March 4, 2026 – Recreation Commission – Video & Transcript
March 4, 2026 - Recreation Commission
We can call the agenda to order, Recreation Commission, March 4, 2026, 10 a.m., in-person or remote access at the Wayland Town Building in the school meeting.
You could review just the bold part of the agenda. I'll review the agenda. This is a call to order, review the agenda for the public, public comment, minutes, reviewer-approved minutes, available from December 3, 2025, and January 29, 2026, Commissioner announcements, reports and concerns, general reports and concerns, Route 20, Landfill Visioning Committee, and the Community Presentation Committee. Part-naming policy is less than a dark review and possible vote to approve the part-naming policy, schedule the next meeting date, and potential agenda items, a topic not reasonably anticipated by the Chair 48 hours in advance to the meeting, if any, and the rate is adjourned. So, is it a public comment? Do you have any public comment? I don't have anybody. Okay, I don't mind. No. Phone is opposed to that. So, if the money jumps in, I just have to allow him to join? Yes. So, there's going to be, like, three dots on the side, and you can click on that and say, promote to panelist. Okay. Unless he shows up just directly as a panelist. All right. So, if he is elected, it requires no assistance. Are you considered a panelist there? Because it says two panelists. Yes. Okay. Do I just raise my hand? Like that? No, we do. Yeah. So, minutes, we'll postpone minutes until Mike gets here. Commissioner, announcements, reports, and concerns. Thank you. In general, reports, and concerns. Catherine? So, I was telling AC yesterday, I didn't normally include, like, a more robust director's report on the agenda to inform you guys what's been going on in BRAC. And I didn't put that on the agenda this year because I've been out sick for a few days, and I didn't think I didn't have time to prepare it. But I can give, like, a quick what's going on in BRAC update if you feel like it appropriately falls into that agenda. The big thing that we had going on, we had a, for the first time in the 10 years that I've been here, a software outage with our software provider, which means all of our systems were down. We couldn't access rosters, field permits, beach memberships. We couldn't conduct any actual transactions. It impacted not just our town, but a lot of towns that use our REC software. It was down from 1 a.m. on Thursday morning to Tuesday at 8 a.m. So, a pretty significant chunk of time. Of this last weekend. Of this last weekend. Oh, wow. The silver lining for us, March, that week is one of our quietest weeks that we have because camp registration is already over. Our early spring sessions are already going. So, it just impacted us operationally in the department, you know, as we do our work. But not so much the front-facing group. So, we're still kind of recovering from that, making sure everything's up in the line, and coming up with new strategies on how to back up our systems. Is that a security issue, or just like a... It was with the software provider. They have, since, they basically got half the FBI was involved. They have determined that no credit card numbers weren't impacted. And they provide daily updates. The last one, I haven't read the update yet, but it started with, we have more good news for you. So, I think we're okay. We and Waylon don't store credit card numbers, health information, anything. There's personal information like names and addresses and birthdates like that, but nothing wildly secure. And we do that on purpose. So, I think we're okay. But, for a couple of days, we were in the zone. Like I said, we had camp registration back on February 9th. By and large, everything is sold out of our main day camps, Summer Adventure, Winning the Scared Speech Buddies. But there are still spots available in the sports camps and the science camps that we offer to supplement those. And, as always, the 4th of July week is usually a little light. But, mostly, we saw what we expected on that registration night, which was great. Like I said, our early spring session is underway. It starts this week. So, that's Rec Pass and all the different lessons that we offer in the early spring. It goes from now until April school vacation. And then we have what we call the late spring. That will go April school vacation to the end of the school year. In between those two sessions, we have April school vacation, which will mimic what we did in February school vacation, which was a huge success. All of our programs ran with pretty good numbers. And the folks that weren't on vacation enjoyed those programs. Did you modify or do anything differently this year as far as camp registration? Or has it been over the last couple of years, it's been pretty seamless? Yeah, we tweaked it. And the software provider that we use, that I'm actually a big fan of, we worked closely with them to prevent some of the issues that parents were seeing about, you know, getting kicked out kind of randomly online or ending up on wait lists when they didn't feel like they ought to be on a wait list. So, we resolved a lot of those issues. Yeah, I mean, we were here in the office until about 9 o'clock that night. I want to say we received four phone calls related to registration problems. How many? Thousands. Yeah, that's right. So, we are getting there. I mean, we still run into the problem. Of people being wait lists. So, every year we find ways to add more spots and be creative about how we can accommodate more campers. It's just tough because the popular ones are popular and everybody wants to be in them. So, there are some wait lists there. But we're still working through those. Plus, people's plans change between now and when summer camp starts. So, there is movement in the wait list. So, there's still some hope. But... Do you receive any pushback from the general public? Or, on the other side of that, have you received, hey, this really is easy. This is really... Yeah, we actually... We received more comments like, this is... You know, they got what they wanted and it was easy to do it and less stressful than year fast. I mean, there was one year... I mean, there were all kinds of glitches that happened and people were getting kicked out when we... I mean, that was years ago and it was the worst. But, I would say, by and large, it was a success with not a lot of issues. Any camp that uses any software, anywhere to register... I mean, people used to have to stand in line in person to register for summer camp. I mean, it's never a pretty process. But, I think we did okay. Have there been any issues or situations that we had last year with respect to people outlawing to do their own? What's right? We'll go to Skype. I'll see each other and that. No, we kind of worked out last year, as you know, some of our employees that worked to run some of our summer camps chose to go through a third-party vendor. There were multiple sports, basketball, football, lacrosse, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, all kind of tried that out last year. The lacrosse coaches decided that wasn't for them and came back to us this year. Football is still going to go the third-party route. So, and we've been kind of happily coexisting. So, we opt not to offer sports camps that conflict with those weeks and work around them. So, that worked out. I don't know. Yeah, and I know some of the folks came to us and the goal of going that route was to, you know, be able to donate some of the money back to the boosters and that kind of thing. And I believe that there were some contributions that were made in that way. So, I think, all in all, it was success. Good. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Yeah. The one thing we've seen an uptick this year, and I don't know why more than other years, is an uptick in financial aid applications for summer camp. So, we're spending a little bit of time processing those. And we have reserved a little bit of the revenue aside to support that. How much do we set aside, and how many potential users are there of those? So, the budget for that is usually between like $10,000 and $20,000 a year support tuition for summer camps. And I would say it gets used by between 5 and 12 different families, depending on what their needs are in the summer and which programs can support. So, yeah, that was the only thing for camp. But now that we're sold out, it's time to start getting ready for that. So, our team is preparing. We have a lot of meetings with HR about hiring the seasonal team that we hire every summer. So, we're working through that. We already have a stack of applications of young folks who are interested in working here. That keeps our crew pretty busy through March and April. A lot of the interviews happen at that time. Does that include the beach? Yep. The beach, the summer camps, the sports camps. We have a few positions in the office. We staff up in the summer to handle the influx. But everything from, you know, lifeguards and aquatic people to camp counselors and snack and session food service people at the town beach. So, we have about 100 different slots to fill. That's great. You have to have the employees, too. I hope so. Last year, we had, I think it was 80% retention from the year before. And we're hoping for the same this year. So, that'll be great. It's a nice question, Laura. It is a nice question. Because they're working with nice people. Field permits are going out now. Christine is very busy working that. There are a lot of conflicts, it seems, between youth soccer and youth lacrosse, wanting the same spaces at the same time. And it just highlights the fact that we don't have enough resources to accommodate our needs.
That's why when Mark gets here, or if Mark comes in, he can give us an update on the Route 20 Landfill Visioning Committee, because there is, there are plans to potentially add another full-size soccer field footprint, which would really help our field permit. It would be a soccer field, but that would be useful for us. It's an all-purpose, it's an all-purpose strike hand. Yeah, we'd be able to strike it. I think Mark might miss this meeting, because I understand he's traveling. Okay. Yeah, I did have a question about apportioning the fields between user groups. Is it, say, you know, we have, just arbitrarily, like, you know, lacrosse has 10 users and soccer has 20 users. Does that mean, do you give more time to the bigger, like, you know, if they have 20 teams versus 10 teams, do you give more field space to the bigger program, or does each program independently get the same amount of space? Not necessarily the same amount of space, because it's based on needs. So, a program that is bigger, like youth soccer, needs much more field space. But let's say, you know, youth soccer is trying to put a single soccer team at Alpine, and so is lacrosse at the same time. That conflict involves one team. So, in that case, they're kind of the same size.
There's, when you flip through our field packet, there's all kinds of different priorities on how we prioritize, like, you know, first they have to be community groups, they have to be wet residents, they have to be, you know, requesting a field that is appropriate for that use. So, like, if lacrosse is requesting a basketball court, and so is basketball, basketball, I would prioritize that. But it gets to a level where it's like, there's a draw, and how do you decide? And so, not necessarily the size of the group, but potentially just the need. Like, if there's nowhere else to put somebody, what do you do? Or you try to negotiate a share, where, like, if it's soccer and lacrosse, every other week, you're just going to have to take the field. It is tough, and I think right now, I don't want to say it's worse than it's ever been. The fact that Alpine is offline is hurting us a little bit. But it will be. It's going to have its growing season this spring, and it should open in the fall. But brand new irrigation, we've expanded over, they kind of raised the small T-ball field that wasn't being used to create another 77 practice space there. Yeah, we're just going to have to get creative. And it's tough, because the different groups at this point, when they're requesting the permits, like, in February, don't always know what they need. And so, not that they're blanket booking, but they are requesting more than they essentially need, so that they can make sure that they're covered.
And so, if every group does that, there's, like, a little bit of contingency that is creating confidence. So, I don't know. Why do you ask? Is there an issue? No, I mean, I did hear that they were trying to figure it out, but I was just trying to understand the numbers, because I thought I heard that soccer was twice the size of lacrosse, but I also know lacrosse, this is their primary season. Right. But, you know, on the other end of it, I also think, you know, maybe an hour and a half practice is too long, and to adjust, you know, time based on what we actually have, I keep wondering if AI can maybe figure it out. Yeah. It's a special forum. Yeah. Like, put it in, we have this many people, these are the things. Well, and I think soccer's actually probably three times the size of lacrosse at this point, but, like I said, the users that are looking to get on a field, it's still one team, usually. So, it's tough. It is, like, we weigh into consideration if, let's say, Little League, lacrosse, and soccer all submit their permits request for fields, and let's say soccer's requesting 10,000 hours because they have 900 kids, but, like, Little League and lacrosse are also requesting 10,000 hours with half as many kids, it's like, are we really using these fields? So, we kind of have to whittle down to the, like you said, the individual time frames for each practice. I think the 90-minute slot gives some flexibility for coaches to, you know, wiggle in that 90-minute slot. Right. Is there any other fields that are offline or expected to be offline for the spring or fall? What was the question? I couldn't hear that. Sorry, again. Sorry, are there any other fields that are coming offline this year outside of Alpine? This spring? I don't believe so. So, the varsity baseball field will be down for maybe, like, a 12-day period for some repairs. Is that before the season starts? It should be, yes. Of course, the season has been bad. Right. And so, we don't really know. Yeah, as soon as the snow melts in July, then we can squeeze in all the games. And, like, you know, sometimes DPW get out there and start doing their thing as soon as the snow melts and potentially find problems or irrigation breaks and things like that. And so, I don't anticipate that there will be problems that would take any fields offline. But we, and the way that we do our maintenance schedule and our capital plan is to plan for only having one footprint down each year. Just because that's all we can really afford to lose. And as you can hear with these conflicts, we can't really even afford to lose one field at a time. But the addition of another footprint would really help. Does baseball, lacrosse, and soccer compete for the same field? They do, like, especially, say, at Wayland High School, because the JV varsity baseball field is kind of overlaid on top of a rectangle. And, like, you know, in the fall, like, the goalposts for the football team are in the infields of the varsity baseball field. But the middle school has a lot of overlap, where it's hard to use those softball fields at the same time. You know, some have less conflict than others. But, yeah, it's, we have a lot of footprints, but they are on top of each other. And so, it is tough. And you can only really put one group at a time. And there's also only so many lines you can paint on the field. Like, you know, we don't generally put, say, football at Alpine, because it already has, you know, three different size soccer fields striped on it. So, just weighing out all those things. Yeah. We usually don't just have the one field offline with them. As a middle school, is there any movement, any type of rehab for the middle school? So, hopefully. It is out, in the out years on the capital plan. The school underwent a pretty comprehensive capital, long-term capital planning study. And I believe they're making that presentation to the public this Wednesday night. Or, is that tonight? Tonight. At 7 o'clock. Generally, when there's, like, school building renovations and long-term planning for what you do about buildings in school, it involves the fields around it. So, a lot of times, like, if they're going to tear down a school building, they put the school building on the field, and then the field becomes the area where the school building used to be. I haven't seen that report yet, but I am going to tune in tonight to see how it might impact what we do.
We shall see. But, yeah, the schools and DPW and facilities are all kind of, have to be partners in how we move forward with this.
Yeah. It's a big one. What else do I got? Field permits. It's just some other things we're working on. There's some repairs that we have to do to the surface of the Happy Hollow Playground. It is still under warranty, we believe. So, I'm working with the contractors there. We just have to wait for the snow to melt so that they can see the surface. We're working on the Kajituit Ballpark Backstop Project. Like I said, the Varsity Baseball Field renovation. It might get kicked out another fiscal year, but we'll find out this week. Which one were we going to do? To completely rehab the Varsity Baseball Field. It's like a $2.5 million, maybe $3 million project that was Phase 3 of the stadium plant. Is that the moving field? Slightly, yes. There is a wastewater project that's happening at the high school that will directly abutts that. There is some cost savings to do it at the same time. There's just a kind of process of convincing the Capital Planning Committee and the powers that be that this is the right time to do it. But like I said, we should know that. Because it would involve a ballot question. We should know that in the next three weeks or so. We're doing some repairs to the equipment, the hoops and the overhanging equipment in the gym. And we'll be installing new wall pads at the gym here at Town Building this summer.
We're working on upgrading all the cash registers and POS systems at the Town Beach. Our staff attended some professional development that the Town put on last Thursday. But also the Mass Park and Rec Conference is coming up at the end of this month that we're registered for. We've been working with the Health Department on controlling the algae blooms that are happening. And also with the Wayland Western Rowing Association to plan around some stuff that's happening at the beach this summer. We talked about hiring our seasonal team. We're already deep into the planning for Wayland Fest 2026, which is going to be October 3rd, I believe, is the date, the first weekend in October.
One thing that's taking up a little bit of our time right now is the middle school has assigned some kind of civics project to the students at the middle school. Where they've been tasked to kind of work with community officials to complete projects in town. Most of them are choosing recreation sites, playgrounds, fields, parks, things like that. So I have about 14 different requests from Wayland Middle School students on their ideas on how to improve things in town. So we're going to, you know, set up some meetings with those students and see how we can have those conversations. And then we also, I think I told you last meeting, we got the $5,000 grant to run the playground series of the Hannah Williams Playground. And we've been working this last few weeks on setting up those events and spending that money. So that's just some of the things we've been working on. Our spring-summer brochure went out. You probably got it at your house. And the next one is already in the works, which was scheduled out to go in May. It's mostly beach in the summer for later. So, yeah, that's just me not preparing my rec department update. That's great. Apart from that, we had done some work. I know Mark was doing it in the background working on some of the ice rink conversation that we had last time. I did a survey amongst other rec departments. I got a lot of good information from about eight different rec departments on how they do it. And I can provide a more packaged report on that at the next meeting. But a lot of them are volunteer-run and don't use town resources, from what I'm learning. Unless it's like a full-blown, like the city of Worcester has the full-blown ice skating rink with a Samboni and a staff team dedicated to it. And I think that's the route Mark said that he wanted to go next time. So I have a lot of information that I didn't have last week. But it's not on the 10 minutes today. And then the issue we talked about last meeting was the request to open up the high school facilities. And I think we did determine that we're going to first try the strategy of adding more portable toilets and service them more frequently. And we've already set up that contract for the spring. So we should see probably like four to six units out there that are getting serviced every other day. And hopefully that will solve the problem. Yeah. So that's all I have, Mr. Chair. Will Wayland Fest also be held at the same site, even though we have new owners? Yes. Yeah. And it sounds like the new owners are very eager to, you know, support Wayland and make some changes there. And I think that they do like this event. So it'll be great. That meeting was actually, we had a planning meeting scheduled for tonight or tomorrow night. And it just got canceled because so many folks are either sick or out of town. So TBD. They certainly seem to be much more interested in cooperative ventures as opposed to previously. Yeah. I think people are excited about what's going to happen then, which is great. I think they're excited about that. I also think they're excited about the people in one of the, and the town center, the center here. The old Holtzons. The old Holtzons thing. I think my sense is correct, but that's going to be a dump of dumps event. Yeah, I heard that, actually.
Little Giants. Right? I love the fact that it's all gone from now. Yeah. You know that? Oh, people can't cut through there. They can't cut through there because they're going to do... Oh, you can't cut through the Pellet Island? Oh, for instance. It's making me really hassle on my lunch break. That's something that... But I used to do that. Everyone did. I was like, they should make this a public road. Yeah. I had someone ask me a question about, they were interested in diving program, and I wasn't sure if it could be a rec program or if I had to go through the community pool and become one of their programs. Something like a six-week intro to diving, you know, with a trainer, you know, do a week. Interesting. Have them reach out to us. So, we in the rec department do offer programs and lessons not on town property, like, you know, we partner with the music school and even the dance studio and offer programs that way at sites that aren't ours. And so, it's possible that we could support that. It might be something the pool just wants to take on on their own. I don't have a good regular contact at the community pool, and a lot of people in town think that we operate the community pool. Yeah. We get a lot of their phone calls. But yeah, it's something we could find a way. Yeah. Yeah. I understand there's diving at the Weyland Swim and Tennis, but that seems to be the only place in town. And then, you know, people come to the high school and they're very, you know, strong swim program. And I don't know how they get their divers because, you know, a diver can get 50 points for a meet. And generally, the points can rack up to 200, 300. So, getting 50 would win the event for you.
Maybe we could talk to the community pool or even the, you know, the diving coaches that went in high school and see how we could put together, like, a youth program. Interesting. All right. I'll have some time, too. Yeah. I love them. They won the space again. Yeah. They've been kind of renowned in that sport. And they beat Weston, too. Oh. Oh, really? Yeah. Weston. Oh, red tide. They're strong. The Weston beat the third place team. But I think one or two points. Wow. Wow. All right. So that's a general affordance. And we'll wait. Oh, is Mark? Mark, is he going to attend online here? Did you teach traveling? Jeff, I believe Mark is traveling. Mark's in Dallas. Okay. Okay. He's not attending online. I don't believe so. I think he had meetings today. I don't know if he was going to try to jump on for some part, but I don't believe he's available. Okay. So we won't get any kind of reports from them on it. I think it's that they did two public forums recently where they presented some like high-level conceptual designs that included a field. Um, so that's, those are all public meetings. You can watch them back on Wacom or the minutes will get posted eventually. But, um, it's. And where else do they propose for use of that property? So they started with 17 different, um, proposed uses from a community forum that happened way back and they've kind of withered them down, like some through their investigation determined wouldn't be possible on this site because of its prior use. And so I think that this is their final recommendation. The house can be done. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually, I haven't watched back the most recent forum. I meant to, but I was safe, so I, um, but before next meeting, or maybe, maybe Mark will be able to remind us. I'm making excuses now. It's been a crazy 10 days. I'll tell you that. Um, yeah. So nothing official from the Route 20 landfill canoe, but there's new movement. Great. Leslie, do you have anything? No, we haven't met. We won't be, I think we're done until time. Tell me, I think there's some articles and none of them are, uh, yeah, ours, but next year there will be. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Uh, park naming policy discussed about review and possibly vote to approve a, uh, park naming policy. Um, I've had discussions with, uh, and, and Tom Bay and the rest of you. I know you've had some. Very, very brief. But my, my, they would like for us to sort of take a lead in terms of, of, uh, doing this with, having a park naming policy, they would then run by the site board. And, um, it may well be that each, that we get approval of what we, uh, what we propose that, I mean, that other groups would, um, um, uh, use our policy and modify it as they would, which they would have to get, I think, approval from the, from the site board. Um, um, so that said, Leslie, you provided any other. Um, so there's two things in the packet. I, I can, yeah. Um, Jeff, you probably already have this, the draft policy that, um, Leslie put together. Um, I think that's a good starting point that we could work through. And then I just included like a little worksheet on things to think about when developing a naming policy, like, you know, why are we doing this? Is there a problem that we're trying to solve or is it just a preventative situation to avoid risks or, you know, if there's core values we want to determine. Um, and then, um, and then eventually when, once we develop the policy, we have to determine how to execute the policy. So, like, who makes the decision on how and when the park gets named? Does it require town meeting approval? And I think, like, if we're developing the policy, then we would have the authority to decide how it goes. And potentially people in town do want it to go to town meeting. Um, maybe it doesn't need to be so formal. And if it does go to town meeting, it's a majority vote. Uh, vote. It's a two-thirds vote. Um, that might be a 50%. Yeah, that's true. Um, so just things to think about as you start making one of these policies. But I'll stop there.
So if you're looking at this, um, why policy? What problems are we solving? What risks are we avoiding without a policy? Uh, anybody have a particular... Yeah, yeah, from my perspective. Some of the things like, does a person have to be a resident of a town? Uh, does a person have to be, you know, in an elected or appointed position? Uh, is there a, is there a, is there a, um, time constraint in terms of, of how, how quickly this could happen should, should someone who people are considering pass, and is there a, is there a time, consideration for, you know, a year or two years or whatever it might be? Mm-hmm. So, I guess I know there's a lot of times there's a quote-unquote knee-jerk reaction when someone passes. Mm-hmm. Oh, we should do this, we should do that, uh, we should be, so there are considerations as far as that's concerned. I've also seen policies where people won't name facilities after living, but it's only after people let it pass. So there's different ways to do it, and I think that we have to figure out which one works the best and when it helps. Um, who's responsible? So if it's a, uh, some type of a sign, it is who's responsible for design, who's responsible for manufacturing, um, who, who bears the cost, who bears the cost of the design and, and or the manufacturing. Um, my assumption is that, um, you know, the town, the DPW will take care of the installation aspect of this. Yeah, that's a, that's a question that, it would need to be answered, answered, um, what materials, what materials would you use inside, or what materials would you use to use inside? It's noisy out there, but, um, that's the other thing, and I think that if it's going to be the right department policy, and we're putting together, do we want to dictate some kind of uniformity with the signs that, that this is what they should look like, and this, you know, like, you know. Don't really count to you on it. Right, right. Like those kind of details, right. If we want to get into that, if this policy should tell you what color it needs to be, then I think that we should talk about that. Yeah. Well, these are all good questions that I think, for me, open. Yeah. Does anybody have any opinions on any of these things? I kind of like the idea of bringing it to town meeting. I didn't really think about it. I was originally thinking, you know, that each committee would, um, the, the, you know, the application would go to the committee, the committee would vote, and then they would put it to the select board so that they, um, have the final say. Um, but just, the only reason I like town meeting is for awareness, and if it's supposed to be an honor or something that defines our town, people in the town should really have it forced in front of their faces and know about it. Yeah. And, and then get the opportunity to appreciate it the same. Um, maybe it's not that, doesn't need to be that grand, but, um, I think maybe, maybe losing out by, by not knowing about it. Yeah. Yeah. Or exposure. Yeah. Um, but I'm, you know, someone thinks that's too much also, or, you know, I could agree with that. Yeah. Do you have any opinion on this? I mean, I think that like, I, I'm sort of, I guess I'm in the same camp as Leslie. I feel like it's something that like being able to have there be a, um, visibility and an opportunity for a public to also have a say in this, but I'm afraid that it gets like, something like this would get like lost in the shuffle with such, you know, I feel like our town meetings have so many different agenda topics that something like this gets lost in the shuffle and wouldn't get the, the emphasis, um, that maybe, you know, it, it needs. Um, I do think that there being some type of like structure basis or baseline for how to be able to like petition for a name change or a, or, uh, um, the ability to do that, I think is definitely necessary rather than just like throwing out an idea and having to be something that gets decided that way. But I guess I'm also concerned about it just being like lost in a town meeting agenda. Yeah. Okay. Is there, is, is our ceremonies ever acknowledged at town meeting or is it something that would be like re-capped? Last town meeting was one of the first town meetings that they incorporated some of the town's annual awards into the meeting, but similar to what Jeff brought up is there was concern that it was going to get lost or, um, you know, just muddy the waters of the business of town meeting. So they set aside a time right before town meeting for that. Yeah. Um, yeah. How were, how were previous fields named? Like how was like the like Schwartz field like decided? How were any of, is there like, I don't even, I mean, those, all of the naming for any of the fields all predates, you know, my time in Wayland. Um, but is there, was there, is there like any precedent for how those were decided or chosen? Not really. The only one that's been done since I've been here is the Eric Schwartz field. And it was honestly a group of residents that were interested in, um, placing a sign at that field and they funded it and installed a sign at the field. Um, and that's like, like, so I don't know that like any work has been done, like to change the deed of the property or whatever it would be to actually officially change the name of that location. Um, you know, I think as it looks on paper, it's still, you know, the town of Wayland baseball field on Riverview F. Yeah. But there is a sign there and they're actually, we voted the last man to replace that sign. Um, and name it Eric Schwartz. It has some experience about our King. Um, but like you were saying, it's like, for, I think first the commission has to decide, like, do we, do we need a naming policy? Like the policy might just be like, we're not renaming any fields. Like it's, it's going to be Alpine field. And that's what we call it based on where it's located. You know? So. Yeah. I think that, that was one of the issues in terms of when, when, when Dave passed, uh, there was a, there was an immediate, uh, interest in perhaps renaming the contituate field. You know? Yeah. Um, I think that, that, um, that the, the, I think the initial, um, response to that is sort of, um, when people actually thought about what that, what that would actually mean for contituate field being renamed, I think there's, there's probably, um, less an appetite to rename it at this particular point in time. And I think that part of the reason for that is that it is, it is, it is really, uh, always been named contituate field. And I think contituate residents of the contituate, contituate part of town are very pleased that that field was made for contituate and there'd be some, some opposition to renaming that field. Um. I agree with that. I agree. I, I think, you know, preference to historical or landscape would be beneficial or better than, you know, you know, in lieu of that, then maybe considering names of, of people. Right. Over like say a commercial brand name, right? Like. Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess the only, the idea of having there be some type of structure avoids the like, you know, situation. And I thought, like I said, what it sounds like for a Schwartz field is like somebody says, Oh, we should do this. And basically plant a sign and nothing gets formally changed, but it then does get changed to some degree. Like there's nothing that we really have in place that prevent people from like somebody just goes in, you know, names Alpine, Jeff Bergeron field, like, which is an idea that I'll put out there. I'm just saying, you know, no, but I think that just like having there be some type of structure or some type of like, you know, if it's something that there needs to be like, or, you know, even if it's something as simple as like, just presenting to us as like, here's the reasons why here's maybe some improvements that they want to invest out of like, you know, out of what they want to be able to do for that field, you know, what the vision would be and then being able to sort of, I don't want to say qualified, but to some degree, like qualified to be able to like, you know, determine that, you know, that name changes is just and wanted. And there's some type of like, you know, improvement or investment or, you know, something that goes behind making that change. Well, I can tell you that with respect to the field being named Thrive King is that field was named Busick Field. And the reason it was named Busick Field was because Johnny Busick, the ex-Ruling Hall of Famer, he funded a portion or all of that building of that field. So they named Busick Field. Johnny Busick never set foot on that field and never saw it. So when I died, he was actually my boiler's best friend. And so he had been an active member of the Royal and Recreation Commission for years. And so I made the proposal that they renamed the Field of Thrive King. And so, you know, ultimately, there was some discussion about it and there was a movement that actually made that happen. But it was not one that... It actually went primarily through the Recreation Commission. And I don't recall whether or not there was any input from the select board at that time. So that's sort of the history behind that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm... I think even keeping something as simple as like... Like to your point, I said, like, you know, there was a... You know, it was changed as... It changed to Art King as sort of like a memory for somebody who contributed something to recreation for a long period of time. There was sort of like a reason there was like, you know, that type of thing. Like, I think that just having there be some type of proposal could keep it as like a vote to the Recreation Commission to be able to decide if something does have some type of change like that. But having it be, you know, sort of like a group consensus without it running through Recreation... Like they're... We almost need to almost have like that, like that little standard of what's the... You know, what's the reason, what's the cause and, you know, what's coming from... You know, what's the benefit for making that change? You know, if we're even able to just create that type of, you know, structure, I think it's a step forward. Actually, I think that, from my perspective, that each of the boards that would be responsible for naming rights, as far as that's concerned, you know, could make their own adjustment. It would be a basic policy set. And then if there were tweaks that needed to be made to that policy based on whatever board is overseeing that particular piece properly, I think that that would be okay. And I think... I think that probably the select board would probably have, quote unquote, the final set. Yeah. Just because... I mean, for instance, like if we end up doing fields at the Route 20 landfill project, are we going to call that the Route 20 landfill field? Like, having there be something that is slightly better. Like, somebody says, great, we should actually do this, you know, as this part because, you know, and have there be some type of, you know, here's the naming. Like, you know, we decide and if, you know, whoever's working on that, and if it goes to the select board, you know, they can, yeah, they can have the final decision. But having there be, you know, a reason or some type of backing behind it. If we have to call that landfill field, like, that's a problem. We should just sell that area to Sudbury. No, you're right. And that's coming, right? So I think it's, we need to develop this policy before it comes time to put a name on that field. Yeah. Well, I actually thought that we needed to do this before the local recreation project, because even still today, we get a lot of confusion between the local field and the local school field. Yeah. And so, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, throughout this process that we get requests to rename that site. I don't know. But in my time here, I've had no less than six requests to rename, cut you to a ballpark. And so, like, every time we get a request to name field, it's not always possible to react to it. You know, like, so I think if we put, you know, some kind of parameters or guardrails around how those requests get handled through this board, then that would solve, it would solve a problem for us. Yeah. So where are we going from here? Should we prioritize what we think it should be named after? Like the criteria? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot where to start. I mean, even, and just, I'm like, you know, brainstorming a little bit here. Out of Cotitua field, like you have like sort of that center part, it is Cotitua field, but there's two different softball parts. One's field one and one's field two. So, you know, the idea of like where, and I'll use Dave as an example, like, you know, where Dave was so involved with me, with Waylon, with men's softball, you know, that gets a ton of use actually like changing one of those, like sort of fields as that would be, I think would be a great, like, instead of field one that becomes, you know, you know, Perlman Park at Cotitua field or whatever, you know, like something like that. I think, you know, I think it would say it's a good idea and it avoids, you know, me driving around in circles trying to remember which one's field one and which one's field two at night. But I, you know, I think that there, but, you know, that could be one that, that starts with it. It's, you know, those are just field one and field two. So why not actually like consider adding a name or something like that. Well, when Leslie prepared this draft at the bottom, she included some links to other town policies and other town policies do reference like portions of parks. So, you know, like, you know, some have playgrounds that are named specifically after people so that, you know, our policy could include some kind of stipulation for, you know, subsets of geographic property. And with like, I know, like the, you know, with Norton found it with EJN foundation, like building the dugouts doing the other field as like an EJN field or something like as something like that, I think would be a great sort of nod between the two, which is, you know, two areas that are very, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, I think that the folks in constituent would not be opposed to keeping the name particular field. And then as you suggest an add on, I think that they would, I think that people, folks in constituent would be opposed to eliminating particular field. Yeah. Yeah. But having an add on, I think would probably be okay. And doing something that's almost like a small sign that's on like the back of the dugout, like on the, on the brick stricture where it's like, you know, Perlin Park is now field one. And, you know, Eliza Park is field two, like something like that, I think actually gives it a little bit of a naming, like, you get a little bit of a naming right, you have a few things like that. I think that, you know, I'd be afraid that we'd open up everybody who wants to be able to change small things across the board. And so that's where I think that having there be something that's, you know, in place for great years, like, you know, proposal for why, you know, why this matters, why this is important. Like, I think those are, you know, great ways to be able to, you know, add a sense of community, but at the same time, not necessarily making a drastic change to, you know, a field that's been named that way for a hundred years or whatever it may be. So, on that same concept, and Leslie and I kind of touched on this earlier about when you have, like, groups that are interested in using the same field and they have the same standards. Like, if we open, create this policy and create some kind of application procedure where it says, like, you can apply to rename constituent field one or two, and we have eight different applications. Like, how is this commission going to decide between, because like I said, we've had six, at least I know of, to rename constituent ballpark or parts of it in the last 10 years. There's eight, oh yeah, and there's eight memorial benches that are in place at constituent ballpark in lieu of renaming those spots. So, let's say we create this policy and say, okay, we're now accepting applications to rename constituent ballpark one, and we get eight applications. Those applications are going to you all, and you're going to have to make that decision. And so, like, to Leslie's point, like, how do you set up the criteria to decide between, like, whether, you know, Dave Perlman deserves it more than the next, you know what I mean? It's like, it's going to get, you know, potentially political or emotional or dicey. And so, how do you whittle it down so that those decisions can be made in a way that doesn't contradict the mission of what we're trying to do, which is to honor someone, you know, without not honoring someone else, you know? Yeah, you don't want to rank any, you know, you don't want to rank these and say, this one gets it. That's it, but, yeah. Yeah, I'm more nervous about my son suggesting 6-7 Park. So, I don't know. I can see that happening. Yeah. Like, anything that would. No, and honestly, like that, like, there can be folks out there like that, I'm sure. 41. We get, we get these First Amendment auditors all the time that kind of push their, their rights to be able to, you know, push the public sector envelope as far as they can. Like, so somebody could come up and besides, they should be named something completely ridiculous. And so, like, how do you separate that? Body McBeth face? Yeah, exactly. I think that adding the criteria of, like, what would be, like, what, like, for instance, like, you know, I think that's where it comes down to, like, the, the, the reasoning or the improvement or the impact as to why. And I think that's where we can, you know, that's where we can almost have that decision. You know, if it's something like Dave and his involvement with, with men's softball and developing that program, which is a huge sense of community. And that is like one of the cornerstone community parks. Like, that's something that I think that everybody can, and, and his involvement with recreation. I think that that's a huge thing. I think that the, you know, the creation and building of the dugouts and backstops and everything that's being worked on from the other side, you know, you have that bit of, like, involvement and, you know, improvement and impact on that area. Which I think that helps us differentiate from a, you know, what we wanted, we want to do this, you know, just as a, you know, as a memorial, like, I think that gives us a little bit more criteria to be able to weigh and help make the decision. And so it isn't an emotional, like I'm picking one over another, but there is like a, you know, an impact to, to what that is. Yeah. I mean, so I did draw up some criteria, and I wonder if we can look at it and kind of rank it as to, you know, which would be our top preference and which would come next. Um, and, and just kind of start with that. Um, so the item on the back page, number four, taking this from another, uh, of that one. Yeah. Is there any way it could be shared? I, for some reason I'm like stuck in, um, in like security, trying to get my, the, the, trying to get my Wayland email open on my work computer right now. So if there's any way that you're able to just share it on the screen, that way I can just read where it is. I, I've seen it, but I don't, I want to be able to look at it. Um, but, so I can't share. Um, I just wonder if I can email it to you. Oh, I can share. You're specifically the naming policy? Is that the draft? Yeah. Just the, the draft that Leslie had. I read it, but I just want to be able to read along and I can't see it right now. All right. I can email to you at a different email. You're stuck in secondary security. Yeah. If you can send it to my Yahoo, I can have that open. I see you have a pirate's helmet. Uh, Bill Matlock. Yeah. Uh, not a pirate's fan. It's right next to the Grippy Jr. Uh, piece of his jersey and a few other things all around. So. What's that? Wine and memorabilia. Nothing wrong with that. Both of them are good. Sure. I wonder if I can find it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Same. And, and I, you know, as I probably said this before, I was really just kind of compiling things from other facilities. And so these are not totally my thoughts, just what other people have done that we can strike and adjust. Right. Um. So you can get no facilities should be named after a living person. Yeah. So starting at number four in the back, um, other places have given priority to geographical location, historical or cultural significance, natural or geological features. Some people, some towns stop there. Right. And that's the criteria. Right. No people. Yeah. Yeah. The school department has a policy that they won't name, uh, buildings or facilities after people. Yeah. I've seen some that are other children are, like, you can't name something after a child that has to be an adult. So there's some child protection things there. Um, just something totally different to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has historical cultural significance, I think. Yeah. Um, you know, and like clay pit hill fields are named after the geological features there. It is clay under there. Yeah. I agree with number four. Is there any way that we could have, like, you'd almost be able to add that this isn't like, you can't name it after a business or any type of like, like, you'd hate to, for somebody to be able to buy it and then basically name it as like, uh, um, you know, a real estate, a real estate company decides to just use it as an advertising format. Yeah. I, I think that wouldn't go over well in Leland. So I particularly think that's a good idea because the bullet number five says that they made such a significant contribution of land or money. It's potentially to me that says that you could buy the name to one of these. Yeah. Yeah. That makes me nervous. Yeah. Um, I feel like we would have politicians, you know, and just anybody, um, Yahoo park. Yeah. Which now I kind of like. Jeff, if you look at number six, you look at number six, that's actually what you were, you were addressing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's, I think that's a key piece and it actually create, like, I think that also helps, you know, if there's, if there's multiples or people who want to be able to do, you know, there, it allows us, you know, more options if we choose to go down that way of having it be, you know, part of that. And then it actually also helps with a little bit of like, maybe, you know, I guess field assignments or something like that. You know, when you have, you're able to tell between something that has no name and it's just a, you know, random assignment. And it would be. It stays as a constituent field, but you'd have two different parts and they'd actually have like a name behind them. Yeah. I mean, could, would we want to strike the second two sentences in five where it says exceptions may down through the end where exceptions may be considered when a significant contribution of land or money is made and the donor stipulates naming of the facility. So that would be a living person or for volunteer efforts. If it's a don't, it could, that could be a trust though. So if it's like somebody who like has something that's part of a trust and they end up donating and it's in memory of like, you know, something beyond that. Um, I would almost just add that it wouldn't like consider, like, we wouldn't consider, you know, any sort of like, you know, any sort of business or, or, you know, corporate naming as an option. Yeah. Some kind of language to exclude a commercial. Yeah. So just, but the bullet should not be named after living person. Some of these policies, um, define the timeframe after someone's passing. Like some towns say you have to wait five years or, you know, cause when emotions are fresh, I think it's much, people could make a decision that they were determined. It could be true. Yeah. That's always one of the things that I mentioned to them. Minimum of two years or whatever, whatever. I think at least two years. Um. That would be a minimum. Yeah. Two years. I wonder, what do you think about that, Jeff? Um, yes. I mean, I do think that actually removing some of that at like immediate, like the immediate change. Um, but I would say that there are like, I mean, I would allow for like exceptions, sort of like hall of fame voting. It's five years, unless you're Roberto Clemente. And then they waive the five year waiting period because, you know, somebody had a significant impact and it's, you know, it's the right thing to do at the right time. Yeah. That's my next pirate's helmet that's coming up ASO too. Roberto Clemente. Roberto Clemente. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was looking at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was looking at that. One thing about children. And it shouldn't be a nice situation about children. Well, what about Hannah Williams? I know. There is a statue at Hannah Williams dedicated to Sarah Pryor. Who was? Oh, Sarah Pryor. Yeah. Hannah Williams was an adult. Yeah. I remember those signs. And we've gotten comments in the rec department that people find that to be like a very kind of sad memorial to be at the playground, because obviously it was a very sad and tragic story. And then it didn't kind of match the mission of what is trying to be accomplished at the playground. Yeah. Just something to think about. I mean, obviously it's very sad when adults pass too, but it's... So, because that's kind of an art installation or statuary instead of... Yeah. But we do have like, there's memorial benches in other parts of town. And some rec departments have pretty comprehensive programs on how to install memorials in general, but particularly benches. But that's different care forms. Yeah. Well, I think maybe it's worth diving into what... Gosh, this sounds terrible. You know, what we're looking for in our deceased person. Yeah. You know? And that's, you know, if it's like somebody with military honors or volunteer impact or some sort of impact in the town of Wayland. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's not for us to define and maybe that's for the group to prove. Per application. Yeah. I think too, I mean, the policy should, like when an application comes before this board, should help support this board make those tough decisions. Right? So, if it's like... Yeah. It's going to have to be clear so that those decisions... You know, just to put some guardrails around those decisions, because you all are being the hot city when that happens, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Every former selectman is going to have a park in town. Right. Or a rec commissioner or, you know what I mean? Yeah. Or anybody. And not everybody kind of always agrees with the sentiments, you know? Like, I think that we've had requests for different folks in town that I would see could raise some opposition to. Yeah. You know, it's not always a hundred percent agreement across the town of how something should be named. You know? If Art King had one envy, I'm sure that he might have an objection to Art King being named that guy. I mean, that would be done in, you know, 20 years ago. It sounds very different. Yeah. I mean, the whole world is different now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I think a lot of schools and different communities just say, we're not, our policy is that we're not doing it, you know? Yeah. But if there's an appetite for it in this town, then we can set those parameters. I do think we can't call that field, landfill, field. So I think we need to go up. Wait, wait. I mean, we have rock plants and wetlands. We need to be south. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. I know. But actually, this is confusing me about the Route 20 south landfill is that Route 20 goes east and west. There is no Route 20 south, outside of the west. but it's just it's a silly name um i mean i almost want to say you know preference not to have it named on behalf of someone deceased but i don't want to say no um and credits for having it not named yeah someone who's deceased yeah so not living or deceased so not people yeah but um i just you know we've seen so many instances of things being renamed in boston like yucky way and um yeah yeah renaming yucky way through something else right because of historically yeah um right and things change over time right and that's why like i think you have to move that emotional piece out of it but like these names that we're coming up with today at this meeting are kind of new and fresh in this moment in time but 10 years and 20 years from now how do they age you know maybe we could consider naming sub parks uh and not you know the the whole the whole one field one versus field two yeah in terms of renaming a portion uh ball field if it was currently you can never say renaming park or field number one and for field number two and then that name would last for 20 years and then it could be considered to be renamed at that point and then but then i also think i also think the burden of the cost to do this should be the submitting group like they should be paying for so i'll tell you the parks and rec um i go to this park called lynch park up in darger rain that's right on the ocean and they have memorial benches probably about every 15 feet all along the atlantic ocean and it's a program that's run by the park and rec department and you can put a plaque on the bench and name that bench and it's good for one year and you have to pay for it and so but the money goes to supporting the upkeep of the park and so it is like there's a purpose to it other than just naming the park uh the bench um but some rec departments do have kind of these robust programs that memorialize folks in town um and you know in 20 years go by and if nobody's really interested in doing that anymore um that bench then becomes kind of available but it's it's a regular program and the funds it's funded by the petitioners who want to see it happen um until they don't want to pay for it anymore and then then the name goes and somebody else gets a term but the funds do go to yeah you know maintaining that particular part yeah so if that could be the strategy we could say we're not naming parks but we're going to install memorial benches and it's the purpose is to fund the upkeep of the park potentially or you know offset fees for the users or however we want to do it there's a lot of ways that other towns you know tackle this issue in a way that is different than just creating a concept i don't know what you're thinking yeah i love lynch park lynch park lynch park lynch it's beautiful you should go yeah good i like the idea of having i i mean it seems i don't know that we would have interest in that that towns people but i think i think having um uh something like that here would be great um but we do a lot of the blocks you know when you're setting up when you're making all the bricks right yeah that um something bigger would probably be attractive to people and maybe um that's another project it is no it's a big one too yeah there's some cans of worms going on here how do we keep moving this forward i have to update my sons pick up patrol real quick i think i've missed the deadline oh no i got it stuff what do you think about restricting the naming to a sub park rather than the whole park for a deceased person uh i mean i think that keeping that as as well like one of the primary options i think would be great but i if you only have one field then you're sort of you're stuck we'd get stuck with landfill park if we do that right well yeah unless i mean unless there's multiple fields but then you can you know separate each of the each of the individual fields but you'd end up but yeah you'd end up with you know such and such a field at landfill park or like you know for instance like you know our king is one field like you wouldn't be able to do that as like one standalone field so being able to like allow for multiple parks within the same complex to be individually named i think that's a that's a great option um but i wouldn't say that you'd be able to restrict it um you know exactly like that yes someone could petition to name the entire building field as something yeah yeah separate from our king right because it's separate it's a separate location you know from and it's a separate purpose in terms of recreation you know baseball or softball field okay so i'm hearing there's consensus to open keep it open to full sites and partial sites yeah so we keep that yeah okay and then this this decedent would have to be at least two years past that's and no living people no living two years yeah person yep um and no nothing commercial would you keep the two-year window as like a would you also allow for like would it be two years with um you know with an exception to that or um what would an exception what what what would the purpose of the exception do um just as an example i guess like if it's something that uh if landfill like if there's something that's just like something that's like you know meaningful at the time or there is like a you know direct involvement or contribution or anything like that that the timing of the field opening or you know keeping everything linear like makes it more timely like you we'd be able to vote on an exception to be able to waive the two-year policy but otherwise you'd be able to you know your the petition to change the naming rights opens at two years unless you know unless you know voted upon or figured out and let maybe unless it's a newly established field so if the field already has a name then you'd wait two years but if it's a newly established like if we're going through the process we're about to cut the ribbon on landfill park do we have to wait two years to name it after somebody essentially is right so it's like but it might limit you from being able to name something that is newly established oh yeah i think i think it's a new facility that there's no two-year wait i think so when the new facility is open it's it's open as whatever name we would come up with for that particular location we don't really have any parks that have been named in the last 20 years other than newly constructed fields right and possibly sports sports yeah and well hennaway was been hennaway was for a long time yeah um well there was no real name for uh um what's his name um north i don't know what's his name um oxford oxford that was named oxford because most of our fields are named after the road they're on which is helpful for wayfinding purposes but um yeah alpine yeah yeah it was where town beach i mean i was renamed had league no no just like a picture joke yeah yeah um yeah so we have to think about how this could impact and newly develop you know right so i'm just i also look at the timing like if like perlman is an option for one of the fields a constituent it's only a year since then but with like the involvement in that area if you were to name one are you not able to name the other even though like there's a large draw or a large consensus of people that are interested in doing that like do you name one but not the other like do you hold it like that's sort of but but that's like i guess maybe the sentimental side of it is like if you were to if that's something that's like you know deemed as like one of the places just based on like i said the you know the men's softball his recreation involvement you know all of those things is it waiting a year even though we may decide to name one of the other fields what i'd hate to do is try to name both of those fields and then it's a 20-year waiting period to do something that everybody sees as like a general you know a general consensus that would be something open but i don't want to make an exception to a policy because you know just for the sake of making it i guess
you're potentially you set up the criteria to be like recommended criteria right so you all say to your waiting period but give yourselves the discretion to pick the application that meets most of the criteria right yeah because if we open up the door to rename the softball field the constituent ballpark i can up the top of my head think of six different groups that would make out the correct and so to me that would be a really hard discussion for this group yeah
but so that if you just have recommended criteria and then you guys could have the discretion to choose between applications i mean is it also worth figuring out how many fields would be available for purpose you know so maybe if it's like all right like you know like you said like locker field like that was just sort of like deemed all right it's locker conservation but there's confusion between locker school and everything is that a field that we would look at as an option for or consideration for an alternate name i think it hasn't gone through this process or whatever this new process is it should be available for yeah and i can make a list for us for the properties that belong to recreation or even just town properties and the subsets of those properties so like it should do a ballpark that's the name if that's how we say that park would retain that name but you know the the playground the basketball court and two softball fields could be sub-named and then local field probably just the field um of course that property is both recreation and conservation and so we would have to determine you know it that on a shared property like that does recreation have the final say or does it have to also be approved by the conservation commission or well i think you're kind of you're you're right in a situation there with conservation i should say they didn't want to they might want to change the the the conservation portion of that property to something that they would like it could be known as and and we would like to have it known as the whatever whatever uh recreation and i'm just thinking some of our fields that are subsets of other properties is like the clayford hill school there are seven soccer fields there that could stand to be named but probably with the approval of the school committee the school committee says they cannot be named after folks right so we have to kind of determine which properties were even yeah yeah i think that we would from my perspective we would probably stay away from school from school properties yeah okay so we can put together a list and you know the scope of what we're talking about here but i imagine once you format that list and say these you know 10 subsets of you know these recreation areas have no name and are available to be renamed then we're going to get flooded with application you know what i mean and then all of our fields and names of town would be named after like folks in this time space rather than say like an arcade king wouldn't be even on the at this point right um it's fun isn't it oh yeah yeah also looking at this list i i like this number eight that historical and commonly used place names will be preserved wherever possible so you know for example that would possibly restrict constituent from being named yeah yeah yeah right and and they yeah yeah so that that would qualify as a sort of naming individual portions of subside but they name the kitchen constituent field would be the overriding name of it
oh so and then this next paragraph describes more of the individual that we're interested in but that not we but just other um i think that's part of like whatever you know somebody's applying for for for that that like those would be the criteria that would be evaluated for that right yeah please describe how this person fits these qualities and then we can and i think that actually helps take some of the emotion auto you know the emotion or though like yeah like you go based off of the criteria
and i do think all all all fees and costs related to naming placard and ceremony and and process should be for that person to to to handle yeah yeah no i think i agree i i think that that's something that if you know if they're doing it it's it comes as like that's part of the contribution to you know that that's part of the contribution the contribution to the enhancement of the quality and you know all of that sort of stuff so did we decide not to go to town meeting and instead just go to the select board and and then the select board and ceremonies would handle it yes yeah i think that that's the i think that if if there's parties involved so for instance if it's like loker it's a split decision between you know recreation and conservation those those choices then go to the select board for like here's the recommendation from recreation that either matches or counters the you know one from from conservation and then the select board makes the decision rather than it be a you know open forum for everybody to then start to come up and try to change and advocate for that i think it comes back to the select board to make the final decision could we release black smoke like when they make it absolutely yeah and everyone will know in town everyone will know it's the orange smoke they've made okay no i i i think that as we go through this process that we are going to be looked at to rename landfill park potentially local wreck and consider one and two so i think that we have to kind of build this with that right like how do we make it these these subsets of properties where properties get the right name yeah yeah there's such a thing it might be worth looking at neighboring towns to see what's been named around us so we can notice pitfalls yeah i used to run a summer camp and it was a resident camp an overnight camp and it was called camp day and so everyone thought it was a big in and we went to a consultant once and they said at first like you got to rename this camp but it was named after somebody whose last name was day and it was just it was the main of my existence for 10 years you know yeah yeah sleepover camp at day camp so these things happen right like yeah it's just and it's still my event today well the other thing it says is you have to have a two-thirds uh vote from the recreation commission was that's just what i took from another yeah i know i'm looking at that and saying saying two thirds or five yeah let's see there's a five majority majority majority yeah yeah all right nice to change um i think i think leslie's right that we need to involve the public ceremonies committee so there can be like a proper or ribbon cutting and such because i feel like the the renaming of eric schwartzfield didn't get that kind of grand poppin circumstance around reading it was mostly just the insulation of a sign um but there's a whole group of people behind it that were there but um potentially it deserved more than more attention than it was i didn't know me but i've heard i'm going to add that lesson yeah should we consult them at this point in the planning state oh yeah um i'd be interested to see if they have any anything that could become a foundation for what we need to do next because um they probably have their own metal uh yeah who's buying that now i believe the chair is richard turner oh which is still it i believe so
there's a lot to think about here on this one little policy yeah stuff i'm so glad you said landfill park if that sticks we are in we are we have a whole other problem on our plates we this is why this policy needs to exist before that happens
former trash park
oh boy that's you're quite apt to have these conversations yeah no it's good it's really good to kind of flush some of this stuff out and i wonder if um this is obviously a public meeting that other folks in town that have thoughts about this could potentially provide some you know direction to the right commission as we go through this process i mean i think you know we're working on this draft now but i still think we're probably two or three iterations away from a final policy so it'd be interesting to see what historical and conservation have to say or you know just like the assessors knowing yeah knowing the lay of the land and what what are potential options
historical and store commission might look at that probably there's quote unquote south landfill uh probably if and see if there's anything that they might come up with that would be to remain for that for that area yeah yeah oh and the brown trail goes right through there yeah there are like other you know there's yeah we could if you put it out to the community to be like what do you think this park should be named i think we would be flooded with some interesting requests that's where six seven park comes in
well as we were saying earlier there was a boat being named in scotland or england was it scotland and and they put it out to the public to name this boat you seem to not know about this and a radio host suggested boaty mcboat face and it was like a military grand vessel that was you know boaty boaty mcboat face and it wildly won and then it eventually became the sir david attenborough and vessel but um but yeah so pitfalls yeah this is we're gonna tighten this policy i do think we have to probably clean up the language about monetary buying contributions to parks and fields and if they're gonna are we striking it oh i think that's how well because there is a difference between being a commercial entity and buying the naming rights to a field that versus you know making a philanthropic donation that's what they do with the name right quote unquote game right to last stadium and you know uh agriculture park yeah you know whatever it may be yeah but they buy that they they pay big money but it's always going to be great woods i don't care what you call it it is yeah i'm always great so i i would say restrict that to the the benches yeah i don't think we need the money through that source unless we've amend the naming policy in future years
well i think you think there was a group that still exists i think that is looking to establish an indoor facility 195 main street through a public private partnership and that potentially would be a facility that was named commercial right well we think we could name that one it's uh there's uh dpw uh well runoff former burn down yeah burn down and mcprice ejected library we got the missile site like we don't get the nice clean property
but it's a good discussion here i think this is maybe mull on it i yeah i'm still just not really interested in the corporate names i think it would just be yeah i agree sully landscape yeah no yeah even if it's like local like what if it was like you know i'm trying to think of like a town business that's like a russell's or something like that it's like a yeah i don't know that like a something that's known to be a whalen thing opposed to like a td garden right like which is not a way i don't know um but even like community the whalen community pool which is on town land and i guess privately owned yeah um i guess they could have done yeah they could name their potentially they could name their well i don't know because it's on town land so i know that they're still kind of subject to public procurement and all that so would they have to go through this process to rename the pool after somebody that contributed to it that's it it's just dicey this is yeah there's there will always be people who are looking for exception yeah and they'll find that and it's going to be in front of this board to make those decisions which could i think will be hard decisions you know there's a lot of emotion involved in naming after people all right that's cool you can avoid all of it just say we're not going to name things after people no but like i said there's an appetite for that potentially in this time because it's just the number of requests i've received to rename parks after folks all right should we stop here and then yeah if you want either if you want to go in and make some of the i would love to see a format that would be do we maybe grab another application form and see i can probably put something together to have a working document to work off of next week if you want yeah okay if you don't mind doing that yeah and i can pull like you had contributed those links to other sources and to see how other towns do it and then maybe just i can highlight some of those things that still need to be fleshed out about like the commercial stuff or um the open questions but yeah as we put the policy together but there is some consensus that we definitely reached today in terms of the criteria and portion of the parks and you know okay so i can highlight that um okay so now so we'll wrap that up and number six schedule a next meeting date and thank you agenda items obviously is a potential event item for the next one and you you think that we could meet in in that april yeah yeah i my schedule for the rest of this month is a little crazy so i mean obviously i'm not on commission so you guys can meet but i don't see a necessity to meet um this month this month right so we could meet in april what what works for people in april and what works for you so we have an april school vacation in the third week in april i would like it kind of later april just because i'm going to that parking right conference so i'm losing a week there and i have a vacation plan so between now and then okay sure well i can't do it in the summer right well i can't take vacation in the summer so i'm trying to do it um so i'm looking at april and i would say the 30th
yeah it's a thursday oh sorry the 29th 29th is a wednesday the 28th is the town election but we don't have any contested races so we should have the same composition but town meeting is my fourth this true what works would be either um for the wednesday is what wednesday april 29th or may 6th is what there's no reason for us to meet before the town meeting that might be we voted all of the things we needed to kind of put and put on like the revolving fun caps and things like that i don't or see that we're going to need to meet ahead of time i don't know so it's wednesday april 29th or i would just have to leave it's one of those super early release days so i have to grab henry and the 29th is super wednesday i think so okay so so if you what time do you have to grab 11 15. uh uh that's my six too far um um what was what was uh i can't do tuesdays um well it's thursday the 30th does that work or not yeah either the 29th or the 30th well 29th doesn't work no but i'm saying i said i have a reference to wednesday i guess yeah um there's the thursday the 30th would be challenging for me yeah end of the end of month might be okay should we just try the 29th at 10. um you said 29th work for you jeff yep yeah i can make the 29th work is it worth almost trying to do it at 9 30 though and that way if we need to wrap up by 11 and leslie needs to leave
all right i'll put that out to mark and mike as well should we alternatively just pick it's yeah if that doesn't work for them we push it out one week until may 6th yeah same okay i'll put that's it that's for wednesday yep i will put i'll find out if mark and mike can be at that time and if they can then we'll go through from there okay the only thing i would ask if we have that minutes by then it'll be an open meeting about law violation because you can only go 30 days with free meetings and then we also need um i know sometimes my email is like okay that's 48 hours we need an agenda so um if you between now and then if there are agenda items that we have one on the agenda well you know this one is this naming policy is going to be one definitely definitely sure and like i said i don't know if we want to be talking about ice rinks in may but maybe we do um that's okay yeah fine i'd be surprised if we would move forward the next range but um i'd like to be a push for a huge push back from the dpd yeah yeah situation and i think mark north was working kind of behind the scenes um to go down an avenue that wouldn't involve the dpd that it would be like a third party event that it comes in yes i think so and if that's the case then we have to figure out how much how much it's going to cost and how much it's going to cost the general public yeah because it's a it's a pay-to-play type situation i my my my sense all right so sometime between now and April 29th i'll hopefully have a fresh draft of this with some talking points and then could call for more tonight okay would uh someone make a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn i'll second it all in favor oh hold on one second there we go raise my hand yeah yeah nice to go raise my hand yeah nice to go raise my hand
You could review just the bold part of the agenda. I'll review the agenda. This is a call to order, review the agenda for the public, public comment, minutes, reviewer-approved minutes, available from December 3, 2025, and January 29, 2026, Commissioner announcements, reports and concerns, general reports and concerns, Route 20, Landfill Visioning Committee, and the Community Presentation Committee. Part-naming policy is less than a dark review and possible vote to approve the part-naming policy, schedule the next meeting date, and potential agenda items, a topic not reasonably anticipated by the Chair 48 hours in advance to the meeting, if any, and the rate is adjourned. So, is it a public comment? Do you have any public comment? I don't have anybody. Okay, I don't mind. No. Phone is opposed to that. So, if the money jumps in, I just have to allow him to join? Yes. So, there's going to be, like, three dots on the side, and you can click on that and say, promote to panelist. Okay. Unless he shows up just directly as a panelist. All right. So, if he is elected, it requires no assistance. Are you considered a panelist there? Because it says two panelists. Yes. Okay. Do I just raise my hand? Like that? No, we do. Yeah. So, minutes, we'll postpone minutes until Mike gets here. Commissioner, announcements, reports, and concerns. Thank you. In general, reports, and concerns. Catherine? So, I was telling AC yesterday, I didn't normally include, like, a more robust director's report on the agenda to inform you guys what's been going on in BRAC. And I didn't put that on the agenda this year because I've been out sick for a few days, and I didn't think I didn't have time to prepare it. But I can give, like, a quick what's going on in BRAC update if you feel like it appropriately falls into that agenda. The big thing that we had going on, we had a, for the first time in the 10 years that I've been here, a software outage with our software provider, which means all of our systems were down. We couldn't access rosters, field permits, beach memberships. We couldn't conduct any actual transactions. It impacted not just our town, but a lot of towns that use our REC software. It was down from 1 a.m. on Thursday morning to Tuesday at 8 a.m. So, a pretty significant chunk of time. Of this last weekend. Of this last weekend. Oh, wow. The silver lining for us, March, that week is one of our quietest weeks that we have because camp registration is already over. Our early spring sessions are already going. So, it just impacted us operationally in the department, you know, as we do our work. But not so much the front-facing group. So, we're still kind of recovering from that, making sure everything's up in the line, and coming up with new strategies on how to back up our systems. Is that a security issue, or just like a... It was with the software provider. They have, since, they basically got half the FBI was involved. They have determined that no credit card numbers weren't impacted. And they provide daily updates. The last one, I haven't read the update yet, but it started with, we have more good news for you. So, I think we're okay. We and Waylon don't store credit card numbers, health information, anything. There's personal information like names and addresses and birthdates like that, but nothing wildly secure. And we do that on purpose. So, I think we're okay. But, for a couple of days, we were in the zone. Like I said, we had camp registration back on February 9th. By and large, everything is sold out of our main day camps, Summer Adventure, Winning the Scared Speech Buddies. But there are still spots available in the sports camps and the science camps that we offer to supplement those. And, as always, the 4th of July week is usually a little light. But, mostly, we saw what we expected on that registration night, which was great. Like I said, our early spring session is underway. It starts this week. So, that's Rec Pass and all the different lessons that we offer in the early spring. It goes from now until April school vacation. And then we have what we call the late spring. That will go April school vacation to the end of the school year. In between those two sessions, we have April school vacation, which will mimic what we did in February school vacation, which was a huge success. All of our programs ran with pretty good numbers. And the folks that weren't on vacation enjoyed those programs. Did you modify or do anything differently this year as far as camp registration? Or has it been over the last couple of years, it's been pretty seamless? Yeah, we tweaked it. And the software provider that we use, that I'm actually a big fan of, we worked closely with them to prevent some of the issues that parents were seeing about, you know, getting kicked out kind of randomly online or ending up on wait lists when they didn't feel like they ought to be on a wait list. So, we resolved a lot of those issues. Yeah, I mean, we were here in the office until about 9 o'clock that night. I want to say we received four phone calls related to registration problems. How many? Thousands. Yeah, that's right. So, we are getting there. I mean, we still run into the problem. Of people being wait lists. So, every year we find ways to add more spots and be creative about how we can accommodate more campers. It's just tough because the popular ones are popular and everybody wants to be in them. So, there are some wait lists there. But we're still working through those. Plus, people's plans change between now and when summer camp starts. So, there is movement in the wait list. So, there's still some hope. But... Do you receive any pushback from the general public? Or, on the other side of that, have you received, hey, this really is easy. This is really... Yeah, we actually... We received more comments like, this is... You know, they got what they wanted and it was easy to do it and less stressful than year fast. I mean, there was one year... I mean, there were all kinds of glitches that happened and people were getting kicked out when we... I mean, that was years ago and it was the worst. But, I would say, by and large, it was a success with not a lot of issues. Any camp that uses any software, anywhere to register... I mean, people used to have to stand in line in person to register for summer camp. I mean, it's never a pretty process. But, I think we did okay. Have there been any issues or situations that we had last year with respect to people outlawing to do their own? What's right? We'll go to Skype. I'll see each other and that. No, we kind of worked out last year, as you know, some of our employees that worked to run some of our summer camps chose to go through a third-party vendor. There were multiple sports, basketball, football, lacrosse, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, all kind of tried that out last year. The lacrosse coaches decided that wasn't for them and came back to us this year. Football is still going to go the third-party route. So, and we've been kind of happily coexisting. So, we opt not to offer sports camps that conflict with those weeks and work around them. So, that worked out. I don't know. Yeah, and I know some of the folks came to us and the goal of going that route was to, you know, be able to donate some of the money back to the boosters and that kind of thing. And I believe that there were some contributions that were made in that way. So, I think, all in all, it was success. Good. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Yeah. The one thing we've seen an uptick this year, and I don't know why more than other years, is an uptick in financial aid applications for summer camp. So, we're spending a little bit of time processing those. And we have reserved a little bit of the revenue aside to support that. How much do we set aside, and how many potential users are there of those? So, the budget for that is usually between like $10,000 and $20,000 a year support tuition for summer camps. And I would say it gets used by between 5 and 12 different families, depending on what their needs are in the summer and which programs can support. So, yeah, that was the only thing for camp. But now that we're sold out, it's time to start getting ready for that. So, our team is preparing. We have a lot of meetings with HR about hiring the seasonal team that we hire every summer. So, we're working through that. We already have a stack of applications of young folks who are interested in working here. That keeps our crew pretty busy through March and April. A lot of the interviews happen at that time. Does that include the beach? Yep. The beach, the summer camps, the sports camps. We have a few positions in the office. We staff up in the summer to handle the influx. But everything from, you know, lifeguards and aquatic people to camp counselors and snack and session food service people at the town beach. So, we have about 100 different slots to fill. That's great. You have to have the employees, too. I hope so. Last year, we had, I think it was 80% retention from the year before. And we're hoping for the same this year. So, that'll be great. It's a nice question, Laura. It is a nice question. Because they're working with nice people. Field permits are going out now. Christine is very busy working that. There are a lot of conflicts, it seems, between youth soccer and youth lacrosse, wanting the same spaces at the same time. And it just highlights the fact that we don't have enough resources to accommodate our needs.
That's why when Mark gets here, or if Mark comes in, he can give us an update on the Route 20 Landfill Visioning Committee, because there is, there are plans to potentially add another full-size soccer field footprint, which would really help our field permit. It would be a soccer field, but that would be useful for us. It's an all-purpose, it's an all-purpose strike hand. Yeah, we'd be able to strike it. I think Mark might miss this meeting, because I understand he's traveling. Okay. Yeah, I did have a question about apportioning the fields between user groups. Is it, say, you know, we have, just arbitrarily, like, you know, lacrosse has 10 users and soccer has 20 users. Does that mean, do you give more time to the bigger, like, you know, if they have 20 teams versus 10 teams, do you give more field space to the bigger program, or does each program independently get the same amount of space? Not necessarily the same amount of space, because it's based on needs. So, a program that is bigger, like youth soccer, needs much more field space. But let's say, you know, youth soccer is trying to put a single soccer team at Alpine, and so is lacrosse at the same time. That conflict involves one team. So, in that case, they're kind of the same size.
There's, when you flip through our field packet, there's all kinds of different priorities on how we prioritize, like, you know, first they have to be community groups, they have to be wet residents, they have to be, you know, requesting a field that is appropriate for that use. So, like, if lacrosse is requesting a basketball court, and so is basketball, basketball, I would prioritize that. But it gets to a level where it's like, there's a draw, and how do you decide? And so, not necessarily the size of the group, but potentially just the need. Like, if there's nowhere else to put somebody, what do you do? Or you try to negotiate a share, where, like, if it's soccer and lacrosse, every other week, you're just going to have to take the field. It is tough, and I think right now, I don't want to say it's worse than it's ever been. The fact that Alpine is offline is hurting us a little bit. But it will be. It's going to have its growing season this spring, and it should open in the fall. But brand new irrigation, we've expanded over, they kind of raised the small T-ball field that wasn't being used to create another 77 practice space there. Yeah, we're just going to have to get creative. And it's tough, because the different groups at this point, when they're requesting the permits, like, in February, don't always know what they need. And so, not that they're blanket booking, but they are requesting more than they essentially need, so that they can make sure that they're covered.
And so, if every group does that, there's, like, a little bit of contingency that is creating confidence. So, I don't know. Why do you ask? Is there an issue? No, I mean, I did hear that they were trying to figure it out, but I was just trying to understand the numbers, because I thought I heard that soccer was twice the size of lacrosse, but I also know lacrosse, this is their primary season. Right. But, you know, on the other end of it, I also think, you know, maybe an hour and a half practice is too long, and to adjust, you know, time based on what we actually have, I keep wondering if AI can maybe figure it out. Yeah. It's a special forum. Yeah. Like, put it in, we have this many people, these are the things. Well, and I think soccer's actually probably three times the size of lacrosse at this point, but, like I said, the users that are looking to get on a field, it's still one team, usually. So, it's tough. It is, like, we weigh into consideration if, let's say, Little League, lacrosse, and soccer all submit their permits request for fields, and let's say soccer's requesting 10,000 hours because they have 900 kids, but, like, Little League and lacrosse are also requesting 10,000 hours with half as many kids, it's like, are we really using these fields? So, we kind of have to whittle down to the, like you said, the individual time frames for each practice. I think the 90-minute slot gives some flexibility for coaches to, you know, wiggle in that 90-minute slot. Right. Is there any other fields that are offline or expected to be offline for the spring or fall? What was the question? I couldn't hear that. Sorry, again. Sorry, are there any other fields that are coming offline this year outside of Alpine? This spring? I don't believe so. So, the varsity baseball field will be down for maybe, like, a 12-day period for some repairs. Is that before the season starts? It should be, yes. Of course, the season has been bad. Right. And so, we don't really know. Yeah, as soon as the snow melts in July, then we can squeeze in all the games. And, like, you know, sometimes DPW get out there and start doing their thing as soon as the snow melts and potentially find problems or irrigation breaks and things like that. And so, I don't anticipate that there will be problems that would take any fields offline. But we, and the way that we do our maintenance schedule and our capital plan is to plan for only having one footprint down each year. Just because that's all we can really afford to lose. And as you can hear with these conflicts, we can't really even afford to lose one field at a time. But the addition of another footprint would really help. Does baseball, lacrosse, and soccer compete for the same field? They do, like, especially, say, at Wayland High School, because the JV varsity baseball field is kind of overlaid on top of a rectangle. And, like, you know, in the fall, like, the goalposts for the football team are in the infields of the varsity baseball field. But the middle school has a lot of overlap, where it's hard to use those softball fields at the same time. You know, some have less conflict than others. But, yeah, it's, we have a lot of footprints, but they are on top of each other. And so, it is tough. And you can only really put one group at a time. And there's also only so many lines you can paint on the field. Like, you know, we don't generally put, say, football at Alpine, because it already has, you know, three different size soccer fields striped on it. So, just weighing out all those things. Yeah. We usually don't just have the one field offline with them. As a middle school, is there any movement, any type of rehab for the middle school? So, hopefully. It is out, in the out years on the capital plan. The school underwent a pretty comprehensive capital, long-term capital planning study. And I believe they're making that presentation to the public this Wednesday night. Or, is that tonight? Tonight. At 7 o'clock. Generally, when there's, like, school building renovations and long-term planning for what you do about buildings in school, it involves the fields around it. So, a lot of times, like, if they're going to tear down a school building, they put the school building on the field, and then the field becomes the area where the school building used to be. I haven't seen that report yet, but I am going to tune in tonight to see how it might impact what we do.
We shall see. But, yeah, the schools and DPW and facilities are all kind of, have to be partners in how we move forward with this.
Yeah. It's a big one. What else do I got? Field permits. It's just some other things we're working on. There's some repairs that we have to do to the surface of the Happy Hollow Playground. It is still under warranty, we believe. So, I'm working with the contractors there. We just have to wait for the snow to melt so that they can see the surface. We're working on the Kajituit Ballpark Backstop Project. Like I said, the Varsity Baseball Field renovation. It might get kicked out another fiscal year, but we'll find out this week. Which one were we going to do? To completely rehab the Varsity Baseball Field. It's like a $2.5 million, maybe $3 million project that was Phase 3 of the stadium plant. Is that the moving field? Slightly, yes. There is a wastewater project that's happening at the high school that will directly abutts that. There is some cost savings to do it at the same time. There's just a kind of process of convincing the Capital Planning Committee and the powers that be that this is the right time to do it. But like I said, we should know that. Because it would involve a ballot question. We should know that in the next three weeks or so. We're doing some repairs to the equipment, the hoops and the overhanging equipment in the gym. And we'll be installing new wall pads at the gym here at Town Building this summer.
We're working on upgrading all the cash registers and POS systems at the Town Beach. Our staff attended some professional development that the Town put on last Thursday. But also the Mass Park and Rec Conference is coming up at the end of this month that we're registered for. We've been working with the Health Department on controlling the algae blooms that are happening. And also with the Wayland Western Rowing Association to plan around some stuff that's happening at the beach this summer. We talked about hiring our seasonal team. We're already deep into the planning for Wayland Fest 2026, which is going to be October 3rd, I believe, is the date, the first weekend in October.
One thing that's taking up a little bit of our time right now is the middle school has assigned some kind of civics project to the students at the middle school. Where they've been tasked to kind of work with community officials to complete projects in town. Most of them are choosing recreation sites, playgrounds, fields, parks, things like that. So I have about 14 different requests from Wayland Middle School students on their ideas on how to improve things in town. So we're going to, you know, set up some meetings with those students and see how we can have those conversations. And then we also, I think I told you last meeting, we got the $5,000 grant to run the playground series of the Hannah Williams Playground. And we've been working this last few weeks on setting up those events and spending that money. So that's just some of the things we've been working on. Our spring-summer brochure went out. You probably got it at your house. And the next one is already in the works, which was scheduled out to go in May. It's mostly beach in the summer for later. So, yeah, that's just me not preparing my rec department update. That's great. Apart from that, we had done some work. I know Mark was doing it in the background working on some of the ice rink conversation that we had last time. I did a survey amongst other rec departments. I got a lot of good information from about eight different rec departments on how they do it. And I can provide a more packaged report on that at the next meeting. But a lot of them are volunteer-run and don't use town resources, from what I'm learning. Unless it's like a full-blown, like the city of Worcester has the full-blown ice skating rink with a Samboni and a staff team dedicated to it. And I think that's the route Mark said that he wanted to go next time. So I have a lot of information that I didn't have last week. But it's not on the 10 minutes today. And then the issue we talked about last meeting was the request to open up the high school facilities. And I think we did determine that we're going to first try the strategy of adding more portable toilets and service them more frequently. And we've already set up that contract for the spring. So we should see probably like four to six units out there that are getting serviced every other day. And hopefully that will solve the problem. Yeah. So that's all I have, Mr. Chair. Will Wayland Fest also be held at the same site, even though we have new owners? Yes. Yeah. And it sounds like the new owners are very eager to, you know, support Wayland and make some changes there. And I think that they do like this event. So it'll be great. That meeting was actually, we had a planning meeting scheduled for tonight or tomorrow night. And it just got canceled because so many folks are either sick or out of town. So TBD. They certainly seem to be much more interested in cooperative ventures as opposed to previously. Yeah. I think people are excited about what's going to happen then, which is great. I think they're excited about that. I also think they're excited about the people in one of the, and the town center, the center here. The old Holtzons. The old Holtzons thing. I think my sense is correct, but that's going to be a dump of dumps event. Yeah, I heard that, actually.
Little Giants. Right? I love the fact that it's all gone from now. Yeah. You know that? Oh, people can't cut through there. They can't cut through there because they're going to do... Oh, you can't cut through the Pellet Island? Oh, for instance. It's making me really hassle on my lunch break. That's something that... But I used to do that. Everyone did. I was like, they should make this a public road. Yeah. I had someone ask me a question about, they were interested in diving program, and I wasn't sure if it could be a rec program or if I had to go through the community pool and become one of their programs. Something like a six-week intro to diving, you know, with a trainer, you know, do a week. Interesting. Have them reach out to us. So, we in the rec department do offer programs and lessons not on town property, like, you know, we partner with the music school and even the dance studio and offer programs that way at sites that aren't ours. And so, it's possible that we could support that. It might be something the pool just wants to take on on their own. I don't have a good regular contact at the community pool, and a lot of people in town think that we operate the community pool. Yeah. We get a lot of their phone calls. But yeah, it's something we could find a way. Yeah. Yeah. I understand there's diving at the Weyland Swim and Tennis, but that seems to be the only place in town. And then, you know, people come to the high school and they're very, you know, strong swim program. And I don't know how they get their divers because, you know, a diver can get 50 points for a meet. And generally, the points can rack up to 200, 300. So, getting 50 would win the event for you.
Maybe we could talk to the community pool or even the, you know, the diving coaches that went in high school and see how we could put together, like, a youth program. Interesting. All right. I'll have some time, too. Yeah. I love them. They won the space again. Yeah. They've been kind of renowned in that sport. And they beat Weston, too. Oh. Oh, really? Yeah. Weston. Oh, red tide. They're strong. The Weston beat the third place team. But I think one or two points. Wow. Wow. All right. So that's a general affordance. And we'll wait. Oh, is Mark? Mark, is he going to attend online here? Did you teach traveling? Jeff, I believe Mark is traveling. Mark's in Dallas. Okay. Okay. He's not attending online. I don't believe so. I think he had meetings today. I don't know if he was going to try to jump on for some part, but I don't believe he's available. Okay. So we won't get any kind of reports from them on it. I think it's that they did two public forums recently where they presented some like high-level conceptual designs that included a field. Um, so that's, those are all public meetings. You can watch them back on Wacom or the minutes will get posted eventually. But, um, it's. And where else do they propose for use of that property? So they started with 17 different, um, proposed uses from a community forum that happened way back and they've kind of withered them down, like some through their investigation determined wouldn't be possible on this site because of its prior use. And so I think that this is their final recommendation. The house can be done. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually, I haven't watched back the most recent forum. I meant to, but I was safe, so I, um, but before next meeting, or maybe, maybe Mark will be able to remind us. I'm making excuses now. It's been a crazy 10 days. I'll tell you that. Um, yeah. So nothing official from the Route 20 landfill canoe, but there's new movement. Great. Leslie, do you have anything? No, we haven't met. We won't be, I think we're done until time. Tell me, I think there's some articles and none of them are, uh, yeah, ours, but next year there will be. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Uh, park naming policy discussed about review and possibly vote to approve a, uh, park naming policy. Um, I've had discussions with, uh, and, and Tom Bay and the rest of you. I know you've had some. Very, very brief. But my, my, they would like for us to sort of take a lead in terms of, of, uh, doing this with, having a park naming policy, they would then run by the site board. And, um, it may well be that each, that we get approval of what we, uh, what we propose that, I mean, that other groups would, um, um, uh, use our policy and modify it as they would, which they would have to get, I think, approval from the, from the site board. Um, um, so that said, Leslie, you provided any other. Um, so there's two things in the packet. I, I can, yeah. Um, Jeff, you probably already have this, the draft policy that, um, Leslie put together. Um, I think that's a good starting point that we could work through. And then I just included like a little worksheet on things to think about when developing a naming policy, like, you know, why are we doing this? Is there a problem that we're trying to solve or is it just a preventative situation to avoid risks or, you know, if there's core values we want to determine. Um, and then, um, and then eventually when, once we develop the policy, we have to determine how to execute the policy. So, like, who makes the decision on how and when the park gets named? Does it require town meeting approval? And I think, like, if we're developing the policy, then we would have the authority to decide how it goes. And potentially people in town do want it to go to town meeting. Um, maybe it doesn't need to be so formal. And if it does go to town meeting, it's a majority vote. Uh, vote. It's a two-thirds vote. Um, that might be a 50%. Yeah, that's true. Um, so just things to think about as you start making one of these policies. But I'll stop there.
So if you're looking at this, um, why policy? What problems are we solving? What risks are we avoiding without a policy? Uh, anybody have a particular... Yeah, yeah, from my perspective. Some of the things like, does a person have to be a resident of a town? Uh, does a person have to be, you know, in an elected or appointed position? Uh, is there a, is there a, is there a, um, time constraint in terms of, of how, how quickly this could happen should, should someone who people are considering pass, and is there a, is there a time, consideration for, you know, a year or two years or whatever it might be? Mm-hmm. So, I guess I know there's a lot of times there's a quote-unquote knee-jerk reaction when someone passes. Mm-hmm. Oh, we should do this, we should do that, uh, we should be, so there are considerations as far as that's concerned. I've also seen policies where people won't name facilities after living, but it's only after people let it pass. So there's different ways to do it, and I think that we have to figure out which one works the best and when it helps. Um, who's responsible? So if it's a, uh, some type of a sign, it is who's responsible for design, who's responsible for manufacturing, um, who, who bears the cost, who bears the cost of the design and, and or the manufacturing. Um, my assumption is that, um, you know, the town, the DPW will take care of the installation aspect of this. Yeah, that's a, that's a question that, it would need to be answered, answered, um, what materials, what materials would you use inside, or what materials would you use to use inside? It's noisy out there, but, um, that's the other thing, and I think that if it's going to be the right department policy, and we're putting together, do we want to dictate some kind of uniformity with the signs that, that this is what they should look like, and this, you know, like, you know. Don't really count to you on it. Right, right. Like those kind of details, right. If we want to get into that, if this policy should tell you what color it needs to be, then I think that we should talk about that. Yeah. Well, these are all good questions that I think, for me, open. Yeah. Does anybody have any opinions on any of these things? I kind of like the idea of bringing it to town meeting. I didn't really think about it. I was originally thinking, you know, that each committee would, um, the, the, you know, the application would go to the committee, the committee would vote, and then they would put it to the select board so that they, um, have the final say. Um, but just, the only reason I like town meeting is for awareness, and if it's supposed to be an honor or something that defines our town, people in the town should really have it forced in front of their faces and know about it. Yeah. And, and then get the opportunity to appreciate it the same. Um, maybe it's not that, doesn't need to be that grand, but, um, I think maybe, maybe losing out by, by not knowing about it. Yeah. Yeah. Or exposure. Yeah. Um, but I'm, you know, someone thinks that's too much also, or, you know, I could agree with that. Yeah. Do you have any opinion on this? I mean, I think that like, I, I'm sort of, I guess I'm in the same camp as Leslie. I feel like it's something that like being able to have there be a, um, visibility and an opportunity for a public to also have a say in this, but I'm afraid that it gets like, something like this would get like lost in the shuffle with such, you know, I feel like our town meetings have so many different agenda topics that something like this gets lost in the shuffle and wouldn't get the, the emphasis, um, that maybe, you know, it, it needs. Um, I do think that there being some type of like structure basis or baseline for how to be able to like petition for a name change or a, or, uh, um, the ability to do that, I think is definitely necessary rather than just like throwing out an idea and having to be something that gets decided that way. But I guess I'm also concerned about it just being like lost in a town meeting agenda. Yeah. Okay. Is there, is, is our ceremonies ever acknowledged at town meeting or is it something that would be like re-capped? Last town meeting was one of the first town meetings that they incorporated some of the town's annual awards into the meeting, but similar to what Jeff brought up is there was concern that it was going to get lost or, um, you know, just muddy the waters of the business of town meeting. So they set aside a time right before town meeting for that. Yeah. Um, yeah. How were, how were previous fields named? Like how was like the like Schwartz field like decided? How were any of, is there like, I don't even, I mean, those, all of the naming for any of the fields all predates, you know, my time in Wayland. Um, but is there, was there, is there like any precedent for how those were decided or chosen? Not really. The only one that's been done since I've been here is the Eric Schwartz field. And it was honestly a group of residents that were interested in, um, placing a sign at that field and they funded it and installed a sign at the field. Um, and that's like, like, so I don't know that like any work has been done, like to change the deed of the property or whatever it would be to actually officially change the name of that location. Um, you know, I think as it looks on paper, it's still, you know, the town of Wayland baseball field on Riverview F. Yeah. But there is a sign there and they're actually, we voted the last man to replace that sign. Um, and name it Eric Schwartz. It has some experience about our King. Um, but like you were saying, it's like, for, I think first the commission has to decide, like, do we, do we need a naming policy? Like the policy might just be like, we're not renaming any fields. Like it's, it's going to be Alpine field. And that's what we call it based on where it's located. You know? So. Yeah. I think that, that was one of the issues in terms of when, when, when Dave passed, uh, there was a, there was an immediate, uh, interest in perhaps renaming the contituate field. You know? Yeah. Um, I think that, that, um, that the, the, I think the initial, um, response to that is sort of, um, when people actually thought about what that, what that would actually mean for contituate field being renamed, I think there's, there's probably, um, less an appetite to rename it at this particular point in time. And I think that part of the reason for that is that it is, it is, it is really, uh, always been named contituate field. And I think contituate residents of the contituate, contituate part of town are very pleased that that field was made for contituate and there'd be some, some opposition to renaming that field. Um. I agree with that. I agree. I, I think, you know, preference to historical or landscape would be beneficial or better than, you know, you know, in lieu of that, then maybe considering names of, of people. Right. Over like say a commercial brand name, right? Like. Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess the only, the idea of having there be some type of structure avoids the like, you know, situation. And I thought, like I said, what it sounds like for a Schwartz field is like somebody says, Oh, we should do this. And basically plant a sign and nothing gets formally changed, but it then does get changed to some degree. Like there's nothing that we really have in place that prevent people from like somebody just goes in, you know, names Alpine, Jeff Bergeron field, like, which is an idea that I'll put out there. I'm just saying, you know, no, but I think that just like having there be some type of structure or some type of like, you know, if it's something that there needs to be like, or, you know, even if it's something as simple as like, just presenting to us as like, here's the reasons why here's maybe some improvements that they want to invest out of like, you know, out of what they want to be able to do for that field, you know, what the vision would be and then being able to sort of, I don't want to say qualified, but to some degree, like qualified to be able to like, you know, determine that, you know, that name changes is just and wanted. And there's some type of like, you know, improvement or investment or, you know, something that goes behind making that change. Well, I can tell you that with respect to the field being named Thrive King is that field was named Busick Field. And the reason it was named Busick Field was because Johnny Busick, the ex-Ruling Hall of Famer, he funded a portion or all of that building of that field. So they named Busick Field. Johnny Busick never set foot on that field and never saw it. So when I died, he was actually my boiler's best friend. And so he had been an active member of the Royal and Recreation Commission for years. And so I made the proposal that they renamed the Field of Thrive King. And so, you know, ultimately, there was some discussion about it and there was a movement that actually made that happen. But it was not one that... It actually went primarily through the Recreation Commission. And I don't recall whether or not there was any input from the select board at that time. So that's sort of the history behind that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm... I think even keeping something as simple as like... Like to your point, I said, like, you know, there was a... You know, it was changed as... It changed to Art King as sort of like a memory for somebody who contributed something to recreation for a long period of time. There was sort of like a reason there was like, you know, that type of thing. Like, I think that just having there be some type of proposal could keep it as like a vote to the Recreation Commission to be able to decide if something does have some type of change like that. But having it be, you know, sort of like a group consensus without it running through Recreation... Like they're... We almost need to almost have like that, like that little standard of what's the... You know, what's the reason, what's the cause and, you know, what's coming from... You know, what's the benefit for making that change? You know, if we're even able to just create that type of, you know, structure, I think it's a step forward. Actually, I think that, from my perspective, that each of the boards that would be responsible for naming rights, as far as that's concerned, you know, could make their own adjustment. It would be a basic policy set. And then if there were tweaks that needed to be made to that policy based on whatever board is overseeing that particular piece properly, I think that that would be okay. And I think... I think that probably the select board would probably have, quote unquote, the final set. Yeah. Just because... I mean, for instance, like if we end up doing fields at the Route 20 landfill project, are we going to call that the Route 20 landfill field? Like, having there be something that is slightly better. Like, somebody says, great, we should actually do this, you know, as this part because, you know, and have there be some type of, you know, here's the naming. Like, you know, we decide and if, you know, whoever's working on that, and if it goes to the select board, you know, they can, yeah, they can have the final decision. But having there be, you know, a reason or some type of backing behind it. If we have to call that landfill field, like, that's a problem. We should just sell that area to Sudbury. No, you're right. And that's coming, right? So I think it's, we need to develop this policy before it comes time to put a name on that field. Yeah. Well, I actually thought that we needed to do this before the local recreation project, because even still today, we get a lot of confusion between the local field and the local school field. Yeah. And so, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, throughout this process that we get requests to rename that site. I don't know. But in my time here, I've had no less than six requests to rename, cut you to a ballpark. And so, like, every time we get a request to name field, it's not always possible to react to it. You know, like, so I think if we put, you know, some kind of parameters or guardrails around how those requests get handled through this board, then that would solve, it would solve a problem for us. Yeah. So where are we going from here? Should we prioritize what we think it should be named after? Like the criteria? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot where to start. I mean, even, and just, I'm like, you know, brainstorming a little bit here. Out of Cotitua field, like you have like sort of that center part, it is Cotitua field, but there's two different softball parts. One's field one and one's field two. So, you know, the idea of like where, and I'll use Dave as an example, like, you know, where Dave was so involved with me, with Waylon, with men's softball, you know, that gets a ton of use actually like changing one of those, like sort of fields as that would be, I think would be a great, like, instead of field one that becomes, you know, you know, Perlman Park at Cotitua field or whatever, you know, like something like that. I think, you know, I think it would say it's a good idea and it avoids, you know, me driving around in circles trying to remember which one's field one and which one's field two at night. But I, you know, I think that there, but, you know, that could be one that, that starts with it. It's, you know, those are just field one and field two. So why not actually like consider adding a name or something like that. Well, when Leslie prepared this draft at the bottom, she included some links to other town policies and other town policies do reference like portions of parks. So, you know, like, you know, some have playgrounds that are named specifically after people so that, you know, our policy could include some kind of stipulation for, you know, subsets of geographic property. And with like, I know, like the, you know, with Norton found it with EJN foundation, like building the dugouts doing the other field as like an EJN field or something like as something like that, I think would be a great sort of nod between the two, which is, you know, two areas that are very, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, I think that the folks in constituent would not be opposed to keeping the name particular field. And then as you suggest an add on, I think that they would, I think that people, folks in constituent would be opposed to eliminating particular field. Yeah. Yeah. But having an add on, I think would probably be okay. And doing something that's almost like a small sign that's on like the back of the dugout, like on the, on the brick stricture where it's like, you know, Perlin Park is now field one. And, you know, Eliza Park is field two, like something like that, I think actually gives it a little bit of a naming, like, you get a little bit of a naming right, you have a few things like that. I think that, you know, I'd be afraid that we'd open up everybody who wants to be able to change small things across the board. And so that's where I think that having there be something that's, you know, in place for great years, like, you know, proposal for why, you know, why this matters, why this is important. Like, I think those are, you know, great ways to be able to, you know, add a sense of community, but at the same time, not necessarily making a drastic change to, you know, a field that's been named that way for a hundred years or whatever it may be. So, on that same concept, and Leslie and I kind of touched on this earlier about when you have, like, groups that are interested in using the same field and they have the same standards. Like, if we open, create this policy and create some kind of application procedure where it says, like, you can apply to rename constituent field one or two, and we have eight different applications. Like, how is this commission going to decide between, because like I said, we've had six, at least I know of, to rename constituent ballpark or parts of it in the last 10 years. There's eight, oh yeah, and there's eight memorial benches that are in place at constituent ballpark in lieu of renaming those spots. So, let's say we create this policy and say, okay, we're now accepting applications to rename constituent ballpark one, and we get eight applications. Those applications are going to you all, and you're going to have to make that decision. And so, like, to Leslie's point, like, how do you set up the criteria to decide between, like, whether, you know, Dave Perlman deserves it more than the next, you know what I mean? It's like, it's going to get, you know, potentially political or emotional or dicey. And so, how do you whittle it down so that those decisions can be made in a way that doesn't contradict the mission of what we're trying to do, which is to honor someone, you know, without not honoring someone else, you know? Yeah, you don't want to rank any, you know, you don't want to rank these and say, this one gets it. That's it, but, yeah. Yeah, I'm more nervous about my son suggesting 6-7 Park. So, I don't know. I can see that happening. Yeah. Like, anything that would. No, and honestly, like that, like, there can be folks out there like that, I'm sure. 41. We get, we get these First Amendment auditors all the time that kind of push their, their rights to be able to, you know, push the public sector envelope as far as they can. Like, so somebody could come up and besides, they should be named something completely ridiculous. And so, like, how do you separate that? Body McBeth face? Yeah, exactly. I think that adding the criteria of, like, what would be, like, what, like, for instance, like, you know, I think that's where it comes down to, like, the, the, the reasoning or the improvement or the impact as to why. And I think that's where we can, you know, that's where we can almost have that decision. You know, if it's something like Dave and his involvement with, with men's softball and developing that program, which is a huge sense of community. And that is like one of the cornerstone community parks. Like, that's something that I think that everybody can, and, and his involvement with recreation. I think that that's a huge thing. I think that the, you know, the creation and building of the dugouts and backstops and everything that's being worked on from the other side, you know, you have that bit of, like, involvement and, you know, improvement and impact on that area. Which I think that helps us differentiate from a, you know, what we wanted, we want to do this, you know, just as a, you know, as a memorial, like, I think that gives us a little bit more criteria to be able to weigh and help make the decision. And so it isn't an emotional, like I'm picking one over another, but there is like a, you know, an impact to, to what that is. Yeah. I mean, so I did draw up some criteria, and I wonder if we can look at it and kind of rank it as to, you know, which would be our top preference and which would come next. Um, and, and just kind of start with that. Um, so the item on the back page, number four, taking this from another, uh, of that one. Yeah. Is there any way it could be shared? I, for some reason I'm like stuck in, um, in like security, trying to get my, the, the, trying to get my Wayland email open on my work computer right now. So if there's any way that you're able to just share it on the screen, that way I can just read where it is. I, I've seen it, but I don't, I want to be able to look at it. Um, but, so I can't share. Um, I just wonder if I can email it to you. Oh, I can share. You're specifically the naming policy? Is that the draft? Yeah. Just the, the draft that Leslie had. I read it, but I just want to be able to read along and I can't see it right now. All right. I can email to you at a different email. You're stuck in secondary security. Yeah. If you can send it to my Yahoo, I can have that open. I see you have a pirate's helmet. Uh, Bill Matlock. Yeah. Uh, not a pirate's fan. It's right next to the Grippy Jr. Uh, piece of his jersey and a few other things all around. So. What's that? Wine and memorabilia. Nothing wrong with that. Both of them are good. Sure. I wonder if I can find it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Same. And, and I, you know, as I probably said this before, I was really just kind of compiling things from other facilities. And so these are not totally my thoughts, just what other people have done that we can strike and adjust. Right. Um. So you can get no facilities should be named after a living person. Yeah. So starting at number four in the back, um, other places have given priority to geographical location, historical or cultural significance, natural or geological features. Some people, some towns stop there. Right. And that's the criteria. Right. No people. Yeah. Yeah. The school department has a policy that they won't name, uh, buildings or facilities after people. Yeah. I've seen some that are other children are, like, you can't name something after a child that has to be an adult. So there's some child protection things there. Um, just something totally different to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has historical cultural significance, I think. Yeah. Um, you know, and like clay pit hill fields are named after the geological features there. It is clay under there. Yeah. I agree with number four. Is there any way that we could have, like, you'd almost be able to add that this isn't like, you can't name it after a business or any type of like, like, you'd hate to, for somebody to be able to buy it and then basically name it as like, uh, um, you know, a real estate, a real estate company decides to just use it as an advertising format. Yeah. I, I think that wouldn't go over well in Leland. So I particularly think that's a good idea because the bullet number five says that they made such a significant contribution of land or money. It's potentially to me that says that you could buy the name to one of these. Yeah. Yeah. That makes me nervous. Yeah. Um, I feel like we would have politicians, you know, and just anybody, um, Yahoo park. Yeah. Which now I kind of like. Jeff, if you look at number six, you look at number six, that's actually what you were, you were addressing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's, I think that's a key piece and it actually create, like, I think that also helps, you know, if there's, if there's multiples or people who want to be able to do, you know, there, it allows us, you know, more options if we choose to go down that way of having it be, you know, part of that. And then it actually also helps with a little bit of like, maybe, you know, I guess field assignments or something like that. You know, when you have, you're able to tell between something that has no name and it's just a, you know, random assignment. And it would be. It stays as a constituent field, but you'd have two different parts and they'd actually have like a name behind them. Yeah. I mean, could, would we want to strike the second two sentences in five where it says exceptions may down through the end where exceptions may be considered when a significant contribution of land or money is made and the donor stipulates naming of the facility. So that would be a living person or for volunteer efforts. If it's a don't, it could, that could be a trust though. So if it's like somebody who like has something that's part of a trust and they end up donating and it's in memory of like, you know, something beyond that. Um, I would almost just add that it wouldn't like consider, like, we wouldn't consider, you know, any sort of like, you know, any sort of business or, or, you know, corporate naming as an option. Yeah. Some kind of language to exclude a commercial. Yeah. So just, but the bullet should not be named after living person. Some of these policies, um, define the timeframe after someone's passing. Like some towns say you have to wait five years or, you know, cause when emotions are fresh, I think it's much, people could make a decision that they were determined. It could be true. Yeah. That's always one of the things that I mentioned to them. Minimum of two years or whatever, whatever. I think at least two years. Um. That would be a minimum. Yeah. Two years. I wonder, what do you think about that, Jeff? Um, yes. I mean, I do think that actually removing some of that at like immediate, like the immediate change. Um, but I would say that there are like, I mean, I would allow for like exceptions, sort of like hall of fame voting. It's five years, unless you're Roberto Clemente. And then they waive the five year waiting period because, you know, somebody had a significant impact and it's, you know, it's the right thing to do at the right time. Yeah. That's my next pirate's helmet that's coming up ASO too. Roberto Clemente. Roberto Clemente. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was looking at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was looking at that. One thing about children. And it shouldn't be a nice situation about children. Well, what about Hannah Williams? I know. There is a statue at Hannah Williams dedicated to Sarah Pryor. Who was? Oh, Sarah Pryor. Yeah. Hannah Williams was an adult. Yeah. I remember those signs. And we've gotten comments in the rec department that people find that to be like a very kind of sad memorial to be at the playground, because obviously it was a very sad and tragic story. And then it didn't kind of match the mission of what is trying to be accomplished at the playground. Yeah. Just something to think about. I mean, obviously it's very sad when adults pass too, but it's... So, because that's kind of an art installation or statuary instead of... Yeah. But we do have like, there's memorial benches in other parts of town. And some rec departments have pretty comprehensive programs on how to install memorials in general, but particularly benches. But that's different care forms. Yeah. Well, I think maybe it's worth diving into what... Gosh, this sounds terrible. You know, what we're looking for in our deceased person. Yeah. You know? And that's, you know, if it's like somebody with military honors or volunteer impact or some sort of impact in the town of Wayland. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's not for us to define and maybe that's for the group to prove. Per application. Yeah. I think too, I mean, the policy should, like when an application comes before this board, should help support this board make those tough decisions. Right? So, if it's like... Yeah. It's going to have to be clear so that those decisions... You know, just to put some guardrails around those decisions, because you all are being the hot city when that happens, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Every former selectman is going to have a park in town. Right. Or a rec commissioner or, you know what I mean? Yeah. Or anybody. And not everybody kind of always agrees with the sentiments, you know? Like, I think that we've had requests for different folks in town that I would see could raise some opposition to. Yeah. You know, it's not always a hundred percent agreement across the town of how something should be named. You know? If Art King had one envy, I'm sure that he might have an objection to Art King being named that guy. I mean, that would be done in, you know, 20 years ago. It sounds very different. Yeah. I mean, the whole world is different now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I think a lot of schools and different communities just say, we're not, our policy is that we're not doing it, you know? Yeah. But if there's an appetite for it in this town, then we can set those parameters. I do think we can't call that field, landfill, field. So I think we need to go up. Wait, wait. I mean, we have rock plants and wetlands. We need to be south. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. We need to be south, landfill. I know. But actually, this is confusing me about the Route 20 south landfill is that Route 20 goes east and west. There is no Route 20 south, outside of the west. but it's just it's a silly name um i mean i almost want to say you know preference not to have it named on behalf of someone deceased but i don't want to say no um and credits for having it not named yeah someone who's deceased yeah so not living or deceased so not people yeah but um i just you know we've seen so many instances of things being renamed in boston like yucky way and um yeah yeah renaming yucky way through something else right because of historically yeah um right and things change over time right and that's why like i think you have to move that emotional piece out of it but like these names that we're coming up with today at this meeting are kind of new and fresh in this moment in time but 10 years and 20 years from now how do they age you know maybe we could consider naming sub parks uh and not you know the the whole the whole one field one versus field two yeah in terms of renaming a portion uh ball field if it was currently you can never say renaming park or field number one and for field number two and then that name would last for 20 years and then it could be considered to be renamed at that point and then but then i also think i also think the burden of the cost to do this should be the submitting group like they should be paying for so i'll tell you the parks and rec um i go to this park called lynch park up in darger rain that's right on the ocean and they have memorial benches probably about every 15 feet all along the atlantic ocean and it's a program that's run by the park and rec department and you can put a plaque on the bench and name that bench and it's good for one year and you have to pay for it and so but the money goes to supporting the upkeep of the park and so it is like there's a purpose to it other than just naming the park uh the bench um but some rec departments do have kind of these robust programs that memorialize folks in town um and you know in 20 years go by and if nobody's really interested in doing that anymore um that bench then becomes kind of available but it's it's a regular program and the funds it's funded by the petitioners who want to see it happen um until they don't want to pay for it anymore and then then the name goes and somebody else gets a term but the funds do go to yeah you know maintaining that particular part yeah so if that could be the strategy we could say we're not naming parks but we're going to install memorial benches and it's the purpose is to fund the upkeep of the park potentially or you know offset fees for the users or however we want to do it there's a lot of ways that other towns you know tackle this issue in a way that is different than just creating a concept i don't know what you're thinking yeah i love lynch park lynch park lynch park lynch it's beautiful you should go yeah good i like the idea of having i i mean it seems i don't know that we would have interest in that that towns people but i think i think having um uh something like that here would be great um but we do a lot of the blocks you know when you're setting up when you're making all the bricks right yeah that um something bigger would probably be attractive to people and maybe um that's another project it is no it's a big one too yeah there's some cans of worms going on here how do we keep moving this forward i have to update my sons pick up patrol real quick i think i've missed the deadline oh no i got it stuff what do you think about restricting the naming to a sub park rather than the whole park for a deceased person uh i mean i think that keeping that as as well like one of the primary options i think would be great but i if you only have one field then you're sort of you're stuck we'd get stuck with landfill park if we do that right well yeah unless i mean unless there's multiple fields but then you can you know separate each of the each of the individual fields but you'd end up but yeah you'd end up with you know such and such a field at landfill park or like you know for instance like you know our king is one field like you wouldn't be able to do that as like one standalone field so being able to like allow for multiple parks within the same complex to be individually named i think that's a that's a great option um but i wouldn't say that you'd be able to restrict it um you know exactly like that yes someone could petition to name the entire building field as something yeah yeah separate from our king right because it's separate it's a separate location you know from and it's a separate purpose in terms of recreation you know baseball or softball field okay so i'm hearing there's consensus to open keep it open to full sites and partial sites yeah so we keep that yeah okay and then this this decedent would have to be at least two years past that's and no living people no living two years yeah person yep um and no nothing commercial would you keep the two-year window as like a would you also allow for like would it be two years with um you know with an exception to that or um what would an exception what what what would the purpose of the exception do um just as an example i guess like if it's something that uh if landfill like if there's something that's just like something that's like you know meaningful at the time or there is like a you know direct involvement or contribution or anything like that that the timing of the field opening or you know keeping everything linear like makes it more timely like you we'd be able to vote on an exception to be able to waive the two-year policy but otherwise you'd be able to you know your the petition to change the naming rights opens at two years unless you know unless you know voted upon or figured out and let maybe unless it's a newly established field so if the field already has a name then you'd wait two years but if it's a newly established like if we're going through the process we're about to cut the ribbon on landfill park do we have to wait two years to name it after somebody essentially is right so it's like but it might limit you from being able to name something that is newly established oh yeah i think i think it's a new facility that there's no two-year wait i think so when the new facility is open it's it's open as whatever name we would come up with for that particular location we don't really have any parks that have been named in the last 20 years other than newly constructed fields right and possibly sports sports yeah and well hennaway was been hennaway was for a long time yeah um well there was no real name for uh um what's his name um north i don't know what's his name um oxford oxford that was named oxford because most of our fields are named after the road they're on which is helpful for wayfinding purposes but um yeah alpine yeah yeah it was where town beach i mean i was renamed had league no no just like a picture joke yeah yeah um yeah so we have to think about how this could impact and newly develop you know right so i'm just i also look at the timing like if like perlman is an option for one of the fields a constituent it's only a year since then but with like the involvement in that area if you were to name one are you not able to name the other even though like there's a large draw or a large consensus of people that are interested in doing that like do you name one but not the other like do you hold it like that's sort of but but that's like i guess maybe the sentimental side of it is like if you were to if that's something that's like you know deemed as like one of the places just based on like i said the you know the men's softball his recreation involvement you know all of those things is it waiting a year even though we may decide to name one of the other fields what i'd hate to do is try to name both of those fields and then it's a 20-year waiting period to do something that everybody sees as like a general you know a general consensus that would be something open but i don't want to make an exception to a policy because you know just for the sake of making it i guess
you're potentially you set up the criteria to be like recommended criteria right so you all say to your waiting period but give yourselves the discretion to pick the application that meets most of the criteria right yeah because if we open up the door to rename the softball field the constituent ballpark i can up the top of my head think of six different groups that would make out the correct and so to me that would be a really hard discussion for this group yeah
but so that if you just have recommended criteria and then you guys could have the discretion to choose between applications i mean is it also worth figuring out how many fields would be available for purpose you know so maybe if it's like all right like you know like you said like locker field like that was just sort of like deemed all right it's locker conservation but there's confusion between locker school and everything is that a field that we would look at as an option for or consideration for an alternate name i think it hasn't gone through this process or whatever this new process is it should be available for yeah and i can make a list for us for the properties that belong to recreation or even just town properties and the subsets of those properties so like it should do a ballpark that's the name if that's how we say that park would retain that name but you know the the playground the basketball court and two softball fields could be sub-named and then local field probably just the field um of course that property is both recreation and conservation and so we would have to determine you know it that on a shared property like that does recreation have the final say or does it have to also be approved by the conservation commission or well i think you're kind of you're you're right in a situation there with conservation i should say they didn't want to they might want to change the the the conservation portion of that property to something that they would like it could be known as and and we would like to have it known as the whatever whatever uh recreation and i'm just thinking some of our fields that are subsets of other properties is like the clayford hill school there are seven soccer fields there that could stand to be named but probably with the approval of the school committee the school committee says they cannot be named after folks right so we have to kind of determine which properties were even yeah yeah i think that we would from my perspective we would probably stay away from school from school properties yeah okay so we can put together a list and you know the scope of what we're talking about here but i imagine once you format that list and say these you know 10 subsets of you know these recreation areas have no name and are available to be renamed then we're going to get flooded with application you know what i mean and then all of our fields and names of town would be named after like folks in this time space rather than say like an arcade king wouldn't be even on the at this point right um it's fun isn't it oh yeah yeah also looking at this list i i like this number eight that historical and commonly used place names will be preserved wherever possible so you know for example that would possibly restrict constituent from being named yeah yeah yeah right and and they yeah yeah so that that would qualify as a sort of naming individual portions of subside but they name the kitchen constituent field would be the overriding name of it
oh so and then this next paragraph describes more of the individual that we're interested in but that not we but just other um i think that's part of like whatever you know somebody's applying for for for that that like those would be the criteria that would be evaluated for that right yeah please describe how this person fits these qualities and then we can and i think that actually helps take some of the emotion auto you know the emotion or though like yeah like you go based off of the criteria
and i do think all all all fees and costs related to naming placard and ceremony and and process should be for that person to to to handle yeah yeah no i think i agree i i think that that's something that if you know if they're doing it it's it comes as like that's part of the contribution to you know that that's part of the contribution the contribution to the enhancement of the quality and you know all of that sort of stuff so did we decide not to go to town meeting and instead just go to the select board and and then the select board and ceremonies would handle it yes yeah i think that that's the i think that if if there's parties involved so for instance if it's like loker it's a split decision between you know recreation and conservation those those choices then go to the select board for like here's the recommendation from recreation that either matches or counters the you know one from from conservation and then the select board makes the decision rather than it be a you know open forum for everybody to then start to come up and try to change and advocate for that i think it comes back to the select board to make the final decision could we release black smoke like when they make it absolutely yeah and everyone will know in town everyone will know it's the orange smoke they've made okay no i i i think that as we go through this process that we are going to be looked at to rename landfill park potentially local wreck and consider one and two so i think that we have to kind of build this with that right like how do we make it these these subsets of properties where properties get the right name yeah yeah there's such a thing it might be worth looking at neighboring towns to see what's been named around us so we can notice pitfalls yeah i used to run a summer camp and it was a resident camp an overnight camp and it was called camp day and so everyone thought it was a big in and we went to a consultant once and they said at first like you got to rename this camp but it was named after somebody whose last name was day and it was just it was the main of my existence for 10 years you know yeah yeah sleepover camp at day camp so these things happen right like yeah it's just and it's still my event today well the other thing it says is you have to have a two-thirds uh vote from the recreation commission was that's just what i took from another yeah i know i'm looking at that and saying saying two thirds or five yeah let's see there's a five majority majority majority yeah yeah all right nice to change um i think i think leslie's right that we need to involve the public ceremonies committee so there can be like a proper or ribbon cutting and such because i feel like the the renaming of eric schwartzfield didn't get that kind of grand poppin circumstance around reading it was mostly just the insulation of a sign um but there's a whole group of people behind it that were there but um potentially it deserved more than more attention than it was i didn't know me but i've heard i'm going to add that lesson yeah should we consult them at this point in the planning state oh yeah um i'd be interested to see if they have any anything that could become a foundation for what we need to do next because um they probably have their own metal uh yeah who's buying that now i believe the chair is richard turner oh which is still it i believe so
there's a lot to think about here on this one little policy yeah stuff i'm so glad you said landfill park if that sticks we are in we are we have a whole other problem on our plates we this is why this policy needs to exist before that happens
former trash park
oh boy that's you're quite apt to have these conversations yeah no it's good it's really good to kind of flush some of this stuff out and i wonder if um this is obviously a public meeting that other folks in town that have thoughts about this could potentially provide some you know direction to the right commission as we go through this process i mean i think you know we're working on this draft now but i still think we're probably two or three iterations away from a final policy so it'd be interesting to see what historical and conservation have to say or you know just like the assessors knowing yeah knowing the lay of the land and what what are potential options
historical and store commission might look at that probably there's quote unquote south landfill uh probably if and see if there's anything that they might come up with that would be to remain for that for that area yeah yeah oh and the brown trail goes right through there yeah there are like other you know there's yeah we could if you put it out to the community to be like what do you think this park should be named i think we would be flooded with some interesting requests that's where six seven park comes in
well as we were saying earlier there was a boat being named in scotland or england was it scotland and and they put it out to the public to name this boat you seem to not know about this and a radio host suggested boaty mcboat face and it was like a military grand vessel that was you know boaty boaty mcboat face and it wildly won and then it eventually became the sir david attenborough and vessel but um but yeah so pitfalls yeah this is we're gonna tighten this policy i do think we have to probably clean up the language about monetary buying contributions to parks and fields and if they're gonna are we striking it oh i think that's how well because there is a difference between being a commercial entity and buying the naming rights to a field that versus you know making a philanthropic donation that's what they do with the name right quote unquote game right to last stadium and you know uh agriculture park yeah you know whatever it may be yeah but they buy that they they pay big money but it's always going to be great woods i don't care what you call it it is yeah i'm always great so i i would say restrict that to the the benches yeah i don't think we need the money through that source unless we've amend the naming policy in future years
well i think you think there was a group that still exists i think that is looking to establish an indoor facility 195 main street through a public private partnership and that potentially would be a facility that was named commercial right well we think we could name that one it's uh there's uh dpw uh well runoff former burn down yeah burn down and mcprice ejected library we got the missile site like we don't get the nice clean property
but it's a good discussion here i think this is maybe mull on it i yeah i'm still just not really interested in the corporate names i think it would just be yeah i agree sully landscape yeah no yeah even if it's like local like what if it was like you know i'm trying to think of like a town business that's like a russell's or something like that it's like a yeah i don't know that like a something that's known to be a whalen thing opposed to like a td garden right like which is not a way i don't know um but even like community the whalen community pool which is on town land and i guess privately owned yeah um i guess they could have done yeah they could name their potentially they could name their well i don't know because it's on town land so i know that they're still kind of subject to public procurement and all that so would they have to go through this process to rename the pool after somebody that contributed to it that's it it's just dicey this is yeah there's there will always be people who are looking for exception yeah and they'll find that and it's going to be in front of this board to make those decisions which could i think will be hard decisions you know there's a lot of emotion involved in naming after people all right that's cool you can avoid all of it just say we're not going to name things after people no but like i said there's an appetite for that potentially in this time because it's just the number of requests i've received to rename parks after folks all right should we stop here and then yeah if you want either if you want to go in and make some of the i would love to see a format that would be do we maybe grab another application form and see i can probably put something together to have a working document to work off of next week if you want yeah okay if you don't mind doing that yeah and i can pull like you had contributed those links to other sources and to see how other towns do it and then maybe just i can highlight some of those things that still need to be fleshed out about like the commercial stuff or um the open questions but yeah as we put the policy together but there is some consensus that we definitely reached today in terms of the criteria and portion of the parks and you know okay so i can highlight that um okay so now so we'll wrap that up and number six schedule a next meeting date and thank you agenda items obviously is a potential event item for the next one and you you think that we could meet in in that april yeah yeah i my schedule for the rest of this month is a little crazy so i mean obviously i'm not on commission so you guys can meet but i don't see a necessity to meet um this month this month right so we could meet in april what what works for people in april and what works for you so we have an april school vacation in the third week in april i would like it kind of later april just because i'm going to that parking right conference so i'm losing a week there and i have a vacation plan so between now and then okay sure well i can't do it in the summer right well i can't take vacation in the summer so i'm trying to do it um so i'm looking at april and i would say the 30th
yeah it's a thursday oh sorry the 29th 29th is a wednesday the 28th is the town election but we don't have any contested races so we should have the same composition but town meeting is my fourth this true what works would be either um for the wednesday is what wednesday april 29th or may 6th is what there's no reason for us to meet before the town meeting that might be we voted all of the things we needed to kind of put and put on like the revolving fun caps and things like that i don't or see that we're going to need to meet ahead of time i don't know so it's wednesday april 29th or i would just have to leave it's one of those super early release days so i have to grab henry and the 29th is super wednesday i think so okay so so if you what time do you have to grab 11 15. uh uh that's my six too far um um what was what was uh i can't do tuesdays um well it's thursday the 30th does that work or not yeah either the 29th or the 30th well 29th doesn't work no but i'm saying i said i have a reference to wednesday i guess yeah um there's the thursday the 30th would be challenging for me yeah end of the end of month might be okay should we just try the 29th at 10. um you said 29th work for you jeff yep yeah i can make the 29th work is it worth almost trying to do it at 9 30 though and that way if we need to wrap up by 11 and leslie needs to leave
all right i'll put that out to mark and mike as well should we alternatively just pick it's yeah if that doesn't work for them we push it out one week until may 6th yeah same okay i'll put that's it that's for wednesday yep i will put i'll find out if mark and mike can be at that time and if they can then we'll go through from there okay the only thing i would ask if we have that minutes by then it'll be an open meeting about law violation because you can only go 30 days with free meetings and then we also need um i know sometimes my email is like okay that's 48 hours we need an agenda so um if you between now and then if there are agenda items that we have one on the agenda well you know this one is this naming policy is going to be one definitely definitely sure and like i said i don't know if we want to be talking about ice rinks in may but maybe we do um that's okay yeah fine i'd be surprised if we would move forward the next range but um i'd like to be a push for a huge push back from the dpd yeah yeah situation and i think mark north was working kind of behind the scenes um to go down an avenue that wouldn't involve the dpd that it would be like a third party event that it comes in yes i think so and if that's the case then we have to figure out how much how much it's going to cost and how much it's going to cost the general public yeah because it's a it's a pay-to-play type situation i my my my sense all right so sometime between now and April 29th i'll hopefully have a fresh draft of this with some talking points and then could call for more tonight okay would uh someone make a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn i'll second it all in favor oh hold on one second there we go raise my hand yeah yeah nice to go raise my hand yeah nice to go raise my hand