001hello this is Yolanda Greaves it's time for the select board update for the meeting that happened on Wednesday September 20th we started at 6 15 with an exact session and then came into open session at 7 pm we started with some citizens participation and then jumped into a presentation by Jason pallet of the 495 partnership the 495 partnership is a non-profit organization that works and supports for economic development and transportation and other issues for about 36 communities around 495. it was a great presentation to hear what they're doing and how they can support us and the communities around us as well as businesses from there we went into old and new business we got an update on Cadillac paint Park one of the discussions was what should we name it so some people want to
002keep a Cadillac paint we've had some other names heart park because of all the work that Ed Hart has done there was a woman Susan larnis who apparently helped get this whole project started so we've considered some other names and what we're going to do is we're going to look at some other things and then put it out to the community to see what you think if you have a name you'd like to suggest you can shoot it to me or the full select board from there we went into an update and review of the Community Choice power program so this is a power program that gives Ashland as a community and its residents bulk buying power for your electricity and it last year we looked at doing a certain percentage completely green energy and
003a per certain percentage fossil fuel and mixed so we're in the process of looking at that again and we'll have more information and a final on that as we get into January when we get some the new rates we then discussed sidewalks and it got to be a very Lively discussion back uh probably about a year ago we had a sidewalk plan put together and the goal was put sidewalks on Route 3135 High Street and then Cedar Street and it was going to be in that order unfortunately the costs have gotten a little bit higher than we expected so we're going to do the hot the Route 135 and what the focus that we're looking at is from the Middle School all the way to the senior slash Community Center and because the pricing for
004that was higher than we had planned we're going to just focus on that and then see how we do High Street and Cedar Street and we might reverse which which order that we do Cedar Street so that it's for students walking to the high school and one of the focuses for Route 135 is for students who are coming from Olive Street and trying to walk along 135 to get to the middle school so that work is being uh engineered and then we're hoping to see construction of that of the Route 135 section in the spring and then we'll work on other areas moving after that we then discussed oh and just so that you know if you drive cordovil you'll see some sidewalk work being done there cordovil is a state road so the sidewalk
005work being done on cordovil is being done by the state I know most people don't realize it's a state road but it is from there we followed up and had a discussion about our joint meeting with the planning department with the planning board discussing MBTA communities and what we're going to be doing for that so A subgroup has been created so it's going to be Trisha Kendall from the planning board Joe magnani from the select board Peter magic and then our associate our assistant Town planner and Michael Herbert Our Town manager working to discuss what options we have in regards to zoning that we need to do to meet the MBTA communities act requirements so I think they're going to try to come to the select board a select board meeting probably our first or
006second one in November to have a discussion and then we may have to send the subcommittee back to do some more work but the Hope or the the goal is to be able to bring something forward to our community at the Springtown meeting we then went into our consent agenda and that was approved then we moved into our town managers report so the first thing we talked about was upcoming bonds so on for the Mendez School we're going to do something called bands which are short-term borrowing for some of the monies and we are actually still potentially getting more money from this state because they put 100 million dollars in the current budget to help those School building projects that had price escalations because of covid so we could potentially get another 3.4 or 3.8
007million in reimbursement for the project so keeping paying attention and looking for that we then also got an update on the Mendez opening hopefully many of you had the opportunity to go and tour the school and if you didn't reach out and go take a look it's a wonderful building there'll be other opportunities to be in the building as we heard uh the um Halloween parade that's coming up at the end of October should be held in the Mendez gym and cafeteria we then uh had an update on article 14 so article 14 in our May 23 town meeting was talking about Net Zero in town buildings by a certain date apparently the Attorney General is questioning that and we're still waiting to hear more on that but we just got an update on that
008we then had our select board member updates and reports and then we were able to wrap it up about quarter of ten so that was the select board meeting that happened on Wednesday September 20th