001e e e good evening and welcome to the select board meeting for Wednesday September 18th thank you for joining us we are being recorded and broadcast live by waca TV t v you can also catch us on live stream on Facebook remote participation is available using the zoom video conferencing platform any disruptions with the video conferencing platform will result in the platform being shut down in the event of A disruption broadcasting will continue on waca TV and live streamed on Facebook we have a full meeting the planning board will be joining us a little bit later and we are going to start with citizens par participation uh if there is anyone online who would like to participate in citizens participation go ahead and raise your hand and make yourself known if you'd like to do
002citizens participation if I'm seeing correctly I'm not seeing anybody okay are we have our first we do have a public hearing at 7:15 so unfortunately we can't go into the joint meeting with the planning board plus we are not at Quorum yet for the planning board uh so I recommend we go into maybe consent agenda if I can get a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented so move I'll second that okay uh any discussion okay all those in favor I I four Zer it passes uh just to let you know Makita Keegan our fifth member is traveling for business that happens we all have work that we do okay so that's our consent agenda let's go back to Camp you feel com sure to have a long discussion no I don't think so
003to oh to release the remaining from the Esco sure let's go into that Michael if you could talk us through that this we're discussing funds to be released from the remaining es well there's no funds but just the remaining escrow Michael if you could take us through that please correct so um you know this obviously goes back to the Cirrus apartment development and uh so we did retain funds in escrow um until we were confident that the things that they needed to do and and were part of that development agreement um were actually completed so uh we feel confident in that Peter has has signed off on it Becca Solomon our conservation agent has signed off on that and so um yes we feel now it's appropriate to do this if you recall they actually
004came to us before to release this and right we weren't ready because of certain different things okay any questions from the board on this no okay if I could have a motion then to release the remaining escro balance outlined in the Ashen rail Transit District Camp andell th dorik serus development agreement in the amount of 25 5,723 and4 so moved so okay and any other discussion all those in favor I that's four Z as well thank you for that Michael uh like some of the Town manager um we'll go let's go through some reminders sure I think so um so couple of reminders the next select board meeting will be on Wednesday October 16th we are not meeting on the 2nd because it is a Jewish holiday so out of respect of that we are
005not having a meeting that night so put that on your calendars Wednesday October 16th is our next meeting and then we will also be meeting in the 30th of October uh Ashlin day will be taking place on Saturday September 21st from 9 to 4: uh Joe you want to talk to us a little bit about Ashlin day while we wait sure real quick hopefully uh the rain HS up uh or go south that would be better uh but we have uh the tradition of uh Community Pride day coming up and uh there are many food vendors from town a couple of new vendors that we have which is in a variety of uh uh food people from Thai food to Mexican food to Italian food of course which is pizza and um just it just
006it's it's a lot bigger and then we have uh you know traditional snow cones and popcorn and stuff from the uh from the high school kids that uh use this as a great jump star for their uh fundraising uh venues uh for the beginning of their for their year so we hope everybody shows up um we had a few uh craft vendors uh leave uh leave us unfortunately uh some due to uh personal reasons and uh some double booked their own their own events so uh needs to say so we're down to uh 90 95 uh vendors which is fine and uh we we're shap shading it up a little bit uh so we're expanding the field a little bit so you're not on top of one another and uh that should make things a
007lot easier for everybody and uh we have you know our annual committee members from from from the town all the all board members who are have you know want to be out there they're there um comprehensive plan will be there which is great police and fire have their displays showing up as well and um ashon toown Forest committee but I can't tell you who the uh citizen of the year is and our Grandmaster because that's a surprise until that day so um just be there and show up so come hungry come with some money to spend and come for a great day of community yeah that's it exactly community and reunion and and and reunion the time to you know so Joe real quick it mentions opening a time capsule can you tell us a
008little bit about that so people can be there and excit there's uh at the corner of Main and Union if you look to the left there's a brick building that used to be the old uh New England telephone building and there's a Cornerstone and this is 1963 on it while lo and behold there is the Time Capsule that was behind that Cornerstone so they went on the inside of the building they got permission to uh open up that that wall and dig out the uh the con the uh the Time Capsule so that time capsule will be opened uh after the presentation of the uh citizen of the year and Grand Marshall so it's from 1963 so that ought to be very interesting you know what what what happened you know in 63 a lot
009of things have happened you know so you know from JFK's you know assassination to uh The Beatles coming around so who knows maybe there's a 45 in here I'm hoping there's a couple of baseball cards in there that uh that'll be in mint condition we can sell and fundraise for Ashen exactly it'd be nice to see a Mickey Mantle or something like that you know but I doubt it I highly doubt it great but yeah we're looking forward to it it's going to be a lot of fun and um there'll be some surprises out in out in the thing I don't want to tell everybody what's going on get some surpris show up and have some fun show up have a lot of fun absolutely good okay we still have a few minutes until our
010hearing at 7:15 a reminder our fall baa Grant round and select board Community Grant round is now open submissions are due by September 30th so Monday September 30th and if you have questions you can go to the town's website Ashlin mass.com and you can find more information there just real quick just go ahead um about that so when the the um when we close out the submission cycle Claudia and I will meet as part of the subcommittee to do the um to do the grant okay reviews and then can we plan to put that on our next agenda for October or how do we want do you think you'll be ready for the 16th or do you want to push it into the 30th what would you like to do you tell me I don't
011know I think we can do it for the 16th okay okay I think so too so if we can do it for the 16th then Susan if you could take note to add that to the 16th agenda that'd be great okay awesome you guys are going to work quick appreciate that okay a couple of other reminders before we hit our 75 hearing time electronics recycling oil Mercury and oilbased paint drop off will be on Saturday October 5th so in two and a half weeks uh and from 9: to noon at the DPW off of Ponderosa Road a reminder textile clothing recycling pickup must be scheduled with simple Recycling and uh at simpler recycling.com another thing that I have found out is if you have black Earth composting you can buy tickets from them uh stickers
012and you can give them textiles in a white trash bag if you've purchased a sticker and then you can put it out with your compost so if you're a black Earth customer you can do that and it's another way to recycle uh let's see yard waste collection begins on Mondays on October 7th and we'll continue on Mondays through November 25th and that is uh grass leaves no big sticks or anything like that and it has to be put into those brown bags uh we are looking for individuals interested in running the 2025 Boston Marathon anyone interested to complete the form on the town's website submissions are due by October 15th and then names will be drawn at random uh it's nice that we have a few extra numbers and just a note on that I
013had a conversation with an other organization that has Marathon numbers and it's probably too late for this round but our next round I I think we should look at increasing the fundraising amount but that's a discussion for another time just something to think about okay where are we at now when I read that I thought in running the 25 bosson 2025 Boston Marathon so I'm saying what the marathon crew just up and left and we have to find people to run it oh to run well fortunately that's not what we I know no no no so this is for for bib numbers yeah okay okay so so it is 7:14 I'm going to start reading the legal notice and I'm sure by I'm done time I'm done it'll be 715 notice is hereby given that
014the select board will conduct a hearing in accordance with Mass General law 138 section 19h for an Al alteration of premise this alteration allows on premise consumption of any alcoholic beverages produced by the LC C understand section 19B and 19 C and sold under the lienes brand name Ashland Brewing LLC DBA Clover Road Ashland 151 Main Street ashin Mass 01721 a public hearing will be held on the matter uh on this matter persons wishing uh SE Wednesday September 18th at 7:15 p.m. persons wishing to be heard on this matter are invited to attend the public Hearing in person or by logging into the zoom meeting interested parties who are unable to attend the hearing May submit written written comments to the select board's office Town Hall 101 Main Street ashin mass 01721 or by emailing
015Susan Roby at sroy Asin mass.com signed by myself Yolanda greeves chair of the select board so uh I'm sure you all remember we were here at our last meeting to approve the two separate licenses and now we're combining them and I believe we have someone here from clover Road yes yes hi Jamie moldun hi Jamie how are you do you want good how are you make a motion to open the public heing yes please do um I'll make a motion to open the public hearing second all those in favor I I public hearing is now open uh so Jamie I don't really Susan can you take us through this one and then we'll go from there and then we'll hear from Jamie as well sure ultimately what this is is this is an alteration you
016you approved the pouring licenses for both The Malt Beverages and the wine at the last meeting but they cannot pour the product simultaneously unless you accept this chapter of the law okay Jamie anything to add um no we're just really excited to be able to serve both beer and wine in Ashland very soon Sim simultaneously yeah you go the same place who knew who knew that was a thing yeah wow any other questions is there anyone I just have a question with respect to the legal notice um where it says alcoholic beverages I don't want people to be con confused that it's liquor and not and not malt and wine and I'm just wondering does that should that have been malt and wine instead of alcoholic beverages Susan Joe I took that right from the
017section of the law okay all right I just want to make sure that it it it doesn't become a stumbling block down the road that's all Susan you've been working with the abcc pretty closely on this and I think I think you know Susan's been running I just want just check on it that's all thank you welcome I'm good with it that's fine no other discussion okay let's see anyone to speak against we've heard from staff okay motion to close the public hearing so moved second all those in favor I I and then if I could have a motion to amend the alteration of premise as presented which allows the consump consumption of any beverage produced by the lcy and sold under the L's brand name so moved second okay any other discussion all those
018in favor hi okay very uh Jamie you are all set thanks for being here again and do we do we have a date yet H not yet but we're getting closer very very soon it's been nice to see the progress on the outside so yeah people are excited they talk yeah people people are waiting we're excited too good luck with the last the last little little bit before you open yeah yes thank you I appreciate it all okay good luck and we'll hopefully see you in person soon at the brewery yes you're all invited thank you all bye bye-bye okay didn't take as long but that's okay we have our planning board here hello everybody we have Trisha online uh so the select board has already called itself to motion into uh into session so
019if you guys want to do the same um Can can you hear me yes we can yep okay um I will call the planning board um uh I will open the planning board meeting at 618 718 but that's okay oh sorry Midwest time 718 i' like time better say that at the end of the night so we we typically don't do a vote to open our meeting so that's fine that's fine okay um so we are here to hear we have two items on our agenda as a joint boards is the presentation by Jen Goldston and then discussion of MBTA so Jen I'm going to pass it off to you and then we'll go from there all right very good thank you I'm so happy to be here thank you for I'm glad you had
020several things of business to do together so that um you're making good use of your time together um Jen gon planning consultant leading the comprehensive plan uh for the consultant team and I'm here to basically tell you you how much the committee has accomplished in the first two phases at the end of each phase there are four phases which I might as well switch to that slide um there are four phases in the plan and we are basically right in between the end of phase two and the launch of phase three so at the end of each phase what we like to do is come to both of your boards and just tell you how things are going and where we are and what to expect next so that's what we're doing now so you
021may remember from a few months ago when we had the whole consultant team here that we presented the existing conditions profile and that was the end of phase one which was called Ashlin yesterday and today and it's really just um trying to understand where you are now and then phase two was really about where does the community want to go so there was a really big push for Community engagement I'm going to talk more about it but it was very impressive what the comprehensive plan committee many of you are on um were was able to do in that in that big push and of course there's engagement throughout we certainly not done but um but that was the big push in phase two and trying to understand what is the big Vision people have for
022the future of ashin where do they want to go what are the things they really care about and what do they want to see in a in a kind of a big way in this plan and we're going to start to get into the details of the plan now that we're going to enter phase three but this is not so much about the details it's about that big picture of where the community wants to go in the next decade so the process to create that Vision um I count I tried to uh do a little count of how many hours the committee worked um you worked at least for eight hours collaboratively writing and then refining the vision statement the core themes and the goals and I'll tell you what each of those pieces are
023so that was very impressive um it started with an open house that I think we tag teamed on an event here I can't remember the name of the event holid Holiday Stroll last DEC without open house and then January through June we had several engagement activities there was the meeting in a box which was that do-it-yourself meeting kit which I bet all of you hosted something and maybe folks who are listening to this either participated or also hosted you had a community survey and then you also had something we call it the crowd map but it's basically an interactive map that was online people pointed to places they want to see change or Improvement or preservation and then we did work with the committee and so we created this from that well you'll see right
024up there we keep track on this thermometer how many we call them participation touch points because we actually encourage people to participate more than once you know if you do a meeting in a box we'd love for you to also do the crowd map and and things like that so we count every touch point and you have over 2,700 touch points um you're very close to that AG you know very um ambitious engagement goal that you set you're about 88 touch points shy and you still have several months left so I know that you'll get to that and go Way Beyond your engagement goal which is which is really exciting um we worked over the summer with the committee so the committee held two visioning sessions that um they really worked collaboratively in small groups
025to basically write the vision and the goals we asked them hopefully they were probing questions we gave them this big summary of all the engagement touch points we call that the aggregated community engagement summary we abbreviate that as the aces report and so the committee was tasked with reading that it was very long lots of appendices and then doing a questionnaire that was kind of guiding them through answering the questionnaire they were writing their own vision statement by answering this questionnaire then they came together in these Community visioning sessions uh at the is it called the senior center or the community center okay at the community Senior Center and we spent many hours working in those small groups talking with each other trying to figure out you know what do we want to say in
026this vision statement and what kind of goals do we want to put with it and then we worked for two more committee meetings at the library to really refine that and get to some consensus among the whole um comprehensive plan committee so it was really impressive people didn't always start at the same place but I think we ended at a place and I I don't want to say ending so final doesn't this isn't final final this is where we have a good draft that the whole committee uh has told me there are no deal breakers in this draft and we feel good about releasing this to the public for comments so there's a survey that's live right now to get comments on this draft that was really created from that 2737 touch points that people
027told us about and then this collaborative work does that make sense the way I described that okay all right very good so I'll just go over some fundamentals I know I say this again and again but I always think that sometimes people are maybe listening and just patching into the plan uh or the project and haven't heard me say this again and again so for those of you who have I apologize in advance so why are we even doing this what is a comprehensive plan it's really a way for the community to take a step back and try to figure out what are we even doing here what do we want to be where are we now um you really think big picture and you also want to make those connections so there's all sorts
028of business the select board and the planning board deals with on a every weather week or however often you meet and you know you put all those pieces together and you'll get a a big picture but mostly what you're thinking about are those individual pieces you just had a an action that you were looking at taking in this public hearing and you do I don't know thousands of things like that um all the time so big picture thinking making those connections um guiding specialized plans so there probably will be more specialized plans that come from this bigger initiative and it will help you prioritize where do you want to focus that planning energy on over the next decade leveraging existing assets so we look at what are your Assets Now what kind of funding do
029you have what kind of um Staffing Resources do you have committee resources volunteer resources you have all sorts of resources infrastructure uh facilities and then how do we leverage that with trends that we're seeing in a bigger kind of bigger region than not just ashin and then we want to look at those CommunityWide priorities and that's what we're trying to really sus out in this phase two is what does the community think are the priorities here and that's where we are so just as a reminder there are in the statute the state statute there that that um asks the planning board basically to prepare a comprehensive plan or they call it a master plan in the statute there are seven statutory elements so this plan will touch all of those elements but it will also
030bring in other things that people weren't thinking as much about back when this was written so we've added in things you'll see sustainability isn't actually technically in the statute um sometimes we add other things in but it really depends on what the community is seeing that they really value and and want to add to that all right and then we like to really emphasize in our plan that these in the plans that we work with our communities on these elements are really interconnected I think the old school way of doing a a master plan or comprehensive plan was to just have a separate you know chapter for each element and even do them separately so you may have spent four months just on transportation and then you move on and you think about open space
031but you don't think about them together and we think that the beauty of doing the comp plan the compr plan is you get a chance to actually think about all these things together because they really affect each other and they can help each other or they can hurt each other all right and then the things I'm already starting to use these terms with you I'll just describe what they mean so I talked about that existing conditions profile I like this tree metaphor I've been using it for a long time um the the existing conditions is kind of like the trunk of the tree we're just trying toig figure out the trends the issues establish a baseline of information then and that's what we did in phase one then we're trying to get the big blurry
032picture of the whole canopy of the tree we're trying to figure out what's the vision here where are we trying to go and then we put um the conditions on the conditions are the goals and those are the branches that hold up that canopy and then later in phase three which we're about to launch we'll come up with the strategies which are the leads like well how do you do it how are you going to do it what zoning are you going to implement what uh funding sources are you going to use what um board and staff capacity are you going to do what kind of programs are you going to have kind of capital Investments do you need to do that's coming that's we are not quite there yet but we're about to launch
033into that and then as part of that we'll have something that's called a future land use map it's not shown on my beautiful tree I'll have to think of a way to get that map in there but but the future land use map is not a zoning map in other states it does become a zoning map but not in Massachusetts but it basically says like if we look at the the next 10 years and we try to put our vision onto a map what does that say about where we want to grow where we want to preserve where we want to conserve and how we want to you know look at our corridors and things like that and our neighborhoods so that's what the map does it can turn into zoning changes but it's not
034by itself a zoning map does that all make sense so far all right perfect so we are here tonight to present the we've called it the final draft Vision so it's not final final nothing's final until it's adopted but we we spent a lot of um hard work with the the committee and the community who participated um in a in a very strong way to write this so um I love I love this quote by Tony Morrison the reason we spend so much focus on phase two is because we want the community to get a chance to dream a little before we think and I know dreaming thinking it's not quite perfect metaphor but but the idea here is to think in in a in a um in an aspirational way first before you start
035to say can we really afford that you know how are we going to do it don't worry about that yet you'll worry about that next we'll worry about that in phase three but we just want you to Dream a Little first and that's what this is about so you'll look at the vision and you might say that is ambitious or you might say okay I think we're kind of almost there with some of these things um but that's kind of the point of it so I hope you also have this I think you got a hand out I do have a couple extra copies if people want them um I stuck them in my bag but I'm happy to get them if people want the hard copies this is also online on the comprehensive plan
036website and um we have a whole survey up right now about it so we encourage all of you and anyone who's listening any member of the community that wants to weigh in on what they think about this vision statement this is the first of two paragraphs we would love for you to take that survey and it's live now so I'm not going to read the whole thing um the the the vision is two paragraphs this is the first but I'm just going to um say some of the key phrases that I think will give you a gist of the things that folks are telling us they really care about so on this first paragraph and remember this is a vision for the future so this is Project yourself 10 years into the f 10 years
037from when the plan is done which will be next year so 2035 10 years from when this plan is done this is what the community is thinking they want Ashley to be like some of it is like staying the same in some aspects and other things are maybe improvements over what you're doing so I'm going to read some key phrases um diverse inclusive community honors and preserves its small town charm Rich history open space vibrant and sustainable neighborhoods exceptional schools aesthetically pleasing public and private spaces safe walkable bikable multimodal Transportation options enhances Community connectivity well-maintained accessible Recreation amenities and I want you to know that we we spend a lot of time on every single word here so I'm not skipping over words because I'm not honoring what they're doing I just wanted to to
038give you the highlights okay the second paragraph so again project yourself forward to that 2035 Ashlin is adaptive to changing needs and emphasis on cultural assets diverse housing options Town infrastructure open space climate change Solutions promotes business opportunities focuses on affordability and accessibility for people of all ages Community Spirit flourishing downtown areas welcoming Gathering spaces celebration of its diverse population and robust volunteerism and again really thinking a lot about what are the words we're using using here all right and then I want to describe what this means core themes this is not something that um this is kind of a particular to the way my firm does comprehensive plans because we feel it's so important to think about those connections of those statutory elements we ask the community and the committee to come up with
039what do you think are the themes that we're hearing in the engagement that can translate eventually into chapters for your plan and it will bring together those different statutory elements in a way that we think promotes the concept of these things are all connected and so this is very um customized for Ashland because you guys wrote it not us so the themes you you you are you know at least in this draft form are promoting are one building and enhancing Community two promoting long-term sustainability three three guiding development that honors open space and conservation four enhancing Town services and economic development and five creating a connected and accessible Community I'm going to go through these again because each of these has a set of goals so the goals again are not how you do things
040they're what you're trying to do it's the condition you're aiming for how do you know you're successful after 10 years so the next set of slides is going to be a slide for each of those and again I've paraphrased here the goals are fully written out on your handout um but just for the sake of not having too many words on the slide um I paraphrase the the kind of the key Point here so under building an enhancing Community the three goals that the committee identified are cultivating a thriving Community culture fostering connection between the community and its historical Heritage as well as preserving historic assets and developing inclusive and vibrant public spaces so those were all goals again doesn't tell you how you're going to do it just says what you're trying to do
041the next Core theme is promoting long-term sustainability and there are five goals here and you can just imagine I should have said this on the first Slide the next phase when we start to think of strategies our job in working with the committee is to think of strategies sets of strategies for every goal so this is we're sort of starting from the framework and we're building it out and so you'll see the next presentation I give you when phase three is close to being done we'll have strategies for every single goal of how you can get there so we have carbon neutral practices triple Net Zero Energy Water waste by 2040 and we try to carry on other goals that are already established in the community like the 20 240 goal um tree preservation and
042planting walkable bikable micromobility friendly neighborhoods approach zero waste and preserve water supply quality and usability so these are all under sustainability long-term sustainability the next Core theme is guiding development that honors open space and conservation and so these goals there are five one is protecting open space properties and we want to you know refer to uh the open space and Recreation plan whatever is the most current um during that 10year period to identify those priority areas strive to have publicly accessible and inclusive green spaces within half a mile of every residence in all Ashland neighborhoods some of these goals you'll see have a metric it has a way that you can actually measure success and that's an example of one offer a variety of housing options including affordable housing opportunities new development in strategic locations
043and the goal you'll see when it you know the full goal writes out well what do we mean by that establish adaptable spaces that seamlessly transition to accommodate a wide range of community needs and uses so I think the emphasis here is on adaptable spaces things that can have many functions and then we have um oops enhancing Town services and economic development so we have four goals vibrant and economically thriving downtown public facilities to meet the needs of a growing and diverse population improve public water sewer and high-speed INF um internet infrastructure and water Recreation to safely swim in boat and then I think this is the last one yes create a connected and accessible Community there are five goals connectivity of community Open Spaces to to neighboring towns Transportation safety and accessibility affordable and
044convenient regional and local public transit options townwide Corridor revitalization efforts including multimodal roadway improvements and connections from the Pawn Street Corridor to surrounding neighborhoods and key destinations specifically Ashland's surrounding neighborhoods so you lost a little bit because I didn't read the whole thing but hopefully you're getting the gist of it and we'll go back and read the full the full thing all right so I want to get into just what's going to happen next and I'm happy I don't know if time allows but I'm happy to take questions or comments or anything you'd like um but I'll just finish this if that's okay I think that makes sense okay all right so launching phase three so we're about to do this so um I love quotes So the essence of strategy is choosing what not
045to do strategies about making choices so that gives a good uh kind of a good framework to what to what we're about to do we're about to meet with our whole consultant team and Michael and Peter are going to help as well and we're just going to brainstorm as many strategies as we can think of that could help with those goals and that Vision we're going to kind of comb through our best practices think of cases that are case studies I should say that are similar to things done or could be done in Ashland and we're going to have a session um coming up I think it's next week where we're just going to sit down in my office and do a big brainstorm um and the idea here is is to think of as
046many things so we're going to start with the long list and then we're going to ask the community certainly add to it if you think we've missed something but the idea of phase three is to narrow that list down to start to make those choices to think about where do we want to prioritize our investments and our time and our energy so that is how we've designed phase three so when I talk about strategies I gave some examples before I said they could be zoning you talk about MBTA zoning right after this it could be physical design it could be something to do with other roadway improvements or or other Capital Investments it could be capacity building and I what I mean by that is people for the most part but it can also mean
047other funding sources or it could even mean different boards or committees than you have now so who's doing what um how do you do it where does the money come from that's what I mean by capacity sometimes it's about saying well you probably need to have this kind of position in your community if you want to make this other thing happen so you'll see recommendations like that and then we have uh regulatory policies usually zoning but it can also be other regul ations that the town has control over and then programmatic means some kind of program that you might have sometimes people want to do like a home buyer program or something like that that's local could be lots of examples of programs that you have so those are the four kinds of strategies and
048you'll see that we try to identify those throughout the process so we have a nice mix of those that we're thinking of and then I said we're really going to narrow down so I like this little filter so we're going to put lots of strategy ideas in the top and then through Tech something we call technical working sessions um a community survey and department manager working session and then work with the committee of course um we're going to be narrowing down and creating that strategy short list let me describe each of those um tools so these are more engagement tools so the technical working sessions we um trying to identify with the committee's help uh different town officials could be Town staff could be people who serve on boards and committees could be uh members
049of the community who have a special interest or a personal expertise or some professional tie we want to get people that um are really going to feel um very engaged in talking at a very technical level we're going to be talking about things that are um technical I don't know how else to say I don't want to keep saying the same word but they're technical things um so that will happen and they'll be we'll have capacity to have um at least a hundred Experts of your Community coming to these so there'll be one technical working session for each Core theme and we say that you can invite you can invite more than this but we basically have capacity to do about 20 people each session and then we have the community survey which will be
050we'll take down the visioning survey first because we don't want people to be confused by which survey am I supposed to take and so we'll get that we'll leave that up for you know several weeks and then when we're ready we'll put that survey up for the strategies typically how we do it because there are a lot of strategy ideas as you see from this little diagram we typically do a survey for each Core theme so that if somebody's really mostly interested in one topic or two topics they don't need to feel like they have to go through the whole survey they can just focus in if they want to go through all five of them perfectly fine and then we have the department manager working session we tend to have this a little bit
051later in phase three because we want to have um once we have a little bit more of a short list by working with the technical working session and understanding where the community is coming from we take a kind of a medium short list to the department managers and say tell me about your capacity for implementation where are the gaps here where are some synergies like where can you work together on things and we try to understand that better doesn't mean you can't do something if you don't have the capacity now we just want to understand what is that Gap so that we can refine the recommendation for that and then um and then we do work with the committee as well um showing them all of these results and and having them really come to
052some agreement around that short list so that our goal just as it was with the vision and goal setting is that the committee will have no deal breakers when we're done and at the end of this I'll be presenting that strategy short list to you in few months so how do you narrow the list you know you could you could do it many ways I just gave some examples you could look at what has the greatest positive impact to the most people you could look at what's the biggest bang for the buck what's Avail what is the availability of non- Ashland funding sources like are there state or federal sources or private monies we can tap into um what's the effect on residential property taxes promoting you know which ones promote uh diversity Equity inclusion
053and this is not um inclusive of every idea just want to give you ideas like these are some ways you can prioritize all right so what you're going to see next this is just an example we pulled this is from Topsfield which we finished recently and this this is a page from their comprehensive plan so you'll see at the end of the day the strategies are usually just a sentence or two the trick is finding the set that you want to prioritize that's the real work here once you get that set you can basically have them as part of your master plan and then um we also work with the committee as much as we can to identify some more metrics some of the metrics I mentioned are embedded in some of the goals but
054we also like to see are there other metrics we can measure success with um and so we do some work with the committee around that as well and this is just an example and it's for you to measure over the next 10 years so just because we think of a strategy idea in the year 2024 in the year 2034 you know before your your comp plan is over that doesn't mean that's the best strategy idea at that moment in time so the strategies might change over time but the things you're measuring will help you figure out are the strategies we're implementing are they working or do we need to Pivot so that's why we do that does that make sense all right and then this is just an example of a future land use map
055it's very you know it doesn't really get down to the parcel level it's more of an artistic representation of what you want to see for growth and preservation um on this one they have a historic district they have connectivity Improvement for intersections and corridors they have conservation areas his work preservation opportunities evolving opportunities so this is topsi I think this is Topsfield um is it Topsfield you didn't do this one we can do it for you but you can give us advice um but the idea of it is just to give the bit those big Ideas some some spatial sense to them so and you might you might have different we customize this so you may have different categories we'll work with you on what you want to call things um and that's what that
056looks like so I think that's it so I hope I go too long but I wanted to um get you all up to speed and I'm happy to take questions if if there's time questions anyone who wants to jump in and go first comments thoughts Claudia Joe I mean you guys haven't been as involved as Brandy and I so I actually appreciate the the presentation it provides U additional information that um I was going to have questions and you answered at least three of the four questions that I had so I'll wait sure you don't want to ask that question it it no I'm good right now I'm good right now I'm overloaded with information so yeah and and definitely if you haven't taken the time I'm sure you probably did read through everything already
057I have but go through it again and then if you have other questions Claudia thank you yeah no that was a great presentation and uh I guess when I was looking through some of it I thought about how much work everybody has done and um how much I appreciate that that that uh uh it's just such a massive undertaking so is very much appreciated and um you know and I look forward to uh it it's amazing I feel as though how what has come out of this is much of what I think we all hear out in the community so uh it's it's nice to know that it kind of mirrors what you you think that people want so thank you good anyone on the planning board side any comments or thoughts I did have
058a question about um the slide that we just had with the strategies on top top and the The Next Step I think it's called the which slide was that the prior slide I just have to find it here here we go not used to this computer okay where we're going to start with the strategies and they're going to make their way to the this one yeah just a quick question yeah just to clarify so the last comprehensive plan steering committee meeting um that we had um and I believe Peter and Michael may not have been in there so I don't know if uh others who work can confirm my recollection um the discussion was that the Consultants team would bring all the strategies forward to the entire committee to then kind of dwindle it down
059pick the ones that are interesting to the committee and then make their way down to the local experts the department managers working sessions Etc I see let me what I can I just fin question and so what I heard today was quite different which was that there's going to be a brainstorming session in your office with Michael and Peter that would then trickle down to the committee which is very different from my recollection um so can you clarify that what will you be doing in your office and will you be kind of creating a comprehensive list or actually narrowing it down with Michael and Peter yeah no so we're creating a comprehensive list um so we start out with as big of a list as we can think of knowing that you won't be able
060to implement all of them we want to give you a lot of choices and kind of a lot of options so we think of everything we can think of um and then we typically go straight to the technical working session with packets that have and all of the committee members would be coming to those usually what happens is the committee decides which members go to which Core theme based on you know their interest or what they're representing and then we basically get up exit poll from everybody that participates in the technical working session with how they would rate the ideas and then what other ideas would they add so it's a way for both you know committee members who are participating and all of the other participants to add ideas as well as rate U
061sorry rate I always say rank I get Rank and rate mixed up a lot so I mean they'll rate them not rank them and um and then we'll do the same thing at the same time with the community survey so that people will look at everything they can add ideas if they'd like but they'll also rate the at least the areas that they have an interest in they certainly could rate everything um and then we would go to the department manager with um what we typically do we could talk about the timing of the department manager we've done this two different ways um at the point when you finish the technical working session and the community survey the committee has then a lot of information with which to base some decisions on and what we
062typically do is we give the committee members a questionnaire and I think this is what you might remember me describing but maybe I wasn't clear enough about when that happens in the process so we give the committee members a questionnaire we give them the results of the technical working session and the community survey and then we give them all a questionnaire like we've done in the past where they'll each individually say what they think about the results and then we and I'll describe that more in a minute but then we bring them all together and we focus the conversation on the things that people didn't agree on so let me describe that I'm going to back up so that's kind of the end result and then we go out I would recommend actually doing the
063department managers after that um so that we're just doing that short list that the committee has already vetted with the department managers and then coming back to the committee to then say and this is what we heard from the department managers on the short list that you gave them so you are creating the short list at the committee level but I want to provide you with more information than you have right now and the information you're going to get is how the hopefully hundred folks that come to the technical working sessions and hopefully I don't know how many people will take the community survey but I'm hoping it'll be a nice robust um you'll have that information and what will provide you in that questionnaire is we'll show you these are the strategies that between
064the technical working session responses and the community survey they got very high marks like fours and fives means people really like them um these are the set that got really low marks like ones and twos means people really don't want them like don't even want to work on it they just want it out of the plan and then these are the ones that are like that you know we usually do like fraction like between 2.5 and up to four or something and are the middle ones that we're like we really need the committee's um help with these in particular but what we want you to do is look at the ones that people through this process gave a four and a five and we were asking you to basically say do you disagree with any
065of these things that were ranked consistently high and typically what happens is committee members are no we actually agree we think the that that's probably about right do you disagree with anything that were ranked really low because we're just suggesting they be completely ruled out and you get a chance to say well I want to consider this thing and talk to the committee about it because I think people don't understand XY or Z or and then the committee can vote on whether to raise something out of the out of the don't do it and then the middle piece is where we don't have really clear guidance from the technical working sessions and the community survey it could be sometimes that the technical working sessions really like something and the community really doesn't like something and
066so when we see a score like that we bring that also back for focused Community discussion like what's going on here do you feel like this is something that should stay in or not and if it should stay in does it need to be changed or tweaked and so we think the committee can have a much more informed discussion if you wait for the results of the technical working session in the community survey we won't eliminate or promote anything on our own we just we're going to say basically like if you just go with these results this is what it's telling us and then the committee will decide through that maybe it was a painful process I know it was very long but we're going to do a similar thing um it might take several
067meetings to get through it all but we'll do a similar thing where I want there to be no deal breakers and you like the short list that we end up with and then I would suggest we we have we're doing this differently in one Community right now and I actually don't like it very much but our client really wanted it this way but we I often recommend do the department manager we session after you do that process and then the department managers are only looking at the list that the committee is like I think this is the right short list tell us what Your Capacity you know is to to implement this so I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about the order of that but that's typically how we do it okay any other questions
068hold the microphone a little close so and I know we have some people online um I just we're going to finish here at the table and then I'll get to you Trisha because I know Kate and then then Brandy has something as well so Kate go ahead um so I I I have this I think I have it right you you said ask the community about the strategies and then we're again going to ask them about naring them down so I didn't quite get how that goes in the timeline and then I guess a followup to that is can you give us to publish either the funnel or the timeline with some of those details ched in because yes so we need to engage the community we want to we been doing that but if
069if we can't project like I don't want to be like oh now right next week you have this and I I know you're not putting exact dates but like there's a lot more Community work right and I think putting that out there is helpful yeah I'm I'm happy to do that and I think I said I do it last time and I haven't done it yet so I apologize but I will um yes the community survey is the kind of the biggest push this this quarter but no this I think in business terms this quarter this phase and that's where you know we really want to encourage a lot of involvement again like you guys were super successful in phase two we want to do another big push on that and then um and then
070I know people follow along with at the committee level as well so that you know I'm happy to the extent that the chairs are happy to continue to ask for public feedback at those committee levels as you're having those detailed discussions in the short list discussion and then um in terms of future weighing in what we've done in the past is that we would publish just like we published the vision statement we would publish the short list around the same time that we're coming to these two groups to present where we landed and ask for additional public feedback in kind of a broad way we typically don't do a survey again but we typically say if you have any thoughts on this just submit your comments we can do like an email like a form
071on the website if that's easy or have them email someone but that's typically what we do at towards that um end of phase three um just one follow so then did are can community members add to that giant list I didn't hear how that works so in the survey we'll ask for any other ideas that they can add the I'm sorry I'm not trying to be I guess I'm just confused about we're collecting as much as we possibly can right and then it gets narrowed down and the public how do they participate in that or they don't they only participate in the narrowing down right so in the community survey as well as the technical working sessions we always ask do you have any other ideas it's not part of the survey because it's a
072new idea so that I'm sorry I skipped over this so we usually give a list of ideas that weren't captured in our original list to the committee to basically say we want this in we want this out often what happens though not always but often what happens is we have the idea in there it's just that they didn't it wasn't in the words that they were thinking of it and so we're off often we're like that's actually Incorporated in 2B we could make that more explicit by changing the way we're describing it so we go through a process with the committee like that where we want to go through those ideas yeah thank you Brandy Thanks Jen um so when we were putting together the the vision and and and and um core themes and
073goals we were we had this long list of feedback that had come from you know the original surveys and the the public engagement that we had done and a lot of the stuff that was in there kind of fell under the more strategy level so I know for instance um you know we we heard a lot about say sidewalks so I guess my ask is when you guys put together that big brainstorming list to go back to all of those comments and and things that we couldn't that really didn't fit into the vision and and and goals that was much more specific that just didn't quite fit in there um and incorporate that into the big long list because I want to make sure that all of that work kind of carries forward into sort
074of the strategies and stuff that we're that we're going to um be looking at so yes and I should have said that so so where do we get all these great ideas from so we've created um it's nothing like too official but we basically have a list like every time we see a strategy idea we just in our office we call it put it in the strategy parking lot and we'll get to it in phase three so when we're Gathering the ideas my whole team goes back to the existing conditions profiles and like refreshes our memory because we did it a while ago I don't remember everything and the issues that were brought up and then we go back to that then we look for that strategy parking lot and bring in well where would
075this fit into a Core theme and we kind of sort them into the core themes um and then we also just bring our own you know what what have we done in other communities and what have we seen work and things like that yeah so thank you I forgot to mention where they where do these great ideas come from they don't all just come from our head and I think some of it as we were having those discussions within the committee you kept saying that's not really a goal that's a strategy so we'll deal with it later okay uh Trisha go ahead um hi yeah I was just wondering um just a few um procedural things about the people that are going to be involved like with the local experts I think he said about
076I think maybe you said 20 local experts per kind of group how are those local experts found um I assume it can be residents business owners anyone that has a connection with Ashlin but how how are those local experts found and selected and then the second part is department manager like like what is maybe I missed it but like what give an example of a department manager is that like the planning department and or DPW like maybe I missed what who that is what what department how that works great question Trisha thank you so the we're asking the committee to help identify who the technical experts are as well as you know Town staff but um and I think we're Gathering ideas I can't remember where we left it but I think we're asking committee
077members to send ideas yeah we're actually meeting tomorrow and we're going to have discussion and start making a list yeah so they so the com the comprehensive plan committee has a meeting tomorrow to start doing that list and then um in terms of the department managers you got it right you were completely right so I think Pete you're oh Pete's not here anymore I think Pete's a department manager um Michael can you can you answer the question about who are all the department managers and how many are there yeah I mean I I don't have any exact list but I mean certainly I mean I do but in this case you know certainly DPW I mean we would probably have everybody at the department head level be a part of this even though like I'm
078not sure there's going to be a lot of intersection with maybe the town clerk but maybe there are when we start talking about specific strategies related to the community engagement piece so yeah so that that level I guess you could say does that answer your question Trisha yes I think so thank you and I can add to that which during our public U meetings Trisha the our police chief for example showed up at one of our meetings in the Box um so there's already department manager engagement happening in a way so kind of taking continuing on that theme that's that's great and we also suggest although it's up to the committee um we suggest you may want to invite some of the department managers also to the technical working sessions for sure definitely they'll be
079part of that yeah so um so Jen I'm I'm interested like in other communities where you've done this work like how are those technical experts usually selected yeah we usually you know we have some suggestions just department managers are often good to or if there's a certain board like planning board a couple planning board members should be at anything that is going to talk about zoning right um so we suggest that you know we don't suggest the name of who it is but we just say like you should have some representation from these different things and then the yeah the committee and the town staff or the city staff um basically identify who they are or sometimes they just ask their boards like if you have a transportation heavy core theme which you do you
080may and do you have a transportation committee I can't remember if you do Road Traffic Safety Comm so you can also ask them if they know beyond their commities if they have other folks in the community that they would suggest so you know it depends on the community if they want want to do that but I I think that's a great idea y okay anything else from can I just P back on that J some of the Committees that you just mentioned about the the traffic study committee a lot of the same people that are on that committee are department heads right so you know it intertwines it overlaps so you know you you'll be repetitive that way as well so yeah but I just I just the question that I was not going to
081ask I'm going to ask now I apologize but because I'm not trying to throw a wrench in this but how do you keep person bias out of this this entire project well it's really hard as a planner and it's something that you know we are bound ethically not to have bias but we're also bound ethically to serve a community good so um so we have to balance balance that sometimes we feel like our bias is because we want it to be good for the community um so just personally that's something that planners I think all over probably struggle with but the way we've designed the process we've given a lot of authority to the decisions to the committee and we because um you know actually if you if you had worked with a different consultant
082I guarantee they would not have spent eight hours writing a collaborative vision statement that's another way we keep our bias out of it because we actually didn't write it yeah I actually wasn't referring your personal bias I'm talking about the committee members themselves and their their personal okay I see advises that that may come into play I would never I would never question your ADV because I I know certain people on the the committee would you'd be out so they're watching me they're watching um I guess my answer to that is you know we all bring a bias we can't help it I don't I don't want to get into roomie and stuff like that but if you guys know the parable of the elephant we all can only see the part of the elephant
083we're touching in the dark like nobody has a perfect view of the world of of Ashland or of anything so I think the reason the town selected or the select board I can't remember who appointed this committee the planning board okay so the reason you selected this committee was because they bring different perspectives and they actually bring a certain kind of bias that you're looking for so um it's a supposed to be hopefully it is I think it might be a microcosm of what you see in the community and that's why we have some good debates in Long meetings yeah I think so I was going to kind of reiterate that too that I think everyone in that room has bias but there's so many of us that our biases hopefully will collaborate together for
084a good decision right but I think in some ways we have responsibility to bring that unique bias like I view my role there as a planning planning board bias if that makes any sense just like um but occasionally if I am bringing personal bias like at the last meeting things came up relative to the 126 Corridor and I shared that I live in that area therefore if you're being transparent about your bias I feel like that's important so I've tried during the committee meetings to do that like my my planning board hat versus I live at 126 this is what I think type of thing if that's helpful no it is thank you appreciate that so uh be Michael before you go Michael is there any other committee members who are online or here in
085person that want to comment or add to the discussion we are all going to be meeting tomorrow night to continue the discussion that we just presented or any public that either have a question or a comment now would be your chance to do that um I see I see Flo and robed you guys have any comments or were you just watching Rob you're good okay thank you uh okay seeing none from um registry you unmuted did you have something you wanted to add okay go ahead registry well I just wanted to thank Jen and her team for shepherding us because we are a huge committee with a lot of uh opinions and a lot of choices and to have us all focus on each of these activities through these working sessions it's been um it's
086been a job I'm sure um you know it's a it's a tough place to be but we got through because everybody in the committee has a passion to do good for Ashland and there's a vision that that each one of us has and wants to take forward and Jen and her team have been able to take us forward through that so thank you Jen and um for this presentation also and we look forward to working with you again soon thank you okay and Michael yeah just um actually I'll make one comment as well just kind of to piggyback on what rerry said I think Jen definitely appreciate your expertise and and really your leadership and helping to Shepherd this along it was we've been together as a committee now for over a year and it
087was a really rough go at at the start but what's been interesting for me is to watch the committee EV evolve and you know yes there's some long discussions and all of that good stuff but you know we started like weren't you know only a few people were talking a lot of people were I think very reserved and so now I think there's more open discussion and everything as everybody's gotten more comfortable so it's been interesting to watch that evolve and I think it's been it's been good um so my question goes back to the technical experts again so you know we also have we have local experts here but we also have affiliate or affiliations with other organizations that even though they might not necessarily be residents they do have a they're a stakeholder
088here and do you do you is it okay to have some of them involved and and specifically I'm thinking like with open space so you know obviously we'd have somebody from open space and Recreation or in the town Force committee but should we also look at engaging like a conservation organization like the subury valley trustees and seeing if they would have a seat at the table or mass aabon is that something that you would recommend I would say it's totally up to you all different communities May have a different feeling about this okay some communities may feel like well we don't want an outside organization to to you know put their finger on the scale on our priorities other communities may feel like we we don't have enough experts to fill the room and we
089value their opinion and we'd like for them to give input you could do a middle ground um which I've never done before but I just thought of it right this moment as I answered the question where you have them come but they don't provide an exit poll maybe they're part of the discussion and they can help to educate you know or inform or however you want to say it but they don't give an exit poll at the end but up to you yeah like SVT they have they hold some of our conservation restrictions they you know they could potentially hold more I mean they could they are an integral partner yeah I would I would recommend that as a committee we have that discussion right tomorrow night we're going to be talking about who we
090think we want to bring in so I would say tomorrow night recom you know bring that in as part of the discussion and as a committee we can determine if we want to bring in these other partners but the agenda it's on the agenda I I do think it's good to discuss it today to kind of get feedback while the consultant's here not there tomorrow um and so I will say that some communities and and the consultant can speak to it have used speakers the idea is you bring an expert who's not going to vote but they're going to be a speaker to the little group so uh I I for One support your idea a lot and I think for example I was thinking for economic development inviting an economist from Framingham State um
091I know Peter has been working with uh Framingham State to make those connections but those folks in my opinion should not have a vote but they can certainly come to an economic development group and speak to us so it could be the same kind of concept yeah that's a good idea is that is that what you're referring to as the middle ground I think you could I wasn't thinking of them as a speaker but I think you could do that and you could even have them um we break the larger group up into smaller groups to have a discussion with like four or five people you could have that person or people be roaming the tables to do Q&A or whatever my understand is some communities have done that and that can be a useful
092way to sort of bring in gaps because we might have all kinds of experts but not Regional experts but we don't want Regional people to vote yeah an are we agreeing it does happen so we could record this and make sure it's in the minutes yeah it took us how many years Michael just a few right so it does happen does yeah but I'm glad you recognized it that's progress I know yeah I'll shake your hand on that one yeah right okay any other questions or comments for Jen Mark okay Mark excuse me Mark only 119 Main Street I know me and you have gone a pretty good ways of knowing each other by questions yeah and um I wanted to make sure that the that the people can understand what's going on I came
093as a wannabe Committee Member but ended up a citizen bystander bitter and having time to listen to understand to what it was I came to basically about 95% of the meetings and um it's understandable that you need to have the first words to get a sentence and a sentence to get an idea and by having Jen as the coordinator her company and her the U the other woman that comes with you k great Duo to set up for 29 folks and now it's been coming down to this which has been phenomenal at best and understanding that as a citizen who I who thought that I kind of knew everything I say begin to know that this group gave me an Eyes Open by then me speak and she had patience for me to speak other
094than the people here sometimes said the microphones it's way too much for you um I was happy to be there this group is what they ask on future and what the who the people put in the plan in the comprehensive people on this select board everybody that has put the time in is worth a gratitude of thanks and a fortunate to have them here and as a citizen who was I want to be I'm just glad that I could have my input and was put up a couple times on on your visions that I have put in my time and as as to manager did with the retreat is a form base to be coded thank you thanks Mark thank you Mark and we do appreciate your participation and I would say that to all
095citizens who have participated that we appreciate all the input and insight because it's not our plan it's our community's plan and the more input we can get from the community the better the plan will be great anything else for Jen no okay thank you very much for this presentation I think it was informative I would say if anyone has questions please reach out and uh we are going to continue with our agenda and let you go thank you thank you thanks Jen okay I didn't want to comment as Jen leaves that I think the planning board and select board did a great job choosing this particular consultant um and so gratitude to Jen and her team but also to to these boards in working together to get us here uh for me this presentation sort
096of reinforced that and I remember those early days as difficult as they were I think that it was worth it to get to this point great don't disagree okay moving on the next item in the agenda is presentation on MBTA communities again this is for both boards to review and discuss and Peter are you or Alvaro giving us this great uh yes hello Town planer Peter magic yes we're going to present alvaro's got a PowerPoint we going to plug plug in and I go from there I think there's extra paper copies of you guys need it over on the corner does anyone need a copy Deepa do you need a and if there's anyone in the public who wants a copy take a look at okay there's been some modific fresh copy yeah FR so
097as pull up the PowerPoint I just want to uh first and foremost thank uh joean Yani and Trisha Kendall uh we've worked very hard to put this plan together uh along with myself and Alvaro uh Alvaro has really done an exceptional job with the gis work and the modeling that has to be done by the state uh but uh but the PowerPoint is up and ready to go um Trisha uh Alvaro and I will just kind of run through it but obviously I think you should jump in at any point that you want to talk about the process uh and how we kind of landed and and additionally Joe please feel free and jump in um so with that said uh if I may start um the me communities this has been a law that's
098been passed 2020 uh by the former Governor Charlie Baker and uh just a recap real quick uh the town of Ashland um being home to a MBTA Community Rail station uh is one of I believe 175 communities in the state of Massachusetts in the Commonwealth that has to indor uh adopt zoning codes and Zoning changes to allow for uh Buri housing um and so I think we all know sit on the table through long discussions concerning the housing crisis and the housing shortage um this uh was adopted to uh help um help uh ease some pressure that that we're in uh so with that said um the the the regulations here uh have the a community uh such as Ashen needs to um Zone an area um 50 acres at a minimum um with 40%
099of those acres in this case 20 acres um within a half mile of the MBTA uh station uh no District can be greater excuse me no great no District can be less than uh 5 Acres um at least half of the district has to be in one contiguous parcel uh as a overlay District um that is really been uh a big piece of the jigsaw puzzle we've had to kind of uh identify has to be a minimum gross density of 15 units per acre uh for multifamily uh developments there shall be no age restrictions um within that and all um districts um need to have access to a training station obviously uh with that said uh really that kind of pro links back up to the part where 40% Andor 40% of the total acreage
100needs to be within a half mile of that uh MBTA buffer sure um so um just kind of like thinking about what we presented back on probably was like a month or like two months ago that we were talking about this just thinking of the different strategies that we could have done to approach this um one that would have been like really looking at the minimum density that Ashan could give but in that case you will be looking at the most area or acreage that you will be zoning so in that case you will be looking a 15 units over 75 Acres um the other kind of like at the scale or like at the maximum approach that you could have it's uh looking at a minimum land area but then having the highest density
101in that 50 acres which is the minimum requirement so 23 units per acre and I guess just one thing to keep in mind is always that all the zoning Bilo regulations will be still be in place for the MBTA um this is not like a 4B that anything is kind of just like jumping over like The Zing you're actually taking a look into everything that is within the the zoning and the districts of the zoning underneath of what we'll be kind of like presenting in approaching um just to kind of like remind everybody that uh some of these layers were already given by the state or all of these layers were given by the state and they had certain uh limitations in some cases uh for example the excluded land was uh layer that was
102given just explaining and showing the areas that we will not be able to Zone there is some reasons to this one of them or the main one just being it state or to town own land um there is some ways around it however none of those um were qualifying for astion so that's why we decided to stay away completely for anything that was within the excluded land in the case of sensitive land these was areas that were really red flagged by the state they will still be able to be used Within These model um at any capacity either for density or for um acreage however it's just kind of like a way of saying make sure that you're keeping in mind that this could be a potential float zone so just make sure that when
103you're looking at the zoning take that in consideration when you're writing The Zing um per se and then in case of the density denominator I think that was more to look into areas that were we think in the middle of parcels that will be affecting at a certain level the creation of actual housing um so that's why this it still counts for the acreage however it does not count for the den of housing so you're basically looking at it's called density denominator because it's just taking out of the denominator but not out of the numerator basically um yeah and I think that kind of like takes us and brings us back into um this map that we've seen many times and it's just kind of like showing the different Parcels that we approach um I'll
104pass it down to Trisha so she can kind of like talk about the um the kind of like the analysis and the risk that we did um but just kind of like to like Orient everybody um all of these are the parcels that we've talked SE the spring back to the fall and we kind of just like kept in our mind looking at it because we felt that all of these Parcels were not in either of the two maximal approaches that we mentioned so not going to maximize density or trying to maximize acreage but instead of finding like the middle ground where you're looking actually at the areas that are developed and yet you're still opening for Center areas to continue the the the actual like nature of like the zoning and the purpose of
105the zoning that he was approach so yeah yes so um Al did did you want me to step in yeah thank you okay yeah may maybe we can um yeah let's go back down to the map just for a minute and I can't remember who all has participated in our various presentations on this so I'll go through it briefly and obviously take uh take any questions so these are now the seven uh areas that we were really studying carefully obviously we looked at a lot more partials through this process but these seven are the kind of the ones we started to look at much more closely and and um that as well as in the first phase of this um and then the new ones the 40b projects that we added in um after Springtown
106meeting so a is obviously serus and we definitely want to include that this is our largest land parcel by far this is the one that gets us 50% contiguous inside the um well 50% contiguous it it makes that requirement and you can see it's located within the half mile radius so it's a really very important partiel for us to use um the green ones indicate the two green things indicate that these are project that are either built or in construction B is 100 Chestnut Street um in construction um over 5 acres and as you remember probably from many meetings the how we talked about this that um in relationship to the comprehensive plan which we're in the middle of we really wanted to use Parcels that um that Ashen was already considering for housing at
107least at least in most cases right to use what we already have and then to let the comprehensive plan process guide any future housing locations and we we felt our small working group felt pretty strongly about not making decisions that should be made in the comprehensive plan process so we're using we're looking for things that we that have already been determined that are already in process so the orange part of these um D is ug ugc um as we all know that's the um that's the um friendly 40b project that is um still in litigation and we don't really have any other information about that we hope that we might but we don't um C is 501 Pawn Street um in conjunction with Valley Farm which is next door um which is a project that
108has been approved but has not started construction yet and um and then EF and G are ones that we studied a lot more closely this round e is um the burnhams property plus um connect Church property that's on Pleasant Street you can see obviously it's another property within that half mile radius and it's one that we did discuss in the first round of things on our public forums and we had um people both on both sides for and against like adding that partiel in at that time um there was we there was more people maybe saying leave it out so in the end we left it out we didn't think we needed to use it um in this in this um iteration of things we are proposing to unit use it and um then f
109is 10 to 60 Main Street which as you can see is obviously right on the rim of that half mile radius given that that is one of the 40b projects and um we we looked at it more closely originally we were leaving it out and um but we think we can use it in a very effective way um and uh and and take some of the risk out of other projects and G is Waverly Street and Waverly Street is the the second for project and actually after our analysis we decided we'd rather not use that property so um if we can uh go up to the Chart now um uh I have we have the risk assessment on the next page which everyone had been given um before but we'll kind of stay on this
110chart and I'm kind of just talking about the risk assessment and relationship to these so so what we again starting from the top Sirrus this is currently at a um uh building density of 14 units an acre um it it's a little different than that it's it's all all these are a little bit more complicated because the bylaws are more complicated um but uh so and all that information is kind of listed here so you can look at it yourself but um but we'll say that it's an approved density of 14 units an acre we're looking to move that to 20 units an acre um because it's a completed built project fully occupied and we think there's very little opportunity to add to that site and to increase the density effectively and economically and it's
111using our biggest site so we get the most units out of that um out of that site um 100 Chestnut Street what we're doing there is the the approved density is 28 units an acre we're putting it up to 30 units an acre um again to get the final unit count that we need and kind of for the same reason it's in construction it would be kind of difficult for them to add just addon units and parking kind of in the middle of this process um into the orange sections again pwn Street and Valley Farm that's over on uh uh on pwn Street we again can repeat myself we don't think there's we think there's very little um possibility ility that the valley form Valley Farm property would be be torn down to put up
112something else and the 501 H Street project is approved but not yet developed that is a project um with 120 units and um um at 25% affordable so but but it's not in construction yet and so we thought that project was a little bit risky and we really didn't want to use the 20 really didn't want to lose the 25% affordable um under an NBTA zoning it would go only to 12.5% affordable we know all know how important the 25% affordable is so we lowered that down that density in order to basically put the density where um what they could do by right you know which would be a lower unit count um Peter El would have to jump in about what the unit count would be for that parcel uh I can't remember so
113G jump into it so thank you Trisha so for um 501 pwn Street the unit count is in the low 80s by right um and so therefore we're allowing it to um with the proposed unit count of of 22 it it would raise up into the to the low 90s so it give a few more but it wouldn't allow that extra density to 120 so it's just the way the numbers kind of fell uh doing our overall calculations we were trying to keep that overall number closer to the Allowed by um development allowed on the pon mix use District um obviously to protect that special permit was granted by The Zone by the planning board in 2022 thanks Peter um and then ugc this is one again this is the uh the friendly 40b over
11455 community this is a parcel we in in The Proposal that we're making that we're putting for before the joint boards um that we are taking that proposal out of the MBTA zoning and the reason is that right now it's um its approved density is 10 units an acre it's age restricted it's 25% affordable and that would be then 180 units if we put it at our minimum of 15 units an acre we would have 270 units so 90 units more um at 10% affordable and um not age restricted so we thought that was a pretty big difference and big sacrifice for a project that's in litigation and we don't know how that's going to come out um going on to the yellow areas which are which are the new areas um Pleasant Street again
115those two kind of parcels that I talked about I don't it may actually be more Parcels but the two land owners there um when we looked at that more closely and again the zoning is more complicated than what we can put here um but basically there there is those properties the add you can already do multif family housing um or or mixed use you don't have to do mixed use but you could um so we thought it might be it might be a good idea to use that parcel because it fulfills so many things that the MBTA zoning is looking for and really um owners there can can submit the that multi family housing is already allowed there so there really isn't a difference with the MBTA zoning in fact with the with using F
116which is how those Parcels work the density can potentially be much greater than 15 units an acre which is fairly low um 10 to 60 Main Street again that's add and um um it cannot it's industrial underneath but add um which allows for multif family housing um and uh the there we looking at the 40b proposal The 40b Proposal which obviously isn't approved or anything like that but um the density there is proposed is 36 units an acre and that would be 250 units we're proposing to put that at 18 units an acre so half the density and so that would be 124 units spread across that whole property um and then 61 wave rarely this is the one across from the high school the proposed 40b they're proposed closing it at 17 units an
117acre which would be 20 226 units this is one that we decided to we would like to take out and of the MBTA zoning because there isn't that much of a difference between 17 units an acre and 15 units an acre in this case so what would be what we were concerned about is that the owner could decide if we Zone this at 15 units an acre to pull out of the so to pull out of the 40b process and um and propose the project at 15 units an acre which would just be 27 units lower than they are proposing now but the affordability would only be 10% instead of 25% so we we decided to try not to use that property so um that's kind of where everything sits it's important to understand again
118that the underly zoning there's a lot of pieces to the underlying zoning a lot of little tweaks and all those go into the big state spreadsheet that um that Alo keeps um and it it's also um you know important to remember that um oh that that all of these projects um need to go through whether they're special permit or not special permit special permit up in a lot of different things but but they all they all um need to go through the um site review process so there's always a level of it's not like a 40b it's always a Lev level of check that it still comes through the planning board um and yeah so I think I think I'm not a good in the evenings um but that's kind of where we landed and
119it's I'm sure it's not perfect but we did work really hard and we we think it's we feel good about it so be happy to answer any questions I think there's a few more slides in summary here's the risk assessment I basically already talked about that you can yeah it's the same printout sheet that you guys have received uh earlier um and this is just kind of the summary of The Green that we're looking to use and the red that we're looking not to use for the reasons I just explained so um this like last slide just shows where we are with the minimum so remember that we have to have at least 50 units sorry 50 acres our proposal puts us at 5612 Acres so we we're keeping those Acres pretty low about how
120it affects Ashland and it sets the number of units to about 1,136 it could be 12 or 9 it's a little over what we need so it's a little wiggle room depending on these tiny little changes between our calculations in the state which Alro could describe better the density in The Proposal ranges from 20 to 30 units an acre in properties that are already built are under construction so the ones that we don't think are likely to change and um and 15 to 22 units an acre so a lower density in projects that are just proposed or not proposed yet so um yeah so that's where we sit happy to take any questions can I can I jump in sure I just want to add one thing uh with with and and Al and Pete
121what we're trying to do is we're also trying to protect the 25% affordability which is what we're trying to you know get to our 10% which is what the state is requiring and anytime we we we try to play the game or a project has already been you know submitted and they withdraw because they think they have a a better opportunity then we lose that 25% affordability to you know for the town aspect to get to the goal of the 10% that the state's requiring so this part this particular plan and and that was presented tonight will protect that from happening so I like how you consider that affability keeping the 25% Anna go ahead so um one basic math question and then sort of a a more complex one um so when I add
122a b c e and f which are all the ones that are being recommended my math is 5542 not um 56 something yeah so you are correct so these numbers and Y and jump in Alo so these numbers start off just on paper right and that's where we're put Ling in right the Next Step which we're really kind of behind the scenes is to plug in all these numbers within a state model State algorithm right taking out all the stuff it's taking out all of that what that algorithm and alv me if I'm wrong is taken into account is is parking uh overall land setbacks X Y and Z right that's great I just want to make sure that algorithm then shaves your that total y down to the number that we have to be
123above which is 1124 right and so that number is in total so really the number we're trying to hit is anything above 1124 so right now we have a buffer of like 10 units per se right above that 1124 and so that's our so there's a couple numbers when we're when we're working with this that's fine I just want to make sure because if the public starts doing the math they'll have the same question 100% I think just kind of like the short answer for is probably the density denominators that we were talking about they are included for the acreage in the total 56 6.2 but they are not able to use it when you're multiplying for the density that's important and so you know so then the more complex question which is uh obviously
124you can do this in a variety of ways and if you add up all the stuff that's low risk you end up under 50 if you or the no like a b CF which is no or likely no you end up to 48.5 6 Which is less than 50 if you add up all in other words the configuration can't be too few Acres or to too too big Acres but my question is if you go over the 50 in theory can you go down to 50 can you essentially rezone just a section of a of a uh what do you call it a little par a section of a of a district because a district has to be five acres or greater so could you essentially choose to use the MBT zoning to get to
12550 take one of these somewhat risky pieces MH but Zone a smaller piece of it to Li to make the risk less likely in other words for example ugc Memorial Drive has some risk and it's therefore disfavored but if only a section of it for example A B and C which are all no risk or low yeah together add up to GC Memorial is another 17.9 Acres so you're up up to almost 60 59.6 4 but you only need 50 so I guess my question is if you only Zone whatever the math is uh 10 of it doesn't that limit the doesn't that make the Lisk the risk less likely can't we turn these somewhat risky areas into lower Risk by doing the math in a way that makes it unlikely the developer is going
126to take advantage of this I think in the spirit of the in the law the Comm the the law that was passed to the state level we have created a plan that meets the law that takes that takes some of the risk out but also meets the intent uh can you do what you're stating can you can you Zone a portion of a lot I you know what I assume you can right but does five acres are greater is all you need per District so the bylaw or the state law seems to allow us as long as each section is five acres or greater we can essentially eliminate a lot of this risk but here's the thing there has to be one contiguous acre that's half of the total Acres that you're you're doing and
127that's why Sirus is right right which I guess what I'm saying is ugc memorial by my math you can you can actually Zone enough to get to 50 and lower the risk because you're not you don't need the whole thing to get to 50 you only need whatever 10 of the 17 this kind of goes to a question that I had is that can the state reject our plan based on they don't like what our intent is you know intent and the law is really a tricky area and um my experience is that lots of times they don't care what the intent is as well I can say that and and um it but what is the letter of the law it's a great question so here I mean can we don't know right the
128state a few communities have adopted this right a few communities in the fall I mean last spring at how me have adopted this the h i mean the HC and the AG's office they have not to my knowledge put their final stamp of approval on it but they they have to I mean if we if we follow the letter of the law and do what we've been asked to do they can still reject it that's within their power or not any bylaw that they that's not constitutional then they could any bylaw they have the power to reject I think but if we're following you know yeah so so Claudia you just need to remember that even the um even the communities that say put in their proposals and approve their proposals at Springtown meeting uh
129correct me if I'm wrong Peter but they have haven't even been cleared yet um it's taking six months for them to really look carefully to make sure all the eyes have been dotted the te's have been crossed right so we're obviously putting on our best effort to to meet the letter of the law right but this whole thing even though I think it's a lot of data is a is an extremely simplified version of the spreadsheet that that Alo has been putting together for the state so yes we believe that we are meeting the letter of the law we believe that right but until they go through and really confirm it and I do think I mean we did um you know we did Anna had suggested this idea of of using a part of
130a partial like cutting through it right and at at one of our planning board meetings and we and we talked about that and we and we did look at it um but we weren't sure we didn't think it was just the best way to go that it kind of added complexity to the bylaws we were creating you know where do we make that line versus versus taking Parcels that are already that already have boundaries that already are on the on the state map as a parcel right versus taking a part of a parcel so we didn't see we want you to know that we we did look at it but we didn't see and and Joe anyone else can uh jump in here but we didn't think that that was the that that was a
131better way to go than the way were thinking about it so my understand is the state is available as a technical expert was that framed to them as a possibility well best practices that they provide to like when you are like creating the parcel itself on like the model they do recommend they say that sure you can kind of like go over like a parcel but they do recommend for the exercise of the spreadsheet to try to like Del unate based on the parcels that are already existed and they are like assessed by the Assessor's map that they give you now you could try to do that then you will have to try to override it and then you will have to try to work on it but I think that's for it's possible it's
132not illegal the state the state allows it so I just want to be clear we're not going to be this is not unconstitutional this is not forbidden this is a solution to limit the risk that we're identifying we're just choosing not to do it because it's somewhat complicated but there are technical experts in the state that we can utilize and it's not forbidden I want to make that clear I'm not hearing in any way that what the idea is forbidden as far as we know it's not forbidden but the work group at on looking at it decided that the the path we were going in was a cleaner way to fulfill the MBTA requirements so and also protect the the 25% affordability of that project because if you start tampering with that the the the
133landowner himself could say okay I'm done I'm I'm going to put another project in here this is not the project that you know so now that that whole project that has already been approved and the 25% affordability goes off the table and now he the landowner can put whatever he wants in there without any guarantees of the 25% affordability that we once had hold on hold on affordability is what this town is required to do 10% is is our goal and taking projects that are already been approved at 25% that's that's ridiculous you don't want to take that away whether whether you take a half half an acre or whatever you a portion of the five five acres that you were recommending to to change that around well that changes the whole aspect of the
134project that that's already been presented so even the current project developer you know they like their plan they're not going to change their plan because they've already Mich Michael hopefully will agree with me they've already put large amounts of money invested into this project right but the risk is if we change the zoning if we change the zoning then the possibility of them saying you know what this is not what we want I can I just can I make a comment to clarify so 61 Waverly Street place has not been approved that is a 40b project that this community opposed and the planning board submitted comment I believe the town submit in comment there has been no approval of that project so which is the idea that somehow we're going to get in the way
135of an improved project is just not accurate so for that one that parcel for that that's the parcel that I he was right he was talking about ugc because that's where you started oh any parcel that has some risk including ugc it's it's the exact same concept if you only take a piece of it and Zone it for the MBTA sure ugc has been approved that's one point but for 61 Waverly it has not no I know your initial example cannot be cut as easily but 61 Waverly to your point this is a healthy kind of conversation but 61 Waverly which has not been approved which I believe this community is not a fan of would be a prime target of being able to uh what's the word take a piece of that to make
136it slightly different will that developer say oh I don't want to do a 40b anymore instead I'm going to build a 10% affordable on a piece of it I would I would think that's unlikely they're going to say oh half of it is now 10% let's do that okay Kate you had a comment well I did want to speak to Claud because if you actually go to the State website they they actually very much say communities that have built housing are allowed to take advantage of it so we we are allowed to take advantage of the housing that you've already built yeah that's kind of what we're doing here right yeah but I mean that question was can we do this yes we can we because there are things built we are doing nothing wrong
137we are following the law so yeah I was actually talking about the the land that animal talking about splitting up that is not built upon but but it has a project proposed right so that's part of it so um and I can I guess um one thing was the SE so did we look at increasing the density somewhat to get the unit counts we did no more than 20 I mean what I don't understand you're you're saying increase cus by to 25 for example yeah just whatever that's interesting what would happen with that well you have to remember that and Alo might be able to answer more than I you have to remember that the other zoning in place has to allow that to happen so we already know a pitus that there's not enough
138parking right say and it's limited to a certain height in the B laws right so those things still have to be maintained so you can't say well put a lot of units up there and build it six stories you know because we'd have to change the zoning to allow six stories or or whatever to make that happen right so you'd only have certain amount of like wiggle room because it still has to fit within the bylaws that are in place unless we also change those bylaws does that make sense so but that is the maximum and someone did all the calculations for exactly that amount of of land to say it's 20 we've done a lot of calculations in putting in a lot of different set of sets of numbers within the state model right
139to make it all work to make it all factor out and pencil at the end of the day and and Trish is right right if you throw a bunch of stuff in the model is going to also knock it down more because of certain setbacks and areas right and restrictions within those parcels and so we're trying to thread the needle right we're trying to take everything into consideration and we're trying to you know really it's a balancing act I would say at the best and I think we've come to a a an act or a plan right that is balanced throughout that meets the Integrity of the law as passed and that obviously takes advantage of housing that we have promoted and and developed here in Ashland okay so I think Kate I think you're
140asking like well what about what if it's 21 units an acre instead of 20 like is the magic number is that your question well especially yeah because even if it's 21 that's 50 more units because it's a lot of L um actually I'm sorry it's 40 it's 29 so it's 29 more units but it's it's a lot right so one or two unit makes a giant impact on the numbers yeah no I get it so Alo I mean we did play around with these numbers a little bit Alo do you have any um data on that uh I guess I can like pin down like what will be the exact perfect number to put it um 20 was not in any way like highlighted saying that you know with a maximum of three stories above
141grade and four from the setback was like affecting it in any sort of way so that's why we were trying to keep it at that number if that answers your question no but that's wait a minute El do you know that 21 didn't work do we know that or was 21 too close to the you know I don't I don't remember you know in the process I think that we looked at 25 and we did have like a flag on it but we brought it about at 20 because we were looking at just kind of like spreading the density and not making just one area like extremely dense um yeah that's well so for my perspective right that Ashland already said certain areas they allowed that and when it's built we don't all tend to
142like it which is two separate things but so I think I mean that's a that's a right for picking to looking at going up one or two if five was a flag but didn't kick it off I mean that's five times 29 Acres that's a lot of housing units that could be put back into seirs calculation on a parcel that is readily agreed should be in so I feel like that has to be push to um what's the maximum that fits the model and where would you take the units out um would you eliminate well I don't think that 10 to 60 M well I I don't think the parcels in add unless they have commercial I think they need serious consideration right because it's our our downtown 10 to 60 m is currently all
143commercial and it's a commercial center so to take it on MBTA and put the possibility of only housing I I do not think that's a great idea so it it it's um I I don't see how that makes sense and if you read our bylaws um the add right it's it's the purpose of the district to provide a framework to encourage growth and development successful downtown promote Village salary development with a mix of commercial retail residential usage the walk environment particularly the a specifically is the highest of commercial so proposing to completely get rid of commercial on a parcel in the middle of the downtown I I I don't I don't understand that well you have to remember hold on you guys Michael wanted to add something so I'm gonna let Michael jump in here
144I was going to ask a question but just to Kate's point so it doesn't the zoning already allow for all residential there the zoning allows for residential right and it makes you yeah at a at a really high rate at a two 2.0 F right right if if doing the math and the calculations right having a 2.0 F on that site right and then multiplying the the the the building square footage that you could get with a 2f right and then factoring out the 133% which is on average but what a mixed what mixed use buildings are proposing here in Ash to be over the all square footage you would have a much larger building yeah well I I agree but correct just real quick just for those watching who may not know can you
145explain what f is f is FL floor area ratio right so for a 2.0 floor area ratio you're taking the size of the parcel you're multiplying it by two obviously you're creating a square footage through of a factor of a process of obviously multiplying um the total number of acres by how much is in a square foot um how much square feet is in an acre it's it's 46560 um so with that said it's it's a big structure that you would be allowing to be built over there right however there are other regulations right there are height regulations there's parking regulations no one's saying that actually that would all the units would fit right with that commercial because with the factoring in the totals of the f um but also you got to realize that
146site to to to financially redevelop that site is going to take a lot of units to to financially make that that that that a project commercially work um and and so this number at 10 to 160 Main Street is well below what was proposed in front of the planning board um and the on the the project that was worked on throughout that planning board process yeah I I think that just the point that I was trying to make and Kate I would agree I think what what we would like to see at 10 to 60 Main and and really a lot of parcels downtown is like that mixed use right um but I I do think it's important to note that the existing zoning allows for mixed use but it also allows for all residential
147well no I understand that but when we're making a proposal so another overlay the the base zoning commercial the overlay allows many things right Fair Density that you're saying and then we're going to create an overlay that's only housing which to me is is channeling a value that I'm okay with just housing there but you already got a value that says it's okay to just have housing you got it under existing well we we would hope that developers read the intent and the spirit of our bylaw and we would hope to improve them so we can go back to saying I think you want the mixed use I that's what we hear from people I'm not trying to make this the um Kate Jers plan I have our real bylaws so so I I feel
148like that's just not a good way to go and then to Peter's point about the the one developer that was in front of so I just want to say I have never seen any economic data from that person we never had anything of evaluated by independent so given that there was a billions of dollar Bond Bill about housing there could be projects that do not look like something that was brought in front of us or the 40b right that I I don't think people are saying don't have any housing but all housing in a giant commercial in the middle of your downtown I don't think is something we want to promote a new sure it's like not it's 124 units so it's it's housing I mean 100 the project proposed at 501 which is a
149you know small is 120 units so um and it has to fit it would have to fit under all our concern all our current zoning I think the important thing here today because we need we need concrete feedback right so because this is about it we're kind of at the end of our timeline here so if the if the Dual boards are saying we don't want to use 10 to 60 unless we have to we need that as a directive the the bo the working group has put together something that we believe in we think is a good plan we think minimizes risk in in all of our categories we think um reflects um using using what we have which is what our our goals were you know so but if the joint boards we're
150just a working group if the joint boards have a a combined opinion that's says take out 10 to 60 Maine if if you can and up the percentage to Sirus as high as you can and explain you know and go that way for town meeting we can look at that but we need we can't be just throwing out ideas at this point we need to say this is what we want you to do working group and if not then go then do your plan if it doesn't work right because we're we're out of time and so we need very definitive Direction so ask a question the way that these overlays work so we have ADD in downtown if we had MBTA communities that would be another overlay and then basically what would happen is if
151a developer outside of the 40b process say the 40b gets denied decides to file a new project they would choose which one to apply for and you're saying basically like that the add would have a higher density anyway than what we would be proposing under MBTA communities so most likely even if even if we do keep 10 to 60 Main Street in there someone would want to develop more housing because as we discussed financially feasible that project would need more housing so is that am I understanding that correctly I couldn't say it better okay so see I swoop in at the last minute but a 40 a 40b supered everything 4 if it's approved right approved but you know that's and I just want to be careful about that because yes it is very true
152that the zoning board can deny a 40b project but the reality is is that the develop what makes a 40b I I'll just say dangerous is that it can be denied at the local level but then they have the opportunity under the 40b process to appeal it to a special committee known as the housing appeals committee which hears that they could a developer could even appeal it if the project is approved with conditions that the developer feels like they make it uneconomical and if you look at the history of the housing appeals committee and how they rule on these decisions the large majority I would say over 90% they find in favor of the developer and so that's why most experts around 4bs will tell you that your best approach would be to approve it
153with conditions and there's some strategy involved in that because when you get to the housing appeals committee if there's conditions attached the housing appeals committee can modify conditions but if if you just deny a project and the developer appeals it and the housing appeals committee findes for the developer the zoning board you lose all local control over imposing conditions so I I do want it is true that yes it can be denied at the local level and I know that's probably what a lot of people are going going to want us to do and I totally understand it but the reality is is that under 40b there's another step that's not available under traditional Zing which favors the developer and the thing is that that I would hate to have the 40b process go forward
154and have have you know a huge number of units built there and not get credit for it within the MBTA zoning I mean I I just feel like that we're getting hit twice instead of getting hit once m um I mean so C can I U go go ahead Marcel no there just one uh Chia just made me think about this um because we talked about this earlier I I think in general um I I am very pleased with the process we talked about these a lot and uh some things that we some of us uh disagreed in terms of Pleasant Street have been turned around so the process have been really good and I am comfortable with what's being proposed here relative to Main Street I feel that that project should remain here not
155only for the reasons of the numbers or the possibilities but a because of what Michael said you know that the danger is not a new danger different than what the zoning already allows but the spirit of the of the law that Massachusetts wants is the possibility that people will leave close to a Comm to to a rail station no no other partial is clear than that one tough to be such a large part so close to a train station adding more numbers to Sirus or something that that has been built is is against the the spirit of that so I think we're going to be kind of honest with trying to yeah massage it to to be con convenient for ashin I'm all for that uh but but but here we can almost have it
156both ways it's something that makes reasonable sense to me but also attacks the spirit of of these regulation a little more straight just a a point of clarification so let's just say the zoning as this propose zoning as the working group is put together goes forward to town meeting and let's say it it passes right is there anything that precludes us from going back and revisiting it next year and maybe making some tweaks to it no and I think a lot of communities are going to do that and I think we probably will do that with the comprehensive plan right we need to have a you know the state law we need to have a Zone you know passel meeting come this December 31st right after the next thing after December 31st in my eyes
157is the completion of the comprehensive plan right so looking at the comprehensive plan look at the zoning looking at the areas of development that in the process that genes outlined are there going to be tweaks probably right and we're going to go have to go back through this whole process right and we're going to have to go back and use the same model that we're using right now and plug different things in and and move forward um also at that time maybe we have understanding what happens with the 40 BS if you move things around what do you want to shift of course this is zoning it's fluent right there's nothing about it that's that is is is set in stone right um but yes we do have the ability to do that and I
158I and I as a town planner I suspect we're going to do that and have to go through that exercise and the state would let us go and change it after as long as we met as long as we continue to follow the the regulations set forth within the law but also this this model quote unquote that they've produced for all communities to use to make sure that everybody is statutory compliant I I think that of course they have hold I've been trying to say something for a while okay then go ahead yeah um so I I kind of have three points I want to very quickly say one is the comprehensive plan process there's been quite a bit of talk at least in the groups I participated in in a vibrant downtown and there's
159now a I believe an effort being made by the one of the histo history related committees to define a downtown history District um there's quite a bit of energy around there and therefore I personally I'm not 100% comfortable including Main Street in there because I think it will be highly inconvenient for the comprehensive a plan steering committee to have a zoning plan for Main Street to then have to redo this entire process this MBTA process um or to be threatened by the idea that the MBT is zoning has already defined that property and therefore we should not touch it as part of the comprehensive plan process and so if we this group is going to take Main Street and make it part of it I would like us to agree that the comprehensive plan steering
160committee is not prohibited from rezoning it again and from us coming back here again for another round of MBT work and I would not be comfortable voting it for for for Main Street to be included otherwise because I think it would directly get in the way of the comprehensive plan work that's number one and what vibrant downtown means um number two is the idea of meeting the MBTA requirement in Ashland by resoning five different Parcels makes me uncomfortable Ashland has done a ton of work already we are not your standard Community that's being impacted by MBT zoning we're way ahead of the curve we've done a a lot of work for for housing we are essentially already there this type of zoning change by the state is meant to create towns like Ashland Ashland is
161already hyperdense relative to other communities and so I personally am not comfortable using MBT zoning to rezone five Parcels I would like to find a way to only reone four because we've done enough already as a community and I heard one would like to do a little bit extra work and figure out a way to indeed take a piece of a fourth and so me personally I would recommend a b c and then 8.34 Acres out of Waverly Street I don't think 8.34 Acres out of that one will jeopardize that project um and I think that way we can tell to the public listen we know we did everything already we know this is not really about us we've met the requirement with only four well really three and a half parcels and we have
162done everything we can to minimize the impact on our community because we've already done all this work that the state is trying to frankly motivate in other communities not ours thank you so just hold hold on okay so we have a charge from Trisha right she has asked the subcommittee has done a lot of work and I have listened to your your your comments um I believe that based on what Peter just said not even five minutes ago was that if we approve this and it gets through town meeting comprehensive plan will still have the ability to review this and we as a community will still have an ability to review this MBTA zoning so the one thing uh in regards to yes Ashland has has done a lot of building and we've used that
163as as a strategy against some of the 40 BS will it work we don't know yet yet we haven't heard back from Mass housing on these 40 BS uh but because we don't have our 10% affordable we are at risk with certain things so what I'm going to ask from the Committees if people are ready for this is Trisha has asked for direction do we feel that what they've presented is something that the majority of us and it's going to be a majority vote and some people may be unhappy and that happens at this point we are we are at risk we need to have this approved and presented and available for town meeting on November 19th I know the planning board has a hearing on this for October 10th if I read correctly yes
164that is correct okay so um based on that information I will let Brandy say her piece and then I would like us to say okay and then after after Brandy and Claudia I'd like us to give our yes or no do we support the plan as presented or do we feel the majority of us feel that the subcommittee has to do more work Brandy go ahead so just to that end um first of all I really appreciate all the work you guys have put into this because you know there's been a crap ton of work so let's just recognize that so thank you guys for for the the work that the subcommittee has done and I appreciate all the the intricacies of you know the affordable housing discussion and Parcels at risk and how things
165have kind of ebbed and changed based on the 40b situation I think it's important to include the 10 to 60 Main Street parcel in there I am fully in support of revisiting this at some later point in time um if that if that is necessary I think that you know we can definitely do that I do support the recommendations that the sub that this this working group has made I think one of the other things that is really important when we go to town meeting is that we present a very wellth thought out simplified plan because if we if we present something that is incredibly complex for people to understand where things are coming from and how we got there it's not going to pass and I think that you know this is a zoning
166exercise this is not we are building 1100 units of housing this is a zoning exercise so I think that you know the work that the that the working group has put into this I think is our best um I think our best plan for strategy best strategy for for how to get this through to town meeting in a way that does not impact the town of Ashlen before the comprehensive plan is completed so that is that's kind of where I where I fall on it Claudia and let me say one more thing Yolanda y I mean I think I'm not at this point I'm not comfortable with dividing single Parcels into being two different zones I just think that complicates our work in a I'm not even sure we could we could get there you
167know by the deadlines we have and to me that seems like a complicated solution to the problem I think you know if it if it makes people feel more comfortable we could look at reducing and just take a look at it to see if it works if it if 10 to 60 can be reduced to the minimum at 15 units an acre and so it makes it even more unappealing to develop at that because it's pretty low um um and and if and if uh Sirus Apartments could accept those units on top of the 20 like that's a tweak in what we were doing you know that we could see if worked like I would I would I would deem that like a friendly amendment that if it works go in that direction otherwise we'll
168go in the direction we have I'm just trying to take into account the boards the boards comment so Trisha you're suggesting keep in 10 to 60 Main Street but instead of having 18 units it would be 15 units if it if it can be absorbed in the state model by then and then to Cirus add it wouldn't it would be more than three units per acre right because the 10 to 60 Main Street parcel is smaller correct so it should be it should be less than three units an acre I think yeah and just by fact can I jump in here real quick so if you did that and you multiplied that you're right now we have the 10 to 160 Main Street produ Building correct me um at 18 if you shifted that down
169to the minimum 15 that's at one it's moving that's to 104 okay um as a total so in theory you're shifting around 20 unit units into into Cirrus you can do it into Cirrus you can do it into other units and it's just a shift of you're we're mathematically shifting numbers well Sirrus is nice because it's a low well Sirrus CU you you know what we you know what I would probably go to Sirus first Sirus gets you the biggest bang for your buck because it's 28 Acres Shi around if it's 28 Acres it sounds like we'd only have to add one unit that's correct per acre make that 21 One units per acre and at 28 so we would add an additional 28 there and we've lost 20 at 10 to 60 Main Street
170correct and itn't matter if the model and I'm I assume the model will be okay and it will be able to accept it and and I think and then the only change we're making from the suggestion of the subcommittee is we would also remove F of 10 to 6 no we would keep 10 to 60 Main Street ruction yes because you also need the Acres that 6.5 Acres means a lot right you know what I mean in that total you just can't think of one acre so to the subcommittee is that something I would say check it to make sure it works with the state model does that then Anna I mean it would keep it in this but it reduces the number I mean it's definitely a move in the right direction okay Claudia
171you wanted to say something yeah I just you know thank thank you to the subcommittee again like brandy said I did attend um one of the forums one evening um the public forum and it was very well done the public understood it um it it was simple it it the presentation is just really superb in my mind um and I did actually review the one that you just had Monday night thank you Alvaro um um so I didn't want to miss anything um you know and I just want to to Anna to you points about this the issue isn't I think our community um and and the way we're doing things it is indeed um we have done all the things that you have outlined we are where we probably should be except for that
172important affordable housing number um but in terms of adding housing we've done all that and we have no freaking power here none and so it really this is about kind of minimizing um any more that in in this case could be damaging to our community based on what I think the feedback in the comprehensive plan has been and I am relieved to know that it can be Revisited again after the comprehensive plan moves along further um I think that that's a good thing but I I think when when this goes before the town I think it it at town meeting I think it needs to be made very clear about um what's happened I think we got the one thing that has to be done I think we have to draw really strong distinctions between
17340 BS and the MBTA housing I think everybody knows there's been a lot of confusion around those two issues and for good reason um and and I think that you know again that we're 50 acres right why should a town our size be fif have 50 acres wouldn't one expect that a town our size at this particular density level that the law might take in those things into account it does not it's 50 acres if we were a you know whatever huge huge land every town that has corre a train station has to supply the that's such an arbitrary way of doing things it does not take into account the existing density it doesn't take into account uh it actually the existing density kind of works against you so right um are you saying it's
174a crappy law I'm saying it's a really crappy law and uh would agree I think everybody would maybe conc it's probably great law for a town that's not Ashland that has done absolutely nothing well that's why if you tooken some of these other things into account like the number of units that have been added in this community in the last you know 10 years or so okay do yeah I just I wrote it and read it so if it's 15 if we reduce it to 15 it becomes 104 and we add 20 make it 21 for it adds an extra 28 so yeah okay so I have a question for Peter because we're talking about revisiting and trust me as a planning board member I we should be looking at our zoning so I'm thrilled
175to hear people and I hope we continue that so my question is do you have any indication is this Perpetual because now we built more units and now we have to zone for more units like what's the like I don't think they're freezing this I don't know you know what nobody knows that question right how is it change what you know what I've asked that question to some to many people right and nobody can tell me this tell me an answer because here's the thing on they're just trying to get people to comply right off the bat what the criteria is to can is it going to be an annual obviously a annual um submission right I don't know is it going to be a by anual update um I we don't know yet so
176I think that's the crazy thing about this law is that it's only requiring the zoning so when they created this law they're like great we're going to create this zoning around MBTA but there's no there's no hook that says you have to build it which to our to our for us it's an advantage right that we just have to create this zoning so but long term their goal is going to be to build some housing because we short housing we're sort of propos in already saying we probably want to look at some changes is that going to open the door to say well you built since then more units and now you have to zone for more units my gut check from what I've heard from different people in different communities that are dealing with
177this is it's going to depend on how much housing actually gets created as to what the state is going to ask for are they going to ask for more if there actually is more housing built from this or not and and and as we know it could change on the administration that's there the housing that actually gets built and how many communities comply and it could get repealed it could it could get we don't know what's going to happen at the end of the day all these housing numbers at the state level across the board are all dependent on the desial census right right the Shi is all dependent on the desial census it change that true that factor changes every 10 years so theoretically right when the Cal census when the new 2020 30
178numbers thank you so much 2030 numbers roll out in 2032 right which that's unbelievable still to say that um yeah maybe we'll have to update and we're going to have to submit in every town we'll have to submit new modeling information to the state to say hey you guys have to go through this exercise so so theoretically maybe Bas line it's a zoning exercise that every town is going to have to not every town7 only theed M have to go through every 10 years or once every 10 years and so maybe that's the that's what I could say if I had to link two and two together with knowing what how the state operates um that would be my that's my best guess y okay so based on the recommended change for 10 to 60
179Main Street of 15 instead of 18 and then moving it into Cirrus at 21 that will get us our numbers but you're going to double check it um so Trisha and Joe have asked do we as boards support that and then support what they're presenting to present a town meeting so a b and c would be part of it e would be part of it f would be part of it but with changes so I I want to an E right you're you're talking about the whole thing AB C yep abc e and clear so we had talked about commercial being viable and I know that you have to apply I know we did unpleasant so I don't know and I know it doesn't affect the unit counts but like the whole have we done
180it for Main Street you mean well the whole thing that we're proposing like I I hope that's not just completely obliterated no it's not and we we we applied for it for Pleasant Street as requested we're still waiting to here back on the state and so we're actually going to work that into our bylaw that says dependent upon approval at the state so we also Main Street I thought we were looking into that in Main Street we did not we there was a conversation but it was not it was not that's requiring commercial that conversation was not completed so okay I I will say I will reluctantly support the abcf plan reluctantly for the reasons I stated I I have to say that it's a decision by process where I would have hoped the working
181group would have rather than saying well Anna has this idea about splitting one of these babies up to make it four Parcels but we just think it's too much it would have been helpful to see if it's been plausible um so I'm not I'm I'm somewhat frustrated that it's a decision by process because the process essentially limits our my ability to do much because we're out of time so I will I'm I'm very reluctantly going to go along with this because I'm not given any options but I will say that uh having the state do the commercial at Main Street would be really important a request just like we did with Pleasant Street and I would vote for it you know part of the reason we're out of time right is because we had these
18240b projects come on and I for one was like no but we were ready to kind of move forward in the spring and then we had the 40 BS so that would have given us more time but my other comment would be is we've all had the ability to give our input to the working group no no I did and I didn't see a proposal of that for this discussion essentially the working group decided on its own that oh well it's complicated but I would have liked to see that as part of a discussion tonight like what is complicated because if the working group couldn't figure out where to draw the line to create 8.34 Acres I think we as a group could have figured it out or at the working group or at the
183working group level bringing it here so I'm simply recognizing that the process here is not ideal and therefore I will I will support this as is but I'm doing so openly stating the fact that an idea that was suggested was not fully explored there's lots of things there's lots of things to critique here I don't think it's the working group in this particular case and believe me I would I think you know what this is the state and everything the a lot of things that have happened to this community in the past year that caus this crunch so say that I'm going to take your comments as you know from from from a select board perspective um I would I don't know exactly how the subcommittee work but I know they worked very hard I
184know they've looked at a lot of different things that it didn't come back to us I I'm okay with that if if they looked at it and they T and they tried to figure it out I'm okay with that so again what I'm what I'm what I'm looking for now is and I'm going to start with the select board and then the planning board can do their process do we as a board uh support what has been recommended by the subcommittee in regards to ABC E and F with the changes in the numbers and then the only thing I would add is also if we can check on adding commercial for Pleasant Street and Main Street we don't have to take an official vote but do we we support it do you support it yes
185Joe yes Brandy yes and I as well so from the from our from the select board Trisha we support this with those changes okay with the so with the same description that you gave yep um I will take the same responses from the planning board I think uh Deepa is there right yes so DEA you're a yes yes and um I'm gonna put some um I about sort of the commercial and all of that but I I know we have to go forward so um I wish we were in a different place place here but so I'm having my reservations and yes okay I think I already said Yes No Reservations yes great all right and then I'm a yes so so we will we will take those two things under consideration that the swapping
186of the density a little bit and looking for commercial for Main Street as well as Pleasant Street and then um moving forward with those bylaw great Peter Peter is that uh doable Peter and Al yeah I think uh you know with the with the uh with the team we have and obviously with Joe and and you Trisha we can do that okay and and I just want to say thank you again to the subcommittee the work that you've put into and you know Pete and Alvaro so thank you very much for that um yes thank you any other joint conversation that we need to have as board just one quick are we meeting on September 23rd yes okay that is the the meet and greet on September 23rd um the we've talked about that data
187it was talked about back in August and um because I wasn't sure if you yeah I'm looking at your face and I'm we I apologize in advance I'm going to be out of the country so I I will not be able to make it um but I believe the rest of the board is I just want to make sure I want to make sure okay so we will see you all on the 23rd so that's next week Monday except for Anna safe travels um okay you guys need to do what you need y they need to adjourn do you want to adjourn us yeah we will adjourn the I'll make a motion to adjourn I'll second that and a roll vote Catherine Jersey guy great guys a minute um have a cookie we'll have cookies
188now because that'll keep us going know TR thanks for coming up with that um that you know solution that helped with Anna on such a you know so easily so quickly thank you well thanks every for this they're birthday cookies so there's no calories and we'll high five next okay one B STS okay we don't want to scare people my I know that would would freak people out be like what's happening with the mo I know really glass of wine another cookie oh yeah or two are you doing your movie Nights thank you you are thank you for your hard work thank you I don't need Anna Kate another cookie than okay you to Kate I am dream dream trip Paris where I've never been tomorrow yes we're at 7 comp plan is seven tomorrow
189and then that's a good excuse to miss thek hope you're going some place fun I thought joining you virtually from a cafe in Paris but you're on vacation Anna take the vacation e e e as you know there's a oh gosh um sorry about that just didn't have the mic close enough um so uh we have the the feasibility study for wasum which is you know treatment of the algae and the the things that are making it basically um yeah it's really difficult to uh to use that for any kind of recreation they actually the down that was one of the that down yeah so um so actually we're going to split the cost of this since the majority of it is in Framingham was is they're going to pay for 75% and we do
19025% so that's the CPC article so article number seven um so it's still kind of running through our internal process but it's a new blight bylaw so um we have started getting more complaints and concerns about property maintenance and um you know basically people not maintaining their property and you know how that leads to basically a deterioration of property values leads to you know potentially crime you know that whole broken windows Theory don't we already have a blight we do not oh no we never we've talked about it but we've never done it we've never done it blight a blight byw yeah so so who's is that going through planning board or no it so the Board of Health would actually so the way the blight bylaw would work it would um name different entities
191in town that would be the enforcement agents so right now it's currently the building Comm the way it's written it would be the Building Commissioner it' be the health director in police and fire so I need to meet with police and fire and make sure that they're on board with everything I do think they should play a role in this and then if you know the property owner that gets cited you know if they want to appeal that they would be appealing it to the Board of Health so it was reviewed with the Board of Health last night um Dave probably gave you you know some feedback and I yeah I heard a little bit little bit about it I guess there was some technology issues with Doug yeah yeah he He Turned 67 today
192that's all I'll say happy birthday to Doug yeah um so Dave they've just told me that they they had heard about the blight bylaw and I said is that going in front of planning board because I figured it was a zoning thing and he's like I don't I don't know I don't know no it's not a zoning it's not a zoning thing I know we've talked about it as a board many years ago were you part of that discussion or not I had heard I I had heard a little bit about this like before like it wasn't quite ready for town meeting correct yeah and so who's who's rewriting it and who's so Doug and Raj are really taking the lead on it I'm working with Lisa um so I I got plugged in a
193little bit more earlier this week and you know I added my comments to it um there's a few things I'd like him to tweak uh do we have to approve it going to town meeting so it's your warrant so okay you would need you would need to be okay with putting it on the warrant so can yeah say can we add it to our October 18th agenda so we can discuss it have maybe Doug come or someone from Board of Health if they're supporting this to discuss it so we can determine do we want to move this forward I would think man's BL well and how the enforcement is going to work too because I think that's like key is trying to figure out how how it's going to be enforced and what are I
194wouldn't want it to just go from in front of board of just from in front of Board of Health to a town meeting agenda I'd want it to be here for other public opinion and stuff so okay I was run it by um try Mee as well she yeah she's the one who who drafted it and so like right now I mean to your point I some of the language some of the definitions are kind of squishy which I pointed out some concern so you know for example it says you know like grasp being you know unkempt or something I mean who makes that determination I mean I I just know that you know certain communities have these kinds of things and this was very drastic but there was a house that I was I
195was told about and they didn't mow their lawn and the landlord got cited by the town so the landlord said okay if you're not going to maintain the lawn I'm gonna cut down all the trees so now that's a very drastic yeah measure but I just want us to be careful and I don't think we're going to be able to predict all of that no no no but if can we get a copy of it you know rather than wait until the 18th let's get it out to us so we can at least look and if there's any questions okay does that include nuisance as well nuisance would be something different a little bit a little bit different um nuisance is the dog that barks at all hours and blight is because this is more
196could also be a bacon home yeah so this would so part of this as a play so it's so funny so just like the definitions you know grass or like there's rotted you know trim and boarded up Windows and it's like hey guess what guys you know what a prime example of this is the Valentine property and so I think you know I think we've got to think about about that and how that how that works so um so yeah we're going to meet I think next week with police and fire um and I gave Doug and Raj my instructions okay on specifying some things uh this also requires vacant properties so the owner to register them with a town and there is a fee associated with that okay um this is very similar to
197when I did in low back a ways back and it was it was pretty effective so so let me ask you a question you don't mind M here yeah go ahead how about dumpsters on a property yeah whether they're private or commercial and I'll use the hom AR rabish Sho it's a donation that's a donation box totally different but dumpster of of an individual that's allowing that to happen is that individual responsible for his property I I I think something needs needs to be done there um I don't know if it's planed aid needs to get the box out of there better control it or if it's there's a big sign on it now that talks about illegal dumping and I didn't get to see the whole thing but okay it says we already we
198already have something on do have a donation bin we have yeah we have by but you know maybe it's a good idea to to review that just make sure that it's yeah what the enforcement looks like and what the process looks like and at what point do we require them to remove it or whatever that is so I mean it's not a bad there might actually it's been a while since we we put it forward and I haven't reviewed it recently so there might actually be stuff in there about like removing it I think okay anything else so there's there's blight and then um the NBTA communities you didn't think I'd forget that um and then so finally uh we might have an opportunity to purchase a piece of property uh that buts the Town
199Forest um obviously I don't want to talk you know too much about it but I I will say that um we're working with a land conservation partner um and we're looking at a number of uh different funding mechanisms not just Town funds um unfortunately what we're finding out and bring this up is um so there are two big grants that we wanted to apply for that this parcel would be perfect for and unfortunately because we don't have an approved open space and Recreation plan we're not going to be able to apply for those SOB won't be able to they'll be a they'll be able to do one of them okay they'll be able to help the second the one of the grants specifically requires you to have an approved open space and Recreation plan actually
200it looks like both might oh really yeah and the one that we originally did that started back in 17 never got it got part it never got complete approval and even if it had it expired this year I was going to ask like so because because I remember we talked about an open space plan we've been talking about it for a while but so is that is that the open space and wreck committee committee didn't see it through or is it more like it's their responsibility to get it through okay and what is um how did you get it in place does it go does the plan go before the town or just it doesn't have to go before the town or us what happens is the open space and Rec they have requirements as
201to what they need to do to complete the plan that and if I don't know if you remember you guys remember but back between 15 16 and 17 there was a number of uh public engagements where they reviewed the plan so they to do to do the next plan they have to do that same public engagement and based on what we seeing we don't think we don't know that they'll be able to do it so but we've known about the deficiency public engagement for a while now and I'm not sure anything has been done since right we so this is this goes back to our appointment of committees right we've sometimes just rubber stamped people sitting there and unfortunately this could come back to bite us but yeah yeah it's a little frustrating I know
202we should ask representative come in and talk I can for you some information that I already have on it and then we can go from there that would be helpful yeah because I do think you know it's it's great to have an open space and Recreation plan just from a planning perspective and but you know when it starts impacting our ability to to potentially get millions in Grant funds I think so that's it's disappointing there's there's some real consequences there could that could that affect any any funding that you folks would be looking for the no no no no no that's all totally different yeah that's a different different thing just want to make okay else okay great uh moving on in our agenda vote to reduce in-person early voting hours for week one only
203as indicated below uh is this because of Staffing or just what they're seeing as potential for inperson and most people are doing mailin um it's a it's a combination of things um you know that's Cindy's recommendation based on so this will be on the website but Saturday 10:19 10 to 4 Monday 10:21 10 to2 Tuesday 10:22 10-2 Wednesday 10:23 2- 6 Thursday 10:24 10:2 Friday 1025 9 to noon Saturday 102 10:26 10 to 4 Monday 10:28 8 to 3:30 Tuesday 10:29 8 to 3:30 Wednesday 10:30 8-7 Thursday 10:31 88 to 3:30 and Friday 111 uh 9 to noon and then of course we all know the election is on the six fth of November so questions or comments just um question is Cindy planning to use the the basement of town hall for early voting
204okay sounds good okay Claudia um the other thing is you know I think over time we might need to uh kind of reconsider what voting looks like right it's changing and uh and maybe we need to provide more resources to the early voting that happens in town hall because it does I think there's a lot that has happened basically from what you know Cindy told me um I had inquired after the you know the primary it must have been um in any case so you know maybe they need some additional resources from Seniors or whoever we use at um the school in terms of trying to be able to do that at in town hall I mean I don't know if she didn't say that to me but just listening to it I'm thinking when
205you say additional resources meaning more Personnel or budget well I don't know I mean maybe budget maybe some we just maybe need to reallocate some things from the schools we're going to have significantly fewer people I mean I think unfortunately on Election Day you have to have you have to be able to to have all the precincts set up and able for people to vote right so I mean I think what we're seeing is so many more people are taking advantage of mailin voting that's really where kind of the trend is going um and it's interesting because you know back in 2020 like the majority of people voted by mail now that was covid right and it was also the first time that mailin voting was allowed so it's interesting you don't have the same
206concerns with now as you did back in 2020 but but now it's a convenience thing is a lot more people used to it you don't have to you don't have to ask for a special if you want to not go to vote because you had to have either you were traveling or you were sick or you physically you know absentee balance so yeah yeah I actually filled out my request for a mailin ballot for the first time yeah you know this year yeah yes for me I I like to go in and vote so I do too but I I I the primary like wasn't able to do it and um yeah app all okay so the uh the schedule that I read off uh it is it's a reduction from other years so I
207we need to if I can get a motion to approve the early voting hours that I just read off has so moved so moved and a second Joe go second not second okay thank you Brandy thank you Joe any other discussion all those in favor I I and that passes five 4 Z tell Cindy thank you for organizing all that yeah she's great she really is okay uh that moves us to town manager report okay um I'll just do it as a mishmash I know we have priority projects here listed but there's a few other things so um first uh just you know a bit of good news so I sent to the board the fact that S&P reaffirmed our AAA rating um and yeah it was uh you know was a bit concerned and
208yes they they had quite a few questions um and we were able to answer them adequately uh we meaning you know myself and Britney and Cindy scata um a great team and um so yeah I did get a copy of the the draft report I mean they do make mention of the fact that we had a deficit and the fact that we had to use onetime revenues and it's something that um we need to watch but you know what they say is based on our our strong performance before and our strong we we still got a very strong the top rating in our management um category they felt confident in giving us the AAA rating again so um if we do this next year could be a little bit a little bit different but we'll
209see um we'll cross that bridge when we get to it and it's really good time timing because um the FED dropped uh the interest rates by 50 basis points which I was a little bit surprised so you know doing that ahead of ahead of a borrowing that's great um so congratulations to everybody involved in that um so next one's a little bit of an odd one um so I don't know if any of you have heard Claudia I think you know about this the coyote at the mendz school um so we have a coyote who has uh taken a liking to a rock essentially at the Mendes school and is camping out there um and is not afraid of humans uh one bit and is has skillfully evaded uh the traps that we have set
210so unfortunately we have to look at the next steps um to take care of that and so I'm working with the police department and the environmental police and the school department to uh come up with a removal plan removal plan removal plan it might not that might not happen in front of students Claudia come on you would hope just want know put that out there yes has has the coyote come out when the kids are out like like to that point that's my understanding like they have they have strategies in place they have people to make sure that the kids are safe and Y it's not rabid but it's certainly got some mange and and stuff well but a coyote out in the middle of the day too is not a healthy coyote nowadays Nows
211I see him go through my backyard I wondered how they decided that it wasn't rabbit I mean maybe it wasn't acting rabbit but no no you would know if it's rabbit youin yeah I'm not as up on Coyote Well and then there was a bear on Sudbury Road I know it's like uh down towards it's like National Geographic here I mean think about it where the school is sitting up until however many years years ago was Forest right there was partly field but partly Forest so we're we've taken some of his range away and was UN to see oh yeah and it's you know I never I was there for a lot of years I never saw you never saw no so you know I I think given you know the proximity to the school
212and everything there's a little bit more concern than if you just saw this wandering out and he's he's not like wandering he's like camping yeah it is the RO yeah that rocks yeah I don't think that's going anywhere Jo oh my gosh um so see there's that I'm telling you this is the most interesting job sometimes that um so we did get some good news on the downtown project we did get bids in this time as opposed to the last time where we got no bids um and actually the low bid came in under our estimate so um so we're starting off well so we're getting that um that work under contract I'm sorry the local personel no and we really did we thought this would be a good job for local contractors U because
213it was just like the site work the excavation work so we did talk to a couple local ones and asked them why they they um why they didn't bid and it was just a little bit too big for them you know to the kind of the fixed cost associated with that so what's the timing so hope hope if we you know the contract documents are being exchanged and and hopefully we'll get that started next week or we'll get that finalized next week and then you know I think our deadline is mid November to have that done so concurrently we also are meeting next week to put together the RFP for the next phase which is actually the electrical connections and so what I'd like to do is oh this isn't this is just the site
214work so like laying the conduit remember so what we did the first time we went out to bid it was for both and the electrical connections and we got no bids div them yeah so based on some of the feedback that we got we said okay let's split it up and so that's what we did um and that worth like I said we got seven bids on this one um but what we're going to do is while that works going we hope to have out to bid the electrical connections so hopefully that'll be ready basically as soon as the this first phase is done we can move right into the second phase and then they'll be out a week after that taking the PO I love your op feeling all right I mean seeing what
215we're dealing with with 126 and some of that I mean it's just going to be the same process um so there's uh so there's that um just quick question so the so like the um the first phase of this that that we're that has already gone out to bid that has to be done before the ground freezes right like that has to be so like from a timing perspective we need to have that done like November is right yeah that's why that you know November mid November is I mean who knows this year it could be December before the ground you know it's it's amazing we were pouring concrete or yeah concrete you know when we were doing the sidewalks and everything a little bit later just because the temperatures were warmer anticipated I was
216just curious anything I I do have a question they have to dig right to put the uh conduit underground M where were they going to put it in the road or under the or near the sidewalk so this would be both this no this is their the properties like the oh so individual home exactly I'm saying I thought we already put the conduit in the yeah so the conduit is in the ground like on in the right away right and it's and it's you got the main lines and then you've run it and you'll see the hand holds you know handholes in the in the concrete and the sidewalk sidewalks okay so yes this is going to be the work on on individual properties okay and so yeah you you'll run the electrical stuff from
217the handholes okay so we're not having to dig up any of the sidewalks or anything like that we might have to do like in in a couple spaces it's more from the side from the end of the sidewalk to the property yes okay that's where I get a little nervous yeah yeah okay so it's the St yeah uh if I can have a motion to go past 10 o' second all those in favor I I okay um so oper Charles Trail you know we were we got we received the grant thanks to Joel and the committee to purchase that piece of property um unfortunately we haven't heard back from the property owner um on this so we had a great initial discussion got what we needed to submit the Grant and uh we've been ghosted
218um so I I've given the property owner a deadline in which to respond to us by that deadline is actually tomorrow and I did indicate in in that letter that you know if we do not hear back we'll have to look at different you know alternative measures so um so hopefully we'll hear back from them by tomorrow um but if not then you know we we have some decisions that we need to make okay um so Warren Barn um so just to kind of remind everybody so our intent has been to build a replica of the barn Framingham State has a bigger project that includes a rink and and kind of a reimagining of that space and so we're kind of engaged in this partnership and exploring that so basically you know we had committed
2191.25 million Framingham State had committed 4 100,000 actually it's about 500,000 because they paid for this study and stuff so when we got the estimates back after coming up with the design and everything the estimates basically it's $1.4 million more than what we've already allocated and so Framingham State has proposed that we split that 5050 I'm not necessarily sure that's the right thing um so I have not gone through that estimate yet in look at it in detail but um that's kind of where we stand now and and you know it I'm not necessarily sure if 50/50 is the right thing especially if we're if our main concern is getting the barn built a replica it's one thing I'm sorry 1.4 on top of the ex 1.4 yeah on top of the 1.25 we already
220have well the one point the one point six okay yeah 3 million yeah okay so um wow it's a lot of money it is so is that because of the amenities and things that the that that the Framingham State wants to put into the barn or is it I haven't looked at the estimate so I don't know like so our last when we went out to bid for replica of the barn it came out at like 1.2 so I'm not sure if this if that's gone up you know it's I I have to look at it that's that's what I'm saying yeah no because I'm just I'm just thinking like if if it's due to basically the proposal that Framingham State wants to include that's over and above then yeah I I did um talk
221to Mr M about this a little bit and he did feel that that there were some items that could actually come out off the project and other things that could be potentially be delayed and well Dale and so Dale's the one who took a shot at that based on that discussion that we had and I think after he did that that's what was remaining but again I have to look at the estimate the fine too conb but the other thing that we have to think about is if we are let's just say we are going to contribute some extra money to it not you know whatever amount we have to look at what our agreement is with Framingham State moving forward in terms of like Revenue sharing and things of that nature so so it
222it's not just one isolated thing so you know you have the investment of the capital cost but then you also have I I'll just call it the revenue and cost sharing agreement as well that we have to think about right and maintenance exactly like a maintenance thing that need to be negotiated and are are those some of the things that are being discussed in your meetings Claudia no no we're really not point we're really not that far along oh okay yeah and the thing is is is so we're going to have a we're going to have a tight window potentially uh for this because you know I know Framingham State so it's not it's Framingham State but then it's also the mass State College building authority so their board is looking to approve this in
223October at some point I have to go back through and review the dates but is this something we should put a placeholder on special town meeting or are we not ready for that oh it's not as town meeting vot okay but if if there's a short window it should come to us for review and and a vote Yes because you you'll need to vote on it okay so it's just us approving okay yeah but um it's so are we looking at potential start this year or really next year um I you know I think the Hope was maybe to start this year later this year you know some aspects of it but um they probably want the rink part the rink's going to be the rink's go anyways okay the rink is oh they're definitely
224doing that this this season oh startup date for them well that's what they want clly but that I mean we have to come up with all that agreement and and stuff like that because right now right now the barn remember the barn has aspects Incorporated a part of that that supports the ring and so if we're saying like if we ultimately say hey you know what it's just too much for us we'd rather just spend the money and build a replica of the barn that kind of xays the rink plan as well I think that that the rink is already been purchased and everything I believe do yeah now I think the rink is going up and that the utilization of it this year was going to be different because the barn wouldn't be there
225to support it like the bathrooms and that kind of but as far as like property goes is that on is that considered our property or is that considered Framingham State's property so the rink would go so there would be it would be par so it be on our property so I mean I have before they come before they start building anything if it's going on we need to approve that I mean it would actually be me that would approve whether or not they have the basically a right of Entry agreement okay um and I'm hesitant to do that kind of just based on some of this stuff that's up in the air it's a lot of questions and unfortunately this goes to like the whole like too many projects kind of thing it's hard to
226like really sit down to focus on this one but we'll when we walk the site there last month right wasn't or maybe it was the the meeting the last inside meeting that we had the previous one where they specifically talked about having already purchase the rank yeah I don't remember that CLA but I I could totally not sure you were at that indoor meeting that one I mean I I was at one is that the one where we met indoors and then we then we walked the property a bit more yeah cuz we did both it might have been the pre the one before that could be because you were there for the when we walked yeah yeah and I I mean Jen's also working on this too but Jen's not here here tonight so
227I've been running um very likely on our that first meeting in October we're going to have to review this okay yeah okay um and then two last things so I I did talk to superintendent Adams uh last week about a number of things but one of the things we did discuss was um the athletic fields at the school and I did inform him that you know we would be looking to transition that um the school Fields the maintenance and scheduling that back to the schools and um so he understood um we you know obviously this is going to be a transition so like a you know year to two-year transition so we're just kind of in the nent stages now of getting the information and and um yeah it's going to take a while for
228them to cuz we got think about all kinds of things like equipment and and stuff like that so it could be it's going to be complicated um but we will you know start that process and I think it actually makes sense for everybody I would think even just like if we can I understand from a maintenance perspective there's there's equipment and things like that but just from a scheduling perspective it would be great if they could take that because my understanding what I've been told is we there's other groups scheduled and then they get bumped because school take priority so if they're if they're managing the school stuff they should I would think take it on all on yeah the field are a disgrace an absolute disgrace and I mean they're they're in bad shape
229yeah they're in bad shape they're they're very close to unplayable as a matter of fact the softball field at the middle school was unplayable this year really individual was asked to take a look at recomendations would not because of that field just well that's a different issue fields that exist and were and could be fine but are not right yeah so it's um okay yeah um and then finally so the Reservoir level so um I'm I'm waiting to hear back from Dan Mau but um I I do think like we've hit like the level where we would go into stage one because we're in September like those restrictions don't go into effect the thing is is if we do hit stage two then those restrictions do go into effect the the date doesn't matter and
230that that's no outdoor watering and stuff so I know in other years when we were at this stage a little bit earlier in August we would always take a vote to say that the the we as a select board give the town manager approval to make that call if necessary past September 1st um it wasn't on the agenda so I don't know that we can take a vote to give you approval to do that but is that is this the kind of thing that because of the timing of when we created the agenda that we should take that Vote or not or can we wait until our first our meeting in October or we I certainly got this information within the for the 40 the 48 hour yes so it was less than 48 hours
231so I mean I think part says should we should we take that vote to say if we get further information that we need to go to stage two that we give you approval to enact stage two because of water restrictions yeah yeah I think it makes sense you know Susan just reminded we are we do have a brief meeting on the 30th but it might make sense to just go ahead and do it now on the 30th oh that Monday yeah cuz we're doing the the borrowing right yeah just get done real quick I guess it's can I ask you a question sure because this has been I've had a gentleman today as I was lining the fields at stone pot he saw something on Facebook about this and he was very very polite but
232he wanted to know why aren't we using the T with the MW water we spent all that money but why haven't we used it yet because our bylaw only allows us to do it once we've declared a certain stage and a state of emergency yeah so it has to so it's a supplemental emergency connection so yes the Reservoir level has to get to a certain stage and then we can turn it on now moving forward if the town would like to use that or be able to use that on a regular basis yeah with less rest CH our bylaws you'd have to change the bylaws but it is it is more expensive to use the MW water so just you know and if you want to move down that road then we'll have to have
233that discussion I told them I would ask the question yeah and so I yeah I think a lot of people wonder that yeah yeah could we also put out some some like a public service announcement basically letting people know what our water levels are at and asking people to try to conserve water and limit outdoor watering whenever they can because I think if people understand that and you know people be like oh yeah okay maybe some people will still water their lawns but hopefully some people would take that under consideration and cut back a little bit and maybe I'm I'm just saying it it doesn't hurt to put that information out there to let people know where because if we do get to stage two yep and we do have to enact something then it's
234not a surprise to people that were doing that I know in the past we've very closely monitored that especially when we've had really dry Summers so I think this five weeks six we stretch of no rain has caught us almost by surprise because of how much rain we had earlier in the season um so I would I would say again do you guys feel comfortable because Michael only heard this within the last 48 hours we didn't have the time to amend the agenda are we comfortable taking a vote to give Michael the approval to an stage two if the water levels direct us because of our bylaws I just don't want I think it's because it's I'm I'm that's why I'm saying I mean Michael just told me today so an emergency yeah I mean
235and then if we want when we have our first our next meeting in October we can revisit it and do it put it on our agenda to have a discussion be the other option uh on the 30th or or if it hits level two I I'll have to go check might actually happens I'll have to I should check but I yeah because we're we are controlling that unless we give Michael the approval that's why I'm asking if we had didn't do that and it hits level two what's the what what happens at that point you call an emergency meeting or we we could do that would probably be most likely ultimately it becomes an operational issue if the wells or if the pumps start cavitating we just shut them down so shut some of the
236pumps down not all of them so so to make it a little cleaner could we post ity meeting Friday call well do it until Monday yeah right because if we post it tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. we wouldn't be able to do it until Monday at 8: a.m. so I do think this qualifies as an emergency and I will say over the course of the year and some of the discussions that we've collectively had if we're worried about open meeting law violations they're probably more examples OPP say I I think I think because we didn't we didn't have this information within 48 hours we're just getting it now now someone there's very possible someone will say well you've been seeing the water levels go down why haven't but I know in tracking this before sometimes it's
237fine and then all of a sudden it drops and it's like inches that we give Michael permission to okay yeah can I get a second it drop I'll second that great so Michael you all those in favor of giving Michael the approval I that carries 4 z um so but I would definitely put something out there now two two points so yeah Dan so when we had our meeting yesterday Dan was drafting something up that we were going to going to send to me he's going to put up so the other thing Joe we didn't pay for we didn't spend millions of dollars for the water connection it was paid through developer money and a grant so it was a $2 million project but we didn't pay a dime okay then why AR we using
238it because of because when we put that in place to make it was an emergency connection only because at the time that's what the residents of Ashlin wanted they didn't want us to just turn on the spet from MWR and the point I'm the point I'm trying to make is that's a $2 million project and because of the work that we did like we didn't have to pay for it right yeah see if see if maybe you can get it into your newsletter this this weekend you know just kind of stay I just say you know the more we can stay and if he's creating a flyer or some informational piece make sure he sends it off to uh waa so they can be posting it on cable so people that are watching cable will
239see it in as many Facebook places and the electronic sign board and all any you know yeah it's um we we'll do it I I'll I know she's watching and I'll ask Beth to put something together I'm just joking Beth she's kind she's kind of drowning she's doing double duty right now yep but we might be close to finding somebody okay good anything else from you no that's it okay board reports Claudia um yeah I don't have too much to report that I can think of um Michael touched upon the Warren Barn um we did have a school building committee meeting last night um updating us on in terms of the project and the steps that have been taken for the mold mitigation and there some discussion about the coyote um one of the things
240that you know has been significant to me is that um we the dugouts that were built don't have roofs and that um I have asked been asking for a couple of months um that that really needs to happen that you really don't have dugouts in this day and age that don't have roofs to protect children from balls uh to from Sun rain um thunder and lightning they've even been used to to do that um um number that was floated last night was pretty significant number in fact it was uh about one and two3 times the cost of the actual savings that we because while I quoted about 140 or $1,000 that we had saved during our value engineering on the project it was really $92,000 that we saved from the prefab and now they're talking
241about adding roofs to the tune of $140,000 so I do ask youand for your support going forward on that I I think that it probably can be done less expensively I'm not really sure what the I understand that has to meet certain specifications in that um but and I did ask for some additional materials um which was something that had shown us last month which was forwarded to me however it does not have any detail the only thing that it actually even looked at was different on that was that they needed had several inches of concrete on one end so I'm not really not sure without that detail what that real issue is but um it's just been sort of a you know we're going to have find we're going to have two new fields
242that hopefully are going to help with the issues in in town and you know it needs to be done correctly I don't like the idea of having to go back to the community and ask um for additional monies when we built this school um extraordinary School y that significant cost you checked into the LA Training Center see if they' be willing to uh use that as a project uh I have not Joe if you have somebody over there do but I I I kind of feel like it's really on the the responsibility of the committee one question that I had last night um but again it hasn't been an easy discussion to nobody seems to yeah which I don't understand why be want to about it really but um one of the questions I had
243could we go to an outside vendor at this point and use the monies from the school building project to pay for it how with that construction is just I'm just throwing save money yeah know I understand but that the first question is can we even go to an outside vendor and use the bu use the building project money I don't see why not the contract himself well from the from our engineers and from our from our project management right from the design and project management team they're saying we looked at this and this is what it's going to questions last night to the chair but I have not received any responses thank you I just trying to help no thank you anything else Claudia no that's good okay Joe uh thank you um first of
244all no thanks I'm sorry I keep forgetting that uh first of all I will just like to say thank you for uh to to Donna Sol for her years of service uh at on the CPC uh board she's leaving because she's moving out of town and other Adventures so thank you for your service Don appreciate it um I was happy to represent the select board uh this past week last weekend at the fen wall uh car show and there was over 350 cars vintage that was I went down there and I said oh my can't evenk it was nuts it was AB what a turn it was great turn out it was a perfect day so it was a perfect day it was extremely hot um and so the lines and those that were selling
245water made a lot of money and uh lot of new muscle cars there the only thing I was a little perturbed about there was no 67 GTO every everything but anyway long story short is they raised $21,000 y that's totally awesome yeah so congratulations to Peter and and everybody that was a part of that program over there so great job um fourth 487 Main Street uh we I thought it was going to be a presentation of the new affordable housing program going over there uh what than for saving me the trip yeah same here don't go don't come but what it was I emailed after the fact like didn't Missi who is U she is the lip director for the executive office of Housing and liberable communities was there to look at the property to
246make sure was a property that was well worth putting the the unit and the project online um she thought the project she saw the site was flat everything need to be done so she was she was happy with it so she took pictures and and then she also went up uh up to 100 uh Chester Street and we showed us some of the new properties that have been developed you know in in and around so hopefully that may have some some pull in a Deion that needs to be made we would expect to I I know different organization you know what another voice heard from yep so that that's all Al so hopefully that that'll happen Mass housing still taking comments well yeah well that's that that helps and uh lastly Ash L day thank
247you for uh providing that information earlier it's coming up this this Saturday uh we're looking forward to some hopefully a nice day I mean anything's better anything in tropical storm even though even though it fizzled out the last minute and I hope that's what happens this weekend it Fizzles out so we're looking forward let's all do our Sund dances for weather like sat I mean it'll be chilly but I think and if and if it's cloudy it may even warm up if it stays cloudy so you know but 70 is nice you don't want 80 or 90 like it was people we've had some Ashlin days where it's like 85 or it was it was hot it was the field just Bak but thank thank you all and that's it I'm good Bry so um
248we talked uh a lot about comprehensive plan tonight so um we are meeting tomorrow night to talk about public engagement and sort of the next step in this process um without the Consultants so hopefully we have a really good productive conversation tomorrow night um the um thank you to everybody who came out to see the comprehensive plan at the farmers market last weekend I was not there but they get good turnout do you know I heard it wasn't quite as as high as they would have liked but it but um but for anyone who didn't come to the farmers market you get a chance to come see us at Ashland day on Saturday um thanks to Joe and the Ashland Day committee for for giving us a table we have a brand new Banner that
249we're excited to to debut um we're going to be under the pink tent from um Lisa Churchill at Blush bouquet so so look for the pink tent stop by come come and visit us we're going to be talking about our survey talking about our goals talking about all of our vision for ashin so come come and chat um just uh wanted to just say thank you to um uh for this I was at Joe myself Michael was at the Stone Park music festival that happened two weekends ago um it was a really great event so Grace did a an amazing job amazing musicians um and there's something really cool about having a grand piano in the middle of the Gazebo that is pretty cool yeah yeah so I do not want to be the movers
250that had to put it there and level it and so um so kudos to Grace for for a great performance um and then just the other thing I know uh the select board's been doing office hours at the farmers market um I was talking to Yolanda and she had a really good idea about continuing office hours possibly on days where the library is doing Book Sales so kind of working it's the first Saturday of every month they have a book sale and so people are going into the library me we mentioned it to mina the the the director I would if if we do that and we can have a little more discussion I would recommend we sit upstairs in the vestibule because if we're sitting down like in the um cafeteria area people don't
251go that way for the book sale so something we can put it on our um our we can put that on our agenda for the 18th and I don't think it's I don't think it's a long discussion I think it's just a matter of and then committing to us being there yeah so but I think it's a good I think it's a good thing for us to do I think it's good to be able to but we have to but we also you know from experience I can tell you that if we're not at a place where the people are nobody's going to come to us right so we have to be where the people are yeah we saw that at like Bagel table yeah so you get a few people but not many yeah
252unless unless you provide cookies I can bring some cookies so um and the only other thing is related to the cookies so happy 60th birthday Yolanda so um so just birthday wishes to you thank you I appreciate that very much great party thank you appreciate that uh before I get into my update I have one question for you Michael I was driving by 135 to the community center the other day what are we doing about polls Where the Sidewalk is going are we leaving them there or are we just putting I had the exact same thought today as I was driving back from the community C so and so I put in a question to our engineer so I'm suspecting what they're going to say is that they do have you know you do have
253the required clearance that you need um I I'm just going to say this so on Elliot Street we have sidewalks but there's a number of spots where the telephone pole is almost right in the middle of the sidewalk so I understand we did this quickly because of timing and Grant and stuff like that engineering wasn't quick this was actually pretty quick but it has nothing to do with whether it was quick or not it's just that you don't have room we don't have so we so we're not even asking them to move the poles like that hasn't been thought about we're just putting it in the sidewalk based on I mean we can't even get the wires moved okay I just okay I I I I totally get it I do but it's one of
254those things where yes we know kind of like what the perfect project would be right and again I need to you know I'm probably going to get the answer that yes it meets the clearance requirements cuz I had some of this concerned with downtown too but um yeah I mean that that that could be years and a lot more money in terms of no I understand that I just I'm just asking the question are we going to just see the sidewalks around the polls that's all could we could very well okay yeah okay what why um would you mind explaining I think you explain to me point that the sidewalk on that side um of the street is because there's less um less expensive because it doesn't the way the land is shaped in terms
255of drop off on the other side no if I remember correctly it's because of where the gas line is so you know when you're putting in curb like you you told me the drop off okay it could it could very well be combination of the both yeah maybe it's both but gas line is is yeah getting that question a lot people don't seem to believe me when I say a good drun one yeah so when you know when you're doing a curve a lot of people you know they just see like what's exposed I mean you you dig pretty deep you encase it in concrete um you know you're doing you're doing a good bit of excavation well and on the other side we would have dealt with the the stone wall at the Valentine
256property right that would have been had a few yeah a few different obstacles there okay yeah I mean we do have to I you know we do have to kind of put our faith in the engineers who've evaluated you know both options right and um but that being said I mean Engineers need direction too because sometimes they'll just you know sometimes they don't necessarily have they think in engineering terms they don't necessarily think in community terms okay so and then just a couple of updates so uh Ashland day as we've talked about looking forward to being there um on behalf of the board I will be presenting our citations for citizen of the year and Grand Marshall so looking forward to that uh we'll be there for the comprehensive plan plus as Around the Clock
257we're going to be trying to broadcast live and then roaming and doing some fun stuff on uh Thursday uh September 26 via Zoom is the Metro West Regional collaborative meeting from 8 to 9:30 it's our first meeting of the Season we'll be looking at our projects as well as doing some Community share I'll then be attending and if you're interested in available the weimo event happening from 8:30 to 12:30 on Friday September 27th in person up at devans uh should be a good discussion some of our dealing with difficult people and things like that is some of the discussion we're bringing in a con consultant to sort of help us talk through some of that so if you're available and then on Saturday September 28th over at hopkington Center for the Arts it's their Spotlight
258event they're bringing in Mark Cohen he does the song walking on Memphis so if you're interested it's their fund it's their big fundraiser so the pr the tickets are a little bit more but uh it includes some drink some food some stuff like that so if you're interested if you like Mark Cohen or if you know people who do please share share that information and uh then our next meeting will be Wednesday October 18th no it's September 30 September oh that's right that's that's only a zoom meeting so on Monday September 30th there will be a zoom meeting um that I'm going to need you to okay manage so know what time that's do we have a time yet for the September 30th Zoom meeting uh no not that Susan do we have a time
259yet she there we we'll need to post soon what time Susan we don't have a time yet we're waiting to find when we're goingon to have the documents okay great okay and uh I think that's a wrap if I can get a motion to adjourn all those in favor I thank you all for being here enjoy the rest of September and uh we'll see you hopefully at Ashland day and at our big meeting in first meeting in October big meeting thank you all have a great night