001hello I'm Yolanda Greaves I am the host of Around the Clock and today I'm here to bring you the select board update for the meeting that happened on Wednesday February 19th it was our second meeting of the month for February and we had a number of different groups come in to meet with us we started at 700 p.m. we had some citizens participation and then we jumped into some joint appointments so we met with the Board of Health they had a resignation from their board for a member who moved out of town and jointly between the planning the Board of Health and the select board we were able to appoint someone to fill the position until the election in may we originally had two people that had put their name in but it wound up
002just being one so I'm happy to announc that Maurice krasner who did actually run last year uh was has been appointed as the newest member of the Board of Health we thank you to Maurice for jumping in again and putting his name and he's also going to be running on the ballot in May for that position we then had a joint meeting with the planning board they did not join us in person most of them were joining us virtually and we appointed Amanda Hayes who was a who was an associate member of the planning board and she will be joining the planning board as an appointee and she will also be running an on the ballot in May as a planning board member and it's interesting to say that once Amanda is in her first
003meeting it will be an all female planning board so all five seats will be all women which I believe is a first here in Ashland from there we had an update from Aaron lad he is currently the chair of the conservation preservation committee CPC so we put funds into the CPC as part of your tax bill to go toward projects for open space historic as well as affordable housing he gave us an update on some of the funds what some of the projects are that they're working on and also let us know that they are looking for another member so if you are interested in helping out there is an atlarge seat that means you apply with a talent Bank form you come before the select board after you've gone to a few meetings and
004if you're interested and it works out we could appoint you to the CPC the next update we had was from Jim neelen he is working on the local historic district they are looking to make a historic district in downtown Ashland and if you go watch the select board meeting uh and you can also see it on the website where the area is that they're looking to make a historic district at this point it will most likely go to town meeting so that the residents of ashin can determine if they'd like a historic district in downtown Ashland lot of lively discussion and debate it was great to see uh and to hear from Jim and how the process has been going but I expect it will either be in the May town meeting or the November
005town meeting that the residents will get to vote if they would like a historic district from there we went into our old and new business we had there was a budget Workshop held uh about a week ago in on a Friday morning where all the department heads present what their potential needs are for the next fiscal year a number of Select board members were able to attend as well as some finance committee members um and then as a follow up to that budget discussion there'll be a tri board meeting of the select board the finance committee and school committee on Saturday March 1st in town hall uh we also reviewed some renderings of the Warren Barn if you remember the Warren Barn had to be taken down because it was not safe we are currently
006working with Framingham State who owns the Warren Warren property now in getting the Warren Barn rebuilt it will no longer be considered a historic barn but it will the renderings are such that it will look like the barn that was there and it will be able to be used by either the Warren Conference Center or other residents for different events and certainly right now once it goes up it'll be to help and when it goes up to help uh with their support the ice skating rank that they have at the Warren Conference Center which if you haven't gone and checked it out you should check it out it's a great little ice skating ring with fire pits and it's right there by Henry's place so you can check that out so we reviewed that we
007opened our baa Grant process so if you are interested in applying and you can find out all the details on the website we are looking for uh applications by the end of March 28th so if you want to submit the town meeting warrant is open and if you'd like to put on a town meeting warrant uh item those are due by February 28th we then discussed our Runners breakfast so we have um 12 Runners have who have numbers for the town of Ashland and we always celebrate by having a breakfast with them the Saturday before the marathon and of course this year the marathon is on Monday April 21st we discussed uh our volunteer breakfast that we have and we're going to be doing that on March 22nd so as the appointee of many of
008the boards and commissions that you see here in town the select board invite people who have been appointed by us uh to come together and celebrate all the work that volunteers and we as select board members are there as well as volunteers to celebrate all the great work our volunteers do here in town um we have some open positions the community preservation committee as I mentioned our Conservation Commission is look has a seat that needs to be filled Council on Aging has a few seats open space and Recreation committee storm water advisory sustainability uh are all places that we have seats so if you're interested you can go to the town website fill out a talent Bank form let us know what your background is and how you might be willing and available to help
009we then uh reviewed our consent agenda I want to thank Matt marquest who has been on our sustainability committee for quite some time he has had to resign so thank you Matt for all your work we then had a town manager report fiscal year 25 budget update on where we're at with the fiscal year 25 budget things are looking pretty good if you'd like to ever look at the reports you can go to the town website under finance and quarterly reports are posted there we also had a discussion about federal grants update uh at our first meeting at our one of our meetings in January or early February we talked about how we were uh concerned about the federal funds that were coming to help us pay for the 52 Acres that we purchased from
010the church in uh in Ashland net goes next to the town Forest we have been notified that those funds have come through so that purchase is safe the other large Federal funding Pro um grant that we're looking at is related to Green infrastructure that was tied to our public safety building and mindes building and we're not sure what's going on with that Grant that's almost a $3 million Grant so we will keep you posted and of course we're continually having conversation about how what's going on at the federal level is impacting us regionally and locally and how we as a select board and town staff can make sure our residents are safe and feeling secure based on what we're seeing at the federal level we had some board reports and talked about some different things
011coming up there is an open space and wreck Forum they have some at the end of March it'll be March 26th and 29th if you're interested in the open space and recck plan you can go check that on on the website and that was that was it so um if you see this if you have questions about what happened at a selectboard meeting you can reach out to myself or the full selectboard selectboard ashin mass.com uh come to one of our meetings stop in either in person or virtually and we're always happy to share and answer questions for our residents and that was the meeting for February 19th 2025 for the ashon select board I'm Yolanda Greaves thanks for watching this select board update