001Hello and welcome to the Around the Clock Select Board update. I am Yolanda Greavves. I have just stepped off as chair from the Ashlin Select Board and I'm here to give you our select board update for the meeting that happened on Wednesday, May 21st. We started with a scheduled uh me uh introduction of our two new assistant town managers. Jen Ball left about three weeks ago and we now have two assistant town managers. They are Beth Reynolds who is handling community development and community affairs and Katherine Bird who will be handling administration and operations. So they were both members of the staff and now they've moved up. Uh what was nice to hear was even though we've added moved up to two people as town as assistant town manager, our budget is still neutral and
002we're actually going to be saving some money based on the reconfiguration of staff at town hall. We had a quick public hearing for an Eversource NSTAR um uh conduit going onto the ground. So that went quickly. We then went into our old and new business. We had the some the committee for our BAA grants, our subcommittee of Claudia Bennett and Brandy Kinsman took us through the grants that they have proposed and we approved all of those. We then also went into a discussion and vote on a surplus disposal procurement policy. And if you're interested in that, you can go check it out on the website. We had reviewed it two meetings ago and there was some work that needed to be done in talking about taking information off of computers. So that was added to
003the policy and we have now approved it. We then talked about the historical bylaw. We have appointed Makita Keegan who is going to be liaison to the historical commission uh to look at a historical bylaw for our town. It did not pass at town meeting but people are still interested in either doing separate parcels or smaller or smaller areas but historic preservation is important for many of us here in Ashland. Uh from there we did an update on some 40B projects. Most people are very familiar with the one at 10 to 60 Main Street. that is about four or five months into their process. Then there is the one at 61 Waverly Street. They're about a month or so into their process. And then there is a new one uh on the corner of West
004Union. So at the corner of Memorial and West Union that is a smaller one uh only about 116 units, but right there near the commuter rail. We then went through our consent agenda and as part of that, we did approve a number of one-day liquor licenses for a number of new distilleries that are going to be participating in the farmers market who has their opening day on June 14th. We then went into our town manager report. Uh he talked about the local election which happened on Tuesday, May 20th. There was two contested races, one publicly, which is the select board race, and Joe Manyani and Brandy Kinsman, who were the incumbents, won those seats. And then Scott Peller won the two-year planning board seat um as a write-in candidate. We had a review of town
005meeting. There were 234 voting members in attendance at Ashland at our town meeting. Uh a few good discussions that happened. As I mentioned in the meeting, it's always disappointing when people who are there for a specific reason then leave even though there's more to happen. So maybe the next time you come, you stay for the whole thing. And if you've never been, look for our next one happening in fall of 2025 for a special town meeting. We then did an update on some of our opened positions. So we have a planning director and it's now planning uh director of planning and economic development as well as an assistant planner and an assistant HR uh administrator. Uh so those are in the process of being interviewed and hopefully by June we'll have all of them filled.
006From there we did a discussion of um some additional funding we received uh our Senate our senator Karen Bilka also Senate President put some additional funding in one of the bond bills for some complete streets and uh funding for us to work on some of our street projects. We also then discussed an IMA between city of Framingham and the town of Ashland for some work and a study that's going to be done over on Wikum Pond over on the Route 126 side of town. We discussed some dates for a board retreat. Looks like we're going to get together on July 12th. Uh downtown, we're looking to have things wrapping up in the fall. Same with Route 126. Warren Barn the we are working with Framingham State and they are going to be going out for
007their request for bids to start moving that project forward. We also talked a little bit about some board reports comprehensive plan two nights of meetings leading up to our select board meeting and uh oh another update the Ashland Arboritum uh is being worked on by Becca Solomon um our conservation agent. We wrapped up by 10 uh by doing a board reorg. So moving forward, Joe Manani will be the chair, Brandy Kinsman will be the vice chair, and Claudia Bennett will be the clerk. And that was our meeting for Wednesday, May 21st.