001hello it is time for the select board update for the meeting that happened on Wednesday September 6th I'm Yolanda Greaves current Vice chair of the Ashland select board and your host of Around the Clock the meeting started at about quarter of seven we had a short executive session to review and approve some minutes from another executive session we started at seven o'clock we had two hearings in front of us and a few other events we had some citizens participation we then started with Paul Gustafson he is the owner or was the owner of 433 Chestnut Street and he purchased it from the house that is known as the Henry Warren house he has since refurbished it and is now on the market it is a beautiful job that he's done if you've watched previous select
002board meetings we've talked to him about using some of the old materials and that is now on the market so we had to talk to him about some finalizing paperwork and agreements with the sale of that house we then had a public hearing for Ashland Fish and Game they were back in front of us for a complete liquor license they were in front of us back in April for just a beer and wine license for their Pavilion and now they realize that they really need a full liquor license because of the variety of Liquors and alcohols and all the things that are out there so we approved that for them they have the ability to serve that in the Pavilion as they're doing events or parties from 12 P.M to 10 P.M every day so
003if you're looking for a place to rent check out the Ashland fishing game from there we went to a public hearing for Mike's Auto Sales they are currently on magunco road and they were moving from 50 mcgonco road to 185 magunco Road I'm sorry other way around from 185 magunco to 50. so next time you take a ride around town go down magunco Road they've done apparently a very nice job in updating the facility and where they're going to be there now at 50 they do car repairs and they also have some sales that's what the class 2 license is for from there we went into and to discussed a proposal that Michael Herbert brought to us regarding the Valentine property we've owned the property about five or six years now we did some work
004before covid we had a committee if you've driven by you've been seeing all kinds of work getting done sideboard painting the interior is getting done the next step that I keep asking for and many people have is what are we going to do with the property so Michael Herbert the town manager brought forward a proposal where part of the house would be used for a new newly created Park and Rec Department the downstairs would be available for rental or for town or for private events and the barn would be available for rental for private events or even town events the next step after our proposed after us the select board seeing the proposal is we're going to be having a public forum so look for that date it'll be sometime early November the date wasn't
005selected yet probably the first or second week where we're going to bring this proposal to the public and look for your feedback so be on the lookout for that we had a discussion about our baa Grant process so we have the baa grant numbers we have the numbers for the runners because of the fact that we're a Boston Marathon Town Boston the town the marathon runs through town the baa gives us numbers and we have this process where we then give out funding we give out grants to different organizations certain money can go toward 501 3C or non true non-profit groups and other monies can go to other groups so we've split out now what that process is so when you go to the website if you're a non-profit you'd fill out one form if
006you're not a non-profit you'd fill out another Form we've increased the maximums so you can now apply up to four thousand dollars if you're a non-profit and over two Grant Cycles so a fall and a spring or a spring and a fall depending what order you can get up to six thousand dollars and there will also be some requirements for showing us how you've used the funds and all that will now be available on the website so go ahead and check that out we then went through our hold on checking my notes Here There we go we then discussed the closure of the MBTA station if you are a commuter into Boston from the Ashland station you have known for the last week that the station itself is closed due to Major Renovations almost three
007million dollars in repairs are going to be happening there so you need to either go to Framingham or Southborough depending on which direction you're heading or where you want to park we're trying to get them to open the station or at least the parking with the shuttle that hasn't happened yet so just add extra time and be on the lookout if we can get them to open the station at least for some parking we will let you know and there are shuttles available if you're dropped off or walked to the station we then talked about an all-premise liquor license so right now as a group wants or a restaurant wants to get a liquor license it's for a specific area when we allowed restaurants to do outdoor we had to extend it to their outdoor
008area an all-premise license would be for someone like the Warren Conference Center they currently have a liquor license for their Lodge in their hotel if they want to get a liquor license for another area they'd have to get a separate license unless we discussed or allowed them to do what's called an all-premise so you could you could get your wine at the lodge you could walk over to the white building and you could walk over to a tent we haven't made a final decision we said we would look at it on a case-by-case basis my feeling is and if this is going to help our businesses let's see what we can do but no final decision has been made and then the last part the last thing before a consent agenda we have opened up
009our acceptance for runners if you would like to run the Boston Marathon on behalf of the town of Ashland you can go to the website and there is a form where you fill it out to say that you'd like to run the commitment is to raise three thousand dollars in funds and then you can have a number if we have more than the 12 numbers that we have available the names would get picked out of a hat and preference is given to either Ashland residents or Ashland employees if you're neither of those but you see this and you'd like a number you can certainly apply and if we have any available you may be able to get one we then approved our consent agenda and we went into the town managers report he updated us
010on the mount downtown project if you're driving through downtown you're seeing that things are continually changing the paving is now completely done they're in the process of laying down the crosswalks and it's not just a matter of painting them they're actually textured crosswalks with a very interesting tool that they use to make the grid and to make it look like Cobblestone then we are in the process of doing the connections to the underground for all the buildings and of course the last thing we'll be removing the poles and that'll probably be next spring before we finish everything in downtown but every day there's something a little bit different that you notice as you drive through downtown from there we talked about the Mendes the Mendez school is open it was available for the first day
011of school on September 5th and their open house is happening on September 9th in the afternoon you get the ability to tour the school uh we talked about an upcoming bond issue now that the Mendez is just about done we're looking at doing some short-term borrowing for some large amounts and then eventually going into long-term borrowing and we'll talk about that as it continues moving forward grand reopening of the community center if you remember back in February there was some sprinkler issues some damage done to our community center it's hard to believe it's taken this long but the community center is now completely redone or at least the areas that were damaged and also as they were doing the work they found that some of the original construction might not have been done as well
012as it should have so some of those improvements were made as well so that the building will now be nice and sturdy and strong and in a good position for many years but that is September 12th from 10 to noon another thing we want to talk about is the tail manager talked to us about this is there was a firefighter Grant it's a regional Grant it was for 921 thousand dollars it came to the town of Ashland Southborough and Hopkinton Ashland was the lead on this and it is for new air tanks and air apparatus so what means is the three towns will now have the same uh the same equipment so that if someone from Ashland if we have to go help out Hopkinton and we're using their equipment we have the same equipment
013so they can work together and that was a real big win like I said almost almost a million dollar grant for this new equipment and that equipment is not cheap so thank you to Chief Roby and our assistant chief uh Morgan for getting that as well as Lieutenant Bolin for getting that grant for us and the other communities from there we went into board reports and we wrapped up just before we had to do an extension after 10 o'clock and that was the meeting that happened on Wednesday October I'm sorry Wednesday September 6th and the next meeting will be in two weeks