It's gin with moxy and woristure sauce in it. Sounds weird. That does sound weird. Actually tastes like a sasparilla. Very nice root beer. All right. And then homemade beer. Yeah. Right. Kick to it. A kick to it for sure. Definitely has a kick to it. Good. Well, thank you. Appreciate. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Great to meet you. Okay. Okay. Let's go back to 55 West Union. So, thank you for uh thank you for that little rep reprieve. Um, so, uh, the project itself, it's 116 units on a little shy of five acres. Um, it's AC, it's, uh, off of the MBTA or excuse me, Memorial Drive, um, across from the Dunkin Donuts. Uh, 87 units would be market rate, 29 units would be um, income restricted. Uh 72 units would be uh onebedroom units. 32 units would be twobedroom units.
And then you would have 12 threebedroom units. I believe it's 52 um 52 feet uh four and a half stories. Um and I'm giving you basically a very very high level overview of this. Michael, I apologize. Could you just give me those um numbers again for the the one and two bedroom units? Yeah, the unit counts. Sure. It's um 72 onebedroom units. Yep. 32 twobedroom units. Yep. 12 12 threebedroom units. Thanks. Um and so I think probably the best way forward uh Oh, I'm sorry, Michael. What's the uh breakdown? You said that how many were income restricted and of those do we know what bedroom counts those are or Sure. Um just let me do a little math on the fly here. It's very scary. Um so just with the affordable units all of them um are at 80% AMI. So, you would have 18 one-bedroom units, eight uh twobedroom units, and then three threebedroom units.
Those would be affordable, the affordable ones. Number three again, I'm sorry. Well, three number three. And you know what? I'm going to send I'm going to send this to you. Okay, great. I'll send you the application. and I'll send you the architectural plan set and then if you do have some comments if you want to get them to me um uh may I know this doesn't give you a lot of time but on Monday um I can assemble something to send to mass housing on Wednesday I'll give us a little time and I'm assuming that the uh the entryway to this this project will be off of Memorial Drive correct correct Monday is a holiday y Memorial Day be good. If you want to send it to me on Tuesday, we'll make sure we get it done. Good. It sounds good. We'll make sure we get it done.
Okay. Any other It might not be thorough, you know, when uh when we finish writing, but uh you're using thorough now to write things. Not Yeah, you mean thorough. No, thorough. I'm saying it won't be as good as thorough. Oh, okay. Okay. That was probably the wrong author to confuse that with thorough pretty quick. How about long fellow? So sure, you know, you know how many parking spaces for that one? How many parking spaces? That was good. 180 184 surface parking uh spaces which equate to 1.58 per unit and and no commercial. Correct. It's just straight housing. Just straight housing. So, um, oh, I was just gonna say, so, so the the, um, the project is being done by John Dudley here in town. Um, and he wasn't open to doing any sort of commercial. When I chatted with him, he said, "There is a Dunkin Donuts across the street, so it's not like I'm going to put a coffee shop in it.
The YMCA is going to be opening a little bit further down the road. They're going to have a gym. They're going to have child care." He said there's going to be co-working space in the basement of the building. Um, and he felt that that was the best use of the space rather than trying to add commercial. He also owns the the property across the street where he's going to be looking to do some commercial. Felt that for this particular property to make it across the street as in the eastbound side of 135 on that small parcel. Yeah. Is that co-working space going to be like something that the community can rent? Potentially. He's like that's something he's open to because that that that's a resource that we don't really have in town right now. So that's that's that's something he's open to that it's you know space that people could go and sit there and work.
Yeah. He was open to that. Okay. Yes. So we can I I should also point out that uh Mr. Dudley had also indicated that although he is moving forward with the mass housing process what the intention was and correct me if I'm wrong is that he was doing that just to basically secure the place in line uh but he's willing to delay the opening of the hearing by several months uh in order to let these other projects play. Yeah, he had called me and and indicated that as well. He intended to be friendly Yep. So, I would say like I I get that my personal perspective and this is my personal perspective. I I like John Dudley. He's a great guy. He's done a lot for Ashland, but a friendly 40B is the the notion behind it is that that it is in partnership with the town and this is not in my opinion a partnership with the town.
So, um, so I would just personally not use that phrase. I know he wants it to be a a a good working relationship, which I completely get. Um, I also know that, you know, he's trying to get in before we hit safe harbor. So, you know, so there's that, too. So, you know, we're trying to we're the problem is is that um all these 40B projects are going to hit at once and we're trying to manage the services and the growth of this community and trying to respond appropriately and it's it's going to be a tough it's going to be a tough go of it. So, um, so while I respect his decision to to file this because because if he files when he when he puts in his application through mass housing, that's what starts that's that's the so like even if we would hit safe harbor doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because he started the process with mass housing. Correct. So, yeah. So it's so which is why he put in the application when he did because if we do get if we do get these projects through ZBA we will hit safe harbor. That's correct. Yeah. So I have a quick question. You don't mind Madam Chair? It's it's not on the agenda but it's part of the 40B projects that we've been discussing. UC do we have any idea where that status is right now? Haven't heard anything. have not heard. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's a bit frustrating. So, the land court decision hasn't come down yet. No. And those those you guys went in for those hearings in March, February. Yeah. February or March. And the indication that we had received from the judge was that a decision was pretty imminent. Something must have happened for them to have to wait.
Yeah. And I didn't get any, you know, I haven't received any update either from uh UGC's attorney or uh town council. So that is something. Well, is that something we could follow up on? Just Oh, definitely. Okay. Thank you, man. Oh, not a problem. Okay, moving on. Town manager reports. Michael, thank you. Uh, yes. So, I'm going to start off with the uh the local election. Um so first of all congratulations uh Joe and Brandy on your reelection and congratulations to everybody who um ended up uh gaining a seat uh on the respective boards or committees. I think uh most everybody running um was an incumbent um for all of the seats except for planning board I believe. And so, um, congratulations to Camilo and Scott for, uh, as they embark on their, uh, their journey. Bet time. Um, or, uh, sorry. Um, as they, uh, embark on their planning board careers.
Uh, we ended up having 548 voters. Um, so about 4.2% uh, local turnout. Uh the last day to register to vote was May 9th. Uh really have to give credit to Cindy and Christopher and their and their staff, their respective staff and the pole workers. Um you know, you see a lot of the same pole workers year after year. It's a long day for them. um even the ones who are doing it as shifts and um you know Cindy and Christopher do a great job of organizing them and they just do go in there and plug in and do do the hard work. So many thanks to them and uh again congratulations to the winner and we'll continue to work on winners and we'll continue to work on turnout.
Um, moving on to town meeting recap, unless anybody has any questions about the the local election. So, um, we ended up with 234 registered voters uh at town meeting, which is um which is more than than what we've had uh more recently. Um and uh again congratulations to everybody who came out and uh you know if you were supporting certain things and it was successful again congratulations. Uh some of the comments about the local historic commission. Um, I hope I hope they take some solace in the fact that, you know, it was a high bar, meaning that it was a twothirds vote and um, you know, they they actually did have a simp more more than a simple majority of people vote in favor, but um, it's tough being so close sometimes. Yeah, been there. Yeah. But, um, you know, other than that, uh, everything else went relatively smoothly.
Uh, where there was, uh, discussion and debate, I thought it was, uh, It was pretty healthy. I And I know this happens every time, but I'm always so disappointed when an article, you know, that people are there for and then they don't stay to finish out town meeting. Um it it's it's just disappointing. We saw some people leave after one of the first or second articles and then we saw a lot of them leave after the historical district. And um I don't know how can we how can we encourage people to stay until the end and participate because there was some other discussion that was just as important. So and so again uh thanks to to every um all the staff members and volunteers that uh put on the production that is town meeting because it is it is quite a production and they do a remarkable job.
I still think we need blue tablecloths. Blue tablecloth. Red tablecloths. How about we just make sure I can flip uh change screen to change. Well, start with that. We make sure that we can project. Yes, the projector wasn't working and Paul had to go and get something else and it still was a terrible you know there's so many times um in a day I think we probably say what would we do without Paul Carpenter and it's town meeting is where he really shines in front of a lot of people I mean he can make these things ma like magically happen um so again u and we'll we'll now start the preparation for fall fall special. Katherine uh will be uh leading that charge. Um project updates. Michael, one second. I'm sorry to go back to to voting. Do you know how many people voted before um election day?
How many people voted in early days? I think the first um election first early voting day was 38. Have there was only one early voting day Wednesday last week. So, I think it was 38 or that might have been like 50 something. Maybe maybe the 38 number last night. Cindy said like 50ome people did early voting. I think I asked her earlier in the day before the day was finished. Yeah, could have. Yeah. Okay. Um so, just on project updates, uh I will start off with one that's actually not on this list. Um Cadillac paint or they Ashland Arboritum. Um, so, uh, Becca Solomon and a number of volunteers. Excuse me, I knew this would happen. Just I'm going to go back to the other agenda item. Thank you, Cindy. Um, 55 voted early. 55 voted early. I had I love it that she's watching.
I know. She She told me she was going to watch. So, she's she's in it for the long haul tonight. She is special. Um, that's great. So, um, yeah. So, Ashland Arboritum, Becca Solomon and a number of, um, her weed warriors, her weed warriors, um, went and attacked the Ashland Arboritum and, uh, using a big DPW truck, they hauled like two huge loads of invasive species that they had pulled out. Wow. That's great. On a Saturday. And um you know I I think I think it that's actually it's it's probably one of the it's just the latest example I think of of our staff and volunteers working together after hours if you will um to make to make something happen make something special uh for the community. So we're looking forward to uh to moving that forward. Do you know I mean do you have any other information on this weekend Beth?
Just kind of what they did or what they were for the cleanup. Um gosh I don't have like numbers of how much that they um took out but in three hours they had cleared an area that was larger than they were expecting to. Trisha Kendall uncovered a tree that um will now be Trisha's tree. Um, so they were able to identify things that they were able to save in that area um and really clean out to really get started. There's obviously more work to do, but we do have um a contract with the company that's going to start the arboritum. We're meeting on Friday to discuss timing, but they're going to start the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Um, and the you'll see this spring the pergola will be up, the benches will be in. Um, but the amount of invasive species that need to be removed there and remediated um will take a little bit more time this spring.
So, we'll probably plant everything in the fall is what we're thinking um just because we're we're up against the summer months and that's not the time to plant and it's too many um items to risk losing in the summer heat. So, two questions. One, so the parking lot has not been open, right? Correct. So the park is not available yet to people. Correct. Okay. Um it's you can walk in. You can. Yeah. Oh, the neighbors use it all the time. Yeah. And then the question um how if people are interested in participating in this invasive weekend, whatever warrior, whatever they Becca calls it. Yeah. The weed warriors. The weed warriors. How would they get information or sign up to be notified of when that's happening? Yeah. They can contact the conservation um department. Okay. at town hall and we'll um I mean we advertised that in the newsletter leading up to it.
So join that. I missed that. One thing I think um you know there's there's a lot of work being done in I think in the town forest too with invasive species, right? Yeah. And I think um it it would be a good thing to put something in the newsletter about why it's so important to to work on to get rid of the invasive species. You know, I maybe it seems obvious love that she will be happy. You know, you know who will also love that is Mike Jones and Rob St. me who I think is on their their personal mission to eradicate um barberry which is a well you know and part of my motivation is I think people are saying why are we spending money to do such and such and such and such right and now this in particular is is volunteers but um I think it's important for everybody to understand sometimes why it's better to do this than to just let it go.
Right. I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's No, it's good. That's very good. The very short answer for those that are watching, um, invasive species take over and crowd out native species. Um, and just because they have no known, you know, predators in the both the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. Well, why? I almost sounded like a biology major there, didn't I? And what's interesting is plants that some we sometimes think are native are not native to new to New England. So yeah. And then and then Beth, you know, if you want to continue, Beth had her her first meeting with the Warren Barn group. If you just want to give an update on that, I'll let you do that. Yeah, sure. Um so that project is going full steam ahead. Um I met with the team. They needed to do um just a few tweaks to the path and the parking lot, that small parking lot they're putting in for fire and safety.
Um main that was their main concern was access to Henry's place. So this will actually allow more um access to that just in case of any fires. Um so that's really great. So they pretty much have the plan set. Um they had a few little things that they needed um the town's approval on as far as ballards go in front of the barn doors because um just to just to avoid having to put in um an oil water separator because you can actually fit a car in the barn. Um so there are going to be ballers, but they are really preserving the historical look of the building by putting in um hitching posts. They look like hitching old hitching posts. So they're doing a really great job on that. I I think that project I think everyone's going to be very pleased with the way that that project comes out.