001Congratulations. >> Hello and welcome to the select board update for the meeting that happened on Wednesday, August 6th. We will be having two meetings in August. One was the 6th and the other one will be on August 20th. We had a full agenda. We started with a presentation by Martin Pillsbury from MAPC regarding our hazard mitigation plan. This is a mitigation plan that MAPC, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, has worked with us on in the past, and it's a way to look at whatever hazards or potential issues might be coming into the town of Ashland that we need to prepare for. There was about 14 things highlighted, but the page is about the full plan is about 150 pages. If you'd like to go see it, it's up on the Ashlin Town website, and it
002will be approved uh in the near future. From there we went to a recognition of Jan Bellarelli. She was an employee at the Ashlin Senior Center and she has retired after many years of service. She will be greatly missed. They had a great party for her uh which around the clock was able to be at and share some pictures of. Then we went to a hearing for Clover Road, the new brewery downtown uh at the old fire station. They are looking to do some entertainment on Sundays. So, we had a discussion about that and with just a few questions and some comments, we approved that entertainment license. So, now if you want, you're going to possibly see some live entertainment on Sunday evenings at Clover Road. From there, we went into our old and new
003business. We discussed the town manager's evaluation. It's a lengthy process where each select board member does a review of the town manager and then sits with him and then the chair compiles all that information and presents a final one uh review for the public and for the town manager. As I was chair last year, I had the opportunity to do that and he was rated as highly effective and effective. Uh so uh very happy with Michael's uh progress and programs and all that he worked on this past year and we look forward to another great year of working with him. From there we went to open the warrant for the special town meeting. The special town meeting will be happening on November 19th. We always have it in the fall and certain things will be
004on there like review of free cash and some other budgetary items. And there will probably be a couple of warrant articles possibly related to historical commission, possibly related to some land purchases and to some other items that we are looking at right now. And you'll be updated on those items as we go through the process for the special town meeting. We then had uh to authorize our chair to sign some documents related to the home that's being built by Habitat for Humanity on Main Street. If you're about to head up the Kitty Fenwall Hill on the right hand side, you see a new home going in. That is a collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and the town. And they're going to be posting times if you'd like to go help build on that house. They'll
005be posting some items where you can go and get a group of people together and go help build that house. It's a it's a great feeling to be able to do that. From there, we went on to an update on the dog park. It will be breaking ground in this month in August. We didn't have the specific date yet back on our meeting date of August 6th, but once we have that available, it will be publicized by both the dog park committee as well as the select board and the town. It will be going up on Memorial Drive just past the Trolley Brook Trail. So, if you drive Memorial Drive, there's already a sign that says where the dog park is going to be. From there, we had a conversation about some of the communication
006practices that we as a board are using. how if an email comes in and the chair has to respond and how other members of the board can find out about that correspondence. It's something that we've been working on on and off for many years and we're hoping that this new way of potentially doing it is going to help. We then went to a discussion of Ashland Day/Pumpkinfest. The Ashland Day committee back in the middle of July announced that the traditional Ashlin Day that happens on the third Saturday of September was not going to be able to happen because of funding. Well, a number of people jumped in and there is now additional people who have jumped in and said, "We still want Ashlin Day to happen." We pulled in Josh Wixer from the high school
007and his group of students who have who did Pumpkinfest back in 2022 when there was no Ashlin Day. And there's now going to be for 2025 Ashlin Day is going to be on Saturday, October 4th. If you're interested in helping out, start looking on Facebook for new Ashlin Day posts. Brandy Kinsman from the select board is sort of spearheading this with Mr. Wixer from the high school. So reach out and love for people to participate as well as donate. And there's all kinds of information out there about how you can donate and help make Ashlin Day 2025 a reality. From there, we had a discussion about the 340B projects. Uh, so the one on 10 to 60 Main Street will be in front of the ZBA on 812 regarding some of their storm water issues
008and sewer issues. The uh 40 the 61 Waverly Street, their application is still being reviewed. And then the newest one, which is at 55 West Main on Union, they are having their hearing opened also on August 12th. that is the third 40B project. Uh it is done by a local developer. Um so hopefully we'll see how things move forward with that. From there we went on to our consent agenda and then we went into our town managers report. We had an update on a key tech budget uh regarding some capital and some changes in how they're doing uh enrollment. It's now going to be a full lottery and not each town is going to have a percentage. So, if you have a student interested in KEF Tech, make sure you go reach out and figure
009out uh how that might impact you and your student. From there, we had an update on Ashlin's capital plan and how we have we have 49 requests for the capital funds that will be coming out of our free cash at special town meeting. So, uh um a priority list is going to be put in place, what things need to be done first, and then how it's funded. So, those capital requests will come as one lump sum to the special town meeting for a vote. We then talked about the Nyanza extraction system. This these are extraction wells that they're looking to put to put in uh over by Worcester Air and it is expanding the system to extract some of the Niaol that the chemical that is in the bedrock because of the Nyanza um plant.
010Then we had an update on the board retreat. We have a new process on how we're looking at projects and how we're going to prioritize them. and we've done a little bit of initial work and then in September Michael Herbert and the staff will come back with the ranking that they saw and then we'll discuss what prior projects will continue what may have to get put on hold because of time and resources. Uh and that was pretty much it. We wrapped up just after 10:00. We did have to vote to go past 10 because of board reports, but it was a very full and very good discussion of a meeting regarding some of the 40Bs, regarding Ashlin Day, and regarding uh a couple of other items. And if you ever want to full see the
011full meeting, go back and you can watch the full meeting on WACA TV. A couple of updates that we did talk about. Uh Ashland After Dark is happening on Friday, August 22nd. And of course, as we said, uh, Ashlin Day is going to be on October 4th and Dragonfly Festival will be happening on Saturday, September 27. So, those are some fun upcoming events that I'm sure you'll see many of our select board members at. And that wraps up the meeting and the update for the August 6th select board meeting. Thanks for watching.