001[Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the uh February 7th meeting of the ashin select board I call this meeting to order um and and the uh first item on our agenda is the um uh dangerous dog hearing um so be I will read this this notice of the hearing um please be advised that on Wednesday February 7th 2024 at 7 p.m the Ashton select board will conduct a hearing which will be held in person and Via Zoom the meeting will take place at ashon Town Hall if you wish to attend the meeting virtually please use a zoom link which can be found on the calendar uh the hearing is pursuant to General Law chapter 140 157 section 87-116 of the town's General bylaws to determine whether your dog and this uh this uh notice
002is addressed to uh Claire and Christopher rosam um is a dangerous dog as defined by General Law chapter 136a in the event that the board finds Cooper to be a dangerous dog it will also determine what measures will be taken to protect the public in accordance with General Law chapter 140 section 157 C so I will ask for a motion to open this hearing in accordance with that notice so moved I've got a a motion a second so vote to uh all those in favor of opening the hearing say I I I so the motion is now here uh open and on advice of um of council I will ask for a motion to the then suspend continue continue I'm sorry continue this um uh this hearing uh and the reason for that is that
003we're um going the the animal is no longer in our in the town of Ashland and we're going to um on the advice of councel we need to get further information so the um my request is to uh uh continue this hearing until the date of March March 6 that's we continue this hearing until March 16th at 7:4 March 6th at 7:15 p.m. okay the motion's been made to um continue this hearing till March 6th at 7:15 all those in favor say I I all those opposed no so the the hearing is um now continued to that date and time so I thank you folks for coming hi Mrs Kane good great to see you so we just we just um we're going to continue the hearing until um that date um on March 6
004so um so that's that's really the end of it for tonight folks so yeah so if you guys want to confer and talk about it outside feel free and if you have any questions or other issues of us um let us know yes we communic up until this point Don has been the one that's done all the communication and I just want to make sure that this doesn't S the TA pack and we don't miss anything on March 6 and that this is communicated and is there something that we need to do before that to make sure that this happens I will make sure that you are communicated with and like any updates and any developments any developments that happen between now and then are communicated to you yeah I apologize it sounds like they
005were not the at least for tonight so no there wasn't a lot of communication s toar this situation we just want resolve in her I guess yeah yeah well I think all the I can speak I think the the members of the of the select board understand your position and appreciate great thanks thank you thank you good seeing you all yeah wish it was better circumstances yeah see you yeah bye Marth byee okay all right um do we need to close the hearing I know I no because we've continued it until March 6 so we can't do anything else thank you for that okay so just a note for folks here for um citizens participation the next item on on the agenda is the um historic Cemetery presentation are they ready to do that presentation
006is Helen there I see Joan she's nodding Helen's noding so so how does that uh thank you Lisa um so how is that going to work who's doing the presentation I am okay remotely okay yes we can hear you Joan that's all right I'm sorry hel Helen I see Joan and big letter is right below you okay sorry all right Helen go ahead yeah so I guess I guess Susan R has to make me uh call so I can share the screen Helen did you log in on the link or did you come in a different way because it's not allowing me to make you a co-host that's yeah I'm on the link you're not the host you didn't log in it's Jen on the other Zoom account right I didn't but originally it said
007Jen and then I changed my name so maybe it's still showing me as Jen I don't know I can get I can get it it's because the podium is host so just give me one second okay you should be able to do it now okay so um the Ashland burial ground uh which is the historic Cemetery uh in Ashland um is is the need in need of a restoration and and I'm here to do a pres a presentation for this and uh so I I wrote here the keepers of our stories the historic cemetery is inhabited by folks who built the place that we now occupi they built the foundation on which we Thrive their stories are held in the sacred place and our our stories of culture and place this is why we must
008restore this Historic Site located in the heart of downtown Ashland and we are the ones charged with advocating for the residents who will be part of our community for centuries and their eternity the Ashlin residents deserve our stewardship and their Eternal home now deserves to have a respectful and historically correct restoration the mission statement of So currently we're working uh together with the historic just interrupt can you it might be helpful if you made the screen bigger can you do make it a full screen so people can see it a little easier I'm sorry okay I didn't realize on your screen it wasn't the full screen so okay yeah so the the uh mission statement of our uh our group which is it's a uh the Ashley and historic commission the ashin Historic Society and
009and the working group uh the the the mission statement is to restore the ashin burial grounds of the ashin cemetery to an acceptable condition using thoughtful and historically correct materials and methods in involving the community volunteers and professionals we will document all work done at the cemetery all materials uh to be used to include before and after documentation to serve as a record for the future this uh was not done in the past which makes it difficult to know uh what actually had been done there um to construct a long-term maintenance plan for the site that will minimize future damage and keep the site in a condition that the community can be proud of so the restoration timeline and this is a little bit fluid a lot of it uh will depend on um funding
010which I'll get into after the timeline and how much funding we get over time and and when we acquire it so it's a little bit fluid but we expect the restoration itself to take two years possibly work into a third year you know if need be uh but the timeline for 2024 is to remove brush debris and base plants and trees uncovering buried or partially buried gravestones treating invasive plants with water safe herbicide it's adjacent to the sbur river so this is very important that we use um a board of health approved water safe herbicide to reduce the need for further clearing so when when volunteers come in clear out invasive plants this will help them to not come back so that we don't have to always have people going in to clear them out
011cleaning the headstones using D2 which is a recognized uh biological solution used for cleaning headstones um with a conservator for oversight a conservator is a person or person's responsible for the repair and preservation of things of cultural or environmental concern training volunteers to level headstones and perform small repairs assessment of uh repair uh which requires professionals because some of the work down there will require some professional um professional help it it won't be able to be done by Volunteers versus work that professionals can train volunteers to do which uh which is what we want to base a lot of the work that we can do on uh because it will save a lot of money and it will also uh increase the um you know the community participation so for Cemetery timeline for 2025 is
012to repair gravestones using trained volunteers with conservative oversight and professional repair and restoration is funding allows installing one to two informational kiosks using historically correct material such as Granite for the posts one kiosk would have a map of the inhabitants of the cemetery and the second kiosk would have historic information about the cemetery and its inhabitants and funding as as as funding allows I'm sorry as funding allows installation of native plants and grasses installing a 4in perimeter around each gravestone with round cover to minimize damage to the gravestones from lawnmowers and weed whackers as funding allows so that's a big problem uh we noticed that a lot of the headstones aside from other damage that they do have they do have damage from lawnmowers and from weed whackers which I guess is a very common
013thing in cemeteries of any type um and so to install around each each headstone a 4inch perimeter would of of of like a ground cover that wouldn't grow would keep the lawnmowers and the weed whackers from getting as close to The Headstone as they do now so they that would minimize the damage the damage there so the funding um the current plan is to utilize a small amount of money currently held by the historic commission we would like to apply for CPC CPA funding uh and we want to procure donations that will be used for the cemetery uh restoration project this would only money that would only be used for that um and using the work a working group member who has extensive fundraising experience and is ready to go as soon as we tell
014her she can uh and she's not a town employee or a special Town Town employee so she's able to procure that funding possibly procuring a 5050 matching Grant in 2025 uh from the Massachusetts State Historical commission uh the requirements for that Grant um that need to be satisfied are being worked on currently and um we have three work group members including two of the Ashley historic uh commission members including myself and Joan who took the recent workshop on how to apply for that Grant and so what we are hoping is that um you know we will be able to find as much of the work that needs to be done that requires to be done and and and add in some additional uh things like those kiosks and the plantings um you know as as
015we get the funding and then there's been a few other things that have kind of come up in the mix after I well before I wrote this but after I had uh kind of reformulated the plan um discussing things with the DPW like possibly putting in some a trash barrel or maybe even some signs that say that people can't bring their dogs in just to kind of minimize um you know the work that the DPW needs to go in and clean up after and so Community participation which is an integral part of the component the um historic uh preservation of the ashin burial ground is an important project to bring to the community and together to educate and promote stewardship and pride in our entire Community we hope to engage the entire Community from school-aged
016children to senior citizens and this is very important to us uh there's an important connection here for the community and there's an opportunity for a wonderful learning experience for everyone this was something that the members of the ashin historic commission uh working with the ashin Historic Society and and uh the working group decided early on as a way to instill uh a sense of pride in both it's to instill a sense of place in Pride sorry I said that wrong the history of Ashlin and its early residents connecting with the current residents who will carry this Pro and stewardship forward into the future um we've already got a nice group actually of volunteers that are ready to go we have someone fundraising I have people ready to go in to remove brush and uh invasive
017plants and small trees and we're hoping to get some more people to help them but we have a nice group and we have a larger list of people who want to come in for a u spring community cleanup and uh possibly training may even be able to fund some of the training this spring of some of the volunteers to do some gravestone leveling and and uh some small minor repairs and we will uh be doing hopefully that clean up day this this spring in 2024 with the board's uh permission so I I put in a few pictures here and I wanted to um kind of go over them I this is just a small sampling of the types of deterioration that exist at the cemetery site and you can see that the gravestones some of
018them are sinking and um buried in Brush and plant overgrowth there's mold lien discoloration uh on all of the stones some some Stones actually are are we would consider dangerous if you look at the picture at the very top right corner you can see sort of an obelisk type of monument and it's leaning what you can't see is inside of that Monument originally there was a pin and it would have been standing straight originally but originally there was a pin a metal pin in the center of that monument and and that used to hold it securely in place uh that metal pin is now deteriorated and is basically no longer functional or even existed and all of the pins and all of The Monuments in the cemetery are the same they they no longer exist
019they've deteriorated past functionality functionality excuse me but this particular one and there's a couple more like it um is actually considered dangerous because of the fact that it's leaning and because it's really technically not connected it could easily be pushed over that top part the obelis sort of part of it weighs approximately 70 pounds so if someone were to push it over onto someone else you know there could be injuries involved so so there are you know things like that that that we would consider uh dangerous and then um then if you look at the bottom left there's a stone laying on the ground that uh has a sort of a piece on the back that's cement that was a that was a previously inappropriately done incorrectly done I should say repair so what someone
020came in and did was they applied cement to try to level it on on on the ground so it would stand straight but it didn't and and it deteriorated very quickly but unfortunately because they also applied it right directly to that stone that cement is further deteriorating the stone at an accelerated rate so that particular Stone would require Professional Restoration because that cement has to be very slowly and carefully chipped off uh because it has to be removed to reduce that acceleration of deterioration in that area of that stone and very difficult to do so that would be something you would want a professional to do and there are um a lot of other stones and a lot of other types of damage down there including some other repairs that I I did notice while
021I was down there in December there was another obelis stone similar to that one and it looks like someone had sort of tried to glue them together with some kind of pink gooey stuff that's sort of seeped out so you can see it so you know that that wasn't done correctly um but if you look at the two stones on the bottom uh right hand corner you can see that they look a little bit cleaner than the other Stones these these two stones were sprayed uh in November this picture was taken in December uh with the D2 solution they've had uh no real scrubbing and no real uh scraping at all so the D2 solution which actually works over time so even over a period of time further down the road from now they will
022continue to improve um the mold you know any mold any like and things like that that are on them will continue to to uh disappear and the and the color and and they're they're readable now you can actually read those stones so that's uh part of the you know the Improvement and and that's what the D2 solution can do and so that's pretty much my presentation I I would love to answer any questions thank you uh Helen um questions or discussion yeah go ahead I just had a couple of questions just about the cemetery itself and um Helen is that what's the oldest uh grave marker in there I don't know the exact date but I do know that we have a revolutionary um War veteran buried in there and we do actually have a
023number of um Civil War veteran believe it's Civil War veterans but they they're not really I mean they're very difficult to find that the grav at this point are hard to tree but there are some that we know of and they're not properly marked as veterans um which is another thing we're working on getting because um you know when they go around on you know Memorial Day and things and they put the you know recognize the flags and these these graves are not getting that because they're not really um recognizable so that's something we're hoping to fix as well is this an older grave area than um Simpson I don't believe so there may that one maybe as old typically I think most of them are newer okay and and you know how many graves
024how how big is that area I guess it's actually so there's this is an interesting story so we believe there are about 600 people buried here you can see about 200 stones in different degrees of um condition uh some are really um not well not in good condition um state of Ruin really uh but we believe there is about 600 people in there and so one thing that the uh conservator will come in and do is approve they're going to try to count count the graves but we're also working on although it's expensive um there is a I I believe it's a GPS ground thing that they some kind of thing that they can come in and they can actually plot all of the Braves and it can be used and I had the information
025and I should have had it ready in I don't I'm sorry um but I like a surveyor could come in and plot all the grades and they would they we would have the actual information that cost close to $6,000 so that's what I would call a wish list item depending on how much money we get and how much we're able to do um you know that's that's you know something we would love to do um but in the meantime we are planning to have the conservator that we're going to use for training the volunteers come in and they as part of that will prove to find as many of the grades as they can um and they they were the ones that estimated that there was about 600 grades in there a lot of the
026stones uh I don't know a lot of stones but some of the stones when they built um when they built the other Cemetery for some reason isn't coming to my brain I know the name of it when they built it um because I guess it was more prestigious to be there uh than in than in in this one at the time uh some families moved some of the grave headstones to the other Cemetery some bodies went some didn't so there are some bodies buried here and their headstones are are on the other are in the other uh Cemetery do you mean the S the one over be by the church that one or Wildwood wild Wildwood wild yeah Wildwood for some reason the name just went right out of my head but yeah Wildwood so
027when Wildwood opened because it was more prestigious to be in Wildwood than it was to be here there were families that did move some of the grav ston to Wildwood while some of them moved the bodies not all of them did so we don't really know exactly we don't have an exact accounting of that do you have a projected budget for this for the whole project or I'm working on that now um but I can tell you that we um so we're that's why we're planning on doing this in stages and what we have is a wish list of items with a set of priorities so the first priority um is going to be to get the brush because in order to get an accurate so in order to get an accurate evaluation of really
028what needs to be done down there we have to get a lot of the brush to be out out in the invasive plants out of there it it will be easier to see what needs to be done um and once we have that information uh we will kind of have a better idea of how much of it can be done by trained volunteers and how much we will need to require for professional uh help so we and I'm also getting estimates for the um the kiosks and the plants and the herbicide which I did have an herbicide evaluation estimate I think it was $340 something dollars and some of the plantings were another 300 and something dollars so I'm putting all this together and like I said that's that's why we're kind of doing it
029on a between two and threee period it's going to depend on exactly what all the figures come in at we don't have the final figures but we have enough information to start a lot of it because we are using unpaid volunteers and I am keeping track of that unpaid volunteer time by the way so it's pretty expensive um and so we have a lot of people that are really committed and and are really putting in some some you know valuable time for this uh but as far as the overall estimate it it's going to be slow just because we have to kind of go through some sections to get to the next section before we know what it costs uh but we we believe we can fund this year that brush removal with the um
030verbicide and the clean up day with the conservator and training of the volunteers which which is what our timeline is for this year and then we'll apply for once we know what what the cemetery itself what the the actual work that needs to be done how much professional work do we need how much can be done by volunteers we'll have a better estimate for the total and that's when we'll start applying because I really don't even think we can apply for the CPC funding until we actually know how much money we need and how much money we're getting through our our fundraiser who um you know seems to be pretty confident that we can get a you know a number of of good uh donations but we have we still have to wait and and
031and I'm expecting that she's uh once she gets started she's gung ho she's gonna go right at it so we'll see what she can come up with okay um just one last question just is ultimately would this be someplace that um people could just go and and visit or you know would you not really want people in there or no we would want people in there for for for as a matter of fact we very much want people in there this is a part of the community this is like any other part of the community um we want it to be very much approachable we we just want it to be in a respectable um condition a condition that it deserves to be in uh for the residents that that reside there and for the
032community which is why we decided getting instead of just trying to hire professionals to just do everything which is very expensive I have to tell you one of the reasons volunteers is is a good idea too is it saves a lot of money but also it gets them involves it gets them educated there's history here this is in the Heart downtown ashin in the heart of the his what we're hoping will be the historic district but it is the historic district anyway and so it's a part of our history and and it's a part of everyone who lives in this town's history it is their story because these are the people who who built this town this is the culture that has started with them and has worked its way up to us so we
033want people to go there um I'm not so sure about dogs DPW seemed a little um you know like they didn't necessarily want dogs in there that's okay um but the people we want them to come we would love and we would love to have it so they can read the headstones and they can see who's there and and that the the informational kiosks would be there as a way for people to know about that site that that history in the town that they belong so thank you H I'm just going so uh thank you for that presentation I just want so um you're putting together a budget you're going to be presenting you're going to be applying for funds for the C CPC for this fall uh Springtown meeting is that your timeline no
034no I don't think think so I I kind of really would have wanted to but I think what is going to happen is that we're going to have to get past that spring clean up day we have to get in there and we have to get brush and a lot of so if you kind of see some of these pictures and there's more than what I've got there but some of these pictures if you take notice here at the top there there there's headstones in wooded Brushy areas that are sort of buried and and covered and we don't even exactly know what's there so hel I excuse me for interrupt I just so are you asking ask for something specific tonight this has been a so I'm asking for your so this is town-owned property
035and so we just basically want the select board to give us the go ahead to go ahead and start uh and move forward with the restoration project yeah okay to physically access the property before we get that I think some the rest of us still have some question yeah I just wanted to kind of lay out the pro so help me understand what we're trying to determine tonight so yeah I well I had spoken with Michael Herbert yeah and he had said that since it is a town-owned property that we that we would require the select board's approval for the goahead with the project so that's why I'm here before I before I go with your guys questions or comments Michael is there anything you want to say about procedurally or issues that you see
036with this um well so Helen and and Doug Small and myself we talked uh about this and we talked about what levels of support that DPW could provide um and we're able to provide I would say some light support so for example like helping with the brush a couple of times a year um you know perhaps we the tree work that comes later you know we could roll it into our tree contract if necessary I think Doug's main concern was um you know once it's once it's done it becomes more attractive to the public I mean is that can invite more like Helen mentioned dogs trash you know is it going to be another like level of maintenance that uh that we have to be concerned about um my my larger concern is that so
037technically this is a town-owned property so it would fall under you know some operational management and you know we we know we're not able to we're not we're so it's it's a a problem that's growing which is the staff that we have are not enough to maintain main all the property so the ability to use volunteers and the fact that we have volunteers that are willing to do this and put in a lot of hard work you know I think we want to take advantage of it but like from Doug in in my perspective like so we haven't done any research on like the D2 chemical or or anything like that or any of the conservators or anything and we're not going to be able to so we don't want to necessarily be held liable
038or be held responsible for something that we really haven't had any kind of management or oversight over and so that's kind of like the bigger overarching issue but um you know which I don't know if if we could ever do any do anything with that officially um but anyway that's that's kind of the general concerns I mean I will say Helen and her team I mean they have a a good strong core of volunteers um that I know are willing to do the work and like I said we can supplement it but I will say like once the money like once you start talking about CPC and once it starts hitting our accounts then then it becomes part of the bureaucracy for lack of a better term and so you got to start thinking about
039procurement and you know I'm not necessarily sure how much we much more we can take on procurement wise in the near future um but like we we have to think about that stuff as well okay can I address that a little bit um okay Helen yeah maybe just quickly so we can get to the so I looked at the 30v the 30b manual and and the curement process um back in November um and I've looked at our plan and I've looked at um you know as much of the cost that I can that I can anticipate at this point the biggest cost that I can anticipate is how many headstones will need to be professionally um you know repaired or restored and but what I can say about that is that it could also be
040done over time and what we were kind of hoping and we could and we could add this in too Michael that you know we that you could you could we could run all of our um anything that we procure by you uh but I we were kind of hoping in and to keep the cost low enough so that we could do what's called Soul Source procurement um because I know at certain dollar amounts uh you have to go uh through the whole bidding process and we like to avoid that as much as possible so we're really hoping not to have to do that if we can you know and I think if we were to do it in multiple stages um which makes the funding easier anyway so that's called bid splitting and that is
041that's called bid splitting and that's illegal um no no not if it's under not if it's under so for instance if you were to do the brush removal and and and and the supplies for that this year and then you did this the um the volunteer uh uh training this year that's all under $10,000 that's not necessarily headstone uh restoration so say you did Ne next year you did headstone restoration depending on if it was over $10,000 or not if it was under 10 you would be able to do it under s s Source procurement I read this through on the on on that manual and what we're hoping is that it would be or that we would also um you know we would have enough money that we could put aside you know for
042like say the um so do you have funding now the kios so if we didn't then did the kios in a third year and kept it under the $10,000 you can still do a soul Source procurement and then you know and then if we had to do a procure you know proc so hold on a second Helen hold on a second we're we're seeing a lot of shaking of heads by Jen and Michael regarding the research that you're talking about so Jen could you I can yeah so it's not a soul source so a soul Source means that there's only one person that can do that um it's a pretty high bar and there there is a maximum for that and right now it's 50,000 and that's but you'd still but you basically have to
043prove that there's only one person that could do that I think what you're talking about is best practices but if you know that over a course of a time a Project's going to be $440,000 you cannot sort of break that up into small pieces because they don't allow us to sort of not do procurement um just because it's easier I mean that's but if we were but if we were doing because we had so much funding this year and so much funding next year not not not to to do it to avoid say a specific rule but just and and also to to divide each group so the the the herbicides and the plants would be different project from the um The Headstone restoration which would be a different project from the so kiosk installation
044Helen I'm gonna I'm again I'm going to stop you if you don't mind Rob sure so it sounds like there's still some work that needs to be done in regards to the planning of this project I mean I I think I support the you know I support cleaning up the cemetery but I did have a note that I remember Michael saying that there would be some DPW that needed to be associated with this and right now we don't know that the DPW has the time to do that I guess my question and this is to you Michael and Jen we have volunteers mhm I mean and I would think that some of the just cleaning of the brush or removing of some of the you know and putting it in a pile for DBW to
045pick up is that possible that first step so the day in the spring could that happen yes okay and then the next steps we'd have to have a more detailed description slash discussion as to what that would entail I'm hearing different things in regard to procurement and how you do that um so I would recommend that a more detailed plan get created and then that comes back back either a written one a written plan um either to probably to Jen and Michael that we can then review so it okay can I just ask one question about that so when we bring in the conservator in the spring for the cleanup day it was actually was going to be part of a a weekend where we were going to also train the volunteers which would mean
046if we didn't have to pay them twice it's a $2,200 savings would we be able to include that so I I I personally need to look know a little bit more about what one what the conservat what you're looking for the conservatory sort to do and where is your $2,200 coming from um okay well well we do we do currently have we do currently have a small amount of money in the um historic commission has a small and that would cover that we're also expecting but where where are those funds from uh Paul gust okay okay okay so um I have questions should let's yeah go ahead BR so um Helen I I I had a question that I'm not sure if it's more for you or it's more for Michael but talking about um
047you know this is a town-owned property and looking at the pictures of some of the precarious um monuments and things on site from a from a liability perspective if we have like a big cleanup day and something falls on someone from a liability perspective like I'm I'm just I'm just curious like what that looks like and you know yeah so one that's one reason to have a have a um oh God things out of my head again we have a waiver of liability for yeah I me there's a waiver but also when we they do Town Forest and at the Warren Woods so it would be the same liated it specifically for this yeah and the conservator also is there for that reason to to kind of keep every everything and everyone you know sort
048of from getting damaged themselves that that would be part of their job uh to oversee that that work and and to make sure the things St safe and actually that particular stone that I showed you when they come in for that cleanup day I believe they're planning to pallet that so that doesn't happen okay all right one other question that I had um I know you were talking about procuring donations to be used um were you planning to to develop like a 501c3 because I don't the historic commission isn't isn't a isn't a nonprofit and I don't know right what right right no so this would be done under the working group uh we have a we have a a non special Town employee who's got a lot of experience at uh fundraising and actually
049um she has some things in mind that we've discussed and I'm not going to jinx them by spefically saying but I know we have some things in the pipeline that that if they work out uh would be would be pretty good I'm actually talking more logistically because it's because it's a it's a town board who's going to accept the funds is it coming is it like into because we have to go into the town account that the money that Paul G Gerson gave us I had actually spoken to Michael about this the problem with the 501c3 was that it really was a lot more intensive than what we were prepared for it's a lot bigger time commitment you need a board of directors there there was a lot of uh involvement there that we're we're
050really not to into the historic commission into that historic account do it in the account okay yeah but I I do know for instance that the um the The Corner Spot because I had spoken to Beth that uh The Corner Spot they had they had uh raised money so she told me there is a way to do it I don't really know exactly myself what that is but she did say there was a way to do it and that we need we we could house this money in that account I talked to Michael about that because one of the things I was told by some of the people who I know um were talking with our fundraiser is that they do want to make sure that that money is only used for this purpose um
051and that it would be in an account that wouldn't go back to the town for other other purposes okay and then I just have one other quick I just have one other quick question so this conservator that you've been working with um like did you vet other um experts like was this just one person that you reached out to only only and mostly because there aren't really very many if any other people out there that do this it's mostly these people that do this are coming in to do the restoration themselves this is a very unique group um they're out of Westport Massachusetts they're a group of one guy's a dentist one guy's a pharmacist and one guy's a like a fisherman or something I don't know but they do this because they love this
052this is their this is their hobby really more than anything else but they've gotten very profession over the years uh they've been doing it um just under 10 years I think and they've restored all the cemeteries in Westport and a lot of towns around them they get people from all over that come for them in a few minutes we have to open another hearing but we'll we'll put it I just want yeah I just want go ahead any other questions I have hold on a second wants to ask you got two questions for Helen I like the idea I like restoring the cemetery um to what it used to look like or close to it um that is surrounded by apartment complexes 128 has uh families that are in there with young kids uh conet
053Street has families uh in those in those gray Apartments uh they don't have backyards but I do see them playing in the cemetery area uh the brick building further down by the Sudbury River same thing the kids are up there playing in the back area are there any plans to put some sort of fencing in that area one for protection if we're going to put all this money investment into it and um where would be the entryway for that because again it's behind the Federated church and near uh 128 Main Street so is there a map or is there we wouldn't be changing any anything structural like the entryway um and I believe if we were to put in fencing which would be costly that would be on our wish list item would probably be
054pretty low just because there's other things that need to be done first but one thing I wanted to say about the conservator just I want to do it before I run out of time is that they are willing to train volunteers that's very unique um and at a very low cost um to come in and spend an entire weekend not only overseeing the cleanup project but then probing uh for the the the grave the the the graves themselves and training the volunteers that that is what makes them very unique from from anyone else I've looked into so I just I did want to just kind of say that about them they're they're TNT gravestone Solutions out of Westport Massachusetts so Helen um so I'm just I'm wondering if we can wrap this up uh quickly
055before the hearing so I guess I'm going to suggest I mean I think the board's very supportive of your proposal in getting this done I guess my suggestion along the lines of what Yolanda was talking about earlier is that you have some meetings with either Michael or or Doug or Jen or whoever um and then come back to us with a more detailed Proposal with something we with the kind of uh the questions answered and that we can take action on I think the uh the select board likes this idea and wants to help you move forward so I don't know if the only the only problem with that is some of this some of the answers that you're looking for I'm not going to have until some of this other work gets done no
056that's I kind of need to know that we have the go-ahead for you know at least some of it would you be open to allowing the spring cleanup to happen well except that she's talking about that the con they're looking to have the conservator there during the spring cleanup and then make it a full weekend where they he they help them clean up and then do training that weekend so I don't know that I I I personally would sort of want to see a more flesh out plan well we don't we don't have a date set yet we were planning to do that in the near future could come back think they need to come back I think if they can come back with you know what the cost of the conservator is and exactly
057what they I can tell you the cost of the conservator hold on right so it's $2200 yeah but not only the cost but what is that giving you right that's giving you the whole training weekend they on Helen so I appreciate your enthusiasm and I love that but be I think before we can make a you know this is Town property and we want to support this but I think we need to have a little more hard facts not just from what you're telling us but in a written proposal that says you know this is the conservatory we'd like to use this is exactly what we're going to get for what we're paying them what the volunteers are going to do maybe a mockup plan maybe a mockup form of you know Li you know
058dismissal of liability for the the volunteers are going to go in there and let that be the first step so you I would say as soon as you can get that done you can come back to another meeting and then we can help you and who's Helen's main contact who should she be you Michael or Jen or Doug yeah I mean me for right now so and we'll we'll pull in people and and I guess my next question is do you guys have the time to support her at least getting that to us we can do a couple meetings for sure Helen I think you've got most of this stuff already I think it's just organizing it into kind of like a written plan just with you know certain line items things like that it's
059great good work I mean you know appreciate does that make sense to everybody so okay so uh have so I think we're Helen thank you for your efforts and uh feel free to you know you know when you're going to talk to Michael if you have any other questions email the entire board I'll try to respond and but but thank you all right thank you all right take care they might be online thanks Helen thank so um other okay so the next item on our agenda is the um is the public hearing for transfer of liquor license easy convenience uh 69 Pawn Street so I'm going to read the legal notice um notice is hereby given that the select board will conduct a hearing regarding an application to transfer of wine and malt Package Store
060license held by D2 convenience Incorporated DBA easy convenience store to easy Corp DBA easy convenience food market okay um this is for easy convenience store 69 Pawn Street ashin Mass 01721 a public hearing will be held on the matter at Ashen Town Hall 101 Main Street Ashland Mass on Wednesday February 7th 2024 at 7:45 p.m. parties wishing to be heard in this matter should appear at the time and place indicated above interested parties who are unable to attend to hearing May submit written comments to the elect board's office Town Hall 101 Main Street ashon Mass are by emailing Susan Robi at sroi at Asin mass.com sign Robert shair chair select board so I'll have a motion to open the those in favor open the hearing say I I hearing's open thank you okay so Susan
061or Jen someone want to introduce the is the proponent here someone from Easy convenience store yeah so my name is Kyle Vieira I'm actually councel for easy Corp who's the applicant here um if it's easier for the board I can kind of give a kind of an overview of the transaction some more details and then if you have any questions or anything you want to answer uh me and the managers can kind of answer your questions if that works great so I see other people are here and who else is here for um for this can people raise their hand if they're here for this hearing I just see one one other person online maybe two two there's Yeah couple okay great all right thank you go ahead and no one in the audience is
062uh not here okay okay great thank you go ahead yep so this is for the transfer of a beer and wine license um just some background on the ownership group uh bam mode who's here today she's a manager of the corporation and she's also going to be the on-site manager the operations manager of the business um the ownership group here is extensive uh retail retailing convenience um experience they've spent uh over a decade in that industry um they've previously uh had 10 years of management experience at convenience store and they sold a variety of Controlled Substances such as tobacco um and as far as we aware there's been no um violations either at the state level or at the local level with any of those businesses as far as certifications go this new ownership group
063is going to be tip certified including each and every employee that's going to be working at the premises itself uh we're going to install at the beginning of the new ownership period there's going to be a ID verification system an ID scanner to make sure that each and every person who purchases alcohol is of age um you know additionally in terms of the store itself it's pretty straightforward um this is a straightforward transfer the hours are going to remain the same the name of the store is going to remain the same and the operations himself are going to remain the same it's going to be an identical business it's just going to be ran by a different and new ownership group um I do want to just mention here there is a pledge of a
064pledge of a license here what that means is this is being financed by Rockland Trust it's Alan uh for the purchase of the business so they're pledging their license in the inventory in the business it's basically a security interest so if Rockland Trust needs to foreclose which will not happen we do not believe that will happen here they have a security interest in the property um of course if that ever happens any transfer of license in the future from the bank would have to be approved by the port of Selectmen of Ashland so just so you're aware of that and specifically on any votes that you may have I would request that you also vote on The Pledge the abcc is very particular in their requirements and they require that the town approve not only
065the transfer but of the Pledge of license itself um so otherwise I P here if she she can answer any questions or if you have any further questions for me I'm happy to answer them okay thank you I'll turn board members questions um so is there a specific language that you need for that pledge of License to be in our motion yeah I would I would just suggest that you say uh you also approve the pledge of license and inventory in the application okay if anyone else has any questions yeah go ahead anybody questions or thoughts um is there anyone to speak on uh on this matter in favor of the license um and is there anyone who wants to speak against the license transfer anybody else maybe we want to hear from the manager
066the the woman who's going to be the manager yeah the new manager right did you care uh What uh what's her name who if we could have the the woman who's going to be the new man just you know introduce yourself and say hello and tell us a little about yourself my name is and I'm living in Ashland and I have experience since 10 years in convenience store and I want to try uh try liquor too yeah that's better okay thank you great great thank you and you're familiar with the the rules and the regulations on on the liquor license in the uh in the sale yes Y how many years of experience have you had uh with other convenience stores that have uh either beer and wine licenses and or full licenses to sell
067alcohol 10 year convenience store experience yes 10 years 10 okay thank you I I didn't hear that I'm sorry you're fading in and out that's why I apologize but thank you that seems pretty straight forward straight comments y we are we ready toose one one one quick oh sure go ahead uh Susan if you're there have we received any emails uh yay or nay uh against this uh transfer of license we did not receive any emails there was some concern with the Board of Health which has been rectified there was an outstanding issue from the last transfer where there was a sync that was not brought up to code code and that had to do with coffee they are taking the coffee stations out of this business so they're not going to re be be
068required to have the three Bas sync anymore okay great thank you okay uh motion to close the hearing so move motion's been made to CL motion been made in second to close to hear so move second I interpreted that as a second long favor of closing the hearing say I so the closing hearing's closed so discussion any discussion further on this matter pretty straightforward mhm do we have a motion sure I move that we approve the liquor lcer license transfer for easy convenience Food Market located at 69 Pawn Street and approve the pledge of license in inventory and application is that the correct language councelor everybody's nodding that'll be sufficient so second on that I'll second that the motion's been made in second all those in favor favor of uh approving the motion say I
069I I opposed none motion carries thank you good luck Good Luck Good Luck thank you thank you all right so the next item on our agenda is finally citizens participation so um is there anyone online that's interested in citizens wants to do citizen participation raise your hand or make yourself known I'm not seeing anyone on on the virtual is is there anyone in this room I think we have three people all right so should we Janet got here first so I think we need here very patient right very good J approach the podium thank you hi folks hey Jan how plat 11 Rodman Road um at the last town meeting I asked a question about the uh Capital Improvement committee and I was um directed to come and find my answer outside of town meeting
070so I'm here because the select board is responsible for appointing the capital Improvement committee and you're the slug board so um my question is um when are we going to have a capital Improvement committee interesting question well I will so I don't know if anyone's hot to answer this other I'll ask Michael because I think we all remember the history that we did have one for a while and right now we never appointed so I don't know thoughts on that yeah I'm willing to jump in a little bit um you know so we disbanded the last one partly dysfunction partly other things we then did do a capital plan with staff and with a consultant and I think since then capital's been moving forward I know in our bylaws we are required to have a
071capital a capital committee uh I just don't know I personally have not put it as a priority to work on that so um I think right now how capital is being done uh with major projects having their own committee members has been working so I would either say I mean another thing I know I've been realizing is we need to do another bylaw review believe it or not it's been 5 years plus since we did our last Charter review um so I I guess my my response to you is right now it's in the bylaw um right now Capital has been working in regards to what we bring to town meeting and the number of May maybe there's no committee per se but there are people we look at it staff looks at it different
072committees have looked at it um so I think at this point like I said I know it's in the bylaw I would almost rather look at looking at a charter Review Committee versus a capital committee to re to review those bylaws and then go from there but again we haven't discussed this at a as a board right and so I'm ask asking you to discuss it as a board and okay um my perspective is a little bit different yeah um and I'm going to call on my experience um negotiating School contracts teacher contracts um I've been on both sides of that table and um when we have a contract it says this is what we can expect and it's it's not because we don't trust the people that are sitting at the table doing the
073contract it's it's for the time when we don't right then we can call back and say well this is our process and we're not going to just start this process now because we don't trust you it's because this is how we always do it um so it is a bylaw that that we have a capital um Improvement committee and we haven't had one for um been years six years anyway right and I understand that it was messy and um so when it disbanded I I was um I I understood what was happening and that it wouldn't just be replaced because it it wouldn't right but I think it's been time and people have cooled off and um and whether or not it functions well for the people doing the process the town voted to have
074this process with the capital Improvement committee and when the budget comes to us to vote on it if if the people doing the budget don't respect the process we asked the people to follow then why should we respect the budget that comes to the table right and again it's if it's above board it's it's easy to see if it's um we don't need to do it because it's working for us now please put it on your list and do it because it's part of the bylaw right and it serves a different purpose okay the people making the different pieces of the budget each have their own own um interest to protect and they should right the DPW should definitely advocate for doing the best possible job they can the schools should do the best possible
075job they can the capital Improvement committee they're not even very powerful I understand that right but their job is to look at the whole picture and make recommendations and I do want to know what they have to say without an interest in any stake in any of the outcomes that's what I like about that group so I'm asking you to put that on your agenda have a talk and find seven people that are willing to talk about Capital Improvement and and come to the town and say here's the plan that the town manager makes I know that's his job right like I get that um but but here are our recommendations for it and um and and we can weigh that also okay I I personally I think that's a good idea um we will
076add it to an agenda in the near future and go from there um yeah I'm I'm willing to you know and speak with work with Town management and see how we can fit that back into you know um the current process so any other thoughts on that I mean I think yeah okay well I think we can have a discussion we don't need to yeah so we'll we'll put this on a future Bo agenda that time yeah and okay great thank you apprciate appr it thanks future agenda okay very good all right so Mark H good evening Mark Sony on roadms I'm up here for a little bit like that reason but I'm going to just put in a different frame to to to manager if I can speak to him I watched a little
077bit of your finance committee that was online and I saw the chat okay and I um was wondering how can that shot be stronger other than Housen how can economics make that shot stronger chart can you describe which chart yeah which chart Mark the the graph the the graphic chart that had the oh the new growth yes gotcha so what Mark is referring to is the new growth chart that shows the new growth number for each year so Mark as you know whether it's a a a residential uh development or if it's a commercial development as they come in and they make improvements to property then yes that adds to the new growth figure so if you see more businesses come in and improve their property you'll see that number go up and for that
078new go would never to come up it would have to um have some sort of interest for for whatever group comes in business economic whatever it is to to grow to grow with right I mean I think for businesses to move into town they have to know that they'll be supported by especially if you're looking at a retail business right so they have to feel like they can make a living and generate enough Revenue to cover their expenses that's with any business actually well almost like any business I'm looking at it from um future future science climate and stuff like that business that's is worth growing with in government government sort of not retail but you're thinking like biotech and stuff yeah that's always been my think the biotch and everything to um by BYO
079climate Net Zero and all that including climates climate control and that is worth the um green future this town is small but it can still hold a future with that growth couldn't it yes hopefully yeah so why hasn't it been talked about I don't know that it's not been talked about more well not only place I can get um information from that is from the um sustainability committee okay and that that's a small subcommittee for the town but it's not major town management or what Beth Reynolds has in her plate so I'm looking at an and an expanded to understand future climate control and for future state colleges graduates what they studies okay to keep in the local area so thank you Mark I think one of the board members may have so just for
080clarification Mark are you looking for I mean the new growth number talks about how we add new taxes based on new construction or new businesses as Michael said so are you looking for how can we increase that new growth by bringing in biotech companies or or or things related to climate change and sustainability um Earth studies um let's see what's the other biotech bio biological okay and uh things that um what state colleges have for postgraduate bachelor's Science degrees look at for like an internship program Mar things like that okay well you know we do have a number of tech firms already here and I could certainly talk to them about what kind of internship programs that they have or apprenticeship type of programs is that is that kind of what you're referring to I'm
081I'm looking at I'm looking like the um NASA space space sort of thing that is global global educated that has what has everything to do with um climate and green energies and gotcha ecosystem gotcha all right well thanks for the thoughts on Mark that's helpful and whatever the next speaker is going to come up with I'm I'm on her same side who's that CC okay thank you thank you Mark all right CC come on up and so I know you've been asking to come before us and you're here citizens participation do you um yeah want you go ahead C tell us what you're looking to do here well first I want to extend my gratitude we've kind of put Ashlin on the map with the wireless radiation issue and it started back in 2014 when
082Ashlin became the first in the United States to have best practices for mobile devices that basically says turn off the wireless devices when we're not using them because otherwise they continue to radiate with multiple antennas turn off the white Wii when you're not using it and always put a mobile device on some surface other than your body and we went through the legal fine print and all the devices that says keep this device off your body because it's radiating so we became the first in the nation to do that and then we became the first in the nation through our friends of the library to do a six-part documentary and film discussion series on electromagnetic radiation and health and then we became the first with great thanks to you guys I know Rob Yolanda Joe
083you guys were all on uh the committee when we got a radiation detection meter for our library and I helped a doctor in Newton to get one in their Library out in Pittsfield where Verizon turned a cell tower on on top of a neighborhood these uh citizens got so sick they had to abandon their homes they have one in their library now so we've really been pioneering here in Ashland and I would like to see us take it further to meaningful action that will actually protect our children especially so I've been asking Michael and Rob you are gracious to respond about getting together and talking about how we can do formal education in our town I'm brought in all over the country and internationally to do this kind of training and I think it's time
084that we really put our feet to the ground and start protecting especially our children from radiation so two things got me back on this path one was when I received a notice from the Department of Public Utilities or Public Works saying that it's mandatory that I let them come into my house and put a smart meter on my home that would be the water meter so I've reached out to the DPW and said please show me the legal statements that are available that make that mandatory because I honestly don't think there are any I think it's a musling tactic that the industry uses to make us think we have to do this there's nothing in state law that tells us that we have to do wireless transmitters at Pulse 24/7 on our home and that
085was the first thing and then when we opened our beautiful new Mendes school I took advantage of the open house and I went in with my meter I started in the parking lot and I measured outdoors and it was nice and green it was beautiful in the courtyard at mindz nice and green but every single room I went into in that school we have just overpowered the school with wireless access points in every single classro and hallway and I will give you some of those readings now in the scientific literature they tell us that this man-made radio frequency radiation causes these symptoms it's very well documented in the science headaches insomnia dizziness difficulty concentrating brain fog ringing in the ears skin w ashes uh heart palpitations eye problems anxiety and depression and you guys all
086know that our children are not thriving so many are suffering from these symptoms and if we just turn off the wireless and choose to hard wire with ethernet cables and adapters the problem is solved and there is nothing in the law that prevents us from protecting our kids so I did measurements in the scientific literature on this meter they want us to be at 10 microwatt per square meter or less so in 3 ft of air how much radiation they want us to be at 10 and no higher than 100 and I'll give you the readings inside MZ in the gym where the ceiling's really high and the Ruckus access point is really far away from the kids 3,200 in the art room 20,700 in the steam room 23,100 in the library 28,300 and it
087goes on and on right out to the principal's office where it was 119,000 microwatts per square meter and we want to be between 10 and 100 and what's so C I'm just trying to so this is all potentially important and concerning I think I think the situation I'll speak for myself but I think in terms of the scientific basis and how much we we actually don't know or don't have that information so that's why I want to do the education because I can bring all of that well I think what I'm I'm kind of struggling with and I think the other like what is the best kind of scientific evidence and what is our role as as local officials in kind of teasing that out and understanding it so I I understand that you have
088your scientific point of view I'm wondering if there's another one that we should also be aware of and how we put that process together it's not something we could do at citizens participation but I guess I'm just trying to ask for some guidance or thoughts on that process because I think if I just if we just have you come in and tell us and by the way I don't know if you're dealing with the schools a lot of this seems to involve the schools but if we have just you come in and talk to us then people will be saying but you know there's another side to this and we should hear that and we have invited industry to these types of meetings and they just refuse when I was brought brought in to sit
089on a panel at the State House in Michigan we had World leading experts in science engineering medicine and we invited the industry and they came for the morning session and they listened to the facts and then they did a noow for the afternoon so invite whomever you want we can bring the science and we have some really good advancements that have happened in the last couple of years so you may know that Senator spilka introduced a bill on my behalf right around the time that we got our Ashlin little sign hung up in our classrooms it was to form a commission to bring the right Minds to the table so that we can investigate and then decide what to do well we have had a bill to form a commission in Massachusetts since 2015 and
090we've gotten it out of committee we've gotten scientists and experts to but then it just times out we had the same conversation with the state representative up in New Hampshire and and his constituent got really sick just from the Wi-Fi in her own home and he's an engineer and our Engineers have only been taught you have to have heat from a device to have harm so when this constituent talked to rep Patrick abrami it flew in the face of everything he'd ever known about Wireless radiation but he went and did his Deep dive and he came back and said wow what are we doing here so the citizen introduced him to me they got in his car from new Hampshire we sat in my little kitchen in little Ashland here and we helped him to
091connect the dots why does a legal fine print in your phone say to keep it away from you why have Lloyds of London Swiss re and amb best long since recognized this as a world leading risk and that can leave our town very vulnerable to Legal exposure okay so just are you asking to come before us for a more detailed presentation or to have a I want to educate the town I want to get everybody together on this because tonight if they understood they could put their routers on a timer kids could start sleeping through the night adults could start sleeping through the night so I want to get the information out there and I'm happy to answer any questions or to provide exp hold on a second I just wanted so thoughts what are
092people thinking here what what um so I just want to so I had looked when you had initially reached out to I looked and did some research of my own um and I can't find anything from like the World Health Organization or any any leading health organizations that point to a cause that that that there's anything that is causational about this and then um just also I know you had you had sent an email to the Board of Health as well and my husband who's on the board of health is a h scientific researcher and he did a he did a deep dive into some of your um links and things like that um and I know that he would have some some questions for the process because um I'm not going to speak for
093him because obviously he's not here but he um he questioned the validity of some of the assumptions that were being made um and so so I I think you know I don't I don't think it's something that you know we automatically want to educate people on because I don't think it's been validated that there's an issue that there's a caus if I could answer that in 2011 the World Health Organization determined this radio frequency electromagnetic field of man-made energy was a group 2B possible human carcinogen what was missing back in 2011 is the animal studies in 2018 the United States national toxicology program completed a $30 million study it's the largest study ever done in our country to see if self cell phones could be harmful at the end of the day they had an
094unprecedented 3-day peer review at the NIH with World leading scientists and doctors and in their final report They concluded clear evidence of cancerous tumors and DNA damage now clear evidence is the highest of five categories they can assign and that should have triggered public policy but there are different people in charge of radiation at the FDA today which commissioned that study today it's Dr Jeffrey shuran and when we investigate his background we find that he is married to a woman who's a partner in a law firm that represents the wireless industry he should have never been anywhere near that study so instead of translating it into public policy to protect you and I he went over to the Federal Communications Commission which is supposed to be protecting us and he said oh we don't really
095you know pay no attention to that study so at that point the FCC took it upon themselves to close close a public record that have been open for 6 years and went over and wrote up in the federal registry the Federal Register that we don't need to change our public radiation exposure limits so as soon as that hit the Federal Register people started suing the FCC Children's Health defense Environmental Health Trust and others and it went to court and at the end of the day the judges were presented with 11,000 pages of evidence of harm in the public record and they're looking at all of this and they're saying to the FCC attorneys well how did you determine that it's okay to stick with these outdated numbers from 1996 and the FCC did one of
096these and said oh the FDA said it's okay so of course the judge has asked where is the homework C just sorry R but so I'm sure there's a lot involved in discussing the merits of this so I'm just procedurally trying to figure out what are how we should approach this or what if anything we should do I think you're asking us to sponsor a forum or yeah I think we need to come together as a town and look at the science look at the facts all of our Engineers all of our physicists all of our technologists have been trained that you have to have heat from a radiating device to have harm that's not what the science today says we have FCC limits up here the harm is happening at hundreds of thousands of
097times below that see this is I mean this is Citizens participation so we don't have a lot of time so I'm um I don't know is this is this something we can put on a future agenda to have a fuller discussion or are there other people we should also invite or you know thinking about a forum that's maybe I don't I don't support a forum you don't support that because because in my personal perspective it's a conspiracy theory and I I get where you're going but I don't I don't believe the actual science supports it so that's my personal perspective if I could add the New Hampshire law was passed they formed a commission to investigate with highly qualified doctors scientists engineers and state level authorities and they voted out this commission report that documents
098the conflicts of interest with the wireless industry and our federal agency so there's no Cavalry coming to do this work for us if we want to protect our kids we have got right to Pony are you approaching the school committee at all cuz I will go back to but I think it really Falls with you guys you are our town leaders and I don't want to play Hot Potato I want to protect those kids and Joe you know you're a retired police officer you were telling me about the guys getting brain tumors from the guns the radar guns in the back of the Cruisers it's the same technology and we have put it in every classroom and our kids are suffering well thank you CeCe so I I I'm not does anybody else have any
099uh suggest sus or discussion on this I guess we'll take this under advisement um yeah we can get back yeah and you know maybe we could talk about just a future agenda item when we spend a little bit of time with CC on this okay so what I'd like to do is leave you guys with a meter and I'll come back for it in two weeks but I would like to ask that you go around and measure in your homes I know Michael's taken one home already go measure walk into our schools and see what you see if that maximum number goes over 100 we are responsible for the welfare of our children so I invite you all to take advantage all right does this have to be returned to the library at a certain
100time um no this one's mine okay this is yours this one's mine we do have the one at the ash Public Library all right thank you C I appreciate your um your commitment to this yeah and we have six bills that are before the Committees that are being reported out today their commission bill has already in this in this in the ma in Massachusetts give it at one end in to address this and they're doing nothing great all right thank you I think we're a little bit of loss it's not our usual cup of tea to investigate these sorts of things so but thank you thank you CeCe thank you CeCe appreciate for your commitment kid um okay so that's citizen participation old new business uh so I have vote to sign and post a
101presidential primary election warrant voting will take place at Ashton high school on Tuesday March 5th 2024 from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. so do we have the election warrant to V to sign y I move that we approve to vote and to sign and post the presidential primary election warrant for the primary on Tuesday March 5th second uh the motions has been made in second all those in favor of posting the warrant election warrant say I I all those opposed none the election warrant passes okay thank you and now the next one is open the town meeting warrant yeah Jen would you like to lead the board through that sure so as always um annual town meeting is on the first Wednesday of um May so this year it's actually May 1st wow May May
102Day mhm we going to dance around the May pole before the meeting she can but I'll e the candy that comes in the B we'll have Adam do it so um what I was hoping to do is open the town meeting warrant um and send out guidance to all the town um boards and committees so they're aware of timeline really keeping open notice of intent which really is just um an email to me explaining um possible town meeting warrant articles so you don't necessarily need the language per se but at least the concept and the idea so we can make sure that it we can follow up and that to me by I believe it's March 15th and then um I think on in the backup for the guidance I had closing and posting the
103warrant on the 17th of April I'd love to actually just for the guidance move that up and just gives us a little bit of time um because that's really cutting it close so if we could do it April 3rd at our first meeting to close and post the and I'll change that before we send it out say because it says April 17 okay so you want to you're going to you plan on doing that till April third and then the goal is that then that we could potentially post the warrant earlier so people are okay and it givesa you know because normally we have the warrant articles and that's sort of what we post and then we work on the Motions just gives us a little bit of time we could still have public hearing
104because the Motions um and then we have to have it posted seven days before the annual town meeting but it'll just give us a little bit of and if we can get people the information sooner okay so do we need to change anything or just I'll just change that one date and before we send it out but right uh motion to open the May 1st 2024 annual town meeting uh with the change of the in the guidelines as presented I'll second that motion's been made and seconded all those in favor say I I opposed none motion passes unanimously so the town meeting warrant is open update on comprehensive plan are you up boy bring this microphone down a little bit okay um let's see if I can do this bear with me guys all right
105I'm going to share can I share how do I do it from here I don't oh wait wait wait hold on um oh yeah there we go okay sh there [Music] share okay is that up oh yay okay so um Yolanda and I are the representatives from select board on the uh comprehensive plan steering committee and just wanted to give you a bit of an update Yolanda feel free to jump in with anything that I miss but um I wanted to start with um the project website that JM Goldson has launched for us um the URL on this is um it's https tinyurl.com Envision Ashland and um the reason I wanted to show this to you guys is because let's see let me see if I can do it on here here we go Okay
106so we've just launched um three new um uh Community feedback tools and we will be um hope having these open for the next um approximately two months and so one of these things is a um a survey which takes about 15 to 20 minutes to um to complete and do we have a link to to the survey from our town homepage Michael did we put that up yet I'm not I don't think we've got that up yet okay um got some interesting information on the survey when you get to it okay all right but we'll start with we'll start with um you know there's these three three tools one is the survey one is this crowd map and the crowd map I can click and show you guys um see if I can so basically
107this asks questions and allows people to put dots um at actual locations so if one of the questions here says where in Ashen would you like to see utilities expanded or infrastructure are upgraded so if you want to see sidewalks in a specific location you can um pinpoint it on the map let me see if I can get to if I can get to it easy enough I'm going to show you guys oh hold on this is not working for me hold on me go back all right I don't know why the map maybe it's just the way that this is oh wait hold on clear out of this sorry I have like the Zoom people and oh my God I may not be able to get this to do what I wanted to [Music]
108do all right I apologize but basically you can um you go in there and you basically you put like a pin wherever you want to see specific things whether it is um infrastructure or whether it is um uh supporting housing or businesses commercial development or something new you want to add to Ashlin so it's it's sort of a um it's it it layers your ideas on an actual map so we can see where in point in time you you want certain certain things to be added um and then the third thing that I wanted to just mention is that we launched this um tool called meeting in a box and what meeting in a box is is really um small focus groups that we're going to be hosting um we've already started reaching out to
109people we're going to start we're going to have um these meeting in the boxes for the next eight weeks and basically what it is um it's small group informal discussions about ideas that you have so it's really Gathering the ideas and as much feedback from folks as possible so um I know I'm going to be hosting one this Saturday over at Del deche I'm sure Yolanda um has some in the in the pipeline too and we're going to be we're going to be rolling these out sort of in the next in the next few weeks so um but the meeting in the box is more the ideas the survey is more data driven and then the crowd map is more spatial I guess is the way to put it so um so I just wanted
110to kind of do a little bit of showand tell and then our and our um our website really is uh if I could get this to work I hate laptops really and the website is linked on the um on the select on the uh town website there it is there we go there's the map there we go so you can see some of the dots already being put put into place I was going to ask so this is the crowd map you go to the town website and do it you can go to the project website the project website which you can get to okay from you can get to from the town website yeah you have to look at the committee's page you can find Camp comprehensive planning committee and there it's linked okay
111yes so sorry about the technology issues does do you guys have any questions anybody no but when you click on like even if you're just visiting you can click on one of those dots and it'll show you what the um what the com comment is sometimes you have to scroll through a couple layers um but not that you have to try it now but just in case so the meeting in a box there there you go oh kid spot very nice okay bet you has something about rubber tire mulch so the meting in a box is that so say you're hosting one of these do you get certain equipment or like how does that how does that work or how do you how are you going to record how do we facilitate it yeah and
112get the information and all that you know so we have sort of a um different topics that we ask questions on whether it's housing whether it's um open space whether it's um Economic Development sort of the major the major themes and we ask a bunch of different questions within it um are these all the same questions are people asking the same yes so every meeting in the Box you don't need to go to more than one if you're invited to a meeting in the Box in meeting in a box you only need to go to one because at that discussion there's it's specific questions and there'll be forms that get filled out and then sent back to the consultant so the idea is with the meeting in the box is we're going to ask everyone
113on the steering committee to reach out to their committee so this is part of that discussion right is can we give the rest of our board the information so you could do it with a group of people and Joe could do it with a group of people and right so that it's not just the steering committee doing the meeting in the boxes but they then reach out to their committees and say okay here's the information talk to them about it and have them do them as well y so what we would love for you guys to do is to join one of us in a meeting in the box and then like Yolanda said kind of host your own in your own neighborhoods cool um and are there um sites available like is the town
114supplying are will willing to supply meeting spaces for this are there places yeah I mean we're looking at um hosting two um in municipal buildings like um one in town hall and then one at the community center um I've noticed Dolce is is is very open to that I've known a couple people are having it in their homes yeah well how about if one of the members or people hosting it you know want to say use a town facility any issues with that they just call and just say you know I'd like to you know I'm thinking about like um the the substation at 126 for example you know if people want to use you know yeah I don't think that' be an issue yeah so so on that note who would they contact um
115just get in touch with me first and then I'll put you in the right direction these are small groups so we're talking like four to eight people Max yeah so if you're comfortable inviting some people into your home or if there's a business that wants to support a discussion um not just DOL they have offered you know they they seem to be a good place and people are talking about that but if there's other businesses that want to get a number of business people together or people that are their customers so we're really encouraging as much diversity of places people and input as possible I think the library probably the trustees would probably be open and you can do it on Zoom too like I intended one this weekend that was over Zoom so that's
116interesting people have the zoom okay so and we can get you the materials and anyone's welcome to come Jo me on Sat so the way if you want to host one of these you go to one you get the information you see how it's done yeah Y and they take about the meetings in a in a box take a little longer it's about an hour and a half to two hours total and then what we're asking people to do is once they do a meeting in the Box make sure you also complete the survey because the survey gives us more information not is is more data driven um rather than just ideas so it'll help with um the data collection of this yeah that was actually a comment someone said to me that the the
117survey is very much like there's not a lot of open response questions on the survey right so that's where some of the input will come in open response type is in the meeting in the boxes yep so y speaking of the survey um we did get an update today so far we've got 198 responses wow nice and again how do you access the survey is that something um right now it's through social media links but we'll we'll put it more prominently up on the website so is it on the town Facebook page is yeah I have a Cod code code yeah when I was at Bagel and I was going to talk about the SL I was at Bagel table I asked people you know to here's a QR code and I had probably six
118or seven people take the QR code and yeah Sur it's working because the Goldson team was really really impressed with how many surveys we've got so far well so far I think Goldson feels like our steering committee is like hitting it out of the park in general because we we had I think they said when we had our um our our openhouse Forum we had 159 people submit responses and that was I think by far and way the most they've ever had and the goal was 100 so to have 159 people show up great was a very positive thing so and we see all the comments on that too so they Goldson gave us um a report on the on the open house and we've seen the actual feedback so it's not just sort of
119a a mush of we've seen all we've seen all the comments they took all the information compiled it for us so um and then so our our steering committee is meeting next Thursday on the 15th so we will um I'm sure have lots to talk about so so it sounds like your committee is moving in the right direction to get this thing you know done before it becomes aging I mean there's still and there's still a lot of steps right this is this public engagement part is the first step of public engagement and then as we start writing it there'll be more public engagement to review and discuss and it's it's a multi step process fortunately Goldson I think is very good at this and they are they're guiding us in a very positive way
120may we s to the chat Review Committee you gather all that information in and so we need another one by the way um all right other questions or thoughts I had one kind of just not directly related to this but um you know one of the things that came up with the tree bylaw was a you know the buildout are you guys hopefully there's going to be a buildout analysis as a result of this process yes there will be okay yeah there's actually there's going to be two um there's um that was part of the scope um thanks it's interesting how they they put it together so there's a process that they utilize to narrow down the parcels to see what could be think that's really useful information just remember though that you know while
121we're still subjected to 40b requirements it it's not it's not set in stone you could have because what they're doing is they're basing it on the zoning right that's allowed and so you have a one acre lot let's just say and it's um let's just say it's Zone single family residential and you can build one single family home where you could have a 40b going there of 10 units right so just something to be aware of is there an alternative analysis with 40b no because 40b just kind of Trumps everything well but it is but you can't you can't put it in an existing subdivision right it's got to be vacant land right well no somebody could buy could buy a home and knock it down and and do a 40b now the likelihood of
122something like there's got to be a economy of scale well that's good I'm looking forward because I think that's really useful stuff so I just also before we kind of get off the comprehensive plan stuff um if if you want to do a meeting in the box and um you're trying to connect with one of us on the steering committee the best way is to send an email to um to the whole steering committee which is cpsc Aslin mass.com and it goes to all of us and we will we will get you into a meeting in the Box um and I would also encourage everyone to do all three types I don't know if I really said that but um to do the survey the crowd map and a meeting in the Box because that's
123the most way to get as much feedback as possible so thank you great thank you thank you Brandy thank you all right um review and the Metro West veteran service District agreement which we had some information in our so have anything you want to say about that yeah just um so as as with everything costs go up um and so this year the District budget not our assessment but our The District budget is going up 13,000 our assessment is going up from 56,58 to 6,274 which is an increase of 3,730 $3 so um we need the select board to vote uh to approve that and essentially authorize Travis uh who's the hollison town admin administrator but more importantly the um in this context the chair of the of the board of the Metro board to
124sign I just had one question what it says uh building rental what space is being rented so it's in Holliston their um so their site with their like Rec Department um Council on Aging Services in that building yeah so it's it's right on 16 um okay oh yeah yeah it's more towards the Milford line okay and um just refresh my memory so um if folks in Ashlin want to access veteran services is there certain days that they're here or do they reach out like what's the best way to to get in contact with so they can reach out and set up an appointment number one um and then John is also available at the community center I don't have the exact dates and times um right now but but yes he does have like set
125office hours okay and if if somebody calls over to the community center they'll they'll let them know yeah and then one other question on the contract so it's looking it's a two it's a two-year contract fiscal year 25 to fiscal year 27 but all we're seeing is the fiscal year 25 budget correct that is correct and there's no okay okay yeah now is this pay as you go so is Ash in charge more because of the services that are being utilized so the assessment is based on population and the number of veterans um service whe whether they use the service or not no it's like the active case load oh okay thank you what's our active Cas Lo do you know uh I think the last meeting it was at 10: oh really yeah you
126know no one ever uses those veteran parking spaces that's not true I've seen is really I've never ever seen one Park okay that's good yeah okay um that that's a nonse s yes yes I move that we accept I'm sorry any other okay I move that we accept the Metro West veteran services agreement for fiscal year 25 through 27 and that we authorized to chair to sign on behalf of the board second motions been made in second all those in favor say I I opposed motion passes okay I will sign it when do I need to come in and sign it or is it here now um yeah yeah good say to be fold yeah okay okay oh next item is the discussion of the Valentine property public forum which was held on um January
1279th and next steps which we had talked about okay so um does anyone want to start this one off um we're all kind of involved with this right um I think it was a good forum I think I I think the input was great I think we still could use more input from the community in response to Michael's proposals uh there was someone who the other proposal and the other proposal that was given um yeah I I mean I think we need to I don't know if it's a formal I don't know if there's some kind of survey or something or that we can put out to get some kind of response or um I I I definitely think it's would be good to get something resolved sooner rather than later so that if there
128is a way to start getting revenue or something or if we need to spend more money we can look at what we have for funding and make that decision but I also know it's it's partly um capacity of time and effort on the staff's perspective so but it was a good first step I think and the barn looks great it's looking awesome um I I think everybody pretty much everybody right there have been some folks that have asked me will they will a tour be given of what's been completed right now because a lot of people saw the U saw the Forum and saw the pictures and you know pictures can say a thousand words but actually seeing it you know is that is that a possibility are we concerned about uh the only thing
129I'm concerned about is the parking okay really and I'd like to make sure like the steps are done first sure because you know that going out out of the barn right now it is um Y no but uh good point yeah that's like once we get the steps done I think we can look at doing something doing something sounds good thank you Yanda maybe that's a good place to do a little video on you know you could walk around and yeah definitely I mean we did it we did one a number of years ago where we walked through the interior of the house and the barn um I'm definitely willing to you know set that up again and do another tour of the barn to show people hopefully the basement would be dry so we
130can go down there and yeah um and also go take another look at the house so yeah you Paul and I can connect and I think that'd be a great idea yeah y so in terms of overall process what do we think because you know Michael kind of been moving the ball along with these proposals and we had some other proposals how are we going to uh you would you know ask people to weigh in on it but we didn't really give you know an end date on that or what our next steps are so what are we thinking about how to so that's a great idea that you know show people what it's like and generate more ideas but how do we kind of close the loop and move the process along to making
131some decisions I guess that's what I well as I said I think it would be important to continue to ask people for feedback if they watch The Forum if they didn't go back and watch it we'll look at getting a video up of what it looks like now and then look at what the staff capacity is in regards to what the next steps would be and what that process is right because as we've said we have this one proposal about a you know doing a school there tied into nature we have the Parks and Rec Department I would think that would tie into our budget discussions because if we're creating a park and W Department do we have the funding to do that if there's additional staff um to be able to move them into
132the house what does that see and do people support the idea of the property if possible being used for weddings and things like that and if that's something people are interested in what does that mean for the property right the barn certainly can't be used now for a wedding venue because there's no power so certainly it could be used for something that you know during daylight when it's nice and warm and you don't need power or they can bring generators but if we want to turn it into something similar to the Historical Society in Holliston which I think people seemed um um to resonate that resonated with them they you know what would it cost to get it to you know to that point uh and whether or not people want us to do that
133and so I think we have to keep talking about it here at our meetings if you have feedback Board of selectman at um I'm sorry selectboard Aslin mass.com um we've gotten a couple of emails already from different people who have supported Andor questioned some things uh I think um I mean certainly parking is an issue on that location so we I think we need to get an estimate of and I think people are supportive of stuff happening there what would it take to uh improve the parking I mean I think that's one of the first steps is what would the cost be to improve parking in that facility to allow it to be used for anything those are my thoughts and um you know Lu's proposal was was interesting and I think after the The
134Forum the reason I was thinking about it a little bit more and I think the reason one of the reasons that kind of resonated with me is because when we initially were like looking at what to do with the Valentine estate and we had a letter of interest from a nonprofit school that was looking and and I remember thinking oh it' be really great if we could if we can tie that in with education and things like that um I do think that you know the house itself is a long way away from being able to be used so I know that that Lu's first inclination was really to try to you know have a new place for Courtney to to be able or someone like Courtney to be able to offer a farm-based um
135educational Outdoor Experience and that house you know you showed pictures of that house and and those pictures were I guess generous is a really good word for it so um so it's it so you know we're ways away from being able to to do anything like you know yeah to to inhabit that house at all so you know I think I think we just need to make sure we set some expectations and you know maybe there is a way to to share that house in a way that we could you know run something you know I'm thinking like even even doing something with our wreck department so like Kelly could run something somewhat similar or maybe not you know maybe not goats or maybe goats or I don't know but but where we could have
136offer those kinds of programs there as part of a larger wreck program and still be able to do things like weddings in the barn right so it might have this dual dual function dual function and then you know my only other question was something like from a revenue perspective the article 997 prohibits us from um basically a for-profit Enterprise there so we have to be a little careful about what that looks like so that's why I was thinking more like along the lines of you know um maybe something through our own Rec Department that kind of incorporates a lot of those kind of elements but that's that's my yeah my perspective I'd like to I'd like to be able to do it all it just takes a lot of money so I guess some other
137thoughts or IA I I guess I'm really trying to focus on process and next steps and how do we get to wherever yeah I mean I think it's it's hard to you know we we need to have a vision for it and then we need to figure out what it would cost right and and and and I'm not sure maybe we need to have know how much money we really have to put towards it um I agree with with Brandy in terms of I thought the presentation that was made that evening regarding um some kind of a daycare situation or that could work with a parks and wck department and um potentially venue or whatever yeah um you know potentially they could work hand inand um become part of you know the recreation department I
138mean the recreation department runs summer camps and runs um you know all kinds of activities for for our students so why couldn't it be something that would work together um that being said you know what would the cost be to uh to get that into that sort of and I think you know that might be the where you go first in my mind is that the building has to the the house has to be upgraded um before you can really do too much more in the barn because there's nothing really you can do in the barn unless you have bathrooms electricity maybe some kitchen facilities um so I think that you know we have to be looking at what would it take to bring it up to you know right I mean and I I
139certainly think I certainly think the idea of having the bathroom and the kitchen facilities in the house works right you can keep the rustic barn but the barn wouldn't would need electricity because to do anything I mean maybe it's just a three season but you'd still need electricity in the barn to be able to have lights and music and and whatever else for some any kind of event um so and then you know the question there is what kind of electricity right if it's just lights and and a record you know lights and a a you know a sound system is one thing but if it's lights and the ability for a band to set up that's a different in regards to the amount of electricity that we you would need and and lighting and
140things like that so I I guess again I'm just going to repeat you know to the to the public let us know you know the other thing is it would be good to know how much we've spent so far and get an estimate on if we want to bring it up to this level what would that cost if we want you know if we look at the different levels that we want to bring the house and the barn to and some kind of estimate on what those costs would be and the other thing I think too is um you know we have to be careful that we don't I mean what needs to be done to the barn so that while it's not in use keeps it from falling right right so I mean I
141think that's number one priority is making sure that that have to go back to redo stuff right in some way shape or form protected um and secure right in the so so I think to get any kind of like estimate that we're talking about we need to hire professionals yeah and I think Claudia to to your point I think if you know the Holliston Historical Society it seems to have resonated with some people we've had some people that had some questions and concerns about that and then like the like the whole Farm School idea I mean I think that could be incorporated in some way shape or form into this I think like if you're I'm not sure if it would be a five day a week type of program um just because you need
142to have some of those shoulder days if you are going to have like a wedding or something to to set up and stuff but if people are generally okay with that we can move forward with getting professionals to say okay this is what we're hoping to do and this is what we're hoping to accomplish from your professional view what would that look like what would the facilities need to look like to accommodate that number one and number two what's a high level estimate of what this would cost is this something you have pretty good readership on your town manager's email and you always put some kind of survey at the bottom yeah could we could Melissa or Beth Or and you create a a question to say you know this this these are the possible
143you know these are the possibilities you know basic and then go from there and see what kind of feedback we get I was going to suggest the same thing Yolanda because I don't think asking people to email us no I I I agree why I might get one or two but I think some kind of a survey that gets pushed out gives people the opportunity to and and maybe even if that survey once it's part of your email could also get pushed out on social media and um we're doing a lot of surveys just yeah so that's how you get some input yeah and and what we what we do um well what we did I'm sorry um is so we posted a video of The Forum to the Valentine section of the website oh
144nice um and so we could refer people to that oh good and then yeah that's good you I've looked at that yeah okay great if you do your little wacka TV thing and we yeah so us meeting again on this um what do we thought another three months two months what what you think we should put this yeah if you give me if you give me three months to do some Outreach and get some input and then kind of put together something okay okay so so it's February Mar so maybe June so it's after town meeting cuz we're going to have okay cuz may will be busy meeting and stuff okay all right anything else on the Valentine Forum um so Susan add that to the June tracker for there you go for agendas um
145next item is discuss um volunteer breakfast or pasta dinner uh who uh who was asking about who brought that up or wants to talk about it well um I mean I didn't have it on there I forget where it came from maybe brandy or someone um but I know I know um getting my schedule when it was sort of covid time we didn't have want to do anything inside and I hosted the volunteer um day at my house which I love doing um I offered something I think last year but we couldn't come up with a date and people weren't sure if that was going to work so I think it's that time of year where we do start talking about either our volunteer breakfast that we've had at the community center and I think
146the pasta dinner is something that Joe mentioned at one point that you know do we do we offer a pasta dinner um and I think that's why it's on there so we can discuss what we want to do I think la oh I know what happened last year we had planned our volunteer breakfast and it wound up ending to be the same day as Greenup Ashland and then we never rescheduled about yeah we were going to about to reschedule it and then and then we never got to rescheduling so well what time are we talking about when do we usually do it in the spring right is that still we've done it we've done it as early as March and as late as when we did the one at our at my house we did
147it in like June or July or maybe even Aug it was late yeah yeah yeah so I think Joe you I think it was your idea for the pasta dinner how do you envision I mean are you still cooking cook it you'd cook it yeah where would be at the community center where do you have I would think well you have the kitchen at the community set I don't see why you couldn't do it there um we actually did well when I was still working for the PD we did like two or three of them there uh like a luncheon uh before the U Legion uh was shut down we had them we had it there because it was yeah located was there was a nice location and stuff but yeah I mean that's I
148just think it's try to do something a little different you know yeah what are people thinking of that cuz that's more involved in we usually what do we uh what usually have tjs bring some breakfast stuff over that's what I was thinking when you were talking pasta dinner I was like oh we'll get some trads from tjs well that's true too Joe wants to cook himself I'm nothing against your I'm not that ambitious yeah right I I've it before I think if we were going to do a pasta dinner we'd have to make sure we asked some volunteers who are Serve Safe because I know I'm not certified um or how we could keep it simple or we just do our breakfast and did I just threw it out there do what you want I
149mean you know whatever you guys think of I just thought it'd be something different and have fun sauce I mean I certainly know how to cook but I know how to make sauce I know I don't want to cook for 50 people we don't have to uh yeah it's probably I mean the last time we've done it as many we've had as many as 80 people well no I'm not cooking for 80 people well attended yeah sure oh I can I guess I'm kind of partial to the Saturday morning kind of breakfast thing I mean oh you don't eat Pastor in the morning what kind of what kind of an Italian are you I don't know Pizza cold pizza right pizza come on cold pizza past so the one thing I do want to make
150sure like we'll we'll we'll probably want to host a marathon breakfast right Runners well we'll have to put that on we should schedule that too you know so just kind of like putting things in perspective of like the time you know the calendar true so true I would say maybe if we plan for may not not the Greenup Ashlin day and not Mother's Day weekend well or we try to do it in March right we look at March and I mean in the past they've been in March Pat we've done them in March like the third or fourth weekend St Patrick's Day weekend is March 16th or SE 16 and 17th um the next week one would be March 23rd to 24th um I wouldn't do the next weekend because then the next weekend is
151Easter March 16th is a great day volteer now are you talking about this is the volunteer event I mean March 16th could be a good day right it's the birthday of Ash Corporation of ashin yeah yeah well we do it on the 17th that's a Sunday yeah I know St patri day you can serve some green beer green beer but then we can't do it at the soda I know about s green beer I know what about the 16 we should we pencil the 16th in like is it 9 o' there's a big there's a big um I don't know if it I don't know if it's on you guys it's probably not on your radar but there's a big College and Career Fair over at the high school so anyone of anyone that has
152high schoolers will probably what time is it starts at 9 o' in the morning the hold on Michael yeah so um yeah the career fair and then Susan's not going to be around at that time too so I mean we're letting her take vacation again does Susan actually but if we have a she arranges we make sure yeah I just wanted yeah okay but I think um to your point about the career fair career there might be people there might be a lot of people so so the 23rd that's the week before Easter looks for me sure yeah let's put it in there March 23rd you Susan's looking at her calendar I think the breakfast what kind of like it you know and we talk at 9:00 what do we do with that H yeah
153I think we typically do like 9 to 10:30 it's Susan you're checking your calendar does the 23rd work or is there something that we need to look at I'm not back from vacation yet uhoh but that's okay cuz if you if I mean you you've done the order for us but if there's someone who can help manage that and we when do you leave I leave the sth fly home the 23rd I think we'll be all right I think we'll be okay if there's someone who can just manage you know we can ask for people to yeah respond by this respond by the 15th and that'll give us okay oh that's right we have to do all the inves and all that or we could back it up and have them respond earlier have them
154respond by the sixth or something like that and then you don't have to worry and to be honest with you usually 20 people respond and 50 people show up yeah yeah right got your numbers the way it is y so I mean I'm good with with having people respond by the 6th or 7th that would mean getting the invitation out this week that would be you know that's a that's him or early next week I think that's doable okay okay I'm not trying to if if you think that's doable okay so the volunteer breakfast will be Saturday March 23rd tentatively yep no not tentatively this is what we're going to vote whether or not we do it from 9 to vote okay from 9 to 10:30 9 to 11 how about 9 to 11 that
155way I move that we have our volunteer breakfast thank you for the offer of pasta on Saturday March 23rd from 9: to 11: and we vote invite um all boards that all volunteer boards that we appoint the community and other elected okay and other elected yeah um do we before we vote is there yeah is there any any groups that we've left out in the past that we would feel bad how about our legislative uh contingency I think we've invited them before have we we invited them before sure so would would they understand any any other groups that we've kind of had second thoughts that we you know oh these guys should have been invited and you know any other second thoughts not to invite them again I meant the other way but and then
156what about I think I think the last time we did this we had we looked at that right Susan we did you expanded it used to always be the board you appointed and then you kind of moved on because you have like some of the subcommittees of groups and you extended it to them as well right yeah who was that who are you talking thinking about with that I'm trying to remember who uh well it's a long list yeah and we include them um I'll offer to review with Susan before when in doubt include people doesn't hurt right okay right all right so motion for that has been seconded did we second it okay all those in favor of the date that we discussed say I I okay great thank you thanks Susan yeah no
157pasta oh well I'm bringing it anyway all right next discuss offering a select W scholarship so who was I think the brandy or you brought that you requested I I had um I I figured it was about the right time of year to start talking about this again because I'm sure um things get posted at the high school um for the for scholarships opening up so um I think last year we we uh offered two $2,000 scholarships Y and um so I just wanted to bring that up to see if that was something that we wanted to support again this year and well I'm I'm willing to support it and I'd like to continue it so yeah same here yeah I think it's a great IDE you two have been doing it right we've been
158the sub committee Y and I'm willing to continue same here I'm willing to let them do it okay I'd be willing to do it as well ni have a third voice in it doesn't bother me we oh that's right then it's that's right then we got take notes unless you want to take notes want well I guess we'll continue with the current way of doing it unless there's I appreciate Claudia's offer to the same amount it's tough to get on a committee in this group I'll tell you I know well what do you mean you're in a bunch of committees man um I move that we open the select board scholarship to two graduating senior students two graduating student seniors who live in Ashland for $2,000 each SEC go ahead I was going to say
159I'll second that all those in favor say I I I those opposed so motion carries so we're continueing the select board scholarship all right then next item is just reminder Town building to do the motion to appoint what's that motion to sh myself to the select board so we have discussion Claudia you want to make a I have no comment I was say you can make a pitch sure I think that I have a lot of experience with the schools and uh I feel as though sometimes we uh try to allow folks that have different um passions or different uh backgrounds to participate in those particular groups or subcommittees or I am I am willing to pass it to you Claudia okay and let it be you and Joe thank you I appreciate that you're
160welcome one last thing I my so then I will make a motion unless there's more discussion no be pleased to have Claudia take that over with Joe all right so I'll make a motion to appoint Claudia Bennett and Joe manani to be on the scholarship subcommittee for this upcoming scholarship season for the class I will second that great okay thank so the motion's been made to appoint Claudia and Joe to the scholarship committee all those in favor say I I I oppose none so congratulations you guys and who has um the information about proceeding years would that be we have Su has who and I I can have a chat with you as to how Joe and I have done it in the past and then go from there thank you or you guys can
161talk or talk coffee it's usually usually the gun school they spin the wheel dartboards you know stuff like that okay all right just some other items reminder Town buildings closed on Monday February 15th that's President's Day right uh uh reminder anyone looking to participate in the senior tax workof program should contact Candy Wilson at the senior center uh reminder compete and return Town census and dog license registrations are now available um one second just really quick because because it the mon it's not Monday February 15 it's Monday February 19th so I know it's school vacation week and so I'm so you know it very good yeah yeah yeah so I just sorry I don't I didn't mean to interrupt but I just wanted correct thank you for yeah because Monday February 15th is not a
162Monday yes it's a Thursday yes it is uh reminder nomination papers are available in the clown clerk's office for the spring uh Town election uh that also REM the people who want to register to vote by mail that's due fairly soon I don't think that's on here now but I know that if you want to uh vote by mail um that deadline is coming up and it's not that does not include municipal election but it does include the rest of them right so yeah I would think so considering the first election is mar so that's so the deadline to the vote by mail for March if you're not if you're if you want to do vote by mail check on the town website CU that has the guidelines yeah and just also to let people
163know that um I think they're going to be doing early voting as well so there's other options than um the vote by mail the vote by mail so very good um still free covid tests are available at Town Hall where's that at the Board of Health is that where people go oh okay um all right so the next is the consent agenda have folks had a chance to look at that anybody want to pull anything from the consent agenda I just have one question I'm sorry that's okay go ahead here um I noticed that there and there is no uh request to remove the 15-day waiting period on some of the on the two appointments uh so do we know when that appointment only just one yeah just one I mean just okay yeah so
164uh cam is currently a student at marrat college and he's finishing up their criminal justice program where they also Academy right now yeah Academy train so we're expecting April okay but this allows I move that we accept the consent agenda as presented with thanks to Ryan turn Cliffe for his time on the finance committee absolutely here here second on that second any other discussion or if not we'll have a um uh the Motions been made second all those in favor accepting the consent agenda say I I opposed none agenda consent agenda is passed thank you all right so that brings us to town manager report says here 15 minutes wow well I can try to wrap it up quicker than that um so first uh the board had requested an update on some of our
165priority projects um so I can tell you like working on the Mendes project um I just signed and I believe I got either yesterday or today the completed revised Project funding agreement which allows us to be eligible for actually $5 million more in funding than U we had originally anticipated um so special thanks to our uh Senate President spilka and representative Lewis for helping toh push that through at the legislative level um I'm also working with Jeff demo and Paul um Jeff is part of the project management team on getting a rebate from ever Source um that could be quite substantial end up you know in the seven figures potentially um on based on some of the Energy Efficiency improvements or Energy Efficiency measures that we put in and um you know with the inflation
166reduction act there were some new programs that were instituted through that that now makes now allows municipalities to take advantage of these rebate programs so the thing is is nobody's ever done it before so we're kind of navigating that uh so I remember doing a similar kind of re program when we built the high school it was through eversource at that point but yeah nothing like the yeah yeah so yeah we've already taken advantage of that that rebate program yeah and I think that they they're actually using Ashland um to well to try to yeah see how this is all going to work work itself through so we're the guinea pig but hopefully at the end of it we'll have seven figures actually my Michael can you address for you know the community hears we're
167getting 5 million dextra in reimbursement can you talk about how that's going to impact um funding if not now at our next meeting to sort of talk it through and say how it's impacting you know what we need to borrow and how we're doing that that I think that'd be really good for the community to hear yes that it's it is going down to save us money as a community it will save us money it will reduce the amount we have to borrow um but I can have a fuller picture I think that'd be great thank you I think it it's hard right now to to Really determine that right because right now we're just in a shortterm borrow right but so because I had talked to uh Mr Kendall about that too and what
168what it would look like so at some point we'll know so okay um upper moving to Upper Charles Trail um so first um we submitted a Grant application to the mass Trails program to acquire to get funding to potentially acquire two Parcels that are part of the um that are part of the upper Charles Trail and are more on the Eastern side of town uh they're affectionately known as the Enzo parcels and um a lot of people a lot of people Rob included worked on this but I really um have to give a shout out to Joel he put in a ton of work on this appc I know I give Joel a hard time but I also try to recognize it when he he puts in yeah congratulations Joel forget we're running that through
169yeah cross your fingers um and then also the upper Charles Trail committee is going to CPC to get funds uh for engineering uh of the Dyke Trail the construction of the so they're going to go this spring we probably won't be able to put it out to bid um until the fall at or at the early but um we could have that funding secured and in place and we'll know what that that looks like that's Marty ring and um I Tim Henderson's helping him I believe you're right yeah Marty and Tim so thanks to them for spearheading that together um and the last one I have is just downtown we're at in the process of just finalizing the bid documents for the building connections that should be going out soon um with you know anticipation
170of starting construction in the spring so so there's that um moving on so update on the Dei survey uh so in my last uh newsletter that I put out um I included a link to a community survey that we're doing as part of our Dei strategic plan and so I would just encourage the community to take that I'll put it in the newsletter again we'll post it on social media um I'll send it around to the board members so you can pass it out to your networks as well um but uh really really encourage people to take a take a look at that and take that survey and and give us your feedback um we're going to have a little bit more of like an educational presentation I think that's a fair way of saying
171it um at the beginning to just help people understand what Dei is and what it isn't um because some of the feedback that we we've received indicates that people have a certain perception of Dei initiatives and what we're talking about is something different so want to make sure we do that um so the board had requested an update on some of the projects before the planning board um so Homer a the decision's being drafted did they vote on it yet no not yet yeah they haven't voted on it but the decision for that project is actually being drafted um and the planning board will take that up um at the next they meetting meting yeah tomorrow night just as a reminder like what what is that project entail like so it's mixed use yeah Homer
172a is mixed use I believe it's 29 units 8,000 square F feet of commercial um it fronts hom RAV um pretty much and kind of extends back and to to Alton a little bitops um I I will have to say I mean it's you know for what is compared to what's there now it looks it's going to look big but I will have to say the design I think is probably the closest we've been in terms of hitting the mark into like what looks like a New England the type of that's type of uh project so um and then Clover Road Brewery They went before the uh planning board the other night and then also the design review board and so uh design review is going to have their report ready for the plane board
173by the next yeah so they're going to continue tomorrow to the next meeting and this is the fire the fire station the fire station great so people are really looking forward to that that project actually so if all things go well um we would hope like the May June time frame to open open oh wow that'd be great so CU it's site it's just site plan review right it's just site plan so it's not a special permit that they're asking for so oh that's right because that already F the criteria yeah so actually Michael I have a question um you know we're talking about downtown we're talking about the fire station the what we're going to do at the police station is still open and still has to be discussed has any more thought I
174was actually talking to someone and they said oh it would really be nice is a double decker parking lot to add more parking and I'm just wondering what where we're at with that and what the next steps are to deciding what to do with that building SL lot I think it'd probably be good for us to come with to you with with the thoughts and ideas based on the overwhelming input we got when we did the survey okay last year um I can tell you being someone who managed five parking garages believe it or not in my Municipal career don't ask me how that happened but I did they are a lot yes uh they are a it's a lot of Maintenance um thatting so um so I'm not sure if that would necessarily be
175in the cars but I think the overwhelming response from people was to use that at least partially is parking um so I think we could um present something to you that that looks like that great sounds good thank you and then last but not least uh Governor Healey uh filed a couple weeks ago um what they're calling the municipal empowerment act which do you remember um do you remember the municipal modernization act that happened a few years ago it might have been before your time on the board Brandy and it definitely was with you CL Baker Administration initiative right and it's it's basically a bill with a whole host of modifications to and new initiatives to help municipalities and um so this is in a similar vein um and of course it needs to work
176through the legislature but um I think it's something the Board needs to maybe consider supporting form formally I wouldn't ask that for that tonight but um I included like a synopsis a section by section summary um in your packets that you can read but I think you know looking at some that are really really um I guess trumain to us is it changes the municipal procurement laws it makes Jen's job a little bit easier um interesting so it allows for some flexibility for retirees to come back and work um it makes permanent some of these covid era flexibilities that that we've seen like with um meetings and then also with outdoor dining and um alcohol delivery I guess that's what we're calling it um borrowing for school projects I'm not anticipating borrowing for a new
177school project anytime soon but it allows us to increase the amortization period um and just some small administrative things um interestingly enough and no I'm not advocating for these right now so I'll just preface it with that they also include the ability for U municipalities to impose their a sech charge of 5% on their M motor vehicle excise tax and then also increase the meal's tax from 75% to 1% uh um and then I think some of you would really get a kick out of this one uh they also have a provision in here for double pole enforcement which allows cities and towns to enforce the statutory prohibition on keeping double polls up after 90 days penalties authorized to be imposed are up to $1,000 per occurrence wow so anyway that's again if you want
178some more information I can send that to you frame as to can you can ch but there's no time frame as to 90 days oh 90 days yeah believe so after 90 days can you Char another thousand You' probably that'd be interesting I don't know just based on the synopsis I'd have to look more into the detail of it so I think um I think related to this I think Michael you're um you have that on the agenda for our Friday meeting right the municipal empowerment yes so just to uh let the rest of the board now know know we have our traditional chair and vice chair meeting with our legislative delegation that would be Karen Edelman representing Senator spila and Jack Lewis on Friday so um I don't you know that's Michael's going to
179talk to them about it I guess um as one item um and so if people had any strong thoughts about that or I'm just getting familiar with it it does kind of sound like a good thing um doesn't make us do anything but gives us some additional power but any other I don't know Michael you had any particular other agenda items for Friday just um to talk about the home roll petition for the liquor licenses talked to Jack about filing that yeah if there's anything else you know so we'll report back on the discussion but if there's any any particular strong issues that people okay and I don't think we have any huge kind of spending ass or clarifications that we're expecting or fund you know budget at this point right right so just wanted
180to kind of get that one in there since Michael brought up that but so okay I think it's great that it's including three of those Co error items that we've been asking for to finally make them per this is the adjustable like so the public Hy hybrid meetings that we can still continue the outdoor seating for restaurants and then that to go for alcohol I think it's great that those are all in there okay anything else Michael and your no that's uh that's it right now okay so that brings us to board reports and if Claudia doesn't object you can start off we'll go in our usual order is that working for people I don't want to like it's Claudia as always first so I don't know do you want to it works okay go
181ahead yeah no that's fine um let's see I attended uh Michael's budget presentation to the um the Departments um um it was very well done very well attended obviously I think they probably had to come right yeah exactly they had no choice so it's always a good way to get a big crowd exactly and uh it was I appreciate it it was very informative um and uh the Valentine Forum again I think we've probably talked enough about that that was uh I I thought it was a pretty good crowd I know people spoke about getting more people but I thought uh plus you you know how many people were watching it on Facebook or that but I thought it was uh it was very well done and and uh so and um let's see today
182did my open meeting law um course and it was uh you know I learned a couple of any tips you want to pass on to us do those minutes right away just that if one member is virtual every every vote has to be a roll call vote so that was I did not know that so yikes I don't know if we were doing okay of course we always did that I think we have and then I've signed up for a little budget training with MMA and so nice that's good yep so that's it for me right thank you go ahead Brandy so I don't have too too much um the only thing I would add to that was um so Claudia Joe and I were part of the joint meeting with the school committee um
183so we appointed a new member to yes yes you know we forgot not forgot but never mind I expected you to zoom in from from yeah right yeah yeah I was I was coming down from y rainforest and it was El Yan yeah but um but it was a it was we they had four great candidates um and it you know I I hope that all four of them pull papers to run for school committee because um for the open seat but um it was a great discussion it was a very hard decision um um Mr Kendall put me on the spot I'm still not talking to him no kidding there's a story behind that kidding no no no no no no um but it was a it was a it was a good uh
184it was a good joint meeting with the school committee as always so um they are going to be probably doing their budget session um Mr Adams said like end of February beginning of March so um we'll share that date if it comes you know I'm sure we'll we'll see it but um I think that they are in the middle of um renegotiating five Union contracts so the budget is going to probably look a little different and so I know I will probably try to make it to that to their Saturday budget session because I kind of want to hear what's going on with them defitely um I've done that before it's been very beneficial so so I just wanted to throw that out there and I also did my open meeting law training today so
185I am I am fully up to speed on all things legal so do it together that no well so it's a webinar so we you have no idea who else is on it so I know I was hoping I'd see her yeah so reminder for like we have to go back to an email and register is that what from Susan from Susan so I think there were like specific few dates so I'm waiting for my confirmation from the Attorney General's office that I've completed it and then I I assume I have to forward it to somebody do I have to forward it to somebody they said we should have it in a couple days probably get it back to Susan or Michael you it to to Susan that was my thought okay and the keeper
186of all good things yes okay all right so we'll do that um all and I like that and other than that just been really busy with Comprehensive plan stuff we it's really kicking into action um I drafted an article for Town Pages for March so there'll be something that comes out Mar Town pages and um just uh yeah I was really impressed when you know I think it maybe Michael had sent the link and and uh the crowd map it was it's all pretty pretty nice cool yeah I like cool that that's it for me great thank you Joe go ahead uh thank you Mr chair uh couple of quick things um the affordable housing uh trust has been uh very busy the last couple of weeks uh since our last meeting and um we
187are now uh going through a process where Habitat for Humanity will be building a unit in town uh that location is going to be 4 487 Main Street which is that vacant build uh vacant lot right across from fenwall all the old fenwall building and uh it there are some great designs and uh I will uh bring make copies or send them off to you so you can see them that but one of them looks totally totally beautiful to fit that location it's uh three bedrooms with a little fous porch in front just very very nice so it work working on that and uh Joe um so you went to the abutters meeting that inally how was anything to report from that well that's what I was going to report on it it was great
188they had a a public hearing a public forum I should say half for Humanity and the owner of the pro the former owner of the property um several members of the affordable housing trust and three or four of their uh members from habitat were present there were no other no other uh AB buts unfortunately that may be a good sign you know they they did receive notification um but uh we will actually gladly you know open up another uh have another one uh available for them you know so that could be a great story on around the clock yeah I mean talk about that and get the information out to people oh absolutely I'd love to do that absolutely we'd be happy to do that um the other thing I want to do is uh
189my wife asked me to make sure that I thank all the folks uh that uh sent her cards and and everything about uh for her surgery and uh and she wanted to thank those who uh made her shout out citizen so she was she was extremely taken by it and uh now I have to put an addition on because her head is so big you know listen I'm in I'm in the dark house now it doesn't make any difference how much bigger oh yeah did it really doesn't and she knows I love it she might really be in that dogghouse to Jo it maybe warmer uh anyway uh but she just wanted a shout out for that recognition she's extremely uh humbled and honored by it uh wish my son a very happy birthday 42
190I can't I don't know where the time has gone but unbelievable and um the traffic study committee uh we answered some of the concerns that several residents have provided proved uh to the committee you saw the uh speed radar sign on Pleasant Street which was put up for a few weeks and that's going to go around other locations in town that's on mle now and uh we erected a uh no through sign on on Water Street at the entry we on Water Street and that seemed to have helped defer traffic you know cutting through that that area so all all every little bit helps so we're working on it and uh if we get funding for additional uh you know radar that that's that would be awesome if we can get that cuz it is
191working and it's working well so and and the last thing uh we had an NBTA zoning uh Forum on on the nth Monday on Monday and it was um there were 19 uh participants that came and and were on the zoom uh Forum with us and we got a great lot of great feedback uh with uh with uh some of the citizens concerned about you know is that is that considered mixed use or and and they were concerned about the town property and we very nicely explained to them that Trish Trisha and and Peter explained that a lot of town-owned property is not susceptible to this to this uh right uh zoning change so they said well why can't we buy up all the land and again it was it was it was made known
192that we we couldn't do that but we're looking we're looking at some other options that some folks uh provided to us and uh I would say that what we have currently uh option uh a um uh small density zoning is probably the the one that we're probably going to lean and push for because it includes you know the residential area along Pleasant Street so hopefully that'll help uh there was some concerns about uh uh businesses on on the uh South Southwest side of the rivo tracks and uh that would uh that would definitely cover that those needs for those folks that you know when you say you're talking about the business like Wester air conditioning well yeah it leads down to Wester air conditioning all the way down to uh bams okay and what what
193are you thinking that you would you would include it in the zoning or not okay I think that makes sense it's right there it'sa it's actually right there and some of the other locations that we were looking at like 48 uh house Street which is the old turo building the roller uh ice skating property uh which used to be roachford arena for those who uh oh wow um that that's actually in that area but it it doesn't fit the the criteria of you know being accessible to the railroad tracks and if it if you want to make it accessible now it's going to cost additional money for in funding I thought that we could do Parcels that were not accessible that were not near the train tracks we can we can but this is still
194within that 05 uh radius right no I understand that but I my understanding was um and I apologize I wasn't able to go to The Forum was it recorded that we can go back and watch it okay absolutely um because there was discussion that allowing the zoning on one side of Pleasant Street could then eventually impact the houses on the other side of Pleasant Street but I'll I'll go back and look and then I'll ask one reason why we looked at the certain locations and then do the whole area I see we used we actually use the Sudbury River as as a as a boundary line because there were some concerns like why aren't you using um the oldini property along Ponderosa Road well there's there's some concerns and that's where uh the Mason um
195has his uh company oh right you know oh so that's it's hard without a map in front of it I'll I'll go watch the but it's there but anyway long want to be on the agenda again yeah actually uh we're planning on doing a uh another form uh to go over stuff and uh how was the form accessed cuz I didn't see it on it was Zoom it was Zoom but but on what on it was on it was on the town website was on the calendar on calendar is it but ising up and on wack or is the recording where's the recording available oh that's a good question I'd have to I'd have to ask I don't know okay wack was it whack okay did they F did they record it cuz it was
196a zoom meeting so they probably weren't even involved I'll you know what I'll have to find out I don't know and if we didn't and if if we do another one we make sure that it's okay that's good well thanks for doing that oh no it was it was very interesting and a lot of a lot of folks are very uh interested in you know certain locations and you know we suggested you know 100 Chester Street was another viable location that we could use as well so I mean all those locations were were were presented you said you're doing another Forum yeah we're going to be doing another for actually we're meeting tomorrow at uh 2:00 just to go over the Forum that we had and uh do what we need to do so I'll
197get back to you all individually with respect to where you can locate that that that video and and that's about it so thank you very much all right okay thanks go ahead so since our last public meeting I actually attended the MMA I know that seems like forever ago yeah the convention yeah the MMA conference it was after our second meeting in January and because January had five five weeks yeah um they had a great opening session on Dei and Equity at local government level and what was really interesting was they were talking about trying to have more people at the table and as you as you stood there in the first session you could definitely tell that we need more equity and we need more inclusion and we need more people of color um
198represented at the local government level so it was very interesting and the speaker was fabulous the weimo session uh which is the luncheon for women elected Municipal officials I was uh the facilitator for a fireside chat which went really well with our current climate Chief so that was fun um I attended the dinner that celebrated Senate President Karen spilka and house Speaker Mariano they were both awarded um given awards from MMA and then I went to a couple Saturday sessions uh one was talking about downtowns and business districts and things like that so it was very informative um I enjoyed that um again I highly recommend next year if people can attend it's always a good session saw a lot of different people Michael and I spent a little bit of time together so that
199was good too uh then I did spend some about an hour and a half select Board office hours this past Saturday at the bagel table and what was very interesting was I mean I was there to talk to people and ask them about filling out the survey that I would say 50% of the people that I talk talk to did not live in Ashland that they were so people from Shrewsberry from Westboro from hollon from Hopkinton coming to the bagel table for their bagels but and they they talk well because I I would say are you a a resident of Ashland oh no I was I was I was politely asking people I was using my sales my scale skills and and asking questions but then what was other the other thing that was nice
200was a group of four young women came in they had all graduated from high school they had just all graduated last spring from college they were back home and they all I could tell they use the QR code for the survey and I could hear them like sitting and talking about it uh so they were taking yeah so we got a couple people to take the survey as well and then the last thing this just happened today I'm am on the MMA Municipal Regional policy committee so we talk about policy for a lot of different things and I was just asked to chair that so I'm going to be the chair of that MMA policy committee for the next year great shouldn't be too hard of a lift so um I highly recommend if you're
201interested I don't know if they're still looking for people but you pick one of the Committees and you learn a lot I've learned a lot and have been able to bring back stuff um from it as well for the town so and if we're wishing happy birthdays my oldest turns 30 next Friday and I'm just wow so she's not watching I know that so very good anyway all right and that's it thank you Yolanda yep uh just a few items uh one is um just to give you guys a heads up we did Yolanda and I and Michael met with Dale uh from Framingham University um and he had some ideas about and I can't say too much about it but we he just kind of he he's interested in using the barn for certain
202things and he wants to talk about how to do that and we basically you know uh um talked about maybe next year looking at it very seriously about what kind of projects could be done there they're interested in using the barn so we kind of I think indicated this is the barn that's not built yet correct right yeah okay I just wanted to make sure we were all good good point that was one of not there yet that's in our plan for next year I just I just wanted cuz I'm like uses for the bar and like Barce Saturday night want to make sure we under the star people aren't thinking no good point right and and I think one of the things that I think we thought might be a complimentary because we have
203some other barns of our own and so the fact that they may use it could be anyway so and the other thing is um they're thinking of putting in a an outside rink uh and that could potentially involve some of our property and he was going to ask us about using that so that's kind of in the so I think how did we leave it Yolanda he may be coming to see us in a few months yeah at some point we're going to have him come and he's going to you know once they have a thing few things more a little bit better flushed out yeah um but it would not be for this year it would be potentially next winter right thank you the uh the other thing um just quick update MBTA Advisory
204Board is is doing uh a number of things we've now scheduled commuter rail committee into the fall uh but one of the things that's going on is apparently a fair reduction throughout the system including commuter rail so that's something I'm kind of eager to look at to and see what's going on with that so that's a quick update um and I did um I attended an emotional intelligence training that MMA put on very it's a series from their leadership group and I don't know if Yolanda you were doing it but there's a series of three of them and emotional intelligence of course um is not of course but it has to do with empathy and understanding your own emotions and others and how to focus on things you know um so which is I think
205good at that R yeah well I think we're probably better than most people CU look at what we're doing here so we have to we can't be too but anyway it's an interesting kind of thing but uh I attended that today and I guess um and you know there's two more sessions and I would recomend most of the people there were I think staff uh who deal with the public and how to um you know interact you know with people who are you know upset about something are emotional so anyway um and the last thing I you know I do I've chatted with a number of people but I do want to say publicly I I do not um um intend to run for I will not run for reelection to this post when my
206time is up in May so I just wanted you know just briefly I won't say too much right now um you know like Steve I'm gonna save up and do a number of long no I w't but um uh I I I did want to just you know personally I think it's been a great honor and privilege to represent the people of ashon work with the many people I've worked with over the years um and um so um you know I really uh appreciate that opportunity and one thing I will say um uh you know people who are thinking about running for this office or Jo being on a committee in general that it's really uh it's really a great opportunity to meet people in your community and meet all sorts of people interact with
207you normally would and so I'm looking back on I've spent well now it's been 12 years it would be 12 years on the select board and and my other time time in town government and all the people that you meet it's really kind of an extraordinary um I can't imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't been meeting all these many people so uh anyway but I just wanted to say that so anyway so with any if there's if there's no other snide remarks we will ask to adjourn motion to adjourn hey look at I'm losing mine too yeah Al all right all those in favor of a journey thank you bye you in two weeks thank you all good night everyone