Select Board: November 6th, 2024

001e e that was fun it was cool really they e e e I I looked I e e e good evening everyone and welcome to the select board meeting for November 6th 2024 I'm going to call this meeting to order at 7:02 p.m. um in Yolanda our chair is um going to be a little late this evening and she but she'll be joining us in a little while so um I'm going to go ahead and um I already called the meeting to order but this meeting is being recorded and broadcast live by waca TV and live streamed on Facebook remote participation is available using the zoom video conferencing platform any disruption with the video conferencing platform will result in the platform being shut down in the event of A disruption broadcasting will continue on waca

002TV and live streamed on Facebook um and just for the benefit of folks um the board will be going into executive session following our open uh our Open Session tonight so um so with that I'm going to um open it up to Citizens participation if there are folks uh online that wish to speak if you could use the raise hand function and um and we'll go ahead and recognize you or if there's anyone else that would like to speak for Citizens participation uh come on up okay thank you good evening Mark son 19 Main Street would like to thank say thanks to um Mr Mr Dave for bringing out the his email about the town election results I found out from there that this town was 78% but the rest of the country is not

003as smart as we are what I'm going to say is that people can remember I said this all day long do people remember the President Nixon against George McGovern presidential this is a repeat of that don't blame us we're only from Massachusetts to the rest of the country and I'll leave it at that okay thank you Mark um is there anyone else that would like to speak tonight for Citizens participation anyone online this is Joan Good Friday hi Joan hold on one second could we can we increase the volume from the folks online a little bit we can't hear them that's I think that was my fault I'm sorry oh okay that sounds good John go ahead and you can go ahead and uh go ahead I won't I won't take your time but I

004just I know I sent you folks um an email today I hope you get to see it and I hope when you get to the 40b section that you'll consider some of the things that I that I um put in there so I appreciate everything you do and um good luck with it thank you thank you Joan uh we appreciate your sending us an email and and coming here tonight too thank you you're welcome take care um is there anyone else here for Citizens participation okay the next thing on our agenda is a a tax classification hearing but we are a little early um so do we want to um do we want to to do consent do consent agenda okay all right um so could I get a motion to uh approve the consent

005agenda as presented all those in favor I I and that passes 4 z um is there anything else on our agenda that we can talk too quickly or I can I can read the reminders yeah okay why don't I read the reminders um so I'll make a reminder that the Citizens Academy program will begin in January 2025 this is a 10-week program that will be meeting on the 2nd and fourth Wednesday of each month from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. interested parties are encouraged to complete an application on the town's website um definitely encourage folks to uh to apply if you're interested uh there's a reminder that municipal buildings will be closed on Monday November 11th which is Veterans Day uh a reminder that special town meeting will take place on Tuesday November 19th at ashin

006High School auditorium at 700 p.m. um and we will be offering child care for anyone that uh that wishes to uh to take advantage of that so uh reminder that yard waste collection is every Monday with the last pickup on Monday November 25th 2024 um make sure you put all your leaves in bags and um leave them out first thing in the morning on Monday morning uh reminder that the pre Thanksgiving Farmers Market will take place on Saturday November 23rd at 1:25 Front Street from 10:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. and a reminder that textile and clothing recycling um that pickups must be scheduled with simple Recycling and the number to call is 1866 83550 68 or online at simpler recycling.com so that takes care of our reminders for this evening would you want me to

007just give an update on technology upgrades yeah sure that works make sure your mic's on push the technology upgrade could be we get upgraded mics how's that that works um so I think at our last meeting I had uh mentioned to the board that uh we're working with wacka to uh look at making some upgrades into this room specifically so we have had some issues with the projector um and uh just some believe it or not some of this equipment is is quite a few years old uh even though uh we were around when it was installed that just means we're old too so you know speak for yourself I know Joe I did kind of look right at you when I said that that was that was just not on purpose um but anyway

008we've worked with um worked with Paul and uh Barbara at uh wacka and so what we would be doing is replacing this screen with an 85 in uh television screen um that's going to be framed um we'll actually have the seal um as part of that um we're going to have two 65 in TV screens uh located on the wall U that way for the audience uh so they can see things a little bit better and then this TV back here um we haven't necessarily decided what size that's going to be but it's going to be substantially larger than what it is and so the hope will be that you know the board will be able to kind of look at that screen instead of having to you know turn around and and keep on

009looking back behind you uh for um to see what's happening on the screen so um I know that Paul and the the contractors have been up here taking a look at uh look at some things we should be able to do these upgrades I think before the end of the year and it shouldn't be any disruption to any of our any of our meetings um and that's the intent so um yeah we're looking forward to to having some new equipment what's the width of this screen you know want to say it's aund something so I had a big concern you know because it seems like we're going to go smaller right um the Fidelity um though is so much better that uh you know people should be able to see it much more clearer even

010if they're even if they're towards the rear of the room but that's also one of the reasons why we are putting you know larger TVs up on the side I have a question for f May of course um the TVs that we currently have here there are meetings uh and then they're not a lot but we do have some that have overflow that's out in the hallway and I was wondering if we could probably take one of those TVs that are not going to be utilized and maybe attachment out in the hallway so people could see it and type of deal we could potentially do that we're we're actually going to be replacing also the one on the first floor oh you know when you walk in and you see that one and we'll we'll

011have like advertisements and things going you know when there's not a meeting in progress as well like the town sign that we were going to do the electronic sign electronic sign yeah it'll be electronic Joe we'll put the seal on there see more than one way to skin a cat my friend so anyway I think uh is that is now does that affect any of the equipment in the back too are they going to be yeah that's going to get um changed out as well but that's the stuff that I don't understand so you know talking about that no yeah know no And as far as the budget for this that comes under like our is it our capital or like what is that so um if you recall at town meeting each uh each

012year we appropriate uh funds so the cable is now a cable Enterprise fund um and that change was made probably 7 years ago um and if you also recall over the last year we've worked on an agreement with waa um that uh basically provides a little bit more um you know in one way provides a little bit more flexibility on how wacka can spend that money but also provides I think a little bit more accountability as well uh for all all parties involved than thank you does anybody else have any questions or no no did we have to go out and do an RFP on these no not since we have that agreement no that's that's cool yeah that was that was the Genesis of that year-long right discussion for an agreement well yeah it

013would have been quicker probably to go that was for another piece of equipment yeah no it all works out and again thanks to uh waa Paul Barbara John featherston I know has uh been working on this so many thanks and the board when is it happening probably December nice Merry Christmas folks I was going to say probably won't be ready for a for a December meeting but maybe for January yeah we'll start the new year right yeah and high def Joe High defa what Joe's Loi no more so right okay almost got us at 7:15 okay all right thank you actually I did according to my watch we're at 7:14 I think that's close enough yeah I think we're good by the time you read it by the time I read it so um the

014next um item on our agenda is uh to open the tax classification hearing so I'll read the legal notice from the town of Ashland select board uh in accordance with the requirements of Massachusetts General Law chapter 40 section 56 the select board will hold a public hearing on fiscal 2025 property tax classification on Wednesday November 6th 2024 at 7:15 p.m. at the Town Hall 101 Main Street Ashland the purpose of the public hearing is to consider the percentages percentage percentages of the FY 2025 tax levy to be borne by each class of taxable real and property and personal property meeting information will be posted on the agenda which could be found on the town website www.mass.com person persons wishing to be heard on this matter are invited to attend the public Hearing in person or

015by logging into the zoom meeting interested parties who are unable to attend the hearing May submit written comments to the select board's office Town Hall 101 Main Street ashin mass 01721 or by emailing Susan Roby sroy Asin mass.com so um could I get a motion to open the um the hearing second all those in favor of opening the hearing i i i does it have to be U an individual nope because we're all here so yeah I think we have to do a roll call if um anyone is remote from our board okay so um so with that I'm going to pass that on over to Michael to introduce um yeah Nate uh yeah this is a new era folks um because I think everybody at this table um we we have all um the

016only person we've ever seen give this presentation is Rich ball um and of course Rich retired earlier this year but uh we're very very fortunate to have um working with us Nate Kramer um an experienced assessor who's been uh working with us since uh Rich retired until we uh found a permanent replacement for Rich um and uh Nate I've just been really really impressed with his uh his knowledge base he's probably he's going to have a different presentation than what you're used to and with a couple new couple of new uh things for the uh for the board's information and um yeah I think again we're really really fortunate to have somebody of his caliber as well as really want to take the moment to uh thank the board of assessors I think everybody's here

017David's here Steve's online Chuck's hiding yeah there he is um as well as as June and Terry down in the office for for stepping up during this time so um Nate without further Ado I I hope I didn't talk you up too much so probably did okay well you've got got a lot to live up to now my friend um so one thing I noticed uh the presentation that you guys had up I'm not sure are there still yellow highlights on that presentation um the one I have in our packet does still have yellow highlights okay so those have since been removed I just sent I I realized that when I logged in and saw it that oh no they they don't have the the one without the highlights but nothing really changed um Nate

018are you able to are you able to share your screen so it can I can yep I can okay um basically it's it's it's almost exactly the same just um uh no highlights oh it says oh send request for sharing yeah we're working on that right now Nate why don't you introduce yourself a little bit Nate okay um for while we're waiting for that uh Nate my name is Nate Kramer I'm the owner of Municipal Finance Services LLC um I've been in the business for quite a while now um I was a still am an appraiser for 15 years before going to work for the Department of Revenue auditing tax assessors um I was there for six years and then um went to work for a private company um that City and towns outsourced their

019assessing offices to and then um went to work um for a couple different cities and towns and now I own um this company um we saw we just saw a need um the assessing profession is just it's every time somebody retires there's nobody to replace that person yeah um and I think when I started this in January of 21 there were I think 17 openings um and no applicants um and that TR kind of continues so um I'm happy to provide these Services as needed to different cities and towns when when these situations happen and also you know help them help them find a qualified person and also just hold the hand of a person if they think they have someone that might be good that might NE not necessarily be up to speed on

020everything so um um so with Ashland um rich Ball retiring I Didn't Know Rich I I know many many assessors I Didn't Know Rich but I heard about him heard he was a great guy um but Ashlin just like every other community that loses an assessor it's not a fast process it's very rare to get somebody right away yeah Nate if you don't mind I'm just because I think we're working on some technical issues but just to kind of interject here what Nate is saying it's actually starting to get to crisis levels um there just are not assessors um enough assessors to to do the jobs and Nate we were just talking I think western Mass which depends on like a company to do um like Franklin County or I'm certain like through furog I

021mean that firm said that they were no longer going to be doing that for those communities I mean it is Crisis level so nobody wants to do the municipal work anymore so I think I think a big part of it is that a lot of these a lot of people that are retiring came in started their careers right around the time prop two and a half happened um or um yeah prop two and like in the early 80s um and obviously nobody grows up saying I want to be an assessor um so you know all all everyone just you know did their typical Municipal 35 40y year career and nobody very few people were coming up behind them um and and it's not just it's not just Municipal assessors but it's a lot of the

022contractors too um companies are selling people are retiring and I think it's just going to get worse and worse I know of okay one company um that's closing up at the end of this year and they have 55 communities and yeah nowhere to go because the people that are still there are just stretched too thin so um another reason I put my hat in the ring well well welcome we're happy you're here I think we are all set with the technology so I think you can probably share your screen with the presentation hopefully this can you see that yes okay yep and this is the one okay yeah I know if you can make it a little bit bigger I don't know if that's you or if that's us green right now um oh wait

023there we go except it showed up on a different screen if it's if it's causing issues we have we all have it in front of us too so um okay well why don't we just use the one you have and the changes that are there it's l almost literally just some things are highlighted in the one you have and they're not highlighted in mind they were just numbers I wanted to confirm before I presented but very little Chang and if um if anything did change you know what I'll just say the number so if anything did change or if you have a page that's highlighted um just let me know and I'll confirm whether or not it changed okay perfect all right so I'm G I'm gonna not I'm gonna stop sharing then no we

024want you to share we definitely want we definitely want you to share because so um also folks that are watching um because we have people that are logged on in the zoom they'll be able to see the presentation as well so we definitely want you to have the presentation oh that's even that's perfect that's awesome all right we are we are in business go go right ahead let me just make sure that changes when did that did that um it's still good it's good is it changing when I change it I don't see a change we still see the top page yeah try the arrows maybe yeah I'm changing it on my screen though that's the thing sorry about that so now now now it's now we're good so now we're at what is the

025purpose of this presentation that's what we see all right now I just have to figure out how there we go okay now I got it all right so I'm just controlling it from a different screen technology okay so welcome this is town of ashin fiscal 25 tax classification presentation um the this presentation is going to be a little bit different than what you're used to um from what I understand in the past all you um were asked to decide on was whether or not to select a single tax rate or a split tax rate um but these are the four things that are supposed to be voted on on classification hearings now I don't I don't expect um there there shouldn't be anything different so I would think that um none of the answers will

026be different nothing that wasn't done in the past will affect anything um this is just how it's supposed to be done and as I go through it I'll um uh I'll explain anything that you want explained um so um the purpose of the presentation is to select their single or split tax rate um whether or not to adopt an open space discount whether to adopt a residential exemption and whether to adopt a small commercial exemption um and if you have any questions on what these are um like I said in the past you've only done single or split tax rate um I think you've only ever done a single or split or a single rate um and you've never um adopted any of the other three so it's easy to just say no to those

027if there's anything you guys want to explore um it's too late in the game to do that this year um so we but if it's something you want to explore for next year um I can certainly do studies and and show you what those numbers look like [Music] um so before um I get into numbers and everybody's eyes glaze over um I just like to explain what's happening in the market um despite High interest rates there's still high demand um High interest rates are contributing to low inventory because nobody wants to move and give up their low interest rates um although rates now are starting to um to come down these fiscal 25 values are based on sales that occurred in 2023 so at that point they were uh in the mid to uper sevens

028in many cases um as shown on Slide Five sale prices seem to be stabilizing as we progress through calendar year 24 and commercial industrial segments have been stabilizing and even seeing decreases over the past couple of years um this is a comparison of full and fair cash value for fiscal 24 versus fiscal 25 uh so the residential and open space segments um are seeing a 6.1% increase um commercial industrial and personal property are only going up 2.7% um as noted because those those segments have just been struggling uh over the past couple years um and this these these other two lines here just show the makeup for the town so uh for fiscal 25 91.6 of the town 91.6% of the town is residential and 88.4% is commercial um uh so it's a you know

029compared it's pretty stable from last year and then this uh total value the last line is just showing an overall increase for the whole town of 5.9% which is probably much lower than you've seen the past couple years I'm assuming um this is Slide Five and it's just this is just single family data that I got off of MLS um and it just shows what the Market's done over the past five years now the this is these are market sales whether or not they're arms transactions or not this is just every single family sale that's happened um that's that's been uh listed on MLS by Brokers over the past five years um so you can see from 20 to 21 to 22 to 23 that's just significant increases um in moving through 24 so this

030calendar year 24 will be for fiscal 26 value so we're seeing the residential value stabilize also are those is that the average price these are average um uh this is average list price in the Top Line okay and this is sale price on the bottom line so last year for so for calendar year 23 that year is done obviously so the so the average sale price of a single family house in Ashland in 2023 was 769 where now we're mostly all the way through um 2024 I believe I grabbed this snapshot sometime in October um and you can see there's a slight drop I don't anticipate there being record sales in the past in the last two months it's it tends to be kind of slow after once school starts and the holidays are coming

031um I would expect those numbers to pretty much remain the same if if Nate if you don't mind if I could just interject here as well Brandy um not at all so one thing I just really wanted the board to note um just what he has there at the top so you know how I've said like you know usually there's a couple year lag time between you know what the what you see in terms ter of the the sales prices and what when that gets reflected in the assessed values so Nate's just kind of confirming that you know those FY 25 values um are going to be based on the 23 sales and um the ones that you see for 24 we'll start seeing those in the uh tax year for 26 thanks Nate sorry

032no problem and and I like just to just to piggyback on that I'd like to include this MLS data because because this is showing actual sales not assess values um and I think that's important when you're setting the values is in terms of assess values um just to make sure you're not uh disjointed um which can happen um if you look at anything long enough it starts to make sense so um we wouldn't expect our average assess values for fiscal 25 to be you know 900,000 if the market is showing the average single family sale was 769 so I I like to add that in just show that the assess values are consistent with um with with actual sales um and in Massachusetts uh we're required to be at 100% of market value uh typically

033we run at a median of 95 because if we if we we work with median so if we had a median of 100% that would mean half the town is valued over 100% so we run it at 95 um which kind of with the hopes that it kind of Maxes the town out at 100 rather than having half the town overvalued is this um is this broken out anywhere by um the the house the uh price range of the houses like were there significantly more houses valued at 650 and above versus 400 to 600 things like that that that are included I don't have that in in this screenshot um and the tool that I use to generate this report doesn't do that but um I am able to get an Excel extract from the

034MLS to do that for sales and also compare it to assess values I think that if if someone yeah yeah the other thing is these are average sales and we work with median so so there is a slight differential there but um but they're typically pretty close um so this um these are the average values for fiscal 23 versus fiscal 24 um the average single family value um uh for fiscal 24 was 674 799 and the average value for in 2025 is 720 281 um and if we go back to that slide you can see the average Market sale was 769 so the average assessed single family value is at 720 it's about what we would expect to see slightly below that 100% Mark um the the uh projected tax rate right now is $111.99

035which is over a dollar decrease um which also equates to a decrease in um the average single family house uh uh tax bill but this number could change slightly based on on uh numbers that are entered after this presentation I'm not sure if Britney um the finance director has all of our numbers in yet or how that will uh play into where the tax rate goes um but if it does change it's typically uh in a in a matter of sense not not dollars so you know you might see $125 or something like that um and this is where the commercial industrial and personal property values fall uh fiscal 24 versus fiscal 25 so you can just see it's just a slight increase um and I should add this is just commercial industrial real estate

036it does not include the personal property and the reason I don't include personal property is because the 504 which are utility values um which are very large values versus the mom and pop type businesses which T often have very small values can really tweaked this number so I just I just leave them out um and here is um this shows what a shift would look like if the town should at any point decide they want to shift it doesn't look like as far back as I can see they never have um which keeps things very simple and I think [Music] um is is not a bad idea in a town like Ashlin that's you you know almost 92% residential um to shift it would put more of the burden on the commercial industrial properties and

037probably uh have an effect on new development in terms of commercial industrial and whether or not people um so I I highlighted this in bul um assuming that that's what the town would vote on because that's what they've always voted on um as seen here back to 2021 it's just always been a one which is which is no shift um this is a comparison of surrounding communities and where they are um you have a few around you so Ash that are that also do not shift so Ashland Hopkinson Holliston and Southboro also do not shift um it looks like Ashland is close to the bottom um in terms of the neighboring communities I think only Framingham has a lower average single family tax bill um and then significant increases once you get to hopkington Holliston

038and uh Southboro and the last line here is just the state average um so this includes you know Boston all the way out to hancok every single in every single City and town in the state um you know there are towns out there that have I think gnal has a $2 tax rate um but but um places like West Springfield they their residential rate might be in the 20s they they tend to be a lot higher out there but this is just an overall average for the state um and this is just a breakdown of of um what the maximum allowable Levy is for fiscal 25 in Ashland the levy limit for 24 um uh you add the two and a half percent which is what um uh prop two and a half allows you

039to do and then you add in any new growth so New Growth would be um any new value that hasn't been taxed before so a new house a new building um you know maybe something was exempt before that became taxable um and this is what it is for fiscal 25 so this is new money um this 326 585 and that's pretty consistent with what I've seen in the past I I went back a few years um to see where it's been and it's it's pretty consistent um I think next year with the uh as as the development at 90 to 100 Chestnut Street um progresses I would imagine next year's number is going to be significantly higher here um so the fiscal 24 Levy limit uh the debt exclusion which I'm not sure what that

040is I just saw it on Gateway um and then here at the bottom is the maximum allowable Levy for fiscal 25 um and then that's it um and like I said these are just the four things that that the town needs to um decide on um so typically they would ose a shift one and in history um they have selected no on all of these other options and I I'm happy to explain what these are um if you'd like okay great thank you so much Nate um I appreciate the presentation and um so just a couple of things that that I was um just wanting to confirm so for the um you know the communities that you had presented and you know the the the um you know out of all the communities only Framingham

041is the one that that that shifts um and that's that's because of the um amount of commercial that Framingham has in comparison to towns like Ashland and Southboro and Holliston correct I would imagine so so most most larger communities do shift um and yes the purpose of that is to take some of the burden off of the residential taxpayers when they have a large commercial base yeah if I remember correctly from years past um I think Rich used to say that you know communities that have less than 15% commercial tend not to to shift because basically the um the the increased burden that that gets shifted to to um to commercial is not kind of commerate with what what the um the offset would be to residential correct so um so just that and that's

042that's generally what you what you what your opinion is as well yes crazy things happen um you know there are towns that have more residential than Ashlin that have tried it it just doesn't go over well especially when a large portion of the uh com the commercial makeup is probably smaller businesses that you know you're when you it's it's not like most of these are not large corporations that have Deep Pockets so you're um you know you risk pushing out a lot of small businesses if you with this much residential if you decide to shift it and um you're allowed to go up to 1.75 I think I saw the limit for if they were if if Ashland all of a sudden decided we want to shift as much as we can I think they're

043only allowed to go 1.5% um because it's so predominantly residential um but yeah I I I I had never heard the rule of that 15% rule of thumb but it's it's not a bad idea it's it just wouldn't it wouldn't be a popular decision right especially with small businesses okay thank you um B does the board have any questions um thank you very much for your presentation um you know one thing I think would be you know at some point maybe when presenting to town meeting or that would be to have a conversation about the types of services that vary between one community and another um just when I look up here I you know I know self BR doesn't have um trash pickup I don't believe right so there's varying Services um and you

044know in our case we're you know on the lower end and yet we have on the higher end of services I believe so um just interesting and then um the only other thing I was thinking is to to make it Apples to Apples I you know I don't know if it would be useful but it's I just wonder what would framingham's if it wasn't the 1.69 shift then what would it be what would their tax bill be yeah if they didn't yeah is that that's fairly easy to calculate right Nate yep that can be done in Gateway um I would just need their uh their Levy limit yeah I just kind of sitting here thinking about that stuff right yeah so but uh no thank you very much you're right though and that's a good

045way to look at it the services you provide versus what people pay versus what surrounding towns I didn't realize uh South bro didn't have things like trash pickup um yeah and Holliston doesn't have sewer there's you know there's so that's a good it's a good it's a great way to look at it it really shows that it's a good value and we're actually doing a little bit more of a deeper comparison with that with um the Colin Center study that we're doing so um you know so once that's once that's completed I think you'll see a little bit more meat on the on the bones of that analysis and and the thing is the way because it is so indepth um we won't necessarily have all of those communities but you know we've picked three

046um you know at varying let's just say tax levels one that's you know significantly more than Ashland one that's similar to Ashland and one that's significantly less so you can see what kind of you can start looking at Value in terms of what services are provided versus versus taxes I I agree with Claudia it without that context Michael it's really it's difficult to even analyze what's What's Happening Here I think for most people so I think that's very important yeah so Nate um so the first thing that they would need to vote on is whether or not they wanted to adopt a single rate correct correct okay and are we voting on that tonight or are we waiting to because we we don't close the the hearing until after town meeting correct that is correct

047so um Nate if I remember correctly it was only a year ago um but we the board goes ahead and votes on that now is that correct or do we need to wait until after all the Appropriations are done at town meeting to be honest I it's I think this might be the first town I've done that is a a town meeting town okay um so I'm not sure how that works okay um so I'd say let's go ahead and have the board vote um tonight okay um you do need to keep it open until until U after town meeting and then you can close it and if you need to take the vote again we'll goad do that no harm no fou um and as far as the other action items that's on the

048list we haven't we haven't explored all this no before no I mean I know that it's something that we probably should take a look at if but if we can't if we can't take any action on it this for this town meeting anyway like but I would love to be able to like have a conversation about what that all is yeah Nate and I actually talked about that earlier today um and just I think he's going to do U an exercise especially with the residential exemption because I think that's probably the one that you know when you start reading what in a residential exemption is is probably going to catch your eye um and so he's he going to look at doing that exercise as well okay all right so we can wait to do

049we can wait to do that does the board feel okay with that okay okay all right so um so what we'll do is we'll take a vote and then um so I would say that um unless the board has any other questions for for Nate I appreciate the presentation thank you okay welcome all right so while Yolanda still gets settled um could I get a motion to approve a single tax rate for FY 2025 all those in favor I I I um so it looks like we've approved the single tax rate for this upcoming year we'll keep the hearing open and then we'll close it after town meeting have Britney's information too correct and I think um so our meeting in December is scheduled for December 7th is that correct Susan yeah meeting is the

0504th December 4th the 4th okay thank you you're welcome okay okay so we'll go ahead and finish finish close that out then okay all right um unless the board has any other questions I I also want to just thank the the board of assessors um David and Chuck and um and Steve that are online did did anyone have any additional comments I want to give you guys a chance to to say something if you guys wanted to add anything to this I think is okay all right thank you umine Chuck go ahead Chuck I I just said I think it's I think his presentation is great I'm completely with it all right great thank you Chuck okay I guess we'll be um moving on our agenda thank you so much Nate for joining us tonight

051it was great to meet you and ome and and we appreciate all the work that you're doing for for our community right now so thank you no problem at all it's a great team to work with good Brandy can I just ask Michael the question and Jen about the the study that's being done the Collins what what exactly is that so it's the Staffing study yeah what we've referred to as the Staffing study we as them to we just asked them to do a little bit of a deeper dive so they use some metrics that that we had and we're asking them to do a little bit of a deeper dive so that we could do a little bit more of that kind of comparison to give some context to some of the stats that

052we often use the other thing I think that might be useful in in these conversations when we're looking at the tax rate and the other communities that too would be then also to include like some home values you know related to just uh it I think it just helps you give you a better sense right of the whole picture of uh yeah home values in in what context do you think well in just in terms of you know what what the home value is to begin with and therefore how it might impact the tax rate right um and then just where what the correlation is between the tax rate and the so the three the three players really I guess the the tax rate um the home values um and the services the the amount

053of Serv expenditures essentially yeah because that's that's what goes into the algorithm if you will the calculation because really your tax rate is your function of your expenditures and the assessed value right right so um but it would be it's good to look at it in like real numbers or I don't know I just feel like those three categories to look at it in terms of real the housing market whatever and then the services the specific more specifically right what's being off and what's not being yeah yeah like we said we there's so many more services perhaps in the town of Ash than there are in some of those other communities with a higher tax rate correct so there's a great tool on the Department of Revenue website called the community comparison report and you

054you you select criteria you select your own criteria demographics or or whatever it may be um so you select the towns based on what by based on maybe it's population or land area or um average single family value and stuff like that and and it really hones down on who really is more similar than you unfortunately it doesn't include what services they get because that would just be that would be information probably too hard to maintain because those things change year by year you know yeah it's not an Apples to Apples type your best bet on that stuff is not necessarily looking at the revenue side but it's actually on the expenditures so okay so more to come on that all right thank you so much Nate I know you've been sharing your screen you

055can you can stop sharing your screen and and uh we will see you soon thank you thank you very much have a good night nice meeting you handing it over to miss Yolanda who is who has uh joined us in time thank you uh Brandy for taking over the meeting I apologize for being late um I'm learning quickly you can't be in two places at one time and I had a meeting that I had that I had to do because of something else I'm doing so thank you very much moving forward we have a presentation uh update on the village burial ground and I believe we have Helen who's gonna do that for us and Joan so uh this is just an update you guys have done some great work so Helen I'm going to

056pass it over to you hi yeah um so I have a presentation here I'm not sure how we get it I sent it to Susan Jen are you able to put it up no I think you should um we probably can just make you co-host but I can I don't have it but um Susan can you make Helen co-host so that she can share her screen you should be all set Helen you should be able to share now okay it's up can you see it no you just so just go to share at the bottom of the screen it's a in in the meeting you have to hit share okay wait a second I might I have this presentation up I can't see share okay share I see it all right so [Music] screen and

057then let me find the presentation and that's okay there you go wonderful all right so yeah I want I want to thank you all for having me tonight uh to give this uh update we uh we decided you know that it would be a good time now since we've really had a lot of events and we've had um a lot of work that's been done that down at the site of the village uh burial ground that would be a good time to do an update and let everyone know uh what's been happening down there uh so that's what this is and so go to the next screen so I I did a little bit of uh back I think we had covered this before but just to kind of reiterate everything that's been done since

058the spring so on our original uh cleanup day we the with the original condition of the headstones were covered in mold and lyen very few headstones were visible readable uh they were buried missing many headstones were broken off the base cracked and improperly repaired from uh previous uh work someone had done and many headstones were completely broken and required uh professional uh and requ do require uh Professional Restoration still the back sections of the cemetery were completely overgrown with brush and invasive plants and there was a large a dead tree in the cemetery which has been removed by the DPW uh we have hundreds of hours of volunteer work which is so wonderful um you know that we have so much community support and involvement um our community cleanup and volunteer Training Day the historical

059commission Historic Society Cemetery working group we had 36 volunteers that participated along with our conservators from TNT gravestone Solutions and there was a total of 250 combined total volunteer hours and uh during that event we had cleaning of the headstones using uh D2 uh to clean the headstones which is a biologic solution and uh they used brushes to clean off the stones able uh bodied volunteers were trained to pallet reset level and do light repairs of headstones we had volunteers trained by Kathy Rooney to move remove invasive plants uh cutting small trees and down limbs uh for removal and volunteers moved cut brush to a designated location where the DPW came and removed it on on a number of our events and the DPW also delivered water gravel and gravel for the repairs and disposed

060of the brush and limbs so that was over several uh cleanup days and we really do want to thank Doug Small Chris Messier and Kevin Lang Meer from the DPW because a lot of the um needed assistance that we got from them U made all of this really possible uh the DPW also had a large dead tree and the pretty much in the center of the site uh removed uh which was not only an isore but it was really sort of dangerous so it was nice that that got removed um we have a cemetery uh subw workking group that does repairs we call them our labor working group and uh there's a total of six participating volunteers right now and we plan to add additional volunteers over time um and the volunte total volunteers for

061that uh that group is 86 hours our Cemetery um let's see NOP sorry that's the same uh oh and I wanted to uh make note that all of the palleted headstones if you take a walk down there you will see pallets with headstones on them uh those had to be dug up in a waiting repair and that's why they're on those pallets it's basically to kind of keep them from being further damaged especially by uh lawnmowers and weed whackers so when work is going on in the in in the area they're not being you know further damaged many of the standing headstones were also buried and had to be dug up those headstones have already been repaired and reattached at the bases and leveled we had a an event uh with a high school community

062service day we had 2 uh 21 volunteers participating with a combined total number of 54 hours we had a Boy Scout community service day which I'll explain a little bit more about in a bit um and that was also a civil war recognition and Flag Ceremony that had a total of 29 volunteers with a combined number of 105 uh volunteer hours and so right now I have um the total number of volunteers so far is 114 with a total combined volunteer hours including all events and organization at 867 that is actually that's 867 hours that actually is a little bit low um I've been trying to get more information um there's a lot of it I have to go through and and we haven't got that completed yet but I also have an additional 64

063hours from our research and document mentation group um because they're also doing ongoing work and I have to add that um I I had we had to put this together pretty quick uh so that got left out so I just wanted to kind of add that in so that number is a bit low and it may even still be a bit more than what I've got here and now we've go some we've got some pictures of this was the Training Day in June and this is our conservative TNT was teaching our our labor group uh skills uh that they now are using and are really doing a lot of good work down at the site doing leveling small repairs of the gravestones and um that's kind of going on on an ongoing basis when they

064have time so they'll just arrange with each other to go and meet down there and and you know they may go down and do seven or nine headstones or two or whatever they have time for so we've uh we've got a really nice group of people that are doing that in their free time and we really appreciate that and then the high school community service day uh this is just some pictures from that day we had three different groups of high school students that came in for two-hour shifts and uh did a lot of brush cleanup work which we also really appreciated then um recently we had a Boy Scout Troop uh community service day uh and Civil War vetan recognition uh day as well with the Boy Scouts which was really a nice event

065and uh 29 Boy Scouts and their leaders and working group members participated uh major brush and uh Leaf cleanup of the back areas was done they documented headstone information including names dates condition of the uh Stones the size of the stones the locations materials used for the headstones and needed repairs so another thing that we're doing and we have our documentation team doing is filling out a form that one of our team members uh made uh just specifically for this so when work needs to be done or or when they're documenting anything about each headstone there's going to be um before and after information for each for each headstone and eventually when all of this repair work is completed um we will have that record for the future which is something we hope to um

066really uh have housed in the um in the vault at Town Hall uh because that would be nice so that in the future anyone who wants information so they can go there and look at and and there it is and they'll be able to find out what was done and and how it was done and all of the information they might be looking for so the Boy Scouts while they were there learned historic and interesting factual details about the people buried in the cemetery which was really interesting because they really enjoyed that you have to have seen them the way they kind of intermingled with each other discussing the details of these things to know that it was really something that they enjoyed and that they really picked up on that they were learning something

067because they were talking about you know a lot of people had Jaws back then as as a shoe makers or they died of consumption and these aren't things we talk about a lot today so they were discussing it so you know they really learned uh something and became engaged in in that whole uh process and and it was really nice and then each Boy Scout read a paragraph of the history of each Civil War veteran as the flags and military service medallions were beinged placed at each of the grave sites so uh that was another way that they were able to pick up on a lot of that information as well um and it was a just a very nice and uh you know it was a very good recognition for the Civil War veterans

068who hadn't been recognized in I don't know how long but a very long time um and there are two additional Civil War veterans Graves that need to be found we know that they should be there and we're hoping to locate those in the near future so by all measures that day was an incredible success and there's some pictures of the Boy Scouts and their leaders all down at the cemetery site um we have a group picture and some pictures of them uh doing the work uh down there and then we also have pictures of the flag ceremony and the boy you can see the boys reading and uh placing Flags so that that was just a heartwarming thing I have to tell you it was really it was truly nice to be able to participate

069and see all that um so that was that was nice for our members and for them as well so common progress um at the site uh the cemetery has had an amazing transport transformation if you've been down there you can you can see all the visible headstones were clean and many can now be read which is really which is really an amazing transformation because I know when I first went down there couldn't read a lot of those headstones you couldn't read many of them in fact and now most of them can be read um all unrepaired and unsecured headstones have been palleted I explained that earlier uh 13 headstones were repaired on the volunteer Training Day nine additional uh since by the work the labor working group uh many previously buried headstones have been found

070and we're still looking for more we know there's more in the back section which just recently got cleared of all the poison ivy so it was a little bit tough for us to have people going over the summer was a little tough anyway because it was really hot but we also had that area that still needed to have the poison ivy removed so we didn't want to send people into areas until poison ivy was removed so that area uh recently was it was removed in people have gone in there and started cleaning that area and we hope to find more headstones down there and then um we are currently and I explained this earlier documenting all the before and after information for each headstone and to keep a you know to keep an ongoing record

071and to to finally have a a completed record at the end of the whole process William Bell's relatives uh wanted to know if his grave had been accounted now this was someone who was down there that we found and uncovered their their headstone had been completely buried and we had found it and their their relative wanted to know if if that headstone was there and it was during one of our brush cleanup events and we were very excited to let them know that the stone had been uncovered and so uh Community engagement and volunteerism has been extraordinary and we've been very very happy about that that was the model we really hoped to predominantly use um eventually we will uh move to uh professional uh restoration when we have to but right now we're sticking

072with this because it's working really well for us um so this is some of the labor um ongoing volunteer work that's going down on down at uh the village burial ground and you can see some of the members of our of our labor working group down here uh working on the headstones and they're basically uncover ing a lot of the bases too so even if the headstone is say out of the ground or partially out of the ground a lot of times the bases are buried under the ground they these things sink I guess about I think it was six inches every hundred years um but anyway they've been digging up uh the the uh bases and trying to put them back together with the headstones and and they've been doing a great job and

073you can even see here uh just if you notice from that first picture I showed the difference in these R stones and the coloring they're they're you know they're very clean and they're very nice looking and you can read them which is which is really wonderful and so our next steps um we expect that we still expect I should say this to take between two and three years to complete we're continuing with the volunteerism and Community involvement model until we get the headstones that require Professional Restoration and then we will go to get a survey and assess the costs at that point um the community uh volunteer events will uh continue that's valuable work and we and we really appreciate that work and and involving the community the cemetery uh working labor group will continue

074with the small repairs and leveling on an ongoing basis until all their work is completed the cemetery uh working group documentation team will continue documenting and researching gravestone information location and condition both before and after until all of the gravestones have been completed and that information as I said will be housed housed at the vault at Town Hall when it's completed for future reference and interest we also hope to um find and document those last two Civil War veter veterans head gravestones and we want to eventually install two historic kiosks with a map of the site and historical information we're currently discussing if the sign that says ashin Cemetery should be replaced with a sign that reads uh Village burial ground the correct name of the site we also plan to install uh some signs

075that say dogs are not allowed on the site since that seems to have become an issue and we also uh would like to eventually um more towards the end of the project plant a 4 inch border of low growing grasses around each headstone to minimize damage uh from lawnmowers and weed whackers because when they get close to those headstones they do create damage and we have noticed some additional damage since uh this restoration project started so we really want to we want that as part of the project to minimize that damage and we think that's an important thing and then we plan to install uh Native plantings near the river and our future plans for funding are to use the current funds that we have in the historical commissions account uh then the funds raised

076through grants if we can get them and fundrais future fundraising and we will eventually apply for CP CPA funding as as funds allow I'm sorry okay so um and I just got a couple more things and then um we hope to get eventually if we can if if funding allows get ground penetrating radar to get an accurate account of the number of remains intered at the Village burial ground the Professional Restoration of the gravestones will be completed after the survey and B and bidding requirements are implemented and we are currently planning a civil war service at the Village burial ground for spring 2025 that will likely be in April we hope that you are as excited at our as at our progress that and everything we've achieved and this has been a very real labor

077of love so do you have any questions any questions from the committee Joe I have one thank you Helen thank you uh and and your committee and all the volunteers that that have done the job uh to restore that location um are there actual numbers as to the number of burial uh in that in that location there's not an accurate number we know there's over 200 gravestones and I do have the number written down somewhere but I'm not sure um I know exactly where that is right now but I know it's over 200 um but we know there's more people buried down there uh than we have gravestones because some of the gravestones are buried some of them are missing and also because some of them were moved we're not sure of the headstones that

078were moved to Wildwood when Wildwood first opened we're not sure how many of the bodies went then there's also the fact that a lot of times people if they didn't have money um would be buried without a headstone so that's why we'd like to get the GPS um the ground penetrating radar to get an accurate account of how many people are actually in in the site itself um and that's something we would like to do it's a little expensive um but we do hope to eventually be able to do that and one last question if you don't mind Madam chair um with respect to all the work that you've done uh are there future plans to add protective uh barriers so individuals don't command like fencing area make sure that we don't have people running

079through and you know knocking things down that you've so taking care of nicely you know the thing is one aside from it being very expensive there are stone walls around it um so you know I I know the stone walls don't completely um keep people from coming in especially because there are a couple of openings I mean we could maybe even talk about gating the openings but we don't want to keep everybody out um because we want people to be able to go in and visit it as a somewhat of a nice you know historic destination um the thing that I would be the most concerned about more so would be maybe kids going in and playing and damaging headstones and we have a sort of conversation going about that right now we haven't made

080any decisions on that but fencing is very expensive and as I said we have to kind of go through all of these other things first before we could even begin to think about that so we haven't really discussed that but I know as I said there is there is barriers I mean there's there's stone walls and on on the backside there's the river so they're not going to come through the river um they could come over the fence uh the stone wall but you could come over a fence too so and then you have just the two openings so maybe we would talk about that in the future you know maybe dealing with those openings I don't know that that's something that the working group will have to address thank you good yita hi Helen

081uh just wanted a comment and and a question first off I just wanted to to thank you the committee all the volunteers this has been such an incredible Community project um I I I had the opportunity to get out there and volunteer a couple of times with the labor committee or the labor folks and I just I'm so impressed by the dedication the focus uh the meticulousness of all the volunteers and the caring it's just it's it's truly amazing to see the community come together uh to preserve our history this way so I wanted to thank you for all of your efforts and all the volunteers and all the folks who are M making this possible um first off in in so far as keeping folks out of the property you know I think we

082we we have talked about the CH the concern about kids playing it's not even I I think there's a double concern there not so much actually in addition to kids you know possibly damaging those headstones there's also the possibility of kids getting hurt in a really in a significant way I mean you know so with all the the repair work going on and and such so I think there there is a need for to take a look at you know who who can who and how can pass through uh in a constructive way the the other I have a question for you U about the headstones it's specifically Bally uh the footstone so we've been talking about the headstones quite a bit but there's also been a lot of footstones around is there a considered

083effort to try to preserve that as well um or what's the significance of those footstones in relation to the headstones um yeah so when there is a footstone sure they that would have already been cleaned because they cleaned everything down there if it needed a you know um a leveling or some kind of repair that would also be looked at um not and it made just be that not every um grave site got a footstone but I know there are some I don't have an accounting for how many there are and there may there may again uh be things down there that we don't know about because they could be buried or they could have disappeared over time and that's something we wouldn't um be able to get the information on but as they find

084them in short they would address the footstones uh any any part of um the site that you know would exist from The Headstone to the footstone would be would be be repaired or or cleaned as needed thanks okay CL anything yeah you know I I too just wanted to thank you Helen and and your group um it really has been an amazing project and to see these pictures and how far it's come um really very impressive and um and I was also I was wondering so if a person wanted to go in instead of come out um like you don't want to come out I'm not sure you're saying where where is that where is the best uh access okay so there is there's two entrances so there's one directly behind the Federated church so

085if you walk along the parking lot next to the Federated church and take your right you're going to see the the the stone wall and there's a break in the stone wall right there that's the main entrance um that we've been using there's a another side entrance on the right hand side of the the cemetery on the wall on the far right side and that also has a break I know the DPW uses that entrance to come in but I believe that's also private property over there and there's some agreement to let DPW use it so I don't know that like parking there is really as accessible as that first entrance I would go in through the back of the Federated uh Church yeah yeah and it it it does have um an interesting history

086and it's really coming up on uh 200 years old in in um 2028 right yes it is so um you know really interesting I don't know uh people who may have not gone into cemeteries much um it's pretty interesting sometimes to go in and um have an opportunity to look at you know the dates and often there might be a few words that are engraved about the person or what they died from or um you know a variety of uh information it's interesting to look at how old they were in those days particularly at death and uh just just they're they're much more interesting I think than than you realize until you go in and uh and then of course there's always nothing like a good Stone rubbing too so but actually I kind of

087heard that stone rubbing is um a little bit detrimental to I was just gonna say it's probably not um really good for the the yeah I don't think it is but you are right it it's just really um a lot of interesting interesting information just walking around and reading those stones and you get kind of a picture of like just a lot of people died very young back then you know they were buried next and you know who was who and you see a lot of because you're you're an Ashland resident and you've been here long enough and you know names so you do see a lot of old Ashland names in there so it it is it's a really interesting historical place to go and it's kind of nice and quiet and peaceful too

088it's it's a nice place yeah yeah funny thing how that works all right well thank thank you really very much it it really does look great great all right thank you madam chair so thank you so much Helen and and and the team for for all the work I I was so impressed with just the number of sheer hours and people that you've that you've literally um motivated to to to be a part of this project took took time to keep track of I mean your data is really good and and and you know we know how hard it is to like it's kind of like hurting cats sometimes to get volunteers to to um to commit and show up and continuously show up so just um kudos to you for for the efforts around

089all of that because it's it's it's a huge effort so um so thank you for for that and for the committee that's been um and Kate JK is also here and I know she's been very involved in that as well um but I had a couple questions one you know as we were talking about sort of this like under construction current state of it um I was was wondering if it made sense to like put up some sort of temporary sign or anything about like just like a caution you know just I'm I'm just throwing that out there because just just so people don't get hurt like or we I don't know I'm just well no I mean I I I I I hear what you're saying I think I think it that makes sense

090just of you know people either don't get people use a little bit more caution when they're walking around the site just to not to damage all the work that the volunteers have done but also just to make sure that they're being careful as well um I if possible yeah just sort of like an un you know just you know caution under construction or something just something like that just something um but that was my that was my first first question and then the other thing I know you had mentioned um CPC funding um as a as an option to you know I know it's more kind of like longer term because you still have funds left um which I assume the funds are probably going to go towards you know this this upcoming spring and

091summer from a time frame standpoint like what are your thoughts about like timing for for for CPA funds well I think that we're gonna so we we had a meeting uh last week and we're planning on having another meeting I believe in a month or so uh before everybody gets you know into the winter to do all of our next steps um and I think our timeline um right now is a little bit fluid in that we want to be able to really utilize the volunteers and utilize the community service and keep people excited about it um because one it's it's a really nice project for the community to to be involved in but also because I think when we go for that funding it's nice to have Community Support so that would be very

092helpful um but I I believe as soon as we um find what we believe will be all the stones we're going to find down there because we kind of want to have all the stones visible and we know there's more back there um because once we have an accounting of everything we could get a more accurate assessment of what needs to be done and what our volunteers can do and what they can't and that's when we'll start talking about the survey and then going for CPC funding so it is a little fluid um so and I know there's all kinds of you know dates and you have to have things in by certain times to be able to get for you know the next so we're not as concerned with that right now this year

093because we really have to look at next year first we had kind of thought that might be the thing we were doing right now but once we kind of got into this and we really realized that one I think our volunteers are actually going to be able to do more work down there than we had originally conceived and so that's a nice thing because that saves us a lot of money and it's and it's a way for people to be involved in the community and it's a way to restore part of the community with the within the community which is I think nicer than actually having to pay someone but there are Stones down there that are Beyond uh our labor group's uh capability and will require it but we'll we'll get that after we

094get the total number of stones located and assessed for from our perspective as to what we can and can accomplish and then we'll be able to to get the survey which I'm kind of thinking is going to be next year and then we'll go for the CPC funding either next year if we have it in time or or or the following like I said it's a two to three year and it's a little bit fluid right now just because we are kind of going at this slower Pace now than we had originally planned because we are really having a lot of success you know using using our our volunteers and getting work done that way okay oh and also um as far as the sign uh put down there you know that's something that I

095will also bring up with this Cemetary committee I don't have any um I don't think anyone would have a problem with that I just have to discuss that with them and and we can plan getting something down there I don't think that should be a problem either okay sounds good thank you yeah thank you and I'm I'm really uh glad to be able to come and present this tonight thank you well thank you very much Helen I think the rest of the board has covered any potential questions uh if I have anything else I will reach out but I too want to thank you and your committee and certainly as we as we see here in Ashland when volunteers come together amazing things can happen and you have shown that that is truly the case

096with this project so thank you for leading it thank you for keeping those volunteers engaged and we look forward to seeing what else gets accomplished in this space thank you thank you madam chair if I could just say one thing this is Joan confra sure go ahead Joan very quickly because we have some people waiting that we'd like to get in as well right I just want to thank Helen she has done y's work and I hope that that that that gets gets recognized in the town that without her this project would not be going on thank you so much you're very welcome thank you thank you Joan Joan also does a lot we are actually Co we're co-managing this project so Joan does a lot too so thank you great okay wonderful uh Rick

097Peter we are ready we are going to have a presentation I don't know if they heard me uh our next item on our agenda is a presentation on update and we're a little bit late we apologize uh thank you for your patience um sometimes things take longer than you plan uh as I said the next item on our agenda is an update on the regional YMCA that is coming here to Ashland people are very excited about it and uh I'm going to invite the three of you up and um take us through this presentation like I think Jen is pulling it up for you on that computer and uh you have to start Rick come on for those who don't know you just introduce yourselves and then go through it we're excited I think the

098community is excited to get the update as well SL yeah let's goward to the slideshow good evening um evening folks it's uh really great to be here um we all know it's um this project has been like in the pipeline for some time now you know and uh it's just so exciting to be to the point now where we're making really good progress so real quick just introduce who you are oh I'm sorry my name we all know but some people watching may not I'm sorry my name is Rick mcferson I'm president CEO of the Metro West YMCA right so um if you take a quick look back before I introduce Peter um it was back in 2019 that with the town of Ashland we were uh able to secure the land that this new

099regional YMCA is going to be on in Ashland so that 2019 and as the ball was starting to get rolling Co hit right and everything you know turned into crisis management for all of us right and and so um 2020 2021 was all about just responding to community needs while keeping the the flame burning for the new Regional Y and doing work behind the scenes um and so once we you know hit 2022 things started rolling along pretty nicely and so we're here tonight to give you an update on just where we stand and so I would like to introduce Peter Weiss Gerber who's our chief development officer to kind of get us started and then I'll I'll be back thanks Rick um so as Rick said I'm Peter we Gerber I'm the chief development

100officer and a proud Ashen resident so we're excited about uh about this project um about a year and a half ago uh we had come back to the project we went out we redid the feasibility study we redid Market studies really trying to get a sense of what the community was looking for in a new Regional why so we did a phase called listen learn and dream we received CE about 2,000 surveys from folks in Ashland hopkington hollist Sherburn even parts of of South Framingham because this will truly be a a regional why and what it came back as is yes there's still excitement there's still a need for a facility and then there were a couple things that were a little different on this side of the the pandemic one was that the community

101was really asking for a place that would bring people together from all walks of life that would unify the community that would unify the region the other thing was the Mental Health crisis for children that we are facing and we continue to see it today with kids in our child care programs our early learning programs after school care programs summer camps and there really is a a need now to address that our staff go through what we call trauma-informed care training because of kids coming off of that um tough couple years are still facing those challenges today Challen challenges of socialization challenges of getting back in the classroom so as we work to try to Pro protect the opportunity for all kids to to learn this really became an opportunity to look at the facility

102in some different ways so about a year and a half ago we said okay it's time to come back um together again do you not see Jen can you just look at this real quick I this is what so I think you just have to do it with this instead of that so which one so you have to do it with the arrows okay I don't really yeah you should be able to do it that way all right go get these two arrows back and forth yeah so then it's working okay yeah my apologies uh so about a year and a half ago um we decided it was time to bring our leadership cabinet together together um we recruited a group of about 20 volunteers from each of the towns we tried to get um

103a diverse group of folks uh we recruited two amazing leaders Tom Karen who many of you may know from nesson Sports the Red Sox U vizy Tac who I think a lot of you know from Ashland uh two fantastic passionate compassionate volunteers who then worked to bring a group of 20 folks together including our very own Yolanda um Steve Greenberg from Ashland Amy turncliff from Ashland as well and those folks really started to look at building a group of folks who cared about this project we knew if we were going to kick off a fundraising campaign that folks don't give because they have capacity folks give because they care so our job over the last year and a half was to find out who out there cares about this project about that time we had

104been working with MathWorks out of NAC and they stepped up with lead gift of $2.5 million to really kick things off uh which was exciting so at that time we had our marathon community breakfast an event we hold each year and we announced that lead gift from mathw Works fast forward to this past Year's Marathon Community breakfast and we were able to announce uh Federal HUD funding in the amount of $5 million that was directed towards the Early Learning Center component of this project which is very exciting to actually know we're going to have an early learning center a child care center uh as part of of this we were also able to announce at that event that we will be naming this facility in honor of and in memory of the hoit family Rick

105and decoit were very involved with our YMCA they had helped us each year they were our first inspiration award honores and helped us decide who we were honoring each year Rick had some very specific ideas about the uh the facility I think he wanted pools or um but uh but he cared about this dick cared about this and now Rick's brother Russ is still very involved with our Y and it means the world to them that we'll be able to name a facility on the Boston Marathon route in honor and memory of the the hoit family just a few months ago we were also able to announce that uh we received State funding of $500,000 uh thanks to our incredible Metro West legislative delegation that we have in the state Senate President um and a

106little bit of a sneak preview um but on Tuesday November 19th at our dream big auction will be announcing a very special announcement of a gift that that we received of of a million dollars so that's really exciting what that all means is that the first $10 million of this project is now behind us so as we start to shift towards the next 10 million really looking at okay what are those resources in the community that we can go to uh Gifts of that level as we're looking at the top of the pyramid they take a lot of time and we talked here about a number of projects that that take time to get done so the passion of our volunteers the involvement the time Talent dedication really means the world to us and folks

107staying with us and trusting the process to get to that first $10 million as we go and we look forward we've submitted requests and you can see here on the screen to to a number of Foundations corporations also working with our leadership cabinet and our board of directors as we um shift towards this next $10 million so you can kind of see the the time frame here it's been a journey for all of us but we're excited we're making progress we now see a path forward and with the momentum we have continuing that progress we have an opportunity if things continue as they're going to break ground in 2025 which now doesn't seem that far away does it two months yeah that's a good point two months that's really close so at the same time

108one of the things I was trying to say to to our staff is sometimes you see see a duck on the water and it feels like things nothing's really happening but if you look under the water the legs are going crazy and there's a lot of activity happening that's the way the project has been there have been a ton of things happening on the site you'll hear about that a ton of things happening getting us ready to approach 2025 and from a fundraising standpoint we continue to gain momentum we continue to connect with key folks in the community who want to see this become a reality and uh we'll be reaching out to a lot of people over the next few months uh engaging them in the process so with that I'm going to turn

109it back over to Rick all right so we're going to get into a bit of a design update really high levels to kind of give you a feel for what this project is shaping up to look like on the site um The Guiding principles of this let me take one step back um we're in we just completed what we call the light schematic design phase and Kerrie will talk more about that but during that phase of the project was all about getting every on the same page and part of that was uh you know Hiring Our architect which was a big deal and so we hired a architectural firm called CBT Architects they're out of Boston and they just hit all the all the important um aspects of what we were looking for they really

110have a great feel for working in a space with uh you know that's in nature like this site you know they have a good sense of that um and they just clicked with our entire team so um CBT Architects has been leading this kind of design effort and you know we talked about what are our principles and our guiding principles are around health and well-being right and achievement relationship and belonging are all the things we're going to really make sure happen in this facility uh state-of-the-art programs is a real driver we need to make sure this facility is prepared to you know just deliver incredible programs for you know young children older children seniors everybody um making sure that this is an inclusive facility at every turn like we've got this awesome opportunity to from

111the beginning be intentional about making sure like where does that elevator go you know where are the stairs you know how do we get in and out of this building what's the parking lot look like so we don't like often I think in past projects just in the world you know what gets done first and then you say oh by the way now let's figure this out but we can do it ahead of time and we are um and finally you know integrating there's more and more stud about just how important it is for mental health purposes for us to be outside and to enjoy nature and all of that and this site lends itself to that like more so than like a Framingham facility where you've got a beautiful facility and some space out

112back but not like this so for us to be able to take full advantage of that is a real driver for us um I won't really get into a lot of this but you do see the bottom left box sustainability we talk about it lot you know we're really trying to make sure that we do everything within our power to make sure that you know we're doing everything we can to have a sustainable facility that is um that we're all going to be really proud of I kind of like this slide we talk a lot about um spaces that connect and Inspire so when you go to some facilities older facilities you walk in and you're on the first floor the second floor the third floor but our Architects are working hard to try to

113create and this is this helps I think with kind of I forget what you called it car but like inclusion through visibility right so you can kind of see what's happening you know in a facility like from one floor you can see up in some areas you can see down you'll feel like you're part of the whole thing and so that's kind of exciting and again to kind of re-emphasize program is the driver so having a space that is great for all sorts of different types of programs is uh the number one um kind of guiding principle for us like Peter said creating a sense of community for everybody you know by designing the space properly is right there as well and inclusion at every turn I love the picture of the hoists up there

114and our hoit statue you see tachana mcfaden um they're in our Early Learning Center and just having a facility that brings all of our communities together um there's never been a more important time I think than now for a place like that and finally you know taking full advantage of that beautiful facility and our connection to the Charley Brook Trail you can see there's our entrance you know where the little easement from the Y going in there is and um you'll see when I flip to the next page we're working hard to make sure our internal kind of trail system on the 12 and a half acres connects to trolley Brook and so that's exciting and on that you know on in that on that kind of Campus space there will be Fields so when

115you see these kids kicking around balls and playing outside there's going to be space for that um which is pretty exciting so that's kind of a money shot for tonight for you to kind of get a a feel for the whole campus you know I mean just I'll pause there for a minute so you can take a look I mean that is something you know car we'll talk a little bit more about why you know it landed in the spaces it does but um you can see you know the front of the building the Early Learning Center over there to the left field space to the back and all of the connects on its way to Charlie book on the very back side of the property and this is just it blown up a little

116bit bigger for you to see so that's Memorial Drive the parking lot is on Memorial Drive and you can see the two red arrows going in a lot of time it's been done right talking about you know traffic and how we're going to get into this facility and out of this facility and disrupt you know the traffic on that street just as little as possible so it's a nice smooth way in smooth way out you know with that I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to talk a little bit more about you know how the design you know how we got to some of these and um go from there so thanks hi um Carrie de Leo um with scalora Consulting we are an Ashlin based project management firm so like everyone else who's

117been involved with this project we're super excited because we can almost see the site from our from our office um which is right across from the commuter rail so like Rick said um actually I'll go back to what Peter said the paddling under the surface lots and lots of activity happening right so there's a lot of planning that goes into making a a facility like this but also checking ahead of time to make sure when we get to you when it comes to site plan approval and advertising this to the world that we've done our due diligence we know we can do what we want to do right so um I'll kind of go through that process uh so you can see but I just wanted to give you a high Lev overview of the

118building it itself and and this is what we're calling the master plan um if we go back here I'd say the full master plan means everything is done including you know what's going on down the hill and what's going on in the future and and all that um but zoomed in what those building blocks so the the main core of this building is going to be that membership Center so that focus on health and wellness serving the community child care um you know after school care child care for drop-ins uh all of that gymnasium um and then also off to the side you'll see that ELC so again the ELC has been a core piece of this program we've also are planning for you know building in an Aquatic Center so that that uh aquatics

119first uh chunk would be like a family Aquatic Center you know entertainment pools and then the second chunk is more of a a laat pool Edition and then there's also room for gym expansion um the what you can't see here which I think is important to this site is there's an existing berm that runs along uh Memorial Drive and so one of the first conversations we had was you know what does this want to look like from the street right do you want to be running the marathon and be able to go by Dunkin Donuts and see the building up the hill or do you want to approach the site and then discover it as you enter and what when we started talking about those connections with nature we kind of thought you know what

120it makes more sense there's going to be a sign people are going to know they're coming to the why but you're going to go past that burm which will be kind of a shielding and then as you kind of work your way into the site you discover more and more right you pull in okay this is where I put my car oh look at the building oh behind the building there's more programming oh look it's connected to the trails Etc so that was kind of the design big picture approach and I'm not an architect um I just play one at public meeting so um so I'll just you know I'm just repeating all the all the things that I've heard but that was kind of the approach if you're familiar with the site which many

121of you are you know it drops off quite a bit to the back right so that idea of you know trying to bring the building forward and then you know put the parking in the back it just didn't seem like it worked right what we really wanted to Pres OB erve is what is going on out back right those views that connection to Nature the trees all of that so there's a couple of different areas that are um identified here that the survey showed us there's some Higher Ground what if we take a couple of those Higher Ground areas and connect them and create kind of what we're calling the development space so that bar of building is going to land on that Ridge where we already have some high ground and then the grade

122drops off behind the beauty of that is it allows us to kind of build a really um straightforward building right it does a couple of things um from a building perspective uh that I think this shows is one because of that grade drop off we can bring the scale of the building down so that from the main entry it doesn't look that big but then we have a lower level that actually opens out to the to the ground so that you have good daylight and you can really take advantage of some of those um features of the site um the other thing that really is nice about this is the orientation of the building so the north side of the building is the side that faces the woods right so we can really take advantage

123of Northern Light filtered light and then the southern facing side is where we would have to control the sunlight um it's much more controllable when you're dealing with a smaller volume on the front right so this is you know still very much conceptual but that idea of letting that light filter in from the back like Rick mentioned trying to have some multi- level spaces so that you can kind of see in see out see up see down all of that um really should make for a very transparent building for the users um and also for the sunlight and then this is just a stacking diagram that was done to try to understand you know where do the floors want to be right so the gym is on the main floor but instead of coming in

124on the first floor you're actually going to come in on the second floor so that from an accessibility perspective nobody is more than one floor away from where they want to go right so some really really thoughtful work that went into that to make sure that we are keeping that at the Forefront and that we're also planning not only for now but planning for what could this site be over the course of its lifetime right making sure that as programs change and needs change that we're designing a building that the Y can renovate in multi-purpose over years and years and years so the status of where we are um like Rick said we've just finished what we're calling a light schematic phase uh a lot of work but still some schematic level stuff left to

125do um and what that meant was it got us a set of documents that we could price dial in on some budgets make sure we were not too far off from our targets um we were also able to um start the process because of the HUD funding there's a kind of um long list of items that we have to uh fill out complete Etc as it relates to environmental assessment so um pretty comprehensive environmental planning um we were able to get going on that and actually we are just about at the point where we are ready to submit that to HUD for our uh our um HUD they they call it the esa one or something but uh ESI so um that will go in we'll get a ruling from HUD that makes sure that

126we can actually build a daycare facility with their funds on our site all of that seems so far no red flags which is fantastic news um but as part of that again some of the stuff you haven't seen test pits borings um survey work uh we've done preliminary traffic studies we did a noise study we've done a endangered species study we've done um yeah all all the things right and um the attitude was you know some of these things may come up when we go in for HUD let's just do them now so that when the question gets asked we say yeah we've already we've already taken care of that right yes we Have No ledge party we're hoping for no ledge uh we know we have a lot of lot of big rocks um

127so we are um we're really hopeful that we don't hit anything too catastrophic out there um and then what's coming next so uh as we've now completed that light schematic we're moving into the next phase which is to finish up the schematic um exercises which from an outsider's view probably not a lot is going to change right is more just kind of checking some boxes so that we can dive into what we call Design development which is when the design really starts to get developed as it says um but that's when we dial in on things like what are the mechanical systems locking in the rooms what does the building look like um all of those types of things what are we going to put in for finishes flooring signage Etc um so we will

128work on that through the winter and um we've also started now clearly uh starting our meetings with the town we want to engage you all um we want to engage the community to understand what folks are looking for make sure all of those surveys you know are being answered and that that the Y is doing what they can to answer as much as they can and for the community with this building and then when we are finished with that that's when we'll be coming back to the town to start talking about site plan approval and next steps you know meeting with all the Departments and making sure there's no questions um so we can progress that so that when we get ready for construction documents everybody is ready to roll this again is just a

129high level I can't really read it but just showing kind of where we've been um the last few months leading up to this and then moving forward you know going to the board um you know next spring for an update and and continuing to go back to the board of the why to keep us moving that's all I have thank you yeah so the next several months are big months you know we have a lot of work to be doing um our our board is 100% supportive and our at our last meeting you know gave us the green light to keep this keep everything moving and so that's what we're doing what Peter uh and Carrie didn't really talk about uh is part of this over the next several months we'll be starting to talk

130to Banks you know about potential financing we're working with third party to really look at our proforma budgets so between financing performa budgets you know in continued um fundraising you know all of that that's going to come together in June and there are no red flags we feel good about how everything is moving so you know our our goal our hope is in June all of these pieces come together we don't have any come sideways on us between now and then and if that's the case you know the ball keeps rolling and so with that I guess I would ask are there any questions for us questions comments Joe go ahead thank you madam chair Rick thank you uh great presentation thank you all for being here um the first time I had an opportunity

131to really read what you folks have were ready to present and um you had one uh slide up there with respect to sustainability and I know that ashl we're trying to be as green as we can and with some of the newer buildings that we've recently built in the last couple of years um we started going geothermal is that something that you folks would probably entertain uh if it's if it's feasible for you folks to do something like like that if you could come on to the microphone Carrie sorry I could try but car's bit more the expert here um we did already have that conversation um I think uh the adjacency of this site to the Niza site makes folks a little bit nervous about doing anything that goes down into the water table

132um so we at this point are have tabled that discussion um because of both cost and uh risk aversion if that makes sense solar is on the solar is definitely like we're already in talks um with uh solar sponsor yeah with to talk about solar we uh this will be a high performance building right so very very well insulated um and then fully electric building which is now provide you know necessary for the the energy code yeah yeah I think 2025 that kicks in if I'm not mistaken right yeah yeah yeah yeah so okay thank you appreciate that any other questions comments no I just want to say uh thank you it's a very exciting um I know that um it's been really a topic of conversation in town for several years now and people

133have been so excited and certainly the pandemic uh kind of put squashed a few things along the way um it's been great to know that you all are back working full steam ahead um and I certainly for for one I can't begin to tell you how many people have talked to me about how excited they are with this project so so thank you very much you're all very welcome great anybody else Makita Brandy so thank you very much for the presentation I know that um you know we've talked you know over the years and I know you had said that you need to get to a certain point with fundraising before you're able to break ground was that se is it 70% fundraising is that sort of like what your target tget is before or

134is it am I not remembering it correctly I might not be remembering yeah that's it's kind of a complicated question okay you know it's it's a combination of um of of fundraising and financing okay and the performa budget what this what this facility is going to generate as Revenue to offset debt and that kind of thing so it's it's a it's a full-blown analysis that's happening right now okay and so it's kind of hard to say you know 50% pledges you know you know identified would be nice you know that's a goal of ours is to get to you know that as soon as we can hopefully you know in the months ahead um but it it's a little bit more complicated than just saying that okay but right now there are no red flags

135and all of those buckets are lined up where they're supposed to be today so good awesome yeah I would I would I would reiterate that we're all very excited about this project um I'm curious I know the f pH two phase three for the aquatics program is that going to be like part of because at some point probably I would assume after June you guys will have everything kind of pulled together and be ready to submit an application to our planning board and that process are are you planning to include those those additional phases in that whole planning process or you are okay yeah we're going all in on site plan approval for the entire project you know and our goal is to just keep moving and have this whole master plan done keep just

136keep it moving you know the beauty of the way it's designed is if there needs to be any pauses along the way you can you know you don't have to finish the entire thing all at once and as you all know the cost of of of putting up facilities like this is growing pretty dramatically so you know we know that um the the membership side of this facility is it's going to be 36 million anyway could be as much as 40 million and by the time you finish an entire master plan by the time we get there Carrie we could be talking $55 million right and so the good news about the way this has been designed is we can move before we we don't have to do the whole master plan all at once

137but we can get the ball rolling and then that will create more momentum and and so that's how we're what's a square footage of the initial part of the project 30 uh so the about n and 40 right 9000 for the DLC and 40,000 it's it's approaching 40 you're right yeah it's maybe just're trying to keep it y yeah somewhere okay thank you so and I just love looking at the design and kind of the vision that you guys are putting together it just it really kind of I can I can kind of see it in my brain how it's going to flow on the site and it's it's it's pretty it's pretty cool like I can just imagine like light coming into the window I'm just yeah no so so thank you and I

138would say if you haven't gone up to walk and you want to go walk let me know or reach out to Peter and Rick and they'd love to you know be happy to take you up there because there's a nice path now that takes you into the site and it's really cool and then steps and yeah steps yep so ran it right out of the rock great great well uh thank you all for coming and presenting it's great for our community to hear the update and um I'm sorry we won't be able to join you on November 19th that's unfortunate but I'm sure it'll be a big success and I'll be bidding from town meeting the silent auction you can still can check in we had any flexibility we wouldn't have G meeting I know

139I it's tough that would be fun but thank you all for coming sorry greatly appreciate it okay sounds good sounds good thank you good night good night Happy Thanksgiving thanks I was thinking we should put uh you know we should give everybody a piece of paper as they come in I know we talked about some information about the 40b versus the um MBTA and I know Trisha Kendall I meant to talk to you about that mic is putting together presentation but just a sheet of some updates because I know we're not really allowed to give updates during Tom meeting Mr Shuster is very stripped about certain things so but wouldn't that be nice if just put a QR code say some updated information about the that' be great about the why and and just have

140take it to this presentation you know that great and the burial ground too for that matter yeah yeah yes yes exactly I mean people yeah there's so many things I just put a little QR code on there and like take people right to them help do that the other thing would be could interesting is to give them a link to the town manager's newsletter right maybe if they're coming to town meeting and they don't get that newsletter they could sign up sign up yeah yeah that's great yeah what it's a okay wonderful okay moving on hopefully we can get through the rest of the things fairly quickly before we go into exec session first is the review of special town meeting warrant articles we've been through this a few times we're going to go through

141one more time if there's any other questions and also sort of discuss who might be doing a couple of them our select board where we would then pres present it so uh is this going to be Jen taking us through this okay okay um so the first article is the free cash appropriation um and that will be putting funds into to our general stabilization fund OPB um sped stabilization fund and the capital fund um and we we have fully met withi the finance committee and um recommendations we'll post this online so the full warrant book will be online tomorrow oh good um the second article is the budget amendment and that's really just um adjusting our Capital um out outlay appropriation um from 2.69 00 to 925 um and I think we discussed this at

142our last meeting but when we met with the finance committee and we sort of talked that through they sort of had um they were of the opinion sort of making our motion that goes to town meeting as simple as possible and in their recommendation they sort of qualified it as that this is the way to obligate all of our remaining Opera funds by the deadline of um December 31st 2024 um we have our annual uh property tax exception for eligible seniors um and that will be at 12% um Article 4 is really just a cleanup article from May um we had basically uh a a typographical error um and we had when we accepted the gift from the hington area land trust we referenced um map 18 lot 100 as opposed to map 27 and

143so that's just to make this correction before we right complete that transaction um Article 5 will authorize uh a a borrowing for water main replacement project um up to a million dollars um and that was built into our rate conversation previously and so when Dan ma um and Britney gave that presentation this is the project that they were talking about y um CP CPC is recommending a uh feasibility study uh with the city of Framingham to uh look at was sh Pond and to sort of restore it they've had a lot of issues around CYO bacteria and this will be the first step to hopefully um rectifying that issue um and the City of Framingham is paying 75% of the study and we have agreed to pay 25 and that's with that 18,000 750 is

144I'm sorry is that coming out of the recreation bucket it is coming out of the undes undesignated fund okay thank you you're welcome um article s is uh accepting a new bylaw and that is the blight bylaw which you received a presentation from um our Building Commissioner duck Scott and that's really just giving um the building department health department and actually police and fire can also be enforces um a tool that if there is a blighted property and soort of the Bogue does go into definition of what that would be um some tools to help the homeowner get into compliance um there is also um it would also create um a database of vacant property so if there is a vacant property that they would Reg and that we we would be aware of it

145I can I just like to say something with respect to that the um town of native does not have anything like this and when they saw this language they may just take it and run with it that's great yes so great job for getting that done still got to go through town meeting so kind of a fee associated with that that would be nice like a findest fee or something yeah that would be nice we can yeah I like that um article eight is the MBTA communities um zoning bylaw and I think that has been plenty of discussion sort of around that the planning board has had its hearing and they have um voted to recommend it at town meeting good um and then the last article is article number nine and that's the purchasing

146of open spaceand in the Town Forest so 52 Acres which we've also previously discussed here I think the only change since the last time you've looked at the warrant is that we did add a funding note so we sort of discussed that um and sort of highlighted the the sources um it doesn't need to be in the article or the motion but we sort of just kept it there um on the bottom just again for a little bit more uh information for the voters as you go out of town down U Myrtle Street whereabouts does that begin that property so actually so if if you go as you go by Winter Street right yep so it borders Southern border borders Winter Street right and so as you're going along you'll see some houses and it

147runs along behind there and um I would say you'll get to the Town Line where that's there's that other road that goes into like a little residential the other end of Winter Street yeah um and so that's pretty much the nor the manag of the property okay I'd be happy to take you there would we would we have a map at town meeting yeah that' be good that we can show exactly like what me we'll have a couple slides just one a plot plan and then also just the break down yeah part it actually that um the high tension wires kind of trans it's that's on the other side of the street though isn't it the high high tension wires go through I only look over it where it's wide open over that way cuz

148that's private property over there that pretty wide open space with high if you're thinking on like if you're going north towards Fram you're looking at to the right as Jimmy's property who whose property Jim oh um and then if go left that's kind of the property right yeah okay so of these there's really only one that the select board would address or would we okay so tax exemption property tax exemption and then the blight bylaw or the okay okay okay Joe would you like to do the property tax exemption you typically do I do okay okay anyone want to do the in and really it's just an intro like to the blight bylaw it's discussion you know very short and sweet as to what it is will the Board of Health Endor Doug be doing

149a presentation um we're still figuring out exactly how that's going to go okay so let us know and then if you need one of us then we can figure that out yeah I'm happy to okay but I but I would want backup well it would be so typically it would be somewhat not a you know because they'll go into detail in slides it's a brief introduction of int yeah yeah yeah we'll let you take it Brandy if you don't mind that's you know I will say out of all of these I've articles I've probably received the most calls emails Etc people stopping me about the the blight bylaw so I'm not surprised yeah good or bad or just yeah what are the questions Michael um so I think it's it's generally uh not very much

150in the way of questions it's uh just a philosophical um you know really discussion of government over government over overreach versus kind of maintaining you know public health and safety and um is this possibly going to T to a conversation like the last time when Chief Davis was Joe you know you never know what town meeting um you never know but I no I I do think there's obviously a philosophical there could be a philosophical difference here and that's I mean that's what town meeting is for you know is it is it philosophical but also sort of like um more uh implementation minded I.E like I think we had a conversation about this when when Doug came and and talked to us about this like you know I think one of the concerns that we

151talked about when he came up was you know how people can use neighbors can use this as a punitive measure against each other right so those the sort of concerns that you're hearing from from people as well or is it really just more like the government it's more of thing it's really like who the heck is the government to tell me like how high my grass can be you know and and I think you know it's interesting you know I think there's probably some room for discussion at town meeting and maybe some compromise to be reached you know maybe some things in the bylaw you know need to get modified or yeah you know that's what town meeting is for exactly exactly they haven't been I mean they haven't been bad conversations they've actually been

152really good and I mean one person yesterday I'm like we're just going to disagree on this one because yeah you you think it's a homeowners assoc like it reads like a homeowners association thing I feel like it's got a like a health and safety component to it and I do think that there is a line yeah um and uh that's that's yeah everybody makes their best argument and I'm glad people are paying attention and we enough to to reach out and ask questions so that's good okay anything else are you doing a town manager Forum have you decided yeah next T Tuesday five Tuesday at five okay great and that's and that's both zoom in in person or is it yeah yep okay okay good moving on to we need to vote on the Warren

153Barn plan so we have the most updated mou in our package so uh J I believe Jen you're working on this if you could take us through what changes we have seen or they've agreed to and then we can have any other discussion and then take a vote on this sure sure I can do that um so there's not a ton of changes since the last time we met and presented so I think when we presented it last time I sort of cautioned and said that we hadn't had a full conversation um with um Framingham State University but that we were proposing you know really around the how we're going to split Revenue um for the long-term lease of the barn um and so um there was just really One Small Change on that so

154that is on page four um if you look at the facility use Revenue um they did um accept the idea that 40% of Revenue would go to their project management um company uh currently flick for project man I for property management excuse me um that includes sort of their cost but then also um ongoing utilities and uh general maintenance and that's within that 40% and we would take 10% and put in a facilities maintenance and that's sort of for some of the bigger maintenance things that might pop up and that way we're at least planning ahead um and then the remaining 50% would be split equally between the town and FSU um we were sort of hoping um for two of two waved fees so two events that we could have two activities or events

155at the facility with completely wave fees um they weren't really able to do that because that is how their property management um company sort of becomes whole and so what we agreed to is that they would wave all the fees except for the project the the property maintenance and so they'll do that for themselves as well as ours so it'll be at a reduced at a reduced fee um we were sort of thinking like maybe that's where we'd have a retreat or we'd have some other Town sponsored event there but just so real quick that's just for the use of that facility correct right so if we want to go to their to the to the White House or to the lodge that isn't covered this is specifically for this new facility okay that makes

156sense and then there's no rental cost associated with public skate events at all so that doesn't sort of working for the public for the public for us because they're not going to have ice skates you're basically bring your own ice skates and skate if you you want okay um some of the other concerns I think you guys had were around liability um so we've been working with them to receive their insurance binder and so they um hold a 1 million um Dollar General Liability their project their sorry their um management company also has a million and then we also have a million um and so they have some language um and there we're sort of working with them to see if there is a possibility of increasing that would happen in the lease and so

157um there's some language here that references that um liability will be referenced and worked out in the like forthcoming lease um I don't think that there were any the and then the other is um initially so we are agreeing to pay $1.5 million for our portion of the construction of this project um and initially the mlu had suggested that anything so if the bids come in um and the building is constructed and there was remaining funds available that that would be used for um FFN so the Furnishings um and other programming costs um so what we agreed to was that if it falls under a 100,000 at the end of the day it makes some sense to buy furniture so that it's furnished um if it's above 50% we will we'll split the remaining 5050

158in terms of like we we'll get some funding back if it comes in you know significantly under budget um which you know may be sort of wishful thinking in construction but you know we're at least protected that way originally [Music] just a few years ago it was what 1.2 with the mezanine I think yeah with the mezzanine yeah yeah we weren't able to do it when we went out to bid and this was years ago now it's probably yeah I mean it's been I mean we weren't able to even start the project because we didn't have the funding source um and they have done you know they've done some work on they're making a real solid estimate to make sure that we are going to have enough money allocated for this project and so it's

159pretty close that it's we're we're just the 1.5 really just covers the bar shell yeah I mean there's there's a couple small things that you know maybe we could go back and forth but it's pretty close Okay looks like it's going to be and that the I believe the chillers are already sitting there for the ice skating rink yes cuz they're going to do like a temporary I'm like you drive by and yeah they're waiting for us to work out some final details on a right of access that would allow them to start that so it would be temporary we did talk to them about it so they would be temporary in it as portion on our on our property and then while we're they're under we're under construction they would find a second possible

160temporary loccation and so um sort of build up that as a Community Asset and then it will be um then it will be there permanently Brandy I think you had a question when I sent it initially about sort of you know would it be there permanently um so they will have a concrete pad that's the plan right now um there are no there not going to be walls it's not going to look like a hockey um it's really going no boards you can like going be no boards so they're actually going to sort of surround it at this point sort of with hay bals or something like that like Pretty Natural so it will look like a a pond um and so there'll be you know some places yeah and I think it will sort

161of go with the the look and the feel of the barn so there won't be any of those walls that they have to find a place to gotcha take down and find a place and then they're hoping to use that patio for the programming you know if they have a bridal shower or something like that you may use so like use it as like an extension something in the off in the off on the season shoulder so than I just real like so in a couple years like we could have a new YMCA like a nice new community YMCA we can have this community facility over at the waren conference center pretty cool man yeah like I mean lot lots of good stuff going on yeah that's pretty yeah yeah a good swe I just

162we don't have to Stone Park is a little short too okay uh any sorry I'm trying to move us along okay okay I'm try we're I I don't want you guys complaining when we're trying when we're having to run late um if there's no other questions or comments or concerns if I can get a motion to support the Warren barnu as presented move I'll s okay great we have a motion in a second all those in favor I opposed okay that passes 5 Z thank you very much thank you for all the work thank you for the work and we look forward to progress on that okay next though that's associated with that looking at oh0 40 BS an update on the 40b projects approved by Mass housing the 250 units at the millsite and

163then 225 units at 61 I'm sure you all saw the email that we received regarding the concerns which I know many of us Echo um we'll see how we move forward but uh Michael update yeah just uh just a quick update so we did get an application in for the mill site after review We deemed that incomplete and so kicked it back um the developer obviously wasn't uh too thrilled with that but uh agreed to resubmit um and we're still waiting for that application so that's important because again once we get that application it's reviewed it's deemed complete and it gets stamped in that's when the clock starts so we would have 30 days question even though subed it and it wasn't complete the clock doesn't stop the clock doesn't start yeah that's correct so

164um so yes I I do anticipate you know having that um having that come in well it's already Wednesday so uh so it could be in by Yeah by end of this week or next week um and then actually the uh the other one on Waverly Street uh we did reach out and U you know obviously they've received their site eligibility letter from Mass Housing and um they of course were aware of it and they basically said we'll submit it when we submit it they didn't really have a time I would say we don't need to reach out to them again and let's see if they wait a little while to get it submitted that'd be actually easier in regards to timing and and the work that needs to be done okay yeah and just

165yeah just so you know I mean we are kind of you know as Carrie in the YMCA talked about you know you just see kind of the Ducks floating along the the pond surface but there's a lot of stuff churning underneath and so you know we have been working to get peer reviewers and and starting to to line all of that up so wonderful okay any other questions or comments on that we haven't heard any any from any of the ABS at the 61 Street site I know when this first came out yeah I mean once once something gets filed there isn't a butter notification and things like that yeah they haven't filed yet they the W when they file with theba filed with with the zba they gave us their through Mass housing we

166were notified that they were and then that whole process that we went through but because nothing has been filed the butters have not been needed to be okay okay moving on oh okay um so our calendar for the rest of the year so obviously we have a meeting today we then have town meeting on the 19th so we will not be meeting on the 20th we're not meeting two nights in a row uh then obviously Thanksgiving week we have our meeting on Wednesday the 4th we typically do not do our second meeting but please leave that night open because we typically get together to uh discuss um our holiday our holiday season so it's a social it's a social event so just don't don't uh don't fill your calendar with something else on the 18th

167okay uh one thing I do want to bring up we did not put the nove the December the I'm sorry the January calendar on here we can't meet on January 1st which would be our first meeting of the year because it's a holiday uh so that means we wouldn't meet until the 15th with everything going on we may need to add another meeting um in January so be thinking about that as you're looking at your January calendar um I don't know when it will be yet it'll depend on what the meeting needs to be about and um what else is going on so just be aware that we will most likely add a second meeting in January um and then just while we're talking about it the MMA is the 23rd 24th and 25th um

168if you're planning if you'd like to go ask Susan and she'll register you um if anyone else goes on Friday they have a great it's the weimo lunch in and that's always a great event so I know Michael's not as eager about it recently no I I don't go to the weo event no not the weimo event but okay uh let's see I heard you took care of a lot of the reminders and the consent agenda as well as the update on the select board room and technology so I believe all that's left is priority project updates yeah I can do this fairly quickly okay um Thanks Jen uh so downtown so they did start working on um on the Front Street side uh it's 102 Property Maintenance um of course they've uh hit rock

169ledge um I'm like there's like nothing there so um so they're they're working through that um they did uh they are going to come back back next week um I did let them know that they could work on Monday um as it is a town project um so they're typically exempt from from any of those uh any of those restrictions but um yeah so already we're a couple of days behind schedule but uh hopefully they'll be able to make that up pretty quick um and then we've got the bids uh you know working on getting the bids out for the actual electrical connections too because the goal is to really kind of have this seamless as soon as uh 102 Property Maintenance gets done with the excavation work um and laying the conduit you can

170just bring the electricians in and and stuff and the good news is 102 Property Maintenance actually has an electrician on their team and they look like they're going to try to bid but you know it's to the lowest bidder so we'll see um so there's that um 26 I think I did update you on this actually oh yeah real um H when have all I mean I'm hoping that all the business owners have been notified as to when they're going to be affected um and if we could maybe also somehow make this available to the public so they aware or I'm not quite sure how we might do that but we could put it on the project page okay but yeah all the businesses so it's required that um before they start work on a

171property they have to give them a week's notice ahead of time okay um and it gives them the opportunity to kind of work around hours and and all that good stuff I'd hate for them to be impacted too much by this um and same with the cutover right when the cutover happens they'll be given notification of the window of because they the electricity will have to be cut and then reconnected okay yeah so and just a quick question so I know that the weeks of work that we're looking at um has you know this kind of spaced out over nine weeks are they going to be able to to be able to if the ground freezes are they going to be able to continue to work like is that if the ground freezes it would

172be a little bit more difficult but um you know just based on history things do freeze anymore I mean it's 80 degrees today yeah I mean last year it didn't freeze really um it didn't the year before I mean we were pouring concrete in November like this crazy so we don't think at least for the relatively short term that there would be any issues any issues no still working through maybe well there's no such thing so you know right so it's all it's all it's all a dream any other questions or comments on the downtown anything else on downtown okay Michael keep going thank you so 126 I think I did uh let you know but just in case I didn't Verizon is actually out there um and moving the um moving the wires yeah

173so so that's a huge huge um yeah it's it's magic Claudia um and you know I don't know if you've noticed they have um we have really tried to get them to clean up some of the area a little bit I see a little bit of a of a difference nothing that you know I'm really excited about but making some efforts yeah okay nothing else okay um we're going to do board reports and then we'll go into exec session if anybody has anything uh no just uh are we doing the board reports now yeah board reports and then we'll go into exec session so okay uh yeah just really quickly I wanted to acknowledge the T the effage of the Town Clerk and uh and and volunteers for yesterday's uh federal election and and uh

174Massachusetts election I guess too um you know I think it's it it's it speaks volumes about how smoothly and how professionally things were run yesterday in the town of Ashland we have a lot to be proud of um so I just wanted to shout out the the staff and the volunteers that made that happen uh successfully and I also want to give a shout out to waca TV and their exceptional election coverage uh throughout so that's that's it that's it for me could I just yeah go ahead Michael Sor yeah Makita that's okay before you sorry M no no no no no you're fine no no you remind I was like oh I've got these numbers yeah so yeah it's all good yeah and and thank you for acknowledging Cindy and her team they did

175an amazing job um we actually had about a 76% turnout um which was um about 10% less than than the last presidential election but still a lot compared to you know a um a local um so we had uh 9,86 total voters um and that excludes some of the the absentee voters um and those can't be counted until 5:00 p.m. on Friday November 8th but um on Election Day we had actually almost 3600 people vote on Election Day um and uh almost uh 2,000 voted early in person and um 4,200 people voted by mail so yeah so anyway sorry I didn't include that in my initial report that's okay thanks for reminding me Mita Claudia yeah I was thinking I've been busy but then I was thinking well wait a second we just had a

176meeting last week so so I I don't have much to report on but I just did want to e Echo makita's uh comments about you know the work that happens behind the scenes when we vote and uh you know I'm certainly in the last couple of years seen seen just how extensive it is um and and really because we do vote on so many days now the their work starts much earlier and goes on for you know even even after election day so um so definitely it's U they did a great job I don't think we made the news for running out of ballots or anything so so uh congratulations to us thank you very good okay Joe thank you madam chair uh Echoes uh the sentiments from both Makita and uh to Claudia with

177respect to the uh efforts of the U clerk's office uh last Saturday um I was very happy to at least provide an hour's worth of uh coverage to the uh select board's uh office hours at the library it was very nice uh we had um while I was there we did have a very uh meaningful conversation about a bunch of things that uh were going on in the town by a couple of residents and greatly appreciated and uh I just like to remind people that on November 12th it's uh veter the veterans luncheons at the uh Community Center thank you yes Community Center and it's being sponsored by the Ashland fire and Ashland police departments uh starting at noon time I will be there hope to see others there as well and um that's it

178that's all I have Madam chair thank you Brandy so I will also be really quick because we just met last week um just wanted to um let folks know that the community center um is still looking for volunteers for the holiday program um so if if you would like to be a donor um and either adopt a family a family or a child um you could also decide to do filler gifts or you can donate gift cards um they are still looking for volunteers to help with the program so um please reach out to our Human Services team um Courtney Laughlin is like they still have a form to where you can sign up that's on the website yes and I think it's on our website too so um so people can can use that

179to to um to sign up and and and and you know we are probably about a month away from when gifts need to be delivered so um we'll all probably be getting our our you know familes information pretty soon so um so if you're able to help sign up thank you yeah and just to um what was I going to say I was going to add to that now I can't remember oh Michael could you maybe bump that up in your newsletter this this week um you know just put the link maybe to the donor form oh right up at the in the early because you know you have to dig down to get to it yeah I mean and I was yeah we were talking like I'll probably put like some personal appeals out

180there too like because we are behind a little bit yeah we are a little bit behind from previous years um really yeah we have the same number of kids just a little fewer donors um we'll do some sort of more directed Outreach but um yeah you have a list of people who did it last year who we always reach out to them yeah yeah so we always reach out and um they're sort of cross referencing now um and certainly things are coming in I think they told me like four or five came in last night you know since Friday we've had like seven or eight I think it's hard when it's 80 to think about holidays you know it's like this sort weird Vortex but the time like you know it's sticking away here so

181um it would be great if people wanted to donate and just haven't got around to it would be great y okay that's it for me okay couple things dog park update the dog park thanks to Jen's work and our designer we went before concom on Monday night they had to extend it because we don't have our D number and the goal is to we are going to planning board on the 14th uh and the goal is shovel in the ground sometime in the spring it's looking really nice and we want we need to get it in by February so that we are still eligible for the Stanton Grant which is half of our funding uh tomorrow night I am meeting with open space and wreck as well as with Becca to review the new timeline

182to work with them to get the open space and wreck plan completed uh if you're interested Garden Club is meeting on Saturday at 10: a.m. in the library if you want to start a garden if you just want to talk to other people about gardening like I said it's an open meeting at like I said 10:00 at the library they meet downstairs in one of the smaller meeting rooms and you can I think find information I think they have a website as well I should have known that and then a couple things coming up next week we have a ribbon cutting for Chase Bank which is Wednesday and a chess company on the 15th I don't have the exact name Chess Masters there we go so it's great to see these new businesses coming in

183and really bringing different things to Ashland uh and that is all I have just a reminder for everyone town meeting is Tuesday November 19th and hopefully we'll see you there uh does anyone have the page for the exact I can borrow it there you go perfect well thank you all it is uh 9:30 we are ending early but we are moving into an ex session so pursuant to General Law chapter 30A section 21 A6 to consider the purchase exchange lease or value of real property identified on the ashon assessor map it is totaling 53.5 Acres as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the ongoing negotiating position of the public body and as I as chair I've determined that the public discussion may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the

184board if I could have a motion to go into exec session and to not come back into public session Second Great uh let's do a roll call vote in Keegan I Bennett hi manani hi Kinsman hi and Greaves I again thank you very much we are wrapping up our meeting uh it is 9:30 please hopefully we'll see you at the November 19th town meeting at the ashon high school at 700 p.m. uh because we are open town meeting you do have to show up to be able to participate and hopefully we'll see you there and that wraps up the meeting uh the Open session of our meeting for Wednesday November 6 thanks for watching and hope to see you soon and if not Happy Thanksgiving let us