May 18, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript
May 18, 2026 - Select Board
Good evening. As Chair of the Select Board, I'm calling the Select Board meeting of May 18,
2026 at 6.30 p.m. to order. This meeting is a remote access only meeting. It may be recorded,
and if recorded, it will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the
meeting. The public will be excluded from executive session, but there is none tonight.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted via remote access
in accordance with applicable law. No in-person attendance by members of the public will be
permitted. You may watch or participate in the meeting remotely with the meeting link that is
found on the agenda, the Select Board agenda, or on the town calendar. When required by law
are allowed by the Chair. Persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate
in the meeting may do so at the meeting location, which actually is remote location, sorry. Public
comments should be limited to two minutes per person. Before I read the agenda, I don't anticipate any
changes in the order tonight, but please note the agenda item times, if listed, are approximate. The
items may not be discussed in the order or at the time listed, and all topics may be subject to
deliberation and vote. So tonight, joining me in the room, if you will, is Mr. Levine and Mr. Whitney.
Mr. Fay and Mr. Reynolds are unable to join us tonight, so we'll just have a quorum of three.
We're also joined by Mr. McCall, our town manager, and Jalen Braddocker, who is our management analyst
communications coordinator. So after we have the call to order and review the agenda for the public, we'll
have announcements and public comment. We'll have organization of the board, followed by a review of
the fire staffing study, and discuss and determine next steps. We'll have a discussion of the recent
updates of the web page, which is called Civics Plus. Parks and Recall 705, we will turn our attention to
a recap for the annual town meeting, which we just wrapped up on May 5th. There's a number of items there
that we will have turn our attention to. After that, we will discuss and prioritize some select board
projects, including, but not limited, updates and next steps. Our summer schedule, meeting schedule,
including, but not limited to the goals setting session. Approximately 8-15, we will have a
hearing for an amended liquor license, which is discussion of possible vote to approve the license
amendment at Dudley Chateau. After we complete the hearing, we will have a town manager's report,
followed by consent, minutes of April 27, May 4, and May 5, 2026, review correspondence, select board
members reports of concerns, and adjourn by 8-55. So does anybody from the board have any announcements?
No. Okay. Do we have any public comment? Mr. McCall, do you have any announcements?
Okay. Thank you. Other than, and I'm sure you'll touch upon it,
Madam Chair, that Monday will be Memorial Day and the town will be observing it. And there are a list of
events from the public ceremonies committee that we've, it should be on our website at this point in
time from Mr. Turner. So I just want to make sure people are aware of that.
Thank you. All right. Thank you. Um, do we have any public comment?
Uh, yeah. Richard's raising his hand. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Turner, I recognize you.
Richard Turner, 7 Knob Hill, wrote, I just want to make you aware of something. Not all, not all the veterans graves are going to be flagged. The only cemetery that is flagged is St. Zephyrins and Lakeview. This is due to a vendor problem. The order that was placed in March is on back order with a Ann and Flag Company, that's who we buy these from, due to the, uh, 250th anniversary of the country. They are overworked. They are getting slammed with orders and hopefully within the next week or so we should have our order. But I did speak with a supplier today, Framingham Flagg. Recording in progress. Framingham Flagg. Uh, they, uh, I talked to Peter Whalen's son. Peter had passed away a couple of months ago and, uh, he's, he talked to the Yannan people and they were, they're going to give him, try to give him an estimated date of shipment. So that's all I have. And I hope to see everyone there Memorial Day. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Um, did we just start recording? Do I need to start over? Um, I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. I had a problem getting the recording doing that. I apologize. So would you like me to start over? Yeah, if you would. Okay. Alrighty. Um, what time is it now? 638. Good evening. As chair of the select board, I call the select board meeting of May 18th, 2026 at 6 30 PM, uh, to order. This is a remote access only meeting. This meeting may be recorded and if recorded, it will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted by Meyer remote access in accordance with ethical law. No in-person attendance by member of the public will be permitted. One may watch or participate remotely by utilizing the agenda link or the link on the agenda or the link on the town calendar on the town website. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location, which is obviously online this evening. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. I'm going to read the agenda and before I do that, I would like to recognize board members in attendance are Mr. Whitney and Mr. Levine and note that Mr. Fay and Mr. Reynolds are unable to join us this evening. So the quorum will be the three of us. We're also joined by our town manager, Mr. McCall and by our management analyst communications coordinator, Ms. Jaylen Braddocka. So having said all that, um, we will have announcements and public comment followed by organization of the board. We'll review the FHIR staffing study, uh, discuss recent website updates via FIX Plus, and then approximately 7 05. We will turn our attention to our main evening agenda item, which is a recap of the annual of town meeting, which we just wrapped up, um, last week ago on May 5th. That will be followed by a discussion of our current select board projects with some updates and next steps, uh, and a discussion of our summer meeting schedule, including setting our goal setting date. Approximately 8 15, we will have a hearing for the license amendment for the Dudley Chateau, and which will be followed by the town manager's report, the consent calendar, the minutes from April 27, May 4 and May 5, 2026, review correspondence, followed by select boards with members reports and concerns, and hopefully we adjourn at 8 55 or sooner. So, um, any announcements from the board? No. Okay. And then Mr. McCall, you have an announcement.
Madam chair, I just wanted to call people's attention. The fact that we will be observing Memorial day this coming Monday and the public ceremonies committee has a list of events starting first thing in the morning and then following up with the, um, ceremony at the, uh, the cemetery with our guest speakers. And that can be found on our website. Terrific. Okay. And then I think we were on public comment and the public comment we had heard from Mr. Turner that I believe was recorded. So I think I'm okay now. He's raising his hand again. Richard is. Okay. Richard, I'll recognize you briefly. Um, let me, I think he should be able to talk now. Yeah. Oh, he lowered his hand. I think he's all set. Okay. Yeah. Anybody else have public comment? Okay. I don't see anyone. Now I have to hold a minute for a second because Doug has stepped out of the frame and that I've lost the quorum. So there's one person raising their hand for public comment now. Okay. Who was that please? Um, Peter. Peter. Okay. I can recognize you, but he can't speak until God comes back. Okay. Okay. Peter, we recognize you. Uh, yes. Can you hear me okay? Sure. Uh, Peter Johnson calling from, um, Eight Pine Road in Wayland, um, adjacent to the Chateau. Um, are we on the Chateau meeting yet? Is this public? Yeah. If you wish to speak. So you need to speak here at public comment because, uh, they've had that just the board deliberates on the agenda items. So this is to add your comments.
All right. Um, yeah, I'm having trouble hearing you. So I'm just going to listen for now. No, sorry. This is, I'll say it again. I'm sorry. Um, all our agenda items are not open for deliberations for the public. So if you wish to add comments, this, this is where we do it right here. So would you like to make your comments here? Um, sure. Okay. So Mr. Johnson, Eight Pine Road, right? Correct. Okay. Um, so I can make a comment about the Chateau at this time. Absolutely. You have two minutes. Okay. Um, it won't be that long. Um, I live adjacent to the Chateau and, um, uh, I'm under the, uh, information that the usage of outdoor space was brought into, um, rule because of COVID. And now that COVID is over, uh, I don't see any reason why that space should be used for, uh, public usage. Um, we already have an issue with noise from the Chateau and having an exterior space for people to eat and drink would make matters worse. Um, so I am not in favor of having that space open so that we have to listen to people until 10 o'clock every night. Thank you for the board's time and appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Uh, do we have any other, uh, public comment? Um, I see one more. It's just iPhone though. So I don't know who it is. Okay. Bring them forward, please. Hi. Um, I recognize you. Could you please state your name and your street? Um, I'm Pavel. Uh, last name is O-Z-H-O-G-A-N. Um, on Bayfield Road 30. Um, very similar comments to what I just heard. So we are not directly adjacent, but we're still within earshot. And right now, the matters of noise are very significantly disrupting pretty much every evening other than Monday when Chateau is closed. So we already are suffering from people, you know, drunk exiting, into the parking lot and saying their goodbyes and things. Um, sometimes cordially, sometimes not. Sometimes we have to call the police, uh, because of the noise. But I think even more significant concern that I have is with the amount of cars that are parked. And if you extend now, you know, the, um, license to be an outdoor, that's going to increase their capacity during the COVID. That wasn't the case, right? Because that was for the, you know, for the distancing measures so that overall capacity would not have been increased. But right now we are constantly, constantly having issues with cars parked in lawns, cars parked along the Dudley Pond with the runoff going into the pond. Um, that street and the adjacent streets are actually no parking, but cars are constantly, constantly violating it. And the reason for that is obviously is because, you know, Chateau is not able to provide parking to, um, to their patrons, right? So, um, I think, I don't know, like, how to say it other than being sounding dramatic. But like, if now we are going to hear people, um, eating, drinking, being loud outside, you know, six out of seven days, that's going to be just, like, devastating. Um, I can't already enjoy, like, being outside. And even when I'm inside, I can hear them. Um, you know, when they're in the parking lot, but if now this is going to be all the time, this is just going to be absolutely horrible. Um, so however, whatever, you know, strongest form or objection there is, I would like to voice it, um, and also bring to the attention again, like, they do not have adequate parking already, uh, to be able to safely, um, allow people on the street when they, when the cars are parked illegally on both sides of those streets. Um, the, there's like no, no, um, you know, the ambulance or fire, if they need to get through, they won't be able to. Sure. So thank you for your, um, for ability to say this here. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, sir. Thank you. Uh, Jalen, do you have any others? Um, yeah, there's Becky Leonard. Becky Leonard. Okay, Becky. Um, I recognize you, Becky Leonard. Go ahead, uh, with your comments and just state your name and street, please. Oh, you're on mute. Can you hear me now? Yes. This is Rebecca Leonard, 33 Bayfield Road. I would like to, uh, add to what my neighbors are saying. I'm also an invader to, uh, the Chateau, and they don't have enough parking as it is night after night. They park illegally. Um, I'm very concerned about fire trucks getting through the road as people park on both sides of the street. The police never, ever ticket. Um, we've lived there for over four years now. I've never seen a car ticketed and it parked illegally night after night. So there's no way they can handle more capacity. Uh, they just don't have the parking for it. So they should not be able to have more capacity at this point. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, Jalen, any more? Anyone else? Sorry. Um, I don't see anyone else. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. All right, everybody. Thank you for your public comment. Um, I'm going to go to the close public comment. So the next item on the agenda is the organization of the board. And historically we reorganize the board, um, the first meeting after town meeting, because that's when we have a new member. If we, if there are any being voted in, which in our case is Mr. Reynolds. Um, but with only three members of us here tonight, I am, um, going to recommend the board, um, concurs that we table this until we meet on the June 1st. And I believe all five members will be present then. So is that okay with everyone? I think that makes great sense, Madam chair. Oh, thank you. Agreed. Okay. Um, and I do want to mention before we go off, part of the organization on the 6th will be, you know, to look at the liaison assignments for FY 27. So if you could, everybody, the three of us could take a look at their liaison assignments and see in what changes are necessary. Um, because we also have, uh, we, you know, with Ann leaving, we will have some readjustment and of some of the, the, uh, assignments. Okay. So that brings us to number four. Would you please pull over Mr. Um, Chief McPherson, please. And I think is Kate Ryan here as well. Okay. And Kate Ryan are the director of human resources. Hi chief. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Okay. We're just waiting for Kate, right? Madam chair. I spoke with Ms. Ryan earlier and I, I don't think she need to be here because okay. In, in, uh, going over with MRI, the chief and I were the primary persons on the, uh, on the, uh, the review of the report that was provided to us, but she's not the agenda. I just want to make sure I don't leave anybody out. Okay. So what we're going to have here is review a fire staffing study. As Mr. McCall explained, we underwent a fire staffing study for a consultant last fall. Um, there is a, a supplemental packet. I think it's about 105 page reporter. And, um, then there's a slide in our packet on page four. And I will turn over the floor to the chief and Mr. McCall. Thank you. So there's a couple of slides that I did send to you that are in your pack and it just talks a little bit about the history. And I want to start by thanking the town and the townspeople for the support of the fire department and the support for the staffing study that was approved at the 2024 town meeting. As mentioned, it was conducted by MRI municipal resources, Inc. It was completed in March of 2026 and it's about 106 pages or 109 pages. And there was 35 recommendations. So to make it accessible to the public, we actually did go ahead and put that study as a link off of our webpage so that people can see that without having to print out all 100 plus pages. So it is available for anybody who would like to see what the study said. And if you look at the second page and kind of a quote that I took from that report, there's a lot of information in the report, but this really helps to summarize in my mind, really an overview as to what is included. And very simply, I am going to read this to you and it says, The data and observations present in this report make clear that the department is operating near the limits of its current staffing and deployment model. Continued growth in EMS demand, increasing call concurrency and rising operational complexity place sustained pressures on personnel resources. Without strategic adjustments, these pressures may erode response reliability, increase fatigue and burnout, and heightened operational risk. So in the conversation that Mr. McCaul and myself have had, we had talked about what are the next steps and how do we move forward now that we have all this great information. And I believe that the, you know, consensus was that we looked to form a working group. We felt strongly that we should incorporate members from different parts of the community to number one, help with the sharing of information and to make sure that we're getting appropriate feedback. So you'll see under the next step, it says form a working group. That working group could be the fire chief, assistant fire chief, a member from the fire department, a one of the union member designees, a select board designee, a finance committee designee, a human resource designee, and a citizen from the community is the recommendation. This working group will go ahead and they will study these results. They will prioritize the recommendations and then report back to the town manager and select board. Okay. Mr. McCaul, do you want to add anything before I open it to questions or comments from the board? Yes, Madam Chair. I want to thank Chief McPherson for leading this effort and for MRI for their valuable input. I mean, they came back with 35 recommendations. And, you know, anytime you get a report like this with that many recommendations, you can't always accommodate all of them. So we thought the working group would be a great way to help, you know, narrow down what are the most important ones that the town can focus on. And I don't want to minimize anything that's in here. But I think you could talk to a lot of different department heads who would say they're facing different or similar challenges. And I think town to town across the Commonwealth, many of the towns are seeing these types of shortages in their public safety staffing. So public safety is paramount. That's what you know, we are customer service driven. And we need to make sure first and foremost, our police fire DBW are supported. What we are contending with, as we all know, are some financial constraints. So part of what this working group would be doing is looking at which of the recommendations, as I said, are priorities, and then figuring out how we can fund them. We may have to use things like looking at safer grants or lobbying through our representatives for additional funding from the state. But we need to do what we can to support our public safety in our folks at the fire station here. So again, I thank the Chief for bringing this forward. Dr. Anne McLean- Open questions to the board, Bill, Doug, comments? Bill Doug Duggan- Chief, among the 35 recommendations, which three or four do you regard as the most significant? Bill Doug Duggan- Well, what I would say is there's a number of operational recommendations and there's some staffing recommendations. And I think one of the priorities for us becomes if we look on a relative basis and we look at the number of concurrent calls, I think we're going to have to make some adjustments to the staffing levels to be able to continue to maintain the level of service and protect the town of Wayland. So I think that there is some staffing. And I also would just say to you, one of the other recommendations is something that we recently negotiated with our union, which is to bring forward a fire prevention position. I think as everyone is well aware that we've had a lot of change and a lot of building in the town. And right now we have somebody who works on shift and they're there for one 24-hour shift, one off, one on, and then off for five. But when we're doing fire prevention, that needs to be done every day, all day. So that position is super important as we have these big projects and for us to maintain a high level of customer service and making sure that we're enforcing life safety in the building codes. So I think those are a couple of my priorities and I understand the difficulty given the fiscal picture, but I think we have to have the conversation and research what options we have, including the SAFER grant. Thank you. Chief, did I read that the town has three ambulances, two of which are at the central headquarters and none are at station two. So we have two ambulances that are licensed with the state. One is a mechanical spare. So we more often than not run one ambulance because of staffing levels, because currently we drop down to five. So when we drop down to five or six, we only have one ambulance. It's infrequent when we get to seven. If we're at seven, we run two ambulances. And they are both at station number two, uh, station number one, the headquarters. And, and why is that given that there's a, you know, I think a larger population in the southern part of Wayland than the north? Because of where the staffing and the size of the building that we've typically located them. But as one of the recommendations to look at, right, is, would be to put an ambulance at station number two. So that's one of the study recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Levine. Chief, thank you for this information. Um, I've been making my way through the report, but admittedly have not completed that as, as of this evening. But I do have a couple of questions based on what I have digested so far. And the first is on page 28 of the report. It outlines the staffing. And it talks about historically when certain positions were added, such as in June of 2016, the assistant chief position was added. And in 2019, fiscal year 2019, the town funded two firefighter slash paramedic positions. Uh, then it says in 2021, we're the recipient of a safer grant, which funded two positions for three years. And those were filled in January of 2021. Did those then expire in 2024? Or were we, were able to build those two positions in or were they only based on the safer grant? So that we were able to build those positions in. And what I would just say to people is we're playing a little bit of catch up because in all honesty, there wasn't many changes for well over 30 years to staff. And the town of Wayland has changed. So we've made some investment and we're very appreciative of that investment. I think the reality is we probably need to make some additional investment in staffing, but that is correct. Those positions were in fact funded over the years. And we got those positions at no cost from the federal government pay for those positions at that time. Okay. And then my other question, chief is, um, I know the chair touched on this and you mentioned it generally, but what are you seeing from our neighboring communities in terms of staffing trends? Are, are you seeing, um, you know, the, the towns right around us, maybe Sudbury, Concord, Wellesley, Weston, have you seen enhanced staffing in any of those towns over the last several years? So what I would say is if you look at the charts that are in here, that you'll see, for example, Weston has more staffing than we do. Sudbury has more staffing than we do. Natick has more staffing than we do. So many of these communities have higher levels of staffing already. Many of these, uh, towns have already added, uh, fire prevention positions. So on a relative basis, they found that, that, you know, we were slightly below, I think, average in terms of staffing. I just say to you that what has changed for us is a couple of things, the size of buildings in Weyland. Before we had houses that were 1800 square feet, 25 on a square feet, and then 45 on a square feet. Now we have very large houses. Some of these big residential buildings, they create significant challenges for us. Um, and even some of the technology, we have electric vehicles, energy storage systems. So there's a lot of different hazards that we're facing that require more staffing for us. So, um, uh, the other towns are also making adjustments and have looked at staffing, uh, as well. As you know, in the marketplace, it's very difficult to find medics. We've been successful and we try to hide paramedics so we can provide a high level of medical service, but, um, hopefully that answers the question. It does. Um, the other question I had, Chief, is, um, I thought that slide on page 32 was particularly helpful about the assisted living service calls, um, that the department has responded to over the last two years. But I also noted earlier in the document, it talks about the potential three new developments coming into town with the expanded Carroll School, um, and expanded Veritas School at a new campus, and then potentially the Coptic Church as well. Historically, does the department have a lot of medical related calls to schools, like to even to our public schools, or to what Carroll School, where it has existed over the last few years on Waltham Road? Is that a big, is that a dream? Is there a need for calls to those schools generally? So I would suggest that when you have more occupants in town, that you're going to have an increase in call volume. I can't specifically state what number that will be. I would say that the bigger hazard I'm concerned about is honestly the size of these structures and projects. Again, these are not, you know, 1800 square foot homes. These are massive buildings. When we have a smoke condition at some of the apartment buildings, shall we say, on Boston Post Road, we have to call a working fire assignment, meaning that we get mutual aid communities to come help us evacuate the smoke because of just the pure size of the building. So the problem becomes, from a fire suppression standpoint, honestly, they create significantly greater hazards for us. Well, I look forward to continuing to work on this with you, and I know that you have a lot of institutional knowledge, so we're glad to have you here, Chief. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. So I believe someone that will be you, Doug, will correct me, but I believe that last year Anne was the Lea, it's like a liaison to the fire department, right? And we have a new member joining us who we believe has been through the fire academy. So we will confirm this with them next week when we make our next meeting, which is June 1st. You don't need our person designated before then, do you? June 1st, okay? Absolutely. I would ask that we're also looking at, for example, someone, a citizen from the community that obviously Mr. McCall works to help us find the appropriate representation from each of these groups, right, so that we can move this forward. So thank you. Thank you. So we will we will make that decision. And I was pleased when you edited the slide here to say that you make the report back to the select board as well. I think since we've rolled this out here, it probably makes more sense that when we have the working group's recommendation that that comes before us. So Michael, who is this a working group under you? Or does the select board need to establish a charge and create it as a temporary committee? That was my other question. Michael McCall- I think the distinction would be if I establish it, I can call that working group to order much more easily. If I think if the board creates a its own working group, which would be much more like an advisory committee, you would now have open meeting law, I think it would be something that would have to have posted meetings. So I think if the town manager does it, it may be much more a little more of a convenience. The only thing I would say is we would be just as transparent by if we had this group making sure that meetings could be attended by others, there would be minutes taken. That's, in my opinion, the major difference between the two. Okay, thank you. So is the board comfortable with it being a town manager working group? Michael McCall- I am. Michael McCall- Okay. So we're good. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Michael McCall- Thank you. Michael McCall- I almost said Neil. Sorry. Thank you, Chief. All right. Thank you very much. We'll go on to the- Michael McCall- See you, Chief. Michael McCall- And I'm with Doug. I've got to finish reading the report. Although no one mentioned I was there, anticipating. Michael McCall- One editorial comment I guess I would make is that in the future, an executive summary at the beginning of the report would be very helpful. Marinda Brown- Oh, yeah. Good idea. All right. So our next item on the agenda will be discuss the recent website updates. For that, we are inviting Jalen Abratica, our management analyst communications coordinator to join us. Marinda, we're running a little bit late. We had a problem with getting logged on. So, all right. You're muted, but that's okay. Go ahead, Jalen. The floor is yours. So, over the last year, I've been working with Civic Plus to update our new website to get it a more modern version and make some updates. So, we launched that right before town meeting the week before. So, the new website provides a more modern design. There's enhanced navigation, and it's also more user-friendly than the previous website. We have on the top of our website, we have the navigation bar, which includes departments, so residents can find information about town departments. We have government, which is has links to all the board and committee pages. We have residents, which provides residents, current and future residents, with information about living, exploring, how to stay informed in Wayland, how to get involved. And then we also have a how do I page, which provides quick links to frequently requested information. And we also have buttons on our home page, which allow quick access to agendas, meeting links, online payments, town code. Also, you'll see on the home page, we have changed out our photos, which is a rotating banner. All those photos were submitted by residents. I held a photo contest and asked residents to submit their photos. We got a lot of photos, so I'll be changing them periodically to feature all the ones that we've received. Everything is pretty much the same with the new website. Residents can sign up for alerts still, view agendas, view minutes, view all board pages. Just the overall look of each page is a little different. And I have received feedback from some residents, which was extremely helpful. And based on their feedback, I have made changes. And I'm always encouraging more feedback to see what works for some residents and what doesn't work for others. And the last thing I would mention is that we have the capability to make online forms now and they're much easier and have better functionality. So I'm trying to use some of this to eliminate our paper applications in town. So we're test launching the sandwich board application right now as an online form, and it seems to be working well. So I hope in the future, we can move to using that function for some of our other paper applications that we may have. Is there any questions about the new website at all? So we'll start with Doug, please? Hey, Jalen, thank you for all of your work on this. You know, this is very much needed. And I'm really glad that we are rolling out with this update. I'm wondering, first question is, if you looked at some of the websites from some of our neighboring communities, specifically Concord, because I've looked at that one several times, and I feel like there's just a little bit of a better layout for the user for Concord. If you take a look at that, even with the size of the photo itself, and some of the links, it just seems a little bit more user friendly. And I don't know how hard it is to make layout changes like that. But I would just suggest that and just as a question, did you look at some of the other communities when you guys decided how to create ours? Yeah, we did. So I did look at Concord's. I didn't look at their new website because their new website recently just launched. But I did go through some of their website to get inspiration. With the layout, it would be a pretty big change. When me and Kelsey started working on this project, we had looked at different templates. And we thought the one that we chose was the best one for navigation. So it would be a big project to take on to change the template. But I'm open to working on maybe changing the sizing of the photos and the buttons and stuff because that is something I can do on my end. Okay. And then the other question that I had briefly is, how did you determine what those six main options at the top were? Specifically, was town bylaws one of the most requested links? And that's why it's up there? Yeah. So we have gotten a lot of calls before to where we they can find the town bylaws. And I heard back from some department heads that they've gotten the same type of calls. So we thought putting a button on the homepage would make it easier for residents to find it. Okay. I'm good for now. And I can chat with you offline. But thank you again for your work on this. Thank you. I would just add my thanks to Doug's. The former website was challenging to say with the least. And certainly this represents an improvement. And I'm sure Jalen is you get additional feedback. And as we learn from experience, we can perhaps make some adjustments as appropriate. So thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jalen. Now, Mr. Levine, I'm one of those people that's looking for that bylaw button. Not that you are. You're not the normal person. I can never find it on your goal webpage. I'd have to go outside, you know, to get it. So anyway, so my question Jalen is, is what's the next step? Because this is, this is a huge project. So what do you have next steps in your mind here? What's going to happen next? Or I don't think I necessarily have next steps. I think just working on the website, making changes as needed, if there's little errors here and there. But I don't think necessarily there's any next steps at this point in time. Because I think one of the things is that some of them information is needs to be updated, you know, files need to be either added files that need to be added or I'll just use the budget. For example, I don't believe the current budgets posted and at the top, it might be there, but it's, you know, so I don't know if we are going to go back and look at the different departments and see what, if we can, you know, get some more. Do we have enough space to put more information on the webpage? And if we do, maybe we could add in some of the, like the current budgets and stuff. So, all right. Well, thank you very much. Terrific. Of course, we appreciate all your efforts. Thank you. Thank you. Are you going to stay with us now for the next item as well? Yes, I am. Okay, great. All right. So the next item is going to be our, our recap, because we just finished, as I said, town meeting on Tuesday, May 5th. And the first thing we do is we kind of take a look back and see what we need to do. And then we talk with a number of folks who obviously are
in this process. So we're inviting our moderator, Ms. Jones. Mr. Bernstein, are you still with me here? Yes, I am. Thank you. And I don't believe the town clerk was able to attend, but we did list her on the agenda because she had participated last year. So I've got everybody. And Jalen, of course, is with us because she was very integral in the quality and the smooth, as smooth as we were able to get that warrant that went from 52 articles down to what, 36, 37? Where did we end up? Just a huge amount of things. So I have a number of things here. I'm going to ask Dave, did you want to start and talk to us about the Elvis, sir? What would you like to talk about? Sure. Can you, can you hear me okay? We can, but do you want to put your, your video back on so we can see you? I didn't turn it off. Oh, well, can we have Dave's video back on? I see Miranda. Let me try to figure it out. I'm not sure. And I don't see a video setting on my screen anymore. Right. I think I was demoted to participant, which may, might make me, okay, now I'm being. Now you're going to get promoted again. Comes for the pay raise. Yeah. That's what you want to call it. Hold on. Hold on. All right. Patience. How's that? Oh, here you come. Okay. We don't see you yet. Hold on. There he is. Thank you. Okay. All right. So would you like to kick it off for us? I'm happy to kick it off. So good evening, everyone. So, um, three weeks before town meeting, we conducted our attendance survey online. And our conclusion was that we were going to have about 600 people show up at town meeting. And based on those discussions, um, 600 handsets were ordered and five welcome stations were ordered. The welcome stations are where people check in when they first arrive. We were nervous about that because there were quite a few controversial articles. There was the holiday road article and multiple Sherman bridge articles. And so normally OTI on their own brings an extra 10%. Say they would have brought 60 in addition to the 600 we ordered. We persuaded them to bring 700 and on their own volition, they brought a six welcome station. So we were loaded for bear. Um, as it turns out, uh, we had a total of, um, 339 people attend both nights. And I think the first night, the boat totals were in the range of 220 and the second night, maybe a little less than that. So we significantly overestimated, uh, the number of people who are going to attend. I don't know why that was the case, but my suspicion is that the fact that the holiday road article and the Sherman bridges article, at least several of them was known beforehand that those were going to be passed over resulted in people who would have attended not attending. Um, it's still the case that there was uncertainty in ordering handsets for, uh, town meeting. Uh, the last thing we want to do is have fewer handsets than necessary. Although we were prepared for that, uh, that, uh, contingency, uh, so we tend to, to, you know, lean on the scale a little bit, but, um, we were off by almost a factor of two this time and that meant expense, uh, for the town. Uh, the check-in and voting were both flawless. We had a grand total of two handsets that failed. Uh, they didn't power on correctly. Both were, um, worked at, were identified during the test votes that Miranda conducted, so that was well done. In the last 15 years, every time we've done town meeting electronically, the CEO of OTI, the company that provides our service, was in attendance. Uh, this was the first time he was not. That occurred because seven different towns held their town meeting on May 4th. Um, and as a result, he was in Nantucket instead of Wayland. The good news was that the staff members he assigned here were people that had experience here in Wayland, had worked here before, knew it well, and you would have never been able to tell the difference. Uh, Miranda and the system operator interoper-, interacted perfectly. Whenever she called for a vote, we were ready to vote. Um, and I don't think it could have gone any better, but if anyone has any feedback, uh, critical, constructive, or otherwise, I'm all ears. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. Um, comments from the board? Hey, thank you for your work, as always. Um, a couple of questions for you. Can you explain what a typical percentage response that you would get on the attendance survey? And then I assume that you, over the years, extrapolate that number to predict an overall attendance record? Um, and what was the difference, do you think, this year in terms of that survey? I know you mentioned that some of the articles were passed over. Wondering if you're thinking anything else, um, contributed to the low attendance rate? So, um, the, the attendance survey asks whether you intend to, uh, whether you intend to participate this year, and also whether you participated last year or the year before. And we do maintain historical data, and we do maintain historical correlations, and we basically use all three of those responses to generate the response. If you want, I could have Don Shuler, who does the arithmetic, take you through the algorithm. In previous years, um, have the predictions for the folks that we anticipated being in the seats been within striking range? Usually we're about, usually we're about 10 to 20 percent high, which is about as close as we want to be. But this year we are off by more. And then my other question is, is there an option to purchase the remote devices versus renting them each year? Yes, there is. And tell me the pros and cons about that. So that would require us to, um, operate the system. So it's not just acquiring the devices, it's the laptops that are used for check-in and the software itself. So we would have to have IT staff who's trained in the operation and debugging and maintenance of the system. They're, you know, when they bring 600 handsets, those handsets have to all work out of the box, which means they need fresh batteries and all the rest of it. Um, also these handsets are technology-wise a generation behind. They all use 9 megahertz radio, maybe, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. They all use Wi-Fi frequencies. They don't use 9 megahertz, which is a pain because I have to go around and find people who turn on their Wi-Fi hotspots. So, um, yeah, you guys see me wandering around. Next year, I'm going to have an antenna so I can directionally find people. Um, at any rate. And I can threaten Dave too, you know that. Yes. Um, well, yeah, the ultimate is having your name called out by the moderator as having a hotspot. Happy to shame people. So fortunately, um, when we only have three or 400 people, the signal strength just isn't an issue. So we didn't really have any problems with that this year. Do you have any sense, Dave, on what percent of towns rent versus buy? I do not, but I know that, uh, quite a few towns do buy. Um, so it is an option. Um, you know, we could investigate the economics. I mean, that's something that I'm sure Mark Fite would be happy to discuss. The only thing I will say is, um, if it were to turn out that remote participation were to be approved, then the ultimate place will end up is everybody's using their own handsets, even on premises. Sure. So, um, investing to buy 600, um, old handsets wouldn't necessarily be a good investment, but your guess is as good as mine as to how long it's going to take the legislature to agree to do that. Yeah. And I wouldn't even hazard a guess. Yeah. And if I can just add something to that point too, not about remote participation, but about buying our own, there was some, um, moderator in some town, I don't recall which one through gavel line, the sort of the moderator's um, email system, some town was looking for more handsets. So they owned their own. They were concerned they didn't have enough. So that could, so you could buy 600 and all of a sudden have like, you know, a school vote that we are, it was whether or not to find a new school and you have 1800 people show up. So then you could be in a pinch too. Do, do we just pay per device Dave when we rent them? Yes. Basically it's, we have a contract, a three-year contract that Kelsey and friends negotiated and it specifies basically the cost per handset and the cost per welcome station. It, and I would weigh in it to say it's tricky is an understatement as they alluded to. If at any time the legislature comes in and looks at, uh, the town meeting remote participation, that would, that would immediately change the playing field. My hometown has representative town meeting. We have approximately 200 representatives. So that makes it easier because you know, you have a finite number of reps and our IT runs the, uh, in our equivalent of way cam helps with the audio visual. So it's all staff driven. Um, the challenge, you know, for us each year we look at it and I know we've, I've talked with Dave and Kelsey and I've talked about it. It's one of our biggest cost drivers at town meeting is having the outside firm come in. I should say in my other, in my hometown too, you know, the clerks do a lot of the checking, but there is that maintenance factor as Dave alluded to. You have to make sure they're all up and running beforehand batteries and the technology can be, uh, changed, you know, in a year or two's time that the system that you're using may not be the latest and greatest in, uh, subject to, um, hacking. So, um, it's not always a perfect system. It's the one we have. Um, you know, if there's ways that we can be more efficient to bring the cost down, uh, I know my staff and Dave would be, you know, welcome that opportunity to look for other ideas and suggestions. Uh, but it is one of our biggest costs, but it's with open town meeting, it's, it's hard to get around the number of clickers you have to get and that balancing act anticipating how many people may show up given the articles that are on the warrant. The last question I have on that then, if you know, Dave, is would it be possible to buy X number of clickers, say for arguments, say six or 700, but in a year where we're going to predict that we have a large turnout for a particularly controversial article, can you, can you then rent additional clickers at that point? I'm confident we could make that happen. OTI has a, uh, warehouse full of, of stuff in Natick because they have so many customers around here. So if we were willing to purchase and maintain, you know, 300 or 600 handsets, and then only buy what we need. In addition to that, there's probably a deal there. How the welcome stations get handled, how the system testing get handled, you have to work all that out, but that would be a discussion. And you'd have to ensure that you had a, uh, uh, a homogeneous network, so to speak, that the, uh, handsets you buy today are still compatible with what right. OTI has two or three years. Yeah. Right. And you know, as soon as we get to remote participation and get that work, get that working, then, you know, we'd want to change all that out. Now, if we got remote participation approved tomorrow, it would be a minimum of three years before the moderator would be, in my opinion, willing to actually use it in a real-time meeting. It has to be developed, it has to be tested with high school students and seniors, senior citizens. There's a lot of, excuse me, testing and refinement to be done. So it's not like remote participation is going to show up the day after the legislature approves it. Sure. Thank you. I'm going to, um, switch over to Bill. Did you have any questions, Bill? No, I mean, uh, I'm appreciative of the fact that, uh, the clickers worked, uh, so that's always good. Uh, also though, uh, I would note that the decision to pass over or indefinitely postpone the Holiday Road article was made the first night of the town meeting when it was scheduled to be heard. So, uh, so I, I, uh, that work got around pretty fast. Yeah. Okay. So thank you, Dave. Dave, you're welcome to stay for the rest of the, uh, topics. I'm going to go back real quick to one simple quick one, I think. And that is if, uh, the town clerk was here, I think that, uh, Miss Levine and I wanted to talk about the nomination cycle and the calendar. We kind of thought the, um, the, the, uh, the nomination papers were available early January, and then we didn't vote. I mean, you turned them in, I don't know, middle February or something. And then I think we had like, but anyways, I think they were due in March, early March. That's right. There's still a very long cycle. So I think we wanted to talk to Trudy about that. So can we make a note to follow up with her, you know, on how that, I think I have to be honest and say that last time I ran, which would be the same time Mr. Levine ran, I think nomination papers weren't due, weren't available until the end of January. This year they would do the beginning. So it's a long, it's a long election cycle, you know, proven us for a local election. We thought it was January, February, March and four months, a four month cycle. But it's, it's also hard to get in the middle of the winter to get, to get the signatures. I mean, I made my husband go to the town dump and get them from me. All right. So there you go. All right. So anyway, we want to do that. So the next item is what we want to do is I want to ask obviously Miranda to come to see if she wants to give us any observations, after which I want to go through the articles themselves or what we need to do for follow-up. And I want to have a little chat too about the consent and the abbreviated articles. So the floor is Madam Moderator. Well, thank you. Thanks for asking me to come. I appreciate the follow-up. Um, so as usual, um, there were surprises with town meeting, for example, who thought that the 38.6 million dollar water resource facility would pass without a question. And yet the, uh, hawkers and peddlers article, um, got pulled. So nobody saw that coming.
One of the things I think that has been, I would think say about the, um, the water resources facility, the new facility is that there seemed to be a lot of information out to put out about it before town meeting so that people were pretty comfortable with the fact that we needed this when we needed this article to pass. And I would love to see that much information out there about every single article, but it's a very difficult thing to do. Um, similarly, the, in the capital budget with the line eight, the $250,000 going into cybersecurity and that the description written in the warrant wasn't and didn't exactly fit either. Um, that one caused me concern for a variety of reasons because of the nature of what the, the information, what the article was about the line item. Um, just talking about our town's cybersecurity is, is a little sensitive. Um, so while we want to have a lot of information out there, how much do we really want out? So, um, because it, you know, it was fairly eyeopening, I think to a lot of people and that's what caused an hour, an hour long discussion over that one line item in the capital budget about, um, what, what the state of our, our IT is. Could I comment on that one? Yes. Can we just hold on a second? Michael's going to respond. We did some follow-up on that. I don't want to get into it in too in depth, but you may or may not have been aware, but it turns out that probably a process improvement, uh, opportunity here that during the compilation of the article descriptions and such, the wrong wording went in under article eight, the wording for article eight went in under article nine. What was under eight was actually something that was pushed up working with the capital improvement planning committee, uh, and our work, the, uh, the finance director made working with them. It got pushed into a different year in the five year financial plan. So it wasn't until after that first night of town meeting that I was alerted by members of the capital planning and finance committee that in fact there was, um, some language that was transposed. I did talk to town council about it. Um, there, there is some broad wording in, uh, portions of these that would allow us to move forward. It's not fatal. It's not ideal. Um, the headings, while they give some indicia of what we were there to discuss some of those descriptions, uh, go into detail about the cyber security under number nine. Um, number 10 was the firewall. That's okay. And under number eight, we wound up talking about video monitoring more than the cyber security, but there is some latitude because it talks about devices. So we could get into that deeper if we wanted to, but I just wanted to point out that that in terms of the process, we may need to go back, um, before that the capital budget is submitted and just ensure that the department said submitted it, get one last review of the wording before it goes to print. And I think it had that happened and it may have been caught because oftentimes the department heads submit their written request. And then when we're the finance director and I are talking with the capital improvement plan committee about their recommendations in our budget, we're looking at the numbers at that point and not the description, because we've seen the written description that submitted earlier to us. And I don't think, you know, there was enough steps that at the end, um, it didn't get to circle back with the, the original, uh, submitter to see what the language looked like. So we can improve upon that next cycle. Great. Okay. So, um, so a couple of other things I, as much as I want to see, I would love to see more information get out there before town meeting. So people aren't asking as many questions and it's not the easiest thing to do. Um, and we, this was the first year I got together with the league of women voters and we had the, the, um, and Carol was kind enough to participate as well. And, and Bill, you were there on the controversial articles and Tom was, Faye was as well. And one of the reasons I wanted that was to make sure if anyone had any questions about the consent calendar, they got them asked beforehand. So they didn't pull the articles off the consent calendar. Nobody showed up with a question on the consent calendar. And then a town meeting, the consent calendars went by very well. And I'd like to think that maybe the town has just got, is getting used to it, which is the goal, right? So I knew every single year it would get a little bit smoother, a little bit smoother. Similarly though, when we had, when I had that meeting with the league of women voters, that public forum, we also talked about the abbreviated presentation procedure articles. And we, Carol was available for that and nobody asked us any questions yet. Several articles were asked. We were asked questions about, and I think in some ways it's just getting the town used to listen. The forum is here. Now's your time. Ask the questions now. And that better prepares us, um, at town meeting to realize that there's going to be problems and maybe some things will have to be pulled out of the abbreviated presentation, uh, procedure. Um, but if I could do this league of women voters forum every single year beforehand and the town gets used to it and they know this is an opportunity to ask questions and maybe we'll get more people to come. I mean, certainly the people who did attend, it was more, they were there more for the more controversial articles. That's for sure. Um, and no one saw the, you know, the peddlers and hawkers one going, going, going the way it did. But that's what makes it fun, I guess. I think if we could get that league discussion a little earlier, it was like the week before town meeting, like the, it wasn't at the other years. And, um, you know, the warrant goes to print a good month, you know, six weeks before we actually get to town meeting. So I was just wondering if as a suggestion, maybe we might want to look at, you know, putting that out, maybe even say, Hey, the warrant is coming. It'll be in your house in a week. But in the meantime, here's a preview of some other things. So maybe on the website earlier, I don't know. You can discuss it and see what they think. I think that's, I think that's a great idea. I mean, the reason why we did it the week before town meeting is because I was away the two weeks before town meeting. So the town, the warrant had come out and I was, I was gone. So I, so that's why we did it the following week, the week before town meeting. But if you're, what you're suggesting is that while no one will have the warrant yet physically, they, at least they can see it up on the town's website, right? Because it's gone to print. So it's not going to change at all. So as long as it's up on the town's website, we could do it that way. And we could, you know, while we advertise the forum, provide the URL for the link to our new and improved website. And, and so people can look at it because, you know, one of the things that, one of the things that did happen is that somebody challenged one of the abbreviated presentation procedures and did brought the opposition to it. And I said, well, you know, you're supposed to you're supposed to bring that to my attention. Well, I didn't know until I just read it. Well, the warrant's been out for two weeks, you know, and, and quite honestly, it could be made available far earlier than two weeks prior to the town meeting simply by putting it on the website. So I do think the more information that's out there sooner and the more opportunity we provide to people to ask questions and get them used to that opportunity, that maybe we would have a smoother, smoother running of town meeting. So can you hold this one second? So on the calendar, I want to hop in on that. I do in a consent. Last year, we had three separate consents. This year we had two, but, um, and, and to Miranda's point, they went along pretty well. We ended up taking out at the motions meeting, two articles this year that we didn't, that we did include in consent last year. And I want to run this by the board. Now I'll remind us in the spring, we took out the pay previous bills because it needs a four fifths. And we took out the enterprise fund budgets, I think as well, because it was breathing, it was two thirds. And you know what, the consent calendar is kind of passed by that kind of numbers. It did, you know, okay, folks, we'll just, these are just standard articles and we're voting them. And they went at 215 to three and, you know, 213 to seven. So you're going to get the four fifths. So I think next year, I'm going to say, let's leave that in there, the pay previous bills, because they're not controversial. We owe the bill, we're going to pay it. I mean, that's it. Right. So I would, I would suggest that to the board. The other one is on the abbreviated. Now the bill raised this question to me and then, I don't know, I thought we were right, but I'd like to write it by, we only read, we'd like to present this in abbreviated because that's what came first. And once we read that, like you say, you forfeited your right to discuss it, but when they backwards, I mean, or should they have had the motion first and then I want this in abbreviated or should we also be, be reading the emotion? That was a question that, um, it did not get raised to tell me because we have them up on the screen and they weren't articles that were going to create a lot. The motion itself didn't get, didn't get, I don't think we did on some of them. I think we got up, right Bill, we just said this. No, the motion, the motion was to adopt article X, uh, right. Yeah. And without identifying specifically what was being discussed. Yeah. But it was on the screen, so everybody said that they were voting on, but I'm just wondering if that, yeah, because after, you know, after Tommy and after he asked me that, I said to myself, oh, wait a minute, I think in prior years, you'd have the motion and then you'd say like to present this in abbreviated. So hi. I know. Yeah. I know that I always say the title of the, of the one article, but the motion itself. Yeah, no, it's a good point. It's a good point. So let's talk about that. Yeah. You and I can take that one offline, but I think that probably be a better quality if we get the motion. Agreed. And I want to do this in abbreviated. All right. Yep. Something like that. Agreed. So I think that makes, makes more sense. Okay. Um, so I think the other thing that on this, um, I want to talk about is that we all spent a lot of time on one of the petitioner articles. This was a very unusual year in that we had, uh, seven petitioner articles and, um, we had changed the code last year so that, um, the petitioners have an opportunity to speak to town council about their article. Um, and there's a three week window from the time they're due on January 15 until, you know, the three week period in which to, you know, go before the findings committee for the workshop and then also have input from town council. So I think we changed that, but I think we need to add in another step here is I think we need to, um, should we have other petition articles going forward? I think we need to get input back from town council as to whether an article, if, even if it's submitted as an article, whether it's actually as an article or it's a resolution. And I think that we need to have this find out from town council, what latitude we have to say you've submitted an article in this three week period, but it's really a resolution. Um, and if not, maybe we might want to look at adjusting our code that allows the, uh, resolution if it's, if it's because town meeting cannot direct the select board. This is, this is the whole point. So when the motions came through initially, town council had taken every one of the petitioner articles and made them into like resolutions, but since we had accepted them as articles, um, I just think this is something we have to do some work on. Any other thoughts on those? I think that's right because I remember after I presented one, then there was some confusion by, um, a resident who asked some questions like what kind of authority do we have to pass this or not. And then Carolyn had to step up and give the civics lesson and then jump into the weeds on that. So I, I think it, it was tricky, um, for residents to understand what a yes vote meant. Yeah. And I think they should, um, the petitions who bring these more, uh, these articles should know what it is there and not what they're asking for, but what they're allowed to ask for. I think that's the right phase. What? Right. And I think that we, this was just such an unusually, I have to tell you all the, what, 15, whatever years I've been doing this. I never saw so many petitioner articles. Right. Um, so I think one other thing I was going to recommend when we do the town meeting calendar, we hold a petitioners workshop before the articles are due, but we don't really get much response. I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to hold one after they're submitted. So they submit them on the 15th. And then the very next meeting we have, we said, we're gonna have a petitioners workshop and talk about the ones that have been submitted. And again, this is when you're going to see Tom speak to town council. This looks to us like it's a resolution, not an article, blah, blah, blah, which would allow the person who's submitting it. If they wanted to do a resolution, the time to re get those signatures that they need in order to make, you know, convert it from an article to a resolution. So I don't know what does everybody think about doing the workshop a little later, you know, after we come in, they come in.
I think it's fine. I think you're right though, that we have a problem with people not attending the workshop. Right. Well, once you've submitted an article, you might see, you might not submit beforehand because you may not want to like tip your cards, if you will. Once it's in, now you're in the process. So I'm going to recommend that. Does that so far, nobody have any issues with that so far that we changed that date on that. So Jalen will make that note on our calendar. And then, you know, I think these are kind of things. And then the last thing about these petitioner articles, which is, which was really is, is a challenge for us is the finance committee. We've changed the rules of the road for them so that if something is, has negligible financial impact, they can just do that quick presentation. But under our code, if they don't write a full presentation, then the only thing that shows them the petitioners articles is just their comments. So I think we as a board need to, we may need to do a code change, but I think we need to sit down as well and determine who is going to write the comments that go for the petition articles for the non financial or the negligible financial impacts. And perhaps we write them and then we, we are, we are a staff member writes them and then we submit them to the finance committee for their review. They can make some edits and off we go so that we don't, um, is this really, I think it's, and who, we may never have so many petitioner articles again, you know, but it just, um, I think that was a, uh, a bottleneck that we really want to look at. Yeah. Doug is laughing. It's a heck of a bottleneck. It was a little bit of a bottleneck. I think that, you know, we need to just get a better process. So things go along a bit better, you know? Yeah. To, um, to the point that you're talking about, maybe reworking the code a little bit, I've mentioned this before. I'm going to throw out there again, you know, with this town meeting the last night, I buzzed through a lot of the last articles. I was trying to save time and a lot of people assumed I was doing it because I was fearful that there wasn't a quorum. Quite frankly, I was more doing it for as a time-saving thing, but then I got asked if we still had a quorum and fortunately we did. Um, do you want to change the town code so we don't need a quorum and just get things moving? And then we don't have to worry about lots of towns. You don't have to have a quorum. You don't have to have any minimum quorum at all. No, it's up to the town, how, what they do. Some towns don't have anything. So then we don't have to worry about, as we're losing people so rapidly, we don't have to worry about that. I mean, you could end up with five people deciding a bunch of things, but, um, if that's all that's interested in sticking around, but there's, our towns that have, have no quorum at all. Would you consider reducing the quorum instead of eliminating the quorum? Or you could go down to 50 if you wanted, go down to 25. 75. Or as many, or as many people are on the finance committee and the select board and the moderator to get a vote. All right. Well, I just put a note here on my, um, list of possible, you know, articles for next year to have us discuss. What do you think about that bit of a quorum? I think it's... We don't have to wrap that, that mad, mad panic at the end of town meeting. We, we have, um, we have 10,600 registered voters. To require a hundred people to be there seems to me very reasonable, bending over backward. And, you know, and so if we have to have another night of town meeting because we have 73 people, you know, I, I say we do that, you know, we're gonna, we're going to cling to this wonderful tradition, purest form of democracy. Let's, let's have, let's have one percent of the electorate, uh, in attendance when they make these decisions. Yeah. And Bill, you're, you are, you're, you're repeating what I've heard before about, um, uh, about in terms of main, what if nobody shows and then we completely lose this tradition. We completely lose it. So I hear what you're saying. Um, because you know, I, I'm concerned if, if people, if we get such a low turnout, if people start talking about, well, maybe we should have representative town meeting, will we actually get a hundred people to run, you know, to, to be a town meeting member? I don't know if we would get that. Maybe. Okay. Well, yeah, but it's a thought. I'll put that on my list for a future discussion, but the full board, I think is, is, makes sense. Look at these kinds of things. Okay. So I think I want to go, um, through the articles. But before we do that, I have a couple of comments. Sure. Uh, to the point of the earlier discussion about the League of Women Voters, uh, typically there is a candidate's night rather than an issues forum, but we had no contested races this time. Usually both.
Um, well, well, my memory was, uh, having a candidate's night with, uh, though, you know, maybe it's, as I recall from my first, first time on the board, I, I don't recall there being issues forums, but anyway, um, and, and as to the timing, I think that people tend not to pay attention until the time of town meeting comes closer. So, uh, uh, I'm sympathetic to the notion of getting information out in a timely fashion and in advance, but, uh, I worry that people don't pay attention. Though, um, you know, working with the Wayland Post may be a way to, uh, to do that in a sort of less structured way. Um, with respect to, uh, the question about the whole discussion about, uh, firewalls and, uh, videotaping and so forth, um, I appreciate that there was confusion because of the writeup, but I think also the, um, the proponent of the article wasn't clear about what was in, uh, that $250,000. So I think that we, uh, need to tighten that up a bit. And then finally, as I recall, there has been in the past and maybe still is, uh, a limitation on the number of times that any speaker can speak to an article. Do we still have that? Yep. Used to be two, I thought. I think it's three. I think it's three. Uh, was that observed? What do you think? You thought somebody spoke more frequently? Uh, I think that we did have someone who spoke very frequently. Really? Maybe not. Like the two, two minutes at a pro and con? That's what it's meant for is no more than three times. Yeah. But I, I think there's, uh, also, uh, at the procedural mic, there was some stuff there. Well, procedural mic is meant for not to sort of give your argument in favor or oppose. It's meant for specific reasons to either bring a motion, ask a question. And so there, there's no limitation. It's, it's more designed for if you're at the pro or the con microphone and some people were at the pro and con microphone on the same issue. Um, they have a, they have a, uh, a quota of three times max. That's their maximum limit. And I don't recall anybody being up there more than three times. Bill, I think the reason, um, and I, I share that, but it's difficult to really enforce is that the individual you're thinking of came up to the procedural microphone a number of times to either ask or answer questions. Yeah. And it's just, it was a frequent flyer up there, but it's can't really limit that because it was just related to questions. And, and, and I will say it can be very problematic getting somebody who is answering a question at the procedural microphone, not to give an opinion. They really do belong at the pro or con microphone. So, um, I'm going to move this along because we've got a few other things to do, but this is good. I am also going to add that I received phone calls from a couple of residents that said, this should, this shouldn't be a limit on the number of times someone could speak at town meeting in general. But, um, I think maybe we might want to suggest, or you might want to see if other communities limit two times to the pro and the con. I always thought it was two, not three, but nonetheless. Yeah, it's two, it's three under our rules, but I certainly, I will take that under advisement. Okay. So I want to go through the, through the warrant itself now so that we can just determine what follow up work that needs to be done. Um, they warrant is in a supplemental packet if you want to follow along. So I think you need me for this. Probably not. I wouldn't think this is all your work now. Thank you for joining us. No, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening and I appreciate it. And if there's any suggestions you have, I'm all ears. Okay. Terrific. To make town meeting work, uh, more efficiently. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all your work, folks. Thank you. Thank you for helping us. Of course. So I think, um, the first one I'm going to identify here is, um, Michael, this is going to be a list for, uh, the or jail and I think article 14, reaffirm remote participation. We have to let somebody know, uh, except Trudy to extend that in. Well, I was going to mention that madam chair in my, uh, announcements, but Madam clerk and I discussed these, we reached out to, um, representative Linsky representative Gentile and as Senator Eldridge as well. And representative Linsky is spearheading, filing the legislation that was passed at town meeting. Um, and I will follow up, um, as needed and give you some feedback as we move along. Yeah, because we have a number of home rules here. And I, that was also the question is, you know, we need to reach out to representative Linsky because we would like to get all of these quickly, uh, into place, but particularly the licenses. So thank you. All right. And so you've got all these under control here, what we have to do with all of them. All right. That sounds reasonable. And then the last thing I want to add is, is that on the standard articles, in other words, those that are showing up in the consent, some of them are still really, really long. If we're going to vote for them like a standard, I really think we need to go back and maybe everybody takes one and see if we can't reduce these. So they're just short and sweet and we're out the door. All right. Does anybody have anything else they want to add? Just one item. And I think I've discussed this, um, with Michael separately. I think it will be particularly helpful for multiple reasons, at least during the budget and capital budget presentation, to have our department heads there and sitting in the front row and whatever it takes to empower them to be able to answer questions. If we need to do that, to allow them to speak because one, I think that they're the most knowledgeable and two, I think it's really helpful for town meeting to hear directly from different voices in our town government. Um, for example, I thought it was very helpful when they heard from our town engineer, Abby, or they hear from Tom Holder. And of course, um, Nick was put on the spot for quite some time. But I, I think if we could make that kind of a standard part of the process, if at all possible, I think it will make that part of the process go smoother. Um, and that I think it will give voters more comfort as well. If I could, Madam chair, before town meeting, I always write to all the department heads and tell them with regard to town meeting attendance, if you have requested something and you anticipate that you will either need to answer questions or defend it, you need to be at town meeting. And unfortunately, this time, uh, Mr. Lombardi, as you well know, reached out to me over the weekend to let me know that he was quite sick. And I had excused his presence that evening, not realizing that we would receive the number of questions. It was just during the question and answer when I was trying to feel some of the questions, one of my staff texted him and he called in and said, listen, I can come down. Um, uh, we would, otherwise he would have been here. And if you looked around, um, to your point, we have most of the department heads or essential personnel in the audience that night, sometimes they're in the back, but I agree, we should bring them up during the capital budget and have them up front. So there isn't that delay in getting them from the back of the room to the front of the room. Even also, it could be very helpful for us to have them right there. So we could quickly consult with them because when questions come up to time is always of the essence. Yes. And, and that silence feels extra heavy when we're trying to scramble to respond to a question. Agreed. That's all I have, Carolyn. No problem for me whatsoever. Okay. So I think we're pretty good on this. Um, but also we need to thank Jalen for all the hard work, our first year doing this. And, um, for your reward, you'll get to do it again next year. Yeah. And that sounds like a brush. Um, I also want to just say one real quick that Michael and I are going to conduct a couple of postmortems. We're in the middle of setting up different ones of different groups who, you know, either participate to the warrant, um, probably sit down with, um, Jalen and Kelsey, Doug, you're welcome to join us for that postmortem. If you like, just to see, you know, where can we flow smoother and, you know, and I'm always trying to find ways to simplify this process. So I think that that takes care of that. So Jalen, you're welcome to stay where you're free to go home about the countryside. I'm about to leave, but, um, Nick is the zoo manager, so he'll handle anything else you guys need tonight. That's right. Thank you, Nick. Great. Um, so, um, I had the next one down here was, um, that's some time here to do this, right? Yeah. I, um, you know, I keep this draft agenda list here, you know, what's going to be happening and what's not happening and what have you. And, um, as we go through the, through every meeting, I have to do the basics we do every time I have to do stuff that's time sensitive. And then we try to get, you know, a lot of projects. One project that we've had outstanding course of the meetings is looking at the legal cases. And then also we're going to be, um, um, looking possibly at some quotes, I think, from some legal firms so that we can, you know, look at those and see what we would like to do about legal, you know, counsel. So we have not sort that contract out for some time, so I have that on the list. Um, we will be doing a lot of, uh, appointing, interviewing, reappointing, uh, positions because they all, um, expire in June and they send in their notice usually by May 15th. So I hope we do have a lot, a lot of those to do. Um, we'll be looking at the, the cannabis waiver next time. We're going to be meeting with the graffiti on the first, we're going to be having our, we're follow up meeting on the, um, the, um, discourse, which we're, um, program, which is now called constructive discourse, right? So we'll be doing a lot of, a lot of these things. So, um, we're going to be meeting with the board of assessors through a couple of meetings. So now they have a vacancy, so they've asked us to help them fill that. So we'll have a joint meeting with them. And the last one I want to mention for tonight is that the long discussed, a select board manual has been taken over by Abby. This is fabulous. She's taken bits and pieces from all sorts of documents that are out there and created this. It's about 35 page document. Um, I'm starting to go through it. I should get through it in the next week or two. And then, um, I would like to, um, have the board, um, the board, that's us, authorize, um, Mr. Levine to join me because we think we could really use your wordsmithing, you know, because you know, it's a cut and paste from, you know, so maybe would you be willing to, you know, kind of give that a polish up? I would be happy to, but I'm quickly learning that AI is putting me out of a job as a master wordsmith, but, uh, yes, I will do that. So then we will hopefully have that ready to go by the meeting, by the end of June. And, um, also I think in the next couple of weeks, Doug and I are going to start, um, putting together a packet so we can start making the pilot program, um, um, appointments and discussions. So there we go. So I just want to kind of give a little bit of a heads up. All right. The one thing that we do haven't been kind of looking at that we need to do is go back on the stormwater tracking. I think that was one we were going to take under advisement. So hopefully we can look at that and the complete streets, which is a grant program that I think we just need to do, uh, adopt a policy. It's being drafted. Um, and that's another grant program the town would be eligible for. So as far as the, um, any comments, otherwise I'm zipping on to the next one, as far as the summer schedule goes, obviously you already know it's already published June 1st, 15th and the 29th. Um, I think what we're going to try and do is just have one goal setting meeting and one regular meeting in July. And then in August, we'll probably have two or three meetings so that we can cut back off some of this stuff and, um, stay with it. But what I need is for everybody to send in their, um, vacation schedules to Abby. Madam chair. Yes. I know that you are someone who listens and is to the wishes of the board and you are someone who loves a challenge. This will be right. So I would, I would suggest that we have a target of one business meeting in July and one business meeting in August. Well, you sound like Mr. McCall, but then the other board members said they want to be, you know, I'm only going to do what, what the demand is for the, uh, for the work. If we only do one in August, I can guarantee you we'll be meeting every week in September. Well, I'm, I personally am for a marathon meeting in August, uh, rather than two or three. Well, we'll see nearly pushing ones. Uh, so, uh, so I want you to give that some thought, Madam chair. Well, knowing how responsive you are to, uh, to the needs and desires of your colleagues. Four hour meetings are a real killer to do. They really are. They really are. Plus, plus one member who might be chatting right now, usually giving me the look like, why is this meeting so long? But, um, you know, uh, in all seriousness, uh, people do tend to disappear in August. Uh, the staff, you know, could use a bit of a break. Uh, so if, if it's possible to, uh, confine it to one business meeting in July and August, I think that would be terrific. Yeah. We're going to have one goal setting, which is the, in the beginning. Right. Right. And then the one business meeting in July. And I'm pretty sure those are going to be like July seven or eight. We can make it that Tuesday ran that Monday. And then the other meeting will be July 20th or somewhere around there, but I need everyone to send in the dates to Abby when you're not available or do you want me to just have her send out tentative dates? I, I do the latter. Uh, and ideally with a date in August or, or choose one. Yeah. I don't think that's going to work.
But if you, and then I sit here at meetings and you all give me 10 more things you want. So, uh, I don't hear Doug objecting. So, uh, no, Doug's the one that told me we should have three meetings in August. No, definitely not three in August. I'm fine to have two, but I think the problem is, is our vacation schedules may not all line up. Right. That's why we're having this conversation. So let's see the question that whether it's one or two and let's see how our vacations line up. Yeah, that's fine. All right. Because I really don't like doing them every week. That's really a tough, a tough slog, not only for the staff, but for me as well. We do them every week. So already, um, I have a few minutes before the hearing, which is at eight 15. So do we want want to go to consent? Okay. Move adoption of the consent calendar. All right. Second. Okay. Any further discussion on, uh, roll call vote. So bill. Yes. Doug. Yes. Carol. Yes. Three zero. Beautiful. Uh, any com any, um, let's see where, where are we? Oh, want to do Michael's report? Yeah. Sure. Would you like to speak up now? Yes. Thank you, madam chair. Just a couple of quick items. I, I know there was some questions from the board and some from the public. As some of you may know, we did have some damage a couple months back to fire station two and part of the delay. There's, it's twofold, maybe threefold. Um, initially the quotes that came in were below the deductibles that we had with our insurance carrier. Uh, we have a $25,000 deductible per incident. And we had a couple of problems at the same time. There was some minor damage to fire station one and the more significant, uh, damage to fire station two. We did some immediate shoring of fire station two, and then we applied for, uh, an emergency waiver with, uh, DKM, the department of capital asset management to help bypass some of the public procurement requirements to make some emergency repairs. And that took quite a while because they wanted to see our preliminary quotes. And we went back and forth with DKM ultimately got their approval at about the same time. We realized that we were looking at a $600,000 deficit in the snow and ice budget. So realizing that we were probably going to be under the insurance deductible and we were going to pay most of that 25,000 out of pocket. Once we have the problem come in with, uh, the $650,000 deficit in the snow and ice, we were faced with what buckets of money we were going to be, uh, going to. I've had a couple of meetings with facilities, finance director, and I've talked also with, uh, the fire chief. And I believe that we've now identified a plan. We're going to be doing some of the masonry work in this fiscal year and some of the remaining work will happen after July 1st, but we should have this completed in the probably next one to two months. Okay. Uh, moving right along. Uh, similarly, there was some questions where we are in the, the police chief process. So we've been about six months with, uh, chief Hebert. I would say he's doing a phenomenal job. I've had some conversations with him about next steps and I've started reaching out to some of the assessment companies, uh, about performing that. And I even formed the, uh, acting chief Hebert that I will likely start that process in another month or two, um, looking for a, uh, a firm so that we can get that underway in the summer and hopefully be in a situation where we could have a permanent appointment in the fall. And I did also, I know there were some inquiries, you know, as to how he's performing at the moment without, uh, the second in command. And he said without a direct second, he said he didn't form me that he's doing all right. It also allows him to get, you know, learn more about what's going on the job as he sees it. But I've told him to reach out at any time that he felt there was a change and we'll make changes or an appointment if need be necessary on a temporary basis. Um, just on a quick recap, uh, we haven't had a formal meeting since April. And I want to let you know, we did a ribbon cutting with planning and a bunch of staff over at Takara for their new location. We had Senator Eldridge come out. Uh, he had a proclamation. It was, uh, well attended and we wish them well in their new location. I had been asked by select board member Fay, if I could find out an update on the constituent mall, uh, down in constituent. And I did speak to the building commissioner and he said, it's really the, um, the tenants and the owner, they're getting plans. He finally got, uh, architectural plans for Liberty pizza and they will be moving forward with the building permit, but he's still waiting on some plans for the dry cleaner and the convenience store, but that should be moving along. Uh, we talked about the special legislation. As I indicated, we spoke to our delegation and representative Linsky will be moving that, um, the, the liquor licenses request, green burial, as well as our digital notices. Um, we touched briefly on the capital budget item with, uh, Madam moderator. Uh, I also wanted to mention that, uh, the planner and I did follow up after the Wayland post article. Uh, the state is still listing our subsidized housing index that we are still at, uh, the 10% threshold. Um, the last time they updated that was in September of 25. And for now, as far as the state's concerned, we are still at our safe harbor until we hear otherwise. And I did recently have an inquiry in which I think was generated in part from that article. Um, and I did point the, those, uh, contractors to the state website and where we stand. So, uh, those are the updates I have since town meeting when we last met as a board and I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions from the board, Mr. Levine? Um, two questions, Mr. Town Manager. The first, um, going in reverse order regarding, um, the 10% threshold. Do you have any updates, um, related to the, the St. Ann's senior housing development? Um, I haven't heard from about that or where the progress is for some time. I'm just wondering if you have. I don't have anything to share this evening. When the article came out the Friday before town meeting, during town meeting, I, I tried to reach out to, um, one of the principles we were working with at the, at Pua through the archdiocese who was overseeing the project. I left some voicemails. Um, I will follow up on that and try and get an update for the next meeting. Thank you. And then my other question, thank you for the update regarding the police chief search. Um, once that process begins and we end up, uh, securing a search firm, approximately what would the timing be from that point? Can you just briefly speak to what the phases of that search are at that point? Cause I, I, I vaguely remember being a part of this the first time I was on the board and I thought there was a group of individuals appointed to assist with that search from the town. But do you, do you recall how it's happened more recently? Well, when we did the, the search that ultimately yielded chief Berman as the, the permanent chief, we first did some solicitations, got a firm. And once we had the firm concurrent with them, uh, putting together a timeline, we posted the position, uh, they worked with us to help develop, uh, the job posting, do the initial screening, do the initial screening with candidates. So there's usually, uh, maybe a two to four week period where you, uh, ask for applications. And then in rapid succession, we did staff interviews. Uh, we put together a panel internally where we screened, uh, the candidates had staff meet with them, uh, to look for a fit. And we had some criteria. I consulted with some chiefs on my own to put together some criteria. And then once we identified, uh, say a good set of maybe six to eight candidates, we, we brought those back to the, the assessment folks who narrowed it down to a top three, and then they performed an assessment center. I would say beginning to end to me may have taken about eight to 10 weeks tops. Okay. Thank you. And then I ultimately would sit and review the notes, um, from the assessment center report, and then make a recommendation to you folks based on that feedback, who I think should be the next chief. And you would make that a point with together, we would make the point. I make, I recommend the appointment and you ratify it. Got it. Thank you. Mr. Whitney, Nelson. Michael, with respect to, uh, the, uh, home rule petitions, uh, one you did not mention is the Millennium Fund, which the, uh, the 2025 town meeting approved that's wending its way, I gather through the general court. Do, do we have any sense of where that stands? Um, I would have to get a latest and greatest update. I have met several times, uh, with members of Senator Eldridge's staff and have talked to Senator Eldridge, uh, probably as recently as within the last month. He was here at town hall. And there has been some minor issues that Senate council has had with the wording of the bill. And I have heard from, uh, Ms. Jeunesse with the library board of trustees of how she would prefer this to go. And I think it's, uh, lack of better terms, you know, the process on Beacon Hill, but I know that our, our Senator is well aware of our concerns and he's been trying to advocate for it, but I can make sure I have an update. I'll put in my notes for the next meeting, what the latest status is. It would be great. Thank you. And I added both items to the draft list. So, um, may I ask one quick question too, on the follow-up from town meeting. I heard the list of the home rules. I did not hear the ones, uh, about, um, the town in particular select board being able to communicate with the voters if there was a ballot question. So I just want to make sure that has also gone off. I'm sure Trudy's done them, but just confirm that one. And there was, what else was there? We had an awful lot of home rule ones. That was one that was near and dear to her heart and then changing the, uh, the date for the, uh, the town meeting. I mean, that was, uh, and then of course she had some other, she had some codes that went in, but I just, that was, uh, Doug, do you know what number that was? No. Okay. Okay. The one tricky thing I, I left to make a random. Is that number 20, excuse me, article 20, it's, uh, acceptance of MGL, uh, chapter 53, section 18B provide information regarding ballot questions. That's the ballot. Uh, I just want to also let you know that, um, representative Linsky said, timing will be a challenge here. You know, most cities and towns have their annual town meeting in the spring is that you can have usually from April to somewhere in, into June. We have ours in May this year. He said that the legislative session ends shortly. And then if we don't get these through, we'll have, he'll have to refile them with the new legislature that comes in in January one. So they may, they may end up having a formal session this fall. It's still under consideration. I'm told by my alleged folks at work. Oh, okay. Great. But he said, it's going to be challenging given the, the, uh, remaining time on the calendar this year, if not, he would resubmit. All right. Thank you very much. Um, before we go to the, to the hearing, I, I want, um, has anybody have any comments on correspondence? Okay. I wanted to mention correspondence because in view of the fact that we'd had some public comment tonight about the hearing, um, location that we're going to discuss in a minute, we also had one. I don't know if you're sorry that I responded on behalf of the board, but it won't be, it wasn't in this packet supporting the, the outdoor dining and called it the chatio. So I just, I thought, first, I thought that was so cute anyway. All right. So that would be the shatio kind of like the shack. I know you have to bear with me this week. I'm a little off here. So, um, Mr. Uh, Mr. Nick, would you please bring over, um, Mandy Phillips and Kenneth Phillips, please? And also I believe Mr. Uh, attorney Louis Feltman from KB Law. Because we are now going to have a hearing on the liquor license discussion impossible to approve the liquor license amendment for outdoor only alterations of the premises. So, uh, Madam Chair, the, um, I only saw, um, Mr. Phillips is there. I see him. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't see another Phillips here or, or, okay. Would you, um, let Mr. Uh, Mr. Phillips, could you take your audio off for a second? Is your attorney joining you this evening? No. You're on mute. Just us. Just you. Okay. So let me just get us set up. Okay. Welcome. Okay. So I declare this hearing open for the purpose of considering the application filed by the Dudley Chateau LLC, DBA Dudley Chateau for the application amendment to allow food and alcohol service on the patio for the premise located at 20 Crest Road, Wayland, Mass. 01778 annual all alcoholic beverages ABCC number 03826-R7-1340. There was a notice published advising of this hearing and it was in the Metro West Daily News appeared on May 1st and it read notices hereby given that the Wayland Select Board will hold a public hearing on Monday, May 18, 2026 beginning at 8 15 PM at the Wayland Town Building 40 Constituate Road, Wayland, Mass and remotely for the application filed by Mandy Phillips on behalf of the Dudley Chateau LLC DBA Dudley Chateau. This public hearing is for an outdoor only alteration premises for an annual all alcohol liquor license and again ABCC number 03826-RS-1340. The hearing can only be attended on Zoom and reviewed remotely on Wacom. The Zoom link of course was made available earlier today and it's on the Select Board's agenda and it is also on the Wayland Town calendar on the Wayland Town website. So welcome. How are you? Good. Thank you. All right. So this is how this works. This the rules of evidence will not be applied during the hearing but the board expects that the prospective licensees and any members of the public who comment present present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner. So there is information in our packet. There's an application and there's some explanation as to why the and which the proponents will explain in a moment. So first what we'll do is you'll have an opportunity to describe your business and the reason for applying. The Select Board will ask questions if they have any. Members of the public can provide comment which oops applicant will summarize the application. The chair will close the hearing and take the matter under advisement and make decisions at a later meeting or make a decision and that's where we go. So would you like to have the floor and explain why you're before us please. Sure thank you. First of all thank you to the board for their time. Ken Phillips and I have with me my wife Mandy Phillips. This is a bit unusual uh because the uh the patio area aka the shadow as you pointed out earlier uh has been operational since COVID uh without incident uh so there's uh there's certainly uh a proof of concept there uh it appears that now that the state um exemptions have uh uh expired in a way uh that it's up to the uh individual uh alcohol licensing board so that's why we're before you um but the even though it's called an alteration uh the shadow was built um right after COVID and uh like I said has been operational since uh it's a great uh way for our patrons to enjoy the outdoor weather uh when it's uh you know when it's proper um we took steps in the past to work with uh the um the building department to have the area fenced in we have two concrete structures between the parking lot and the shadow itself and uh I think it's a it's a great area that uh like I said that the patrons have enjoyed it's approximately maybe 30 by 35 feet or so uh so approximately a thousand square feet and um it really there's obviously because the nature of New England we don't really use it we did during COVID in the winter months but we don't use it uh in the winter months uh any longer so really it's more of a seasonal uh area and as far as uh hours go uh we go until 10 p.m on the shadow we do the last scene we don't go to we go to 9 30. i i i have um last call we won't see anyone after 7 30 last call at we have everyone out of there by 9 30. so not till 10. it's incorrect yeah so uh and obviously there's certain uh days where it's just either too hot um or uh rainy or whatever the case might be so it's not uh utilized uh obviously uh every uh every every day uh and we are closed uh Mondays which uh we were on the call earlier and heard one of the abutters uh point that out um it does we're not asking for an increase in our capacity it doesn't increase the capacity um whatsoever our kitchen is is only in our servers are only able to handle so many patrons at once so what we do when we have the outdoor areas we don't do certain seating inside so it does not increase the capacity uh whatsoever as far as parking uh we stayed ahead of the curve and worked with the uh lease department in the past that what we did was request that the DPW put signs so only parking would occur on one side of the street so in the event emergency vehicles did need to come down um the street they could do so uh we haven't had uh uh any issues with that okay thank you i'm gonna oh i'm sorry yeah that's that's really it it's getting a little echo there oops too soon um questions from the board mr whitney yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry i sneezed next time i'll just let you listen to me sneeze you obviously heard the public comment um would you be amenable to limiting the hours of operation further such that you would uh uh no longer uh have patrons uh there uh that is to say suspend operation of it before 9 30. i think the problem with that is your typical dining period uh people would normally go out and commence dining especially when it's light out a little later in the summer months at 7 7 30. uh so instead of you know having to scoot them off uh the patio uh too soon yeah we we normally in in practice you're usually out by nine when it sunsets you know you have might have the mosquitoes come out but uh and it's great too because it's utilized by uh uh families uh families uh families with children teenage children or what uh that just love that that outdoor area you know and the food um yeah and uh and in your experience uh uh uh do patrons who can't be accommodated in the parking lot confine themselves to one side of the street or are they uh on both sides they do actually the the the months uh and that we utilize the shadow uh many patrons either they have the capability to walk ride a bicycle kayak canoe uh so that's that's really nice um the other you know patrons often use uber and things of that nature as well uh so on occasion um do we have issues with with parking uh yes but that's usually uh not during the summer months thank you mr lubin uh thank you for joining us mr and miss phillips um i have a couple of questions uh having been through a similar sort of process myself um at the zba did you have occasion um to connect with any of your rebutters any of the neighbors directly um when you submitted this application um to the best of my knowledge nobody reached out to us um directly on this application uh nor did we conduct a a meeting beforehand um my next question is so this um when you first opened and constructed the shadow was during covid so does that mean the first time that you opened was in the summer of 2020 2020 or 2021 might have been 2021 and then it's been continuous since then so it's been at least five or six years since you've been open yes correct and to the best of your knowledge do you know if the police have had to um appear and speak with whoever the manager is on duty as a result of noise complaints directly related to the outdoor seating over those five or six years no no not not a single time that you can recall uh no because we have always shut down the patio by 9 p.m and had people off of there um that was kind of when i applied for it in the beginning of covid that was knowing that i'm in a residential neighborhood that was a a major thing for me to make sure that you're not disturbing the peace in the evening when you're trying to put kids to bed and right um and obviously the the pond it carries a noise so we do we do try to you know really be uh courteous to our neighbors i don't as far as i as far as i was thinking most of our neighbors like us um they come by they have dinner lunch they bring their kids so i'm under the impression that yes um i i try to be courteous to keep the noise down okay thank thank you i'm good madam chair okay thank you i i have a couple questions so in the application in the application it says the hours are tuesday through sunday noon to nine and yet mr phillips i think you said you keep it open until 9 30. so that was could you clarify what time does it close i wouldn't i usually won't seat anyone after 7 30 to make sure i can get them off the patio because like as as ken stated the bugs when that sun goes down being by the pond we get quite a few mosquitoes so you know people don't really want to hang out out there um after they're after they eat so and like i said the noise complaint but yes i i would have the patio open only until 9 p.m okay and um of everybody here planning is um the least uh knowledgeable about planning but i believe when we issue these this is not an increase in capacity right it's just a total capacity so one place it says here we're going to have seating capacity a number of chairs is 30 but seating capacity is 30 to 35 and max occupancy is 35. so does that i think we need a little bit we have i have i have the tables out there and then there's also like a couch and a chair a couple of chairs so but we don't serve food there so it's where people are waiting for a table they'll kind of hang out or um kind of more of a lounge area just to to a waiting area a holdover area but um as as far as i was told when i applied for this back in uh 2020 that my capacity is 85 and that is my capacity whether they're indoors they're outdoors they're upstairs they're downstairs that is my tool and and and because i get outdoor with you know more room doesn't allow me to have bigger capacity that is my capacity okay right that's a question that i had so um i'm gonna ask um let's see so i think i did this a little backwards so i'm gonna read the public comment now i already mentioned the woman who wrote to us uh was it cassidy dean is that her was that who it was adam chair could i just make one comment uh i didn't you're next you're next hang on i gotta do the public comment once first and then it is i can see you want to speak but hold on once yeah select void ask questions members of the public and provide public comments so we mentioned it already we heard from mr johnson from pine road and we heard from um pablo i forgot uh i can't read my writing here from bayfield and also miss leonard on bayfield uh they were concerned as as um as bill mentioned with parking and uh some noise and and then we had uh i believe it was miss dean was it cassidy dean yeah cassie who had um said she enjoyed the um the outdoor space so all right um mr madam chair question of uh order um yes well uh is uh has their hand raised yeah who has their hand raised um okay bring them forward please oh i think this person spoke before yeah um you spoke before right okay i did but there's a couple things that the owners just said that i wanted to okay you have go ahead so we have personally called police at least on two or three separate occasions when there is excessive noise outside um so we can i don't know provide police logs and whatnot um probably if needed on the traffic i i literally last week went there and took a picture roads are packed street to both sides of the street are packed the parking is overflowing on the residential streets where there is clear nose parking signs cars parked in the mud all over the place um and then i am hearing that people are saying that you know this is not a increasing capacity i think you're saying that this is limited by the kitchen but nothing's stopping you from hiring another cook or another you know wait staff and then you sort of like will not have the capacity restraints on the inside so fundamentally this outside seating will significantly disrupt um i think all the neighbors and it's already a challenge it's already a significant challenge and it's only going to get much much more worse um if we can hear people literally in our backyards eating and drinking until 9 30 pm every single day except for monday thank you all right um yes go ahead elizabeth jaffron yep go ahead um is jeff recognize you thank you um i also am i have been a neighbor of the chateau since 19 oh my god 97 and um it's always been a love-hate relationship it's very challenging being a neighbor i also worry about the impact on the the environmental impact on the pond for example the swans have nested right next to the chateau for the past i think this year they did not but i worry about kind of the environmental impact i also have questions about their septic system and is it able to is it legal and is it working and how often is it you know you know there's been a lot of questions about that and kind of the the pond quality water um i also have had to call many many times i call the chateau i call their bar many times when there are people outside fighting screaming um i've had to go in and tell them that there's a drunk man walking to his car that should not be driving so i've had a lot of experiences of significant issues i've also had to call the police to say that i do not think a fire truck or an ambulance could get up the hill undoubtedly to the point um so i have a lot of questions about their parking and i also feel like they have never reached us out to us as neighbors to kind of say like what can we do to make things better because i think as neighbors we would have a lot of comments um so i i don't feel like it's been a very um great relationship with the neighborhood and i just wanted to make those comments okay thank you very much and you i'm sorry did we catch your address uh yes eight pine road eight pine road okay all right thank you do i have any more public comment here mr um uh lombardo no thank you lombardi sorry okay miss crawl yes hi i'm uh at 76 dudley road i'm the first house on the left up the hill from the chat and um i just would like to say i not only hear them i can hear what they're saying you know she was right the sound does travel across the water and when we're sitting out on the deck or on the dock and you can hear them literally whatever the topic of conversation is i i just don't want more of that i'm still not a hundred percent clear about why they're what it is they're seeking that's different than what they've had before but i just want to make sure we're not getting more we're not getting more tables out there we're not getting more lighting out there we're not getting more sound out there we're not getting extended hours out there um and i i wish i could say more about what good neighbors they are but i've never really interacted with them so um i know people have called the police i know some of my neighbors have and i'm the thing that gets us by especially on the weekends is we know at nine o'clock the outdoor area is going to shut down but that doesn't mean people leave the parking lot they don't they hang around their cars they've had more than enough to drink and then you hear them and you can hear their language and when my grandkids are there that's really problematic so that's my two cents on this thank you very much um am i all set nick yes you are thank you very much all right i'm going to close that portion of the hearing um um usually we don't get input from you mr mccollins too late but would you like to speak now a couple of points i just wanted to raise and thank you madam sure um as the board knows in 2004 the state legislature amended portions of chapter 40a that dealt with the uh this process about the outdoor dining and speaking with town council and we did get an opinion last year town council felt that if the board adopted uh certain procedures for the approval of outdoor dining and the expansion of liquor service to those areas the board could for an existing license holder um make modifications to the license as the local license authority without this going back to the planning board if this was a new restaurant or if they were making um certain additions or modifications to the structure doing to add new dining that trigger a site review or a special permit this would likely go back to the planning board this the reason we're here and to address ms kroll's last comment as as my office helps this board uh with the license renewals it came to our attention that the chateau who had received temporary permission to serve alcohol outdoors as we all know during coven had continued to operate that way but it came to further came to our attention that we needed to formalize if they were going to continue to do that get this actual extension of their liquor license to cover the outdoor dining area they already had the dining area we're just extending the liquor service formally as part of their regular license that's what we're doing there should be no significant changes um i did speak with my building commissioner and and as was noted in the memo we did talk to planning the building commissioner didn't have any concerns but he did make a suggestion that there are no seasonal dates on their application they talk about tuesday through sunday uh noon to nine but they don't say anything for instance memorial day to labor day or something along those lines and so we should consider that um or ask for a recommendation from the phillips says uh regarding that and then we should make it clear on the license that we're not increasing their seating capacity rather that we're just extending the the service area to this outdoor dining so there's no confusion with the butters that there's any increase in seating those are my comments thank you mr mccall so um i think the next thing is that um we go back to the applicant here in the in the hearing and we ask them you know what um mr lombard can you remove some of the um folks who have spoken because i can't see the um the applicants because their box got too small so um and we come back to you now to see if you'd like to summarize um or or answer any of the questions that have been raised so uh feel free to speak sure well um you know once again yes it will not uh increase capacity uh whatsoever we're not requesting that and really what my reference was in all actuality we're only capable of handling so many patrons no matter what the capacity would be but this is not an increase in capacity whatsoever just so we're all clear on that uh as far as to the environmental uh impact um we had conservation come out uh when the for when the patio was first constructed uh they had a few requests we complied with those um as it became closer to the uh water's edge and uh yes indeed there have been swans nesting there every year i didn't see them last year but uh they we've owned the chateau for 17 years now and they haven't always been there uh even when there was no shadow uh as far as the neighbors um be happy to have a neighborhood meeting um maybe we can do it on the shadow um but uh you know we're just uh we're right there and uh majority of the neighborhood comes in and uh dines on a regular basis so the feedback that we get is is very positive but if there's anything uh that we could do to be the best commercial neighbors possible we're certainly uh all ears as far as a suggestion uh from mr town manager uh if you wanted to make it a april 1st to uh 11-1 date we'd be amenable to that just new england being new england you have some of your most beautiful days for outdoor dining in october and potentially in april which doesn't always occur for instance this spring wasn't that great so we probably wouldn't have even really been necessary until recently
all right um let's go back any comment additional comments or questions from the board no i just have a point that i'll raise in deliberation when we're at that stage okay yeah all right um so i guess what i'm going to do now is i'm going to close the hearing read my list here i'm going to close the hearing and take the matter under advisement and um we're either going to make a decision at a later meeting or we're going to make a decision tonight so i don't know what we want to do so um i think that's fine um do we want to deliberate that's where we are deliberate i mean michael made a good point that um uh that we do need to have some seasonal dates applied to this i think um uh we do need to make sure that it's um um you know finished by nine o'clock lights out or whatever by nine i think that's which sounds like what we're doing anyway but we just need to be really sure that we do it i'm trying to think what else we heard here so go ahead mr living so my suggestion is based on some previous experience serving on the zba and michael i'm wondering if we can do this since there's obviously been mixed feedback from the neighbors couple positive some negative i'm wondering if instead of i'm supportive of issuing um the permit slash license but maybe instead of in perpetuity we do it for a finite period of time like a year give them an opportunity to connect with the neighbors especially over the course of the next few months where it will be most in use and then we come back again um next spring and see how things have gone and then can issue it in perpetuity or for longer is that possible michael do we have that option to have a turnaround time that that isn't forever well we do annual license renewals of all of our establishments that serve alcohol here in town whether that they sell it or serve it on premises and you as the the licensing authority i believe it's within your purview to bring the licensee in if you receive you know feedback one way or the other to ask questions we've done that before with others so i think you you you could do something along the lines of what you're asking that you could um seek you know feedback from the the owners that they met with folks and consider that when you do your annual license renewals and i think that don't hold me to it but i think the process starts around november uh when we start renewing for the next year i think that would be that would be ideal um that would be at the close if depending upon what you pick for the seasonal hours of operation once you get to november by then you'll they should be done for the season and then you can see how it went and review yeah i agree yeah um and any comments or thoughts in the deliberation mr whitney yes um well i had a conversation with the town planner today and we also have uh previously heard from the chair of the planning board pardon me that there is uh confusion at best uh about kind of a who who has jurisdiction with respect to a permit uh clearly the select board is the liquor licensing authority uh but the question of whether outdoor dining is a permitted use uh you know i'm i'm cognizant of michael's comment that town council has indicated this board may do so i think the planning board and the town planner may have a different view uh so uh i i think i personally would feel more comfortable to uh have town council uh give us some advice on this question of uh whether uh application should be made to the planning board for uh a permit uh as well as the select board to consider uh the licensing the outdoor premises for consumption of alcohol has town council already weighed in on that michael is that why we're here well we did have a general response to a hypothetical that uh you know how would this be handled uh you know how would this be handled and the town council used the coach grill as an example um i did resend town council's opinion in an email uh late this afternoon just so that folks um may have it uh so when we did ask the the planner earlier um he referred back to the town council uh from last year so i mean i think you're also again well within your rights to uh hold the public hearing or your hearing over to the next meeting if you so choose to to get additional feedback from an updated opinion i should say the councils with respect specific regard to the chateau um it's it's you you're the licensing authority so i think you have that that option if you so choose to exercise and in the other two members of the board who aren't here then be able to weigh in like at the zba they can quote mullinize by watching the meeting and then they can weigh in um substantively and cast a vote do you know if that would apply here michael uh i'm familiar with the mullinizing and that typically happens on those land use cases i've never i don't know if it applies here in a liquor licensing uh setting but again i can check that very quickly but it would seem reasonable to me that if the board members did watch the meeting and were willing to you know state on the record that they did uh and came up to speed i don't know preclude them but again i don't i don't know if that law applies to uh these types of licenses or permits i think that would not be supportive of bill's decision um obviously that that's going to be a a two-week wait because our meeting is june 1st but we should definitely be making our decision on that date
what do you think carol i think i got to think about what the name of this is what to put it on the list step one i wrote do i just say hearing uh continuation of the hearing i think do do we need to anyway thank you do we need to advertise the fact that it's being continued and do we have notice why because my my slip here says my procedure says the board will deliberate and make a decision either later or tonight so we're deferring our decision i don't know if we're continuing the hearing i think it's so i guess we're continuing the deliberation continuing the deliberation so maybe i just changed the wording on that to say uh decision right um okay yeah i do want to say for those um i don't know if doug you saw that we did get a couple emails today michael had sent us the the late town council um uh input um based on the question that michael raised and also that the planning board chair raised and then i think that i don't know i think bill you were really helpful getting all this stuff together we got something from the planning as well as to what criteria they use for site plan right i think it's confusing because this is uh this is not in the commercial district unlike uh the other uh case that michael cited uh it's a pre-existing non-conforming use uh though we also have to be cognizant of the fact that this has been in operation for quite some time yeah i personally have had lunch there and think it's terrific uh always get the mini dudley but uh ah and and a coke or something like that but uh but but in fairness to the applicants i do think that we should uh it would be great to have a discussion with the entire board and to uh see if we can reconcile this this question which may come up in other contexts about the you know the relative jurisdiction of the select board and the planning board with respect to a land use permit right so then uh what do we do in the interim are they they're still in existence right so until we make a decision are they still functioning or would it just be status quo at this point until we make a decision i'm asking the legal minds here i i i think it would be status quo with it it shouldn't shift right now because we're pending a determination it should only shift if we we make a determination okay that will rule against them but we haven't made a determination one way or the other so status quo should remain though i hope that the applicants would bear in mind some of the commentary uh we've heard and we've given in case they want to uh revisit some of the questions that have been raised so this is a question for doug and mike um i don't take a vote to um continue deliberation because that's what it says right here right would just uh take a motion move to continue the hearing to june first okay let's i don't know if i'm continuing the hearing on i continuing the deliberation or whatever whatever it's all part of the hearing whatever you think it is please make it do we have to re-advertise if we're doing that doug so it says deliberate consult the town council consult with some agent town council which we did consult with town council and we did consult and then voted decisions i don't know that it does have have to be posted each time if you're continuing i think it has to be posted initially all right but we can verify i'll find out how's that so yeah it has to be then we'll get it done how's that sound all right so we know are we having a vote on something or i move that we continue the hearing involving the outdoor dining spaces for the dudley chateau restaurant until our next meeting on june 1st 2026. would you accept a friendly amendment uh continue the hearing and or deliberation i would be pleased to accept that well i would be happy to second that motion all right is there anything for the discussion all right all those in favor uh bill yes doug yes and carol yes that's three zero okay so um um the phillips have a question go ahead
did you have a question yes so just for clarification purposes that this is to make the um the outdoor dining and beverage service um continuing you know along the same lines as our as our overall liquor license we'll be able to serve food and beverage on the patio until such time as a negative ruling was ruled by the board is that correct until we we make a decision period not just a negative it could be a positive what are you able to serve right now uh it's our understanding since covid we could serve both alcohol and food outside and we wish to continue to do so because well you can see the weather upcoming one reason this includes many many college kids which is great as well and we also were approached by uh chronicle that we've been on in the past and they wish to come to the uh shadow on friday and do a piece on um outdoor dining possibilities that's what i was saying i think the status quo remains until we make a dissent determination otherwise right great that we'd be amenable to that if the board feels they need that's why i already voted wonderful thank you
thank you for your time tonight and uh i think you're as i said everybody you're free to go thank you thank you oh you can put your video off and continue to listen so we're going to move now thank you just a point of information um yes sure i was looking oh tough time to freeze
plus we lost him you guys better get off while you can oh boy well we can we can hear from him two weeks from now about well no he'll come back in a minute here i just well we've continued the hearing anyway right yeah but i'm going to move on to the minutes then how do i okay so we're on the minutes of um april 27th can i move all three sets of minutes in a single motion i don't see why not i'd make them as amended though okay i move um the minutes of april 27th may 4th and may 5th 2026 as amended for approval second okay okay let's anybody have any edits on the 27th i did not so on um hang on one second a2 where it says gretchen schula came and spoke h to share ideas about parking it should say for the or in the historic district not just they weren't just sharing general parking ideas it was a very specific so write that um and then when mike wagerbauer came in um he wanted us to add uh for article three an additional 200 line item for retained earnings so just for the record madam chair i am back i was starting to make a point of information when we see you but we went on without you now we're in the minutes can you hold on to that thought for one minute we're on a movie we're gonna keep moving um we're actually on the minutes sorry so anybody have anything anything else on the 27th no okay how about on the fourth so like one first question i want to ask is um i don't think kelsey was in attendance in our meeting in our meetings in the time she was doing other things so i don't think she was at our a little um uh meeting so i have a question mark whether she was there um nobody else remembers i think you're right about that i would agree okay so that's why i have that up um under the discussion of the atm topics let's see um c martin provided an update regarding the annual time of articles 27 da da da da um um stating the petitioner has advised they will be postponed indefinitely then article 16 the board discussed the school committee decision to withdraw support upon further review is everyone okay with that okay then then the next one on the fifth i don't think mike michael were you present there on the fifth uh i think he had to be at the school committee or was that on the fourth that was on the fourth so he might know the bad ones but whatever i started it i started on the one on the fourth i was there and then i went over um oh well if you started to give credit for it so on the on the on the fifth again i don't think kelsey was i think she was doing other things um and then when we went to executive so took that out and we went to executive session invited attendance by carolyn michael and i don't think kelsey was there for that executive i think was just jalen and other than that i think we're in good sure anybody else have anything i was there for the whispering lane um i'm sorry i was there on the fifth for the whispering lane yeah we let we gave you credit for that one okay thank you the only other question i had on these minutes is you're supposed to follow the new format but that's not our thing okay all those in favor doug yes please bill yes and carol yes that's three i think we are now um mr mccall did you want us to go back to the hearing so we could hear you not the hearing it was just a point of information that i did the mulling rule allows a person who's missing an adjudicatory hearing to come back watch the meeting on tape and or review the minutes and then sign a form of testing that they have caught up in this one meeting and select board member levine was inquiring would that be possible and a quick search said it it may be possible provided however you have accepted the statute and i went to our e-code we have accepted it but we have accepted it for certain boards it didn't list the select board historic district commission zba conservation uh planning um but i didn't see the select board so it might be something we want to look at in the future so so they could discuss it with us but they can't vote and the vote is still the three of us then we can have they can make have input but that we have to do the voting then i guess i would say to be safe that would be correct i will check to see if there's okay let me check on that make sure i get that correct next week next time all right do we want to have reports and concerns bill nothing doug um just a quick one um spoke with mr fay who obviously couldn't be here he is hoping that and i share his desire in the coming weeks if you could add at some point to your list it would be nice to have a conversation with the finance committee um at a meeting to to discuss process specifically around town meeting yeah obviously there are a number of members of the finance committee that are no longer with us so it might maybe it's helpful to invite back a couple of the recent members if they would so choose to participate yeah and i think this is what michael and i are doing with the postmortems so rather than put it on i think we had this last time so i think we're going to do the postmortem force and see where we um end up with that i did have a meeting um i'm going to report that i i went to the finance uh committee appointing boy last week and we discussed that you know last last year we knew we had we're going to have three vacancies this year and then unfortunately one person got sick so um this is where we are and we do need to find some folks but anyway um yeah madam chair to the to the point of the postmortem uh uh if i were there i would be interested also in having a discussion uh as pertains to the role of uh the the long-term finance planning committee or uh uh cipsi cipsi whatever that acronym stands for uh so i think there was some confusion about uh specifically with respect to the 2026 capital budget and my sense was this was kind of a long-term financial planning mechanism and it seems that they uh talked about it in the near term as well so uh if the board could have a discussion about that i would be appreciative all right you keep adding things we're going to be meeting four weeks in august no we just have a longer meeting on it right now it'll be fine yeah that's what you all say okay so i do want to say that doug has agreed to um speak on our behalf represent us at the memorial day uh ceremonies at the the cemetery and that uh yesterday i finally got after all these years um to go to the local international fair it was the first time it was very nice um it's very cute the spanish immersion program doing things it was a banging the breaking boards it was really cute very nice very nicely done and so with that i am going to take a motion to adjourn please at 903. so moved second thank you and then all those in favor please say hi uh doug yes bill yes and carol yes thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you good night
Richard Turner, 7 Knob Hill, wrote, I just want to make you aware of something. Not all, not all the veterans graves are going to be flagged. The only cemetery that is flagged is St. Zephyrins and Lakeview. This is due to a vendor problem. The order that was placed in March is on back order with a Ann and Flag Company, that's who we buy these from, due to the, uh, 250th anniversary of the country. They are overworked. They are getting slammed with orders and hopefully within the next week or so we should have our order. But I did speak with a supplier today, Framingham Flagg. Recording in progress. Framingham Flagg. Uh, they, uh, I talked to Peter Whalen's son. Peter had passed away a couple of months ago and, uh, he's, he talked to the Yannan people and they were, they're going to give him, try to give him an estimated date of shipment. So that's all I have. And I hope to see everyone there Memorial Day. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Um, did we just start recording? Do I need to start over? Um, I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. I had a problem getting the recording doing that. I apologize. So would you like me to start over? Yeah, if you would. Okay. Alrighty. Um, what time is it now? 638. Good evening. As chair of the select board, I call the select board meeting of May 18th, 2026 at 6 30 PM, uh, to order. This is a remote access only meeting. This meeting may be recorded and if recorded, it will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted by Meyer remote access in accordance with ethical law. No in-person attendance by member of the public will be permitted. One may watch or participate remotely by utilizing the agenda link or the link on the agenda or the link on the town calendar on the town website. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location, which is obviously online this evening. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. I'm going to read the agenda and before I do that, I would like to recognize board members in attendance are Mr. Whitney and Mr. Levine and note that Mr. Fay and Mr. Reynolds are unable to join us this evening. So the quorum will be the three of us. We're also joined by our town manager, Mr. McCall and by our management analyst communications coordinator, Ms. Jaylen Braddocka. So having said all that, um, we will have announcements and public comment followed by organization of the board. We'll review the FHIR staffing study, uh, discuss recent website updates via FIX Plus, and then approximately 7 05. We will turn our attention to our main evening agenda item, which is a recap of the annual of town meeting, which we just wrapped up, um, last week ago on May 5th. That will be followed by a discussion of our current select board projects with some updates and next steps, uh, and a discussion of our summer meeting schedule, including setting our goal setting date. Approximately 8 15, we will have a hearing for the license amendment for the Dudley Chateau, and which will be followed by the town manager's report, the consent calendar, the minutes from April 27, May 4 and May 5, 2026, review correspondence, followed by select boards with members reports and concerns, and hopefully we adjourn at 8 55 or sooner. So, um, any announcements from the board? No. Okay. And then Mr. McCall, you have an announcement.
Madam chair, I just wanted to call people's attention. The fact that we will be observing Memorial day this coming Monday and the public ceremonies committee has a list of events starting first thing in the morning and then following up with the, um, ceremony at the, uh, the cemetery with our guest speakers. And that can be found on our website. Terrific. Okay. And then I think we were on public comment and the public comment we had heard from Mr. Turner that I believe was recorded. So I think I'm okay now. He's raising his hand again. Richard is. Okay. Richard, I'll recognize you briefly. Um, let me, I think he should be able to talk now. Yeah. Oh, he lowered his hand. I think he's all set. Okay. Yeah. Anybody else have public comment? Okay. I don't see anyone. Now I have to hold a minute for a second because Doug has stepped out of the frame and that I've lost the quorum. So there's one person raising their hand for public comment now. Okay. Who was that please? Um, Peter. Peter. Okay. I can recognize you, but he can't speak until God comes back. Okay. Okay. Peter, we recognize you. Uh, yes. Can you hear me okay? Sure. Uh, Peter Johnson calling from, um, Eight Pine Road in Wayland, um, adjacent to the Chateau. Um, are we on the Chateau meeting yet? Is this public? Yeah. If you wish to speak. So you need to speak here at public comment because, uh, they've had that just the board deliberates on the agenda items. So this is to add your comments.
All right. Um, yeah, I'm having trouble hearing you. So I'm just going to listen for now. No, sorry. This is, I'll say it again. I'm sorry. Um, all our agenda items are not open for deliberations for the public. So if you wish to add comments, this, this is where we do it right here. So would you like to make your comments here? Um, sure. Okay. So Mr. Johnson, Eight Pine Road, right? Correct. Okay. Um, so I can make a comment about the Chateau at this time. Absolutely. You have two minutes. Okay. Um, it won't be that long. Um, I live adjacent to the Chateau and, um, uh, I'm under the, uh, information that the usage of outdoor space was brought into, um, rule because of COVID. And now that COVID is over, uh, I don't see any reason why that space should be used for, uh, public usage. Um, we already have an issue with noise from the Chateau and having an exterior space for people to eat and drink would make matters worse. Um, so I am not in favor of having that space open so that we have to listen to people until 10 o'clock every night. Thank you for the board's time and appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Uh, do we have any other, uh, public comment? Um, I see one more. It's just iPhone though. So I don't know who it is. Okay. Bring them forward, please. Hi. Um, I recognize you. Could you please state your name and your street? Um, I'm Pavel. Uh, last name is O-Z-H-O-G-A-N. Um, on Bayfield Road 30. Um, very similar comments to what I just heard. So we are not directly adjacent, but we're still within earshot. And right now, the matters of noise are very significantly disrupting pretty much every evening other than Monday when Chateau is closed. So we already are suffering from people, you know, drunk exiting, into the parking lot and saying their goodbyes and things. Um, sometimes cordially, sometimes not. Sometimes we have to call the police, uh, because of the noise. But I think even more significant concern that I have is with the amount of cars that are parked. And if you extend now, you know, the, um, license to be an outdoor, that's going to increase their capacity during the COVID. That wasn't the case, right? Because that was for the, you know, for the distancing measures so that overall capacity would not have been increased. But right now we are constantly, constantly having issues with cars parked in lawns, cars parked along the Dudley Pond with the runoff going into the pond. Um, that street and the adjacent streets are actually no parking, but cars are constantly, constantly violating it. And the reason for that is obviously is because, you know, Chateau is not able to provide parking to, um, to their patrons, right? So, um, I think, I don't know, like, how to say it other than being sounding dramatic. But like, if now we are going to hear people, um, eating, drinking, being loud outside, you know, six out of seven days, that's going to be just, like, devastating. Um, I can't already enjoy, like, being outside. And even when I'm inside, I can hear them. Um, you know, when they're in the parking lot, but if now this is going to be all the time, this is just going to be absolutely horrible. Um, so however, whatever, you know, strongest form or objection there is, I would like to voice it, um, and also bring to the attention again, like, they do not have adequate parking already, uh, to be able to safely, um, allow people on the street when they, when the cars are parked illegally on both sides of those streets. Um, the, there's like no, no, um, you know, the ambulance or fire, if they need to get through, they won't be able to. Sure. So thank you for your, um, for ability to say this here. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, sir. Thank you. Uh, Jalen, do you have any others? Um, yeah, there's Becky Leonard. Becky Leonard. Okay, Becky. Um, I recognize you, Becky Leonard. Go ahead, uh, with your comments and just state your name and street, please. Oh, you're on mute. Can you hear me now? Yes. This is Rebecca Leonard, 33 Bayfield Road. I would like to, uh, add to what my neighbors are saying. I'm also an invader to, uh, the Chateau, and they don't have enough parking as it is night after night. They park illegally. Um, I'm very concerned about fire trucks getting through the road as people park on both sides of the street. The police never, ever ticket. Um, we've lived there for over four years now. I've never seen a car ticketed and it parked illegally night after night. So there's no way they can handle more capacity. Uh, they just don't have the parking for it. So they should not be able to have more capacity at this point. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, Jalen, any more? Anyone else? Sorry. Um, I don't see anyone else. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. All right, everybody. Thank you for your public comment. Um, I'm going to go to the close public comment. So the next item on the agenda is the organization of the board. And historically we reorganize the board, um, the first meeting after town meeting, because that's when we have a new member. If we, if there are any being voted in, which in our case is Mr. Reynolds. Um, but with only three members of us here tonight, I am, um, going to recommend the board, um, concurs that we table this until we meet on the June 1st. And I believe all five members will be present then. So is that okay with everyone? I think that makes great sense, Madam chair. Oh, thank you. Agreed. Okay. Um, and I do want to mention before we go off, part of the organization on the 6th will be, you know, to look at the liaison assignments for FY 27. So if you could, everybody, the three of us could take a look at their liaison assignments and see in what changes are necessary. Um, because we also have, uh, we, you know, with Ann leaving, we will have some readjustment and of some of the, the, uh, assignments. Okay. So that brings us to number four. Would you please pull over Mr. Um, Chief McPherson, please. And I think is Kate Ryan here as well. Okay. And Kate Ryan are the director of human resources. Hi chief. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Okay. We're just waiting for Kate, right? Madam chair. I spoke with Ms. Ryan earlier and I, I don't think she need to be here because okay. In, in, uh, going over with MRI, the chief and I were the primary persons on the, uh, on the, uh, the review of the report that was provided to us, but she's not the agenda. I just want to make sure I don't leave anybody out. Okay. So what we're going to have here is review a fire staffing study. As Mr. McCall explained, we underwent a fire staffing study for a consultant last fall. Um, there is a, a supplemental packet. I think it's about 105 page reporter. And, um, then there's a slide in our packet on page four. And I will turn over the floor to the chief and Mr. McCall. Thank you. So there's a couple of slides that I did send to you that are in your pack and it just talks a little bit about the history. And I want to start by thanking the town and the townspeople for the support of the fire department and the support for the staffing study that was approved at the 2024 town meeting. As mentioned, it was conducted by MRI municipal resources, Inc. It was completed in March of 2026 and it's about 106 pages or 109 pages. And there was 35 recommendations. So to make it accessible to the public, we actually did go ahead and put that study as a link off of our webpage so that people can see that without having to print out all 100 plus pages. So it is available for anybody who would like to see what the study said. And if you look at the second page and kind of a quote that I took from that report, there's a lot of information in the report, but this really helps to summarize in my mind, really an overview as to what is included. And very simply, I am going to read this to you and it says, The data and observations present in this report make clear that the department is operating near the limits of its current staffing and deployment model. Continued growth in EMS demand, increasing call concurrency and rising operational complexity place sustained pressures on personnel resources. Without strategic adjustments, these pressures may erode response reliability, increase fatigue and burnout, and heightened operational risk. So in the conversation that Mr. McCaul and myself have had, we had talked about what are the next steps and how do we move forward now that we have all this great information. And I believe that the, you know, consensus was that we looked to form a working group. We felt strongly that we should incorporate members from different parts of the community to number one, help with the sharing of information and to make sure that we're getting appropriate feedback. So you'll see under the next step, it says form a working group. That working group could be the fire chief, assistant fire chief, a member from the fire department, a one of the union member designees, a select board designee, a finance committee designee, a human resource designee, and a citizen from the community is the recommendation. This working group will go ahead and they will study these results. They will prioritize the recommendations and then report back to the town manager and select board. Okay. Mr. McCaul, do you want to add anything before I open it to questions or comments from the board? Yes, Madam Chair. I want to thank Chief McPherson for leading this effort and for MRI for their valuable input. I mean, they came back with 35 recommendations. And, you know, anytime you get a report like this with that many recommendations, you can't always accommodate all of them. So we thought the working group would be a great way to help, you know, narrow down what are the most important ones that the town can focus on. And I don't want to minimize anything that's in here. But I think you could talk to a lot of different department heads who would say they're facing different or similar challenges. And I think town to town across the Commonwealth, many of the towns are seeing these types of shortages in their public safety staffing. So public safety is paramount. That's what you know, we are customer service driven. And we need to make sure first and foremost, our police fire DBW are supported. What we are contending with, as we all know, are some financial constraints. So part of what this working group would be doing is looking at which of the recommendations, as I said, are priorities, and then figuring out how we can fund them. We may have to use things like looking at safer grants or lobbying through our representatives for additional funding from the state. But we need to do what we can to support our public safety in our folks at the fire station here. So again, I thank the Chief for bringing this forward. Dr. Anne McLean- Open questions to the board, Bill, Doug, comments? Bill Doug Duggan- Chief, among the 35 recommendations, which three or four do you regard as the most significant? Bill Doug Duggan- Well, what I would say is there's a number of operational recommendations and there's some staffing recommendations. And I think one of the priorities for us becomes if we look on a relative basis and we look at the number of concurrent calls, I think we're going to have to make some adjustments to the staffing levels to be able to continue to maintain the level of service and protect the town of Wayland. So I think that there is some staffing. And I also would just say to you, one of the other recommendations is something that we recently negotiated with our union, which is to bring forward a fire prevention position. I think as everyone is well aware that we've had a lot of change and a lot of building in the town. And right now we have somebody who works on shift and they're there for one 24-hour shift, one off, one on, and then off for five. But when we're doing fire prevention, that needs to be done every day, all day. So that position is super important as we have these big projects and for us to maintain a high level of customer service and making sure that we're enforcing life safety in the building codes. So I think those are a couple of my priorities and I understand the difficulty given the fiscal picture, but I think we have to have the conversation and research what options we have, including the SAFER grant. Thank you. Chief, did I read that the town has three ambulances, two of which are at the central headquarters and none are at station two. So we have two ambulances that are licensed with the state. One is a mechanical spare. So we more often than not run one ambulance because of staffing levels, because currently we drop down to five. So when we drop down to five or six, we only have one ambulance. It's infrequent when we get to seven. If we're at seven, we run two ambulances. And they are both at station number two, uh, station number one, the headquarters. And, and why is that given that there's a, you know, I think a larger population in the southern part of Wayland than the north? Because of where the staffing and the size of the building that we've typically located them. But as one of the recommendations to look at, right, is, would be to put an ambulance at station number two. So that's one of the study recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Levine. Chief, thank you for this information. Um, I've been making my way through the report, but admittedly have not completed that as, as of this evening. But I do have a couple of questions based on what I have digested so far. And the first is on page 28 of the report. It outlines the staffing. And it talks about historically when certain positions were added, such as in June of 2016, the assistant chief position was added. And in 2019, fiscal year 2019, the town funded two firefighter slash paramedic positions. Uh, then it says in 2021, we're the recipient of a safer grant, which funded two positions for three years. And those were filled in January of 2021. Did those then expire in 2024? Or were we, were able to build those two positions in or were they only based on the safer grant? So that we were able to build those positions in. And what I would just say to people is we're playing a little bit of catch up because in all honesty, there wasn't many changes for well over 30 years to staff. And the town of Wayland has changed. So we've made some investment and we're very appreciative of that investment. I think the reality is we probably need to make some additional investment in staffing, but that is correct. Those positions were in fact funded over the years. And we got those positions at no cost from the federal government pay for those positions at that time. Okay. And then my other question, chief is, um, I know the chair touched on this and you mentioned it generally, but what are you seeing from our neighboring communities in terms of staffing trends? Are, are you seeing, um, you know, the, the towns right around us, maybe Sudbury, Concord, Wellesley, Weston, have you seen enhanced staffing in any of those towns over the last several years? So what I would say is if you look at the charts that are in here, that you'll see, for example, Weston has more staffing than we do. Sudbury has more staffing than we do. Natick has more staffing than we do. So many of these communities have higher levels of staffing already. Many of these, uh, towns have already added, uh, fire prevention positions. So on a relative basis, they found that, that, you know, we were slightly below, I think, average in terms of staffing. I just say to you that what has changed for us is a couple of things, the size of buildings in Weyland. Before we had houses that were 1800 square feet, 25 on a square feet, and then 45 on a square feet. Now we have very large houses. Some of these big residential buildings, they create significant challenges for us. Um, and even some of the technology, we have electric vehicles, energy storage systems. So there's a lot of different hazards that we're facing that require more staffing for us. So, um, uh, the other towns are also making adjustments and have looked at staffing, uh, as well. As you know, in the marketplace, it's very difficult to find medics. We've been successful and we try to hide paramedics so we can provide a high level of medical service, but, um, hopefully that answers the question. It does. Um, the other question I had, Chief, is, um, I thought that slide on page 32 was particularly helpful about the assisted living service calls, um, that the department has responded to over the last two years. But I also noted earlier in the document, it talks about the potential three new developments coming into town with the expanded Carroll School, um, and expanded Veritas School at a new campus, and then potentially the Coptic Church as well. Historically, does the department have a lot of medical related calls to schools, like to even to our public schools, or to what Carroll School, where it has existed over the last few years on Waltham Road? Is that a big, is that a dream? Is there a need for calls to those schools generally? So I would suggest that when you have more occupants in town, that you're going to have an increase in call volume. I can't specifically state what number that will be. I would say that the bigger hazard I'm concerned about is honestly the size of these structures and projects. Again, these are not, you know, 1800 square foot homes. These are massive buildings. When we have a smoke condition at some of the apartment buildings, shall we say, on Boston Post Road, we have to call a working fire assignment, meaning that we get mutual aid communities to come help us evacuate the smoke because of just the pure size of the building. So the problem becomes, from a fire suppression standpoint, honestly, they create significantly greater hazards for us. Well, I look forward to continuing to work on this with you, and I know that you have a lot of institutional knowledge, so we're glad to have you here, Chief. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. So I believe someone that will be you, Doug, will correct me, but I believe that last year Anne was the Lea, it's like a liaison to the fire department, right? And we have a new member joining us who we believe has been through the fire academy. So we will confirm this with them next week when we make our next meeting, which is June 1st. You don't need our person designated before then, do you? June 1st, okay? Absolutely. I would ask that we're also looking at, for example, someone, a citizen from the community that obviously Mr. McCall works to help us find the appropriate representation from each of these groups, right, so that we can move this forward. So thank you. Thank you. So we will we will make that decision. And I was pleased when you edited the slide here to say that you make the report back to the select board as well. I think since we've rolled this out here, it probably makes more sense that when we have the working group's recommendation that that comes before us. So Michael, who is this a working group under you? Or does the select board need to establish a charge and create it as a temporary committee? That was my other question. Michael McCall- I think the distinction would be if I establish it, I can call that working group to order much more easily. If I think if the board creates a its own working group, which would be much more like an advisory committee, you would now have open meeting law, I think it would be something that would have to have posted meetings. So I think if the town manager does it, it may be much more a little more of a convenience. The only thing I would say is we would be just as transparent by if we had this group making sure that meetings could be attended by others, there would be minutes taken. That's, in my opinion, the major difference between the two. Okay, thank you. So is the board comfortable with it being a town manager working group? Michael McCall- I am. Michael McCall- Okay. So we're good. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Michael McCall- Thank you. Michael McCall- I almost said Neil. Sorry. Thank you, Chief. All right. Thank you very much. We'll go on to the- Michael McCall- See you, Chief. Michael McCall- And I'm with Doug. I've got to finish reading the report. Although no one mentioned I was there, anticipating. Michael McCall- One editorial comment I guess I would make is that in the future, an executive summary at the beginning of the report would be very helpful. Marinda Brown- Oh, yeah. Good idea. All right. So our next item on the agenda will be discuss the recent website updates. For that, we are inviting Jalen Abratica, our management analyst communications coordinator to join us. Marinda, we're running a little bit late. We had a problem with getting logged on. So, all right. You're muted, but that's okay. Go ahead, Jalen. The floor is yours. So, over the last year, I've been working with Civic Plus to update our new website to get it a more modern version and make some updates. So, we launched that right before town meeting the week before. So, the new website provides a more modern design. There's enhanced navigation, and it's also more user-friendly than the previous website. We have on the top of our website, we have the navigation bar, which includes departments, so residents can find information about town departments. We have government, which is has links to all the board and committee pages. We have residents, which provides residents, current and future residents, with information about living, exploring, how to stay informed in Wayland, how to get involved. And then we also have a how do I page, which provides quick links to frequently requested information. And we also have buttons on our home page, which allow quick access to agendas, meeting links, online payments, town code. Also, you'll see on the home page, we have changed out our photos, which is a rotating banner. All those photos were submitted by residents. I held a photo contest and asked residents to submit their photos. We got a lot of photos, so I'll be changing them periodically to feature all the ones that we've received. Everything is pretty much the same with the new website. Residents can sign up for alerts still, view agendas, view minutes, view all board pages. Just the overall look of each page is a little different. And I have received feedback from some residents, which was extremely helpful. And based on their feedback, I have made changes. And I'm always encouraging more feedback to see what works for some residents and what doesn't work for others. And the last thing I would mention is that we have the capability to make online forms now and they're much easier and have better functionality. So I'm trying to use some of this to eliminate our paper applications in town. So we're test launching the sandwich board application right now as an online form, and it seems to be working well. So I hope in the future, we can move to using that function for some of our other paper applications that we may have. Is there any questions about the new website at all? So we'll start with Doug, please? Hey, Jalen, thank you for all of your work on this. You know, this is very much needed. And I'm really glad that we are rolling out with this update. I'm wondering, first question is, if you looked at some of the websites from some of our neighboring communities, specifically Concord, because I've looked at that one several times, and I feel like there's just a little bit of a better layout for the user for Concord. If you take a look at that, even with the size of the photo itself, and some of the links, it just seems a little bit more user friendly. And I don't know how hard it is to make layout changes like that. But I would just suggest that and just as a question, did you look at some of the other communities when you guys decided how to create ours? Yeah, we did. So I did look at Concord's. I didn't look at their new website because their new website recently just launched. But I did go through some of their website to get inspiration. With the layout, it would be a pretty big change. When me and Kelsey started working on this project, we had looked at different templates. And we thought the one that we chose was the best one for navigation. So it would be a big project to take on to change the template. But I'm open to working on maybe changing the sizing of the photos and the buttons and stuff because that is something I can do on my end. Okay. And then the other question that I had briefly is, how did you determine what those six main options at the top were? Specifically, was town bylaws one of the most requested links? And that's why it's up there? Yeah. So we have gotten a lot of calls before to where we they can find the town bylaws. And I heard back from some department heads that they've gotten the same type of calls. So we thought putting a button on the homepage would make it easier for residents to find it. Okay. I'm good for now. And I can chat with you offline. But thank you again for your work on this. Thank you. I would just add my thanks to Doug's. The former website was challenging to say with the least. And certainly this represents an improvement. And I'm sure Jalen is you get additional feedback. And as we learn from experience, we can perhaps make some adjustments as appropriate. So thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jalen. Now, Mr. Levine, I'm one of those people that's looking for that bylaw button. Not that you are. You're not the normal person. I can never find it on your goal webpage. I'd have to go outside, you know, to get it. So anyway, so my question Jalen is, is what's the next step? Because this is, this is a huge project. So what do you have next steps in your mind here? What's going to happen next? Or I don't think I necessarily have next steps. I think just working on the website, making changes as needed, if there's little errors here and there. But I don't think necessarily there's any next steps at this point in time. Because I think one of the things is that some of them information is needs to be updated, you know, files need to be either added files that need to be added or I'll just use the budget. For example, I don't believe the current budgets posted and at the top, it might be there, but it's, you know, so I don't know if we are going to go back and look at the different departments and see what, if we can, you know, get some more. Do we have enough space to put more information on the webpage? And if we do, maybe we could add in some of the, like the current budgets and stuff. So, all right. Well, thank you very much. Terrific. Of course, we appreciate all your efforts. Thank you. Thank you. Are you going to stay with us now for the next item as well? Yes, I am. Okay, great. All right. So the next item is going to be our, our recap, because we just finished, as I said, town meeting on Tuesday, May 5th. And the first thing we do is we kind of take a look back and see what we need to do. And then we talk with a number of folks who obviously are
in this process. So we're inviting our moderator, Ms. Jones. Mr. Bernstein, are you still with me here? Yes, I am. Thank you. And I don't believe the town clerk was able to attend, but we did list her on the agenda because she had participated last year. So I've got everybody. And Jalen, of course, is with us because she was very integral in the quality and the smooth, as smooth as we were able to get that warrant that went from 52 articles down to what, 36, 37? Where did we end up? Just a huge amount of things. So I have a number of things here. I'm going to ask Dave, did you want to start and talk to us about the Elvis, sir? What would you like to talk about? Sure. Can you, can you hear me okay? We can, but do you want to put your, your video back on so we can see you? I didn't turn it off. Oh, well, can we have Dave's video back on? I see Miranda. Let me try to figure it out. I'm not sure. And I don't see a video setting on my screen anymore. Right. I think I was demoted to participant, which may, might make me, okay, now I'm being. Now you're going to get promoted again. Comes for the pay raise. Yeah. That's what you want to call it. Hold on. Hold on. All right. Patience. How's that? Oh, here you come. Okay. We don't see you yet. Hold on. There he is. Thank you. Okay. All right. So would you like to kick it off for us? I'm happy to kick it off. So good evening, everyone. So, um, three weeks before town meeting, we conducted our attendance survey online. And our conclusion was that we were going to have about 600 people show up at town meeting. And based on those discussions, um, 600 handsets were ordered and five welcome stations were ordered. The welcome stations are where people check in when they first arrive. We were nervous about that because there were quite a few controversial articles. There was the holiday road article and multiple Sherman bridge articles. And so normally OTI on their own brings an extra 10%. Say they would have brought 60 in addition to the 600 we ordered. We persuaded them to bring 700 and on their own volition, they brought a six welcome station. So we were loaded for bear. Um, as it turns out, uh, we had a total of, um, 339 people attend both nights. And I think the first night, the boat totals were in the range of 220 and the second night, maybe a little less than that. So we significantly overestimated, uh, the number of people who are going to attend. I don't know why that was the case, but my suspicion is that the fact that the holiday road article and the Sherman bridges article, at least several of them was known beforehand that those were going to be passed over resulted in people who would have attended not attending. Um, it's still the case that there was uncertainty in ordering handsets for, uh, town meeting. Uh, the last thing we want to do is have fewer handsets than necessary. Although we were prepared for that, uh, that, uh, contingency, uh, so we tend to, to, you know, lean on the scale a little bit, but, um, we were off by almost a factor of two this time and that meant expense, uh, for the town. Uh, the check-in and voting were both flawless. We had a grand total of two handsets that failed. Uh, they didn't power on correctly. Both were, um, worked at, were identified during the test votes that Miranda conducted, so that was well done. In the last 15 years, every time we've done town meeting electronically, the CEO of OTI, the company that provides our service, was in attendance. Uh, this was the first time he was not. That occurred because seven different towns held their town meeting on May 4th. Um, and as a result, he was in Nantucket instead of Wayland. The good news was that the staff members he assigned here were people that had experience here in Wayland, had worked here before, knew it well, and you would have never been able to tell the difference. Uh, Miranda and the system operator interoper-, interacted perfectly. Whenever she called for a vote, we were ready to vote. Um, and I don't think it could have gone any better, but if anyone has any feedback, uh, critical, constructive, or otherwise, I'm all ears. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. Um, comments from the board? Hey, thank you for your work, as always. Um, a couple of questions for you. Can you explain what a typical percentage response that you would get on the attendance survey? And then I assume that you, over the years, extrapolate that number to predict an overall attendance record? Um, and what was the difference, do you think, this year in terms of that survey? I know you mentioned that some of the articles were passed over. Wondering if you're thinking anything else, um, contributed to the low attendance rate? So, um, the, the attendance survey asks whether you intend to, uh, whether you intend to participate this year, and also whether you participated last year or the year before. And we do maintain historical data, and we do maintain historical correlations, and we basically use all three of those responses to generate the response. If you want, I could have Don Shuler, who does the arithmetic, take you through the algorithm. In previous years, um, have the predictions for the folks that we anticipated being in the seats been within striking range? Usually we're about, usually we're about 10 to 20 percent high, which is about as close as we want to be. But this year we are off by more. And then my other question is, is there an option to purchase the remote devices versus renting them each year? Yes, there is. And tell me the pros and cons about that. So that would require us to, um, operate the system. So it's not just acquiring the devices, it's the laptops that are used for check-in and the software itself. So we would have to have IT staff who's trained in the operation and debugging and maintenance of the system. They're, you know, when they bring 600 handsets, those handsets have to all work out of the box, which means they need fresh batteries and all the rest of it. Um, also these handsets are technology-wise a generation behind. They all use 9 megahertz radio, maybe, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. They all use Wi-Fi frequencies. They don't use 9 megahertz, which is a pain because I have to go around and find people who turn on their Wi-Fi hotspots. So, um, yeah, you guys see me wandering around. Next year, I'm going to have an antenna so I can directionally find people. Um, at any rate. And I can threaten Dave too, you know that. Yes. Um, well, yeah, the ultimate is having your name called out by the moderator as having a hotspot. Happy to shame people. So fortunately, um, when we only have three or 400 people, the signal strength just isn't an issue. So we didn't really have any problems with that this year. Do you have any sense, Dave, on what percent of towns rent versus buy? I do not, but I know that, uh, quite a few towns do buy. Um, so it is an option. Um, you know, we could investigate the economics. I mean, that's something that I'm sure Mark Fite would be happy to discuss. The only thing I will say is, um, if it were to turn out that remote participation were to be approved, then the ultimate place will end up is everybody's using their own handsets, even on premises. Sure. So, um, investing to buy 600, um, old handsets wouldn't necessarily be a good investment, but your guess is as good as mine as to how long it's going to take the legislature to agree to do that. Yeah. And I wouldn't even hazard a guess. Yeah. And if I can just add something to that point too, not about remote participation, but about buying our own, there was some, um, moderator in some town, I don't recall which one through gavel line, the sort of the moderator's um, email system, some town was looking for more handsets. So they owned their own. They were concerned they didn't have enough. So that could, so you could buy 600 and all of a sudden have like, you know, a school vote that we are, it was whether or not to find a new school and you have 1800 people show up. So then you could be in a pinch too. Do, do we just pay per device Dave when we rent them? Yes. Basically it's, we have a contract, a three-year contract that Kelsey and friends negotiated and it specifies basically the cost per handset and the cost per welcome station. It, and I would weigh in it to say it's tricky is an understatement as they alluded to. If at any time the legislature comes in and looks at, uh, the town meeting remote participation, that would, that would immediately change the playing field. My hometown has representative town meeting. We have approximately 200 representatives. So that makes it easier because you know, you have a finite number of reps and our IT runs the, uh, in our equivalent of way cam helps with the audio visual. So it's all staff driven. Um, the challenge, you know, for us each year we look at it and I know we've, I've talked with Dave and Kelsey and I've talked about it. It's one of our biggest cost drivers at town meeting is having the outside firm come in. I should say in my other, in my hometown too, you know, the clerks do a lot of the checking, but there is that maintenance factor as Dave alluded to. You have to make sure they're all up and running beforehand batteries and the technology can be, uh, changed, you know, in a year or two's time that the system that you're using may not be the latest and greatest in, uh, subject to, um, hacking. So, um, it's not always a perfect system. It's the one we have. Um, you know, if there's ways that we can be more efficient to bring the cost down, uh, I know my staff and Dave would be, you know, welcome that opportunity to look for other ideas and suggestions. Uh, but it is one of our biggest costs, but it's with open town meeting, it's, it's hard to get around the number of clickers you have to get and that balancing act anticipating how many people may show up given the articles that are on the warrant. The last question I have on that then, if you know, Dave, is would it be possible to buy X number of clickers, say for arguments, say six or 700, but in a year where we're going to predict that we have a large turnout for a particularly controversial article, can you, can you then rent additional clickers at that point? I'm confident we could make that happen. OTI has a, uh, warehouse full of, of stuff in Natick because they have so many customers around here. So if we were willing to purchase and maintain, you know, 300 or 600 handsets, and then only buy what we need. In addition to that, there's probably a deal there. How the welcome stations get handled, how the system testing get handled, you have to work all that out, but that would be a discussion. And you'd have to ensure that you had a, uh, uh, a homogeneous network, so to speak, that the, uh, handsets you buy today are still compatible with what right. OTI has two or three years. Yeah. Right. And you know, as soon as we get to remote participation and get that work, get that working, then, you know, we'd want to change all that out. Now, if we got remote participation approved tomorrow, it would be a minimum of three years before the moderator would be, in my opinion, willing to actually use it in a real-time meeting. It has to be developed, it has to be tested with high school students and seniors, senior citizens. There's a lot of, excuse me, testing and refinement to be done. So it's not like remote participation is going to show up the day after the legislature approves it. Sure. Thank you. I'm going to, um, switch over to Bill. Did you have any questions, Bill? No, I mean, uh, I'm appreciative of the fact that, uh, the clickers worked, uh, so that's always good. Uh, also though, uh, I would note that the decision to pass over or indefinitely postpone the Holiday Road article was made the first night of the town meeting when it was scheduled to be heard. So, uh, so I, I, uh, that work got around pretty fast. Yeah. Okay. So thank you, Dave. Dave, you're welcome to stay for the rest of the, uh, topics. I'm going to go back real quick to one simple quick one, I think. And that is if, uh, the town clerk was here, I think that, uh, Miss Levine and I wanted to talk about the nomination cycle and the calendar. We kind of thought the, um, the, the, uh, the nomination papers were available early January, and then we didn't vote. I mean, you turned them in, I don't know, middle February or something. And then I think we had like, but anyways, I think they were due in March, early March. That's right. There's still a very long cycle. So I think we wanted to talk to Trudy about that. So can we make a note to follow up with her, you know, on how that, I think I have to be honest and say that last time I ran, which would be the same time Mr. Levine ran, I think nomination papers weren't due, weren't available until the end of January. This year they would do the beginning. So it's a long, it's a long election cycle, you know, proven us for a local election. We thought it was January, February, March and four months, a four month cycle. But it's, it's also hard to get in the middle of the winter to get, to get the signatures. I mean, I made my husband go to the town dump and get them from me. All right. So there you go. All right. So anyway, we want to do that. So the next item is what we want to do is I want to ask obviously Miranda to come to see if she wants to give us any observations, after which I want to go through the articles themselves or what we need to do for follow-up. And I want to have a little chat too about the consent and the abbreviated articles. So the floor is Madam Moderator. Well, thank you. Thanks for asking me to come. I appreciate the follow-up. Um, so as usual, um, there were surprises with town meeting, for example, who thought that the 38.6 million dollar water resource facility would pass without a question. And yet the, uh, hawkers and peddlers article, um, got pulled. So nobody saw that coming.
One of the things I think that has been, I would think say about the, um, the water resources facility, the new facility is that there seemed to be a lot of information out to put out about it before town meeting so that people were pretty comfortable with the fact that we needed this when we needed this article to pass. And I would love to see that much information out there about every single article, but it's a very difficult thing to do. Um, similarly, the, in the capital budget with the line eight, the $250,000 going into cybersecurity and that the description written in the warrant wasn't and didn't exactly fit either. Um, that one caused me concern for a variety of reasons because of the nature of what the, the information, what the article was about the line item. Um, just talking about our town's cybersecurity is, is a little sensitive. Um, so while we want to have a lot of information out there, how much do we really want out? So, um, because it, you know, it was fairly eyeopening, I think to a lot of people and that's what caused an hour, an hour long discussion over that one line item in the capital budget about, um, what, what the state of our, our IT is. Could I comment on that one? Yes. Can we just hold on a second? Michael's going to respond. We did some follow-up on that. I don't want to get into it in too in depth, but you may or may not have been aware, but it turns out that probably a process improvement, uh, opportunity here that during the compilation of the article descriptions and such, the wrong wording went in under article eight, the wording for article eight went in under article nine. What was under eight was actually something that was pushed up working with the capital improvement planning committee, uh, and our work, the, uh, the finance director made working with them. It got pushed into a different year in the five year financial plan. So it wasn't until after that first night of town meeting that I was alerted by members of the capital planning and finance committee that in fact there was, um, some language that was transposed. I did talk to town council about it. Um, there, there is some broad wording in, uh, portions of these that would allow us to move forward. It's not fatal. It's not ideal. Um, the headings, while they give some indicia of what we were there to discuss some of those descriptions, uh, go into detail about the cyber security under number nine. Um, number 10 was the firewall. That's okay. And under number eight, we wound up talking about video monitoring more than the cyber security, but there is some latitude because it talks about devices. So we could get into that deeper if we wanted to, but I just wanted to point out that that in terms of the process, we may need to go back, um, before that the capital budget is submitted and just ensure that the department said submitted it, get one last review of the wording before it goes to print. And I think it had that happened and it may have been caught because oftentimes the department heads submit their written request. And then when we're the finance director and I are talking with the capital improvement plan committee about their recommendations in our budget, we're looking at the numbers at that point and not the description, because we've seen the written description that submitted earlier to us. And I don't think, you know, there was enough steps that at the end, um, it didn't get to circle back with the, the original, uh, submitter to see what the language looked like. So we can improve upon that next cycle. Great. Okay. So, um, so a couple of other things I, as much as I want to see, I would love to see more information get out there before town meeting. So people aren't asking as many questions and it's not the easiest thing to do. Um, and we, this was the first year I got together with the league of women voters and we had the, the, um, and Carol was kind enough to participate as well. And, and Bill, you were there on the controversial articles and Tom was, Faye was as well. And one of the reasons I wanted that was to make sure if anyone had any questions about the consent calendar, they got them asked beforehand. So they didn't pull the articles off the consent calendar. Nobody showed up with a question on the consent calendar. And then a town meeting, the consent calendars went by very well. And I'd like to think that maybe the town has just got, is getting used to it, which is the goal, right? So I knew every single year it would get a little bit smoother, a little bit smoother. Similarly though, when we had, when I had that meeting with the league of women voters, that public forum, we also talked about the abbreviated presentation procedure articles. And we, Carol was available for that and nobody asked us any questions yet. Several articles were asked. We were asked questions about, and I think in some ways it's just getting the town used to listen. The forum is here. Now's your time. Ask the questions now. And that better prepares us, um, at town meeting to realize that there's going to be problems and maybe some things will have to be pulled out of the abbreviated presentation, uh, procedure. Um, but if I could do this league of women voters forum every single year beforehand and the town gets used to it and they know this is an opportunity to ask questions and maybe we'll get more people to come. I mean, certainly the people who did attend, it was more, they were there more for the more controversial articles. That's for sure. Um, and no one saw the, you know, the peddlers and hawkers one going, going, going the way it did. But that's what makes it fun, I guess. I think if we could get that league discussion a little earlier, it was like the week before town meeting, like the, it wasn't at the other years. And, um, you know, the warrant goes to print a good month, you know, six weeks before we actually get to town meeting. So I was just wondering if as a suggestion, maybe we might want to look at, you know, putting that out, maybe even say, Hey, the warrant is coming. It'll be in your house in a week. But in the meantime, here's a preview of some other things. So maybe on the website earlier, I don't know. You can discuss it and see what they think. I think that's, I think that's a great idea. I mean, the reason why we did it the week before town meeting is because I was away the two weeks before town meeting. So the town, the warrant had come out and I was, I was gone. So I, so that's why we did it the following week, the week before town meeting. But if you're, what you're suggesting is that while no one will have the warrant yet physically, they, at least they can see it up on the town's website, right? Because it's gone to print. So it's not going to change at all. So as long as it's up on the town's website, we could do it that way. And we could, you know, while we advertise the forum, provide the URL for the link to our new and improved website. And, and so people can look at it because, you know, one of the things that, one of the things that did happen is that somebody challenged one of the abbreviated presentation procedures and did brought the opposition to it. And I said, well, you know, you're supposed to you're supposed to bring that to my attention. Well, I didn't know until I just read it. Well, the warrant's been out for two weeks, you know, and, and quite honestly, it could be made available far earlier than two weeks prior to the town meeting simply by putting it on the website. So I do think the more information that's out there sooner and the more opportunity we provide to people to ask questions and get them used to that opportunity, that maybe we would have a smoother, smoother running of town meeting. So can you hold this one second? So on the calendar, I want to hop in on that. I do in a consent. Last year, we had three separate consents. This year we had two, but, um, and, and to Miranda's point, they went along pretty well. We ended up taking out at the motions meeting, two articles this year that we didn't, that we did include in consent last year. And I want to run this by the board. Now I'll remind us in the spring, we took out the pay previous bills because it needs a four fifths. And we took out the enterprise fund budgets, I think as well, because it was breathing, it was two thirds. And you know what, the consent calendar is kind of passed by that kind of numbers. It did, you know, okay, folks, we'll just, these are just standard articles and we're voting them. And they went at 215 to three and, you know, 213 to seven. So you're going to get the four fifths. So I think next year, I'm going to say, let's leave that in there, the pay previous bills, because they're not controversial. We owe the bill, we're going to pay it. I mean, that's it. Right. So I would, I would suggest that to the board. The other one is on the abbreviated. Now the bill raised this question to me and then, I don't know, I thought we were right, but I'd like to write it by, we only read, we'd like to present this in abbreviated because that's what came first. And once we read that, like you say, you forfeited your right to discuss it, but when they backwards, I mean, or should they have had the motion first and then I want this in abbreviated or should we also be, be reading the emotion? That was a question that, um, it did not get raised to tell me because we have them up on the screen and they weren't articles that were going to create a lot. The motion itself didn't get, didn't get, I don't think we did on some of them. I think we got up, right Bill, we just said this. No, the motion, the motion was to adopt article X, uh, right. Yeah. And without identifying specifically what was being discussed. Yeah. But it was on the screen, so everybody said that they were voting on, but I'm just wondering if that, yeah, because after, you know, after Tommy and after he asked me that, I said to myself, oh, wait a minute, I think in prior years, you'd have the motion and then you'd say like to present this in abbreviated. So hi. I know. Yeah. I know that I always say the title of the, of the one article, but the motion itself. Yeah, no, it's a good point. It's a good point. So let's talk about that. Yeah. You and I can take that one offline, but I think that probably be a better quality if we get the motion. Agreed. And I want to do this in abbreviated. All right. Yep. Something like that. Agreed. So I think that makes, makes more sense. Okay. Um, so I think the other thing that on this, um, I want to talk about is that we all spent a lot of time on one of the petitioner articles. This was a very unusual year in that we had, uh, seven petitioner articles and, um, we had changed the code last year so that, um, the petitioners have an opportunity to speak to town council about their article. Um, and there's a three week window from the time they're due on January 15 until, you know, the three week period in which to, you know, go before the findings committee for the workshop and then also have input from town council. So I think we changed that, but I think we need to add in another step here is I think we need to, um, should we have other petition articles going forward? I think we need to get input back from town council as to whether an article, if, even if it's submitted as an article, whether it's actually as an article or it's a resolution. And I think that we need to have this find out from town council, what latitude we have to say you've submitted an article in this three week period, but it's really a resolution. Um, and if not, maybe we might want to look at adjusting our code that allows the, uh, resolution if it's, if it's because town meeting cannot direct the select board. This is, this is the whole point. So when the motions came through initially, town council had taken every one of the petitioner articles and made them into like resolutions, but since we had accepted them as articles, um, I just think this is something we have to do some work on. Any other thoughts on those? I think that's right because I remember after I presented one, then there was some confusion by, um, a resident who asked some questions like what kind of authority do we have to pass this or not. And then Carolyn had to step up and give the civics lesson and then jump into the weeds on that. So I, I think it, it was tricky, um, for residents to understand what a yes vote meant. Yeah. And I think they should, um, the petitions who bring these more, uh, these articles should know what it is there and not what they're asking for, but what they're allowed to ask for. I think that's the right phase. What? Right. And I think that we, this was just such an unusually, I have to tell you all the, what, 15, whatever years I've been doing this. I never saw so many petitioner articles. Right. Um, so I think one other thing I was going to recommend when we do the town meeting calendar, we hold a petitioners workshop before the articles are due, but we don't really get much response. I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to hold one after they're submitted. So they submit them on the 15th. And then the very next meeting we have, we said, we're gonna have a petitioners workshop and talk about the ones that have been submitted. And again, this is when you're going to see Tom speak to town council. This looks to us like it's a resolution, not an article, blah, blah, blah, which would allow the person who's submitting it. If they wanted to do a resolution, the time to re get those signatures that they need in order to make, you know, convert it from an article to a resolution. So I don't know what does everybody think about doing the workshop a little later, you know, after we come in, they come in.
I think it's fine. I think you're right though, that we have a problem with people not attending the workshop. Right. Well, once you've submitted an article, you might see, you might not submit beforehand because you may not want to like tip your cards, if you will. Once it's in, now you're in the process. So I'm going to recommend that. Does that so far, nobody have any issues with that so far that we changed that date on that. So Jalen will make that note on our calendar. And then, you know, I think these are kind of things. And then the last thing about these petitioner articles, which is, which was really is, is a challenge for us is the finance committee. We've changed the rules of the road for them so that if something is, has negligible financial impact, they can just do that quick presentation. But under our code, if they don't write a full presentation, then the only thing that shows them the petitioners articles is just their comments. So I think we as a board need to, we may need to do a code change, but I think we need to sit down as well and determine who is going to write the comments that go for the petition articles for the non financial or the negligible financial impacts. And perhaps we write them and then we, we are, we are a staff member writes them and then we submit them to the finance committee for their review. They can make some edits and off we go so that we don't, um, is this really, I think it's, and who, we may never have so many petitioner articles again, you know, but it just, um, I think that was a, uh, a bottleneck that we really want to look at. Yeah. Doug is laughing. It's a heck of a bottleneck. It was a little bit of a bottleneck. I think that, you know, we need to just get a better process. So things go along a bit better, you know? Yeah. To, um, to the point that you're talking about, maybe reworking the code a little bit, I've mentioned this before. I'm going to throw out there again, you know, with this town meeting the last night, I buzzed through a lot of the last articles. I was trying to save time and a lot of people assumed I was doing it because I was fearful that there wasn't a quorum. Quite frankly, I was more doing it for as a time-saving thing, but then I got asked if we still had a quorum and fortunately we did. Um, do you want to change the town code so we don't need a quorum and just get things moving? And then we don't have to worry about lots of towns. You don't have to have a quorum. You don't have to have any minimum quorum at all. No, it's up to the town, how, what they do. Some towns don't have anything. So then we don't have to worry about, as we're losing people so rapidly, we don't have to worry about that. I mean, you could end up with five people deciding a bunch of things, but, um, if that's all that's interested in sticking around, but there's, our towns that have, have no quorum at all. Would you consider reducing the quorum instead of eliminating the quorum? Or you could go down to 50 if you wanted, go down to 25. 75. Or as many, or as many people are on the finance committee and the select board and the moderator to get a vote. All right. Well, I just put a note here on my, um, list of possible, you know, articles for next year to have us discuss. What do you think about that bit of a quorum? I think it's... We don't have to wrap that, that mad, mad panic at the end of town meeting. We, we have, um, we have 10,600 registered voters. To require a hundred people to be there seems to me very reasonable, bending over backward. And, you know, and so if we have to have another night of town meeting because we have 73 people, you know, I, I say we do that, you know, we're gonna, we're going to cling to this wonderful tradition, purest form of democracy. Let's, let's have, let's have one percent of the electorate, uh, in attendance when they make these decisions. Yeah. And Bill, you're, you are, you're, you're repeating what I've heard before about, um, uh, about in terms of main, what if nobody shows and then we completely lose this tradition. We completely lose it. So I hear what you're saying. Um, because you know, I, I'm concerned if, if people, if we get such a low turnout, if people start talking about, well, maybe we should have representative town meeting, will we actually get a hundred people to run, you know, to, to be a town meeting member? I don't know if we would get that. Maybe. Okay. Well, yeah, but it's a thought. I'll put that on my list for a future discussion, but the full board, I think is, is, makes sense. Look at these kinds of things. Okay. So I think I want to go, um, through the articles. But before we do that, I have a couple of comments. Sure. Uh, to the point of the earlier discussion about the League of Women Voters, uh, typically there is a candidate's night rather than an issues forum, but we had no contested races this time. Usually both.
Um, well, well, my memory was, uh, having a candidate's night with, uh, though, you know, maybe it's, as I recall from my first, first time on the board, I, I don't recall there being issues forums, but anyway, um, and, and as to the timing, I think that people tend not to pay attention until the time of town meeting comes closer. So, uh, uh, I'm sympathetic to the notion of getting information out in a timely fashion and in advance, but, uh, I worry that people don't pay attention. Though, um, you know, working with the Wayland Post may be a way to, uh, to do that in a sort of less structured way. Um, with respect to, uh, the question about the whole discussion about, uh, firewalls and, uh, videotaping and so forth, um, I appreciate that there was confusion because of the writeup, but I think also the, um, the proponent of the article wasn't clear about what was in, uh, that $250,000. So I think that we, uh, need to tighten that up a bit. And then finally, as I recall, there has been in the past and maybe still is, uh, a limitation on the number of times that any speaker can speak to an article. Do we still have that? Yep. Used to be two, I thought. I think it's three. I think it's three. Uh, was that observed? What do you think? You thought somebody spoke more frequently? Uh, I think that we did have someone who spoke very frequently. Really? Maybe not. Like the two, two minutes at a pro and con? That's what it's meant for is no more than three times. Yeah. But I, I think there's, uh, also, uh, at the procedural mic, there was some stuff there. Well, procedural mic is meant for not to sort of give your argument in favor or oppose. It's meant for specific reasons to either bring a motion, ask a question. And so there, there's no limitation. It's, it's more designed for if you're at the pro or the con microphone and some people were at the pro and con microphone on the same issue. Um, they have a, they have a, uh, a quota of three times max. That's their maximum limit. And I don't recall anybody being up there more than three times. Bill, I think the reason, um, and I, I share that, but it's difficult to really enforce is that the individual you're thinking of came up to the procedural microphone a number of times to either ask or answer questions. Yeah. And it's just, it was a frequent flyer up there, but it's can't really limit that because it was just related to questions. And, and, and I will say it can be very problematic getting somebody who is answering a question at the procedural microphone, not to give an opinion. They really do belong at the pro or con microphone. So, um, I'm going to move this along because we've got a few other things to do, but this is good. I am also going to add that I received phone calls from a couple of residents that said, this should, this shouldn't be a limit on the number of times someone could speak at town meeting in general. But, um, I think maybe we might want to suggest, or you might want to see if other communities limit two times to the pro and the con. I always thought it was two, not three, but nonetheless. Yeah, it's two, it's three under our rules, but I certainly, I will take that under advisement. Okay. So I want to go through the, through the warrant itself now so that we can just determine what follow up work that needs to be done. Um, they warrant is in a supplemental packet if you want to follow along. So I think you need me for this. Probably not. I wouldn't think this is all your work now. Thank you for joining us. No, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening and I appreciate it. And if there's any suggestions you have, I'm all ears. Okay. Terrific. To make town meeting work, uh, more efficiently. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all your work, folks. Thank you. Thank you for helping us. Of course. So I think, um, the first one I'm going to identify here is, um, Michael, this is going to be a list for, uh, the or jail and I think article 14, reaffirm remote participation. We have to let somebody know, uh, except Trudy to extend that in. Well, I was going to mention that madam chair in my, uh, announcements, but Madam clerk and I discussed these, we reached out to, um, representative Linsky representative Gentile and as Senator Eldridge as well. And representative Linsky is spearheading, filing the legislation that was passed at town meeting. Um, and I will follow up, um, as needed and give you some feedback as we move along. Yeah, because we have a number of home rules here. And I, that was also the question is, you know, we need to reach out to representative Linsky because we would like to get all of these quickly, uh, into place, but particularly the licenses. So thank you. All right. And so you've got all these under control here, what we have to do with all of them. All right. That sounds reasonable. And then the last thing I want to add is, is that on the standard articles, in other words, those that are showing up in the consent, some of them are still really, really long. If we're going to vote for them like a standard, I really think we need to go back and maybe everybody takes one and see if we can't reduce these. So they're just short and sweet and we're out the door. All right. Does anybody have anything else they want to add? Just one item. And I think I've discussed this, um, with Michael separately. I think it will be particularly helpful for multiple reasons, at least during the budget and capital budget presentation, to have our department heads there and sitting in the front row and whatever it takes to empower them to be able to answer questions. If we need to do that, to allow them to speak because one, I think that they're the most knowledgeable and two, I think it's really helpful for town meeting to hear directly from different voices in our town government. Um, for example, I thought it was very helpful when they heard from our town engineer, Abby, or they hear from Tom Holder. And of course, um, Nick was put on the spot for quite some time. But I, I think if we could make that kind of a standard part of the process, if at all possible, I think it will make that part of the process go smoother. Um, and that I think it will give voters more comfort as well. If I could, Madam chair, before town meeting, I always write to all the department heads and tell them with regard to town meeting attendance, if you have requested something and you anticipate that you will either need to answer questions or defend it, you need to be at town meeting. And unfortunately, this time, uh, Mr. Lombardi, as you well know, reached out to me over the weekend to let me know that he was quite sick. And I had excused his presence that evening, not realizing that we would receive the number of questions. It was just during the question and answer when I was trying to feel some of the questions, one of my staff texted him and he called in and said, listen, I can come down. Um, uh, we would, otherwise he would have been here. And if you looked around, um, to your point, we have most of the department heads or essential personnel in the audience that night, sometimes they're in the back, but I agree, we should bring them up during the capital budget and have them up front. So there isn't that delay in getting them from the back of the room to the front of the room. Even also, it could be very helpful for us to have them right there. So we could quickly consult with them because when questions come up to time is always of the essence. Yes. And, and that silence feels extra heavy when we're trying to scramble to respond to a question. Agreed. That's all I have, Carolyn. No problem for me whatsoever. Okay. So I think we're pretty good on this. Um, but also we need to thank Jalen for all the hard work, our first year doing this. And, um, for your reward, you'll get to do it again next year. Yeah. And that sounds like a brush. Um, I also want to just say one real quick that Michael and I are going to conduct a couple of postmortems. We're in the middle of setting up different ones of different groups who, you know, either participate to the warrant, um, probably sit down with, um, Jalen and Kelsey, Doug, you're welcome to join us for that postmortem. If you like, just to see, you know, where can we flow smoother and, you know, and I'm always trying to find ways to simplify this process. So I think that that takes care of that. So Jalen, you're welcome to stay where you're free to go home about the countryside. I'm about to leave, but, um, Nick is the zoo manager, so he'll handle anything else you guys need tonight. That's right. Thank you, Nick. Great. Um, so, um, I had the next one down here was, um, that's some time here to do this, right? Yeah. I, um, you know, I keep this draft agenda list here, you know, what's going to be happening and what's not happening and what have you. And, um, as we go through the, through every meeting, I have to do the basics we do every time I have to do stuff that's time sensitive. And then we try to get, you know, a lot of projects. One project that we've had outstanding course of the meetings is looking at the legal cases. And then also we're going to be, um, um, looking possibly at some quotes, I think, from some legal firms so that we can, you know, look at those and see what we would like to do about legal, you know, counsel. So we have not sort that contract out for some time, so I have that on the list. Um, we will be doing a lot of, uh, appointing, interviewing, reappointing, uh, positions because they all, um, expire in June and they send in their notice usually by May 15th. So I hope we do have a lot, a lot of those to do. Um, we'll be looking at the, the cannabis waiver next time. We're going to be meeting with the graffiti on the first, we're going to be having our, we're follow up meeting on the, um, the, um, discourse, which we're, um, program, which is now called constructive discourse, right? So we'll be doing a lot of, a lot of these things. So, um, we're going to be meeting with the board of assessors through a couple of meetings. So now they have a vacancy, so they've asked us to help them fill that. So we'll have a joint meeting with them. And the last one I want to mention for tonight is that the long discussed, a select board manual has been taken over by Abby. This is fabulous. She's taken bits and pieces from all sorts of documents that are out there and created this. It's about 35 page document. Um, I'm starting to go through it. I should get through it in the next week or two. And then, um, I would like to, um, have the board, um, the board, that's us, authorize, um, Mr. Levine to join me because we think we could really use your wordsmithing, you know, because you know, it's a cut and paste from, you know, so maybe would you be willing to, you know, kind of give that a polish up? I would be happy to, but I'm quickly learning that AI is putting me out of a job as a master wordsmith, but, uh, yes, I will do that. So then we will hopefully have that ready to go by the meeting, by the end of June. And, um, also I think in the next couple of weeks, Doug and I are going to start, um, putting together a packet so we can start making the pilot program, um, um, appointments and discussions. So there we go. So I just want to kind of give a little bit of a heads up. All right. The one thing that we do haven't been kind of looking at that we need to do is go back on the stormwater tracking. I think that was one we were going to take under advisement. So hopefully we can look at that and the complete streets, which is a grant program that I think we just need to do, uh, adopt a policy. It's being drafted. Um, and that's another grant program the town would be eligible for. So as far as the, um, any comments, otherwise I'm zipping on to the next one, as far as the summer schedule goes, obviously you already know it's already published June 1st, 15th and the 29th. Um, I think what we're going to try and do is just have one goal setting meeting and one regular meeting in July. And then in August, we'll probably have two or three meetings so that we can cut back off some of this stuff and, um, stay with it. But what I need is for everybody to send in their, um, vacation schedules to Abby. Madam chair. Yes. I know that you are someone who listens and is to the wishes of the board and you are someone who loves a challenge. This will be right. So I would, I would suggest that we have a target of one business meeting in July and one business meeting in August. Well, you sound like Mr. McCall, but then the other board members said they want to be, you know, I'm only going to do what, what the demand is for the, uh, for the work. If we only do one in August, I can guarantee you we'll be meeting every week in September. Well, I'm, I personally am for a marathon meeting in August, uh, rather than two or three. Well, we'll see nearly pushing ones. Uh, so, uh, so I want you to give that some thought, Madam chair. Well, knowing how responsive you are to, uh, to the needs and desires of your colleagues. Four hour meetings are a real killer to do. They really are. They really are. Plus, plus one member who might be chatting right now, usually giving me the look like, why is this meeting so long? But, um, you know, uh, in all seriousness, uh, people do tend to disappear in August. Uh, the staff, you know, could use a bit of a break. Uh, so if, if it's possible to, uh, confine it to one business meeting in July and August, I think that would be terrific. Yeah. We're going to have one goal setting, which is the, in the beginning. Right. Right. And then the one business meeting in July. And I'm pretty sure those are going to be like July seven or eight. We can make it that Tuesday ran that Monday. And then the other meeting will be July 20th or somewhere around there, but I need everyone to send in the dates to Abby when you're not available or do you want me to just have her send out tentative dates? I, I do the latter. Uh, and ideally with a date in August or, or choose one. Yeah. I don't think that's going to work.
But if you, and then I sit here at meetings and you all give me 10 more things you want. So, uh, I don't hear Doug objecting. So, uh, no, Doug's the one that told me we should have three meetings in August. No, definitely not three in August. I'm fine to have two, but I think the problem is, is our vacation schedules may not all line up. Right. That's why we're having this conversation. So let's see the question that whether it's one or two and let's see how our vacations line up. Yeah, that's fine. All right. Because I really don't like doing them every week. That's really a tough, a tough slog, not only for the staff, but for me as well. We do them every week. So already, um, I have a few minutes before the hearing, which is at eight 15. So do we want want to go to consent? Okay. Move adoption of the consent calendar. All right. Second. Okay. Any further discussion on, uh, roll call vote. So bill. Yes. Doug. Yes. Carol. Yes. Three zero. Beautiful. Uh, any com any, um, let's see where, where are we? Oh, want to do Michael's report? Yeah. Sure. Would you like to speak up now? Yes. Thank you, madam chair. Just a couple of quick items. I, I know there was some questions from the board and some from the public. As some of you may know, we did have some damage a couple months back to fire station two and part of the delay. There's, it's twofold, maybe threefold. Um, initially the quotes that came in were below the deductibles that we had with our insurance carrier. Uh, we have a $25,000 deductible per incident. And we had a couple of problems at the same time. There was some minor damage to fire station one and the more significant, uh, damage to fire station two. We did some immediate shoring of fire station two, and then we applied for, uh, an emergency waiver with, uh, DKM, the department of capital asset management to help bypass some of the public procurement requirements to make some emergency repairs. And that took quite a while because they wanted to see our preliminary quotes. And we went back and forth with DKM ultimately got their approval at about the same time. We realized that we were looking at a $600,000 deficit in the snow and ice budget. So realizing that we were probably going to be under the insurance deductible and we were going to pay most of that 25,000 out of pocket. Once we have the problem come in with, uh, the $650,000 deficit in the snow and ice, we were faced with what buckets of money we were going to be, uh, going to. I've had a couple of meetings with facilities, finance director, and I've talked also with, uh, the fire chief. And I believe that we've now identified a plan. We're going to be doing some of the masonry work in this fiscal year and some of the remaining work will happen after July 1st, but we should have this completed in the probably next one to two months. Okay. Uh, moving right along. Uh, similarly, there was some questions where we are in the, the police chief process. So we've been about six months with, uh, chief Hebert. I would say he's doing a phenomenal job. I've had some conversations with him about next steps and I've started reaching out to some of the assessment companies, uh, about performing that. And I even formed the, uh, acting chief Hebert that I will likely start that process in another month or two, um, looking for a, uh, a firm so that we can get that underway in the summer and hopefully be in a situation where we could have a permanent appointment in the fall. And I did also, I know there were some inquiries, you know, as to how he's performing at the moment without, uh, the second in command. And he said without a direct second, he said he didn't form me that he's doing all right. It also allows him to get, you know, learn more about what's going on the job as he sees it. But I've told him to reach out at any time that he felt there was a change and we'll make changes or an appointment if need be necessary on a temporary basis. Um, just on a quick recap, uh, we haven't had a formal meeting since April. And I want to let you know, we did a ribbon cutting with planning and a bunch of staff over at Takara for their new location. We had Senator Eldridge come out. Uh, he had a proclamation. It was, uh, well attended and we wish them well in their new location. I had been asked by select board member Fay, if I could find out an update on the constituent mall, uh, down in constituent. And I did speak to the building commissioner and he said, it's really the, um, the tenants and the owner, they're getting plans. He finally got, uh, architectural plans for Liberty pizza and they will be moving forward with the building permit, but he's still waiting on some plans for the dry cleaner and the convenience store, but that should be moving along. Uh, we talked about the special legislation. As I indicated, we spoke to our delegation and representative Linsky will be moving that, um, the, the liquor licenses request, green burial, as well as our digital notices. Um, we touched briefly on the capital budget item with, uh, Madam moderator. Uh, I also wanted to mention that, uh, the planner and I did follow up after the Wayland post article. Uh, the state is still listing our subsidized housing index that we are still at, uh, the 10% threshold. Um, the last time they updated that was in September of 25. And for now, as far as the state's concerned, we are still at our safe harbor until we hear otherwise. And I did recently have an inquiry in which I think was generated in part from that article. Um, and I did point the, those, uh, contractors to the state website and where we stand. So, uh, those are the updates I have since town meeting when we last met as a board and I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions from the board, Mr. Levine? Um, two questions, Mr. Town Manager. The first, um, going in reverse order regarding, um, the 10% threshold. Do you have any updates, um, related to the, the St. Ann's senior housing development? Um, I haven't heard from about that or where the progress is for some time. I'm just wondering if you have. I don't have anything to share this evening. When the article came out the Friday before town meeting, during town meeting, I, I tried to reach out to, um, one of the principles we were working with at the, at Pua through the archdiocese who was overseeing the project. I left some voicemails. Um, I will follow up on that and try and get an update for the next meeting. Thank you. And then my other question, thank you for the update regarding the police chief search. Um, once that process begins and we end up, uh, securing a search firm, approximately what would the timing be from that point? Can you just briefly speak to what the phases of that search are at that point? Cause I, I, I vaguely remember being a part of this the first time I was on the board and I thought there was a group of individuals appointed to assist with that search from the town. But do you, do you recall how it's happened more recently? Well, when we did the, the search that ultimately yielded chief Berman as the, the permanent chief, we first did some solicitations, got a firm. And once we had the firm concurrent with them, uh, putting together a timeline, we posted the position, uh, they worked with us to help develop, uh, the job posting, do the initial screening, do the initial screening with candidates. So there's usually, uh, maybe a two to four week period where you, uh, ask for applications. And then in rapid succession, we did staff interviews. Uh, we put together a panel internally where we screened, uh, the candidates had staff meet with them, uh, to look for a fit. And we had some criteria. I consulted with some chiefs on my own to put together some criteria. And then once we identified, uh, say a good set of maybe six to eight candidates, we, we brought those back to the, the assessment folks who narrowed it down to a top three, and then they performed an assessment center. I would say beginning to end to me may have taken about eight to 10 weeks tops. Okay. Thank you. And then I ultimately would sit and review the notes, um, from the assessment center report, and then make a recommendation to you folks based on that feedback, who I think should be the next chief. And you would make that a point with together, we would make the point. I make, I recommend the appointment and you ratify it. Got it. Thank you. Mr. Whitney, Nelson. Michael, with respect to, uh, the, uh, home rule petitions, uh, one you did not mention is the Millennium Fund, which the, uh, the 2025 town meeting approved that's wending its way, I gather through the general court. Do, do we have any sense of where that stands? Um, I would have to get a latest and greatest update. I have met several times, uh, with members of Senator Eldridge's staff and have talked to Senator Eldridge, uh, probably as recently as within the last month. He was here at town hall. And there has been some minor issues that Senate council has had with the wording of the bill. And I have heard from, uh, Ms. Jeunesse with the library board of trustees of how she would prefer this to go. And I think it's, uh, lack of better terms, you know, the process on Beacon Hill, but I know that our, our Senator is well aware of our concerns and he's been trying to advocate for it, but I can make sure I have an update. I'll put in my notes for the next meeting, what the latest status is. It would be great. Thank you. And I added both items to the draft list. So, um, may I ask one quick question too, on the follow-up from town meeting. I heard the list of the home rules. I did not hear the ones, uh, about, um, the town in particular select board being able to communicate with the voters if there was a ballot question. So I just want to make sure that has also gone off. I'm sure Trudy's done them, but just confirm that one. And there was, what else was there? We had an awful lot of home rule ones. That was one that was near and dear to her heart and then changing the, uh, the date for the, uh, the town meeting. I mean, that was, uh, and then of course she had some other, she had some codes that went in, but I just, that was, uh, Doug, do you know what number that was? No. Okay. Okay. The one tricky thing I, I left to make a random. Is that number 20, excuse me, article 20, it's, uh, acceptance of MGL, uh, chapter 53, section 18B provide information regarding ballot questions. That's the ballot. Uh, I just want to also let you know that, um, representative Linsky said, timing will be a challenge here. You know, most cities and towns have their annual town meeting in the spring is that you can have usually from April to somewhere in, into June. We have ours in May this year. He said that the legislative session ends shortly. And then if we don't get these through, we'll have, he'll have to refile them with the new legislature that comes in in January one. So they may, they may end up having a formal session this fall. It's still under consideration. I'm told by my alleged folks at work. Oh, okay. Great. But he said, it's going to be challenging given the, the, uh, remaining time on the calendar this year, if not, he would resubmit. All right. Thank you very much. Um, before we go to the, to the hearing, I, I want, um, has anybody have any comments on correspondence? Okay. I wanted to mention correspondence because in view of the fact that we'd had some public comment tonight about the hearing, um, location that we're going to discuss in a minute, we also had one. I don't know if you're sorry that I responded on behalf of the board, but it won't be, it wasn't in this packet supporting the, the outdoor dining and called it the chatio. So I just, I thought, first, I thought that was so cute anyway. All right. So that would be the shatio kind of like the shack. I know you have to bear with me this week. I'm a little off here. So, um, Mr. Uh, Mr. Nick, would you please bring over, um, Mandy Phillips and Kenneth Phillips, please? And also I believe Mr. Uh, attorney Louis Feltman from KB Law. Because we are now going to have a hearing on the liquor license discussion impossible to approve the liquor license amendment for outdoor only alterations of the premises. So, uh, Madam Chair, the, um, I only saw, um, Mr. Phillips is there. I see him. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't see another Phillips here or, or, okay. Would you, um, let Mr. Uh, Mr. Phillips, could you take your audio off for a second? Is your attorney joining you this evening? No. You're on mute. Just us. Just you. Okay. So let me just get us set up. Okay. Welcome. Okay. So I declare this hearing open for the purpose of considering the application filed by the Dudley Chateau LLC, DBA Dudley Chateau for the application amendment to allow food and alcohol service on the patio for the premise located at 20 Crest Road, Wayland, Mass. 01778 annual all alcoholic beverages ABCC number 03826-R7-1340. There was a notice published advising of this hearing and it was in the Metro West Daily News appeared on May 1st and it read notices hereby given that the Wayland Select Board will hold a public hearing on Monday, May 18, 2026 beginning at 8 15 PM at the Wayland Town Building 40 Constituate Road, Wayland, Mass and remotely for the application filed by Mandy Phillips on behalf of the Dudley Chateau LLC DBA Dudley Chateau. This public hearing is for an outdoor only alteration premises for an annual all alcohol liquor license and again ABCC number 03826-RS-1340. The hearing can only be attended on Zoom and reviewed remotely on Wacom. The Zoom link of course was made available earlier today and it's on the Select Board's agenda and it is also on the Wayland Town calendar on the Wayland Town website. So welcome. How are you? Good. Thank you. All right. So this is how this works. This the rules of evidence will not be applied during the hearing but the board expects that the prospective licensees and any members of the public who comment present present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner. So there is information in our packet. There's an application and there's some explanation as to why the and which the proponents will explain in a moment. So first what we'll do is you'll have an opportunity to describe your business and the reason for applying. The Select Board will ask questions if they have any. Members of the public can provide comment which oops applicant will summarize the application. The chair will close the hearing and take the matter under advisement and make decisions at a later meeting or make a decision and that's where we go. So would you like to have the floor and explain why you're before us please. Sure thank you. First of all thank you to the board for their time. Ken Phillips and I have with me my wife Mandy Phillips. This is a bit unusual uh because the uh the patio area aka the shadow as you pointed out earlier uh has been operational since COVID uh without incident uh so there's uh there's certainly uh a proof of concept there uh it appears that now that the state um exemptions have uh uh expired in a way uh that it's up to the uh individual uh alcohol licensing board so that's why we're before you um but the even though it's called an alteration uh the shadow was built um right after COVID and uh like I said has been operational since uh it's a great uh way for our patrons to enjoy the outdoor weather uh when it's uh you know when it's proper um we took steps in the past to work with uh the um the building department to have the area fenced in we have two concrete structures between the parking lot and the shadow itself and uh I think it's a it's a great area that uh like I said that the patrons have enjoyed it's approximately maybe 30 by 35 feet or so uh so approximately a thousand square feet and um it really there's obviously because the nature of New England we don't really use it we did during COVID in the winter months but we don't use it uh in the winter months uh any longer so really it's more of a seasonal uh area and as far as uh hours go uh we go until 10 p.m on the shadow we do the last scene we don't go to we go to 9 30. i i i have um last call we won't see anyone after 7 30 last call at we have everyone out of there by 9 30. so not till 10. it's incorrect yeah so uh and obviously there's certain uh days where it's just either too hot um or uh rainy or whatever the case might be so it's not uh utilized uh obviously uh every uh every every day uh and we are closed uh Mondays which uh we were on the call earlier and heard one of the abutters uh point that out um it does we're not asking for an increase in our capacity it doesn't increase the capacity um whatsoever our kitchen is is only in our servers are only able to handle so many patrons at once so what we do when we have the outdoor areas we don't do certain seating inside so it does not increase the capacity uh whatsoever as far as parking uh we stayed ahead of the curve and worked with the uh lease department in the past that what we did was request that the DPW put signs so only parking would occur on one side of the street so in the event emergency vehicles did need to come down um the street they could do so uh we haven't had uh uh any issues with that okay thank you i'm gonna oh i'm sorry yeah that's that's really it it's getting a little echo there oops too soon um questions from the board mr whitney yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry i sneezed next time i'll just let you listen to me sneeze you obviously heard the public comment um would you be amenable to limiting the hours of operation further such that you would uh uh no longer uh have patrons uh there uh that is to say suspend operation of it before 9 30. i think the problem with that is your typical dining period uh people would normally go out and commence dining especially when it's light out a little later in the summer months at 7 7 30. uh so instead of you know having to scoot them off uh the patio uh too soon yeah we we normally in in practice you're usually out by nine when it sunsets you know you have might have the mosquitoes come out but uh and it's great too because it's utilized by uh uh families uh families uh families with children teenage children or what uh that just love that that outdoor area you know and the food um yeah and uh and in your experience uh uh uh do patrons who can't be accommodated in the parking lot confine themselves to one side of the street or are they uh on both sides they do actually the the the months uh and that we utilize the shadow uh many patrons either they have the capability to walk ride a bicycle kayak canoe uh so that's that's really nice um the other you know patrons often use uber and things of that nature as well uh so on occasion um do we have issues with with parking uh yes but that's usually uh not during the summer months thank you mr lubin uh thank you for joining us mr and miss phillips um i have a couple of questions uh having been through a similar sort of process myself um at the zba did you have occasion um to connect with any of your rebutters any of the neighbors directly um when you submitted this application um to the best of my knowledge nobody reached out to us um directly on this application uh nor did we conduct a a meeting beforehand um my next question is so this um when you first opened and constructed the shadow was during covid so does that mean the first time that you opened was in the summer of 2020 2020 or 2021 might have been 2021 and then it's been continuous since then so it's been at least five or six years since you've been open yes correct and to the best of your knowledge do you know if the police have had to um appear and speak with whoever the manager is on duty as a result of noise complaints directly related to the outdoor seating over those five or six years no no not not a single time that you can recall uh no because we have always shut down the patio by 9 p.m and had people off of there um that was kind of when i applied for it in the beginning of covid that was knowing that i'm in a residential neighborhood that was a a major thing for me to make sure that you're not disturbing the peace in the evening when you're trying to put kids to bed and right um and obviously the the pond it carries a noise so we do we do try to you know really be uh courteous to our neighbors i don't as far as i as far as i was thinking most of our neighbors like us um they come by they have dinner lunch they bring their kids so i'm under the impression that yes um i i try to be courteous to keep the noise down okay thank thank you i'm good madam chair okay thank you i i have a couple questions so in the application in the application it says the hours are tuesday through sunday noon to nine and yet mr phillips i think you said you keep it open until 9 30. so that was could you clarify what time does it close i wouldn't i usually won't seat anyone after 7 30 to make sure i can get them off the patio because like as as ken stated the bugs when that sun goes down being by the pond we get quite a few mosquitoes so you know people don't really want to hang out out there um after they're after they eat so and like i said the noise complaint but yes i i would have the patio open only until 9 p.m okay and um of everybody here planning is um the least uh knowledgeable about planning but i believe when we issue these this is not an increase in capacity right it's just a total capacity so one place it says here we're going to have seating capacity a number of chairs is 30 but seating capacity is 30 to 35 and max occupancy is 35. so does that i think we need a little bit we have i have i have the tables out there and then there's also like a couch and a chair a couple of chairs so but we don't serve food there so it's where people are waiting for a table they'll kind of hang out or um kind of more of a lounge area just to to a waiting area a holdover area but um as as far as i was told when i applied for this back in uh 2020 that my capacity is 85 and that is my capacity whether they're indoors they're outdoors they're upstairs they're downstairs that is my tool and and and because i get outdoor with you know more room doesn't allow me to have bigger capacity that is my capacity okay right that's a question that i had so um i'm gonna ask um let's see so i think i did this a little backwards so i'm gonna read the public comment now i already mentioned the woman who wrote to us uh was it cassidy dean is that her was that who it was adam chair could i just make one comment uh i didn't you're next you're next hang on i gotta do the public comment once first and then it is i can see you want to speak but hold on once yeah select void ask questions members of the public and provide public comments so we mentioned it already we heard from mr johnson from pine road and we heard from um pablo i forgot uh i can't read my writing here from bayfield and also miss leonard on bayfield uh they were concerned as as um as bill mentioned with parking and uh some noise and and then we had uh i believe it was miss dean was it cassidy dean yeah cassie who had um said she enjoyed the um the outdoor space so all right um mr madam chair question of uh order um yes well uh is uh has their hand raised yeah who has their hand raised um okay bring them forward please oh i think this person spoke before yeah um you spoke before right okay i did but there's a couple things that the owners just said that i wanted to okay you have go ahead so we have personally called police at least on two or three separate occasions when there is excessive noise outside um so we can i don't know provide police logs and whatnot um probably if needed on the traffic i i literally last week went there and took a picture roads are packed street to both sides of the street are packed the parking is overflowing on the residential streets where there is clear nose parking signs cars parked in the mud all over the place um and then i am hearing that people are saying that you know this is not a increasing capacity i think you're saying that this is limited by the kitchen but nothing's stopping you from hiring another cook or another you know wait staff and then you sort of like will not have the capacity restraints on the inside so fundamentally this outside seating will significantly disrupt um i think all the neighbors and it's already a challenge it's already a significant challenge and it's only going to get much much more worse um if we can hear people literally in our backyards eating and drinking until 9 30 pm every single day except for monday thank you all right um yes go ahead elizabeth jaffron yep go ahead um is jeff recognize you thank you um i also am i have been a neighbor of the chateau since 19 oh my god 97 and um it's always been a love-hate relationship it's very challenging being a neighbor i also worry about the impact on the the environmental impact on the pond for example the swans have nested right next to the chateau for the past i think this year they did not but i worry about kind of the environmental impact i also have questions about their septic system and is it able to is it legal and is it working and how often is it you know you know there's been a lot of questions about that and kind of the the pond quality water um i also have had to call many many times i call the chateau i call their bar many times when there are people outside fighting screaming um i've had to go in and tell them that there's a drunk man walking to his car that should not be driving so i've had a lot of experiences of significant issues i've also had to call the police to say that i do not think a fire truck or an ambulance could get up the hill undoubtedly to the point um so i have a lot of questions about their parking and i also feel like they have never reached us out to us as neighbors to kind of say like what can we do to make things better because i think as neighbors we would have a lot of comments um so i i don't feel like it's been a very um great relationship with the neighborhood and i just wanted to make those comments okay thank you very much and you i'm sorry did we catch your address uh yes eight pine road eight pine road okay all right thank you do i have any more public comment here mr um uh lombardo no thank you lombardi sorry okay miss crawl yes hi i'm uh at 76 dudley road i'm the first house on the left up the hill from the chat and um i just would like to say i not only hear them i can hear what they're saying you know she was right the sound does travel across the water and when we're sitting out on the deck or on the dock and you can hear them literally whatever the topic of conversation is i i just don't want more of that i'm still not a hundred percent clear about why they're what it is they're seeking that's different than what they've had before but i just want to make sure we're not getting more we're not getting more tables out there we're not getting more lighting out there we're not getting more sound out there we're not getting extended hours out there um and i i wish i could say more about what good neighbors they are but i've never really interacted with them so um i know people have called the police i know some of my neighbors have and i'm the thing that gets us by especially on the weekends is we know at nine o'clock the outdoor area is going to shut down but that doesn't mean people leave the parking lot they don't they hang around their cars they've had more than enough to drink and then you hear them and you can hear their language and when my grandkids are there that's really problematic so that's my two cents on this thank you very much um am i all set nick yes you are thank you very much all right i'm going to close that portion of the hearing um um usually we don't get input from you mr mccollins too late but would you like to speak now a couple of points i just wanted to raise and thank you madam sure um as the board knows in 2004 the state legislature amended portions of chapter 40a that dealt with the uh this process about the outdoor dining and speaking with town council and we did get an opinion last year town council felt that if the board adopted uh certain procedures for the approval of outdoor dining and the expansion of liquor service to those areas the board could for an existing license holder um make modifications to the license as the local license authority without this going back to the planning board if this was a new restaurant or if they were making um certain additions or modifications to the structure doing to add new dining that trigger a site review or a special permit this would likely go back to the planning board this the reason we're here and to address ms kroll's last comment as as my office helps this board uh with the license renewals it came to our attention that the chateau who had received temporary permission to serve alcohol outdoors as we all know during coven had continued to operate that way but it came to further came to our attention that we needed to formalize if they were going to continue to do that get this actual extension of their liquor license to cover the outdoor dining area they already had the dining area we're just extending the liquor service formally as part of their regular license that's what we're doing there should be no significant changes um i did speak with my building commissioner and and as was noted in the memo we did talk to planning the building commissioner didn't have any concerns but he did make a suggestion that there are no seasonal dates on their application they talk about tuesday through sunday uh noon to nine but they don't say anything for instance memorial day to labor day or something along those lines and so we should consider that um or ask for a recommendation from the phillips says uh regarding that and then we should make it clear on the license that we're not increasing their seating capacity rather that we're just extending the the service area to this outdoor dining so there's no confusion with the butters that there's any increase in seating those are my comments thank you mr mccall so um i think the next thing is that um we go back to the applicant here in the in the hearing and we ask them you know what um mr lombard can you remove some of the um folks who have spoken because i can't see the um the applicants because their box got too small so um and we come back to you now to see if you'd like to summarize um or or answer any of the questions that have been raised so uh feel free to speak sure well um you know once again yes it will not uh increase capacity uh whatsoever we're not requesting that and really what my reference was in all actuality we're only capable of handling so many patrons no matter what the capacity would be but this is not an increase in capacity whatsoever just so we're all clear on that uh as far as to the environmental uh impact um we had conservation come out uh when the for when the patio was first constructed uh they had a few requests we complied with those um as it became closer to the uh water's edge and uh yes indeed there have been swans nesting there every year i didn't see them last year but uh they we've owned the chateau for 17 years now and they haven't always been there uh even when there was no shadow uh as far as the neighbors um be happy to have a neighborhood meeting um maybe we can do it on the shadow um but uh you know we're just uh we're right there and uh majority of the neighborhood comes in and uh dines on a regular basis so the feedback that we get is is very positive but if there's anything uh that we could do to be the best commercial neighbors possible we're certainly uh all ears as far as a suggestion uh from mr town manager uh if you wanted to make it a april 1st to uh 11-1 date we'd be amenable to that just new england being new england you have some of your most beautiful days for outdoor dining in october and potentially in april which doesn't always occur for instance this spring wasn't that great so we probably wouldn't have even really been necessary until recently
all right um let's go back any comment additional comments or questions from the board no i just have a point that i'll raise in deliberation when we're at that stage okay yeah all right um so i guess what i'm going to do now is i'm going to close the hearing read my list here i'm going to close the hearing and take the matter under advisement and um we're either going to make a decision at a later meeting or we're going to make a decision tonight so i don't know what we want to do so um i think that's fine um do we want to deliberate that's where we are deliberate i mean michael made a good point that um uh that we do need to have some seasonal dates applied to this i think um uh we do need to make sure that it's um um you know finished by nine o'clock lights out or whatever by nine i think that's which sounds like what we're doing anyway but we just need to be really sure that we do it i'm trying to think what else we heard here so go ahead mr living so my suggestion is based on some previous experience serving on the zba and michael i'm wondering if we can do this since there's obviously been mixed feedback from the neighbors couple positive some negative i'm wondering if instead of i'm supportive of issuing um the permit slash license but maybe instead of in perpetuity we do it for a finite period of time like a year give them an opportunity to connect with the neighbors especially over the course of the next few months where it will be most in use and then we come back again um next spring and see how things have gone and then can issue it in perpetuity or for longer is that possible michael do we have that option to have a turnaround time that that isn't forever well we do annual license renewals of all of our establishments that serve alcohol here in town whether that they sell it or serve it on premises and you as the the licensing authority i believe it's within your purview to bring the licensee in if you receive you know feedback one way or the other to ask questions we've done that before with others so i think you you you could do something along the lines of what you're asking that you could um seek you know feedback from the the owners that they met with folks and consider that when you do your annual license renewals and i think that don't hold me to it but i think the process starts around november uh when we start renewing for the next year i think that would be that would be ideal um that would be at the close if depending upon what you pick for the seasonal hours of operation once you get to november by then you'll they should be done for the season and then you can see how it went and review yeah i agree yeah um and any comments or thoughts in the deliberation mr whitney yes um well i had a conversation with the town planner today and we also have uh previously heard from the chair of the planning board pardon me that there is uh confusion at best uh about kind of a who who has jurisdiction with respect to a permit uh clearly the select board is the liquor licensing authority uh but the question of whether outdoor dining is a permitted use uh you know i'm i'm cognizant of michael's comment that town council has indicated this board may do so i think the planning board and the town planner may have a different view uh so uh i i think i personally would feel more comfortable to uh have town council uh give us some advice on this question of uh whether uh application should be made to the planning board for uh a permit uh as well as the select board to consider uh the licensing the outdoor premises for consumption of alcohol has town council already weighed in on that michael is that why we're here well we did have a general response to a hypothetical that uh you know how would this be handled uh you know how would this be handled and the town council used the coach grill as an example um i did resend town council's opinion in an email uh late this afternoon just so that folks um may have it uh so when we did ask the the planner earlier um he referred back to the town council uh from last year so i mean i think you're also again well within your rights to uh hold the public hearing or your hearing over to the next meeting if you so choose to to get additional feedback from an updated opinion i should say the councils with respect specific regard to the chateau um it's it's you you're the licensing authority so i think you have that that option if you so choose to exercise and in the other two members of the board who aren't here then be able to weigh in like at the zba they can quote mullinize by watching the meeting and then they can weigh in um substantively and cast a vote do you know if that would apply here michael uh i'm familiar with the mullinizing and that typically happens on those land use cases i've never i don't know if it applies here in a liquor licensing uh setting but again i can check that very quickly but it would seem reasonable to me that if the board members did watch the meeting and were willing to you know state on the record that they did uh and came up to speed i don't know preclude them but again i don't i don't know if that law applies to uh these types of licenses or permits i think that would not be supportive of bill's decision um obviously that that's going to be a a two-week wait because our meeting is june 1st but we should definitely be making our decision on that date
what do you think carol i think i got to think about what the name of this is what to put it on the list step one i wrote do i just say hearing uh continuation of the hearing i think do do we need to anyway thank you do we need to advertise the fact that it's being continued and do we have notice why because my my slip here says my procedure says the board will deliberate and make a decision either later or tonight so we're deferring our decision i don't know if we're continuing the hearing i think it's so i guess we're continuing the deliberation continuing the deliberation so maybe i just changed the wording on that to say uh decision right um okay yeah i do want to say for those um i don't know if doug you saw that we did get a couple emails today michael had sent us the the late town council um uh input um based on the question that michael raised and also that the planning board chair raised and then i think that i don't know i think bill you were really helpful getting all this stuff together we got something from the planning as well as to what criteria they use for site plan right i think it's confusing because this is uh this is not in the commercial district unlike uh the other uh case that michael cited uh it's a pre-existing non-conforming use uh though we also have to be cognizant of the fact that this has been in operation for quite some time yeah i personally have had lunch there and think it's terrific uh always get the mini dudley but uh ah and and a coke or something like that but uh but but in fairness to the applicants i do think that we should uh it would be great to have a discussion with the entire board and to uh see if we can reconcile this this question which may come up in other contexts about the you know the relative jurisdiction of the select board and the planning board with respect to a land use permit right so then uh what do we do in the interim are they they're still in existence right so until we make a decision are they still functioning or would it just be status quo at this point until we make a decision i'm asking the legal minds here i i i think it would be status quo with it it shouldn't shift right now because we're pending a determination it should only shift if we we make a determination okay that will rule against them but we haven't made a determination one way or the other so status quo should remain though i hope that the applicants would bear in mind some of the commentary uh we've heard and we've given in case they want to uh revisit some of the questions that have been raised so this is a question for doug and mike um i don't take a vote to um continue deliberation because that's what it says right here right would just uh take a motion move to continue the hearing to june first okay let's i don't know if i'm continuing the hearing on i continuing the deliberation or whatever whatever it's all part of the hearing whatever you think it is please make it do we have to re-advertise if we're doing that doug so it says deliberate consult the town council consult with some agent town council which we did consult with town council and we did consult and then voted decisions i don't know that it does have have to be posted each time if you're continuing i think it has to be posted initially all right but we can verify i'll find out how's that so yeah it has to be then we'll get it done how's that sound all right so we know are we having a vote on something or i move that we continue the hearing involving the outdoor dining spaces for the dudley chateau restaurant until our next meeting on june 1st 2026. would you accept a friendly amendment uh continue the hearing and or deliberation i would be pleased to accept that well i would be happy to second that motion all right is there anything for the discussion all right all those in favor uh bill yes doug yes and carol yes that's three zero okay so um um the phillips have a question go ahead
did you have a question yes so just for clarification purposes that this is to make the um the outdoor dining and beverage service um continuing you know along the same lines as our as our overall liquor license we'll be able to serve food and beverage on the patio until such time as a negative ruling was ruled by the board is that correct until we we make a decision period not just a negative it could be a positive what are you able to serve right now uh it's our understanding since covid we could serve both alcohol and food outside and we wish to continue to do so because well you can see the weather upcoming one reason this includes many many college kids which is great as well and we also were approached by uh chronicle that we've been on in the past and they wish to come to the uh shadow on friday and do a piece on um outdoor dining possibilities that's what i was saying i think the status quo remains until we make a dissent determination otherwise right great that we'd be amenable to that if the board feels they need that's why i already voted wonderful thank you
thank you for your time tonight and uh i think you're as i said everybody you're free to go thank you thank you oh you can put your video off and continue to listen so we're going to move now thank you just a point of information um yes sure i was looking oh tough time to freeze
plus we lost him you guys better get off while you can oh boy well we can we can hear from him two weeks from now about well no he'll come back in a minute here i just well we've continued the hearing anyway right yeah but i'm going to move on to the minutes then how do i okay so we're on the minutes of um april 27th can i move all three sets of minutes in a single motion i don't see why not i'd make them as amended though okay i move um the minutes of april 27th may 4th and may 5th 2026 as amended for approval second okay okay let's anybody have any edits on the 27th i did not so on um hang on one second a2 where it says gretchen schula came and spoke h to share ideas about parking it should say for the or in the historic district not just they weren't just sharing general parking ideas it was a very specific so write that um and then when mike wagerbauer came in um he wanted us to add uh for article three an additional 200 line item for retained earnings so just for the record madam chair i am back i was starting to make a point of information when we see you but we went on without you now we're in the minutes can you hold on to that thought for one minute we're on a movie we're gonna keep moving um we're actually on the minutes sorry so anybody have anything anything else on the 27th no okay how about on the fourth so like one first question i want to ask is um i don't think kelsey was in attendance in our meeting in our meetings in the time she was doing other things so i don't think she was at our a little um uh meeting so i have a question mark whether she was there um nobody else remembers i think you're right about that i would agree okay so that's why i have that up um under the discussion of the atm topics let's see um c martin provided an update regarding the annual time of articles 27 da da da da um um stating the petitioner has advised they will be postponed indefinitely then article 16 the board discussed the school committee decision to withdraw support upon further review is everyone okay with that okay then then the next one on the fifth i don't think mike michael were you present there on the fifth uh i think he had to be at the school committee or was that on the fourth that was on the fourth so he might know the bad ones but whatever i started it i started on the one on the fourth i was there and then i went over um oh well if you started to give credit for it so on the on the on the fifth again i don't think kelsey was i think she was doing other things um and then when we went to executive so took that out and we went to executive session invited attendance by carolyn michael and i don't think kelsey was there for that executive i think was just jalen and other than that i think we're in good sure anybody else have anything i was there for the whispering lane um i'm sorry i was there on the fifth for the whispering lane yeah we let we gave you credit for that one okay thank you the only other question i had on these minutes is you're supposed to follow the new format but that's not our thing okay all those in favor doug yes please bill yes and carol yes that's three i think we are now um mr mccall did you want us to go back to the hearing so we could hear you not the hearing it was just a point of information that i did the mulling rule allows a person who's missing an adjudicatory hearing to come back watch the meeting on tape and or review the minutes and then sign a form of testing that they have caught up in this one meeting and select board member levine was inquiring would that be possible and a quick search said it it may be possible provided however you have accepted the statute and i went to our e-code we have accepted it but we have accepted it for certain boards it didn't list the select board historic district commission zba conservation uh planning um but i didn't see the select board so it might be something we want to look at in the future so so they could discuss it with us but they can't vote and the vote is still the three of us then we can have they can make have input but that we have to do the voting then i guess i would say to be safe that would be correct i will check to see if there's okay let me check on that make sure i get that correct next week next time all right do we want to have reports and concerns bill nothing doug um just a quick one um spoke with mr fay who obviously couldn't be here he is hoping that and i share his desire in the coming weeks if you could add at some point to your list it would be nice to have a conversation with the finance committee um at a meeting to to discuss process specifically around town meeting yeah obviously there are a number of members of the finance committee that are no longer with us so it might maybe it's helpful to invite back a couple of the recent members if they would so choose to participate yeah and i think this is what michael and i are doing with the postmortems so rather than put it on i think we had this last time so i think we're going to do the postmortem force and see where we um end up with that i did have a meeting um i'm going to report that i i went to the finance uh committee appointing boy last week and we discussed that you know last last year we knew we had we're going to have three vacancies this year and then unfortunately one person got sick so um this is where we are and we do need to find some folks but anyway um yeah madam chair to the to the point of the postmortem uh uh if i were there i would be interested also in having a discussion uh as pertains to the role of uh the the long-term finance planning committee or uh uh cipsi cipsi whatever that acronym stands for uh so i think there was some confusion about uh specifically with respect to the 2026 capital budget and my sense was this was kind of a long-term financial planning mechanism and it seems that they uh talked about it in the near term as well so uh if the board could have a discussion about that i would be appreciative all right you keep adding things we're going to be meeting four weeks in august no we just have a longer meeting on it right now it'll be fine yeah that's what you all say okay so i do want to say that doug has agreed to um speak on our behalf represent us at the memorial day uh ceremonies at the the cemetery and that uh yesterday i finally got after all these years um to go to the local international fair it was the first time it was very nice um it's very cute the spanish immersion program doing things it was a banging the breaking boards it was really cute very nice very nicely done and so with that i am going to take a motion to adjourn please at 903. so moved second thank you and then all those in favor please say hi uh doug yes bill yes and carol yes thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you good night