001e e e hello everybody Welcome this is a a special meeting I'm sorry you ready Mackie yeah there you go oh okay welcome welcome everybody this is a special meeting for all of us and I guess we'll get to know all your team members soon um but for the steering members um I would like to call this uh meeting to order um should and our roll call is done if you've signed on the paper that was that was being handled by Tony then you're all set um we have a quorum um has everybody read the minutes I just wanted to know if there is any edit or any correction that you might want to suggest minutes approved um okay take the vot okay okay so there's somebody um you need to admit Michael heret Peter
002machic here this is for not for this is forting approve it this is to approve the minutes yes mik okay Peter BR Brandy not here Yolanda yes cat Kate yes Anna yeah she's in the zoom Okay Okay C here okay okay Roberta Chuck Lids Allan Ed Burman Stacy Stacy okay Karen Karen Coleman she's on the she's on over there someplace yes she is just skipping I was I was Tony Lewis I was absent so I abstained Kyle hackinson Steve Mitchell he's on Zoom okay can you guys hear us yeah now we can so it's actually very difficult to un unmute ourselves for some reason I was getting some errors and I think Steve might be getting them too because he's raising his hand I couldn't mute I can I just to speak to this Anna
003Town planner Peter magic last night the selectboard got Zoom bombed and so I'm making any any member a co-host but I I have a very lock down security and you're not allowed to uh turn your camera on and I'm unmuting and I'm making everyone co-host as they come in and if I recognize you and you are part of the committee got it just be aware for minutes that you can't really hear everybody but we are here okay Mo moaa Beth Beth Reynolds oh okay You' taken the notes right no okay Nathan okay Mike Mike is on okay yes Cara okay Bill Bill naski he's I was okay okay um the the person that took over prent one is it is this his first night jaob okay okay Le Leah Suarez David iano Aaron Mano Haron
004rerry hi Lisa hini she said said yes okay well that's it okay thank you um it's the me are the minutes passed yes okay um I just wanted to welcome our uh a newest member of our steering committee would you please uh get up and so that we can all wish you all the best thank you thank you for joining us um I had sent out an email about two dates I would like a show of hands so that the goson get to um put this on their calendars so the two dates are June 13th and 25 that's one option the option b is July 3rd and 18 so if you if you're just to clarify it's June 13th and July 3rd right yeah and June 25th and July 18 there will be two weeks
005between those weeks between those they can collect the data right can repeat those one more time so June in the month of June it's 13th and 25 in the month of July 3rd and 18 so it's the two meetings in June I thought it was a meeting in June a meeting it's a meeting in June meeting in July so 13th and 3r 18th and 25 25th and 18th keep the so there's one month one day in each month right so we have to decide on that by the end of the meeting yes or if if you can decide now that might help because then we can focus on the presentation can I have a show of hands for TW June 25 June 25 June 25 25 is okay with you David anybody elsee July same
006so I think can do July 18th and June 25ths July 3r and June 13 okay those on Zoom can you give us the dates 2th 18 okay so should we go with that is that a majority it seems like that okay yes is that all right okay okay so um over to Rob I think Rob he wanted to do something Rob just had to open the meeting we just have to open the plan Bo meeting then we'll over the consult all right I I call this meeting the Ashlin select board to order at whatever time this is 7:08 and I see a quorum present and virtual than Trisha Kendall calling the planning board meeting to order also at 7:08 and I do see a quorum as well okay so at this time we will hand
007it over to the Consultants uh just for everybody on Zoom uh just please note just as a reminder um due to a uh Zoom bombing situation I have uh made members um co-host so you can turn on your camera and you can unmute themselves any public if you do want to speak if we do or open it up to public comment you will have to raise your hand and I will unmute you uh and ask to be uh and ask you to unmute yourself with your question so thank you so much so with further Ado I will pass it to the consultant uh the goson team wonderful well I'm so grateful to to be here with all of you and um we'll get that PowerPoint up Pete is that something you're doing okay perfect so
008just as by way of introduction you'll hear from each member of our team just as they're about to present we thought that would be a little less cumbersome than having everyone come up one at a time and then present later on uh but we're really excited to have our representatives from our full team here as you know most of the time you see me Katan and Brena at these meetings and we're the jam Goldson part of the team the prime consultant but we have all these wonderful technical experts doing things more a little bit more behind the scenes so far and we like to kind of bring them in at you know really important milestones we also so they're here tonight and we're very grateful that they're here um we also like to bring the
009planning board select board and the committee together once at the end essentially to kind of Mark the end of each phase so that we can share this is what we've learned these are the next steps and so each of the four phases you'll see we'll ask for a meeting a meeting like this and we think it's important for accountability we don't want the planning board and the select board to get a document at the end of the you know 18 months and and have had nothing to do with it before then so that's why we're here tonight um we spent the first phase really trying to understand Ashland and uh and you may have just raise your hand if you've already seen the profile summary that we submitted I don't know when we did it
010a few months ago okay some of you but not all of you so that's certainly a document that you can look at it will have a lot more information than what we're presenting here tonight um and even that summary uh doesn't have all the information we gathered we also collect all the data uh for each of the areas of the comprehensive plan in Excel spreadsheets that we just share with you because we think it's important for you to have all the data but we just pull out the pieces that we think are most interesting or important to share the story of how we're seeing Trends and issues and opportunities in your community but you have access to all of those Excel databases or spreadsheets rather as well so if you're really into the data you
011can find all of it there all right so let's go to the first slide um oh it's right there perfect so we'll spend most of the time you'll see this is not a brief presentation because we want to make sure you hear from all of us and uh and we'll kind of uh hit some of the the key pieces of Trends and and issues that we've seen and then we're going to each end with what I like to call sometimes a wicked question like it's basically a rhetorical question for that we're not expecting you to answer right now but through the course of the process you may want to think about is this something that we want to Grapple with and so that's how we'll end each section and there may be other Wicked questions
012that you can think of but these are just some that our consultant team thought of when they're really looking at what are the trends issues and opportunities does that make sense so far okay perfect so and then at the at the uh sort of at the end of the presentation we'll just go through where we are right now in the process because we've already launched phase two and you may have seen a lot of Engagement opportunities out there so we're going to give you an update on where that is what you can still do to help with that process and then I think you may have some time to ask questions and and discuss the presentation after that all right next slide so what we'll um just do very briefly is share the uh schedule
013in terms of where we are right now so we've uh basically we have four phases there it is um the first phase was yesterday and today just trying to get an understanding of where youve where you've come from and where you are now and that's what we'll be sharing the results of tonight the second phase we're kind of in the middle of it's helping the community by providing you with lots of different kinds of Engagement tools to help the community Envision the future where do they want to go so we call that Ashlin tomorrow and then once we close that out that phase out in a few months and that's part of that those two that pair of meetings we're trying to do that's that's when the committee is actually writing the vision and goals
014themselves um based on what community members are telling us through those engagement tools once we close that out we'll go into the the third phase which is achieving Ashlin tomorrow so you know your vision by then you know where you want to go in a very broad way um and achieving ashin tomorrow is what sometimes people are waiting for they want to get into the strategies what zoning changes are we going to propose what uh what Capital Improvements are we going to propose what kind of programs could we could we have that's the third phase and then at the end so well that'll bring us into 2025 at the end we'll basically be pulling it all together into what we think will be a very beautiful plan for you and that that'll be the first
015time you'll see it all together in a more of a uh master plan comprehensive plan format all right next so I'll just go through generally what this uh summary profile we call it uh includes and then each member of our team will present the section that they worked on next slide and I believe this is available uh on our website so anyone here is welcome to look at that summary document and uh and it includes all the normal things that a comprehensive plan would include so you can see the list here and we'll go through each of these sections in our presentation so we have demographics is actually one section housing is another section we have economic conditions transportation and Mobility uh historic resources and cultural resources for open space and Recreation we actually called
016it or I'm sorry for open space we actually called it open spaces natural resources ecosystems and sustainability because we know it was really important for Ashlin to integrate sustainability in natural places so we thought that was a appropriate place but you'll see as we go through the plan that will probably start to weave through lots of elements and then we have Municipal facilities assets services and Recreation is there um and then at the end we'll talk about land use and Zoning which sort of pulls it all together in a lot of ways so so let's go ahead and oh and so what are these based on so we collect a lot of data most of it's open- Source data a lot of census data uh you can see a whole list of um you know
017sources that we've used we also use local knowledge we work very closely with with Pete and his staff to to collect a bunch of you know different information that we've kind of woven in next so we're going to start with um Brena trolinger who is from the JM Goldson team she's going to talk about population and Dem Graphics Brena hi everyone I'm Brena um I am a planner with uh James Goldson and you probably recognize me from a lot of our committee meetings um so I'm going to start us off today talking about population Trends and the demographic makeup of Ashland so Ashland has seen micone is that better yes okay so since 1980 Ashland has seen a pretty significant amount of growth and is projected to continue growing um by about 6,000 residents by
0182050 um next slide and so when we look at the breakdown of this growth we see that older adults ages 35 to 65 will sort of be driving this growth pattern as well as senior citizens 65 plus um and these uh age range breakdowns are pretty consistent with County and state comparisons um next slide and so over time Ashen has also become increasingly diverse um and since 2010 the percent of the population that's black indigenous or people of color um has nearly doubled and with that information it's also important to note that there are some Equity gaps in Ashland where black households are earning less than their white counterparts in 2020 and that can also be seen as um women in Ashland are earning less than their male counterparts um so this is also important
019as Ashland is an environmental justice Community um which are communities who have historically faced more negative environmental impacts than others and this is typically determined by things such as income and the percentage of minority um residents and so ashin is considered an environmental justice Community Based on both income and presence of minority populations next slide so as we're thinking about um growth and change in Ashland that sort of leaves us with a few questions in the fact that Ashland is growing and we should think about how Ashland can welcome new residents um as its growth occurs and we should think about how um this increased number of residents may put strength Rin on Municipal services and so how can Ashland continue to um provide a high level of service um for these new um residents
020um and then in terms of environmental justice and Equity um Ashland is increasingly diverse and with that we should ask how can we put these Equity issues and how can we uplift marginalized voices within the planning process okay thank you good evening everyone I think I'm going to put my mask down so you can hear me better um so favorite part for everybody today in my presentation is housing uh my name is Kat a spass I'm with jmg um and I am the housing and Equity planner for the company you've seen my face several times as well um Pete if you can go to the next slide all right righty so we're talking about population changes and what does that mean for the actual development that's going on in town so as you see here
021there's a map talking about development over the last centuries um most of the developments actually happened between 1980 and 2013 and um since your Inception from 1846 those two de two two generations that's really when the development picks up um but you'll see here the little red dots on the map are the um n sorry 1700 to 1799 but all this orange I would say mid orange colors that's all the new development going on in town and you see it's very spread around the town itself whereas the older um buildings are really spread through the downtown of Ashland but if you go to the next slide please Pete what does that actually look like in terms of makeup of housing what's the tenure or the type of Housing and so you've actually built a lot
022more multif family housing than your neighbors of Holliston and Sudbury so kudos to you um you'll see here that also you've built more multif family in the county so Ashland here has about 60% of multif family housing in 2010 um I'm sorry 30% and that goes up a bit um to I would say like 45% or so um currently you have about 50% of single family housing so that also ticks up a bit you'll see that in the middle sex County and in the state you're um just a tad bit over the multif family but you're also a tad bit over the single family so you're kind of balanced a bit but still much more over the the middle County and the state um you'll see also oh sorry sorry thought that was a few
023no okay about 25% of residents are actually renters as well so the uptick in multif family housing Al has also meant a decrease in single family housing and the makeup of home ownership has decreased as renters have increased all right and you'll also see that there's been a shift in and household size so over the years there's also been smaller households including household um excuse me home sizes so there are a lot less four to five bedroom homes than there used to be and that kind of reflects the household sizes going from 1 to Two and Three Families versus four to five and up and so you can't talk about housing without housing cost and so you've probably seen yourself how how much housing is actually increased in town and also in the surrounding area
024and so cost bur is one of the thing one of the terms that we use to look at how much affordability or non- affordable is the town and about 1/4 of families or people in town are cosper and so that means that they're spending 30% or more on their income on housing you'll see from the rest of the pie here that this is the more of the the rest of the breakdown between the lower income family households and so about 70% of those who are low income or Exum low income are actually spending 50% or more of their income for housing and so that actually takes away from other things that you need to pay for your family household Insurance food Transportation all of the things that you don't necessarily think of when it comes
025to build time and then more into housing affordability so we looked at also just rent changes over the years and as you've seen um rent increases has actually has actually increased 94% so back in 2013 it was about $1,00 a month for rent in 2022 that's 2, 200 and you're actually higher than your your neighbors of Holliston and hopkington and and Sudbury as well this also goes into housing sales and affordability of home ownership So currently your meet and household income is about $124,000 but you'll see here to actually afford a home you'd need 500 or sorry $241,000 that's double the income already in town from the median household income you'll see also from the chart that the actual single family price has been $735,000 so there's a $515 gap to actually what folks can
026afford with the median income household and what homes have actually sold for SL please and so that goes into your subsidized housing inventory I know that there's a lot to that and I'm going to try to condense it into a little summary as much as possible but the Shi is basically a way of looking at your low and moderate income house housing in the town um and so the state currently has a mandate of about 10% for all municipalities um and you're are currently at 5.83% which is about 435 units you need quite a bit to get to the 10% I know you all can do it but you're still underneath the threshold and a couple of of your developments actually fit into the Shi so you'll see that the village of the amas is
027a homeownership um area that that counts in Shi and then the 12 Pawn Street is a rental that accounts towards the Shi so Shi includes both rental and home ownership and so this really makes you think about what does affordability look like and how can you increase your Shi which includes the ability to create affordable housing um so that you have more affordability in town and how can you get to that 10% and then again as a population increases you'll also have more folks in town they'll have different housing needs and again affordability comes to mind so what measures can you take to increase affordability for folks who are not only in town already but folks who are coming into town that might need some more affordable opportunities so that's about it for my presentation
028thanks got to bring the mic up um hi everyone I'm Eric alerson I'm a prin with rkg Associates and um our role on the jam Goldson team is the economic development component of the plan um than thanks um ashen's a really interesting place in its land use composition and also I think from my perspective the opportunities for where our Economic Development activities business activities uh commercial activities industrial activities are taking place in the town today um versus the sort of composition of the town as a whole from a land use perspective we get to when Jen team gets to the land use chap um section of the presentation at the end you'll see a lot of open space and a lot of land that's dedicated mostly to you know the single family housing and also
029to residential but the map that's up on the screen shows the sort of geocoded locations of where business activities are taking place today and is probably no surprise to many of you it's you know along Pawn Street and it's kind of in the area that we are in right now which is the downtown uh in the new Corridor area but what as I was looking at those two they um they're very different in the businesses that they support and the economic development activities that are going on there and and sort of the size and the scale of commercial development or other types of Business Development that's that's in those areas and something that when we get to the questions that we put together I wanted to think a little bit more about but it's really
030kind of those those two areas that I think we're going to be thinking about uh as we go forward uh with the plan next please and you know to no surprise I mean this is sort of happening all across the Commonwealth but also all across the country ashlin's unemployment rate is 2% which is extremely extremely low um labor force AB uh availability Workforce availability is pretty much almost an alltime low uh we hear about it almost every day and Ashland's no different but what is kind of interesting about Ashland and probably as a result of so much of the Town comprised of sort of non uh non non-commercial um land in the community is your job growth has been slower than both the county uh and the state as a whole about 6.6% job growth
031uh or about a little over 700 jobs in the last 10 years um and it's been interesting as as I was looking at I was thinking well okay it's interesting to know too where has that job growth actually occurred because that kind of helps um to sort of paint a picture about what's happening in the community and a lot of your job growth has been in sectors like retail food accommod food and accommodations um General government Health Care um uh construction was also another Big Industry sector so that then leads me down the road of well okay well who's working here versus who lives here and works is a really important question so we started looking at that and that's sort of what the colors a little faded I apologize but we started looking at
032at that and what we noticed is um a lot of folks who are working and live in Ashland um and you'll see it in some of the demographic data they're really high income earners and high income households and that's been changing over the last 10 years that those those folks have been coming in a lot more so than lower income households and lower income earners and that also corresponds to the educational attainment of the folks who have been coming in over the last 10 years those two things usually go hand inand so what we saw in the commuting pattern data is that a lot of folks who live here are leaving the community to work they're mostly in professional technical scientific service jobs finance and insurance so much higher paying which reflects the house the
033high household income here but interestingly the jobs that you have here you need to import workers because not a lot of people who live here actually work in the jobs that are here today so that not only has implications for economic development as implications for housing also has implications for transportation and traffic and how people are moving in and out but if we think about the jobs that are here today they tend to be in lower paying industry sectors than the folks who are who live here and are leaving they tend to be in the higher paying jobs the people who work here can't afford to live here um the over the over that last 10year period from 2013 to 2023 the average wage of almost of 82% of the jobs that were grown here
034over that 10-year period was about $51,000 when you adjust for Massachusetts High Cost of Living um as you just heard in the housing uh piece your you know your median rents $2,200 a month and you need $240,000 a year to afford the median um for sale price so there's no way you're going to get that as a single person or a single earner household at 51,000 so although I'm talking about Economic Development has ties to a lot of the other components uh of the plan itself particularly housing and you know how do we try to support a place where people can live and they can work whether they're here today or they want to be here tomorrow so that kind of leads me to the to two of our questions um that we come up
035with one is should we start to rethink the land use and the zoning framework along pwn Street Corridor I know this was uh the Cecil group did a study on pwn Street 10 or more years ago um the infrastructure is in place or is was very close to being in place now is it time to sort of look back at the zoning and start to rethink that now that some of that infrastructure is in place the other one is how do we maximize um some like what I would consider to be the Fairly limited land resources that the town actually has for economic development and I think if you haven't seen the numbers yet you'll see them in the landuse piece they're they're very small and probably the most important question is is that actually
036a priority for the town thanks all right good evening everyone my name is Megan Melo and I am a transportation planner with kson and Associates you may have interacted with my colleague Sonia earlier in the process and she'll be back in the loop in future phases but I'm excited to be here tonight um especially because my mom actually grew up here um in the 1960s she and her four siblings grew up on Warren Road so excited to be here tonight um and I'm going to be talking about transportation and mobility in the town so next slide please when we look at the overall Trends in Ashland um looking at census data for how people get to work uh we could see that nearly 3ars of residents commute in their personal cars and this probably isn't
037super surprising um we also see that the percentage of residents working from home has nearly quadrupled since the last census in 2010 and I think we can all understand probably why that has gone up um if we compare that to the rest of the county it's actually a little bit of a bigger increase um but there's definitely folks that have changed their commuting patterns since the pandemic despite just over a third of residents living within a half mile of a Transit stop so whether that is the MBTA Commuter Rail or the uh Regional Transit Authority bus routes um only 6% are taking transit to work so there's all sorts of reasons why that number might be low uh often it relates to the frequency of those transit services access to the stops um but that's
038just something to to think about next slide please so transportation and safety obviously go really hand inand um I know that safety Safe Streets pet infrastructure came up with some really critical issues early on in this process between 2018 and 2022 that 5year period there were just over a thousand crashes in Ashland um and you can see on this map they're really concentrated along the major routes in town so Route 126 135 in the downtown area particularly um crashes involving people walking and biking are kind of concentrated in that downtown area and at the Main Street and 135 intersection um the majority of those crashes are just resulting in property damage to vehicles but there were nearly 20% that resulted in some sort of injury and so one of the effective ways to increase safety
039on our streets is using complete streets design principles so for those who might not be familiar you know that's an approach to the way we plan and design our streets and then the way we maintain our streets to really provide safe access for all users so not just people driving but people walking biking using Mobility devices really people of any age any level of ability so Ashland is a participant in the Massachusetts Department of Transportation complete streets program they've received funding on complete streets projects over the years um and they've some of those are in process and they're continuing to kind of work down that list of prioritized sites so that is a that is one way to really improve safety on the streets here all right next slide please um oh I skipped here's
040an example of some of the sites that uh have received funding or some of the projects that have happened I think uh most folks in this room are probably pretty familiar with what's going on and downtown and and some of the other projects that have been developed from the list in 2018 next slide please so when we think about Transportation facilities um beyond our roadways uh there are sidewalks around Ashland they're a little bit scattered though you can see in the map so the network has some gaps in it um they're in some key neighborhoods and places around the town um but there's certainly some areas where you might not have access to that dedicated infrastructure when we look at Trails those are really limited to the paths in some of the state parks and
041the Town Forest but I know there has been a lot of momentum around the upper Charles Trail extension um a lot of great work around that project um I'll get to that back to that in a minute but um thinking about bike facilities as well um those are also limited but they're are bike facilities in development um and that's something that I know is integrated into a lot of those complete streets projects um so to touch on the upper Charles a little bit more uh we can stay on the slide um so the proposed extension uh that route was approved in 2019 um and that was after there was a committee formed in 2014 and in 2017 the town worked with a consultant team to look into the feasibility of that extension and if that
042it comes to fruition it's going to be a really great way to connect a lot of key places in the town so both the middle and high schol School the MBTA station the State Park Market Basket some really important generators where people are going to want to be able to to walk in bike and get their outside of their vehicle um there's been a lot of progress lately kind of chipping away at that Vision there's a long way to go but really important um progress has been made the trolley Brook Trail that section opened in 2021 and those other sections too that the town has worked to um acquire and kind of work on so we know that it's a long road ahead but um there's a lot of important work happening to realize that
043Vision all right and I will leave you with three questions for reflection so first just thinking about the the larger Trends in the area we know that most people are driving to work and and driving in general around town but how might the town prioritize other modes of transportation particularly walking and biking um not just for recreation but also for getting around to the places that we need to go and then next thinking about uh safety I think can you help that one perfect oh sorry Transit um so again compared to the region there is a slightly lower percentage of residents that are taking transit to work so how can the town increase access to these existing Transit stops and routes by especially by foot and by bike and therefore hopefully encourage some ridership of
044those of those routes and then lastly again thinking about the upper Charles Trail like I said that could have some really important impacts on connecting key places in the town but in the meantime how can we make some of those connections better more comfortable more safe for folks all right thank you all right you get me again hopefully this musical chairs makes it a little more interesting as well all right uh so I'm going to talk about cultural and historic resources so you can go to the next slide and uh and what we learned is you actually do have a lot of historic resources uh and I I always uh like to to emphasize to communities that we're showing a certain number of resources that have been identified in surveyed but that's almost never the
045full amount of historic resources that you actually have in the community it just means that you've gone out and and had the ability to survey these uh but it's often sort of uh just a proportion of what you really have in the community so what we found is that you have 232 surveyed resources if you're curious to to find them you can go on the Massachusetts uh historic commission website and it's very easy to search under Ashland and you can find all of these um there are no local historic districts despite that I was confused when I first came cuz I saw the signs downtown I thought oh there's a local historic District here but there actually isn't and what I mean by that is it's actually a protected area that the state recognizes it's
046a it's a very specific program that would give a a historic district commission the authority to review every exterior change that you can see from a public way um on private private and public property and so you don't have that here next uh you also have a demolition delay by law which is one of the best practices in historic preserv World especially in the Massachusetts area and you just strengthened that so that you can now uh have a a year basically a year delay on a historic resource if somebody tries to pull a demolition permit and uh your historic commission determines that this is an historic resource that they want to put the stay of demolition on then you have a year to figure out is there a way we can save this building or
047move the building or incorporate it somehow into the new development proposal and you also I believe this was also part of the newest change you have now a rolling so sometimes communities say anything older I don't know what your original time frame was you can shout it out if you some of you know 1950 okay so communities will sometimes say anything older than 1950 as an example will be considered uh potential to have a demolition stay um pending review for its historic significance but it's it's actually and I I think it's smarter because as we march on the years change and things that we thought when we first established these weren't historic become historic eventually so they have a rolling to 70 years which makes a lot of sense next so looking at cultural resources
048you have a lot of um very active sort of events and cultural uh of coming together in community building and there are several components to this the farmers market a Corner Spot which we have the photo of uh and when we first interviewed there was actually some program going on so we we were able to kind of see it firsthand uh the library and then other spaces that may be at religious centers or or other places and so those are all very important for uh kind of the cultural health I would call it of the community which is really about celebrating people who are here bringing people together next and uh and so your questions for reflection the first one is really about you know how how much do you want to do with protecting
049private historic resources other than the demolition delay and you've done you certainly been very proactive in going out and trying to acquire uh you know historic resources to save but there aren't a lot of um Tools in place like a local historic Resource as an example uh which is kind of the primary way in Massachusetts we can protect private resources there are no lot there isn't much else that you're doing right now and I guess one of the the questions is do you want to and the answer may be no um or the answer may be yes and that's why I I bring it up next so the other question I have is just around um indigenous peoples and Indigenous histories um how might Ashland expand Community understanding respect gratitude um you know there's lots
050of different ways to do that and I know you have some resources that you've identified I have you know a picture of the Devil's Den here um but there may be other ways that you can honor that culture as well next and then we have uh question for reflection around cultural resources and so I would say that Ashlin has a a rich cultural um infrastructure but you also have a very U you have a lot of growth that's that's projected in the future so you're going to have Brena said before 2050 probably going to see another 6,000 residents you're also becoming a much more diverse Community you saw that uh socioeconomic diversity um doubled essentially if you look at the bipo population and so what does that mean for cultural offerings are there ways you
051can strengthen your offerings are there ways that you can strengthen offerings and Facilities to embrace New Growth as well as cultural differences um and further build community so again rhetorical questions not expecting an answer tonight next all right so I think I'm done here yes and now we're going to introduce Brian creamer from Niche hi good evening all this a little bit closer my name is Brian creamer work at Niche engineering U I'm here to talk to you tonight about two separate but obviously linked topics uh one about open space natural places sustainability uh and then sep about Municipal facilities uh recreation resources uh and how intricately you know linked those are to all the rest of the topics you've heard about tonight um if I could ask for the next slide please so uh
052the map you're seeing up here um indicates how much open space exists um in in town today about half of the total land area of Ashland about 4,000 plus acres um is characterizes as open space right or natural lands of that half about 25 or quarter or so is uh permanently protected right that that has a you know protection or a restriction on it where um take a article 97 or you know an act to change that but it's largely not going anywhere um the other quarter would be considered unprotected open space um that some is owned by the state some is owned by the municipality um and then some vast majority of it is owned by private entities could be nonprofits could be you know private land owners or institutions uh if we go
053to the next slide that's a little bit more about the unprotected um so the unprotected in sort of the darker red color is the open space that we're um concerned with per se but you know want to be mindful of as all the other competing you know resources competing interests you've heard about tonight uh from um other presenters you know might want to consider re other uses for that land um make it housing or industrial uses um and what level of priority is it for Ashlin to continue to acquire um or uh permanently protect Open Spaces contiguous or or separate from the other Open Spaces in town um the other piece I wanted to go to is on the next slide so of that uh unprotected I think it's important to note that you control
054about a quarter of that um so that those municipally owned unprotected uh parcels equ to about 430 Acres um and about 188 or 10 10% of that is within your of rail Transit District around the rail Corridor itself the next slide please another piece I want to talk about land but also about watersheds so I think it's important for us at particularly at the comprehensive scale plan scale to uh think careful about where that land drains too uh and and what Water Resources um are impacted by the the land use patterns that we um uh that will change over time um so a vast majority of the of the Town certainly drains to the Sudbury River um the the green Hues that you're seeing there um are the Watershed areas that drain to the Sudbury
055and then the yellow basically the Warren Woods and Southeast portion of town um actually drains to the Charles River Watershed um I wanted to call out and and highlight some of the more recent work and that's been happening U both with the city of Framingham and residents in Ashland about wasum Pond that the vast majority of the wasen pond Watershed you know certainly within the boundaries of Ashland um but I want to point out all the water quality um and you know Pond resource work that's happening um that's been Grant funded as well as volunteer based U to protect and restore the quality of that pond and its Waters um next slide please I also want to commend really um you know of your peer communities and the communities I work in um you're really
056doing a fantastic job with attacking and and you know promoting an idea of sustainability and reducing um your carbon footprint both for municipal uses um and private uses um and you've all set a very um intent and you know aggressive goal uh by about 91% reduction from 2017 Levels by 2050 um and and the and the way we get there the road map that you've all developed over the recent years years um largely relies on electrification um transition to electrical ve vehicles um and and that's you know sort of in line with many of the other strategies that we're seeing in other communities um and and it I think puts you on the right path for a 25e horizon to decarbonization uh and reducing you know uh Ashland's carbon footprint and next one be remiss
057if I didn't mention um you know nian a site I do not want to be up here talking about um that I'm an expert in in Brownfield or super vun site uh but it is a critically important aspect of of your town and how this cleanup process has been over the last you know several decades and how it will continue in the future um we understand you know the importance of the residual contamination work that's happening with mass DP um you know is anticipated to continue in all the work that's um happened in recent years um with the you know bipartisan infrastructure law to you know continue that work NOP that's great yeah next one thanks so um some of the key questions there's obviously been a lot of talk tonight about how um development
058pressur is are going to uh push into some of those uh unprotected open space Parcels that were highlighted on that second map there in red um how critically important it is to identify and prioritize um adoption and protection of uh certain Parcels um and how that overlaps with um topics such as you know habitat and quarters and really key Watershed um know scale moments of of land protection that can have uh Downstream water quality impacts um next slide and I toly to keep with the theme and really sort of keep he beating the drum of how critically important it is that ashin meet those you know goals of 2030 the benchmarks of 2030 and 2050 um as you as you go on the road to um reducing carbon footprint um how how are those that
059there's going to be a lot of pain points there um that that both the the town as an actor and the town as an advocate will have to coach residents through incentivize residents to um adopt um and we'll leave it at that thank you so secondly and and certainly linked are uh the municipal owned facilities um services and this this runs the gamut from um the cultural and you know uh public resources that that Jen was referring to including the library and The Corner Spot all the way through your you know athletic fields and and um those things specifically as well as your utilities uh infrastructure so we going to highlight a couple key moments from the um existing conditions report if you could the next one or profile sorry I said report but um
060so some of the key findings that we heard through the interview process and getting to know your town a little bit better um where three key moments um where that the pitway school you know is is obviously Kudos on on the menes school it is uh a a really great resource I'm glad it's um opened up pretty well uh the way school is obviously one of the more aging elementary schools um and updating and you know that resource um is an important consideration of of a capital planning um as well as the town CPW site and then certainly um you know what to do with um aggregate indry site um potential acquisition of that um and and when that lease comes due um in just just a year next slide as wanted to um highlight
061the overall population projections that we were showing that Brena was um highlighting at the beginning of this um that also comes true for school age populations as well um so what you're seeing there is projections from the New England School Development Council of an increase of approximately um 390 or so students or about 14% increase of the next decade um that is going to put a strain on Elementary School populations but really throughout the the district thanks um I want to talk through briefly about uh sewer rate so approximately quarter of residents are currently still on a septic system either um because of topographic issues or just not in connection to uh the MD sewer system but a vast the majority of residents in town about 75% um are connected to the MW system um
062that was coupled with an increase in sewer rates back in 2022 I don't believe there's been one since then I don't think there was one this year couple just did a I missed it all right apologies so there's another one recently um and we recognized that um there's a relatively high cost burden for for the the rayer um we're going to talk through what the strategies are to either mitigate those costs mitigate the the burden on the rate payers um and how the that's benchmarked with peer communities as well and going forward next slide so a key question um how does a town really accommodate those additional capacity all the growth that we're talking about at these um you know U new residents over the coming decades um and how are those residents connected to
063either you know wastewater treatment plant in town or the M sewer uh system and what kind of rates are they paying um and then lastly um next slide how are the uh bipartisan INF infrastructure law or funds that um need to be expended in the next um two years um going to impact and and help the Deferred maintenance uh concerns as well as new capital needs I think that is my last one I'm going to turn it back over to Jen thanks all right we're almost through the whole thing so hopefully you're still paying attention not getting sleepy um so we'll talk at at this closing section about uh land use and Zoning so let's go to the next slide um so you can see we looked at uh what is your current land use
064how is your land used and we looked at uh what percentage of your land has single family homes this is not zoning this is how is the land used what's built on the land or or not built on the land so single family is about 33 a little over 33% uh multif family is about six a little over 6% and you can go around the circle I'm not going to read every single one but you can see that this also uh highlights what Brian was talking about around the percentage of protected open space and unprotected open space which is uh you can see you about open space is about half of your uh community's land area right now but a lot of it is unprotected and some a smaller sliver you can see that it
065says limited protected open space 1.51% that's probably uh partials that are enrolled in one of the chapter 61a tax abatement programs which gives the town some right uh to acquire under certain circumstances for fair market value uh but it's a small amount of land all right next so uh the current zoning code uh really prioritizes more single family home growth uh two and three family homes are allowed on about 16% of your land and you can see that chart on the bottom so the big blue line is about 76% % of your zoned land is uh allows single family homes about uh 10% allows two families and about 6% allows three family or above and you and this is by right by the way so this is do people know what I mean when I
066say by right so you don't need to go and ask for a special permit uh or any kind of special review you can go to the building permit uh building department and basically get your permit to build um that's what we mean when we say bu right and you can see you can't do any accessory dwelling units by right um so that's just something we wanted to to highlight for you next slide so we did has anybody come across the term buildout other than looking at our scope okay so we looked at your total land and we looked at how it's zoned and we looked at Parcels that are undeveloped but zoned for something whether it's single family or commercial development and we looked at uh also properties that could could potentially be redeveloped um
067there's a kind of a formula we use to just see is it kind of ripe or is there a marginal use on the property or uh uh perhaps the the property is not fully used in the way that it could be so we also looked at that and what this is telling you is not what will be built what it's telling you is what your zoning says could be built and so when we look at all the developable land or redevelop land what we're getting at we're going to give you two figures the first one is how many residential units could you build uh by right under your zoning and then I'm going to show you how much commercial and industrial property uh square footage you could build so the first figure I have here
068is 323 residential units could be built given your current zoning and um and it's a pretty small proportion of your your total units I actually have it on a note that I can't see right now uh but it's a small percentage I can get you that when I sit down and I can look at the note in a minute um and then if you go to the next slide you can see the Industrial and Commercial so it's about 2.8 uh million square feet and you can see as this kind of highlights what Eric was saying you don't have a lot of um areas that you could really build on right now you could see the basically the red you can see that probably more clearly on this map is showing areas that you could build
069new commercial and then the the the lighter that gray color are areas that you could build uh industrial all right next and so the questions I think I have two or three I can't remember um so one question is given that population growth that's expected about 6,000 new residents if you look at H the household the current household size average household size um about 2.42 people on average live together right now so household size just how many people do you live with do you live alone do you live with four people and then the uh uh the census basically gives you an average and so if you just look at that and let's just make an assumption that about the same household sizes will stay you know that will stay true in the next few
070decades I don't know if that's true or not it could be that households continue to get smaller it could we could see a different Trend happening but let's just take that as an assumption for the purpose of making a calculation you following my logic so I want to know well if you're going to have 6,000 new people and the household sizes are about 2.42 people how many units might that be to accommodate that level of people and um and it's about 2,500 additional homes and so you can see that disconnect between what your zoning says you can build and and what you might need given those assumptions and those are big assumptions and they might not be 100% correct but you're way off and then the other piece to think about is that since most
071of that zoning is probably saying to build single family homes you may consider if is that a conflict with your open space goals do you want more open space to turn into single family homes there'll be a great Market pressure and what happens when we have Market pressure but not enough housing I think we all know the answer to that cuz it's all over the news um there's a supply and demand problem and housing costs go way up and so Kad talked about both the rental and the ownership costs and the reason it seems so unaffordable is because even though maybe you felt like you have built a lot um it's also you know it's also a regional issue uh so there's lots of factors at play but that's a that's a red flag for
072us when we look at what can you build under your zoning what kind of development do you want and how much unprotected open space you have so we just we're not telling you what the answer is um but we just want you to think you know how can Ashlin ensure it allows the market to produce an adequate amount of housing Supply to meet population demands and then the next slide um gets at there's a large market demand for for housing Ashlin has for 1,420 Acres of unprotected open space that's privately owned Brian went through all of these different figures that's the that's the the amount that's privately owned um now we what I don't have up here which I actually want to understand this better is how much of that land is environmentally um constrained
073and can't be built upon we actually do know that because we did the buildout I just don't have the number here but that's the other question for you um but then the question I I have here on the slide is how can Ashlin best balance its need for that additional housing production with open space protection and how can land use policies improve so that you can grow in a sustainable way Brian mentioned uh your decarbonization efforts but uh sustainability also has a lot to do with land use um people will drive more if they live further out if they don't have ways to get around very easily if they're not clustered there's also a lot more just uh eating up open space that provides natural tree coverage uh and uh uh absorbs carbon so um
074does that all make sense the way I'm framing these question questions yeah they're big questions all right next is a oh that's it all right so now we're going to have kise I think come is it Cades or Brena I'm sorry who's giving the overview okay perfect so Cades will close us out with what's happening right nowk Al righty so we're in the thick of engagement right now which is our phase two of all the four phases and so I think most people here are from the committee so we all know what's sort of what going on but for those who are new to this we have about three different tools that we have during this engagement phase there's the community survey um which basically asks a general questions to the community about what they
075want to see from in Ashland what are some issues we should tackle and address um and then the crowd map really is a fun interactive activity where you kind of pinpoint what you'd like to see in the different parts of town whether that's um you know fun and play or work or things of that nature and then there's also the meeting in a box which is a take meeting have a meeting with family co-workers friends whoever and give your your thoughts in that way and so we're in the thick of it right now we have about a week left of Engagement so really push to make sure you're trying your best to get to as much of the community as possible um but that's what we have so far goe thank you and so Brena
076was very kind to update the numbers for what they look like today and kudos to you congratulations you've reached 233 participation points which is a very good number so pat yourself on the back um so far from those participation points you have 1,267 survey responses 556 responses from the crowd map and then 210 participants from 38 meeting in the boxes um I understand that there's more meeting in a box notes out there that we still haven't collected so if you have them please make sure to give them to us so that we can transcribe them um and then this equals to 72% of your goal so you're on the right track keep pushing and then we just wanted to shout out the folks who have actually given us our um some meeting in a boxes
077so if your name is up there congratulations and kudos to you if your name is not up there get in your competitive spirit and try to get it up there but that's so far what we've gotten um and I think if you go to the next slide Pete yes may I just chime in and you may have said this and I didn't hear but I just want to make sure you understand this engagement goal is not does not need to be completed next week the engagement goal is for the entire project so you have two more phases to continue to gather so the fact that you've reached 72% of your full project engagement goal in in this phase is actually amazing um you have another week left and I would really continue does that make
078oh can you guys not hear me no we can hear you [Laughter] surprised well if you can that's wonderful but really you have the whole project to get that done Jen Jen opened up the can of worms you know this do not mean that you can slow it down this just means that you've got so phase two is the biggest portion of our engagement phase that's really where you're going to get the bulk of Engagement points this next phase in three and four you'll get some in there but there's not it's not going to be the same as the second phase so keep pushing to get those uh engagement points up and you're and get closer to your goal because there will be an opportunity like Jen said during this whole process but it won't
079be as large as this point yeah next slide thank you and so as I mentioned our uh deadline for engagement phase is 26th of April um and so after that closes we'll be able to take all of the responses we received through the crowd Mac the survey the meeting in the boxes and summarize all those things and analyze them and put them together with a nice bow for us to talk about our conversations around visioning goals and core themes so now that we've chosen dates we can go ahead and put those on the calendar and we can start working towards that yeah so that's about it so thank you all so much right how is oh let's see they last I know were 400 and something surveys but they only did five weeks of Engagement
080all right so if you keep pushing I mean you're already beating them but their your is over we open we going open up for questions or okay just as a note everyone who's going to ask a question in the room the only way to have the audience here is to come up to the microphone uh up to the podium and then anybody online if you do want to ask a question uh just please raise your hand and I'll call on you uh via Zoom so we'll start in the room does anybody have a question Jeff do I give my name and address no no I'll um Trisha kendle I'm on the planning board um and in some of the meeting in the Box questions maybe one in particular it had about things that come into
081conflict I think between things two things you might want or synergies synergies and there was another word for it um so the big question for me is about housing you know come maybe coming from planning board both in both in two respects I mean on the one hand I I think I hope that most of the residents of Ashland are welcoming to to to other people of of of all different types of people in our community on the other hand I have heard many times from different sources not one more unit of housing in Ashland too much right which you know is another impossibility right but how do we start to balance and I don't think that's a question for here I'm just wondering if that's you know I assum part of your process that
082how do you balance those two things like we have all these 6,000 people that are expected to come in and we have at least sections of the community that are saying wait our schools can't handle this the parking is already bad the traffic's already bad how do how do these two things how how did they MH right and especially in light of um as we know uh 40b projects just in the last few weeks that we know are um looking at our community and does this process um takeen to continue to take into account these things that happened two weeks ago you know that are con that are now going to be things that we as a community have to address is this part of the process as well um that's kind of a big
083question but I think it is a big question let me see if I can tackle it thank you um so the process is really designed to pull out those synergies and tensions I think you were talking about we start by you know obviously tonight we were trying to point some of those out to you as well um and then in the meeting in a box and also the crowd map and even the survey we'll start to understand what are people people feeling where do they where are they seeing those tensions and we you know we can guess at some of the things that we might hear some of the things that you mentioned then as we go into having the committee we we do feel it's important that the consultant doesn't come up with those
084answers for you on how to balance we can come up with well if you want to do this here's a way to do that um that's you know either through zoning uh through changing your land use or through uh different Ty of Capital Improvements or um you know we can look at Best Practices we can give you case studies we can give you technical information but we want to have the vision be written by you we actually quite different in that way um as a as a team we feel it's important that as a as a committee that you take all that feedback that you're Gathering now will help you digest it but we really want you to then come up with well how do we balance that um how do we we see that
085people are concerned about X Y and Z how do we come up with a a 10 to 15E Vision that acknowledges those tensions and starts to to kind of tease that out and put it into that big overarching Vision once we understand that from you all in the next few months um then we'll start to look at okay well if that's the way you want to start to balance this out and I don't want to give you examples because I don't want to bias what you come up with but there's probably lots of different approaches you can take to to try to balance those those tensions and and also recognize those synergies and reinforce and leverage them um but once we have an understanding of that Future Vision and you're and the next step actually
086in meeting one in June June 25th that's what you'll be doing then on July 18th which was the second date you picked earlier you'll be focused on the goals and the goals we like to encourage you to start to think about measurable goals so that they can really be something you can actually track um so you may say we in the ne and I don't don't get don't take this as a recommendation this is purely an example of what you could say you could say in the next decade we want to create X number of housing units and we want them to be in this kind of Housing typology and we want them to be in this General location or locations in the community because it helps us do these other things so I'm hoping
087I'm I'm being I'm trying to be abstract by not I don't want to put words in your mouth but does that make sense the way that I frame that that's what the second meeting is about those goals and we try to get you to think about you know what uh either percentages or actual numbers or or just that you want to increase something maybe you don't know the number in July um and that helps you become very concrete when we start to think about in phase three well how do you do that how do you create that number of housing and how do you do it in those locations or how do you preserve that percentage of unprotected open space and what areas do you prioritize and of course looking at your existing plans you
088know your open space plan and whatnot is going to give you a lot of answers as well in terms of priorities so that all kind of layers on itself um and then our phase three when we're helping you with strategies that how do you do it that's when we start to really look at those tradeoffs and look at your capacity and we bring in working with the department managers as well as uh various board and committee you know representation to really balance out what's feasible here out of all these different ways you could go about reaching these goals and this Vision what's actually feasible what can you do what other funding is out there um and we'll help you with all of that that from a technical point of view but we try to provide
089that framework so that you can actually make those decisions yourself about how do you eval it out that's a kind of a long-winded response I hope it seems like I was answering your question in an effective way thank you okay thank you I think Anna was next yeah so next up uh Anna uh Anna can you please uh State your question sure thank you Peter um Anna Tes minitz I'm also on the planning board I appreciate that um that answer which I think leaves leaves us as the committee with a lot of um a lot of empowerment to figure things out and I have two questions that that are kind of my way to step towards that one is in order for Ashlin to meet its 10% affordability requirement if you will by the state
090and no longer be vulnerable to 40b what is the official number of units right now that we need to get there and my second question is if we zone or work towards um building fully subsidized housing as a town not private not not private development but actually public development um are we limited in in meeting those 10% in other words does can we for example build it fully for our Elder Community or does it need to be um multigenerational yeah thank you those are my two questions thank you yeah thank you an I'm happy to answer those so cadas is going to pull up the exact number but it's you have 435 units and you're at 5.8% so it's probably somewhere around 400 maybe a little less yeah I I won't do the math now
091because it's going to take a bit but it's about 800 units or so um 800 total total toal toal so difference right so we're at 5.83% so if we were to just round up there um that equals 435 so if you were to round it up it's about 800 total units to get to your 10% total that you need so it's probably around 400 or something it's the Delta we can get you the exact number and I'm sorry we just don't have it at our finger ticks but that I think that would be helpful for the committee yeah absolutely that's easy for us to do um in terms of your second question you you really can't build housing that restricts to you know um residents or very specific populations um you know you really want
092um the I mean the other piece of this you said can the town do this can the town build subsidize housing that's that's pretty difficult for lots of reasons um and what I what I would recommend is you really look at your zoning and then using 40b strategically um to help the private Market really raise those funds and use their expertise and you're going to end up with mixed probably mixed income uh you're going to end up with probably uh intergenerational housing probably not all age targeted and uh and that's really what we're seeing a a big need for um but also if you just look at fair housing issues you really want to open up housing as broad as possible uh for lots of reasons including that it's probably best for the community as
093well thank you thank you so Steve Mitchell Steve Mitchell you have your hand up next please unmute yourself and and uh and ask your question great thank you Peter um so a question actually it's a two-part question there's been a number of uh recent articles about net migration out of the state and kind of the demographics by which uh folks are migrating so number one is this a a problem as far as UCS consultants and if so how do you factor that into your your projections so we rely on um State projections essentially and I know that I don't know all the factors that they look at but I do know they look at more Regional Trends um I don't have a specific answer as to how that's factored in and I don't know Brena
094I know you had put together the demographic section if you recall specifically um but that's all I can say is that it it's you know they look at these bigger Regional Trends but I don't know specifically how the formulas will work okay I it just seems to me that uh you know there's enough of a concern uh out in uh whether it's the uh um Economic Development Arena the employment Arena and so that it would be something that would be factored in at some level uh I would ask or suggest that maybe you get a little bit more information on that for the for the committee yeah sure we can look at the projections that we've used and I think give you a little bit more information on what they factor in and and uh
095yep Kad is taking a note on that yeah we use the mass uh dot um projections um and I think the Donahue Institute also provides uh some projections but because they're looking at the future it's really variable and so what they're based on is like usually the census um and so even now from 2020 things are already looking pretty different um and so it's hard to get more specific especially looking out several decades um so I don't have a specific answer for you but we can um gather more resources okay great thank you do you want say no of course I'm sorry please thank you Eric definitely um hi Steve this is Eric from rkg um great question if you read the globe the last month or two you've probably seen three or four articles
096about this um from my just speaking for myself and our experience in the region I think it's a huge problem um our communities and our Workforce are aging and Ashland is no different what we're also seeing is a net out migration they call it domestic migration so those who live in the state now and then are migrating either to another mostly to another state within the us or maybe even out of the country um they tend to be our working age residents between the ages of 25 and say 44 uh research that we did a couple of maybe about a month ago we looked specifically at suffk County which is generally Boston the folks who are moving out of Boston who are out domestically out migrating are our highest income Workforce they're typically um earning
097over over1 $125,000 the folks who are coming in and I don't say this as a negative it's just the data you can take it how you want the folks who are migrating into Massachusetts are typically International International IM migration and the incomes that they have are very low but they're critical to to supporting and sustaining huge swats of our economy so that's why I say it's not a bad thing that they're coming in we we need those folks but we also need to retain the folks who are leaving because they're a different segment of our economy so unless the folks who are coming in with less education and less training unless we can get them trained very very quickly or educated very very quickly and moved into the jobs that other folks of the working
098age are vacating we're going to have this imbalance and it's going to continue this is not a covid based Trend Massachusetts and many other states in New England we're doing a ton of work in Connecticut exact same issue as Massachusetts in migration is dominated by International immigration outmigration is dominated by domestic and it tends to be high income earners they're just going elsewhere um I would just say it's difficult to say what the reasons are people come and go for a whole bunch of reasons family reasons personal reasons relationship reasons money reasons job reasons housing reasons so I think as a community it's important to try to figure out what can you actually address as Ashland and what role do you want to play and can you play because I think as someone mentioned before
099a lot of these are Regional and state and even sort of Northeast challenges so we're going to have to tackle them as Mega regions or as as States but I think as part of the the comp plan we'll want to think about like what could we actually do as ashon or what are we comfortable doing and like how can we be part of the solution both locally but also regionally yeah well just to followup to to that uh um is that I I suspect it might be um more uh specific to certain Lo locations uh and maybe not affecting all locations but it also seems is that you've got a prime um wage earning group that seems to be the bulk of the migration out of the the community out of the state and I
100think that's got huge certainly huge implications and and clearly it's related to the cost of living in Massachusetts I'm sure you've seen the article the other day $900,000 I believe is the a average house in Metro Boston is that do I have that correct so you can see the pressure on uh you know the cost of living and uh you know it's again I don't know how you factor all this into you know the projections that we're going to base our comprehensive plan on so uh I appreciate your answer thank you so I know I think we have a couple questions in the room so I'm just going to ask you to proceed to the microphone I will not call on you everybody uh Michael Herbert Town manager not in the suit tonight so um
101I just had three points um first of all thank you for your presentation thank you for putting all of this together it was really good um you know I had an opportunity to look at the documents uh but seeing it up here on the screen and having you present it really kind of brought a lot of it to life um number two I just think it's important to tie in Steve started going in this direction is that at least what we're hearing from the state is that we need to build more housing because we have this outmigration of people you know these high income high-skilled workers who can't afford to live here and so the concept or at least the theory is the more housing that's produced the more it will drive the price down
102and people will stay here um at least that's what that's the Theory right that's what we're being told um and then finally I just uh had those Shi numbers and the 10% numbers that Anna had uh had asked and I think it's important to note uh for everybody here that that 5.8% um that is that is a real figure but it's also important to note that there have been a number of units that have been permitted that have not been built yet for several different reasons and actually um a few of those include um the development on aund at 100 Chestnut Street um which I believe 18 of those units are going to be classified as affordable um 100 or 501 Pawn Street which is um 120 units 25% of which are affordable and since
103they're rentals you get to count all 120 units towards your subsidized housing inventory and then also several years ago um the zoning board permitted the Arbella at Ashland project which was an age restricted uh development on munko hill of that's 180 units uh that was a 40b and 25% of that was affordable and so you get to count all 180 units um unfortunately those latter two have not been built yet for several reasons but once those are done we actually are at our 10% just barely over it at 10.09% um so just thought I'd present everybody those numbers and Pete put those numbers together so if they're wrong blame him so but he did it he did it several times okay Mark s 49 hathon Road informative saying things but to me it's the housing
104is not my cup of tea I want to get more business so I'm going to be going down Pawn Street and the municipalities combination what would be a scenario if businesses have more permits in the spaces on Palm Street would that be a balance act to go by can anybody answer that in what in what vein Mark what can you explain can you unpack that one for us okay py was was a dream years ago about 10 20 something years ago and what it was going to be a business and Commercial Highway through to get the economic up here for for the town it's it's good Highway through the town through through the state and stuff like that but the businesses has been going in and out of some buildings on some Lots what percentage
105of buildings on Pawn Street only can be attractive for there if you can if you can view what's there at the time I don't know if that was part of the scope of this first phase Mark okay can there be in the future down the road for open space ecosystem and before buildout single family houses that can have a have a mixed use in each for economic go and future business growth so looking at com combining housing and and Retail or commercial uses as a mixed use projects is that what you're uh not in retail but in um green climate control local state college graduate business master's degree in the sciences and stuff like that can that be a growth aim a growth aim I think so yeah absolutely so why is it all been
106about the single family housing and not using it for that MH thank you thank you thank you Mark hi Katherine Jers I'm also on the planning board I have two questions um I tried to take notes I didn't get all the housing but since housing is on everybody's mind important the in the calculations so we are MBTA Community we are currently studying MBTA zoning I don't know what'll happen at town meeting but let's just say it does pass that will be by right 1,124 units so we should at least be updating and factoring that in conversations um um and then I wanted to find out so this June 25th meeting which will provide information to the July 20 July 18th meeting how can we get a or what did you build in for like a
107public check-in because our committees really I mean we tried to be representative but I mean there's no way that 29 people should be completely speaking for the town so I'd like to find out how either between the 25th and the and July 20 July 18th or after the 18th we can check that this that our the way we're kind of heading does meet the intent of the public so so the work sessions on the 25th and July 18th they're not necessarily your words they're the words coming from the community that we've collected through the various tools and engagement phase um so that's one way that you're reflecting what the community is really wanting from this this process and then we'll also be having a community comment period after we've done completing the vision and goals
108and core themes so there is a back and forth with the community around what work you're doing as a committee and making sure that that reflects what the community uh continues to to want to share with us okay did I I I heard there's a community comment period not a committee comment per corre okay yeah thank you yeah hi I'm Chuck lids and I'm Vice chair of the sustainability committee and I want to begin by noting that you need to work on the that part because the town meeting voted to be Net Zero by 2040 I hate to ask I'm sorry could you repeat the first part I miss the the the um the town meeting voted to be Net Zero by 2040 not 2050 um you're using state things and I'm not saying we're
109going to do it God knows I'm very aware of the difficulties um the other the second observation I'd have of course if we're going to have X number more residents only if we build the housing um I by the way I'm all for building the housing I'm not trying to but you know saying we're going to have 6,000 more residents who knows it we could have 10,000 more residents if we built the housing um the and now I forgotten what my question was going to be anyway thank you I by the way I think this was a spectacular report I really do thank you hi I'm Bill novakowski from design review uh you mentioned that about 25% of the populace is cost burdened and a health emergency away from financial disaster um did you uh
110have do you have the data to determine what percentage of those people in danger are renters um we do have them in the workbook that you have access to okay I can try to bring it up in a little second okay also um has have any differences been made between people who are renting in say two and three family homes and I emphasize family and homes as opposed to the big boxes that are going up on places like Chestnut Street and 12th Pond Etc do you mind just re stating that question Sor yes what P what percentage um have you broken out the um percentages between people who live in two and three family homes versus the people who live in the big box structures that are going for cost burden yeah yeah I don't
111think we have that data but we can do the we can show you the rental versus owner data okay I'm I'm just concerned because you know what what passes is affordable in some of the newer developments isn't affordable so yeah part of part of that is um all affordable housing is calculated by the 80% Ami and so the area meting income really encompasses a large portion of the land and not just Ashlin or the or the the communities around it so a lot of municipalities have had the issue of is This truly affordable and for whom so um I think that's a general question that a lot of communities struggle with okay thank you thank you hi I'm David iano I'm the uh representative of the third precinct um question I've got for the data
112you guys got on housing you have I don't know if this was captured in your analysis uh like housing based on like square footage per home uh just kind of curious how many homes might have in town that would be just picking a number like with under, 1500 square feet that might be considered like a starter home or something that would be more attainable for a new family or just cuz I know a lot of stuff that was has been built that is single family in the last few decades has tended to Trend larger and you know is much more Out Of Reach for folks coming into the market I'm just curious be it single family Town Homes apartments like do you guys have that broken down by square footage I don't believe we have
113it by square we didn't look at it by square footage um I don't know planning if the planning Department's looked at that at all with Assessor's data I don't think we have either no is there any chance we could get that I would I would we I think first off you got to look at the assessors data to see if it how it breaks down okay yeah I think if the data is there we can try to dig it out but you have to you're only as strong as your own data when it comes into the circumstance right so you have to first go and see obviously how much how the how the Assessor's data is organized thank you guys love the report thank you thank you I I remembered what my question was going
114to be um did when you were thinking about open space that's potentially developable did you take out of that Wetland area the short answer is no it's by parcel and that's what Jen was hinting at in the land you section too a an overlay would that we intend to do is to sort of take out the undevelopable portion of the open space that is unprotected yeah I know around me there's a lot of open space but you can't develop it so Brian's analysis didn't do that but our buildout analysis did consider uh environmental constraints so we could we could we could add that layer into the report or to our presentation yeah we do have it thank you you're welcome Claudia Bennett I'm a member of the select board thank you very much for your
115presentation I enjoyed it um as you can see I think a lot of what we're discussing these days is housing and how it's going to um impact our community and I and I just wonder you know of late I personally have been feeling a little bit like there's a lot of things that aren't in our control and here you know we're bringing our community together for their feedback and what they envision our our community to be um and yet how do we align what the things that we don't control with what our our what everyone is envisioning I feel like we come together and we're in a little bit of a vacuum um and then some of these things aren't don't come to fruition the way we plan yeah that's a great process question so
116part of the committee's job and then ultimately the the planning board and the the select board will be to add a layer of um you know your perspective from what's going on on things that you know you can't control um we can also help just in terms of technical um advice and assistance with that but the reason we have the committee write the vision and the goals uh you know as Kad said we want you to take the words of the community when they give you their engagement results but we also want you to add your own perspective from your uh understanding of the community and what's going on and what's realistic thank you rajish from Precinct 5 um wonderful presentation so thank you for that but what a tease I won the answers to
117the questions that you send out um one of the things that I've seen through the six M ABS that I've done um and then looking at brena's document I see that the responses have been the maximum among white women 70% and above all through through the weeks um and here we're talking about the fact that there has been a change in the demographics so there is this discrepancy and how do we as community members reconcile with that and take that idea forward um because we're saying okay there are some people who are coming into town and who are who are going to be bip or whatever or else um how do we how do we adjust that in our reporting yeah thank you rajashri so um what we typically recommend is looking at I know
118brena's been giving you weekly reports with um advice uh and we look at the demographics reported um in the survey in particular and uh and trying to do some targeting targeted Outreach around especially around if there are events in those you know in communities you're trying to reach if there are also uh groups that you can pull into the meeting in a box it's a really great way to try to offset uh if there are any gaps that you're seeing in the survey um you know you can continue to do that in the future phases but we would you know advise that you you know work hard to do that right now as well and I and I don't know Brena if you have on your fingertips kind of what some of those gaps might
119be at the moment rajish stre mentioned that in the meeting in a box you were seeing mostly uh White women uh participants yeah and I will say white women typically um we see that across communities it's not just you guys um where women in general are um more active and more engaged um and the percentage of white population overall is more represented um so that's not just a problem in Ashland and I also will say that there is a huge caveat with this data and we're only collecting demographics at the very end of the survey so the numbers reported are for people who made it to the end of the survey and chose to share that information with us it's totally voluntary and these other groups may be better represented in places we're not collecting
120that data so it is hard to extrapolate that across all engagement because I know you guys have been doing really great work especially with the meeting in the boxes to Target these um Gap communities that we talked about in the network mapping assessment and so we do have some some gaps um but those are really only reported in the survey um so I don't want to put too much emphasis on you have this huge gap when that's not necessarily the reality of the whole picture um does does that make sense I'm still troubled by the discrep yeah thank uh Stacy Grant Lewis I represent the cultural Council but this is not a cultural Council question um first of all great presentation very informative and like rajes said it's a very much a tease for to
121the rest of this but my question is about recording in progress the surrounding the surrounding employers around our area because our our community typically or in the past has been a pass through Community a bedroom community where people like you said work elsewhere so if they're be how the behavior of the surrounding employers that are not reflected in the data that you showed like of the Rons and and those large employers um how that's impacting the influx of people coming into town and their needs I know that even today although Google isn't headquartered here but they are certainly sending their employees in different to different countries um and and so that affects um you know people leaving their community so I just wanted to know if that's worthwhile looking at to look at or is
122my question clear do you want to weigh in on this one I'm just goingon to ask for clarity um so is your question about commuting patterns like for Ashlin residents and where are they going right yes so that's partially the question um and uh the influx of people who might be coming through to live here if they're going to surrounding employers and if that's worth looking at got it um I think the way that the community is structured in terms of its residential versus job opportunities balance sort of the jobs housing balance obviously this is a bedroom community by and large compared to some of the other surrounding communities uh Framingham I mean even nact to a certain to a certain degree um when we looked at the so I think the way that things
123are structured today unless something radically changes you probably will continue to be a place where people reside not not necessarily where people are where more people are coming to work than who live here versus a community like you know like a Framingham for example where there are a lot of people whatever it is 70,000 people who live there but they have a ton of jobs too um so I unless something radically changed National I think the trajectory may continue to be the same you might see some slight fluctuations uh when we looked at the commuting data we can look at it by Ashlin resident Ashlin residents who work and where they commute to on a daily basis for their job it was pretty interesting to look at like the top 10 locations for that um
124it was number one was Boston it was also Cambridge uh Newton walam places that are not near here Framingham was in the top three so that is a big draw for people who live here and are engaged in the workforce um a little bit of maror I saw on there so again I think to your point it's like people come here it seems like to live because it's an amazing Community to live in there's a lot of reasons why people want to live here but then that jobs Bas especially the jobs in professional technical uh services that are in the Boston the Cambridge the wall fams um even you know up near um 990 in Framingham you know places like that so I don't know if I'm answering your question but we did look at
125that and I I think what you what I interpret you were commenting on I think is is accurate like people live here and then they're they're going out but I don't know I don't know if I helped or I answered your question or not yeah I just wanted to I guess I just wanted to see if we could get more granular and who exact like the surrounding large employers how that impacts you know the housing needs and the things that we can control in terms of for for the town and how do we we want to go economically like things like that so I don't know if it's worthwhile go to the mic can sorry can I just ask can I keep going or not yeah can you restate your question just one minute pal
126so just so I can try to understand a little bit more let's say math Works continues to grow in niic are you saying what is the impact of that growth on ash from a residential perspective thank you okay uh Peter match to Joe manani Joe did you have a question uh I did and thank you thank you Peter for acknowledging me uh Joe manani to hopan a member of the select board uh thank you for the presentation uh it answered a lot of the questions that I had um one of my concerns is that I believe it was on the first slide when you were talking about your goals I think there were seven seven seven items that you had up there and believe the very last one had to do with planning and and
127Zoning uh to me right now that should be foremost uh one of the most important things we should be looking at especially where we're being uh you know bombarded with uh these different projects that are coming into town for with with new growth uh don't mind the new growth but we need to be able to um moderate uh moderately handle the growth uh so that the town grows with the growth and can uh keep up with the growth uh we've had this issue back in the in the early 90s when the uh the condos were were going crazy and we had a difficult time as a town catching up to the growth and I think that's one of the issues and I hope that's something that you folks will address uh for the future uh
128and and I'm I strongly believe that uh we are way behind when it comes to uh zoning um and I hope that you folks will really discuss and and put forward uh the inclusion every zoning bylaw that needs to be addressed to help uh give us another tool to help fight this uh this bombardment of uh projects that are coming on you know coming toward to our town so I don't know if you have any comment on that or is that something that you folks are going to do but I appreciate all all your efforts so far yeah thank thank you so much I I'll make just a couple comments you know absolutely Planning and Zoning is at the core of what the the strategy ideas will uh will be kind of focused on um
129and the I just the second point I want to make is the order of the the topics was in no way reflective of priorities I typically put land use and Zoning at the end because it ties a lot as you noticed I referred back to what a lot of the prior presentation presentations included so it kind of ties it together at the end thank you thank you and and Peter uh just one last thing I didn't mean to interrupt uh the young lady but if someone needs a follow-up question think you get to the microphone because we couldn't hear what that follow-up question was in her response that's what I was trying to get attention for oh okay okay thank you okay we have one person online Anna say Anna you have your hand raised
130please uh State your question my question is regarding Economic Development are there particular economic Trends uh in our area you mentioned marbor and Framingham appear to be attracting job growth should we should ask be thinking about resoning in a certain way to attract a certain kind of business to kind of fit in with what's happening in Metro West are there economic opportunities for us as a community to think about for the next 10 years 10 to 15 years as we grow so that we can augment our tax revenue um more commercially rather than uh being just a bedroom community um great question and yes that'll be part of the goals and strategies component of this and also we be working with Jen's team too because I I think some of it the buildout needs to
131probably inform what can get built where and then tie back to the prior uh question that we just heard around land use and Zoning so one example is um with Co we saw a huge boom in like transportation and Logistics warehouses which can range from 150,000 square feet to 3 million square F feet in size those require a lot of land both for parking of semis uh access and just the general size of the building so if we were to look at some of the available say industrial Parcels that Jen had showed on the build app map and we don't and I'm just making this up but let's say all those Parcels were three acres in size we're probably not going to Target a large facility like that but when we look at industrial and
132Manufacturing maybe there are other kinds of Niche manufacturing that maybe have barriers in the zoning or require special permits or have really high parking requirements um so we can look at those things and try to reduce the regulatory barriers to Economic Development um in Metro West there's a lot going on um there's been actually a pretty fair amount of that industrial Logistics up until the last year or two things like lab was going but I'm not sure that's really a great option at this point in time um medical office and medical uh manufacturing device manufacturing continues to also be a strong point in Metro West so we'll be looking at all that stuff as well as you know maybe you want to have some more walkable commercial nodes that are supported by mixed use right
133that's another way to have Economic Development just at a very different size and scale right supporting small businesses local entrepreneurship um in addition to the large uh businesses and players that we might be thinking of Elsewhere in the region and is Hospitality still a hot spot in western Mass or is that impacting this area uh that I will have to look into I'm not sure thank you all right thank you hi hi everybody I'm Rob share the current select board chair um and so uh one of the things I want to do kind of ceremonially is thank you all for being here and just um just kind of reiterate our uh our support for this uh Pro uh process um and the um thank all the work of the folks in the steering committee for
134going through this and we started this what a year or a year and a half ago was an idea um and it's um it looks like it's going strong I I do want to say as someone who's um kind of wrestled with all these issues as a municipal official for going back for more years than I at the moment care to re remember um you know you I think you've hit on this existing conditions report you hit um all the kind of major issues that we've been dealing with um and you know the themes of uh sustainability walkability Transportation housing Economic Development uh quality of life I didn't actually hear that term very much but you know in in a community like Ashen that's really important that's why people come here it is a bedroom
135community it's um one of the more Blue Collar towns in this area and you know I really appreciated your um I think you got it right in terms of the housing in our record and housing um in this area we have been housing provider for Metro West really U besides say Framingham and uh you know Marboro um so uh you know I just um I did I did want to hit on you know just kind of thank you all for thank you for your efforts and the efforts of the steering committee and I think um you know going to some of the questions you I feel like youve put together a great framework for these folks to work on because they come out of this I really want to emphasize the need for concrete tools
136and as you can see that you know events are always moving we're always behind a step or two behind right so now we have 240b projects we're dealing with um and so all the kind of numbers you're putting together all of a sudden they're outdated you know so um but uh you know I think this is a great process the a strong process and it really gives us hope for the future and I just want to emphasize coming out of it with strong tools that we can put in effect because we've talked about many of these Concepts on and off for years I've been open space how to protect open space buildout uh things like that um you know the idea of having the need to have concrete tools and specific numbers and then coming
137out of this with like things like a sidewalk plan you know and a complete streets priority list that's you know kind of institutionalized um so I I want to emphasize that and as you folks get into this process and start putting together these concrete recommendations um you know you know ask for whatever resources you need and the tools you need to to get that straight and um you know so that's where we are racing Against Time as usual but uh anyway thank you uh yeah that's all I minutes okay everyone we have about five minutes to go in the meeting okay uh we have about five minutes to go in the meeting if there are no remaining questions I make a motion to adjourn um second okay motion to adjourn okay all those in favor
138okay nobody opposed all right the motion is passed [Laughter] items committee that you have for the next meeting we're scheduled for May 16th so you can just email those to us okay