November 2, 2026 – Select Board – Video & Transcript

November 2, 2026 - Select Board

Autoscroll:

this is november 2nd 2026 at 6 p.m on select orders meeting in it's a hybrid meeting we are in person at the town building in the whalen commons room and also you can participate by remote access this meeting may be recorded and if recorded it will be made available to the public when we can as soon as possible after the meeting the public will be excluded from this executive session pursuant to chapter 2 of the act of 2025 this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law one may watch or participate remotely with the meeting links that will be found on the whalen town calendar or on the select board agenda 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 either in person or via remote access i will comment we respectfully ask to be limited to two minutes per person we're going to read the agenda shortly but please note the agenda items times it listed are approximate items may not be discussed in the order and for the times listed and all topics are subject to deliberation involved so now for my call to order i'm going to have to review the agenda i'm going to have announcements and public comment we'll have a discussion with uh management analyst communications coordinator regarding the 2027 annual town meeting calendar we'll enter into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to litigants with sean gibbons versus the town we will also discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining for the uh teamsters we will discuss driving with respect to ongoing opioid litigation on allinson's and we will review and approve the executive session minutes of september 22nd and october 19 2026 with the intent to hold soul minutes we anticipate returning to a recession at 7 pm after which we will meet with our finance director mr keverney to discuss and vote and sign the general obligation bond close from november of 26 we will have a fiscal 20 year fiscal year 28 operating budget update and a discussion of limitations in our budget and finally we'll have a preliminary discussion on our pfos funds disbursement approximately 8 pm we will meet with um the vice chair on the economic development committee to have an update on revitalizing railing business association we'll introduce some candidates to make some couple appointments we support the intent calendar at 8 30 we will have a hearing um for a grant of location from aerosource and we believe uh verizon 8 45 we will submit a couple updates minor amendments to uh the outdoor dining and social media policy followed by the town managers report we'll review the minutes in april of october 5 2026 the agenda list october 19 those amendments are not available review correspondence followed by select board members reports of concerns and with any luck of john 9 35 so joining me in the room this evening um select board members mr whitney mr reynolds mr fay mr levine and myself kelly martin we are joined by town manager michael mccall and i think that it just about does it right do we have any announcements from the board or from mccall i'll mention again later on in my my announcements but just remind everybody tomorrow is election day polls are open at the respective precincts from 7 a.m to 8 p.m if there are any questions you can check the town website or call the town hall and speak to the town clerk's office
yes i have two announcements i don't intend to announce every single great thing that's happening in town but these two events i think are pivotal yeah the first is next saturday on november 7th at the arts wayland gallery at the center from 4 to 5 30 so this don't take up your saturday evening a genuine rock star will be geisman i can't make a mistake excuse me lee eastman uh he's the former drummer of the del fuego they were the top new band in the united states that were in the old store magazine back in the community for me he's going to give a lecture and a performance on piano with some other band members including a virtuoso violinist if that were all that's happening i wouldn't be making the announcement what's really going on is mr geisman had a lot of talent brought to it a lot of hard work became a genuine rock star then became a drug addict went through self-recovery and started a remarkable program that has helped approximately 300 people became new lives and so the talk he's going to give this what art did for him and how he made it uh communal and there's more about this on the arts wayland website the other event is on thursday november 12th i think this one too is pivotal i i do when i i bet a lot of you do too i get a lot of flack from people now and then why can't i get a cup of coffee in the town center and the beginning of that process uh thanks to two people i'm working at this is happening an event called hard hats and red cups will occur on thursday november 12th i'm going to be brief here because it was in some materials we've seen i just want to remind the great wide world you can go to guildhumanservices.org sign up it is a i'm going to call it a reasonable fundraiser and then go from 16 to date again it's thursday november 12th thank you madam chair anybody else have any announcements all right i'm good on that do we have public comment i don't see any in the room do we have any online laughing oh it's getting online okay thank you very much so with that we're going to move to invite um jayla grattica to join us to discuss the um 2027 810 calendar page six in the packet
it looks a little different from what you've seen in the past we've kind of took a bit of patch it to it because we'd like to make it more user friendly so rather than list all the code and this and that which is really for office use quite a bit has been reduced hopefully as everyone's read it what was yours jim um so i put together the 2027 town meeting schedule um with the help with carol um so it basically goes over all the deadlines that we plan on having for town meeting um town meeting will occur on may 10th um and the election will occur one week before that on may 4th um so we're gonna open up the warrant on monday december 7th um and the slack board will have to take a vote on that um and then we will most of the schedule is the same as it's always been in the last few years um there's just a few things that we've added um under 2027 under thursday january 8th 28th and friday january 29th um that's one thing we added with carol um so myself carol miranda and town council will meet with the petitioners if any um to discuss their article and determine if it's an article or resolution um and that's something new this year um the only other thing that's changed in the calendar that wasn't in your packet is that we added the deadline for the last day that the select board could submit a ballot question to the town clerk um and that date is tuesday march 30th because it has to be um 35 days preceding the town election um other than that everything is pretty much the same and close to deadlines as last year if there's any questions we can answer and we also work with tom and carol yes we're all little pool care trying to smooth out the process um i think you also reached out to um the town clerk yeah council yeah yeah yeah everybody's been contacted someone's going to ask them someone's going to ask that i know that's you he's going to say shall i open it up to questions then yeah anyone have any questions
i just have a comment i feel we're in good hands jam good hands thank you all right then let's take a vote oh i think we have to vote this calendar don't we you typically do yeah typically do and then what we'll do now is we'll distribute it to all the parties that hopefully will use this and planning board the finance the finance committee and um i do plan on making the 2027 annual town meeting page live tomorrow and that this calendar will be posted on there as well um so that will go up all right so just i want to point out one thing here just because on the tape too and if i want to ask you people always say what day is this going to print the answer is what day is the final write-ups are due and that is is it march 16th yes march 16th okay everyone always says when is this going to print but you know what it's a book so it's one doc one document one document so someone comes back the day you know we're going to print tomorrow and someone comes with an editor on page 12 that control the formatting all the way up all the way down so it isn't when do we go to press it's when are the things doing someone asks you that then you have the reason why we just can't have it you know for the whole entire thing out so all right do we have a motion to approve the calendar or is it we have any other changes nothing i move that the board votes to approve the 2027 annual town meeting schedule calendar as numerated on page six seven and eight of our packet with the annual town election being held on may 4th 2027 and annual town meetings starting on may 10th 2027 second thank you ready for the discussion uh one question will the additional item that you referenced be included in this yes that will be included in the calendar um and i do want to make one other comment when we have that meeting with the town council this is the real idea um for us but we'll also include the finance committee leaders on to be an article in any article particular article so we're all in the room same time everyone only information wants to send us a lot about it there we go all those in favor say aye all right motion passes five zero thank you thank you
i think that's something i'm going to show you normally i'm right in order here and i know you're going to show you the select board enter into executive session a pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to litigation on sean gibbons versus tonnell weyland at all b pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective union weyland department of public works ppw association teamsters local 170 c pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21a3 to discuss strategy with respect to the ongoing opioid litigation with ellersons and d pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21a7 to review and approve the executive session minutes of september 22nd and october 5th 2026 with the intent to hold said minutes is there a second to the motion to enter into executive session second thank you the chair declares that a public discussion of these matters may have a detrimental effect on the litigating negotiating or bargaining position of the town we'll have to have a roll call vote please mr levine yes mr fairio yes mr ronalds yes mr whitney yes ms martin yes that five zero the chair and vice sentence by michael mccall town manager deborah ecker kp law and abigail warren executive assistant to the town manager the board will rejoin the public meeting from the executive session and we hope to return plan to return to open session in approximately 45 minutes so we're going to go into that's office thank you john we're good together thank you select board is returning to open session at 6 53 p.m
the next item on our agenda will be to invite our finance director brian everything to join us for our discussion uh three items first will be to vote and sign the general obligation on in this patient notes of november 2026 so don't put brian for you um i did want to mention that this information is in the packet it starts on page nine when brian finishes his explanation we need to have sign each one of the documents there are 60 pages in total and they all are wet signatures so you can either sign them tonight or you're going to come in tomorrow and sign them and vote but they do need to be signed within the next day or so well you know today yeah so um i also want to mention that in the packet there is um all of all the motions and when um tom reads it it's quite a lengthy amount or finding out a um note on brian mcdonough who was a twirling pepper and lock that said um we do not have to read all the paragraphs in full if we are comfortable with making just one summary motion so i'm mentioning this now so that when we get to the vote you can then say to me we're good with the summary or we'd like to have them read individually but in accordance with the motion the whole vote would have to be provided to the board advance the meeting the full votes are in the packet if you would like a written card copy of the full motions through there all right i think i've got all set frank we're ahead okay so good evening um page page nine guys sorry yep so on october 20th the time did issue uh bonds in the amount of 14 million nine hundred forty two thousand forty five thousand eight hundred and seven dollars for 26 projects i did send out a memo uh data back in september that really detailed all of the different bonds that we will be issuing and as well as retiring 5.1 million dollars in advance so the summary of this is that october 20th we did issue the 14.9 million dollars in bonds we sold them at a premium at 107.32 we generated a premium of a little over money dollars as well as which will cover the cost of the issuance of the bones as well as using some of the money to pay down some of the existing debt that we have so the way it works is that um the information is in the packet your folks can sign the loans um we will send back the signed copies to the bond council at the end of the week we will remit bring it back on november 11th advance in the amount of 5.4 million dollars um i think i try to explain in detail all the different numbers the true interest cost of the loan is 3.96 two weeks prior to that bonds were trading at four four and a half they came down to four and a quarter we end up getting 3.96 so we're fortunate in that and i don't know what the trading at this week but we did lock in a 3.96 cooling interest cost rate the um the average is about eight years on each one of the loans we have all different uh durations on each one of the loans some are 20 years some are 10 years they very depend upon master it along and how bond council will allow them so the notes are in front of you they're helping to answer any questions you may have on the borrowing does anybody have any questions you may have any questions all right then are we all set to make the vote all right well it's comfortable just yeah perhaps if we're comfortable with the summary as opposed to reading the two three pages of materials out loud you guys could have a summary yeah yeah um i've definitely seen you on the several pages you alluded to in the fact
anybody else want i could have sworn i saw them since yeah it was in my mind mr company you circulated some of this before a slightly different form this is we're just doing now what you said it's right here on page 13 i believe introduced demands before right yeah it's on page 13. this is why i was comfortable saying we could do the summary because you haven't received it so it's right what happens if uh we issue a bond uh for a particular project and and all the proceeds aren't used you can re-vote them at town meeting for a lifetime project that would be similar that would be issued by bonds so hypothetically if we had bond surplus from say a road project or say a hundred thousand dollars we could vote that at town meeting to use an upcoming road project but it doesn't in any way it isn't used to pay down the debt for instance in some cases you can use a portion of that but we haven't typically what we do is we move it to the next year's capital budget
also if it's a significant so for example i think there's been projects i don't know what was the high school only but we have actually gone and we send the unused portion on the debt right we haven't we don't follow along right there's not a lot of debt out there that we haven't um that we'll need to reset one of them mr snakebrook that we did authorize a nine hundred thousand dollar but we got a federal grant in the state grant mostly of the aqua fund so that's an example of a debt that was authorized to tell me that we'll have to resend so we're going to be doing that as an article yeah so with respect to the schedule from 2027 to 2046 with the declining amounts i are the amounts principal payments or are they principal and interest principal and interest okay and what accounts for the declining balance or in some cases constant balance is it a function of the maturity of the bond or paying down the the principal well we have we do it by level principal meaning for the first 10 years the principal months about the same as you get in the back years that changes a little bit because the the coupons for the most part are going to be five the same so you will see that the principal portions do go down a little bit at the end below but we we basically restructure the debt based on uh equal level principle depending and so but depending on maturity obviously the 10-year uh runs off faster than which money yeah right but some of them we do have to do like five years for example the two million dollars on the high school fee right right or no a better example with the msba would be two million dollars that would be happy to be paid off in five years right so when we do our capital budget you got to keep that in mind the effect of the taxations because another construction project of two million could be over 20 years where msba would be under five years to be a bigger impact on the budget thank you anyone have any further questions have been moved this board adopt the vote prepared by bond council and in writing before the board to approve the sale of 14 million 5 000 general obligation municipal purpose loan two thousand twenty six bonds dated november 10 2026 pnc capital markets llc at a price of 15 million ninety two thousand three hundred twenty dollars and 72 cents pursuant to the terms set forth in such written vote which vote shall be recorded in full in the minutes of the meeting period second okay does anybody have any further discussion or questions okay and we'll have a vote can you want us as well call or we can just do just do okay all those in favor say aye aye motion carries five zero thank you now again there's these 16 if they have to sign so i'm gonna so then take care of that and pass them off so the next item on our agenda the next item on our agenda is brian has prepared for starting on page 16 i think in the packet is a fiscal year 2028 operating budget update and then also some limitations you know as to as we're putting this budget together and look at things um the last time that mr kevin joined us was in august and had explained on potential limitations for then and then he asked to come back and you know in a couple months after things had kind of shaped up a little bit more and so that's what he does so um are you going to be sheriff screening this brian or are you going to just talk i'm going to it may be a little bit more than what carol had on the agenda i'm sorry what i have in this powerpoint may be a little bit more than than what i have you have on the agenda it is well i can i can go right i can go right to the 28th if you want to go down um i'm happy to do that what do you think should we just do all of it no just go to the 28th okay i guess everybody go to go into just the 28 information if i 28 or would you like to go over some of the material are we going to have another time to talk more about some of these other slides so yeah we can leave if you want to talk about the other slides we will what's what's the general consensus here for us doug has questions requirements that's disgusting all right why don't we just do them all going real quick i think we're running a few minutes early am i am
so we're on page let's start on page 18 i have 19 right hopefully you can work on the screen what's your best so acknowledge mr michael mccall david fleshman the school superintendent christine pattinson school business manager of various towns school departments select board school committee and finance committee all participating and putting these numbers together so what i'm going to go over is the fiscal 26 operating results fiscal 27 tax recap summary i know we're doing it on the 26th we're going to talk about fiscal 28 revenues fiscal 28 expenses so to get into fiscal 26 where do we end up so our budget for fiscal 26 on the left hand side at 111.4 million dollars both revenues and expenses if you take a look at the top part of the chart we committed 109.3 on revenue which means we had a shortfall two million dollars but if you take a look at what's highlighted in orange we actually plan to use 2.4 million dollars in free cash so at the end of the year we actually ended up only uh we we were short by a little over two million dollars so we were 400 000 to the better on the expense side again 111.4 million budget we spent 110.1 we turned back 1.2 million dollars in unspent appropriations which means really a net about nine hundred thousand dollars in um shortfalls and revenues versus um turnbacks and expenses and this all will end up in our calculation of our ending fund balance now allow a pretty good year if you take a look at the revenue receipts taxation came in at almost 99 and they will get into the other ones in the second so on turnbacks briefly the top four which are on the left inside the top five are towns um they came in with turnbacks in that amount the school department came in at a little over six hundred dollars on classified came in at sixty two thousand dollars how do you define the term turnback it's the budget that was voted to tell meaning versus what you actually spent in income with
so it's a variance yes yeah thank you so on the revenue i know these are the largest items we have in our the town's revenue budget real estate committed with a one to 99 percent personal property at 99 of the collection uh chapter 90 committed 100 we received from the state 7.9 million dollars a motor vehicle um we came in a little under budget at 76 000 where at 3 to 3.2 million is still a very good achievement for the town license and permits we came in over by six hundred thousand dollars investment income we talked about that in previous meetings that human also over by six hundred and ten thousand dollars and these are just the major five categories of revenue that town has now what i have here on this slide is a comparison on the left hand side you have historical town budget from fiscal 17 to fiscal 27 and then right that's the tax levy on the right hand side is the budget in fiscal 17 to 27 and the next couple of slides really take this and just show you the the trends that we're experiencing for the tax levy of 2017 to 27 you see that it really is i wouldn't say rollercoaster but it is not consistent the uh compound average growth rate the tax rate over a 10-year period is 4.2 percent the five-year compound average growth rate is also 4.23 percent and i have a little dotted line right in the middle that should represent about a 4.2 percent clean lease and tax so the takeaway of this screen is that the use of the increase in taxation has not always been consistent however over a five and a ten year period they're coming out to be both 4.2 is this property tax only yes and real estate and property value real estate and personal personal on the general fund side what we have here is 17 again through 27 you see a spike there in 24 i believe that was the increase in the special education the out of district tuition um the compound average growth rate for a 10-year is 4.2 and the five year is 4.9 so if you go back to the tax levy we're still looking at 4.2 about a tax levy increase and a budget increase so that has been relatively consistent
our free cash highlighted in green was what i'm expecting free cash to come in at last year it came in at 11.8 million i'm expecting free cash to come in around 11.4 we did have shortfalls in revenue and we didn't have the turnbacks that we've seen in other years specifically our snow and ice budget was over by 600 thousand dollars and if we had to draw from other appropriations that same 600 thousand dollars so between the two it reduced the amount of return back that we had had that not happened our free cash probably would be at least 11.8 million a little more the free cash had been submitted to the state about a month ago so we should be getting our certification hopefully by thanksgiving here's your opera as of today maybe the bottom two numbers are hard to see but unspent right now is 236 000 on the left hand side i have some shading in here a couple weeks ago you folks voted transfers from the snake brook into the mw already that's what's highlighted on the speed on the left hand cone we've spent about 95 percent of the appropriations and so as of um you know this week we have 236 000 of unspent appropriation and i believe um michael that we won't have any issue spending that being by the end of the year i've been assured between michael fay and tom holder who are managing the uh respective state book game in the mwra that those numbers will be spent down and and we came to you as being proactive because the last thing we want to do is have money rock on the table or something we're just moving it it's no guarantee we won't come again one more time
so we did have a rating call prior to our issuance of the bonds and um back in early october um pretty much what the moody's has told the times and what they told us last year that you're not giving out work because our current debt levels are eligible um the community does have a stable tax base where we have a high resident income and wealth based in the town as well the important one here is the fact is that we leave the down reading of our triple a and they they continue to bring up the fact that we need to maintain on balance levels of 25 of revenues and that can be obtained by a prudent use of free cash in the future we're right at the 24 25 range they want to make sure they stay there they get there again reminding us that this is the important issue for the town of women i did look at other times we looked at wexington in in winchester they were both criticized for the same thing so we're obtaining a 25 percent revenues um unbalanced revenue is is a challenge but we're right there right now we just need to maintain that in the areas and again the proven use of free cash can get us there right what does this mean about number three significant growth in the leverage ratio about 350 of the revenue well i'm still getting in that detail from loody so the leverage ratios would be the quick quick ratio and the current ratio if you're familiar with balance sheet ratios those are the two so i've asked moody's to give me exactly the numbers they use and what exactly does that mean so leverage ratios again on the quick ratio and the quick rate and the current ratio which is basically a measurement of our current assets so i'm getting more information communities on number three and going into liabilities retirement system on the left this is already the latest numbers we're expected to be fully funded by 2036 if you take a look at the right they get a few numbers here if you look at fiscal 28 our increase is only 1.19 the increase in fiscal 29 is 6.47 6.47 is more indicative of the previous years we brought to seven previous meetings and this really helped us um along with other things avoid having a potential low arrive at the 28 budget not having the um retirement assessment go up but this this creates another problem because we're going to have in the out years uh you know anywhere from six through ten the assessment will go up substantially over 10 percent i really don't understand why it's only less than two percent it really should be around six percent on our trajectory to get us here by 2036 so we'll end up paying you in later years for a light year in 20 years full pet on the full um funding around 2046 on the right hand side this highway historically we found that no changes here i just wanted to remind the board um they will be continuing to fund this with uh free care i'm sorry taxation 500 000 and the transfers from the revolving funds also will participate in this so here are the reserves at the end of the year our stabilization fund is 5.4 million recreation 61 000 capital stabilization 4.2.4 we have 37 million dollars in the oak foot fund spend revolving we now have eight hundred thousand dollars circuit breaker which is the school fund the seven hundred thousand and our estimated free cash is 11.4 those are the numbers we're walking into this for 27. so why did i notice there's about a three plus million dollar increase in the open
yes that's our returns with all the returns
that was good uh the enterprise funds briefly all three of these funds the water enterprise fund the water fund and transforestation all had revenues exceeding budget and expenses less than expected so the all three of them had good years with respect to the revenues and expenses
tax recap i just have one slide on this uh before i jump off 26 any questions on 26
so the tax recap is so you don't have to come next week no that's the 16th the only reason i brought this one in here is it leads to the discussion about 28 okay so we went to town meeting with the fiscal 27 budget with the tax increase projected to be at 4.8 on the tax recap finally now it's 3.4 for the most part a little bit more in state aid as well as a significant increase in the amount of local receipts i'm sorry could you repeat yes so the the reason the main reasons why taxation went from 4.8 at town meeting down to 3.4 which is because of a surge of over a million dollars in local receipts as well as a little bit more money in state aid so does that mean the town levy plus impacts yes
when we do our budget we do it in february and march we go to town meeting in april may and we don't know where all the revenues are going to land just two or three months later and then when we get to the recap six months later we put all these numbers together we actually do our budget in december where we actually voted the budget in spring so is the is the tax rate then adjusted to reflect the fact that you're in other revenue we do estimated tax bills for the first two quarters right and then we they're in the full true it up for the last two and when is that change in the rate made uh we have it here in the 16th they'll probably do it the first of december when they start to try their tax rate and as well as in the middle of the fiscal year yes yeah we actually do our budget and then finalize the budget in the middle of the budget so that informs the last two installments of foreign taxes actually you never notice that there's two the same and then there's two two the same that are different no yeah no i i noticed that but i i didn't realize that uh the rate was adjusted an extreme in order to what's the current um um tax rate oh it says 1533 here that's 26
okay so it's 1533 on this but that's based on the fiscal 26 full valuation right full valuation it's full valuable with the terms that is yet to be adjusted so that 15.33 will come down because the full valuation or the tax recap will go up it's an interesting number because even though it goes down the dollar amount that we have to lose for the taxation remains the same so your assessment may go up yeah so just on new growth do you have any comments on why the um overlay has increased you know to 350 000 uh there's been some significant abatements you know we were less than 300 but i've been talking to the assessor we felt that it should stay around 350 347 for the recap it's significant less than what it was you know 10 years ago that was way less before yeah right so moving on to the fiscal 28 forecast so before i go to that does anyone have any comments so thank you well you know again our sources revenue is taxation state aid and local receipts you know we've all been in enterprise fund transfers and we do get rents and pre-cash does fund the capital budget and other articles but does not fund the general fund budget so on the left hand side i try to highlight in red on the left hand side the total amount that we can expect to raise by taxation is 100.5 million that's based on new growth coming in at 350 000 again we'll find out in a few weeks if it's more than that but the most we're working with right now is 100.5 million in tax levy or the max levy as it's called the total state aid is a little over 10 million local receipts are 7.8 transfers from other funds at 1.7 so going into fiscal 28 the total amount that we could raise the front of budget is around 120.2 million dollars and they're right clearly you can see that in the pie draft the blue is the taxation piece of it and what does the debt exclusion assume with respect to action by town median and may of next year well the the debt solution will come from a ballot question that the residents will vote to approve certain projects that are funded by excluding that then we'll vote the budget at town meeting to support the debt service that pays that debt so we do we do put on the tax that's added to the tax limit so when you take the tax limit which is right 95.7 and the tax the excluded at 4.8 you can get max levy at 100.5 and the 4.8 is principle and interest yes it's debt service it's not principle yes seven on the way in fiscal 28 there's 4.8 million dollars of debt service that will be supported by increasing the levy by the exact same amount so if you take a look at the tax levy it's just an outlook from 27 through 31. um as you can see the very bottom uh where i think the point numbers of the percentage increase in 27 the total tax max tax tax went up 3.4 the 28 is going up 2.8 and 29 is 3.4 this is not with an override this is where we currently stand with our tax regulations the taxation is going up by three or less in the next five years uh yeah i have a question um how are we doing as a town in order to appraisals to the presence home appraisals you mean what we do on the evaluations right uh we hire a company that can run my question how are we doing i think a year or so ago we were um making progress but we are hoping to make more progress you know where we are you mean the exact actual real estate sales no evaluations um when the assessor goes out and checks on the property
that's something you you want to touch with yeah i work with the assessor on that we do hire a company because i'm done with evaluations did you have a sense of how they're doing i know i'm even going to come in our next meeting but you have a sense of how they're doing my last conversation with the assessor he thought that the uh would probably be greater than 650 it may be climbing to the sevens maybe seven seven fifty but the jury's out on that you've submitted everything to the state okay with respect to new construction additions and whatnot plus we have terrain across the street which we got i believe four million dollars of assessed valuation okay um right right right i think tom's question is there was a we wanted the impression see if i got this right we wanted the impression that there was a backlog you know because of stuff to getting to people claiming off these building permits is that the right phrase i want to use and adjusting assessments yeah you know he's getting on product because he's not completely gone at this point right that was the question i think yeah that's a good question so i thought i would thank you friend do these service um projections include the mwra debt well in different models yes i run a model for the general fund budget and then we have a separate model for the enterprise fund budget so which which is this this is the general fund budget this would not include okay excluded that for the water fund so the first debt payment for the mwra through the water rates will is 29 is it 29 november of 20 million isn't it is that 2.2 million 2.3 goes to it yeah yeah i thought it was two months so and fy 29 okay
so this next um chart basically brings all the revenues in and i highlighted in yellow the total one revenue that is projected to go up as you can see the bottom numbers highlighted in yellow fiscal 28 we're projecting total revenues be going up comparison to 27 around 2.9 percent and this again is all without any override for available revenue again that's just a graph of it um on the right hand side you see the tape 2.9 down to 32 or 2.71 but you don't see any force here or high trees there are on the low threes or the high twos
valuations we talked about that we're probably going to come in take a look at the left-hand side fiscal 27 will probably look um similar to 27 however the full valuation on the 26 was 59 million he says it doesn't think it's going to give an eye he thinks it's going to come in around 700 thousandish which the total uh valuation may be in the high speed like 39 million or 42 million total valuation as you can see um back in ribbon's edge back in 24 that was a 90 million dollar increase in our taxation
um so for 28 so really what is before us is a cash increase of 6.2 million dollars and again it's all footed here if you take a look at 27 the 94.9 million dollars of what's going on the tax tree tax week i'm sorry highlighted in the yellow 105 is the max levy for 28. so there's a cash increase here on 5.5 if you add in the remaining amounts we can bring we can bring a budget to the town meeting with a cash increase of 6.2 that would mean at overall a 5.46 increase in revenue i'm not saying we do that i'm just saying that's the most amount of money we can raise that town meeting right now before the recap before all the other numbers come in is 6.2 million dollars that's what we can do that's what you can do the most you can do without having an all right the uh the total state aid is projected to go up at two and a half percent it may go higher typically we've gotten more but with respect to building your forecast budget we're staying around the two percent two and a percent when michael and i get the budget put together in later in january and february these numbers will be adjusted based upon what the governor's office does publish at the end of january or our preliminary stated numbers local receipts has always been a good story in the last couple years we are a million dollars of a budget or 117 percent of budget the fiscal 28 budget is being helped substantially by local receipts and it's really all predicated on what we actually do in 27. so part of the reason 27's taxes are coming down is because we had a very good 26. the reason why we can have um a 28 under without an override is we have a good 27 but we don't know that we're only in the fourth month of the year so these are earlier projections but there's nothing that tell us tells us that these are not achievable so excuse me brian in the local receipts you know we raised fees early in the event shows up there on the local receipts right right transfers uh we both we get towns enterprise and school transfers uh both town and enterprise transfers continue to grow at two percent the school is showing a declining um contribution to the town for the most part a few years back there was four accounts that paid in one of them being full day k full day k is now part of the general fund budget the other fund that's having significant problems in generating an indirect is the children's way so i only have ten thousand dollars of an indirect from the children's way and if it's with 28 budget the other ones are don't paying their fair share it's it's simply the children's way um is not able to pay at the rate they paid previously and we don't have full gain so what's driving the 28 budget oops on the left inside you have the unclassified numbers do i have highlighted around the debt service at a million dollar cash increase in insurance 32b which is the health insurance at 1.3 so insurance right now for a model is going up 12 percent we know that the debt is going up 15 at the very bottom you see that number three million dollars um we did talk about slide a couple uh ago which our total cash increase is 6.2 so right off the bat the unclassified budgets are expected to take half of a cash increase of 6.2 the other category in the air that's growing is evoke education a couple years back we would we wouldn't even have a student going to minute man's and there may be two now we have you know six to eight we have kids going to minute man now we have kids going to vote so this is a category that we may see continued increases in
energy i talked to michael mccrawl and michael fair last week these numbers are projected to go up by 15 percent michael fair believes that they may go even higher than 15 percent
so when you put it all together here's the optics that we have if you have a 6.2 million dollar cash increase the unclassified budget is taking three million right off the top another two thousand dollars those to the uh on a portion which is state aid and local receipts i mean with state aid and in the cherry sheet items that's only gone up two thousand dollars that leaves 3.1 million dollars to be split between the town and the school so that's a very different model than what we've seen in previous years so to summarize if we did bring the budget tomorrow to tell meaning increasing cash by the revenue by 6.2 there will be a five and a half percent budget increase that would also mean the tax increase of 4.9 5.9 so the problem in developing 28 budget is that the significant portion you can see right on this um so before i jump into that on the left hand side you see what we have as projected early on forecast for our budget you have the town budget school budget unclassified and other budgets these are early projections that both the town and the schools put together this is of all forecast numbers we've yet to submit the budget guideline and meet with department heads but we feel comfortable there within these ranges so those are the numbers we're working on if you take a look at the middle problem the very bottom you see 120.3 that's more than we can raise on a recap so more work to do on this one and here's the pie that basically splits the 6.2 it's split pretty much right down the middle if you take a look at the general fund budget the general fund budget half the budget is the school budget basically 30 percent is unclassified and then the remainder really goes to the town that's really the allocation of the total budget but the allocation of the revenue increase in 28 is not consistent with what our budget is in other words the school is not getting 50 percent of the 6.2 unclassified getting 30 percent of the town getting the difference just that unclassified right off the bat is taking the 30 percent well excuse me can you go back to slide 34 when you said that this one on fy 28 120 000 309 we can't raise that on the how much what's the delta the 120 million what should we be raising 30 30 you're going the wrong way brian we're at the end of the goal 34. yes why 34. sorry right there right there yes that one you said on this one i think on the fy 28 estimate oh by the way you're missing a t and estimate um on the total 20 you said the 120 309 is more than you said we should be raising elsewhere what was just remind me what was that number we should be raising the 121 it goes back to um max levy really that's where my head does it if you take a look at the second come on in from the left you see 120.2 point two okay so we're 100 000 already and that's right no time really appropriates a budget right at you need some level of cushion right and again these are very early on numbers not so much on the revenue side right but more on the expense side okay and since i've been here what brian's been doing is trying to build in two hundred thousand dollars of cushion for things so that would be three hundred we're kind of delta yeah i'm gonna need to get a 400 000 okay thank you so this this chart here is an effort to sort of give you an idea what the different options would be for example on the left hand side if we produce the budget with a five percent increase basically 118.6 million dollar budget we would have a tax levy increase of 5.3 and we would be under the levy by you know half a million dollar if we go up 5.5 you see that the levy pretty much disappears we could not produce a budget much more than a 5.5 percent increasing but you can clearly see the six percent budget puts us in the right we would not be able to do that could you could you give a summary opinion of where this places us well the whole override 12 months out in 24 months or i know that's for me for 29 yes please i think if we produce the budget it's say this i'm just i'd say five percent you probably would still need your own right by at least two million 29 thank you just to add that the finance committee asked us that question the other night because they said you know this is the second year in a row where early on six months ago we were looking at numbers and now now we're not convinced we need something we've shared all this along the way the difficulty is making those estimates we're making assumptions on numbers and when you finish town meeting and you're wrapping up your fiscal year and you're trying to project a full year ahead and you know you won't get a lot of hard numbers at least till january and february you get your tax recap and we we got some surprise numbers from middlesex county this year they gave us a lower assessment um it's hard and you know we're not trying to fry wolf we're not trying to uh scare anybody with the override but if we were to have gone the other way and instead of conservative estimating these numbers you know it's i think it's i would rather be erring on the side of caution with brian in anticipating 12 increase in health insurance in certain numbers and then get the good news as we go along and say okay you know we were have this in the wings and we might need an override but numbers are broken our way then to go the other way and not put the increases we've seen and then all of a sudden get hit with bad news and then we would be in a dire straits right now so um it's just hard because we were asked you know can we get better numbers we we're doing the best we can we're trying to project out now we have three years of cola information we can help use that as we plan going forward um we're trying to get better numbers from west suburban our health care uh provider um as well as from middlesex county last year you know we were getting alternating six and nine percent increases this year we've got about three percent uh 27 yeah um it was lower than we projected 20 is less than 70 yeah so it it throws our projections off but now we're wondering where we got low estimates are we going to get hit next year so we may have to think they may come back and they tend to give you a low one and then a high one and alternate so i just want to put that out there you know we're trying you know the best we can to give some numbers going out because you're not only looking at one year two three years out because as we've talked about if we do go for an override we may want to go one time and talk about having a multi-year override and talk about doing something like marblehead did where you make a commitment to the town that if you allow us to increase the level in anticipation of these overrides we won't necessarily spend it because again those numbers could change and break our way we might not need the amount you ask for an override all that does is give you authorization to tax them it doesn't mean thank you so in the last couple of years or last year and projected next year we're looking better than we expected but previous year we you know we did the death reclassification we did the bans thing uh all because we were concerned about uh avoiding the override or deferring it or something um what explains the unexpected um positive results last year and prospectively next year
well i i know our assessor's been working uh aggressively to make sure they had proper valuations we we had the health insurance was much less than yes and that's based on claims data and we haven't had an estimate yet we're supposed to have a meeting in december to go over the claims data to date which would give us an indication where absent that we've been conservative because the last two years uh gic and maya who are the you know it's probably the largest uh purchasing agreements out there um their rates of vineyard fall are between 12 14 percent so we can look at the industry trends we're smaller subset if we don't have the high loss pool that they do we make out a little bit better um but we've been aggressive in valuations through the assessor we've had some things um that have come in that have generated that unanticipated local receipts through permits um your projects will probably pick up some at some point from terrain with the renovations there so and why prospectively next year do we expect the uh the tax revenue to be better well the tax revenue i mean we'll let you what we need to but the max levy will improve because if we get more of a new growth we'll have more to work with but we're we're holding that constant at 600 or something we're we're expecting 6.2 million more in revenue than revenue uh uh of which 5.6 is taxation right so that's it's two and a half percent of the operating budget plus in the world so it's two and a half on the 120 line or is it on the 115 yeah keep in mind what bill's looking at he's looking at the 27 then we'll we were under we had surplus levy so you have your swing of five million dollars we did not fund the 27 budget to the full wedding room so you do have so there's a million dollars in unused levy in 27 so you combine the two you can come up with the 5 million dollars and just conceptually brian i don't know the last time we had an operating overriding it doesn't matter yeah so what has changed through
you know when i was at the board 15 years ago or something we kind of struggled with this and had frequent overrides and then we went to an exercise to we try to make some structural changes in the budget and you know it seems to have the last 10 plus years we haven't experienced any override and now we're bumping up against it what what well we got sure we started to we're not using free cash back in i think 17 or eight been subject then they'd walk inside them in the chair or we pulled green away green away last year we knew that this day would come because once you stop using free cash and you stop depending on the levy and you saw through another screen a levy is only going up to two two and a half three percent so if your levy i'm sorry your max levy is only increasing by less than three and a half right but your your school budget for example the school budget in 28 is going up over four percent town budget is going up over three percent those numbers are greater than what the levy is going up but so eventually previous 15 years was that not also the case wasn't there i would say the unclassified to go faster i mean this year they're 10 percent relative to the other sides of the budget yeah i think i mean if the health insurance increased really over a 10 year period when john suchison was here really was only growing around five or six percent it's the last bunch of years that we've seen the spike in retirement now excuse me we also have opam which is a program we have to fund and we're funding that uh about 500 000 a year if i want to buy tax 500 000 yes it is that's it and now we have this um makeup a special assessment whatever the regular is for the retirement there's another one we didn't have those 15 years ago we didn't have those 10 years ago i i think and then the we spend over a million dollars in energy you know i think it's going 1.2 million a year and those numbers are going up i mean you just get your home as we said we tried to purchase when we can on the dips but our electric and our natural gas are going at a concern over this year but if i may um brian the bill whitney's question wayland is not unique many other communities matches us that they're facing overrides at a greater pace than in past years but is it one of the big factors that own values aren't going up at the same rate that they used to or not that not a factor i mean they may be consistent with other towns i mean i don't have the uh you know it's for example what wakefield's doing or welcome or you know we don't get paid to you know shrewsbury i think i think what closing the gap quickly on an override is the fact that we don't have significant new growth historically in the town if you take a look at like what what is our next big project um maybe if all these gets developed uh you don't have um the surge of reoccurring new growth that keeps adding to you that you get max levy every year we yeah we did our river's edge where we did have launch away last year but those things aren't every year and i think what's escalating the the day when we're leading over right is the fact that you know new growth um i did put out a chart we're one of the last with triple a moody's the new growth but they will rank in the middle of the pack in the state with respect so a new growth as a percentage of the prior levy so we don't have good metrics on new growth in comparison to other towns i think that tom has a good point though because i think that i live in a smaller home and historically those have increased more percentage-wise than the larger homes they're so they tend to be a little more flat in terms of their
maybe i think that's a good point too but i think it is i personally think it's a lot of it's to do with both of them and their retirement and these other additional things we're getting and that's a lot of money is relatively well i think what it's really new we won't even do an open since about the last eight nine years right yeah we've consistently at least three four years running since all over putting five hundred thousand dollars in
and brian i'm new i just want to confirm something can you break down so if we have a two and a half percent increase on about 105 million that gets me about two and a half million and then what is the new growth the only other major factor we guess maybe six million right yep and then to brian's point that if you have unused levy we can use that you don't always i mean i'm going to say i'm thinking back in about 20 2020 i think we had about eight brian you're hoping here at 19 or 20 we had about eight or nine million dollars of our newsletter capacity didn't we but we've used it to help with these budgets over the last few years and to the point where we are now pretty close to the bone here is opev a pig in a python thing or is it just going to keep going up i recognize that's an unfair question but you're an expert i'd like to hear your opinion well i mean if you get fast forward to year 2046 you would have um you know say 50 million dollars in the fund and then you would draw down that every single year to basically take a huge bite out of your health insurance budget i mean that would become a revenue source to fund from the budget as long as the investment returns you know keep with it you don't you wouldn't have to continue to fund it you know unlike the uh retirement that's not mandatory so it is potentially one lever that you could pull if you were getting tight um on the budget however who these rates us yes uh it considers the factor that we are responding in what are we like are we like 42 percent now what's the percent time um they always cite that in our rating that we're one of the few communities that are that well funded on the old mountain so so what's your uh what's your takeaway on this michael uh these are you know possible over the right well i was going to put in my announcement today we we continue to meet um brian and i meet with the superintendent and his business manager regularly and then we still have our group both madam chair and mr levine attend those um we have concluded that we will be at least at the moment appears we can get to fy28 without an override we have several different scenarios depending upon you know what we present to the fincom and how much of an increase in the budget and how much increase in taxation whether there would be some uh changes to our budgets internally uh essentially some cuts we might have to make some minor reductions on both sides of the ledger the school and the town to get through and save some of that levy cushion but it appears at this point it is doable to do it without nova and i think we started seeing that friend late summer early fall where we saw the numbers coming down uh to a million and then below a million we've run some scenarios where there could be um a situation where we have to make cuts between uh i would say a half million three quarters of a million um within within the operating budgets on both the town and school side but it may be doable are we better advised to seek an override of a lesser amount now when we don't need it in order to create uh that additional capacity uh as you said you don't have to you don't have to exercise that but to create that capacity and presumably be less on a going forward basis you started soon well one of the discussions we had um the other day was timing and i think well we didn't have a formal vote but i think the consensus from a lot of people is that putting an override on the spring ballot now might be challenging in terms of we have a process that we like to do to get input from the board would someone would have to request from the board you'd have to get a report from the fincom but then are we leaving adequate time to uh communicate to the community why we want to do this why now and how much if we were to forego with this year make do now we start essentially a 12 month campaign uh if you will not that the town campaigns for the override but it would be an informational campaign as to why we need this how much we come up with a number and then we work towards that so
the sense i get from everybody attending is let's let's ride it out for this year but start early and put together a meaningful information campaign perhaps with uh something we've looked at in marble and making a commitment to the community i would add optically it doesn't look great because we started between two and three million dollars is where we thought we were last spring beginning of the summer in terms of staring down an override and now we're as low as a half million dollars so if i'm the average voter looking at that i would not want to move forward with an override because look at how the numbers broke our way or came out the way that we hoped they would how can we make a prediction in the next year or two that we're not going to be similarly situated and i don't think we will be but i i think it doesn't look great to ask for an override for a small amount i guess i'm concerned about kicking the can down the road we don't want to do it last year because we're going to do the mwra and this year we may not need it but next year we might need it and we might need a bigger number but if we can look if we come forward with a smaller number you mean a smaller number but a three-year override or if if we're in a position in
28 29 30 we need x if we start a year sooner query do we need less because we had it but we we thought we had we had a smaller amount we're we're seeking we're projecting the need for less it's an interesting thought we never talked about that if we went forward with a half a million dollar override if we had gone forward and we had enough time this year would that have significantly reduced future overrides because i was always looking at three years of overrides at about nine million dollars so if we if we took bill's advice and we happen to have gone forward this year would that overall number be less would we be getting out ahead of it to save ourselves more money yeah as long as we're looking at it from different perspectives let's say we did a million dollar override for 28 but we don't need it we still produce about it it's a practice inspection for example for example the million dollars that we do an override for 28 will be going with a um a levy calculation plus two and a half and that would reduce that would reduce your number that you would need for 29 so hypothetically you need two million dollars now 29 it may look like a million dollars in 29 because you're already rolling a million dollars a year before that's going to be separate then did you ever consider those folks when you were loading overrides like that to try to get out if they were annual things we didn't we didn't think about multiple year overrides but it was it was i don't know if it was annual or maybe every other year or something and again you're you're taxing my memory so i think excuse me i think brian only has a couple more slides maybe we'll let him finish the slides like this is that something good with that and then we can come back to some more questions like okay brian
so this last slide is our pending free cash use so 28 like i said we're looking at our 11.4 million dollars a very top number there the 2.2 million that is in the the most recent capital plan we will fund the capital stabilization 250 000 because that is a positive metric in our moody's calculation i do have two hundred thousand dollars for the spread revolving and uh surface one of koi those are open items right now but i would say that you totally used 2.7 i'd like to see it lower than that in order to maintain our 25 percent fund balance there's a percentage of revenues i'd like to get that 2.7 million dollars down and that is the last slide that was okay so um thank you for doing that and i appreciate it um when i think it was more comprehensive than i thought so i appreciate that i think i like a lot of the things you guys have put forth and just appreciate you know the forward thinking and giving us some food for thought you know on you know where we really want to land those budgets um i do want to just say that our town code does ask the town manager to provide you to select for proposed budgets in november for the town budgets in the classified and this fulfills that requirement um by december 15th the superintendent will present and you know again a proposal not the whole budget to the school committee and then at the end of the year or whatever date is mutually acceptable with the finance committee um that will be the combined um budget that we're going to be working on and probably just do that so just kind of lay it out for everybody on terms of the schedule um i will say this that we did i did receive a um an email from um carl barnes was the finance committee chair you know in advance of our recent financial planning um meeting and he said that we wanted me to read this at that meeting but it in fact impacts us so i'm reading it to us as well um they would like the select board finance committee would like the select board to consider establishing and appointing a committee to evaluate cost savings and efficiencies strategies for addressing structural deficits if any and that it committed to the committee being charged with preparing a report and a recommendation this is no later than june 30th but obviously that would be up to the board and i did mention it at the financial planning and um just to make sure that everyone felt it was a reasonable request and i'm putting it before the board that's also something we want to want to look at um i don't know brian you have any thoughts on that i know they did it um i think when you were on the board bill yeah it was on it yeah it was it was really done by members of the board working with the staff okay now it wasn't
the people outside uh the appointed uh elected boards and so forth right but it's something i think i just want to draw out there and you know we can spend a little bit of time talking about it you know in a couple of meetings or so does everyone think this is worth discussing yeah i'm gonna let them know about that does anybody have any other questions or brian do you have any i'm certain mr mccall do you have any other comments you'd like to make on this topic please okay i have one other question that we haven't talked about in some time and it seemed to fit under this agenda item since we're looking for different cost savings and efficiencies and addressing our strategic structural deficit and that is when if at all should we revisit the holiday road development discussion because it seemed like this was the purpose of why we were talking about that is when i hear brian's presentations year over year he talks about the importance of development for our growth and it seemed like that was one of our focuses and obviously the school committee wasn't on the same page and there was a timing issue but i don't want it to fall off completely because i have a sense that schools will not end up being built on that site and so we should always be keeping this on the burner and and discussing it and when that timing is right i know it created some consternation in the neighborhood but i i'd still like us to continue discussing it because it seemed like it had some real potential next question i don't know when the next financial planning meeting is but this might be a good topic for us to raise what's the status you know are they willing to have another conversation how should we proceed does that sound like a good yeah i mean my reaction is uh i was thinking about closing it for the upcoming family meeting putting it back on um so douglar bean's question um goes under the umbrella of new growth which i think is kind of what bill whitney was mentioning big picture and i think that's why our board to continue to focus on group 20 and constituent to maintain the um wayland's look but not changes significantly but work towards zoning changes that will help new growth in those areas um new growth comes in different forms whether be a residential addition or uh adu uh and other things um other businesses in town but i think those two areas um uh potential there um potential sources of increased commercial income which is what we're going to need in years ahead you know um anybody else have any last questions or comments everyone feels like it was a very full of us discussion i really appreciate it i really liked the uh the forecasting there brian and you know what we the budget should be thinking michael as well i appreciate that all right so let's move to the next item on the agenda which is since brian was here i wanted him to you know do this preliminary discussion on the PFAS funds disbursement so I'll just review everybody's remind everybody that we received funds for PFAS litigation whatever it came from and it's Brian's memo which is on page 54 tells you we received one point I think it's 1.1 million am I on the right page yeah I do want to let the board know that we did discuss this previously and we voted on 12-15-20-25 to support the payment of the debt service for the masters for the NWRA connection and happy hollow treatment facility together through water rates so that's what we voted previously just so you know but as we look forward and as we mentioned earlier first debt service payment big big jump is going to be in FY29 and so I asked um Ryan for some recommendations do you want to speak to them Brian um so the question was what are proven uses of the million dollars from the PFAS settlement sorry and I gave three one of them probably is the best option we just simply use a million dollars to offset the construction costs and we would simply just borrow us the authorization so we have a thirty eight point six million you could use the million dollars as part of the funding source on the construction project however that doesn't take away number two number two I don't know would be to use the money to offset the first debt payment that the waterfront is going to have related to the thirty eight point six million that number the amounts of substantial it's around two point eight million dollars in principal and interest their fund right now it's far less than that they don't even have two million in fund so the water fund is going to need help in some form to make that payment in which would be on November 28 we're going to borrow in November 27 so on November 28 based upon where the waterfront stands now they will need assistance to make that first payment and using this money for that purpose would be a good use the other pool of money that we could use to help the waterfront would be the real estate fund the money that we got from river's edge that money can be used the debt service but but whatever decisions we make the fact that we've got to deal with this two twenty million dollar debt service payment we do need to help the waterfront make that payment in some form and then I think you thought the third option under number two would be fund debt payments in multiple years yeah or or so that kind of smooths it out because otherwise you have these troughs you know you don't have to make the two later maybe in the next year you still get the two land versus if maybe we looked at something like obviously Brian and Michael will make a recommendation I'm just going to make it at five hundred you know for the first couple years that reduces their what they have to raise and it looks in the rates but I want you to throw this out and get input you know what because they're starting to broadcast for 29 and this of course would help these funds would help that forecast anyone have any comments why would the water fund need help because the fund needs to have at least that amount in the fund and they make the payment well why doesn't why aren't the rates increase to create you know sufficient capital the needed cash flow they've just started to increase in the first increases in 27 and 30 percent almost we don't know offhand what the 20 28 number is going to be but even with those amounts I believe the funds still going to need some assistance to making their first payment in order for the fund to make the payment they need to have the cash in the account at the time to make the payment they can't go on the right I understand it just you know there's arguably an identified source of revenue to pay for the debt service which are the water rates right so but the increase in the rates the 27 is an increase in revenue to offset the expenses not so much to build their fund balance so there's because you don't set rates you don't set rates ringing revenue greater than your expected expenses fund balance increases when revenues come in greater than revenue greater than budget and expenses come in less than budget but if you capitalize a debt service reserve for a an expense you know a pending expense for which you're you're obligated it's the first budget obligation of the town creating a debt service reserve in anticipation of that first payment are you saying it's not an eligible expense? no what I'm saying is in order to make the payment in order for the water fund to make the payment it needs to have that amount of money in the fund at the time of the payment right now it's projected not to Brian and I have felt that the water rates were not increasing year over year to anticipate these expenditures we've made that comment in the past that the rates have been relatively flat and we felt that knowing this was coming there should have been and I think I don't want to speak for them but I think our DPW director would concur that there should have been an increase year over year coming up to this point so that that fund balance would have been built though just as an aside I wouldn't be in favor of using the real estate to pay like this but I do want to say this these funds were for I don't know if I'm representing the PIPAS yes these were generated based on you know the litigation that we engaged in due to the contamination so I think and I think the board felt that and you know it would be appropriate yes we already voted we would do that but I was just trying to think ahead here was as the forecasting is going on for FY29 and FY30 it also includes the enterprise funds and that I thought we should have a discussion of what we think the direction we already voted to support it just how do we want to do it do we want to do one lump sum and then it just sort of delays it do we want to do over a couple years just want to throw it out so one idea that I thought about reading this in the packet about setting the money aside to deal with the middle school site middle school site is being considered a future home for a future school and you can't build a school if the site isn't appropriate to build a school or build anything and we have an expert looking at this site and I think we should anticipate costs associated with getting the site in the position where a structure can be built it's the site's problems are PFAS related and therefore I think possibly setting this money aside to deal with those problems would be a wise move are you afraid are you afraid of the old debut anybody else have any comments I like that idea I like that idea I also think we just answered your question a moment ago you were saying should we have a new committee to look into how to say 20 40 something the water rates going up right the new school isn't being there and now if you've got a communications issue coming up that committee may turn into a PR committee cool all right I have to say I really feel we should put some of this towards the and there are a construction security million dollar bill when you bump two million dollar debt service payment into one year it's going to really bump people's rates up at the same time we'll be trying to get over it and rise and probably approval for new school buildings so I am in favor of you know us applying this this million dollars towards that maybe we we feel we want to do something with the middle school we could use some of the real estate funds or something like that that's a financial policy that said that we should not be self-sustaining or maybe it's using general fund revenues to sell for those enterprise funds but this is a general fund this was money I understand but the principle I guess is that the enterprise function is self-sustaining and I think I think there's a little discussion that we've had before several months ago in our concerns that what a public was not prepared for this time that's my memory without sounding critical was that a pretty rare event or is is what rare event having to spend having a debt come up and not allocating some well it's a huge debt and knowing it's huge it wasn't new that it's huge and that it had it was front-loaded to Carol's point this is unusual isn't it or is what Bill's saying happening a lot well it's a difficult question it's a difficult question it's a difficult answer we don't normally have they don't an enterprise fund not normally picking up twenty fifteen twenty thirty million dollar projects either that's why Bill has a good point they know they're not picking up projects like that so they would allocate they would do what he said I don't want to look at him and take time the budget would include funds looking forward anticipated excuse me yeah so this is a rare event yes I agree that an enterprise fund is so the operation should be self-sustaining I I I don't want to speak for Brian I've had concerns about how the rates were utilized in for water and I think you're going to face a similar problem with the transfer station in my last town particularly we didn't have border border public works or water commissioners and it was the town manager who set the water sewer trash rates all these things um with input from the department heads my hometown does not have a board of public um public works they do have water commissioners that set their rates but they do adjust their rates and they're paying for their catastrophe it's a different model here and they set the rates not you folks not I just think that they could me personally done a better job of anticipating some of these changes I'd like to come to the interest of collegiality I'm not being critical I'm just new and trying to learn that's all I don't think anybody on the board disagrees with what Mr. McCall just said and what Bill said but this is just a separate monies we received kind of like a grant it's not the right to raise but this was part of litigation we participated in and I do think we should we did say we were going to apply it towards the debt for that project I think we should do that your needs for a vote and Bill's question are different I think that we said that it made sense for the the eventual settlement to go toward PFAS abatement I don't know that we were specific the only vote was taken was to support the payment of the debt service for the Amdell rate connection and the happy hollow tree with the facilities together through the water rates that's what we voted it was 4-0-1 through the water rates so so this is to upset water rates Brian how much what do we what do we anticipate the shortfall would be for the first year of the debt or the payment of the debt service I'm just going to bring that up what is the timing on you voting for this because we can if this can wait a little bit yeah we can get the updated model from the Abrams group yeah as to what their rate projections are for the next bunch of years I think that's that's I always suggest wait a little bit and we'll get the model from the Abrams group about how he plans on getting enough fund money in the fund at the beginning of the 29 should be July 28 which is not that far away now okay I think that's a good suggestion and then I just wanted to get it on the table get on everyone's mind so off we go thank you so much Brian thank you Brian appreciate it um I think that our next item is is to invite Karen Kelly I think I see her up there yeah and she's going to speak to us just a little bit on revitalizing the Land and Business Association hey Karen how are you I'm good how are you good so Laura's yours excellent uh thanks so much for having me um really the purpose of this visit is just to chat with you all about um an initiative that we're taking on that I think you'll all be excited about um and I know a lot of the local businesses are which is to be the catalyst to um restring together the Wayland Business Association which used to be um you know something that we had in town um as a supportive link both between businesses but between businesses to the town and town to the businesses um I don't know exactly the date that it that it sort of um uh dissolved but somewhere 10 to 15 years ago um and so there's been so much activity as you all know in terms of new businesses coming to town it's really exciting um and we really want to trying to play our efforts to help all of those businesses businesses that have been here for 20 years or 100 years or one year um connect with each other um to both you know support you know co-marketing efforts um there's all sorts of ways that you know businesses that are that are connected can help each other succeed um and um also create communication channels between them between themselves uh between the town and them um and that that's something that as we've started to chat with some folks who've been in town a long time like Russell's and others um are excited about this idea they also want to feel really confident that town leadership is on board and that they would welcome um a communication channel to local businesses to local businesses thank you we want to open it up to questions from the board anybody want to start i can also provide a little more context um in terms of how we're thinking about it um again like edc is not running the wayland business association what we're really trying to do because we the town really lacks a way to communicate with businesses as we just saw with the zoning changes on route 20 really the only way we had to get a hold of we could get a hold of everyone is by sending a letter um we have actually been going door to door trying to collect email addresses because we don't as a town actually collect email addresses um on the dba forms which we're hoping is a change the town can make um but um what we want to do is essentially send out a form to folks for email addresses that we do have and graffito has been a fantastic partner in this um they want to get this out to all of their businesses and town center but again we want to make sure it gets kind of everywhere in town um and so the idea would be there's a form that simply says hey you know we want to we want to help kind of reignite this for um businesses in town no matter what the size is um if you want to get involved in kind of spearheading putting it together check this box if you want to just be part of it once it's formed check this box um and we're just asking them for their name the business name and their email address and then we'll kind of give that a few weeks for people to fill out and then whatever we collect from there we're going to turn it back over to the businesses who said they want to spearhead it um like we said we've had a few conversations with some of the longer standing businesses in town who are ready to kind of take this on um and then they can figure out how it's structured and kind of take things from there karen i really appreciate this effort and it's sparking in my mind when i was first on the board and my first year about 10 years ago i remember going to a couple of whalen business association events and they seem to be fairly well attended and then i don't recall why it fizzled out but i have a sense because it probably lacked the leadership of those few businesses that you're talking about that are willing to spearhead the group i think that's a solid foundation in getting this off the ground again karen thanks for appearing this evening and thanks for working on this idea like doug um probably built as well um in past years events and um wba events my memory was it was a non-profit and you know they had a christmas party every year at least where the board was invited but um it seems to me that it's really important organization for two reasons one um it can be communication among the business owners to full awesome steam if you will and then maybe work together to approach the town on issues that concern the most the most second thing is i think it gives them a sense that they're part of the community you know and you know i persuade them to stick around longer or um um you know obviously help their bottom line in in meeting more people and uh getting ideas to grow their businesses and so i really appreciate you pushing this and thanks to the rest of the committee members yeah of course it's been a it's been very much a a full team effort to the the door-to-door stops and um just trying to pull it together all our resources for how we can reach the most amount of businesses and if there are ideas on your end of the table too of course we welcome them um and yes tom statistically businesses that are part of these types of organizations tend to stay in business longer people also tend to look more favorably on them um consumers um and the shop local efforts can be a lot stronger when you have kind of unified campaigns that can be brought about um by um groups like this thank you i would agree uh we should think about those unified campaigns campaigns because they may be coming back to see us uh talk about a split tax rate or something like that you know but i think uh certainly it's a great idea so thank you for doing this a lot of things i know you guys are working hard on this i think it's terrific thanks chris i'm gonna thank you as well keep us informed um you know of uh your progress i'm sure this you're going to succeed at this this will be terrific you know you and i had a uh conversation about this when you wanted to put it on the agenda and i said absolutely come in and tell us this is also a very exciting endeavor i appreciate the efforts so great and i'm i'm excited to tell the businesses that they have will have an open communication channel with you all as well that really means a lot so thank you thank you thank you thanks karen thank you bye-bye thank you karen came and she said eight o'clock that's my bedtime i said well just you could be on the zoom and wear your pjs i don't know all right i would like to invite uh suchi copal and javier battencourt okay who knows over please i think two candidates for the broadband and cable advisory committee we have three slots open and their information begins on page 55 in the packet so good evening everyone how are you good thanks thank you for joining us um this is a um i'm going to say an infrequent committee that we put together when we need to you know we know our cable licenses um doug levine who's on our the select board here and mr doug in case you don't know he is excuse me also on the committee so that's this one so that we can um it's exciting progress here um what we'd like you to do is just quickly give us you know two minutes you know the reason for wanting to be on the committee then the committee will ask some questions and then we'll probably have a vote to make some appointments does that sound great good would you like to start miss copham miss copham i'm sorry yeah anyone so i'll get started um i'm a valent resident i've lived here for over 30 years uh i'm a professor at boston university um working on a number of different topics you know related with geospatial technology satellites and ai and i also have a business here locally in wayland uh with ai and large language models and text mining and things like that i got interested to serve on this committee because a lot of my work involves on location allocation models and i was curious to see how valent is dealing with all this influx of what's going to come next uh in terms of even things like data centers that are associated with some of these cable companies at this point um i've done a lot of work on data centers so i just want to for me this is like a a topic that is of great interest to me to study and also since i live here to really understand the implications
thank you um javier you want to give us some two-minute intro sure sure so um i've been in in wayland for a little over 30 years as well and i have three children that all went through the wayland school system and we moved to wayland because we wanted our kids to go to public schools and so wayland has been a super great community for us and you know i retired this year and i was looking to volunteer and my background is in technology and the only other industry that i've worked in is film and tv when i lived in in in los angeles um and so you know i thought when i saw this in the post i i thought well it's a sort of a marriage of kind of the technologies that i'm familiar with that i've worked with um and if they needed my help then great you know um any way that i can help i'm happy to do that okay i'm gonna add up now to questions to the board who would like to start well uh i first want to thank you both for your expressive expressions of interest um i was i was i was gonna ask uh ms girl paul about uh spatial analysis and technology infrastructure but as i'm completely ignorant uh about technology i will uh uh spare myself that embarrassment um uh uh no i think uh you know we in wayland are uh really blessed by having folks such as you who are uh specialists in in these complex areas and uh so i have no questions but just want to express my appreciation to you for your willingness to help out thank you i'm going to switch on to this side and have doug speak because doug has actually been on the committee the last round and it's going to be on the committee this time so i think maybe i should have started you know the first place already about that so sure um i'd start off by making a statement and that is i think we're very fortunate this time around to have a number of people answer the call who seem highly qualified with relevant experience i did serve on this committee in the last go around and while it wasn't that many years ago as you both know the landscape has changed tremendously and uh we have a public access channel in whaling called way cam which is entirely dependent on these cable networks the two major networks um providers and the funding stream which apparently year over year is continuing to dry up as more and more people leave um cut the cord so to speak leave their cable subscriptions behind move over to streaming services and the like and so uh another perspective member of this committee named doug stotts uh has asked and the select board agreed to expand the mission statement of this committee so to speak to investigate the potential of broadband and the revenue that that could bring in um and i imagine this is also happening in multiple towns around the commonwealth and outside of massachusetts as well so i just say all of that as um to put out the fact that we're gonna be needing to think outside the box somewhat in order to keep our local um cable access channel thriving uh there are some great volunteers that work for that channel including the executive director who's been there for some time and they will work closely with this committee as will uh the way cam board they're a tremendous resource and so um i i don't think it's too presumptuous of me to say that i i anticipate you'll have the favorable votes today to join our our hallowed committee and i look forward to working alongside you and i don't have any questions uh uh leaving both of you um just want to echo bill whitney's comments that and it is great to see people with such um the trust of resumes uh being willing to um donate their time and their expertise to help the town so we appreciate it very much thank you i'll just reinforce what my colleagues have said thank you very much for applying and i'm going to say the same thing with um that doug said i i'm so impressed with the breadth and the amount of interest we've had in this committee and and the different skill sets and thoughts that are being presented um this time around and really we're going to have a really really good favorable outcome more favorable than the last time so with that um unless either of the candidates have a question for us i think i'm going to ask for a motion happy happy to move that this board approve the appointment of sushi copal and javier bettencourt to the broadband and cable advisory committee with an end date and once the project is complete second okay let me put in the discussion all those in favor say aye all right okay doug could you want to congratulations to both of you on your unanimous appointment uh you will receive some correspondence via email from the town manager's office at which point you should go into the town clerk's office who will swear you in formally to become official members of our committee and they'll also at that time uh give you some information related to training that you need to take as a town volunteer including conflict of interest training and i look forward to serving with you in the months to come do we know when that will start i don't yeah yeah we don't know when this committee will actually start but it'll be probably in a couple months yeah i'm sorry something isn't you're missing something just reach out to one of the town manager's office abby warren that you did and she'll direct a twist and we'll get back to you right away so congratulations and thank you thank you both thank you so much thank you thank you very much good night no i think we have another candidate to interview tonight and it's mr ishba yeah i hope i said that correctly would you want to bring him up so this gentleman has applied for good evening how are you you're on mute sir hi good evening member of the board how are you thank you so this gentleman has applied he would like to be a constable we have only once box constable however it's not uncommon for the town i guess and you would remember this in years past to have um an associate so mr ish how do you say your name sir um ishfak my first name is aunts and last name is ishfak okay mr ishfak has applied to be an associate his information is in our packet on page 61 um i don't know if you were listening when we did the other um appointments but you can just have a couple minutes to give us you know a brief explanation why you're interested in the position i'll open it up to the board for questions and then most likely we'll have them take a vote of course uh so i currently uh i'm sorry um i currently uh serve as a constable in uh stone massachusetts and and i was sworn in today as a constable for city of watertown and i would like to make my services available to the town of valent as well um and uh i operate uh middle sex notary where we handle and uh notarize legal and official documents and uh my work requires um attention to details and uh professionalism and i can um arrange my schedule to travel to wayland and handle the assignment as needed in the gistler to go ahead and share in the program which is uh for our in the next eight years as acientist smith um thank you um i'm here um and i will actually continue to have a nice survey i'm looking at churr um i am uh currently serving as a constable in stil massachusetts and as um the valent is not that far from me so i would like to serve as a in massachusetts and my work already requires you know uh you know notarizing the document and handling it and keeping all the accurate records um and completing everything uh truthful so i would like to serve as a constable in the feeling thank you sir did you just say you were very recently appointed as constable in the town of stowe um i was uh appointed uh in august 26th and i was um sworn in today for a constable in city of uh watertown today and in stowe over the last couple of months have you had occasion to perform any duties as constable for that town i have not um because there's not a lot of work in so massachusetts i'm expanding my services uh around the cities and then my last question is do you plan to seek appointment as constable in other massachusetts municipalities yes and about how many would you want to be invited i'll i think another two of them i believe so
okay thank you no questions thank you um thank you for applying i appreciate that you replied i'm also going to ask um the town manager if he has a question mr mccone i i just would think it would be prudent because there are some service of process i know there's been reforms under post relative to what a constable could do because when i was serving elsewhere in other communities we had to look at what constables were allowed to do um and oftentimes there's input from the chief of police so it may be prudent to um make any action take the seeming subject to approval um by the chief of police because oftentimes if someone's going out to a house they have to wear a certain id and make sure they're not um you know they're doing it insistent with what the new post regulations say and them they'll probably um he'd probably want to have just a background check too okay um i believe the town club um has spoken to him i'm a suspect that oh good god today is right and um um sir you spoke with the the town clerk right there in rayland um i just had a communication with abby over the uh email i have not spoke to anyone but i did send my letter of interest okay do you think there was some conversation there so um all right i'm happy to move um uh the appointment um uh as constable as associate constable for the town of whalen for determining the june 30th 2029 provided um that mr ashvac agrees to confirm with the wayland police department to secure necessary equipment to effective to make him effective in his work unfriendly amendment to meet all requirements pursuant to the post commission right in a successful background check for the police chief right sorry
perfect i can send over the uh background check uh i had then in here in wuburn um police department and uh regarding the post certification um so i'm only going to uh delivering and deserving the paperwork i'm not going to um do any police uh functions or anything like that um but i'm happy to send over all the informations and i have done my uh conflict of interest training too i can send all the document too um happy to take a look into it so i have a motion on the floor is there any further discussion all right are we all set over here okay all those in favor say aye aye aye okay donald you want to do anything you just call me donald
no i said don't um mr ashbach congratulations you were just appointed unanimously as the associate constable in the great town of whalen um you will hear from our town manager's office in the coming days with information surrounding your appointment at that point once you receive that letter via email please come into the town's clerk's office to be sworn in you already indicated you completed your conflict of interest training just make sure everything is squared away with our town clerk and you should be good to go and you're sworn in at that point perfect thank you so much board you good luck to you sir thank you thank you all right i'm going to uh skip the consent and we're going to move this a hearing we have a hearing schedule the ever source grant the location hearing schedule 8 30 um petitioners are a mission to erect to construct one poll and then also to move another poll so we'd like to invite attendance by jacqueline duffy and chris crosby cosby sorry these are both ever source representers are they available yeah i got the she's off she's ever source on a phone call she's on right now on a phone call okay i don't see them anyway
all right so yes this is christine cosby hi christine how are you okay hold on one second i'm going to so i declare the hearing open for the purpose of considering the application for a grant of location from ever source to relocate one poll number four dash 73 and install one poll number four dash 73 on the easterly side of particular road approximately 107 plus or minus speed north of diego west and the following notice was published in the metro west daily news on friday october 16 2026 and that reads the wayland select board will hold a public hearing on monday november 2nd 2026 beginning at 8 30 p.m remotely via zoom on the application from mstar electric company dba ever source energy and verizon new england inc for a grant of location relocating one hole number four dash 73 and installing one poll number four dash 73 dash a on the easterly side particular road approximately 107 plus or minus speed north of yeager web so the petitioners are requesting permission to erect or construct poles to be owned and used in common in common by them and for such other fixtures including entrance and guys as may be necessary to sustain or protect the wires of the line along and across
with ways or ways of said town is described above so the hearing can be attended on zoom or reviewed remotely on wake cam the link has been made available um at the day of the meeting it's also so on the what else is it it's in the packet you can click on that uh copies of the plan are available public review online page at the wayland.ma slash 25-select board so welcome to the to the hearing what we are going to do here is uh i want to make sure everybody knows that formal rules of evidence and other court procedures do not apply to the public hearings before the select board the board expects everyone know including the perspective we can't get any members of the public to comment to present credible and reliable information in a clear and concise manner so we will ask you to explain um the reason ma'am i will open this up to the select board for questions then if there are any members of the public present who would like to make comments they will you'll have an opportunity to respond to those questions and then we will close the hearing and take the matters under advisement and i know you so i think that that kind of sets it up so um miss cosby the floor is yours yes explain okay go ahead okay yes this is this is christine crosby from eversource energy and uh we are requesting uh permission for granted locations for two poles to be installed in constituent road uh one is pole 4 over 73 and the other one is actually one of four over 73 is an existing pole to be relocated and the new pole would be 4 over 73a and the purpose of the those this pole this installation would be for pole 4 over 73 to be relocated to clear access into a driveway that's out there and then the new pole 4 over 73a would provide the new electric service to uh 100 172 164 constituent road
okay i think there's any questions from the board mr beck um good evening i wanted to uh note that one of our whalen residents um observed on page 64 of the packet the document petition of n star electric company dba eversource energy and other companies for joint or identical locations and poles and this resident's concern was a paragraph that i will not read that has to do with commission to lay to maintain underground ladder tables and wires which which this was had a problem with and i concur but if you go to page 65 of the packet we have an order for joint or identical locations for poles which would be the subject possibly of a motion this evening which does not contain that paragraph so we can agree then um um that uh you you do not need permission from our board nor do you intend to intend to um uh dig for underground and place underground lateral cables and wires um in the in that area correct
excuse me
did you have my question i'm a little i'm a little bit confused about i i don't know anything about a page 64. that's in our package just all right so that um the letter call is just a phone maybe apologize for that reference um i did that in part for our board but let's look let's look to the petition that you included in your package okay and that petition has yes no a number on the right hand corner um but then again they all the same number um the document says petition of n star electric company dba eversource energy and other companies for joint or identical locations and for poles do you see that
yes i i have the petition i have the petition all i have is the petitioning paperwork that we submitted to the town the petition the the plan the letter and the order which is the form that would be signed off by the the select board um i i don't have the whole entire packet i'm sorry well i just want to make sure members of the board and for the public that your packet does include a petition that has language looking for permission to lay um laterals and cables wires underground okay but on the next page yes that is correct another page of the packet there's a document that says order for joint by identical locations for polls which does not have that language and it's that order that our board is considering tonight agreed yes okay great that's all i have anybody else have any questions does that answer the overview too yes thank you all right does anyone else have any questions here is there anybody um lobby from the public who is online who wants to make a comment
no one okay all righty um are we clear on this point well i just want to make sure that yeah go ahead question i feel like well i'm just looking at the order for joint or identical locations okay and um references made to uh and sorry like there's not going to be a resource energy verizon the wingman have petition for joint or identical locations and so forth so does that does that reference include the entirety of the preceding petition
see this is the let me say this if i may this might help this is paperwork that was submitted by the petitioners and we have our own uh motion that we make well we have an order a report which is included in the package which they provided right right right well we usually make a motion and then if we want to add it for example to our motion that you know they will notify the dpw when they're going to be in town and because we also have a recommendation in being farther down from the dpw i did speak with um mr patrilli this morning about this and he was not aware of any leaning of the cables or the laterals or digging up the road or any of that and so what his the dpw is on page 66 here says the purpose of this uh recommendation is um they've worked reviewed the request and have determined these proposed polls will not overly impede the use operational management of the towns right away it finds that the polls are located in the man to be consistent with other polls located in the subject vicinity and the wayland police department also finds this proposed work to be consistently utility polls is with the above information that the department of public works recommend select board grant us for the installation of the proposed utility poll so they this to me is where we are what we are doing and i also did mention to them at prior letters it's a sidebar here um we have received also in their recommendation that it says that they are to you know notify the dpw and work with the dpw and the police chief in accordance with the town's rules and regulations rather than just coming to town and has to tell them when they're coming so so this does not include any laterals and then we had um abby reach out this morning bill whitney uh one of the members of the board and and as my colleague mr fay has indicated there's a concern about the last paragraph preceding of the uh signature of mr chiffon or chiffon yeah and so as we understand that the intention is to relocate one poll and create a second poll and not to do underground work is that your understanding uh well the uh the pole that's being relocated is um it's just being moved to clear access to the driveway the brand new pole that's being installed 73a would also include the underground um installation into the private property to service the buildings would it be in the public right-of-way i'm sorry what was i'm sorry what would would the underground work associated with the new poll be in the private on the private property or in the public right-of-way uh a portion of it would be on the public way yeah see the i think the concern uh is that uh uh we have experience with uh roadways being busted up uh work being done steel plates in place for extended periods of time and i think the uh concern uh that has been expressed is that if we're talking about uh a pretty straightforward simple uh construction of the new pole relocation of existing fold uh i i sense the board has no issue with that uh but we frankly don't want to be in a position where we've given carte blanche to have the roadway um affected uh particularly uh uh you know the pavement and so forth you then get into a period of disruption of uh patches and all that and so we're just trying to understand whether the scope of this project would include uh that kind of work in the public right-of-way
yes um the new pole that would be installed would also include the underground lateral to supply the underground electricity to the private property um it's not that much of a distance it's off it's off the roadway it's it's right behind the pole maybe eight feet ten feet you know it's not it's not in the roadway at all but but it's in the right-of-way public right-of-way it's in it yeah it is a small portion is within the right-of-way yes right the sidewalk right there so did the do you know whether the prior owner had underground electric underground cable from the street was just a new a new um um way of providing electricity it's a new installation
both the pole and the underground installation into the private property it's it's all new the location of the underground work yeah so when or a more fulsome description i think so so i'm going to resend what i said earlier when i read the dpd this is what i was looking for the motion that we have is no this this is what they send me we have our own motion and our own motion does not include it says install and maintain one pole any necessary anchors and guys oh to be installed on the public right away right blah blah blah blah blah following the directives of the dpw regarding the timing and execution of the construction to minimize disruption and ensure public safety does not in any way shape or form in my opinion and somebody else should read it to ensure that it does not allow underground wire laterals cables but but why why take a vote on something that has no is no help to the i understand that i'm just saying yeah i read the wrong thing so i want to be corrected that we we usually have our own right what they put in okay now sorry i mean we now back to the discussion we do have a we do have a plan we didn't get a level even in the in the packet on page 66 and it does appear to be um the polls of course on the street side of the right of the way and um so to mr whitney's point i think the more detailed plan would be helpful to our board to appreciate what we're proving here and i think that if it's got any changes to it it does need to go back through the process go through between the w and release to make sure they're comfortable with what's being done this is not my field or anything but is there reason why the wire is not above ground
i know because the underground installation would be be becoming underground off the pole underground to a padma transformer which is a which is a piece of equipment that's it's all underground it's it's not it's not an aerial it's not an overhead um installation is after the benefit of the nearby private property owner or for the benefit of ever source along contituent road um the underground installation is specifically for the the electric service to be provided to 172 contituent road and that underground coming off the pole under the ground would go into the private property at 172 and it would supply electricity to the pad mount transformer and that pad mount transformer is specifically being installed for the customer for the property owner it's for their benefit for the project that they have going on out there
sorry so there there's conduit linking from the pole to the transformer which is on the private property yes it's the christian academy the pole the pole is in the public way the brand new pole would be in the public way and from that at that point that the the overhead wise will come it's air installed down alongside the pole in a standpipe it goes under the ground into private property to then continue the underground feed i'm sorry what i'm sorry the transformer is not in the right of way it's on the private property no no no i i have i got an easement from the property owner for the the transformer the transformer yes it's on the it's on private property and i already i already obtained an easement for that from the property owner
madam chair i'd suggest we continue the hearing and ask every source if they could give us a plan to lineagate uh the uh the underground work in the right of way it sounds pretty straightforward to me but i think it'd be helpful too right would you um i want to make that as a motion no just a request you can just request it okay um miss cosby i think that we have an us i'm sure you can appreciate the significant questions here we want to make sure we get this done accurately um and so i think i'm probably going to recommend that we continue speak with the board that we continue this hearing and i think that what we probably should do to help expedite this let's give you perhaps we could have some input from the individual board members of what we would like to see i know we had asked i'm sorry i'm sorry i lost everyone it would be helpful and i'm happy to meet you or someone else down there maybe another member of the board so we can appreciate exactly what the game plan is and did you want to say we need something delineating the underground well just i think it'd be helpful to have a uh a plan and maybe a section or uh whatever's appropriate to just sort of fully explain yeah we can do that i can i can have a eversource survey um prepare a plan to also show the underground installation that'd be great okay i need something and i will i will also i will also submit a new paperwork to go along with it you know a petitioning document to go along with it to explain that this is an underground installation and not an overhead installation for that conduit
and just affirmation they're not going to dig up the road and mind the board there already are metal plates there while soon as it's coming up it appears to be sidewalk and east of the sidewalk based on this this plan we haven't unpacked it but so could they just yeah go ahead mr i'll say what i would appreciate confirmation that we don't need to further dig up the road it sounds like the work will be at the edge of the right of way moving east thank you all right do you have all that do you have
could you hear everything's cause we yes um i i is that what you want me to do do you want me to have a uh a new plan prepared from eversource survey to show the underground installation from that new pole that would be installed you know on this overhead petition um and i'll also prepare another document you know ease a petition document that will that'll be specifically for underground the conduit uh is that is that what's acceptable for you not quite no i'm trying to make sure we don't have to do this again yes we would like that but we also have one other request go ahead could you make sure that the new plan you're going to provide shows hold on a second can i can i make sure what the new plan what uh affirms that there's no need to dig up the roadway again or put in steel plates again the work is on the west edge of the right of way and proceeds east it doesn't go back into the road oh yeah i i i don't think that's that's the case at all it there won't be any i don't i really don't believe that there's going to be any kind of digging up in the road or anything if anything the plan is just going to be to show the location of where that conduit is and in in relation to the pole and to the private property thank you and duddy also good great i am too thank you so much so now i have to say i want my shot here
then i'm continuing the hearing i'm going to move to close the hearing we've already deliberated and then we are continuing this until you provide us with the additional information thank you for your time and we will see you again thank you ms crosby okay and and then then abby will get back to me as far as a continuation date yes as soon as we get the paper oh okay and we'll set up a date how's that sound oh that's great okay thank you very much thanks for your time thank you all right thank you thank you i'm going to move back to consent mr craig happy to move the consent calendar for november 2nd 2026. second okay okay any further discussion otherwise let's have all those in favor say aye aye so it's four zero um and then children mr reynolds has stepped out okay now we're going to move to
68 of the packet so we have these policies that are actually fairly recent that we've adopted that there's edits to both above the first one is um outdoor area food and alcohol and it's a number 14 i believe is what we want to look at number one number 14 um which basically this is the signature requirement for the signage requirement that the chief had mentioned to us last week that he would like to have implemented on all the outdoor um any areas anybody has any comments on this or wants any edits because eight and a half by 11 figure i think it is because it's it's not that many words right now okay
now are there any is curious i'm coming up to a dining policy it's 68 number 14.
no questions i'm really the same okay any other comments are you also having a size thank you sure okay um no one has any other edits to this i'm just going to take a motion and i think what we're doing here is we call it revise or we call it amend because they've seen revise this is a policy that we put into place in uh october 21st 2024 now we're going to revise it right it doesn't matter in the word all right happy to move happy with this board uh through revisions to the policy entitled policy procedures and rules for the expansion of outdoor areas of food and alcohol service as indicated in our packing thank you any further discussion all right i'll go some favor say hi all right all right motion passes that's five zero and on page 72 this is a social media policy this was adopted by the board or excuse me april 22nd 2025 mr fame had an um edit here and find the page page 77 77 number 16 did you want to speak to it sure we went back and forth on this issue there was some concern about endorsing candidates or positions on ballot questions whatever so um this language um doesn't really change the policy significantly but it does give um uh the option of the town manager to um authorize you know language online social media if appropriate so any questions or comments on this i think it's a very intelligent and extremely smart because it was too restrictive previously
we're good all right let's have a motion please happy to move revisions uh happy to move modification of the policy social media social media policy
as indicated in our package second okay anything from a discussion hi although some famous say hi motion passes five zero see i'm so excited i got things going oh my favorite part of the night now town manager's report no more guests we're good all right um thank you madam chair a couple of quick items um as some you may know i'll be posting you may have seen the detours the sherman's bridge rehabilitation project is ongoing with between the town of railing and sudbury um it start it will start on monday november 9th um and it will be fully closed to all traffic for the duration of construction no access to the bridge will be permitted it's expected to take approximately 12 weeks uh with substantial completion and reopening of the bridge anticipated by february 1 2027 weather and other conditions um permitting you can go to the project website if you so choose to get updates it can be found on the town of sudbury website under the sherman's bridge
if you search for sherman's bridge my town manager office hours will be on monday november 9th 5 30 to 6 30 in the select board meeting room here in town hall for those who didn't see it on either the web page or our social media the 2026 annual report is now available on the town website we do not yet have hard copies we reply um the annual town report highlights town departments boards and committees their accomplishments for the fiscal year running july 1 2025 through june 30th 2026. also we have an update from mr turner on veterans day ceremonies they will be held here at the whalen veterans memorial outside the town building on november 11th they will commence at 11 a.m there will be additional information on the town's website we're getting updates regularly i know representative winski will be here i've heard from senator elbrich that we cannot be making we cannot make it um along with veterans day there is a photo exhibit currently honoring whalen's veterans it's over at the community center they have photos honoring whalen's veterans throughout the building photos of your neighbors and other residents and you can learn how they serve in details of their service just quick recap since our last meeting um i had the good fortune to spend some time with some of my staff and volunteered one afternoon at the sedbury food pantry which is located here in whalen uh our office right now is putting together a food drive the town manager's office and uh we had such a good time working with the folks over there meeting those people who needed um some of the food and i'm telling you it's an excellent operation i've worked at other shelters and food pantries before and you know i spoke to john thomas and his staff over there it's just incredible how streamlined it is so i'm going to try and put a challenge out to some of my other departments to spend some more time over there um i attended the massworks award where we were presented the massworks uh grant for the 495 000 for the expansion of the capacity for mbta wastewater at town center and i was fortunate to get the ear of secretary pally of the executive office of economic development and i said it was great that they gave us this grant and we've worked with them about putting the mbta communities overlay in that area but we could really use some assistance and you know moving this along to further the goals of the administration they put me in touch with the staff i've already reached out to jesse burkan over at um town center and we're trying to get a meeting together with their staff to see what we can do about um getting some housing over there i also attended the mma legislative breakfast last week so i went out and met with some legislators listening to their proposed plans for the upcoming uh legislative session and talk about the needs for wayland representative linsky was there as well as some other metro west legislators we also had a meeting with state 9-1-1 to ensure that we're going to get the necessary funding um to open the regional dispatch next july mr keveney and uh acting chief hebert were there as well so it was a productive meeting and then we had a meeting of the west suburban veterans district and we went over our financial planning um and then we also had individual meetings as i indicated before with our financial planning groups the subgroup with just the schools and with the larger groups so we've been quite busy the last couple of weeks as we go into budget season i've circulated the capital budget to all of my staff so they're looking at it
our unfortunately our uh incoming assistant town manager uh had to delay he is officially starting next monday however he may be able to show up later on this week and i also wanted to remind folks that uh again tomorrow is election day uh get out and do your civic duty polls are open from 7 a.m to 8 p.m that's all i have thank you very much does anyone have any follow-up questions or comments there i'm going to move right on to the minutes we're just having one set of minutes this is from october truth and it's on page 82 in the packet i'm happy to move approval with uh the changes
okay does anybody have any edits there's two edits
change the word wood to the will so the terrain will be holding
and then you make the changes and then on a18
we can change the order the way w e e i g h to evaluate anybody else have anything okay i have something on a 15 when we see representation of those terms oh so join the meaning of person describe the purpose of the request i think that just needs just a little bit more information because that's the whole purpose of this item 815 i think we just need a little more like describe where and the what of their uh outdoor uh alcoholic beverage consumption area just including just to spread more on that um you may and i think that's all i have done anything good okay then um how about this all those in favor of these minutes as amended say aye please all right motion passes 5-0 any comments on the correspondence i take that as a non-review report reports of concerns
anybody want to stop it mr rills i'm all set thank you matter term okay this is where tom says i have 21 no way no he's just kidding go ahead oh yeah do you like do you think that would be good to turn mr 21 good yeah good i just have one item oh yes but it's it's an important item okay there's an article a few days in the globe on the use of ai by municipalities and um there's an interesting article and i was thinking when we were interviewing these fine individuals to be on it on the cable committee whether we might want to consider broadening the uh go to the charge or maybe after they're done see where they might be willing to work with our tech people to evaluate how we can be more efficient in this in this building and even with the schools to provide services and help reduce to discuss the town so you put that down there and someone that's like way far like we're doing on the right there's a microphone but there's some left there's some left there
okay um mr biff uh there were two addenda issued um uh two respondents or people expressing interest in the rfp the 212 titular road uh the uh submissions are due on the 12th of this month so we're looking forward to uh hope mixing envelopes then so you have two already yeah we don't have any list yet we have uh we have two
potential respondents who posed a series of questions to which we have replied so wonderful i have um a few but i'm so excited that i'm running early i might not tell you anything so you've got to laugh at the first one so after the last hearing where we had a discussion about the double polls and then i started um i've written had abby right back that we would like you know a strategy of the double polls they requested and meaning within which i reported the last time and then michael went with as well and i thought that i thought it went pretty well um it's very interesting to let you know that uh i've asked them to come ever source and verizon to come before it's tenderly and later this month to speak to us but a couple interesting things is that the polls of course are shared ever sources on the top and then that anyone else uses including the town the town also utilizes these polls were a third party on and the bottom is verizon and so when you want to have a whole new world it's one by one by one and when we get to the bottom guy which is verizon they take the polls out um i did ask for them when they come back to give us a bit of i'd like to get a little handle on the scope of the situation and um so i've asked for the total number of polls in wayland but they did show us a chart that we have 95 double polls in wayland and i also asked for them to see if i get all this okay but i asked um for the number of double polls that have been removed from wayland in the last 12 to 18 months and the number that are scheduled for the next 12 to 18 months because i don't want just a list we would like to have some activity and then i also thanks to chris's wonderful pictures was able to say and in particular we'd like to know what the immediate strategy is on these two polls which i forgot the names it's 63 something and something else but anyway i did so we'll see what happens i tried well not so sure i'm going to be that successful of it but i'm trying how's that sound excellent that's great yeah thanks for following up yeah thank you so i went with um mr levine to the mural opening uh dedication that you were going to speak to that did you want to go back that's a long time ago um being able to speak to it i have one thought on it but we had a nice turnout outside the community pool on a beautiful day uh with some moving speakers uh and a very long effort to raise money from the beautiful mural that now exists there in lieu of the two uh especially eight film incidents that occurred on that that same space so it's a real wayland success story um and the artist uh appeared as well who is a wayland high school grad and she she spoke eloquently about her efforts on the mural and ideas and the color scheme and then the committee was there as well that pulled this all together and uh it's wonderful it was a nice event i highly um encourage everyone to go by and see the mural and it's interesting because it started around one wall that didn't kind of move around around the building and the artist said and this is the key thing take away from everyone when you face the building over over here on the far right is like a folder and that's how she positioned it so if you want to get see the whole thing all at once go stand by the boulder or when you drive up or you know kind of back make sure you're parked there to look at it the colors are subtle the message is lovely i just want to mention that mention the focal point of it was very exciting um we have a full agenda next week but one of the big things is we will be having the tax review cap assessors will come in but also having i'm going to confirm but i have the um the chair of sips is coming in to talk about the capital report uh they have issued it i think it was around october 15 i delayed to the middle of november because i had members out but i think they'll all be here next time and hopefully they will come in and talk about it and we should close your question and then bill about the capital adjustments to the capital spend plan i have that on the list and then um we've talked a little bit tonight about some uh costs that are increasing and one of them is the possibility of many and one of them is the cost of energy and it's going up and i have to tell you there was an article in the paper about things brockton has done installing batteries but more importantly i want to mention that you get that little report card on your email every week about your energy consumption and fascinating to me i'm spending the money on electronics and electronics right so i went i went to the cape a couple days i disconnected right i made my pc right came back the next week i saved five dollars in electricity so i'm thinking they want to this might be something we might want to look into as a town if we were to disconnect for example our computers every weekend vacations are over there you know just it's like my brother does that he has that on the search i'm just throwing it out they call it vampire stuff you know you leave chargers plugged in like what things that don't need to be in yes that's that's my point so i just want to throw that out you know me my little ideas and with that i will take a motion to adjourn at 9 20. at 9 20. please please make note major full agenda and you're 20 minutes early no done impressive can i get it since say second the move thank you thank you all those in favor say aye aye thank you very much for your time everyone