, uh, and cost estimates. Uh, geotechnical engineering to understand, uh, again, the, uh, composition of the soil, the bearing capacity. Phase one environmental assessment, uh, that would determine whether further environmental study is needed, preliminary septic design and engineering, traffic analysis, legal fees, and so forth. So the notion is to really just kind of better understand the development potential of the site for something. Uh, you know, and there's no sense that we would seek any kind of action by town meeting that would affect the, the fact that, uh, the school committee has care custody and whatever the other thing is, uh, of the site. And so, uh, uh, it's just a way to, uh, have this information available to inform future decision making. As to the cost of it, a similar kind of exercise was done at the current Alta-Oxpo site. That was $360,000, so I think $200,000 is, and that was some time ago. And I just finally add that you folks have seen this draft. My board is not, so in order to just get the conversation going and be in a position to hopefully finalize this on Monday when the Select Board meets next before the warrant goes to print. So this is a draft. This is my draft. I think it fairly reflects what the Select Board would do. But in fairness, I just wanted to point out that it's my draft. Thank you. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but if we determine that Holiday Road was a good location or a suitable location for a school, these are tests that we would need to complete. That's right. And the typical process, as you know, is for a statement of interest to be submitted to MSBA, and then there's some back and forth, and then there would be an initial planning grant or study that would include work. So it jump-starts the development of the school in a way. That's the decision. I guess if we wanted it for fields or something like that, you know, we wouldn't need to know septic and foundation and all of that. And so would this money be wasted, like doing such a comprehensive study at the site? Like, we don't even know what we want to do with this. Yeah, but we can't know if it's really viable to even put a school there, pursuant to the suggestions that were put before us or some of them, if this isn't done. So we'd kind of be making suggestions along the long-term facilities plan without any insight, whereas potentially this could give us some insight. And I think we still have to do this even if we were to use it for fields, correct? Maybe not to this degree, but there still has to be some sort of evaluation. Yeah, some work would have to be done. So maybe the results would say, oh, it's not viable for this, but it's viable. Right, exactly. That's the idea, you know, to just understand how it can be used, because there's no information on that to date. Sorry, I know I'm asking you to watch this, but I mean, with our enrollment projections and stuff like that, if this were used for housing, we feel like that would... We're not saying it can be used for housing. We're literally just trying to understand if it can be used for anything. For anything. And in order for that to happen, we have already discussed, which I understand you weren't here, so this is liquor, but no, no, I'm not saying it in that way. But we would need to have an understanding of how that type of use, everyone, the town in general, would impact enrollment. So, in the event that it came back, that it wasn't suitable for a school for some reason, but it was suitable for, you know, three single-family homes. I don't know. It's just something I'm throwing up. Or active or passive recreation. Okay. Sorry. No, I understand. If I do it for you, then I end up with a slippery slope. I understand. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. What did you say, Erin? Sorry. I mean, it just says, like, for a variety of potential uses, including, but not limited to, active or passive recreation, town use, including, we're going to change that to use as a school for development of affordable and market-rate housing units. And the whole point of us making proposed edits was that this will be under the joint direction of both boards versus just the select board. Right. Because the land is still under the care and ownership of the school committee. And because we're in the middle of this facility is master planning and wants to not be involved in it. Where's the budget coming from for this? That's still to be determined. Whether it's, I think it would be probably under the levy, if not. There's actually a sum of about $200,000 in the sale of real estate account that we've identified. Because I know that we did not have any room to do anything new this year. So I just want to be aware of that. We were very tight on our budget this year because of the levy. So, Bill, I guess since your board hasn't seen this yet, if you make any changes of substance, I would say, would come back to us or to this? Sure. I envision they would likely approve it. So they had further discussion after Betsy and I were there the other night, I believe, with respect to this. And to the best of my knowledge, what I understand is while these are Bill's direct edits that have not further been seen by the select board, the select board is generally in alignment on accepting these edits. Okay. And having it be a joint. That's correct. And if that were not the case, it would come back here in the end, I would assume so. Because if it was changed, we wouldn't have voted one. Right. The only caveat to that is the publication data. The timeline. Understood. Yeah. Which is what, Monday afternoon? Tuesday? Tuesday at noon, I think. Tuesday at noon. Okay. So what do we need to do? Do we need to approve this? Do we need to make a motion? We don't have to do anything, but I would suggest that we should take a vote to approve to co-sponsor Article DD or not, and to recommend Article DD for passing for the town meeting consideration. We usually say support of the article. Yes. Do you want me just to say so moved? There's two separate items there. Okay. I'm going to do this. It's not going to go well. She's going to have to fix it. No, just do what you want. And I'm going to say that I am voting to kind of co-sponsor with the select board to do this, because I think we need to know. We need to know what it is appropriate for, if it is appropriate. So I don't think any of us at the table are sitting here being prepared to vote for this being used for one thing or another. We're voting, at least I am voting, to understand what and if it can be used. So I would like to make a motion to approve the support of co-sponsoring Article DD with the select board and... With the revisions proposed by Mr. Whitney. With the revisions proposed by Mr. Whitney. But substantially in this form. Yes. Substantially in this form. So that it is a joint proposed article and that it's under joint direction of each board. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Okay. So we've got... So that passes. I would entertain a motion to vote to support the article. So moved. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Is it on DD? Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I'll send this back over just because I made a couple further. Just deleting the re for the use and adding the school committee. I'll send it back to you. Thank you. Okay. The article which is in our packet for Wednesday. And I did not move it to the packet for today. I will now. I have to look at it on here. I haven't had a chance to fix this, but I looked at it the other day. So... Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. I have it, Christina. I just don't want people to think I'm like... We have discussed this amount and this article in theory, but we have not discussed it specific to in this form and for approval of the article. So, I would encourage any discussion or questions. I did not ask Kirsteen or David to attend because I felt like we had already gotten their feedback on this prior to at other meetings. Uh-huh. And so the idea and the hope is that expectations are there will be a $250,000 balance remaining in this fund at the end of this fiscal year. Uh-huh. And by allocating $300,000 to this by-town meeting vote, um, we would have it up to $550,000. Cross our fingers, knock on wood. Um, and that would be, you know, more of a desired cushion. And the idea has always been to try and fund this, um, so that there was a balance and we could maintain a balance and not have it be that we were always knowing we would be using it in our, basically within our operating budget. Um, I think we got good numbers and feedback with respect to the special education budget from Kirsteen and Ronnie and David, um, this year while we were looking at the budget. Um, go ahead. No, I'm listening. Oh, okay. Um, they propose, finance committee proposes this comes from free cash by way of reminder for everyone, this requires, in order for the funds to be used, an approval by the select board, um, a majority vote by us and by the select board in order to release the funds. Um, and we must have, uh, depleted our operating budget funds for special education and circuit breaker funds. Um, I can't think of anything else, but I think this is the largest amount we've ever put in here, which is, is good. Right. It's going to help us from. Well, I think it's the first year we're going to actually carry some over. Exactly. As well, which is good. Exactly. I feel like we started on this in school committee. Yeah. With the funds being started. Yeah. Or the second year of it. Yeah. Cause we didn't, I don't know if we funded it the first year that we created it. It was new, it was created only four years ago maybe? Yeah. It was like right when we came in. Yeah. I think it was. So, does anybody have any discussion, questions? Do we want to just take a vote to approve, uh, approve the article? Sounds like our part of it is just, or like, the first paragraph and then the rest is the FinCon. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I would, I would want to have some wording changes, but it sounds like it's not a place to, we're just voting on whether to approve it or not. To support it. Just basically to approve it, like for town, for town meeting to approve it, we're recommending that town meeting approve it. Got it. Yeah. Which is really just the operation of getting the cash into the fund. I move support article M. I second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None. None. Okay. Okay. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. All adjourned. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.