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October 7, 2026 – Historical Commission – Video & Transcript

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October 7, 2026 - Historical Commission

 
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Welcome to the Wayland Historical Commission meeting for October 7, 2026. This meeting is both in-person and by remote access. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WCAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Personal to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in-person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. Anyone may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found in the 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 here at the meeting location in-person or by remote access as applicable. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. Does everyone here have a copy of the agenda? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. My name is Rick Conard and I'm the acting chair for this meeting. I'm calling the meeting to order at 11-103. Can everyone please introduce themselves? Tonya Largy. Hey Gardner-Westcott. Brad Carver. Sherry Anne Bryant. And do we have anyone on remote? No, there's nobody. Okay. Do we have a volunteer to take minutes for this meeting? We already know I'm not good at it. I'm not very good at it. I can't really take minutes and chair the meeting at the same time. Let me pull up something I can write on. I think that is a yes. That's a yes. That's a yes. That's a yes, Rick. Oh, we were waiting on you, Brad. Yeah. Can everyone hear? Okay. I'll try to speak loudly. If at any time you cannot hear, please let me know. Please raise your hand. Do we have any public comment? Do we have any public comment? Do we have any public comment? Okay. Review of minutes of our last meetings. Okay. Does everyone? Well, I will say that the last meeting minutes are in the first draft and they are not completed. So. Okay. So we have the August 17th meeting minutes that we did get to at our last meeting. And you should have a copy that has brown insertions on page two. Is that the right version? That's the right version that I just ran a few minutes ago. That's the most up to date, I believe. I think all the corrections are in this that I've received from folks. The ones in orange are the latest ones from K, which are not just spelling errors I had made, but it's some actual correction wording of sentences. So it's in the orange in the copies. You'll see it on the second page. There's several of those and one at the top of the third page, one at the bottom of the third page. And I think that's it.
And Amanda just joined us. Amanda, do you want to introduce yourself? I am Amanda Chacho. And do you have a copy of the minutes that we have? I don't have a copy of the minutes. I did have the agenda, but I... There. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. What is this? I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. It kind of went down. Drew, you were right at the first time. There's this. There's this thing for a little... Yeah, now these... There is this from the back. Oops. There's... There's... There's... There's... I know. I don't like these. I sit on the edge of this chair because... It's not much better. It's not much better. It's softer. Okay. Does anyone have any further comments on the August 17th minutes? I had previously provided some comments and those I see are incorporated. Did you get a... Under cell tower antenna, Rick, did you get a copy of the report? Yes. Because I see I should have gotten an email copy. Yes. I did send you a copy by email. Okay. I'll have to go look for it. Yeah. On the town email or what? On... I believe it was town email. Okay. That would be great. And my recollection is that the State Archaeologist Mass Historical Commission had signed off on on the project indicating no significant impact or words to that effect on historical or cultural resources. Well, I'll make a motion that we accept the August 17th minutes as corrected and added to. Okay. I guess we need to vote on this. I'm in favor. Sonia? Yes. Kay? Yes. Right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Now I need to point out, since we don't have any members on Zoom, we don't have to do it individually. It's only when we have people on Zoom. Okay. Thank you. So then, Sherianne, if you can provide me with a copy of the minutes that incorporates all of the changes, I can send that to... Okay. ...the town clerk. That would be great. ...and to Abby, and they can post it on the town website. Next on the agenda is the review of the Weyland Festival. Last weekend, Steve Angelini was pleased that he was able to exhibit his diorama. He said nothing really got damaged, either in transit or when it was on display. I think there was one little figure that he wasn't sure whether it got misplaced or taken, but it's not significant. And he was delighted to be able to exhibit it, and if we do this again next year, he still has it. He's interested in bringing it again. It was very, very popular. Particularly with children. Yes. And it's always difficult to interest children in history, so this was quite popular. And Kay took some photos, and did you take any photos? I didn't. I didn't. Okay. I think Bonnie Gossels took a picture, and I took a few pictures of kids at the exhibits. I hope that we'll be able to put some of those pictures on our website. Good idea. Although, I will say, Steve said within the first half hour, he was getting pretty hoarse, and he was talking to adults then, more than children. The children were more later in the afternoon, but I have some delightful pictures of kids in there. One of them is looking at it very pensively, and other ones are just peeking everywhere, and so, yeah, it's really cool. But Kay's idea was putting marbles in the sandbox and having them sifted out. I got a kick out of watching those little kids. I'm trying to do that. I forgot that little kids like to dig in the sand. Sometimes I thought they were more interested in digging in the sand than finding anything. How many marbles did you lose? Well, when we had someone who volunteered to help at the table wasn't told that they only get one marble each, she said two children walked off with quite a few marbles. I don't know why. So I'm estimating that it's about 70 kids minimum that we had, because actually we had 77 marbles were taken. So I took it down to 70. That was pretty popular. In previous years we had discussed, I think, Amanda, you suggested getting like plastic points or something, but we thought there might be too confusing with real points. We had talked about that before, using replicas that are made of, you know. And I looked into it and it's not inexpensive. Right. That's the problem. But for $5, I got a hundred marbles. So I figured that was worth it. And I think for this age group, it makes sense. Yes. You know. And they were happy with the marbles. And, you know, only one child came back and tried to get more marbles.
And we had beautiful weather. Very nice weather. It wasn't too windy. We had weights on everything. So I don't think. I think we need to give a shout out to Katherine Brunner. Yes. For giving us the tent. Yes. The tables for the two spots. Two spots. And we ended up using both tables. We had, because Steve put his unsaw horses, which I was concerned about. I was afraid they would not be stable enough. Somebody would knock into the table accidentally, but it worked out very well. They were very, I guess they have clips on the end that kind of go up a little bit to hold them. So that made more sense. Well, I hope he comes back next year because that brought a lot of people to our tables. Unfortunately, I don't think we did as many handouts as we did the first year. And so I guess that's what we have to work on next year is getting out there and actually handing them out to people, not waiting behind the table until somebody walks up to us would be helpful. Certainly we did that with the archeology dig. I went out and just, anytime I saw a group with little kids, I asked them if they wanted to come dig in the sand. And I said archeology because I knew the parents would know what that was. And actually that did encourage them to come. I don't think they were so sure about it at first. Some of them were very young. Some of them were very young. Yeah. And they had parents helping them. It was so funny. They would get the cif so full, you could hardly lift, they could hardly lift it up. So then we would just dump it over here. Right. And then say, oh, unfortunately, archeologists don't find anything the first time either. So let's try again. And they would start digging in the pile that they already dug down knowing there was no marble, no prize in it. Well, that was good to tell them that. Carcheologists do that too. That's a lot of times we don't find things. So Amanda, thank you for coming at the end. Oh, you were such a blessing. Such a blessing. We can put this in the lab after the meeting if you... Yes. And I hope we have time. I have a strict time schedule, but I have the stuff to return to the labs. Okay. I had a piece of paper to collect names of people. I did get two names. One was a retired transportation engineer who I talked to at length. Another lady was a member or officer in the New England Mountain Bike Association. She seemed to be interested in the rail trail. I don't know if that's a possibility for our, if we do brush clearing next year, but... Okay. Right. I asked folks if they had already been on the rail trail, and almost everybody among the adults said yes. Mm-hmm. Particularly from the middle of town to Weston, because it's hard paved. Or biked. You know, I said, have you walked it? And somebody said, no, but I've biked it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I'm glad to see folks. And so I made a point in talking about the layout of emphasizing our railroad interpretive site that what we're hoping, what we've done, and they could see the pictures, the photographs of the turntable excavation already, and that we were hoping to go further with that. It gets the word out for people to realize there's more there than just the depot. You all say, oh, I've been to the depot, but oh, I haven't seen that, you know, I haven't seen any of this stuff. A lot of people have walked past the turntable foundation and didn't know what it was, but by seeing the diorama, they could better understand what it was. And how it works. Right. How it worked. We had two women come to the historical society asking specifically for the round table pit and so forth, and they had walked it and hadn't seen it. So I sent them back past the depot, and I didn't hear from them again, so hopefully they found it. I also wanted to point out that Steve upgraded the diorama for us that he did not have the Grathard House Museum on it previously. Oh. And he put it on, and it was a pretty good record. It didn't have the addition on it, which would have been there when the train went through, but that's all right. He did a really good job of putting the house in, so I was pleased with that. Didn't many people look at the future signs that we had? The posters? Well, you know, the sheets of paper. The handouts? The sheets of paper that printed out with the signs will look like. Yeah. I had a notebook. You put it in a notebook, yeah. I had also a poster showing the locations of the signs that will be installed in this current phase of work. Yeah. A lot of people looked at those. Mm-hmm. Okay. If there are no other comments, moving on to Wayland 250th. Is there anything new? I don't know. I can't talk now because I'm in a meeting. Okay. As far as the 250th, I think we're going to, we did the Liberty tree plant on the Millen law office screen. And town manager was there. Tom Fade from the select board was there. It was in the paper. And what? And it was in the paper. And it was in the paper. Okay. So that was the last thing we did for the 250th. I know we have another meeting that hasn't been decided on date what yet, sort of as a closing. I will say that Sherry Ann's coloring book with the history of Wayland in it was very popular. And they took quite a few. I think they handed out a lot. I think the rest are going to the historical society, I think, since the rev 250 will be disbanded shortly. And I think that's the last I have heard on it. I think they gave away a lot of t-shirts, too. Oh, that's, thank you for reminding me. They, those t-shirts were free with a donation. And that worked out really well. I think I sent out a notice, email, and I don't remember it was over. Do you remember how much it was, Sherry Ann? No, I don't. I'm going to have to look it up and see what it was. Let's see, I didn't do it under that email. You could send it out under my regular email. So, I should have had that ready for you. If you want to talk about something else while I look it up. Well, the proceeds from the t-shirts, the 250th, is giving to our commission for the, to ward the historical marker for Conjunctual Goldfield. That's cool. So, that has really boosted what we already had from the two talks that we had sponsored. And we, the theater, the history of play shows. We have enough to pay the, um, artist, I think. The design. To, um. So, it's over 2,000. To design, uh, a sign for the, uh. I mentioned it again to Catherine Brenna. Um, she's still in favor of it. But I don't think she's talked to the rec commission at all about it. And, uh, Mary Antis did ask, um, if there was a possibility of putting them the same thing free with a donation at the historical society. And we have not asked yet to see whether that's a possibility. But, of course, she wants to get rid of the t-shirts. She doesn't want to have to harvest them or anything. You know, I, I got one of those t-shirts. And then Tim came the next day. And he thought I'd got it from him. It was the same size. So, I said, what happened to my t-shirt? He says, Mom, I thought that was for me. Well, you know, we can get another one for a donation. Yeah. Well, he brought it back. Well, moving on, uh, the next item is the cemetery. Right. Yep. Um, on the cemetery project, but we, uh, to back up a little bit, there were four or five bidders who pulled the, uh, plans and specifications. Uh, only one bid it. Um, the one bidder was Cali Corporation. It's C-A-L-I. Um, and what's interesting about the bid process is they submit their technical qualifications, but until we review those technical qualifications to get back to them, we don't know the price. So, I, we don't have a price. Um, so we have, uh, Cali Corp. They have provided a list of references. I can, uh, I can pass these out. Do they, do they know that they, they are the only ones that. I doubt it. I doubt they, I doubt they know that. They're located in Natick. Right. I did not make. Yes, they know now if they're listening. Oh, the three of you can share two. I apologize. Um, but we, um, Sherry, I'm Sherry, Sherry. And remember, last time, uh, we had three bidders and we, uh, had a form prepared. Actually, Ann prepared a nice form for evaluating the three bidders. Um, I sent that form to Rick and I, I drafted a few additional questions, but they actually have, uh, quite a bit of experience. Um, including some projects that looked like they were quite large. Um, including, including one in the town of Weston, um, in 2020. And as I understand, Rick is actually meeting with some people from Weston tomorrow. Um, so I think that what we need to do, my suggestion is that, um, you know, I'm, I'm willing to do it. Uh, Rick, I don't know if you are, uh, in Sherry, Ann, or if you're still interested, we can carve up the, uh, the list of references. Um, give them a call and see what, uh, see what kind of responses we get. Once we report back, um, on the list of references, I guess, at that point, then we can get the price. And at this point, we don't know what the price is, but Cali was the one bidder that actually came to the walkthrough. Uh, you know, they, they did seem interested in the project. Um, and based on the short amount of information we have on the reference form, they certainly have done a number of, uh, substantial projects. So they didn't get the first time. They did not. Okay. They did not. They did not. And, and what happens if we only get one bid? Um, well, it's up to us whether we want to accept it. Um, the remaining funds are $175,000. I checked with Cali yesterday, uh, of the original bid of $239,000. And the question in my mind is, you know, what happens if the bid comes in at $200,000? Um, are we permitted to go back? Uh, assuming we're, we're satisfied with Cali. Can we go back to Cali and ask, uh, you know, we would like to delete these items from the bid to bring it down to $200,000 or $175,000. I don't know the answer. Otherwise we would need to go to the town and get more funds. So I just want to point out that, um, CPA funding deadline is November 13th. So you need to know sooner rather than later. Yeah. I would, what I'd like to do is have all these references checked within the next five, six days and get back to, uh, Kaylin and then, um, um, or Jaylin rather. Um, and you know, start that process. So at this point, I mean, we have a bid in, we just don't know. Uh, and the bidder seems qualified. Um, but we just don't know what, uh, what bidder's price is. So. We need to work with Jaylin on that. The technical proposal that they submitted was 10 pages and it was really bare bones. It was. They checked the boxes and they signed, they didn't provide any real narrative, any, um, qualifications of the people that would be doing the work. Um, so the, um, evaluation criteria that, uh, Jaylin sent, it will be difficult to, um, for example, compliance with state law. I mean, there's no information in the technical proposal that enables reviewers to evaluate that. I, I talked briefly with Jaylin this morning. Uh, she, I guess it was going to be one of the reviewers where she has already started doing the review process. We might want to set up a meeting sooner rather than later to make sure that if we check references, we don't cross paths. Um, uh, we might be able to, um, ask Callie to come in for an interview and try to get some more information from them during the interview process. That would enable us to better complete the evaluation checklist. I don't know. What do you think, Brad? And did you go through this and. No, no, we didn't. Uh, and guys, you probably didn't get it. Yeah. I sent it right before it came to me, but, and it prepared a form, which was. We did agree. Okay. Yeah. And that was, that was, and it was a numeric formulation. So you check various boxes, give the bitter certain number of points for X, Y, or Z. And then you kind of add up the points here. There's only one bitter. So the points don't, they matter. Um, but I think that the, the questions, uh, are important to ask the references, but when we did it the first time around myself, Sherry and, and just, uh, divided up the references. Um, and then we compared notes and, and then at this meeting, uh, you know, we chose, we chose epic based on the, basically based on the references, uh, that we obtained. But I don't remember in the bid documents that there was any real detail on compliance with state law, those sorts of things. I think they just check it off and say, yes, we do comply with state laws. Uh, and I haven't been in the bar. I haven't, you know, I haven't been convicted of any crime. Uh, they just check those off. Um, so I can, I did talk to Jalen yesterday. I can ask her whether, uh, she thinks that's advisable to, to bring them in. We didn't do it last time, but I can ask her if she thinks that's advisable. Yeah. Well, as you say, with only one bitter, the ranking may not be all that important, but as long as we determine that they're qualified and, uh, we check the references. Right. Right. So I guess that the case point about, uh, CPA funding, it's November 13th. Our next meeting is, would be the beginning of November. And I assume we need a vote to, if we were to accept Cali, we'd have to vote on that, obviously. If we needed to go back for more funds. Right. Uh, or even if we don't go back for more funds just to approve the use of Cali, I assume that we'd have to vote on that. I don't think you have to go back to CPC for that. No, I'm talking about us. Yeah. Yeah. For instance, if we, if we, if we, if we voted on it. Yeah. We need to vote. Seeing that they're the only ones that it. I don't feel I have enough. Yeah. Something about. Okay. I'd rather have the references to see. But I would trust what I'm saying is we would do one that said, like, you know, I trust with Brad's after, after you check the references that you felt good about it. Yeah. I think we still need to have a vote on it. I would think. Well, we will have another meeting before the deadline for the CPC. Right. I'm not, I'm not sure. I've never applied for a CPC. I guess we didn't get it for this time, but I don't remember what the process is in terms of getting an application. And for instance, we needed $25,000 from, from CPC. Well, I'm not sure what's involved. Think of Stonebridge. We went back, what, three, four times. And the last time it wasn't even us. It was somebody from the community did it. Right. So, if it turns out to be more expensive than anticipated, you can go back and try and, you know, it'll go on the warrant for the town to vote on whether or not to give us more funds. Right. But then does it, would that hold up the work because we're waiting to see if the town approves the additional funds? Well, you can make arrangements to do it for the, for what being funding that we have, which may mean a reduction of things that they're going to do. If they say, well, we can't do all that for less than 200,000, and we said, we only have 175, and they'll say, okay, these, this project, cleaning the stones, won't get done. And maybe the straightening of a, of markers won't get done, but the repairs of the broken ones will get done. Yeah, that's what Brad suggested. And then, if we want to continue to pick up those things they discarded because they weren't going to get paid enough for it, we can go back to the town and ask for more money. But that puts it two years out. Because, remember, they're voting for the next fiscal year. We'd have to wait until town meeting to make sure. Well, that's what I'm saying. Right. And then that may be a whole new contract with the firm to cover the additional work. And you could perhaps do it by change order. I'd have to talk to town council. You could probably do it by a change order for additional work, but I'm not sure about that. Well, I guess we should, I'm willing to call references. Rick, I don't know if you're, Sherry, and I don't know if you're still interested. There are, I think there's one, I think there are about six references, I believe. I don't know. Okay, you don't. Okay. Okay. Well, I can, Rick, if you're interested, I can, we carve up a list between the two of us. There's one. I will be talking to someone from the Western Historical Commission tomorrow. But the reference provided was the director of the Western DPW. So I don't know whether those two departments and boards were both involved or, but I can, I can, I can take on Western either way. Okay. Well, even if, after talking to him and the commission and he says, no, you really need to talk to the DPW, at least you've got two opinions from Western on what they thought. There are six, six references. Could you call three and I can call three? Would that work for you? Okay. Okay. I could do Newton. Am I including Sherry Ann in this? I can't. You can't do it. Okay. I can't do it. Okay. It's fine. Just tell me either. What's Jay and I do? Are you doing these references? I think she's expecting us to do that. I'll, I'll talk to Jay today or tomorrow. So you're doing Newton and Wesson, Rick? I don't know. Yeah, I guess I could do Oxford also. One of them, the second one is the city of Boston. That goes back to 2018. Um, I'm not sure that we necessarily need to go back that far. Well, the plan make a suggestion is that, um, since it was so long ago, it'd be interesting to be sure that there were buildup. Well, and Newton was 2014. Good point. Well, I'll tell you what, I will Rick, if you do those two, I'll call the remaining one. Uh, so I'll do Weston and Newton then? Yeah, and I'll do the remaining one. Sorry. And the first time around, we had a couple questions, key questions we wanted to ask. We did. And I have, I sent Rick the, uh, I sent Rick the form that we use. Uh, and I, I drafted some additional questions. And so I think if we, uh, use that, those same evaluation criteria, I think that'll, that'll cover what we need. And I'll coordinate with Jaylin to find out what we need to do in order to obtain the price, uh, to make sure we get that. Cause that's obviously critical. Bye. So that's the update on the, uh, cemetery. It's good that we got a bid. I frankly didn't think we were going to get one. So, um, we waited at the, uh, pre-bid conference and it was like five minutes after the hour. And we were just about ready to give up. And, uh, somebody showed up. Right. It was, uh, someone for an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're taking which ones? Uh, I am taking, uh, city of Boston, city of Chelsea, town of barks, Foxborough, and town of Linfield. Uh, Foxborough. Oh, I thought Rick was doing Fox. Which ones are you doing, Rick? We're doing, uh, Weston and Newton. Only. Okay. And the last one. Uh, Linfield. Lin. You might want to prioritize them by the year doing the latest. It might be easier getting information from more recent work. Right. That's a good idea. No. We do know staff changes from 2014, 2018. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know Amanda has a time deadline. Yeah. So we should move the meeting along. Thank you. Uh, house plaques. Uh, Brad. Uh, this will really be quick. I have nothing to report. So all three, the last three, I, all the plaques have all been made and sent and it might be installed by now, but no. Did anybody ask about them at the festival? Ask about house plaques? No. Um, I do have a question though. Did you send, um, you were encouraging one of the applicants to send you how they wrote up because you, so. Yeah. I think I sent that around everybody. Did you? Yeah. I couldn't remember whether that was sent or not. Yeah. I did send that around. I also sent around an updated list of, uh, all the house plaques of information. So. Yep. You can't lose macros. You can't lose AI. Yeah. I guess. By a good way. What were the dates on the three? AI. Oh, AI. I said that recently. The dates of the houses? Mm-hmm. I was curious. I don't remember. I mean, one of them. I wouldn't use AI. AI on dates is not good. No, that's not what I, that's not. No, one of them, one of them was, uh, in the 20th century, it was like 1920. Uh-huh. The others were in the 1800s. One was like 1894. The other might've been 1880, so somewhere in that range. Not sure. But it's on the, it's on the list that I, I, I did prepare a new list of all the plaques that have been issued. No, but I would, I would not encourage them to use AI as a resource for finding out how the house is because AI cannot be trusted on dates, especially dates. Let me put it that way. Yeah. Is that something that we should put in our list of guidelines now that AI is becoming so prevalent? I mean, I, I don't think there's an issue with using AI as a starting point. It would probably give you, not the be all end all, but it would probably give you guidance. I would want to verify. Sure. Of course. Everything has to be verified. Of course. That's the way. Document. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Do we have instructions on how to verify? Set a step by step to the... Um, I relied on Kay a lot for that. But maybe we should for the future, you know, like go to the town hall, speak to the, I don't know, just a step by step. Well, it kind of varies because one of the applicants I know, uh, it had been verified by Gretchen a number of years ago and she had already done all the work. So it was already done. Yeah. That's a macros. Right. And other, other people, it's not as clear. So there's, in other words, there's not one, one template for all houses. It's a little bit different for each one. Yeah. And I will say Gretchen has been updating a lot of the macros once she's done that she's found other information since then. Oh, cool. And I believe Kate said that the assessor's records are now... They are now on site. Um, it goes from 1827 to 1939. They're not all on, but... 1837? 1827 to 1939. The problem with that is there are no street addresses because there was no house numbers put on until 1955. And that's on, um... An archive.org, uh, under, uh, Wayland Assessors. If you type in Wayland Assessors, you get all of them and then you can filter it by years. Okay. So if you have a name from a deed, you can go in and be sure that they're still paying, they're paying money on that, um, property. But that's, that's all you can do. You, you don't know whether you sold that property and moved to another house and so forth. How accurate are the real estate listings? Found where? Like if a house is for sale. I don't know. I don't, I've never accessed those. You mean you've ever gone to an open house kind of and got a listing sheet? Um, not recently, no. I'm just nosy that way then. Okay. Moving on. Archeology. Anya? Amanda? Well, the processing of Castle Hill is still going on. Uh, I'm sorry, was Hill's? What? What's going, still going on? Castle Hill. Castle Hill. And Sand Hill. Uh, I found a pestle today that was in the wrong box. So I did some research on that. And that, uh, ended up from being near Castle Hill. And I got the date of the house before they moved and first people that found it. So that was something. Um, so I have to finish that up next week. But otherwise, the processing of everything is going fine. We only have a few more boxes of Castle Hill material. Yeah. Left that we have found unless we get into the charcoal or the, I don't know what we're going to do with that yet, right? Well, we have charcoal, but, um, I don't know if I can process it. Right. Look at it. Okay. Um, Margaret has completed her powers. Uh, so any, uh, time that she spends between now and the end of the year will be as a volunteer. Okay. She's interested in continuing on, uh, with the data entry work that she's been doing. All right. You split. Um. Yeah. She did indicate to me that next year she might be looking at other opportunities. Uh, although she's still interested in volunteering for us as her time and availability allows. And Sandy, I think is. She said today that her hours are coming to an end too. Yeah. Yeah. But she indicated that she's still interested in volunteering. So, um, okay. Okay. The, um, annual report. Okay. Thank you for all the work that you did on that and submitted and in time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A couple of days is fair. Thank you all for responding on, uh, on it, making your suggestions and corrections. Thank you. Okay. Um, railroad and rail trail. Um, this may be a lengthy report. Two benches were installed by the contractor BM Lofgren on September 21st. One bench at Plain Road, uh, almost right on the site of the Tower Hill Railroad Station. The other bench was installed next to the Cattle Pass, which is close to the end of Plain View Road. Uh, there's a cul-de-sac right at the end of Plain View Road. Uh, you could park there and walk just a short distance to the Cattle Pass to see that bench. Uh, they were precast slabs and the benches were bolted to the slabs. They needed a backhoe to excavate for the slab. I watched them, um, and on August 20th, Mike Fea and Bonnie Gossels and a person from the contractor walked the trail to locate where the signs will be placed. We also looked at the Dudley Woods sign locations and the Castle Gate sign locations. And, um, then we went to the DPW, uh, on River Road to see where the signs were stored in the back of the building in a crate, uh, big, uh, wooden crate. So we couldn't open up to see all the signs, but they appeared to be in the crate along with the hardware. Um, so I learned from Mike Fea that the seven rail trail signs, the two Dudley Woods signs and the Castle Gate signs may be installed starting next week. The, um, poles were not ordered until relatively recently. So the contractor was waiting for some hardware, which I understand they have now received. And some of the hardware will be, um, placed in the concrete at, at the contractor's facility. So it, they, they, they need to be inserted into the wet concrete. Um, so unlike the bench that's at the library, the Phil Schneider bench, the concrete will not be poured in place on the site. My understanding is they'll, they'll bring these concrete slabs on a truck and then use a front end motor to position them where they'll be, uh, installed. And that's my understanding. So, um, uh, we held a remote meeting with DCR yesterday. Uh, Tom Fay, Mike Fea, Bonnie Gossels, and myself on what the DCR is calling phase two of the Wayland rail trail signs. Um, you know, according to DCR, they did not approve the signs for Wayland Depot, the engine house site, Russell's and the Sudbury town line, even though those signs have been fabricated. So DCR seems to want to go through the entire process all over again, including what is the purpose of interpretive signs, selecting images, reviewing the text, and getting approval, doing graphic design. Uh, from my point of view, it was a very frustrating meeting. We didn't, we, we focused more on the signs that have already been made. Um, apparently, well, my understanding for the last two years is that the town portion of the rail trail, which is stone dust between the depot and route 20 would be paved as part of the same project to extend the trail west of route 20, Russell's crossing. I learned yesterday that DCR wants to speed up the construction of the trail between route 20 and East Sudbury, uh, because that's presently a gap in the trail. So bicyclists need to, to bicycle along route 20 or along Pelham Island road, and it's a gap. So DCR is under pressure to do that portion of the trail. And they want to do that starting next year, if possible. They are going through the permitting process. There was a meeting with the Whelan Conservation Commission last week that I didn't learn about until I talked to someone at the Whelan Festival. Uh, I think that's probably a NOI public, you know, wetlands hearing. Um, so as a result, the part of paving the trail between the depot and route 20 has been pushed off until future years. And until that is done, DCR will not let us install any signs along that portion of the trail, the stone dust signs. So that's, they see an opportunity to go through a whole new, uh, process of, um, designing these signs all over again. So they're not considering using the trail over the wetlands? The trail over... From Russell's? They're, they're going to use the railroad right-of-way. That involves the crossing of the Sudbury River. Okay. Why, why is the fact that they are speeding up the Russell gap, and not, why are they, I don't actually follow... Why, why is the stone dust portion being postponed? Well, or, or rather, why, why does that make a... Why does that impact the sign? The reason is... Do they have to do them again? Which I learned yesterday at this meeting, according to Tom Fay, there are some easement issues on the town portion. If you're familiar with the trail, uh, at the west end, near, near the slope that goes up to the new town center, is not within the DCR easement from the MBTA. So there needs to be an easement from whoever owns the land, which I assume is the new town center, whoever owns new town center now. And there's also a potential easement issue with a portion of the trail that uses a town of Wayland land near the depot. So, according to Tom Fay, this is going to be put into a warrant article that needs to be approved at next spring's annual town meeting. So, DCR doesn't want to wait until those easement issues get resolved before going ahead with the trail construction west of Route 20. Does that answer your question? Well, I got confused on the last sentence. They don't want to continue from Route 20 to Sudbury. They do. They do. They're going to do that, but they're not going to do from Route 20 to Route 27. That would be a separate project. A separate project. Yeah. So, they're going to do the, go over the Sudbury River, but they're not going to do this other area. Not as part of this contract. So, the resurfacing of the stone dust portion of the trail may not happen for several years. In the meantime, we can't install these signs. So, we couldn't adjust the location? There's two easements, it sounds like, that might be in question. Can we just adjust the placement of the signs slightly? I don't see how... Well, that's a possibility. If we could avoid dealing with DCR, we didn't discuss that at our Zoom meeting. But if, for example, the engine turntable and engine house land is town owned. So, if we put the sign there, could we do that? DCR is reluctant to give us any kind of permission because they're afraid their contractor might damage the sign during the construction. Okay. So, that's the real issue, right? Yeah. Okay. So, these are the signs that have already been fabricated? Yes. How many of them? All of them? They're not willing to put in... There are, as I understand it, there are four. The Weyland Depot... Four out of the seven. Engine Terminal, Russell's Crossing, and the Sudbury Weyland. Not four out of seven. Seven are being done, and four are the ones that will not be done. Oh, okay. There are 11. Eleven. Okay. Okay. Right. So, four out of 11 are being held up. Not sure it's 11 anymore. Has it changed? It had to be changed. So, they took out a couple. DCR took out a couple. Yeah. I don't know what the number is now. It's... It's four is not part of the seven. My understanding is seven along the rail trail, plus two Dudley Woods, plus one castle gate. So, that's ten that can currently be installed. Okay. Do we know how many were fabricated that are just going to be sitting there? As far as I know, there are four. Okay. So, we have the engine terminal, Russell's Crossing, and the Sudbury Town Line. The Sudbury Town Line sign is identical to the sign at the Western Weyland Town Line. So, we assume that because DCR approved the Western Weyland Town Line, they approved the Sudbury Town Line sign, because it's an identical sign. Until yesterday, I had thought that the construction of the trail would be a mass DOT project, because they're the ones that held the 25% design public hearing two years ago, that I watched remotely. But now, DCR has taken the project over, because they want to expedite it, and separate Route 20 West from the town portion that's stone dust. So, their schedule, and as I said, they met with, I understand they met with the Weyland Conservation Commission last week. I haven't looked for that meeting on Wakeham or anything. I assume they're meeting with Sudbury. They're trying to get the permits this winter so that they can advertise for bids next spring or earlier. It's about a one-and-a-half-mile gap, currently, between Route 20 and just east of Landon Road in East Sudbury. So, unless there are any questions, that's about all I have to report on Rock Trail. I have questions about the interpretation site from the 2005 report. Does that mean that we cannot go ahead and work on that? I mean, it's on Tom property, it's not on DCR or DOT property? We did not discuss that at the Zoom meeting. I would assume that if it's not within the DCR easement, that we would not be precluded from working on town land. So, the next item, which we really already covered, signage, Castle Gate, and Dublin Woods. I did get a call from the contractor last Thursday while I was on foot in a supermarket. He asked for a confirmation of the location. I sent him some information. I followed up with some more information. I offered to do a site visit again to make sure that they install the signs at the correct locations. I haven't heard back. If possible, I would like to watch the contractor install the signs as I did with the benches to try to make sure that nothing goes wrong, if I'm able to do that. Next on the agenda is signage for Stone's Bridge and Sherman's Bridge. I've had a conversation with all who's the project manager for the Sherman's Bridge project, and I'll pass this around. During our discussions on Sherman's Bridge, the subject of an interpretive sign at that location has come up. And so I sent an email to Paul Nicoli, I believe it is, in August. I hadn't heard back from him, so I forwarded it to Tom Holder last Sunday, talked to Paul the following day. And as a result, the DPW has offered to fund the design and installation of a sign at Sherman's Bridge up to a cost of $5,000. Thanks, Rick. And they have offered to do the installation themselves. That's great. I love the line, establish sign parameters, which we've been asking for for five or six years now. I have never seen. Who would do the art though? Did they say who would they go with the same designer and everything like that? We didn't get into that level of detail. Subsequent to my receiving this, I forwarded this to Chris Hager, who's chair of the Sudbury Historical Commission, and Steve Green, who's a member of the Sudbury Historical Commission, as well as a board member of the Sudbury Historical Society, asking if they would be interested in participating in the design of the sign. And Chris Hager responded, yes, they had been talking about that themselves, and they would be very much interested in participating. So now we have another sign project to design. So they did say that we would do the design. Well... No, they want to participate in a conversation about the design of the... I mean, Tom Holder. He's willing to give us money, but... No, they're not interested in getting involved in... In the design. ...the content of the sign. Okay, great. They would, you know, give us a yes-no when we come up with something... Great. ...that's ready for fabrication. That's great. They don't want to get involved in the details... Okay. ...of the design of the signs. And then, Kay, if you have anything new on the Stonesbridge... Yeah, the Stonesbridge... Carol was out of town or other projects, and she said she would not begin it until mid-October, which is probably next week. And I have already gotten the desired photographs to her that are in the correct DPI range that she wants. And I gave her a list of things according to the years that they happened, because there's so much that happened there over the last 300 years that we need to at least highlight. And so she has not worked on any designs yet, because she won't have time until next week or so. Where is... What is the source of her funds for design for Stonesbridge? For... For... Oh, from the CPA funding that was left... Money that was left over for the CPA. Repair the bridge. They did have leftover money. You know, it's a good question. I believe they did, because CPA has... I mean, CPC has been asking me if they can sign off on the Sherman Bridge, and I said no, not yet. You mean Stonesbridge. I mean Stonesbridge. Thank you. Stonesbridge. So, that was part of the design, was to include a sign, and that's the only way you can get signs from CPA funding. You can't just go in and ask for sign money, but because it was part of the preservation of the bridge, they were able to include the sign into that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Sherman's Bridge money, according to this email, will come from the DPW. There's the commitment that they're making. Right. Future educational programs. There's a gentleman who's a professor who offered at the beginning of the year to talk about Knox bringing the cannons down from Fort Ticonderoga. At that time, the Historical Society already had someone, Steve Glovsky, talking about it as a program for them. So, I thought Knox Trail has been brought up so many times during this past year. I thought we could ask him to give his version of Knox Trail and possibly do it at this COA building as a town function. And because that would give us more seating if we needed it. The only problem is that after a certain time, there's nobody there to work the equipment. Somebody would have to be trained how to do that. Also, this professor said that there was no charge for his talk. So, he falls into our budget. So, that's one suggestion. I tried to reach the woman that talked about Cato, who signed the first deed for Sudbury Plantation. And I've only reached out to her once and she didn't respond. And we had so many other programs going on. I didn't have time to chase her down, but I could try again. And that's all I have currently for the educations. I do think that the woman who is a Native American would charge for her talk, though. Seems like a no-brainer. What? It seems like a no-brainer with that price tag. Have you heard him speak? I've not heard the professor speak. No, I did hear the young lady that she did it for the Sudbury Library. I remember you talked about it. Yeah. And she is in the acting field. So, you know, she was okay. I think we should investigate whether... What's the professor's name? I don't have... I'd have to look at... You know, maybe he has something on YouTube or... Yeah, we could do that. Look that up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. As you said, noxtril is very popular this year. So I would think that would be a good topic. I do too. Yeah. All right. Next on the agenda is budget. Budget. Okay. I'm asking the rest and people, especially in the archeology lab, what their budget is going to be needed for the coming year, how many more boxes you anticipate you'll need, how many more bags, how many more pens, what other supplies would you need. I don't think that Margaret has any more needs for the office, and we have the black folders for the books that we had, and she still has to label those properly. But I don't know of any other items, and that's what I'm asking. And from where I stand, I don't really see that we need anything. Do you know, Margaret, do we need any kind of bags? Speak a little louder. Do we need any more bags for the archeology lab? Well, I don't know. Have you looked? I don't need any for what I'm working on, but I'm not using the tiniest bags. The four by fours? Yeah. Yeah. I think we have a supply of those. We have a great quantity of the really large bags that we have not been using. Right. We may... We have more of those. Yeah. For now, I think we have enough small bags. Well, what do you mean? I mean, this is a year long. I know, but we've... I mean, these were the two... You know, Sand Hill and Castle Hill were the two big projects. So, I don't foresee that we'll need a lot more bags, because we're winding down both those collections, and the other collections are quite small. And it's unpredictable, really, what's in them. We might need some more boxes, simply, you know, because if they're all surface finds, they're not as precious, but we'll still want them in the archival boxes. So, I can count how many boxes we have, but I don't... Other than that, I don't really see... And we might need some smaller boxes, which tend to be more expensive. Well, we still have that Watertown Dairy collection. Yeah. It's not... It's surface finds, though. It's a surface collection, but there's a lot of good things in there. Yeah, they're good things, but they're not, you know, in situ, so... Well, last time, there was talk about going upstairs to the attic to see how many boxes you've had left to do. Yeah, we hadn't done that. And so, what I guess I'm asking is if you could see what you have to do and give an estimate. Well, it's really impossible to give an estimate, because I don't know what's in the box. So, until I open them, I don't know if any big boxes, little boxes... Yeah, but you have to open them to see whether they're boxes you want to keep, right? No. We don't want any of the yogurt boxes or, like, the old cardboard boxes. We should have them all in archival. So, we're going to want boxes. Amanda, we do have some smaller boxes with artifacts on it. Yeah, yeah, that's... I know. I'm saying we'll want boxes, but it's hard to predict which sizes until I see the collections. That's what I'm saying, is you need to go up and look at the collections. I'm not talking about it in the attic. I don't think there's much of anything up there. I might be wrong, but I think it's mostly charcoal and soil. You think it's mostly what? Charcoal and soil. No, no, no. There are some other things up there, too. Like what? Well, there's all of the stuff from that pit on the Castle Hill Road that was taken out. Soil. And that was very, very old, that feature. Okay, but it's soil. No, not soil. Dishes and cups and things like that. They're early in the attic, but it's a site number. And they're in the attic? And the what? And they're in the attic? They're in the attic. They're in the attic. And the attic, yeah. What site number is it? I don't know. Because I have a piece of paper pinned on the wall from the last time we went and I counted the boxes and I don't remember another site number. We'll have to go up again. I can just check the lab and see. In our lab? Yes. I have on the bulletin board. Last time we were up there, I counted like 35 boxes. I will go up and look because I know there's stuff. Oh, yeah. We can both go up. I asked last time if you, but we didn't go up. We should look again. I haven't been up there for at least a year. No, no. We haven't been up there in over a year. Okay. So I guess, again, the question is, would you please go look, see how many boxes upstairs still need to be brought down to be sorted, and then we'll have a better idea of boxes. And you're not locked into that. If you say I need 10 boxes and it turns out you need 15, you know, but we may have to budget that for the next year rather than this year. What about binders? I just hate ordering things that we don't need. Like, you know, we might end up having a lot of things, supplies we don't need. And it's just, it's a lot of plastic. I'm not ordering in advance. I'm waiting until you decide what you need. No, I know. But what I'm saying is it's hard to predict what we'll need. Even if I counted, I think I have written on that thing that there's 35 boxes up there. If we end up throwing out 25 of them, I mean, I don't know until I open the boxes. No, I understand. It's going to be a whole process. It's not something I can just at a glance say, oh, we should go up and review it again. Yes. Yes. We need to. I asked about binders because in the past we have purchased binders. I think the binders are... I think you're all set. And I think there may be one or two extra binders for future use. From what I, from what Margaret tells me, all the things that we had considered for the binders have been put into binders and are back in the archeology lab. She's been using some of the binders for some of the things in the office. And so I don't think we need any more of those. And we won't need any more archeology pins that last for a long time because we're going to get a supply from Rev. 250 who used it. We're answering questions and, and they have already off told me that they're going to offer them to the archeology lab. So you won't need more pins. And then it's just a matter of, you know, do we budget for 10 boxes or do we budget for 20 boxes? And that affects how much we have towards education. Just saying. Because in the past we have always spent the majority of our budget on supplies. And that may start to change a little bit as we get closer to the end. Has our budget been reduced from last year? As far as I know, it's still a thousand dollars. And we haven't spent anything yet, is it? Or have we? I, I don't, you haven't spent anything, have you? I don't think I have either. Not the new fiscal year. I don't think we have. No, and I don't think I have either. But we do need to finalize. This is like the third month that I've been asking about budget stuff. Yeah. And it's, I know it's difficult to find time to go up there and look. But we kind of need to know before we spend it on something else. For sure. Okay. Several years ago, did we get some money from the CPA for lab supplies? No, because I think they said that they don't give money for, wasn't there? They don't give money for. If it's part of a project, a specific project, you give money. But I've never been asked if we spent the money for supplies. When I, you know, when I sit on their committee, any open project, project that hasn't been closed out, they ask how far are we? Where, you know, and for years I've been doing on the signs, you know, saying, well, we're trying to get enough money. We, what we were trying to do with the town, what do they call it? Established sign parameters, and we never got it. I mean, that goes way back to Sharky. And we... Wayfinding, I think, was the term they used. Wayfinding. Yes. We didn't... It didn't go over, anyway. Okay. So, I don't think we have anything for supplies, Rick. We're meeting Wednesday, and I will send Susan an email and ask her just to verify it. Okay. Okay. Next on the agenda, goals of our commission and potential CPA projects. Okay. There has been a great deal of interest in the past in continuing on with the railroad interpretive site that Shirley mentioned and talked to a number of people at the Whalen Festival. Our big remaining project is an archeological excavation of the Whalen Railroad Engine House foundations. And if you remember, Tanya and Amanda, two years ago, we had a Zoom meeting with Suzanne Chereau, the PAL, to inquire about this. And it's a continuing topic of discussion. So, I guess my question is, is there enough interest on the part of this commission in approaching the Community Preservation Committee to see if there would be support for this project? Well, we better find out what they've upped their costs to. Well, when we talked to Suzanne Chereau two years ago, she suggested a ballpark estimate of $125,000. That was exclusive of any soil contamination issue that might be found, although we have no information that that exists. It did not include any reconstructive masonry worker after the archeological excavation is done. So, from the same source of funds that was used for the rail trail signs, that was leftover town center gift money. And the budget for the signs was $85,000. So, out of the approximately a little less than $250,000 that was still available in that account, we should have some leftover funds. This was part of the memorandum of agreement between the town and the town center. They offered funds for the construction of a rail trail. Instead of using those funds, the town portion of the rail trail, which is stone dust, was constructed with CPA funds. The original MOU said if there are any leftover funds from that $250,000, they could be used for the railroad interpretive site. My understanding is that that MOU has been amended multiple times since then, so that that money is no longer dedicated for the rail trail or the railroad interpretive site, but could be used for other town purposes. But it was available when we asked the select board to use the funding for the rail trail signs, the $85,000. So, if there is still any remaining money from that town center gift money that could be used to match any CPA historic preservation funds, so that we wouldn't need to ask for enough, we would have provision for contingencies or escalating costs, etc. So, I guess my question to this commission is, is there support enough for this engine house excavation project to go to the CPC, Community Preservation Committee? I thought, Rick, that when we met with Michael McCall, you brought that topic up about funding, and there was a figure mentioned then, and he said that we could count on that amount, even though it was in the general funds. Do you remember how much? Well, subtracting $85,000 for the signs from $248,000, which was what I understood was remaining from the $250,000, that leaves $163,000. How much? $163,000. I don't think it was that much. Well, I know that Michael McCall at that same meeting said they were under, he was under extreme pressure to avoid a proposition two and a half override. I don't know what... He said specifically that there was a certain amount that we could count on. Well, that's... And so we'll have to go back and look at him notes on it because... To answer your question though, Rick, I'm a little conflicted, because I would love to have an interpretive site. I remember Suzanne talking about possibly explosive costs related to soil contamination, and she was quite concerned about it, even though there's been no evidence. But I would love... I almost feel that I'd rather put the money toward a... So there'd be maybe some slight excavation, but really the masonry. And the... I want the public to be able to visualize what was there. And that is more important to me than the actual excavation. I know that doesn't sound maybe normal coming from an archaeologist, but I feel that that would be more bang for our buck. And I just... I don't know how you feel. You're the railroad expert here. Well, the example that we have often talked about is down at Whitman, where there was an engine terminal that was excavated as part of the MBTA Old Colony project. And that was a very extensive excavation of a turntable, the foundations of an engine house, including excavation of the inspection pit. There, and the excavation of the water tank foundation. And they're all preserved in what they've termed a passive archaeological park with a fence around it. I envision something in Wayland that would be right along the trail that people could walk up to and see as long as there's no safety, that nobody falls into a pit or anything like that. But there is a turntable pit that we have excavated that has been exposed for 15 years and nobody has fallen into. I'm wondering if they talk to maybe some different professionals, maybe preservationists and historical architects, maybe landscape architects. I'm just wondering if maybe we go at it from a little bit of a different angle and see if it can be done within that budget so that we don't spend a lot of money on excavation where we don't really learn much and then we have nothing really to show the public. Maybe we should go down to Whitman and look at what you're always telling us about. Well, we've seen the photos. It looks great. We've seen the report, the 2005 report. Rick has a copy right here. I do want to say that tonight at 7 o'clock on a Zoom meeting is the night for people to come and ask questions about the possibility of getting funding for their preservation site. And then after that, November 13th is the deadline for the application. Yeah, I have no bandwidth, so I'm not going to be doing that. I'm sorry. But I'm just suggesting that... What I'm trying to get across is that within four weeks, this all has to be... Yeah, it's not going to happen within four weeks, I don't think. I don't see how... We could put an application together. Yeah, you put in an application by November. We already have a lot of these information. Okay, so what would we put an application in for exactly? For the archaeological excavation of the engine hose. Okay, I think it's a lot of money with not a lot of upside. I mean, I don't know. Why do you feel there needs to be an archaeological dig? We can't do any subsurface excavation without a permit from the state archaeologist. That's right. We should, because we'd find maybe other things in the soil. Well, what I was asking, I think, is what is the purpose for doing an archaeological dig rather than landscaping and setting up the tracks that go to the pit and so forth? You have to move the soil. But you don't need an archaeologist to do that. I'm not asking what an archaeological dig is. I'm asking what do you expect to find? What is the purpose for doing an archaeology dig? Because you never know what you're going to find after the soil. As a result of our annual brush clearing, we have already discovered a row of bricks that are from the foundation of the north wall of the engine hose. I have pictures of that. They were on the poster that we showed at the Rayleigh Festival. I have not followed those bricks, done any digging. I have protected those bricks with stakes and blue tape to prevent any heavy machinery like a mower from running over and destroying those bricks until we can do a proper examination and excavation. Well, I guess my question is, is that surface finds or is that something you have to dig for? There might be stuff underneath, but see, this isn't so old that there aren't historical records, right? You yourself have a ton of historical knowledge. There's a lot of probably written schematics, you know, that can be looked at. So a historic preservationist with somebody who, and a landscaper who, you know, understands that could maybe create the site even better and more economically than an archaeologist. An archaeologist is, there's just going to be a lot of money spent on the digging part of it, and not a lot of money spent on the interpretive side of it. And so that's, that's my fear. When there's, there's kind of a, you know, historical archaeology, I don't think you need to spend as much money on, on, on the excavation when there is so much written about it, and enough remaining that you can visualize. I, I don't know, it's, it's, I think if we're going to move dirt there, we should do it right. I think you could have somebody surveying the same way when, when the electric company comes through and, and, and excavates, you have somebody watching. I don't, I don't, I don't, but that's, that's just me. Amanda, I'm surprised at you. But Suzanne talked about the cost. You could have that in Rome. He was talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, you wouldn't have that attitude over in Rome, I don't think. I wouldn't because there's not, there's not historical records, there's not paper documents that say the tracks went here, the engine house was here. We have all of these historical documents that tell us where the things are. But you don't know what else is. You don't. But I, I feel like it, I would take the risk and have, have an archaeologist maybe standing there watching. I don't know. She, she really talked about quite expensive costs when we were on the phone with her. Sure. And I, I, I don't see that you're going to, I don't think you're going to find something so earth shattering that it's worth those costs. It doesn't have to be earth shattering. There's a lot of spots. I, I, I feel like there's always, I, in my, in my cost benefit analysis, that's what I would come to. Well, there have been several other railroad engine facilities that have been excavated in Cohasset, when the MBTA line was extended down there. There was an engine term, engine terminal with a turntable and an engine house site. Both of those sites were excavated by professional archaeologists, documented, photographed, filled back in to build a parking lot. Because the site was right next to the central business district and the community felt that they needed parking. And parking was more important than preserving these archaeological artifacts. Another site in Salem. Salem. I know, I've seen the pictures you showed me. Where, where the site was part of the site, not the whole thing, was excavated. They excavated an inspection pit, the turntable foundations, documented it, photographed, filled it in, built a new parking lot on the site. Those are lost opportunities. I agree with you 100%. To see. That's not what I'm suggesting we do, Rick. No. I'm suggesting we create an interpretive museum outside, but not spend our resources on the wrong thing. Well, I... Well, who's determining what's the wrong thing? We are. We are. All as a group. But this is up for debate. I think with the two funding sources that I indicated, and our conversation two years ago, we may not be talking about excavating the entire footprint of the three-stall engine term. Maybe we could excavate the part that's closest to the trail, and then reconstruct it. If that's what you want, I would rather do the whole thing. I mean, if... But if that's what you want... Well, that's what's going to cost money. No. She said hundreds of thousands of dollars a thing that have any kind of toxic substance. She didn't say. She did. She did. On the phone. 125. 125. Well, originally... That's it. She said if we don't come into anything contaminated. Yeah. Oils, all these things. She talked a lot about it. I remember being alarmed. But Rick, this is your baby. And I'm going to support you. Whatever you want to do. So, if that's what you want to do, I'll back you. Well, I agree with Amanda that, yes, we want to support this. We really want to get this done. But I get Amanda's point is, after spending this much money, when you say they excavated, did that mean that they went around the outside of the building foundation? Or... I just want to know what we're going to get back for that money, I guess. You mean in Richmond? At any of the sites that they did the excavation, were they totally covered by dirt and ground, and they had to dig out that? Yes. Or were they... Because you've already uncovered the turntable pit. Yes. So, are we talking about doing the engine house? Yes. And that's not uncovered, at this point. There's no sign of the engine house location at all. There are two bricks that are protruding through the ground. Yeah. The back wall, you can kind of see some granite blocks where the back wall was. But we have not done any underground digging, because my understanding has been that in order to do that, we would need to get a permit from the state archaeologists... Okay. I get that. ...to have the project overseen by a qualified... Right. And so, Amanda is saying, here is... I'm going by Steve's thing. Three long pits, where the men went down to work on the engines. So, that means it's going to be oil and other contaminants. They didn't work on the engines. They didn't work what? They didn't work on the engines. They inspected... Oh, they inspected the engines. They inspected the engines. So, if they found a leaking engine... No. All they would do was inspect. The heavy maintenance, the routine maintenance was all done in Boston. Okay. I get that. My question is, if they found an engine that required maintenance, and I know they're sending it out, but meanwhile, it's still leaked going into the engine house. And that's what she's concerned about because that would make it contaminated soil, which goes up considerably how much it's going to cost to excavate it, right? Yeah. She said they all would have to get in special suits, and it was a whole big thing. Now, again, I'm going to vote with whatever you want to do, Rick. You've put a lot of time and energy in this, and I want your dreams fulfilled. But it's just... Look, the train was still running in the early 70s, right? I mean, this isn't ancient Rome. This isn't Native American material. We have documents. We can probably figure out and have a preservationist reconstruct it accurately. Without too much archaeological excavation. But if you feel that it can't be done authentically without it, then that's all right. Well, my belief is that if there is a digging there, an excavation by a qualified contractor, they will find those three brick-lined inspection pits. And they can just dig the dirt out from those inspection pits. They will find the granite blocks and the bricks that form the perimeter of the engine house wall. And keep in mind that this was last used by the railroad at the time of World War I. There was no contamination by the... There was more contamination from diesel locomotives starting in the 1950s than there was from the steam locomotives that used this engine terminal. Okay. You know, my feeling is that, yeah, I kind of agree with that. I mean, I'm completely supporting what you want to do. I think you just have to know that you get 125,000 whatever we're going to ask for. And if it turns out it's contaminated and it costs 300,000, then it stops. No. I completely support you. But to me, that's the one risk is that the amount we ask for won't be sufficient if there's contaminated soil. And I guess you just deal with that if it comes up. If it doesn't, great. We have to think about it some more. I don't think we have time. We don't have time. What happened? CPC is meeting tonight at 6 o'clock. 7. I think it was 6 o'clock. No, no. I just read the email. You're right. 7 o'clock. 7 o'clock. To discuss potential projects. They're not requiring a full application. No. Not until November 13th. So if we go, we could gauge the interest from the members of the CPC to see if they are interested enough for us to submit a well-developed application. I think that's a good idea. I think especially after the cool railroad display we had, there might be some momentum. Well, that's why we did the display was to start that momentum going. And certainly, I have been waiting for this to happen for a very long time. Not as long as Rick and Tanya, but for a very long time. But I did see your point of purpose for what we hope to get in return for that $100,000. And now I understand it's just the tunnels or the pits there. I couldn't quite grasp what it was before, but now in your last presentation, I understand that. And I'm happy to go ahead with all this. This is what I've been waiting for. Sure. So I think coming to the meeting and asking your questions, telling them what you want to do, see what the reactions are. Okay. But we need a motion to vote the court. To pursue it, I think. I move that we allow Rick to pursue CPC funding for the railroad excavation. And interpretive thing for the engine house excavation. For the engine house excavation. Rick, why don't you do the motion because you understand the fact. Well, up on what you already said, but just that I go to the Community Preservation Committee meeting tonight to present a proposal, a concept to excavate the foundations of the railroad engines. I second it. Amanda the third said it. Okay. So do we vote on that? Just a voice. Voice vote. Anyone? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So the motion, Sher-Yan, is that I go to CPC meeting. Tonight. Present the concept or proposal to excavate, to ask for CPC funds, CPA funds, to excavate the foundations of the railroad engine house. Does that make sense? Sher-Yan, how can you see that font? Well, it's a problem, especially when I start seeing double. I have, my screen is expanded like this. Foundations. Foundations of the engine house. Railroad engine house, yeah. So that's a Zoom meeting. It's not in person. Zoom meeting. Zoom only? Zoom only. Okay. Well, that works because I don't have a way of getting there. I do have a PowerPoint, same PowerPoint that we used two years ago when we met with PAO to present it. And I could probably give it in. Well, you know what, Rick? This is to ask questions. Right. Not necessarily to present. It's not the application and your presentation to them of the application. So what you need to do is shorten it and just tell them what we hope to accomplish and that it's the preservation of the archaeology, the engine house foundation showing the pits that the men worked in to look at the entrance. Right. I mean, I would say, I would use the terminology to create an interpretive site so they understand that. And I definitely would refer to the 2005 report. Yeah. And if you want to show the pictures there, because people do better when they see things, show them the pictures of the pits done elsewhere so that they have a better idea of what we're trying to do. But yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. Well, I know there has been considerable interest in this in the past. I'm interested. If we're going to do it, I've been guilty of delaying this, I suppose, for a long time. But before the funds disappear, if they still exist in the town center gift money, we should avail ourselves of those funds if they're still available to use to match any potential CPA historic preservation funds. I agree. We're all on board. Thank you. Are there any other goals or potential projects that we want to talk about tonight? I do want to say, and I didn't need to bring in a report with me. We did a long list, granted, because we wanted to show that we're actually doing a lot of things in town and preserving the history of Wayland. And I found that six of them have already been started and worked on like the signage for Dudley Woods and Castle Gate Road, and it's still the installation that has to be done. And you've already worked with somebody on that. So that's a project that has already been started. I forget what some of the others were right now. The education one is one that I thought the Knox speaker, so that's been started. Yeah. I'd love to investigate the speaker. And then, yeah. If you get me his name, I would, I mean, free sounds really great. But we're all in, already have started six of those. And so the ones that we hadn't was this one, which we've just agreed that we want to do. And I forget what the other one was. There were two that we hadn't physically started or mentally started by agreeing to do it. So I don't think that we've got too long a list of goals. I think we're going to achieve a lot of them this year is what I'm saying. Great. We've got the cemeteries. Well, yeah, cemeteries. That's another one that's already been started and we want to complete. I don't know if we'll complete it this year. Exactly. Thank you. The rail rest posts were a project two years ago that was approved. I have found three out of the six posts. Wow. They're on site, each of Glen Road, ready to be installed. Now, from the meeting yesterday with DCR, rather than wait another two, three, four years for DCR to finish paving the stone dust portion of the rail trail where the other set of posts are supposed to go under that CPA funding. I think I would like to move ahead with getting those three that we have found that are on site installed. Right. I don't know whether it could be done as an extra work order as part of the current signed installation project. The contractor has the equipment on site. I did mention that to the guy from the contractor when we did the initial walk through a month and a half ago. And he seemed receptive, but whether that, I guess I would need to talk to the town manager about that, Michael, to see whether that's a possibility. But rather than wait a couple more years till we find another set of rail rest posts, install those, and at least we can spend some of that. So you're not thinking about fabricating the ones that you can't find. Well, if we fabricate them, we can't install them until the DCR. Okay. So we still have time to look. So it's more time to look. Yes. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Next on the agenda, membership and interim chair. I've served interim chairs three meetings. Does anyone want to volunteer to? I don't really know how, but I'll do it if you need me to for three meetings. What am I doing? I'll be happy to help. It does require a lot of time and effort. I can see that. I tried to do the best I can. You did a wonderful job. We did a good job. We did a good job. We did a good job. We got a lot of extra jump in his lap than I did. In fact, I think we should. Right. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. Just as Brad did and Sherry Ann. All three have stepped up and done a wonderful job. Obviously, what we can accomplish as goals depends on our members. And I know, Brad, you expressed an interest in stepping off the commission. We hope you can stay on as long as you can to help us with the cemetery. Well, that's what I was going to say. I'll stay on with the cemetery. I won't necessarily come to the meetings if you put this cemetery work first on the agenda and do that. But I'd be glad to help with the cemetery work because I've already started and I want to see that to a conclusion. So I'd be glad to continue on with that. But beyond that, I would discontinue all further activities. We still need to find somebody to join us. Right. Well, I have a couple of people I'm going to talk to. Well, I was hoping that we might engage in some conversations with some archaeologists who are historically oriented people at the Wayland Festival. I didn't, other than the two, one was a transportation planner, one was a transportation engineer that I engaged in conversation with. I didn't identify any prospects for membership. I think there was an archaeologist that showed up saying she lived in Wayland. But I didn't get her name. Really? She showed up where? She showed up at the festival. I thought I had with the Sherman's Bridge activity, we had a number of people from that neighborhood who seemed to express a lot of interest in Wayland history. I didn't know if any of those people, three or four people, if any of them would be prospects. You know if they signed up last year? Who has the list from last year? I don't remember. No, I'm just thinking if you go back through the emails that we got on Sherman's Bridge, there were three or four people who either came here. A lot of them were from Sudbury. Well, there are some on Sherman's Bridge. Yeah. And Doug. Doug, yeah. Doug. But I don't know. Like, are they members of the Historical Society or Museum, for instance? I don't know if they, they may have just been interested because it was in their backyard, kind of thing. Right, right. Possible. I did talk to one person that lived in town, and she considered it, and Rick followed up, and unfortunately she felt that this time it was not something she could do. So, it isn't like we're trying to find, not trying to find people. We are trying to find people. We are trying to find people. Actually, we've tried two. Are there? We've had regrets from two people. Yeah. Are there any teachers that live in town? Any teachers? Any of the middle school, high school teachers? I don't know. I honestly don't know. Well, a lot of them don't live in town. That's the thing. I don't, I don't know any, any that do off the top of my head. But, so, I was thinking you could ask that bloke who dressed up in colonial garb. Who dressed up in colonial garb? The one who bought the house next to the high school. Oh, yes, yes. Right. Okay. Got it. I did look up his name, Amanda. I remember you asking me that once before and I did look up his name. That's Bryant house next to the, uh, no relation. I didn't. Well, I was going to put it out in the public. Maybe any of those folks who are, who, who are so gracious to donate their houses last tour or perhaps this tour. Um, I, I don't know. I don't either. Doesn't hurt to ask. Doesn't hurt to ask. And they can do house plaques. Okay. With nothing further on the agenda, I suppose I'll entertain a motion that we adjourn. So moved. Second. Aye. Aye. At 3. At 3. At 3. At 3. At 3. At 3.