Acton Select Board Meeting 5/23/22

001agenda is resident concerns i will say tonight that during the discussion of selection of officers we won't be taking public input at that time so if you have comments on the selection of officers please make them now i have a question uh mr chair is it true that we don't have the zoom meeting going yet the zoom meeting is running and there are six remote attendees okay thank you so um please go ahead uh i'm tara from stockton and um i have three things to speak about can i use the second question if others would like to speak please line up behind microphones guys why not wait wait wait wait for people to to change please go ahead okay so in my view people of privilege are well represented in the committees i'll wait hopefully

002my two minutes will start when you guys are listening no we're listening no i mean whatever time you need no go ahead good okay so in my view um people of privilege various privileges color their skin income property ownership are well represented on the committees in acton this is a time for justice yes affordability of taxes is a justice issue and it's critical but we already have representatives on the fincom and on the alg that are very concerned about keeping taxes low the select board is about values and now is the time for justice for housing justice for environmental justice it's about more than just money and so i urge that you elect a chair that is stands for inclusion that stands for justice in all of their being thank you i have a concern

003about hayward road i think that the butter should be noticed before there's any votes on any plan to put any light the lady in prospect street and massa on main street said it best she didn't want people idling in front of her house at lights and so i think it's important to not vote on anything until you hear from the neighbors and that they are notified by mail the quarter acre around so you can get these guys in here to give you their views i also have a question about west african citizens library the trustees are very gentle people and they've been told they have no choices in some kind of upcoming reorganization and i would like very much to hear from the town manager uh whether or not he will respect their wishes so

004we don't take questions now some board members may make comments if they wish but um all right well i will ask my imager who's the liaison so we don't take questions now we don't request a comment she can comment i hope she does comment oh she does she's i guess saying that yes they will respect okay thank you very much if i'm not mistaken please say something before wednesday's meeting thank you thank you hello i'm virginia loftis i live at windsor green all renters seven thousand in the town we need a voice we need some pataka workmanship with you we need to not only be heard but the contents of what we need to be heard has to be heard we need a consciousness of that's joint we need to be heard and considered as

005town residents not everybody as citizens but as town residents we must have a voice and a voice where there's a joining of the brains and thoughts you're running the town we need to work with you and you need to work with us thank you rose thatcher prospect street i'm also here in favor of to support the renter advocate and i just want to make sure that the members of the select board receive the letter from the west acton baptist church in support of the renters also okay thank you thank you peter berry from faulkner hill road i urge a select board to rotate officers during tonight's meeting for two important reasons first is to maintain the essential nonpartisan nature of town government select board members do not run as democrats or republicans nor on the

006basis of any particular political ideology but your commitment but on your commitment to support the best interests of the entire town the chair also cannot be elected based on partisan political viewpoints if the board were to devolve into a partisan body based on politics the board would become simply another political politically divided entity which would further divide rather than unite our town the international city managers association warns that partisanship is incompatible with the regular duties of local government the icma comments local governments rely on relationships collaboration and compromise to solve problems and provide services injecting the partisan divide into local decisions may very well degrade the crucial relationships and trust required to solve local issues in local government our relationships are much more important than party and ideology local government officials typically use their roles

007to build community trust and healthy relationships rather than contribute to disagreement and bickering when governing bodies meander from their proper roles things will get messy fast second reason is the inherent nature of the select board as an elected body you represent the will of acton's voters the voters who elected you deserve to have their interests represented in the chair this is particularly true for the members who receive the highest number of votes for these reasons i urge you i urge the board to elect dean charter chair and jim snyder grant vice chair both of whom possess the most important skills required of the school of the select board chair leadership the ability to work collaboratively and knowledge of town government thank you thank you hello my name is michelle perak i am from brook street

008i have been living and or working in this community for quite some time and both as a tenant resident and representing a lot of elderly who are they are very intimidated by their landlords by the town and they're not getting anywhere i for one have lived under a management for that just sold and didn't tell their tenants that they were you go and ask for something to be done nothing gets done it's in violation of the board of health the building code everything and i personally have been to them and nothing has been followed up with that owner former universal properties to get anything done you go to strawberry hill to act in housing authority whether it be elder or property base they are doing nothing either for these tenants many with physical and mental

009health issues cognitive limitations they cannot stand up for themselves i am in a role where i am not to do it or i could lose my job so i would appreciate if there was a tenant advocate on here who reached out to these people reached out to the elderly and disabled were available to somebody like me who can get a less dangerous tenancy in a building that probably should have been condemned years ago but has not to get safety into strawberry hill apartments where veterans live our own military veterans live in there and you can walk in any time of day there are guns there's prostitution and the drugs do you think they deserve that in addition to the fact that they're elderly and impaired they don't even have locks on the main doors or

010buses come on so i support the position of a renter's advocate and a turnover the chairs and vice chairs and i hope councilman sluckman snyder grant gets that chair position and honestly something needs to be done you have control over this acton housing is a state but town run facility come on are we going to allow our elderly to be walking like a cockroach because we can't respect them enough to give them clean water safety bars non-mold apartments and tubs and access please i work for pills to keep them safe when will you help them do the same respect them they've been here much longer than me and deserve it thank you thank you i just want to let you know that we have um you know some months ago opened up a renter's hotline

011it has been very successful there have been tens of reports i think all of them have been resolved so um especially if they're really health problems and things like that i urge people to call the the renters hotline thank you good evening i'm mike here i'm mike going i'm here to speak to the select board reorganization of officers having been a selectman for six years i'm very aware of the process of electing officers to the position of clerk chair and vice chair the reasons that people historically start out as clerk to understand the workings of local government including mass law as it affects municipalities then move to vice chair shadow the chair learn all of the intricacies of the budget process and then as chair direct the board's efforts to accommodate the town's needs this

012process has been in place for more years than people can remember it is inherent in the nonpartisan town government this upcoming year will be a difficult one as inflation continues federal and state monies decline and proposition two and a half will limit what we can afford to do we need to have someone who has not only been involved in town budget but has the experience of actually creating a budget dean as municipal properties director for many years has done just that finally i would appeal to the board that prides itself on fairness and equity to connect themselves accordingly um dean was passed over his chair last year even though he had done his due diligence as vice chair this is not a popularity contest it's a program it's a progression if it were a popularity

013contest i would point out that dean won every prince precinct in town but that's not the point the role of chair should pass to him this year please do the right thing thank you thank you good evening janet adachi simon heck with lane it shouldn't be necessary for me to weigh in on tonight's select board officer election but given last year's aberrant election process i feel i must dean charter should have been the select board chairman last this past year i urge the select board to make amends for last year and elect him chairman tonight the select board has had an orderly officer selection process for years as mr gowing described going back long before my own nine year tenure on the select board from 2010 to 2019. if you want to be chairman first

014do a year as clerk then a year as vice chairman the process is not just some outdated formality but makes good sense which is why it has endured and should continue as standard practice when i was winding down my first stint as select board clerk three of my colleagues wanted me to agree to be chairman i knew that i'd be a capable chairman but declined to deviate from the established officer rotation ignoring the usual officer selection process would have needlessly upset the then vice chairman and i also believe that serving as vice chairman would better prepare me to serve as chairman i said that i'd aim to be a strong vice chairman working closely with the new chairman and town manager and that is what i did with no regrets and excellent results the local

015re-election results earlier this year confirmed that mr charter enjoys strong support in all precincts a lifelong resident and retired long-time municipal employee he understands the town's history and government operations in a way that no other current select board member can come close to matching he is able to listen to and work collaboratively with people holding diverse opinions which is a crucial skill for any select board member but especially for the chairman please do the right thing this year electing charter as chairman and mr snyder grant as vice chairman thank you thank you hi i'm lauren rosensweig morton 26 marshall path i'm a former planning board member economic development committee member and select board member for two terms and i'm not going to repeat what my colleagues have already said i see there's a long line

016we are all neighbors whether you're a renter whether you're a citizen or not a citizen or you own your own home we are all neighbors and dean was elected by a lot of people and he may have not learned as much or been up to speed as much as some of the few other members have been on certain topics and but he's been shown that he is willing to learn that he is open to taking input i have never you know the cpc when he chaired that was an excellent he received excellent accolades from everyone on how he led the committee how he brought people to consensus and i think he would do an excellent job so thank you thank you hi eric hill for orchard drive in my 20 years as a homeowner and

017a resident and acton i have felt exceptionally well supported from the kind of built-in advocacy that homeowners enjoy in this town and i would like to see the same level of support extended to everyone who lives here it's really come to my attention i've been aware over that 22 years how conspicuously absent the inclusion of renters in our decision-making process and even in any form of major visibility and involvement in town government has been for those reasons i would really like to see a chair of this board be a strong advocate for that position of the study and the placement of a renter's advocate and someone who has been a demonstrated bridge builder and pulling people together and i really feel that jim snyder grant fits that description and at this unique time when it's

018so important that we pull together i would like to see jim as the chair thank you thank you hi i'm leslie johnson i live on brook street and i'd like to see a renter's advocate i'm a renter and subsidized housing there are a lot of renters in subsidized housing that have disabilities that are immigrants that are senior citizens and other vulnerable people and i think they need an advocate to work for them and um and i'd also like to see a chair that would be supportive of a rental advocate thank you good evening everybody danny factor 11 davis road apartment a5 i wanted to speak on two topics the first has to do with the fact that the organized renters organization uh housing climate and justice for actin uh appreciates the fact that we now

019have a renter's hotline but it should be made clear that their uh position is clear that it's not enough and that we need a renter's advocate and if you folks don't already know the reasons already you can call a forum and we'll come and we'll tell you why so we you know if anyone is under the conception that having the renter's hotline is enough then we need to increase the amount of listening that is um going on in town and there are a lot of ways um to do that now as far as a chair uh let's admit first of all that this is an important position i think if it wasn't if it was just a token position uh and if it wasn't an important position we wouldn't have this many people uh here

020caring about it let's talk about two important things that the chair does they set the agenda that's something that's very important when you're dealing with the issue of communities that feel marginalized there's a certain sensitivity when it comes to knowing how to set an agenda that is inclusive um the second amount of discretion that a chair has is at meetings itself it has to do with a degree of respect that you give the audience it has to do with when you decide to cut somebody off or when you want to be a little more sensitive to someone who is vulnerable so this is why a lot of vulnerable people in our community um care about this um the last thing i want to say about the chair is that there's been some talk from other

021people like being able to be a chair is a right once you're elected to the board that everybody gets their turn and that's the way that it's always been i see being a chair as such an important role that it's not a right but it's a privilege it's a privilege that's given to somebody who has certain abilities to listen and to be sensitive and to especially be open to new issues when they first come up not later as well because it's the first voice um that you're going to hear when you uh bring a new matter i myself was under commission on disabilities thank you hi my name is sheryl kennedy perez i live at 33 harris street and i'm here about the renter's advocate i actually think you have enough information and um and

022i'll say that on two things one is there have been calls i do know that given what when presidential has just learned about the condition of 250 apartments in this town clearly you should have been getting millions of calls like thousands of calls because those buildings are in terrible shape one of the people who oversees the care of the buildings said to me that she had in her many years of managing buildings never seen some buildings as damaged as these are she also at the same time said she's never seen people keep their apartments as clean as people here have so that's not a reflection on tenants if people felt um was more comfortable speaking to an institution which your hotline is part of the city it's an institution different than someone who's identified as

023an advocate really you need to bring women here and ask them to talk to you about what they have found you would be appalled i know when i heard i heard you know rats trash not being picked up for weeks on end mold under carpets bedrooms filling up with water on a regular basis and that's what i can just pull off the top of my head it's um you need this other person because truly and i know towns need to be able to prove that there's a need i i know you need to be able to prove that i'm just saying i think you have the information i think you just need to bring women here and ask them to talk to you about what they found which by the way when universal left when

024has none of our phone numbers and none of our email addresses they have no clue because universal took it with them if there was someone who was paying attention to these things differently than just letting housing management companies run amok uh you you would have your proof and and i guess about the um so i've lived in cities where there were like the mayor's position rotated and you know it worked okay 15 seconds left okay but it was a figurehead it wasn't anybody who really had any power so food for thought thank you hi simon morton townhouse lane i'm a condo owner many of my neighbors are tenants many of our neighbors across the town of acton are tenants i'm really have been shocked over the last sort of six to nine months of hearing

025about some of the conditions that some renters are are living under and you know they're all our neighbors they all deserve to live in in dignity and safe and affordable housing and so i would like to urge strong leaders to select board to take you know strong affirmative action on tenants rights and to support the creation of the tenant rights position thank you thank you hi christopher lopez central street so i am a renter in action i've coming up on my year lease and so the story of just a brief story of just me it's i've enjoyed this town a lot i've really enjoyed the people in this town the small businesses how close we are to nature and i think a lot of the people here have so many wonderful uh things to contribute

026to this town but every time i think about it living here is not something that i enjoy for the specific reason that living in a an apartment can be a struggle when a lot of the issues we face is decisions that our apartment owners make on our behalf and it's hard for us to speak up but even when we do speak up and i have multiple times we're just faced with no response or a non-response and where we are either being told to reread something we've already read so many times or we are just being directed towards just a dead end so this has been a story that's been repeated over and over through my canvassing through my organization housing climate justice for acting and to see this replicated in other places and worse conditions

027compared to mine i'm living in luxury but there's definitely others whose are not in the best conditions and because they can't or have tried and only left with dead ends they are seeking the town for help so i really really hope that um the town can take in consideration that there's more that's needed for our renters and with that being said i think the town also needs to make sure that we're represented in a way that sure our voices are heard and i think you've seen time and time again we are definitely trying to raise our voices ourselves but we need some help so thank you very much thank you jennifer marazza central street so i am all for non-partisanship um and procedural likening to procedures and adhering to them but i'm also disappointed in

028how our group was received when we first made our voices heard to the select board in comments that were made that disparaged us for no reason except for the fact that we were renters bringing up concerns i have been a renter my entire life i've always been close to my landlords my grandmother and grandfather are landlords i have no animosity towards landlords i have a concern about the condition of renting an acton that's my concern we have talked to established housing stability office who has told us that putting a hotline up on a website is not a trusted resource they told us that they went through the school system the faith communities the built rental buildings all to gain the trust of the communities in order to get people to call them that's what's needed

029so our organization has canvassed we've canvassed over a thousand people in town and we've compiled concerns that we will be bringing to you in the coming meetings and we're only looking for those reasonable concerns to be received and to be acknowledged and to be dealt with and for the folks that are neglecting a third of the people in acton to be held accountable thank you thank you hi frannie osmond 16 half moon hill i'm here to talk about three things in my allotted time one is the technology of town meeting um i had a conversation with the chair recently and he thought it was difficult to set up a zoom so that people watching at home and participating from home could see who's talking it's very frustrating and very non-community forming to be at home

030and not see who's talking right now people on zoom can't see me just one second you mean select board meetings yes you said town meeting oh sorry town yeah select board meetings i all it takes is putting a laptop over there on that table and shining it on the audience i'm people at home on zoom can't see that i see dozens and dozens of people here i didn't count um they can't see that um they should be able to please make this happen number two i am so inspired by the work of the housing and climate for justice in act and group and i just was marching with the group up to town hall i'm very excited when i was on the select board we were aware of the fact that we weren't hearing from

031renters enough but we didn't do enough and when the organization climatemobilization.org got involved and helped organize us i'm very grateful and to all the renters who have been speaking up and i think that we're on a good roll um and so i trust that the board will move ahead with that and continue to hear the voices of that group number three the select board rolls i implore you to not be partisan about it it was i think it's not i liked going along with and it's not a matter of oh we always done it that way it was for good reason that people would learn to learn about being on the board and i was dismayed by the process last year and i think it should be the order that it goes unless someone's really

032heinous but everybody has their ups and downs everybody has their um experiences of not being so good we don't expect you to be perfect select board members we expect you to try and learn and be better and i would hope that dean would be the next chair and jim the next vice chair thanks claire cisco stow street um i will try to paraphrase um just state that um i do agree with um mr gowing and mr perry and the others before me in terms of the leadership on the board over the past year i've been really disheartened to say the least to hear from many residents who feel that the current board leadership has not done a good job of listening to citizens concerned and is driving its own agenda this has been brought up

033both on the street and openly at select board meetings this is not personal um but i've never i've lived in this town for 28 years and have never ever heard so many people come up to me and just say this has got to change this is not right um so as a select board your job is to represent the people and i'm asking you to listen to what people are saying is that they want to change on the board um i won't repeat everybody knows mr charter's experience i have uh very different political views from him but that doesn't matter to me i respect his leadership and my experience is that he has been open to hearing other people's points of view and to changing his perspective once he's got new information mr snyder grant

034i've had the pleasure of knowing for many many years he's dedicated much of his life to the town on multiple roles he has a lot of experience doing mediation kind of work and i will close by adding that the current focus of diverse diversity equity and inclusion in our community should be reflected in the selection of the select board and diversity is not just about race or gender or sexual orientation it's also about how you approach things and so i would like to see a different approach to the board and i urge you to elect dean charter as chair and jim snyder grant as vice chair to provo promote that diversity and to demonstrate that you're listening thank you thank you good evening carol and wright at 44 brewster lane condo owner why did we

035march today we marched because housing and climate justice for acton has worked hard with the renters in this town to spread the word for the need for a renter's advocate in our investigations through canvassing we found a growing need for medi mediation sorry between the renters and their landlords you've heard all this good night i just add my voice to their wonderful efforts and i thank you thank you good evening madeline cruz town house lane diversity equity and inclusion i hear so many people around town saying that over the last year and yet a person like me has yet to feel some of that some of you want to recognize and some of you don't but at the end of the day renters are part of this town and we deserve to be included there's

036a lot of things that the town needs to do better to make that happen and i'm going to start off by saying to there's nothing more disappointing than having people who work for our town government that yeah i get it you work nine to five but you always represent this town whether you're a select board town manager social services if you work for the town of acton you represented it even when you're off hours so many of you see me and say hello but there's other of you that have seen me in the past and haven't even acknowledged me do you know how awful that feels it makes me feel like trash acknowledgement and accountability go a long way on october 18th i came here and i presented my story so many of you did

037acknowledge that there was a problem that needed to be fixed but so many of you put me down trashed my name and made it seem like i'm this crazy person oh my god this woman of color coming up here degrading acton housing and you know tonight was the first night that uh peter berry said hello to me thank you mr barry you made me feel good tonight i thank you for that change however it shouldn't take this long we need change a lot of people don't like it but you know what it's inevitable change is growth growth means that we're coming a long way i don't ever want to hear someone say i don't belong here i do belong here and i've i i recently applied for the human services committee and i was told

038whether it's gossip or not some people don't want me why don't you want me because i say truth that's not my problem i hope that you take an accountability my experience as a person as a human being please remember housing is a human right it's a need you want to help and homelessness this is how you do it we do need a renter's advocate and mr dean i hope that when you take the chair because i have no doubt that you will tonight you please please try to understand people like me reach out and speak to us because we deserve that from you thank you thank you bob van meter half moon hill i want to congratulate the town for taking initial steps toward recognizing the needs of renters but urge you to make investigating

039the gaps in service and the needs of renters and others in town around housing stability in the next year i also although i understand ms cruz's feelings and other and those of other people i believe that mr charter can serve the town well as chair and i hope that uh the board elects him and mr snyder grant as vice chair later this evening thank you thank you and chang south acton swamps not a renter uh i would like i'd like to say that if in fact you do do a renting at the advocate that you are conscious of the fact that we are getting a top heavy administration and that you should delete some other member of the administration or maybe combine that job with some other job so that we do not have so

040many people who are in the administration because we have to pay their salaries and i think that that is something that we should consider and the reason that people had a progress for the chair vice chair and the clerk on the board of selectmen is that the chair was supposed to help teach the clerk and the vice chair the fiscal policies of the town and as they grow as you grow in stature and more knowledge you gain the confidence to do the town budget and to do the taxes and god forbid perhaps even do the thing for prop two and a half thank you i'm i'm not gonna take duplicate you you you both have been up to speed no i'm not taking you again i'm sorry um so you can talk you can talk

041to one of us after thank you um are there any online uh people who'd like to speak i see one hand matt are you calling on people tonight yes i apologize i was having a little bit of technical difficulties heather morton you should be able to speak hi um i'm this is the very first time i've done this over zoom so i'm not quite sure how it works is this an appropriate time to talk about the one-way street on river street nobody else has spoken to that no we're going to be a later part of the meeting so this is more for general comments and also tonight comments on um uh the uh select board officers we'll be taking comments on the hearing for the one-way street in [Music] a short uh not very long

042i i have nothing to say then thanks okay thank you next up this user does not have their full name but their username is dick and peggy t that they can identify themselves and tell us where they're from yes richard and migrant testa on juniper ridge road west after we'd like to echo the many many supportive comments for dean charter as uh the next chair thank you okay thank you um we'll we'll see what we can do for the for that um for uh calling uh uh people later um we'll see if we can get that volume up when i speak or when the person speaks okay i'm just i'm just asking which is which okay so so we're all hard to see here so um um we just raised the volume a little bit

043the audio much better back here the speaker's showing up over your head okay um uh we'll we'll move on um uh so uh comments for me tonight it's uh exciting to see all you people here tonight there are um not only is this there's more people than we've had in the room uh in two and a half years maybe a little longer actually it's about four times as many people as are online so that that's uh that's cool thank you all for your comments on uh renters tonight two things about that i'd like to comment on there one is we established this renter hotline i think maybe four months ago three four months ago we've been able to satisfy the vast vast majority of problems reported on that hotline i would encourage people to use

044it because in addition to possibly getting your issue resolved if we can't resolve your issue then we make we will make note of that um as far as the renter advocate goes um uh i want to make it clear that uh to everybody that we're not dismissing people's concerns the renter's advocate is a complicated thing and it's a lot of thought i suspect that we'll be discussing this quite a bit at our goal-setting session this year um three things uh happened uh uh this past week of note um in the middle of last week household goods uh cut the ribbon on their new edition which is a a new building that they call the barn and a big addition on their on their main building uh it's very very exciting for their their operations and

045uh and one of the things that they'll be able to do in the new space is to take tractor trailer load shipments of of things from uh from places um secondly last thursday the school committee announced that the the committee to select the new mascot has chosen a name it's the a b revolution it wasn't done in a student-led process so that's very exciting and then finally uh last friday the habitat for humanity project on carlisle road had its official ground breaking that the house on 26 carlisle road was um to say it was run down is it is a is quite an understatement it's being replaced with a new uh new house and um uh you know as of uh now it's the work is beginning it'll probably take the rest of the year

046and um in a family it'll be an affordable housing unit which will be rented out i mean it's already sold in town so that's also exciting um mr manager your update thank you uh two brief items there uh the celebrations committee uh james mcrae our veterans officer and gail sawyer are coordinating a parade for memorial day it'll be starting at the high school at 10 a.m and make its way up main street and then go down concord road to woodlawn cemetery so that's on monday at 10 00 10 a.m on may 31st which is a week from tomorrow we will be having a webinar to announce the preliminary findings of the work that the collins center from the umass boston has been doing we hired them earlier this year to help us to formulate a

047job description and identify an appropriate role within the organization for an equity diversity equity officer their work is nearly completed before they submit our their final report to the town they are going to be reading out and sharing some of their preliminary findings for people to have a heads up on and understand and that's um it's actually at 8 15 at night it's a virtual only meeting and it's um [Music] tuesday 5 31 may 31st thank you does any member have a member minute jim a couple of things oh it's a few pages back i had to take a lot of notes um may 28th um the nera park the the adaptive bike program is starting up um so there's three bikes available for residents for to take out on the rail trail for up

048to three hours for free and i look forward to seeing this program be a great success the other thing that's happening community groups um are now uh able to start reserving rooms uh for example uh at the public safety facility or right here in this building or the library and that's happened i had the honor of um working with one of the housing and climate justice and acting groups to uh to use this room um using this room on the weekends does require a select board member since normally this building is locked on the weekend so one of the advantages of of getting space in the library in the public safety facilities they're open on weekends that was it thanks thank you other members member minute um very quickly um just wanted to address tara's

049point on the west acton citizens library they have a meeting um coming up this week um and it's a public meeting so if anyone wants to come they can um from what i'll just say this um we're definitely very dedicated to making sure that we are taking care of our western citizens library we realize it's an important part of our town and we do have many changes thank you going on um with our memorial library leadership as well as west acton's leadership and so we're definitely trying to accommodate everyone and at this meeting we'll definitely be talking about that more and what that looks like for um our board of trustees on both ends so we're definitely dedicated to that on the town staff side as well as myself as the selectboard liaison to that

050um and i also just wanted to make a quick note for everyone here today and on zoom thank you so much um you know it's really important that we're mindful of what this town really wants for the leadership of our select board because that very much determines the tone by which you all as residents of our town feel comfortable coming up here and speaking we want this to be as inclusive as possible and the leadership of our select board very much determines that so thank you thank you dean our friend nope okay uh we'll move on to our first public hearing of this evening the select board will pull the public hearing on monday may 23rd 2022 at 7 10 pm on the proposed amendments to the existing traffic rules and orders to add the

051following street to article 6 section 1 one-way streets river street from the intersection of school street to the intersection of chadwick street the designated one-way vehicular traffic on river street from school street to chadwick street shall be eastbound mr manager thank you this is a project that we started last year we had some meetings with neighbors on river street that started because of concerns for pedestrian safety and we talked about potential need for a sidewalk on that street and as we were looking at the sidewalk we determined that there may be a potential safety benefit to actually looking at the way traffic circulates on that street before we add a sidewalk and so director corey york led a project with a consulting team to do some design work to determine the safety of it and

052corey is here with us virtually if i could bring him in to share the results of that work good evening yes as john had mentioned um we've been looking at river street most recently before the addition of a sidewalk uh several years ago i've been we've been talking with the neighbors they had some concerns about speeding um on the on river street and throughout the day we did some counts and we did see some high speeds that were approaching 50 to 60 miles an hour it was like a half dozen cars throughout the day some of it was racing to catch the train in the morning was i think when the police had pulled a couple people over and there was some late in the day down to the evening rush hour or something like

053that so it was something that we were looking into and then shortly after the park over at the river street dam was coming up so we were kind of watching how that was playing out um and then most recently as we've been talking about the sidewalk with the neighbors this had come up again so we had we ran a concept design looking at a sidewalk coming down basically the entire length but this upper section between school street and the chadwick street intersections some challenges there with steep slopes the river on one side proximity houses to the street so we we kind of floated the idea of look taking a little more aggressive look at it so we had hired a consultant to come out and evaluate sort of the flow through here so they did

054an analysis of the the roadways the traffic data and the intersections and um looking at the sight lines as you as you're at school in chadwick and the sight lines when you're at school and river looking sort of looking to your right the sight line itself is about the same it was about a little over 200 feet there's a little bit of an advantage at the school in chadwick where um you kind of lose a little bit where there's a high point and then but you can see further down i think it's you can see the neighborhood of um i want to say it's like 600 and something feet down you kind of lose the vehicle and they go in that valley and come back up so there's some benefit there one of the biggest

055benefits is just deal with the alignment it allows a vehicle to pull up at more of a 90 degree turn so you're not really trying to strain over your shoulder to look um and that was something that had played into it so in doing this this analysis they the traffic engineer had recommended doing the one way um so it would be allowing vehicles to enter from the school street intersection driving towards parker street um having that as the one-way approach and then all the the westbound traffic that that was typically heading towards the school screening instruction now would be diverted on the chadwick the transportation advisory committee had met and discussed this and they they unanimously voted in favor of it um we've also distributed to the neighbors that we've gotten email shelves from so

056we've distributed information for them to look at and we sent it out to our the police and fired a comment they both had come back with some questions and comments um that they both had relative to flow things like that um the fire department had raised some concerns about that but he'd withdrawn those because he didn't see the questions that he had outweighing the the benefit of trying this out doing the one way um and improving that flow and then when i met with the police and talking about theirs they had the same agreement um it they realized that both of them had kind of the same sight line limitations as you're looking to the right but in essence utilizing the chadwick intersection was more favorable than having vehicles up at the school street trying

057to look at that sort of that reverse y looking down so they they felt it was the safer option as well when you compare the two intersections as part of their recommendation they also asked which i agree is when we if we were to do this one-way operation that we would install those portable speed signs they have put them up as kind of a reminder for people on school street that of the posted speed limit there to help reinforce that um as we do this flow um i think when you look at the traffic data itself when i was looking at the three day counts they had it was about i think over the course of the entire days on average it was like 230 vehicles that head westbound so um that would be the

058potentially the traffic that would be diverted on to chadwick um when we looked at the peak hours we're looking in the range of about i think um there's something like 48 cars or so in the peak hour in the morning and like 52 or 53 cars in the evening peak hours so i mean on average it would be an additional car every minute if you just kind of average it out but um so it wasn't they didn't see the queuing as being a major issue at this location and some people may may redirect their roots but it didn't seem to be overly troublesome to do this so it was recommended and did get support from emergency personnel and transportation advisory committee so uh we're here tonight with the amendment to the traffic rules in order

059to um try this out and do it one way that would by one of the big benefits of if if we do this in addition to the trying to help out with the speeding issues um but is also the improves the viability of a building a sidewalk through here our the options that we were looking at was going to involve retaining walls to sort of cut into the slope um and then we did meet with the park designers so as they're progressing with their designs they're formulating one of the walkways that's near river street that would sort of do a shared purpose where the sidewalk would tie into it as you're walking up you can kind of meander in the park and they have a one way that would come up through this so we

060would tie into that plus we also keep away there's a there's at least a couple houses that are um that are very close where we were looking at we were going to have to do some work so there was some concerns there about walls in front of their houses or even just impacts we were working pretty close to their foundation so if the one way was to happen it does make the sidewalk design a much better approach to that and one thing that i've heard i've heard over the years um as the real trails are coming in i've heard discussions of this being another possible route there's a i guess there's a fair a good amount of bike traffic that's already on this so if we did a one-way um we would we are looking

061at the sidewalks but also having a contra flow lane for bikes which would be similar to what we have on maple street sort of on the one-way stretch between main street and stowe street where the train tracks are so it gives sort of a an organized way for bikes that are coming the opposite direction the ability to sort of be there as drivers and pedestrians it kind of organizes you kind of you kind of know where people are so so we're here tonight to ask the board if they're willing to approve this and make this stretch one way sort of heading eastbound between uh school street and the chad chadwick street intersections for work history thank you so um members of the board have questions for director york right and i don't know if this

062is too early in the plan do you know what side of the street the sidewalk would be um put yeah my original concept that we had put out there for this stretch we were we were looking at the uh sort of the school street side and mostly because of complications with when you look at the fort pawn brook side it just drops right off into the flood plain so um we were looking on that side but it has like so the implications but the homes and the structures with the one-way stretch it gives us more um more room to play so uh and with the poles there we we believe if we have the one way we would be able to run the sidewalk um all the way down the river side the football brook

063side and then tie right into the park there because we would be able to sort of stay on the guard rail along the guardrail there it would give it more of a continuous sidewalk along that stretch all the way down past all the way down past probably most of the street going down that way thank you yes dean so um considering that we will be diverting some traffic some additional traffic onto chadwick street uh i wonder if you've thought at all about investigating the need for a sidewalk on chadwick street that might help out um just a suggestion the other observation i've got is that you know certainly turning something in a one-way street in the short term seems very inconvenient and insurmountable but i remember years ago when coughlin street got made one way

064it took a while for people to get used to it once it gets imprinted it works out pretty well so i think this could be a really positive improvement but i would like to hear a reaction about chadwick street sidewalk yeah we did this part of when we did the survey for river street we had thought about that so we had added on so we do have a survey of chadwick we're planning to extend the sidewalk up to make a connection over the school on that food is part of that process thank you other questions from board members i i have two um cory is where the foliage is on the end of chadwick street at school looking right is it possible to trim that back to improve the sight lines yeah we're working with

065the tree crew they they've been coming out you know last year they were pruning back uh sort of the chadwick at the river street side um i did notice there was some bushes that were not just the trees that were sort of overhanging blocking the stops out a little bit but there was also a bush kind of encroaching out blocking the sight line so we'll be working with the neighbors there and the tree crew about just pruning that back to improve that so okay thank you and then my second question is if it was necessary in the future what's your reaction to uh the possibility of a three-way stop at chadwick in school one of the things that i've heard uh complaints from some residents um you know that where you pass chad work there

066you're heading if you're going westbound you're heading into the s-curves of school street and i've heard some concerns about people continuing quite fast through those s-curves um and so i'm just wondering what your reaction is to the stop sign and and if there'll be a future thing obviously yeah we recently did uh hi and parker we've gone through some multi-wave stop analysis um it's something like say down the road we could look into working with the police we're going to put up those flashing signs to reinforce just reminding drivers about the speed do some added enforcement there to kind of try to get that under control depending on what they see for speeds good thing is these traffic accounts if we pick up on a pattern of speeding the police can target their enforcement to

067try to go after somebody who's just um driving at a really high rate of speed so um we do use that information to try to target some of that enforcement to grab some of those situations as well um thank you uh now on him yeah sorry about that um yeah i have two quick questions um so you touched upon this but can you go into more detail on the changing of signage um and then the second question is um would this change would there be like any construction like any trees that would need to be cut for this uh as far as for the one way if we opted for a one-way flow and um and then that gives room for the sidewalks if i don't believe there would be any any treatments because we

068we should be able to work pretty much within the confines of the existing limits of pavement um if if we had to if the two-way flow remained and we had to excavate into the shoulder to build a sidewalk there would be tree pools um they're going around poles those slopes they have their trees on sort of the tops of the slopes so there are trees that would be impacting the roots i'm going to take down the one benefit here as well is one of the things when we were had the sidewalk shifting sides it was there was some large trees up by school street that looked fairly healthy so we were trying to avoid removals of those if we go to one way i think what we'd be able to do is narrow up the

069roadway a bit keep it in the sort of keep it in the pavement so we wouldn't have to impact those trees and it would allow us to stay on that same side so i think the one one-way approach in the sidewalk did be a lot less environmental impacts as far as tree rules things like that thank you so i don't see any more questions so i'll take comments from the public now hi franny osman um half moon hill i'm the chair of the transportation advisory committee and so thank you corey for mentioning the fact that we just did discuss this and we supported it unanimously but i wanted to point out to the neighbors who had concerns about traffic piling up that we did look at the report that they had done and it looked

070like it was you know like changing from one to two cars at a time waiting whatever it was it was not um concerning um the amount that was backing up cory can you confirm that yeah like we were talking about um the westbound traffic for river street it's about 230 cars per day but at the heaviest times rush hour we were looking around say 48 to 53 cars was in that that rush hour so i mean just after that over the course i mean you're looking at a little over a minute per car coming through there so it wasn't even the queueing that they ran through their uh their system looking at the traffic data was very minimal increases in cubing it was adding a car or two it might be added to it the

071in the delay as you're trying to make that intersection with only a few seconds so it was a very minor uh increases from what all the study is showing okay i mean i suppose if you live there we can't ask everybody to spread out exactly evenly over a whole hour so i suppose if you did live there you would see more as the people up on at the corner of river street see now i also wanted to point out that the commission on disability was also hearing about the park and some of the sidewalk advantages of doing this of getting the sidewalk there and so wow it's loud is it echoing for everybody maybe i'll stand back um i think this is really important um we should always be putting pedestrians before cars and i

072believe that this is this is me talking now um but it is a good decision um and it also can help with the connections between aspen river rail trail and the bruce freeman rail trail that we might be able to get to go through the wr grace property and this gets us that much closer to good connectivity between south acton and west concord so thank you hi everyone daniel gilfix vanderbilt road in historic south acton i just want to remind you all that the objective here was not to have a one-way street the objective was to improve safety and in the way we're going to do that is to install sidewalks and you guys are introducing one-way street in order to facilitate sidewalks great i'm up for it i think it adds some inconvenience to

073some people but that's the best solution however i implore you not to just think of that alone because as others might have mentioned you install you make a road one way people are going to be driving even faster than they're driving right now and i've been an advocate not only with sidewalks but of lowering the speed limit on river street for decades now and it just makes no sense that a much wider road school street that has sidewalks and a double yellow line is at is at 25 miles an hour and narrow river street which has no sidewalks and no line is at 30. and if you're going to make this one way people are going to go even faster so please you don't need a commission to study we don't need to spend any

074more money it's just obvious that that road has to go slower and the other request i have is that please don't focus merely on the sidewalks between chadwick and school it's the entire road that needs to be done and if we speak about what's easy to do from chadwick to parker it's so open really we could you could take care of that in half the amount of time it's going to take to do the other end so perhaps you can get started on that then make this you know one way and then do the others or do it all at the same time but please focus on the bigger the biggest goal which is safety customers consumer safety thank you yes okay only if you want to be heard i'm sam williams 14 chadwick street

075for 29 years i got this piece of paper in my mailbox on friday and here we are monday i hope you don't expect to make a decision after three days on on a decision that could affect a lot of neighbors and we've heard that neighbors of input i didn't know about this until friday when i received this three sentence statement there was no explanation for the rationale i was left to speculate as to the rationale i can think of one or two reasons none of which mr york mentioned but i would ask that mr york's statements be transcribed because it was very difficult to understand everything that he was saying i think he made a good point a lot of which i i couldn't hear because of just the the echoes and the noise so

076i hope that you will not make a decision on this tonight without satisfactory input the explanation i did here is that cars are driving 60 miles an hour westbound to to make it to the train well if you make river street one way eastbound you do realize it's downhill eastbound you think they're going to drive any more slowly like the earlier guys say they're going to drive just as fast i mean maybe consider some speed bumps if that's the issue thank you for the time thank you hi good evening my name is cheryl and i live right in between river street and school straight on the second house in from the fork cory can you just clarify one thing for me did you say that the purpose of the one-way road is to make space

077for the sidewalk without having environmental impact was that the main main reason of making it one way [Music] no the one way concept came up several years ago in working with the neighbors they had some concerns they were witnessing high speeds heading towards school street so it came up as a discussion then because the high speeds were all heading towards school street the traffic that was heading i think the 85th percentile speed was was registering in at like 32 miles an hour at the time um with a few coming obviously coming up higher than that but um so it was it was looking at it as from a sort of a traffic speeding issue um it came back to light when we started looking at the sidewalk along the entire stretch of river street talking

078with the neighbors about um traffic issues so it it lend itself that we want to take a closer look where we're trying to put sidewalks along the entire length and looking at sort of the speeding issue in this upper section so it was kind of a dual a dual thing that we were looking into okay i want to clarify that the speeding happens both directions and specifically coming off of school street onto river i live the second house in we have four children um i have two myself there's a top a two-year-old toddler on the corner there and a fifth grader across the street this cars coming off school street on the river street are pushing 40 50 miles an hour taking that turn and then there's a 30 mile per hour speed limit sign

079and they're going 50 60. um so my suggestion is if this is going to go forward with putting the river street as a one-way street with sidewalks is going to be a green light for people to go even faster around that corner because they're anticipating no oncoming traffic but there is a plethora of children right there in that little neighborhood bikers pedestrians with no sidewalks currently obviously that's what you're working on but there needs to be implemented a drastic reduction in speed before the corner so signs that clearly state taking that corner people need to slow down 15 miles per hour that's my suggestion speed bumps which was already suggested absolutely because it's a straightaway it's a racetrack for people and my kids running across the street to play with their neighbor is like like

080i'm white-knuckled um so making this a one-way street from that point on is just like terrifying to me um i'm not opposed to it granted i will have to do the big loop around chadwick and school street to get to 27. that's not the biggest deal what's the big deal to me is the people that'll be taking that turn much faster than they already do so thank you thank you hello my name is stephanie prance i am at 79 river street um which happens to be the house with the driveway that hits that i'm essentially the four-way stop there if and that's what i would like to suggest i think everyone here realizes that it's going to turn into a raceway coming down off of school street down river it already is but i think

081that what's going to happen it's going to be similar to what happened up at high street if you remember they just put that four way in not too long ago because of all of the accidents happening there nobody stops when they're coming down chadwick as it is right now so i like when i'm pulling out of my driveway even now i'm watching high-speed cars coming both directions and people who don't stop coming down chadwick so if it's a free-for-all with three people or you know with that coming this way and then coming down river i don't know that i stand a chance to make it across with the people who don't stop to turn into speed my next concern is if you don't do anything there we have i mean there's several new homes that

082are in that river street area there we all have kids we all have neighbors who play they're running on those sidewalks i think with the speed and the risk of accidents those cars are not going to stay on the road they're going to end up in yards they're going to end up on sidewalks it's already happening even at low speeds another concern what were some of the other you'll talk more about things that's all i have and i'm for it i am for it i also serve on the 53 river street committee this is something we've been working on a long time we want to see something change it's just to what detriment and what i just want to make sure that we're covering all the bases we're looking at it from all points of

083view and the biggest thing is going to be the speed thanks thank you hi i'm heather sheehan on 81 river street so i think i'm cautiously optimistic and hopeful about the one-way solution i definitely have some concerns as well in what you know previous neighbors have spoken about regarding the speed because i think one kind of traffic calming measure that is happening on river street already is when cars are heading in opposite directions there isn't much room so you have to slow down to make way for one another so i worry about pulling on a one-way street you know having plenty of space and cars just flying down that road my other concern is the sidewalk locate the proposed new sidewalk location so we have a sidewalk in front of several of our homes on

084river street and if we need to cross the street to get onto a sidewalk i can only imagine where that would happen right around where our mailboxes are and it's very difficult to see because i walk it every day with my daughter in a stroller and i have to hold the stroller back and stick my head out quite far to see that no cars are coming so i'm really concerned about making that cross when we're trying to increase safety it seems like that's kind of counterproductive and lastly is what staff just talked about cars flying down river street towards school street if they need to make that quick right onto chadwick it's going to be a very quick ride so i'm really concerned about traffic slowing measures leading up to that turn perhaps a stop

085sign as well as cars coming down the new one way well now they're facing oncoming traffic and what will be done to alert them that they need to now share the road and slow down so i mean really a stop sign for all three seems like the safest solution thank you can i get you just a clarifying question do you where you said you had to lean out to see is that crossing at your house at 81 river so no i'm 81 my mailbox is down at the end near 69 river so when we go you know just walk down there get mail want to keep walking down river we have to cross to get on the other side of the street and it's terrifying to cross there because of the foliage and just there's

086a turn right there so cars kind of whip around pretty quickly at that spot okay thank you thank you hi everybody i'm kendra wilson also live on river street and thanks for your work on this cory you too definitely in favor of making this into a one-way as you proposed and echo a lot of the comments that have been said already tonight just to pick up on heather's point is there is sort of a blind corner right there on river street i'm at 69 and it's right where our mailboxes are we have about 20 kids between my house and probably eight houses down that are 12 and under and it's terrifying with our children out and about so hope that you strongly consider keeping the sidewalk that's already keeping it on that south side of

087river street all the way up to school street where there is a sidewalk today right there i think it would impact a lot less homes some of those homes with the foundation issues we wouldn't have to deal with that it would probably move a little quicker so that's one thing and to daniel's point keeping the sidewalk going all the way to parker because that would keep people especially young children on one side of the street and not in the road where we're really worried about the speed again hoping to keep the speeds at a lower miles per hour to help with that and then implementing crosswalks so i love the idea of having a sidewalk on chadwick to connect with the sidewalk on school street and then down to river so kind of crosswalks all

088there because right now i often cross from school on to chadwick and it's sort of like you know you got to be ready to go because it's a blind kind of heading westbound on school street there's a hill and you can't really see so you've got to move quick [Applause] and then also the stop signs i think we have to mirror what we did on high street for safety to have stop signs on all sides on river and then i'd love to know in terms of timeline for this what what does this look like for approvals next steps i have no clue um so i'd love to hear that from you guys too thank you so just to answer your question that this the one-way decision could be made very very quickly right so because

089there's not much to prepare it's not like building a sidewalk okay thank you thanks good evening my name is jane roberts i live at 57 parker street and i'm asking the select board to not make this change at this time um i don't think there has been enough notice of this change perhaps for the people who live right there near the intersection of chadwick and river street but for people who live a little bit beyond that this was news to us i didn't hear about this until last week i think there are a lot of moving pieces still we've talked about the park on river street there's still a proposal to remove the dam at 53 river street there's a south afton main street corridor traffic study that's been proposed um i think we should

090wait until some of these pieces have stopped moving and we have a better idea of what might be going on in the slightly larger neighborhood i think maybe there are some short-term easy things that i've heard other people mention putting a three-way stop at the intersection of river street and chadwick street sounds like a really great idea changing the speed limit to 25 miles an hour i think sounds like a great idea um i know it's not ideal for the people who live right there but there are sidewalks already on school street between river street and chadwick so that is somewhat of an option for people as opposed to the other end of river street between chadwick and parker street and in particular between miriam lane and carriage hill drive there's the hill and i

091can't imagine how nobody has died there yet because it's so dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists if the change is eventually made i think it's important to think about the impact on other surrounding streets so we've talked about the impact on chadwick and the challenges with the sight lines at the intersection of chadwick and school street there are no great sight lines if cars start using parker street instead that's also a very dangerous road between river street and school street due to the curves in the narrow road and again the excessive speeds that people drive if people choose to take high street instead we already know about the issues with the intersection of high street and main street so i don't think we want any more traffic going that way either and um finally it's kind

092of a challenge of being in south afton we're kind of isolated we're cut off by route two we're cut off by the railroad tracks were cut off by main street and so um well they don't want to be car centric the reality is people do drive places we don't have grocery stores that we can easily walk to so one potential problem if we make that section of river street runway when school street gets closed between river street and chadwick street as sometimes happens for road work or when trees come down people have to drive really far out of their way so thank you for your consideration and again i hope there's more opportunities for people to provide input on this before a final decision is made thanks thank you i'm david hahn 105 school street

093my property fronts on both school street and river street and i have an office in the back of my house that looks out on river street so i see this street all day every day compared to school street river street has virtually no traffic there's some at peak times but if you look at the figures in that report and i just want to say that there is a full traffic report that corey has been quoting from for the person who was up here who said he wanted more information there's a complete report up about this one-way study so i urge the them to get that person that report the uh i won't repeat the uh the arguments uh obviously this there's a sidewalk on the south side which is the riverside of river street that

094starts in front of the new houses by chadwick and it picks up again at the other end of school street so and and we're doing a park so it's logical the sidewalk belongs on the south side on the north side just speaking for the historic district commission concerns there's two houses where it's virtu it's impossible to get a sidewalk through those front in front of those houses without the sidewalk being already that far from people's front door so i think it's just logical that it belongs on the south side in terms of safety concerns i'm for a stop sign at chadwick and school street there are dangerous s-curves down school street i've lived here for 15 years i had a beautiful fence in front of my house it has gotten hit nine times serious accidents

095911 calls so that that would be great if you could slow the traffic there and in terms of a back up there someone had a question about that in the report i believe it says it's 14 feet they measure it in feet so go from 20 feet to 34 feet which is less than a car so that i don't think it's a concern i do have a suggestion for the other end of river street where it connects to school street the reason why people of course speed through there is because it's an acute angle you don't have to slow down to make a turn and i think there's enough real estate there corey to as you come by the church heading eastbound to make that end to school street more of a right angle intersection

096with um between river and school i think sweep the sidewalk out and make it you know so people really have to slow down before they turn onto river street perhaps that will alleviate some concerns lastly i'll say that it's an extremely popular route not for cars but for pedestrians bikers uh runners walkers strollers especially bikers we get huge packs of bikers all the time coming down they're almost always heading eastbound down the river street so i'm 100 for this and i hope you pass it thank you hi i'm lisa ruggiero and i live at 6 chadwick street and for many of the reasons that have already been mentioned the concerns about speed concerns about sight lines all of those things i could just echo what so many people said however i end up feeling like

097i don't want this to happen and i would say one of my biggest concerns other than all of those things is i don't think it makes sense to have traffic directed so that you're making a left turn from chadwick onto school street i walk almost daily in our neighborhood i also drive my car and there's there's not a comparison between turning left on uh from chadwick on to school with turning left from chadwick onto river they're both a little hairy i will admit that but turning onto school street um to the left is where that s-curve is he was just referring to and people come whipping around there so first of all you have to get your car out beyond where the white line is in order to even be able to see both ways

098on school street and then once you're out there and you look both ways it's hard to see to the right because of foliage and there's a hill cars are coming up over a hill so they're speeding up over the hill on the right and they're speeding around the curve on the left and you're sitting out there halfway in the road because that's the only way you can see and then you try to make it and i can't tell you the number of times either again walking or driving that i've been part way out and have to like stop all of a sudden because somebody comes whipping around whereas at the other end when you're turning from chadwick street onto river yes it's true that many people do not stop there but also you do have

099clearer sight lines to the right and the left it's a little straighter at that point so it's easier to see so that's one of my biggest reasons where i do not think this makes sense to make the traffic divert the traffic through chad book and left onto school street and i personally some people here are more generous than i but i would not be happy if i lived on the upper part of river and had to go across chadwick and up school and try to make a left from school onto river that's not going to be an easy task either so at any rate that's my thing i'm not i'm not in favor of this idea i do think we shouldn't forget the idea of sidewalks which is sort of how a lot of this

100started and i guess that's it thank you thank you james convoy 120 parker street uh 25 years there of course i use river street a lot and i can sympathize with the people who have seen cars zipping along there today i went through and there were small children out there the weather being nice and all so i'm kind of sitting on the fence as to whether it should be one way or not i just heard about this tonight since i'm not on the water but one option might be what i've seen in downtown maynard and several rural streets in weyland which is a speed bump temporary which i think they have in maynard or permanent which they have laid down in wayland uh certainly one in the chadwick road area which is where a lot

101of those houses are next to the street children on tricycles bicycles etc and maybe um to address the people who live on the corner of school and river street one near there maybe with appropriate warning signs like i see in those towns speed bump or speed hump coming up so slow down so it might be worth a try as far as the one way yeah it wouldn't inconvenience me a lot but i can feel for the people on on chadwick street getting more cars thank you thank you thank you alyssa nicole school street 76 can i ask a clarifying question of something that corey presented corey did you say that there was consideration for a contra bike lane on that section of river street so that bikes would be coming against the one-way flow east

102westbound that's correct yeah similar to what we had on maple street by the training station okay um so i think that this is a rational decision to make the road one way from school street to chadwick and keep the sidewalk on the south side on the riverside so that people don't have to cross over to the north side to continue on the sidewalk and to avoid all of the issues with the cost of retaining walls and the issues with getting too close to the historic homes on river street so i'm fully in support of it i do hear that people are concerned that having it one way is going to cause cars to go even faster so i agree with what david hahn said about widening the sidewalk there because i'm not a traffic engineer

103but i've heard enough of them say that when the when the street is narrowed that the visual narrowing of the street slows cars down so i think we need to make the sidewalk as wide as possible and my neighbor peter lukasic says that it's called a tree lawn so between the street and the sidewalk a wide swath of grass and that will keep pedestrians that are on the sidewalk even safer so i know there are rules about how wide a road needs to be but let's make it you know the minimum that is required i firmly support changing river street to 25 miles an hour so i live on school street which is 25 miles an hour it also makes no sense to me that that road is 30 miles per hour on river i

104don't drive on that section of river i always um when i'm coming from like powder mill parker i will take a right-hand turn on chadwick and then a left on school street i walk there a lot though and so i think it makes a lot of sense to lower that speed limit in terms of fixing the intersection to help the additional flow of traffic that's going to be coming down chadwick to get to school street i don't know what the traffic engineers are going to recommend whether a three-way stop um bettina promises that she's going to get her pruning shears out and take care of the foliage there but i think another piece that can be looked at is to grade that vertical curve so that you can see further down and it's a scenic

105road and it would require another public hearing but i think that that's a good thing to look at i am absolutely not in favor of a country bike lane because i walk there and i know that the folks that are here tonight walk and run and bike there and i haven't heard anything positive about the contra bike lane on maple coming up to main street it seems to me that it's a an accident waiting to happen because you're not expecting bicycles to be coming the wrong way on a one-way street you're expecting bicycles to follow the rules of the road so especially for the young children and the pedestrians and the runners i think it would be immensely reckless to have a contra bike lane there and that's all i have to say thank you

106thank you [Music] hi i'm rob hamilton i live at 62 river street which is in the section that would be considered first i just want to add to what she just said about bicycles and contra michelin um one of the things that i've noticed is that when we get the large number of bicycles usually on a weekend they don't use bike lanes at all they're operating in a pack so we shouldn't think about building a bike lane for them if we build a bike lane it should be for the occasional commuter or child um so i'm cautiously in favor of turning this section of river street into one way but i'm wondering whether it's possible to do it on a trial basis for perhaps a year and then reevaluate what you know the pros and

107cons after there are quite a few um things that that i regard as cons you know it would definitely affect my driving pattern every day going to work and so forth the other thing to consider as others have said are traffic calming mechanisms such as speed bumps or a slight redesign at the entrance of river street from school street i know that the fire department will not want that that intersection restricted there are it's a pretty small um intersection but whatever can be done to try to slow the traffic would be uh would be the real enhancement of safety so that's all to be considered thank you thank you hi there my name is kim hofnell i'm at 122 school street right at the corner of school street in chadwick um first i want to

108thank everyone for all their hard work on this project that you've done to date but before we approve this and hearing what everyone else is saying i do think there's a lot more thought to be put in around the safety aspects of this um you know i know you did your traffic study showed the you know minimal i use that word very lightly um impact and the traffic going up chadwick street but the people that live there and the people that drive there every day are the ones that experience what's really going on there and what i hear is people screeching out of chadwick trying to get in front of the person flying down school street i hear the horns blowing and the increase in that traffic and the risk around that really makes me

109nervous for the people in that area and those people driving in that area and the kids playing around that area so i do think before this is approved we really need to make sure that safety measures are put in place before anything changes i know you mentioned that it'll be approved quick because all it is is changing the road i think there's a lot more work to be done before this gets approved and that we make sure that our community is safe when it's done thank you thank you hi bettina ave corner of chadwick in school and the offensive very long leafed linden tree which i will prune as soon as possible sorry about that guys it's really nice to see all my southie neighbors here it's like we should have a block party really

110soon it's also really wonderful to have the focus um we've lived there for 26 years we hear all the screeching we are and there's been some great comments great suggestions and i'm very very grateful that you're thinking of doing this because um people say they haven't heard about it but really we've been talking about it ever since i moved here and with the new park making river one way is just going to solve a lot of problems the traffic study was excellent and shows there would be a minimal increase of people on chadwick i live right there so i hear all the things that my neighbors have been saying and i really thank you and i hope you go forward with it because it'll be extremely wonderful to have a sidewalk on river and my

111only other comment is please consider sidewalking chadwick as well because if we are going to divert more cars onto chadwick just for pedestrian safety as well it would be great to have that little itty bitty segment sidewalk too thank you so much thank you hi i'm michelle i don't live on those doors where i travel them daily for work which i'm only given a short time to commute between clients i do see cyclists flying down there with no regard to their having to go by traffic laws and just like cars do but i also realized that the intersection of parker river are totally blind and once people come to that point they are flying down there because they're so fed up of having to wait and pull out nearly get hit themselves but i do

112think that road not just that that tipping point but the entire thing should be one way because when i'm headed either towards littleton or towards the other direction i am coming across cars not stopping even on school street at that point so whichever way you make that one way there are still people going to get hurt unless you enforce the laws of the road at every epicenter of that road chadwick parker in school and especially those cyclists i've never lived in an area so dangerous with cyclists and i came from the city thank you i have a very brief request next time we talk about training just tell everybody who you are i know who you are but could you tell everybody who you are i'm charlie caldwell [Music] uh for those of you who

113don't know that anyway my brief request is next time we talk about changing directions sidewalks and so forth could we have a map [Applause] hi i'm tara from west acton nowhere near here but i i have friends in the area and i travel there quite often and before i get my comments i'd just like one question answered did the town send out a butters notices so that people got a mailing that this was going on okay thank you um so i agree with the concept of the speedway and the the 15 miles an hour is a great idea i was shocked when i a friend moved into quail ridge and i had to travel 15 miles an hour and i thought for sure it was at least a year until i made it down the

114thing and it isn't it's it's a half a minute a minute it's worth the safety um i agree with david on the 90 90 degree river street thing i think we can do that now i hope the speed limit we can do that now three-way stuff we can do that now sidewalks all the way down great idea sidewalk club chat chadwick i think we should have developer fees for sidewalks when they are on the corner given that they're making millions of dollars i hope that the sidewalk down river is meandering so it's not right up against where people are speeding because they will still speed please like we did along main street we made that meandering and i think we should do that again uh the sidewalk i think should be on rivers the river

115street side excuse me the riverside of river street if it isn't then not only are you crunching a sidewalk up until kathy's house your would ruin her native garden which is beautiful and all those old trees but more importantly perhaps all the people would have to cross river street to get to the sidewalk so that i think is not good um i urge people to to take caution on speed bumps i know somebody that lobbied for like 10 years to get a speed bump outside our house only to hear all night long so uh raised crosswalks might be a better idea love the idea of a road diet anything you can do to to narrow these roads thank you so much thank you yes and i'm afraid of the contra bike lane thing for the

116same reasons already stated thank you thank you um matt could you call on the online people please first up is heather morton hi everyone um i'm heather morton i'm at one river street so i actually live at exactly the place where people are racing past going down what i now understand would be the direction one-way road i've never received any information about any of this right i haven't seen the traffic record i didn't know there was a presentation so my first comment is just i really would have appreciated knowing that these discussions were happening and having some information and i would love to get a copy of the traffic report i'm in a position right now where every time i go down river street um i have to stop because my my parking spots are

117right there so as people are speeding by there's a two bump out parking spots that are on the right hand side of river street so often my housemate has already parked and i need to actually stop and pull in backwards to get into my parking spot and i have people racing down i've you know i've almost been hit a couple a couple times so you know i mean i think it's fantastic that we're talking about how to slow people down i think that's a great idea right now just instinctively of course i'm very against the idea of making it one way it does mean that myself my housemate and my tenants would all be using chadwick street which we rarely do right so you're sending a lot more people residents who live at the beginning

118right at the very top of river street you're sending us all the way down to chadwick when i want to say get to gates right i want to get to gate west acton to drop my daughter off or pick her up um you know i understand that might be considered trivial right but it's it's pretty it's going to be pretty significantly inconvenient so because i didn't know anything about this i would i would love it for it to be temporary or to be able to read the traffic study i'm still not entirely sure what this is a problem solving it sounds like we're trying to get a sidewalk which i support that's great but somehow getting a sidewalk involves turning the whole street into one way it seems to me that most of the people

119who've spoken so far have been concerned about the amount of traffic and the speed that the tr the traffic is going and i agree with that both the bikers and the people racing down river street they're going really fast i'm not i mean i want to see the traffic report i want to understand better how making it one way is going to automatically slow down the traffic uh so i'm still you know i'm wrapping my mind around this right as we're talking about taking taking me about i don't know what would it be a tenth to a fifteenth of a mile out of my way every time i try to get home or leave home so i understand i'm just speaking it you know my personal concerns this is one family well three families but

120um and and there's a larger good here but i i do think that that larger good could have been communicated to the neighbors i get stuff all the time from the historical district that oh manages to find its way into my mailbox and uh you know again i heard about this through miriam maxwell's senior citizen you know uh newsletter that goes out that's the only reason i knew that this conversation was taking place this evening so i would appreciate it if it could be temporary or if if you could vote on this at a future meeting just to give those of us who didn't know anything about it and are going to be pretty seriously impacted a little longer to wrap our minds around it thanks thank you next up is gabriel breton hi yes

121thank you so much i actually live at 39 school street across the street from heather so right at the why of school street and river street um i want to kind of echo some of those sentiments that cheryl and heather have raised we all i think most families along river street have children and the speeds going down river street i've been working from home for over two years so i see it daily and while that turn is really difficult going off river streets to school street the traffic on coming to river street is um it's just ridiculous um i think you know we've done the quick math and this ads about 20 hours for a year for my husband and i for our commute to have to reroute um which definitely is an inconvenience but

122i think the thing that we're all hearing as well is that this is more of a safety concern and not a traffic concern so the speed limit there is kind of unjust for what the needs are in that area so i would like to see a speed limit change especially knowing that there's going to be a part coming in there that's going to increase the traffic flow once that is there and i don't i haven't heard anything regarding what the future of that will look like so at this point i would say we are against this until we have more information and all neighbors considerations are taken into effect here so um thank you for your time and i'm looking forward to seeing more on this thank you and next is peter bretton well my

123wife just went uh ahead of me so um i would like to echo what she said and um it just seems like there are other options to um achieve the same thing without impacting those of us at the head of river street as people have mentioned raised sidewalks and changed speed limit and since my life already echoed what we talked about i'm going to give you your time back thank you okay thank you everybody for for your input uh comments from members of the board dean well i i certainly think that whether it's a deliberate act we take tonight or whether it's just the way things happen i think we have to consider this to be a temporary sort of a trial run i think it's worthwhile attempting it and i think considering the the

124backlog of sidewalks we've got out there anyway i don't think corey is going to be building new sidewalk on river street in the next year or so anyway so it might give us a chance to test this out as a traffic measure um the one way and plan on revisiting it before he does any physical changes down there other than putting up the signs thank you him again yeah thank you i have two questions for corey um the first question is um based on the feedback you've gotten today do you think that there might be any changes to the current plan that you're envisioning and then the second question is um if we you know were to decide on doing a trial run is that even feasible from where you stand yeah i mean if

125we were to if you were to approve this and we could always revisit it a year from now or six months from now this is something we implement i work with the police to establish sort of the next steps and now we're going to roll it out publicize it with message boards or whatever so there's a we try to work with them as far as just getting enough um signage or something up there so it educates the drivers it'll be a change similar to when we did parker and high we try to get the signs out the markings and message boards just to try to really reinforce what we were doing it it worked well there so um but hopefully try to do something similar to try to pre-warn drivers as they're coming through here

126as a sort of a changing pattern did you have another question no anybody else corey you've heard a lot of comments here i wonder if you had any particular responses or reactions to any of them yeah no we've um as jonah said we did a neighborhood meeting um it was a year ago but we met with them um we've gotten a lot of emails over the um over the last several years related to the um sidewalk design itself um trying to see what we can do to move it forward so um this has been sort of an ongoing dialogue with the neighbors so i would look forward to that continuing so as we implement some of these changes we get their feedback because they they live and breathe this day and day out so they're

127kind of the best experts of what's happening out there corey what do you um think about narrowing down the the entrance to school street possibly you know shifting it to the left a little bit as you enter it and you know and making it more of a right turn and if if you thought that was a good idea um would would that happen concurrent with installation of sidewalks or what would you suggest yeah we have to look at how we how we would roll it out with the phasing because with the one-way stretch that would allow us to run the sidewalk down the fort bond brook site so we were already looking at some kind of an houring there because we would sort of stay away from those larger trees that are right up there

128and we could look at that as david had mentioned making that a little bit more of a 90 degrees i think that would help right now versus um where it's it is a fairly easy right to make without slowing down so um this would that would help us to um reduce those speeds as you're turning on we'd have to look at how we implement that um now without the sidewalk going on but i'm sure we can find a way to do that so or would it be possible to temporarily put in a temporary speed bump i really don't like speed bumps because someone mentioned that it's they're noisy and i think people don't like the noise after a while or maybe they don't like it in the beginning [Music] but uh uh until we had

129a chance to narrow down the neck of the street um or put in the sidewalks there well is it is that temporary speed bump a possibility we could look into that um i do know it's not getting into speed bumps i know the fire typically has concerns because now they're going to be driving over them as they're responding or neighbors there are new styles out there that are segmented so that the so for the emergency vehicles having a wider wheelbase um they can drive sort of in between the humps rather than just having one continuous one so it's something we could look into and see what might work and might not cause the detriment to the emergency personnel or any permanent or temporary traffic coming measure there and i also have to say that we've

130heard a few comments tonight um i think it's definitely worth investigating the three ways to stop at chadwick in school even before the comments tonight i've heard people expressed concerns about the the entrance to the uh s curves uh westbound on on school street and people continuing a pretty pretty fast speed through there so i think that's um that that's worthwhile we heard a few people tonight i've never been there when there have been this um you know screeching of tires and things like that but um i've certainly seen that that um the people go through their vest jim um so when i think about safety there and i think about speed limits one thing i've learned in our traffic time together is that putting a sign up isn't what slows traffic down it's the

131condition of the road uh you know the the or the appearance of the condition of the road through the drivers does it feel like a place where i need to drive slowly so to me the big win is when the road is can become narrow so that i mean i'm okay either making this decision tonight or at a future meeting but i don't think we should make it temporary because temporary means that we can't do the work to actually narrow it and we can't reliably plan a sidewalk because if we undo it the sidewalk suddenly doesn't have a place to go so i would rather either tonight or at a future meeting after more community input just make the decision and make it make it permanent you know as permanent as decisions are so we

132can go ahead with actually changing the conditions of the road making it narrow adding sidewalks that's that's the big win for me is to is when we get to the real place of safety there it's a really difficult place to live and feel safe so i don't think there's any ideal solution that's going to make everyone happy but this does seem like for the most people the best way of creating safety is to neck that thing down and get a sidewalk thank you i i completely agree that it's very difficult to make this a temporary solution um if we did make it temporary uh we would have to hold off any work on on sidewalks until we decided that it wasn't temporary any longer um and i i just want to uh you know because

133several people asked and um i've attended uh the community meetings all the sidewalk meetings read all the sidewalk designs and and this this design the the the problem for uh this to get everything through that section is if we didn't make it one way there then the the um the sidewalk has to be on the house side of school street or not the riverside and it is because of the nature of the houses there it is really really close to some houses and in fact there are one or two places where there couldn't be a sidewalk there to actually be a gap because the house is in the way um and so there's just not enough room for a two-way street and a sidewalk and so people would have to walk out in the traffic

134lane because we couldn't fit a sidewalk there the the advantage to putting making this one way in addition that the sidewalk fits is that this in several people have mentioned that this tonight is that sidewalk can be continuous contiguous all on the south side or river side of the street for the full extent which is means that you know someone using the sidewalk doesn't have to cross the street over and and back so um what's what's the the sense of the the board do we want to vote on this tonight um uh um i think that perhaps postponing it or extending the public hearing would probably be a good idea because i do think there were several valid points exactly like you said like you know making the three-way stop sign um you know making

135sure that like we're thinking about narrowing down the road where to put sidewalks i think all of those are important to consider so i would be in favor of extending the public hearing on this okay you want to bring it up at a at a future meeting uh relatively soon um and so um uh maybe corey i think that uh in members of the board please correct me if i'm wrong there are several things to to consider and they could be separate orders here the three-way stop at chadwick in school a narrow down or other traffic coming measure at the entrance to river and other people asked about the feasibility of putting a sidewalk and chadwick at the time we put the sidewalks on on river so mr manager uh if if i may just

136just a note to the virtual audience and and the in-person audience uh we did have an email distribution list based on people that attended the meeting that we held outside last summer or maybe it was two summers ago if you're not on that list if you want to send an email to manager actonma.gov and we'll make sure that you're included on for future um distributions to that list you also have the ability to subscribe to notices of public hearings but that would get you everything if you're just interested about this i can add you to our list and also the public hearing the documents related to this discussion on the second is a link to him on the second page of the agenda where you can access the traffic study that was referenced tonight jim

137to add to your list of issues we should be looking at is speed limit as well okay i'm not taking any more comments now okay um so we'll bring this up at another another meeting again soon thank you everybody um our next next public hearing um notice is here by given under oh thank you very much corey um notice it's here by giving under chapter 138 section 12 of the general laws that the select board will hold a public hearing on may 23rd 2022 at 7 30 p.m in the francis faulkner hearing room actontown hall and remotely by your video conference and call in on the application of leland uh inc for a change in manager from gerard lebron to joan labros for an all alcohol license as a common viddler at 469 416 great

138road acton from a computer please uh click on the link to join the public uh meeting activemad.gov slash meeting bos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9923 and enter the webinar id 503-918-785 telephone users may dial star 9 to request to speak after joining the meeting computer and app users may use the raised hand feature to speak mr manager thank you this is related to the lately restaurant i don't believe is there someone is a representative oh would you mind sharing with us the details of your request thank you yes please my husband and i ran leone for 50 years uh he passed in december and i'm requesting the change that's it thank you do you intend to keep the restaurant open i'm sorry are you going to be keeping the restaurant open sorry i am

139putting it on sale and if it sells as a restaurant we'll need the liquor license thank you any questions from the board any any questions or comments from members of the public any online comments um seeing none i'll take a motion to close the public hearing thank you thank you move we closed close the hearing is there a second second motion has been made in second and all in favor of closing the public hearing say aye any further discussion on the part of the board i would take a a motion then to approve the change in manager at le uh for an alcohol license as a common fiddler um at 469 great road show moved is there a second a second so team moves in france seconds uh all in favor say aye aye any

140opposed it passes unanimously thank you and our last public hearing the the atkins slug court will hold a public hearing on may 23 2022 continued from may 9th 2022 at 7 40 p.m in the francis faulkner hearing room 204 in at the town hall 472 main street acton and virtually at activemad.gov meetings pos on the application of 42 knox trail llc ceo troy gunther for us sites plan site plan special permanent under zoning bylaw section 10.4 at 42 knox trail the applicant proposed to conduct a building trade shop to manufacture and store stone walls application materials and how to participate remotely are available online at actontown hall doc dot actomate dot gov slash ds web slash views slash collection dash one four eight one two slash collection dash one four eight one three um so

141this the applicant has requested that we continue this um mr manager is there a date that they would like to continue to um to yes i think june 6 would work and um i'm not i don't have the schedule in front of me but i think if we said eight o'clock it wouldn't interfere with anything okay so i would take a motion to continue this hearing to um uh june sixth at eight o'clock so moved it's your second second all in favor of continuing the hearing say hi nate it passes unanimously okay on to our first new business item which is selection of officers i would like to say that i believe that there are a few essential principles in this process um uh and a couple of uh good to have guidelines so the

142the first essential principle i think is that um the member uh who uh would fill the office have the time and inclination to fulfill the position it's also essential for a majority of the members to have trust and confidence in the person being selected it's good if members have a choice when selecting an officer and it's good for the board to share the officer experience across across members to that end i'd like to have a process where the board nominates discusses and votes for the chair vice chair and clerk the board has traditionally not taken public comment during this officer selection i would like to continue that so just to detail the process a little bit first for nominations i would encourage encourage members not to be shy about nominating themselves if they feel that

143they would be interested for an office in in that case i would ask any other member to second that nomination if a member is nominated by another member i'll ask that member the member being nominated to second to affirm their interest i'll ask for nominations of members other than the current office holder first and then open it up for other nominations including the current office holder um after the nominations we can discuss to in the in each nominee can advocate for themselves if there is a single member nominated we'll just have an up or down vote if there are more than one then we'll have a roll call where you can vote for the person of your choice if no member gets three votes we'll drop the person with one vote and vote again comments

144questions okay i first opened it up then for um nominations for for chair uh then to start with uh other than me i'd nominate dean okay and i'll i'll open up for nominations for anybody i nominate jim snyder grant okay and i'll second that nomination [Music] sorry we should probably second so i'm sorry we should go back just to dean someone you know a second dean oh sure okay yeah and then um you nominated jim so i'm going to ask jim to to second his nomination sure yes okay any other nominations i nominate david for vice chair or are we going to do that first and then one at a time um so um so i'll give the each of the two people nominated the opportunity to advocate for themselves one of you want to

145go first um what's a little complicated here is that i'm going to be advocating for dean um but i'm but there's some pros and cons in there so we'll call this advocating for myself um i think we've heard the sensible reasons why we have a rotation i'm not going to get into that again except to say that in the case of the financial matters serving on the acting leadership group and working on the budget i have not had the experience that i would like to have in order to do that i'm looking i would i was looking forward to taking a year to learn more about that the other thing i'd like to address is the concerns that have been expressed about dean and address them they mostly center around claims about a possible lack

146of experience or unhelpful attitudes in dealing sensitively with issues that have racial equity and racism involved so i had a couple comments about that um first um unlike a year ago we've now had you know a year's worth of meetings a hundred hours uh to to work with dean and understand how he works and what i've seen is that dean keeps voting with the rest of us on these kinds of issues when they come up indigenous people's day accepting the deic report proceeding with research and interviews on how to structure a deic position now he does sometimes usually note some concerns um dinus described himself as somewhat more conservative than the rest of us and he he brings those concerns in but then he goes ahead and helps create a unanimous vote for moving forward

147so i i don't see him using the power of setting the agenda as as chair to pull us away from the work we are doing because he's actually been a part of the work plus agendas are set with the participation of a vice chair and the town manager so a variety of perspectives are represented in that process the next thing is i'd rather have us deal with issues about you know if we see each other having a lack of sensitivity or lack of knowledge i'd like to see us deal with that by calling each other in rather than calling each other out so in this case you know if i if i hear dean some i hear dean say something that i think is problematic i want to go talk to him about it and

148my experience of talking with you dean is that you listen you change your mind sometimes you are you are not arrogant [Music] you you listen um so that's the way i really prefer to deal with this now now i'm not saying that citizens uh need to do this it's part of what we take on as elected officials uh you know people will bring complaints forward sometimes quite publicly and that's we need to be able to react undefensively i'm just saying that as board members we can be of help to each other by being direct and honest and respectful and we can all learn from each other and create a better board that way um i'd i'd much prefer that we do that rather than preemptively denying him again a chance to be chair um people

149have mentioned the vote issue that that resonates with me to some extent and i and i don't think it's quite clear to me the voting the fact that more people voted for dean than voted for me and voted and voted for you and all that um and it's clear that that's not because half of the town wants to uh you know stop making progress on inclusivity and racial diversity it's because dean has experiences and skills that are useful to the town and people saw that and voted for him our commitment to anti-racism work is not a fad that's going to go away it's very strong it can survive having a slightly more conservative chair for a year and i'd much rather proceed that way with us all working together and creating a model of how

150to work together rather than extending the model of um you know sort of dividing the town up into good guys and bad guys that's my speech thank you dean thank you so um i i would look forward to serving as chair i i think i'm well prepared to move up to be chair having spent two two terms now as vice chair and i learned a lot from two different chairs who had totally and complete different personalities and different approaches to the work so i think i've seen the pluses and minuses of both of those so i think that's valuable and whatever happens with this election certainly i look forward to working with jim and all the members of the board uh in the future um as as was pointed out you know i come from

151a different political point of view than the other members of the board but we found some great points to of agreement and i think although david and i have had some really spirited discussions in the past i think we've had coffee a few times and realized that on on a lot of the core issues in town we tend to agree more than we disagree and i think that's a very positive situation to be in that that we can can disagree on some things agree on others and still act respectfully and in the best interests of the town so however the election comes out um i continue to be a dedicated public servant for the towns i've been for many many years and i look forward to working with everybody else on the board in whatever

152role you decide is appropriate um thank you by general discussion how would you thank you um yeah so i think that um for me it's it's a difficult decision but i think that it comes down to maybe my unique perspective as a new board member on the end also let's call it out a very young boy member i would say that for me following tradition for tradition's sake for me i i think that it does it does lead to many pitfalls and i think we always have to caution ourselves about that um every position that's here is a learning curve every single one of us here had to learn how to adjust to the role of being a select board member it was not an easy process for any of us there are gaps you

153know with our current knowledge that we had to fill being on this board um and equally i would argue for a chair and vice chair and town clerk position which aren't positions of leadership within the select board there it does comprise a learning curve as well and i think that that's going to be inevitable um i do respect that there is a natural progression for a reason um and i do appreciate the benefits of having turnover within that leadership in order to provide more perspectives i think that us as a board can benefit from that i think that it's also important to note that being in any position of leadership is a privilege as was stated before it's not all right no one is automatically entitled to it you have to earn it um and

154i think that everyone here recognizes that and for me it's also my decision is definitely going to come down to looking at what i view is what the select word priority should be and everyone is going to have their different priorities and that's you know and that in many ways will determine how we lean um and a lot of times you know we talk about issues that are partisan and i think that as many people stated you know it's not i think that we need to take a step back and you know if we do prioritize issues such as diversity equity and inclusion i would argue those are not partisan issues those should be non-partisan issues those should be issues that every single person cares about and i would say that people who prioritize it

155and have made it a focal point you know that i they think that should be considered and so i think that i'll stop my rent there but um those are at least just you know that's how i'm gonna be framing my decisions and so i recognize every person's service on the board um you know everyone here has has really given so much to be you know to be in this position of service um and it's it's a really important role and so i think that we can't we can't underestimate that and i think that's what's going to be framing my decision today other discussion i just have a quick comment in that i too i'm struck by the status quo um i don't think that it like to echo what hema just said it's not

156it is a privilege and and not a given um and i also believe in the natural progression but there's nothing in the town charter that says that even lists a progression like that and i've watched jim um actually blossom in the role that he is in now and i would i would completely support him in the chair position and i and i know that he would rise to the occasion and and i've listened to a lot of constituents and and he would have a lot of support in that regard that's that's it are there general comments i i i i completely agree with the people who uh at the beginning of the meeting who said this is a nonpartisan decision i think that we've all worked together in a nonpartisan fashion already in fact i

157um have said a couple of times you know so first of all for oml reasons we can kind of only collaborate with one other member of the board on any given issue um you know we can't get three of us together outside of a meeting and so you have to choose someone to collaborate with on any given issue and i probably collaborated with dean on more issues than in any other member however i don't believe in the the round robin thing at all you know i think it's nonsense actually to decide three years ahead who's going to be chair and not even knowing what the makeup of the board is going to be at that time i think it's much much more important that the chair have um uh confidence in in uh the the

158uh the chair and it's i think it's in some ways and in fact more important for us than it is for members of the public because you know when it comes to decision making all of our votes are equal with regardless of the the the chair but for each of us um relies on the the chair to be our proxy for everything here um so i think it's actually more more important for the the members of the board than than than the members of the public um um i you know i i think um this is this is a very tough decision for me i think jim is very detail-oriented would be really good in being being prepared and analyzing the various things that come up again dean i've not i i think dean knows

159a lot about uh town government and things and and is also is also good my um issue my biggest issue and maybe maybe dean can address this is you know a year ago really ago this month i nominated dean to be chair and i strongly encouraged him to take the chairmanship he didn't do that and that and that was because um people were attacked from this board and we needed a different chair at the time and the and dean didn't do that and he defended the previous chair and and since then you know the the people that defended the previous chair i don't think have um uh gone and apologized to the people who are attacked and i think that's very significant to me um i don't know dean if you have anything to say

160as to why um you did that at the time i would have loved to have you be chair a year ago um and then we wouldn't have had the you know the election where i was elected um so i don't know if you have a comment and whether you've reached out to the people who are attacked and and um uh apologize to them well you know there's a couple of uh a couple of issues here one is um i'm more than willing to apologize for anything that i did or anything that i said but it's never been my philosophy to apologize for something that somebody else said or somebody else did i can certainly express solidarity with people that feel that they've been attacked but but i don't believe in in the whole philosophy of

161apologizing for something i think that run rings very shallow uh you know as regards to my support at that time and for retaining the chair i would remind you that there were actually it was a three to two vote to retain the chair it mr benson um had made statements that frankly i would not have made but i think they were made in the heat of the moment and especially where there's a situation where he was only going to be chair for another two months it seemed to me like a very adversarial thing to do to attempt to basically impeach the chair at that point mr benson and i have been acquainted for many years and i'm a situation where i i prize fairness and i also prize loyalty so i think that's what swayed

162my decision to decline the opposite opportunity to move up to a chair for that two-month period thank you any final comments oh go ahead please um yeah no thank you um so i think that um i i just wanted to to note that david thank you so much for being chaired this year um i will say that you know navigating all the complexities that this year brought complexities with their budget you know difficulties with having you know dib discussions those are all really challenging things to navigate and i will say that you know i support the decisions that you've made for the most part i think that you've done the role of chair really well and so just wanted to thank you for that and i think it's cool to have turnover but i think

163it's also important to recognize the current leadership and so dean thanks for being vice chair and and jim town clerk as well i think that um it's you know we we navigated a really tough year and we should give her pasta pat on the back for that okay if there are no more comments we'll we'll vote i'll call members one at a time and please say jim or dean himager jim fran jim [Music] jim dean uh is there anything you can do or say hello so wow that was really loud um one thing that you mentioned david is the importance of just having the capacity to do the job just because it is a really time consuming job requires a lot of research you know it you know it requires you sometimes being prepared more

164so than us board members um so i guess my question is i'd love to hear from each of you whether you believe you have the capacity um and the time um and effort to dedicate to a really heavy role like this one yes i what i would regret is that to do it i would need to give up um being on the green acting board and doing much leadership with the acting climate coalition for for the for the next year so it would make me sad but but i can do that so i i certainly think i've got the time and the the energy to put the effort in there's the challenges i'm familiar with i i'm not heavily involved with uh with other activities other than serving the town as a matter of fact

165i just recently declined to get reappointed on the board of the acting lions club in anticipation of no matter what happens tonight just realized that i i couldn't keep that many balls up in the air at the same time so it's certainly willing to to make any whatever sacrifices need to make sure that you know this would be my primary focus i'll vote for dean so it's three to two redeemed [Applause] i'm not taking any comment quiet please quiet please um dean would you like to chair the uh gobble now or do you want me to finish this agenda item enjoy the rest of the evening david that evening or usually we should switch at the end of the agenda item but i'm happy to do whatever you want i'll at least finish this and

166then we can we can we can talk again so um i'll take uh nominations now for vice chair for um anybody but it's current hover holder which is he already has another office so um uh nominations for vice chair dean i would nominate jim i'll second that this this might go much quicker jim wait wait no wait he's um is there another nomination for vice chair yes i'd like to nominate you david for vice chair okay any others oh so is there a second for me oh sure oh i actually by my rules i should second so i will second for me um any other nominations um so uh jimmy want to go first and sure um a bunch of things i'm looking forward to about being vice chair um one is getting more involved

167in the alg process and learning more about budgets the second is being able to work with dean and the town manager on the agenda and learn more about that process which has been somewhat mysterious to me um [Music] yeah and it feels like good practice for preparing to be chair which if i run for re-election and get re-elected i would be happy to be chair um for for me um i'm i'm happy to do this if people would like me to do it my biggest interest is being on alg i'm a liaison to both the finance committee and the school committee i've invested heavily in understanding the town finance and so i uh it's it's a it's just a strong interest of mine um i will say however in this not for really discussion for

168um tonight is that there's there's nothing in the the alg charge that requires the chair and the vice chair to be the lg reps we can we can select any liaisons we want to alg so um that could go either way so um any general discussion so again i look forward to working with everybody um especially um you know there's been some discussion about you know a progression and learning curve that people go through certainly that i went through in my progression is from clerk to vice chair and i look forward to working with jim especially with the infamous agenda call with the town manager that can get really interesting and really involved and certainly encouraged him to stay on for another term on the other hand david i've been very impressed with the fine

169job that you did representing the town during the alg process and certainly i agree with you that you you certainly have a very excellent understanding and relationship with both school committee and finance committee which is very important so however whether it can be a formalized position in alg or whether it's just you'll be the older statesman that will be able to give lots of advice to whoever is vice chair and myself that would be great so i still i value the idea of bringing people up and i look forward to working with jim but it goes the other way david you and i have had a good working relationship and i hope that will continue okay um any other uh comments okay sorry please go ahead sorry it takes my brain a little bit of

170time um so i guess one question that might help me make my decision is um you know in terms of the vice chair position based on you know what you know of the role and what you think you can add to it what's maybe one thing you would bring to the role you mentioned you know working with alg i'm working with the chair is there anything specific that you would like to bring to the position um i'd like shorter meetings i'd like that might mean having more meetings that's okay by me um i'd like to so i'm thinking about the agenda i'd like to make sure we have time for at every other meeting or so to dive into an issue that's not a specific urgent decision but it's more of a policy discussion i

171think we don't get enough of those um in general i have i have a really strong interest and experience in having meetings be fun and productive i think our meetings are productive they're not very fun and uh i think we can we can do something to shift that ratio i i think for from for me if i was vice chair i think that the the biggest thing i i bring is the is the financial aspects so which i've already mentioned um the the other about the financial stuff um i don't feel the need to go to alg and speak about things i want an excuse to be forced to go and listen so that i can start learning so if we arrange things in such a way that david you're speaking and working with me

172to bring me up to speed on what's going on that would that would meet my needs i just want to i just feel like i need to get more engaged on the financial side of things i'm sure and whatever whatever happens we can discuss that during our liaison discussion other other comments um uh we can uh uh vote now then um [Music] him or jim can i go last i'm still thinking okay jim snyder grant so fran votes for jim uh dean jim schneider right my dean jim oh i'll vote for me sure and um i will also vote for jim and would you yeah i'll vote for jim as well so that that's unanimous [Applause] we haven't gotten to clerk yet um for clerk nominations for um except for jim and dean before i

173nominate you david how much do you like taking notes well i i have to say that i um i when i was clerk i was a different kind of clerk than jim was you know jim is much better at being detail-oriented than i am so i took tourist notes and then reviewed lisa's notes whereas jim no jim's notes are more complete they're quite hard to read so and feel free to nominate yourselves if you'd like now himacha how much do you like taking notes i feel like maybe school should have prepared me for this um it would definitely be a learning curve but i am i'm open to it i'm open to learning i i would nominate him a job second actually i'll ask him ajay the second oh yes you're all second okay um

174another nomination okay um for for this one i will just take an up or down vote and we can take a voice vote all in favor of himager for clerk say hi any opposed that's stupid namaste okay dean do you want to pick up sure all right thank you out of the now the less exciting things hello here we have a review of the haywood road intersection reconstruction that's probably going to get really exciting mr manager thank you i'd invite director york to reappear if he could this is a project that we brought to the select board within the last year with the 25 design and we identified some options for how that hayward road at main street intersection could be reconfigured and at that time the board supported a specific design which included a

175traffic signal uh which which would be a new condition for that intersection and so we're at the point now where we're checking back in with the board um corey's been working with the design team and we are at the 75 design and corey i hope you can share your screen and show us a little bit about what we're where we're at right now thank you yeah try yeah we can see but it's not presentation mode you could probably just zoom in on the on this slide and it might be good enough some reason my mouse isn't working there we go better yes okay um yeah so as john john said we we went through the 25 design hearing uh we selected a concept we've been working with the engineers to advance that so we're at

176a 75 design level so we went through a series of um taking a a little bit more in-depth look in advancing that concept so this is sort of the draft plan showing the lane configurations sort of the new road widenings in some places and even a little bit of an houring in some places but so it shows the um they submitted this for just review and comment i believe we're looking at trying to do another public forum sometime in early june so we were looking just to go through here and see if there's any anything that really catches a ride that needs to be tweaked um you know i think for the example here i just gave the plan sheet that has the pavement markings and signage so you'll see you see the new crosswalks

177at the intersections um you'll see the those shaded areas of where the bike lanes would come in so there's um you see the dash lines where the bike flames are cutting through the intersection and then on hayward road you see the bike lane there that has a bike box in the front so that has an area that would detect the bikes there'd be across main street there's a mast arm being proposed there for the signals that would be facing both approaches and then there'd be some signal posts on the other corners for the other signals and pedestrian signals for signalized crossing the the project itself we had them extend up into coughlin street up that way so as you look up there a little bit of a they show a little bit of a road

178narrowing there reduce some of the pavement kind of shorten that crossing um to make it a little bit shorter of a distance for a pedestrian trying to cross the street there and if you look across the street at musket drive there is a tree there so we worked with the consultant to preserve that tree so the sidewalk is pretty close to where it is now we're trying to stay away from that tree location and you'll see so as we come back down towards the hayward and main that center island that unfortunately the tractor trailers are sort of tripping over and clipping the sign that would be removed it's a painted island there and then we show an extension of a sidewalk going down main street heading towards um sort of where the senior housing would

179be and you see a kind of bump out there so one thing we're looking at is the potential there's a large tree there as well so trying to preserve that tree um so some of that work there when we're on that side is going to involve easements so it's something we haven't approached the neighbor yet but we're trying to get a design to a point that made it um that we will come to with as we get ready to start talking to the public about all these so that's kind of the general gist of what you see here this plan shows a series of the different signs one of the things would be the no turn on red so the right turn onto haywood road would have a no turn on red and i believe

180same with hayward road i think would have a no turn on red as well so um so some modifications there and you'll see the on the main street northbound you see the staggered stop lines there so the left turn lane is staggered back that allows the larger truck traffic the maneuvering to come out of that um intersection and make that swing to sort of head south down towards root two so there's components of that where they were doing turning templates i'm trying to make sure everything works um the looking at the delays things like that so um that's basically the project that we have right now before you so um any questions or comments i can take those back to the consultant as they sort of fine tune this and get ready for the next

181step and and if i may and so corey the the goal here with being before the board is before we go to a public forum we want to make sure that if there's any concerns that this board has that we don't go past those until you know present something that we already know there's an issue with so from a high level from this plan view or otherwise if there's anything that stands out to you or if you want us to look into further as as corey mentioned we were looking at early june for the forum but it certainly could be extended until late june or however much time is needed depending on what concerns are brought up at this at this point okay thank you any comments or questions from the board members jim i'm

182yeah so i went back and looked at the november minutes which is the last time we discussed this and i just want to remind us that the vote to support it was three to two so it's not like a big ringing endorsement of the plan so i think there may be uh you know concerns that we'd like to look at more let's see looking at the minutes one particular question came up about whether there had been any whether there was any new information about either pedestrian safety or car safety like accident information after the pedestrian light went in and after the road hayward road was widened because i guess we were speculating that perhaps those changes had already increased safety um and that was a good thing maybe we didn't need to do this whole

183plan so i guess that's a question for corey yeah this time i i'll have to go back and talk to the consultant about that um we have the data working on this i matter if it's been simulated based on the timing of those okay questions from other members of the board david uh i don't have any questions but i have a just a few comments i think this this plan is excellent i like the um the left-hand turn lane northbound on main street i like the right-hand turn southbound on main street i like the fact that there is no extra turn lane outbound from hayward um i like the uh the the way that the sidewalks are integrated here i like the bike boxes the the bike lanes the fact that now the intersection goes

184through musket and coughlin um i i think this is it's worked out to be um excellent um you know it um to to address you know the the thing that jim brought up uh i think it's not just the crosswalk there at crossing main street to be able to get to hayward right the um the the bicycle safety through this intersection is significantly improved um it you you'd have to you know be experienced slash gutsy rider to take uh the the left-hand turn from uh on a bicycle uh northbound at main street onto hayward i mean you can do it i would do it but it's it's it's a gutsy thing i think no parent would want their 15 year old to do that i also will say the way the intersection is currently the

185fact that buses can get out of hayward at all is due and and requires this coordination of three lanes of traffic to stop for them and it doesn't always happen right i think i'm sure that all of us have driven through that intersection you know at morning or afternoon bus times and the buses can't get out of there and until usually someone northbound stops usually the right-hand person northbound stops then the left-hand person decides not to go then the other people southbound eventually stop and then a whole line of buses comes out because everybody now waits for three or four buses to come out and that was a huge problem right i also think it's not only the buses problem but it's the 16 year old new drivers coming out of hayward turning left onto

186main street as a new driver is again you have to be it's a gutsy move and i think this intersection design increases the safety here for new drivers enormously and i have heard from parents of 16 year olds of course their 16 year olds become 17 and 18 year olds and then the parents are less concerned but i've heard of um from before i was on the board you know uh until now you know people concerned about their their new drivers coming out of concord and turning left coming out of newtown and turning left or coming out of hayward and turning left so i i i think you know we've made a few improvements to this over time i really like the way it is now thank you um yeah from from my point of

187view it seems like i've spent a good chunk of my life stuck at the intersection of hayward and maine because of where i live i think the improvement to school related traffic whether it be buses or parents or young drivers the improvements to that school age population is is just really critical in this area and i i think this should do it also i've witnessed you know constant issues with large truck traffic from hearts getting in through that intersection so i think you've solved some of those problems as well so i i think that's all good and i'm really very much in favor of this plan the one point that i would like to make is that when you plan on the next forum i'd like to see to make sure that there'd be a

188real positive effort made by town staff to reach out to some of the abutters within a reasonable radius of the intersection the ones that are going to be impacted by it not only in the short term with construction but also obviously there's there's going to be traffic lights there there's going to be idling cars there probably fewer idling cars there once you have a rational traffic solution than than what happens right now but i think it's important to uh to make sure that you know people within you know maybe a 300 foot radius or 500 foot radius of this actually be firmly notified that there'll be a form coming up so we make sure that we hear their input thank you yes actually on that point one question for cory is in terms of the

189outreach to the public for this public forum um i was wondering if you were planning on reaching or reaching out to people just living within that radius or maybe like sending a more town wide um plus just because i know that well as was mentioned a lot of like you know there are a lot of school children on that road um a lot of buses that go through there i feel like this specific intersection does affect more of the town um so i was just wondering about that yeah typically with a forum like this we work with john and i t to post it on the website to get alerts out as much as we can that way um we in in addition this has a impact with schools we try to reach out to

190the schools to get the word out that way to get distributed as much as possible so we do try to reach out much further beyond just direct letters or a certain radius because uh a lot of commuted traffic through here and school traffic so we try to hit um try to hit all those to get them aware of it and get them to sort of look at it get their comments thank you uh any comments from the public first anyone in the room i'm a little confused is this going to be stop signs or traffic lights i i'm sorry i'm having a little trouble with my hearing aids but i think it's a traffic light it's okay i'm saying is there gonna be traffic lights from now on when once this is done or like

191stop sign uh i'm pretty sure i know the answer but i'll i'll hand it off to corey would you describe exactly what the traffic control will be there yeah this would be a signalized intersection is what's being proposed so the catholic signals for all the approaches alert traffic when stopping to go okay great my last question is is there any plans to fix uh the sidewalks along um all of from that point on up to the point where we get here to town hall because a lot of our sidewalks are kind of hazardous uh there's been damage and if you guys are gonna um do this which is much needed even i as a 41 year old not only scared for my soon to be six you know my 17 year old that is going

192to be driving soon but even i have issues and get scared coming out of hayward or going into hayward people pretty aggressive when you're trying to let people come through but definitely uh plans on fixing our sidewalks there would be a good thing thank you thank you yes tara from west ham thank you dean a good first move on the first day to notify abutters that the most vulnerable people the parents and children or the people that live around which effectively when these traffic lights go in that create a race course situation to get through the light they also create idling where it doesn't need to be because they could have gone if it was a stop sign as the person from prospect in maine was very concerned and i urge that the radius of

193the abutter notices go into the development because the people are very concerned about the cut-through situation when people are stuck at lights i realize that would maybe seem the same when it's a stop sign but the stop sign situation it's only clogged there for a couple hours a day and so i urge you to be inclusive in the butter notices mailed paper copy butter notices to a wide enough range the people will be affected by the cut through situation in particular there are people with disabilities that are live in the neighborhood the musket drive and the other drive into the um i forget what it's called with the heights there presidential heights um they are concerned and they didn't when i emailed them when i saw the agenda they had no idea that this was

194coming so i urge you to send out paper mailed copies to people within a quarter mile thank you at least thank you um matt do we have any online questions we do not mr chair thank you so jim looking through the minutes again had another question um there was an unknown about adding the extra left turn lane if that would require widening to the point that there would be expensive ledge work and that was one of the things we were looking for as the design got developed and i didn't know whether this was enough of a development to figure that out or whether that's still a mystery of how that might increase the cost i know in looking at this design the engineer was trying to be cautious of what we knew for known lynch

195um i think we're trying to minimize that as much as possible while still trying to improve the intersection so i can um i can work with them to get more of a identification of what they've seen but i know they were trying to be cognizant of that not get too too much cost in theirs doing a huge amount of blasting and just a final comment about the cut-throughs so what we're basically talking about is changing um the wait times for you know that awful weight on hayward when we're waiting trying to go on on main street they're cutting that down from three minutes to 90 seconds um and it's three minutes you know like it could be shorter it could be longer sort of an unpredictable time would become a predictable time so that's a

196nice feature it does then of course create backups north and south on 27. and that's um [Music] you know that's an unfortunate trade-off i'm not sure it's an improvement um so that's why so from a traffic flow point of view i'm not particularly enthusiastic but any of the safety features i'm very enthusiastic about um the the cut through issues were actually they were both ways so um and it cut both ways because on the one hand if you reduce the traffic back up on hayward then you have fewer people who are coming on hayward than cutting through jefferson uh you know like northbound but if you add a backup on 27 you have more people who are coming south going ah there's a light there i'm gonna turn right and then so they they then

197add traffic to the to the back streets now what you pointed out dean was that you know these are these are still public streets it's not it's not a it's not part of our goal to keep cars off of you know streets but you did suggest at the time that if it does change the traffic patterns it might be wise to look at widening those streets uh the back street so that if there's going to be more traffic let's at least make it safe enough to have you know bike lanes sidewalks you know room for people to get around you know these are not the streets aren't owned by the cars they're they're our streets that's all thank you david yeah i just i just wanted to say one advantage to the traffic light um

198from an acting center point of view is that the traffic will be pulsed a little bit right um which you know we're not proposing to to signalize uh acting center and and therefore um it gives a you we're making it better you know by not having as many uh directions of travel through the um newtown concord road intersection but that's all and it's secondly one i just wanted this is completely separate one important thing to move around move forward with this is um uh there are the infrastructure bill did pass the federal government so there's money around and so um if we have a shovel ready design we may be able to leverage some of that money thank you any other board comments um well mr manager uh i don't know what you need from

199us i think the next step if of course he's got in mind to do a forum with proper notification i think pretty much seems like all thumbs up on the design that we have right now thank you we will um we will let you know what what the date looks like for that and we'll probably we'll be able to announce it at the next meeting or sooner and sooner i guess i should say okay thank you all right item 8 installing new 25 mile per hour signs mass r29b signs um mr manager thank you uh we've been working to improve signage throughout the community and this is another example of that i wonder if cory has a picture of what these signs look like i know those one in the packet right oh you're muted

200and could you just also tell us more about the intent of this request and why it's before the board corey um yeah so we have um as you know back in the 2020 special town meeting there was an article um that that talked about the modernization act for um for the town and so the town had adopted adopted those provisions it was kind of two parts uh one was adopting components of section 17c of mastering law chapter 90. and what that did was give the town the select board the authority to establish um in thickly settled on posted um roads or they don't have a posted speed limit now the thickly settled uh before the opt-in was 30 miles an hour this allows the thickly settled to be 25 miles an hour so if you

201can see my screen on the bottom left you'll see a sign that says thickly settled on top with the speed limit 25 and ours would say town wide and um on the bottom it says unless otherwise posted what that is is um streets that have an approved posted speed limit now would that would still govern this is for the unposted streets um so and these signs would be um are proposed to be installed sort of all the gateways coming into acton so i think there's approximately about 17 locations or so where as commuters are driving the drivers are coming into acting you put these at all the town lines um areas so if they're being forewarned that um that we did do that opt-in so be a 25 mile an hour for the unposted thickly

202settled versus um the pry which is 30. the if you look at the sign the other side on the right is the yellow thickly settled 25 hour in in speaking with the state i was asking some clarification because we have gotten questions about posting individual streets they informed me that if the select board if they opted to prove say we had an unposted road that we wanted to add um a 25 mile sign two to reinforce that um element we couldn't that that's the that's the approved sign that we'd be putting up on those streets it wouldn't be the regulatory white black it would be the advisory sign that's being shown right now i think what we're looking at tonight would be just getting your um getting your okay to proceed putting up the sort

203of the the town wide particularly settled 24 hour signs and sort of all the entrances as you drive in that and to try to alert everyone as they're coming in this is in effect okay thank you um any uh questions from the board david yeah does um uh you know i assume that this is a good thing for uh the police to enforce speeds on back roads is that actually a true statement that did have the police weighed in on this back when we did the special tom meeting we worked with the police on it and we were doing it i haven't worked with them recently we were just getting ready to look at putting these up which helps because as they're doing enforcement on these unposted streets we would need to have that signage

204in place for them to help reinforce the new speed limit i i i think this is a good idea concord does this it you know gives us a chance to do this i have one other question um completely hypothetically if i know that normally changing the speed limit requires a study where we need to determine the current percentile speeds and that kind of thing but does this allow us again completely hypothetically to take down speed limit signs say on a street like river street and then is it 25 miles an hour no that that because those have approved special speed regulations um this doesn't this doesn't affect those streets in order to change those um special speed regulations we'd have to go through a speed study and um and go to the normal process okay

205that's that's that's what i suspected but i still think this is a good idea there's a number of back roads that have straight sections and um and and you know people shouldn't be flying down them thank you so corey i i would expect that probably uh this would apply uh in large part to some of the uh subdivisions of town which don't have posted speed limits um is that correct yeah that's correct a lot of that um as you said a lot of those streets they don't have a sign you'll see some of the older streets that potentially don't i think um i think it came up when the north factory fire station came up i don't believe harris street has a has a studies met the thickly settled it would apply to streets like

206that predominantly probably subdivisions okay thank you um yeah i think we've certainly heard enough earlier in the evening about speeding cars so it doesn't seem to be going away any other questions from members of the board jim um as i said before i'm not much on signs as a way of actually changing behavior so i you know i don't have a strong sense of that this is going to do much good but i'm happy not to stand in the way if folks think it's a good idea i it certainly couldn't hurt i just don't think it'll help much thank you tara west acton um i love this idea uh i would hope that it says town-wide not city-wide uh i have a couple questions uh town-wide instead of city-wide on the town right so um

207it was my understanding that the town can [Music] put in place a safety zone on a numbered highway they have them in sudbury where they're 25 miles an hour and i've heard that they can't change the speed limit from 30 in west acton for example because it's a state highway well why are other towns doing it so i started looking into this and found out that the town has to declare a safety zone and then apply to the state or something like that i urge us to do that i love the idea of a town wide 25 miles an hour unless you know uh you know where nobody's living or something like that posted but um i i don't want to ignore the highways we live right on a highway and they are just going

20860 miles an hour 60 miles an hour down river street 60 miles an hour everywhere else and at least gives the cops something that they can rely on in terms of enforcement right now they say they can't do anything effectively but more blinking lights they help even though there's a rolling one down on 111 right now and we just put we just took a couple chairs and sat down and watched everybody and started looking at the uh the speed limit on the thing and and they seemed to be working the blinking lights seemed to work really well so i urge you not only to do the stagnant signs but to do the live light signs with a smile because there's i was in new hampshire and they had one that had smile on it when

209you were going the right speed i thought that was kind of cool um would this include when you're coming in when you're in mass on exit 43 you know how you take exit 43 and then you get onto mass ave for the people that live at yankee village it becomes a dangerous situation cars come flying it's impossible sometimes they're so rude they honk at you is there a way to put a sign like this right coming off the highway onto mass ave to avoid i'm surprised somebody hasn't gotten killed to be honest with you people don't even respect the buses one of the reasons that i don't let my children take the bus in the morning is because first of all it's a dangerous very early in the morning if my oldest took her best

210two minute man tech it's just there's too many safety concerns with cars random cars coming in and off of 43 but also the other reason is people just don't respect they just continue flying by so having a sign like this coming into acton from exit 43 would be so helpful for the people that live at yankee village and also possibly in the future adding a crosswalk where we could cross to the other side okay corey do you have any reaction to uh mrs cruz's questions i can uh yeah i could talk with us with the state they managed that um ratchet row but as in addition to that we have kelly's foreign improvement project which i think the roadway improvements they don't go off as that far but they do get to the other side

211of roach brothers so we have some roadway improvements going on right now that will hopefully work towards slowing down some of the vehicles but i can reach out to the state whether or not we're allowed to put up an advisory sign at that location thank you um all right any other do we have any uh questions uh out in the virtual audience there are no raised hands okay thank you all right um so mr manager would you like a vote from us to approve this yes please okay i will i would entertain a motion to uh to approve the installation of these new 25 mile per hour m a dash r 2-9 b signs in appropriate locations as determined by the public works director so moved moved by mr martin second second fran moving second

212any other questions then let's vote all in favor of the motion say hi opposed abstentions mr manager thank you for that support would you like me to address the next item fine looking family got there corey all right item nine review bruce freeman rail trail refining designs mr manager thank you so we've been uh awarded a grant to install some new signage along the roof along the corridor that uh for the bruce rainer rail trail and the planning staff and our economic development director along with working group that includes select board member arsenal have been working on the preliminary designs and there was a survey that was published last week like a lot of state grants there's a quick turnaround we have to spend the funding and have the signs fabricated by by the end

213of the fiscal year so the pace on this project is quicker than normal but we're doing everything we can to do some engagement we had about 135 people respond to the survey and most part were favorable with the design concepts that were presented i do have some show and tell here so if you're from if you're familiar with some of the design concepts um on the signage for the bruce wayne rail trail there's a dragonfly theme and so the designer for this new wayfinding program is incorporating that into the signage so that it's a familiar look and feel um and it has a sorry it's black this is the right side and it's a cohesive design and look and so i guess hopefully the board had a chance to see the signage and if there's

214any feedback that you have as a board or individually i'd be helpful to know that because we're going to be continuing to move forward and providing this this is an important um project not just for for the rail trail it's important for the business community along great road it's important for the library uh there are i know that i've i've discussed this with people at the library that not everybody knows that while they're riding their bike they could have access to millions of books and awesome materials and programs just up the road so i think this way finding is a way to have people know that they're passing through some really cool and interesting things here in acton and encourage them to check it out thank you yeah i took a look at the at

215the survey and participated in it those are some great designs i think they really fit nicely so what's what's the next step really just touching base to make sure that there's nothing that you think is horrible about what we're doing here so we can continue to move forward david um just as a matter of feedback i like the uh designs i don't have them in front of me so i can't identify which one but that offered a little bit more information like that that gave the distance i think that's important to you know to say you know pizza's pizza shop one tenth of a mile and people know this basically on top of it or um library four tenths of a mile and then they know you know whatever it is that how far they're

216going to have to cycle so i think that the distances and the names of things are are it's better to have more information i think it'll help people and also using visuals with texts i think is important with words yeah okay thank you any other dish manager so we would appreciate actually if the board would be willing to consider voting to support the design concepts that were presented in the in the packet and as part of that survey i i would move that we support the design concepts that were in the packet to support the design concepts we've seen any other discussion all right all in favor mr martin's motion say aye aye opposed abstentions okay thank you uh mr manager approve revised building permit fees um seems like we've seen this before thank you

217this is a follow-up discussion to uh one that we had i believe it was at the last meeting where we you know throughout the organization we've taken it very seriously from a staff standpoint the climate emergency declaration that the town voted on last year the select board's policy for environmental sustainability that's been a key part of you know what drives what we do and you know everyone across every department has embraced it and tried to find ways that they can be responsive to it whether it's you know changing the electricity supply in our electrical accounts or looking at changing the fleet that we have or all kinds of different things and our building commissioner identified a way that he thought he could make an incremental improvement to support sustainability initiatives understanding that there's probably more

218that could be done in the building permitting process he thought it would be good to try to advance one two specific ideas that he had right now related to capping the amount of fees that we charge for so rooftop solar installations and for energy star certified window installations and those are the two items that we were looking for approval to for the board to support the cap that he had uh proposed that we had proposed and the board's discussion at the last meeting it seemed like there was interest in the idea but there were some questions bigger picture questions about fees generally which i'm continuing to work on and can address going forward but this is something that we think i think could be considered in the meantime thank you questions from the the board

219jim um yeah i was the one i was one of the people that raised some legal questions last time and um looking forward to the answers i so we got you know i got a preliminary you communicated a preliminary note from nina about this stuff and it was clear that the the questions and concerns i had were all about the bigger picture as you're talking about so i think this is a great step i think it's great that tommy was able to you know put this forward and i want to support them i want to support this change thank you david yeah i'm also in favor of making this change um i will say that you know a resident expressed concerns about how we did the the fees um but i i don't think it's

220bad to have um the dollar amount be a proxy for the work right i understand that there's um uh there there are potential pluses and minuses to any scheme but if you change the scheme uh though it'll favor one group and not not another not another group but i think that um trying to um uh the the the dollar amount often is very heavy into the uh the labor involved and the labor correlates directly with the amount that needs to be inspected and you know it may be easy to enumerate the you know with a a more complicated fee schedule for pretty standard projects like maybe a window it's it's not so easy i think for random building projects right and so uh you know if i build um an entryway on the front of

221my house to cut up cut out cut out uh drafts is you know how does that get judged right and i think you know i i understand the the point of view of the the resident and i you know but i i don't i don't fully agree with it i think that the dollar amount is not a bad proxy for the amount of work thank you comments from any of the members of the board immature sorry um can you actually um repeat the two um the two points that um the building commissioner identified one was to establish a maximum amount of charge in fees for the installation for the inspection of the installation of energy star certified windows and the other was capping the amount of electrical fees the capping amount of fees charge associated

222with rooftop solar installations thank you jim um just to have a preview of you know a future discussion um when we look at the climate action plan there's going to need to be a lot of retrofit work um and on the other end we look at the climate action plan construction is is is a challenge environmentally so if i was thinking about adjusting the fees in the long run i'd want to reduce the the rehab fees and increase the new construction fees but again i think that's that's that's major work i understand to to to analyze that and make sure it's done in a legal way and so it's just uh it's it's a direction that i'd like to see us moving in thank you and he might do well with um you know properties

223in in the historic districts as well renault so that would be a good plan okay thank you uh any questions from the audience who are fading fast okay uh we could call on them individually yeah are you sure the uh so i would be willing to entertain a motion at this point well i would move that we approve these proposed changes to the building fee schedule this second moved by mr grant snyder grant seconded by ms arsenault any other questions comments all right all in favor mr snyder grant's motion please say aye aye opposed abstentions passed unanimously item 11 um municipal agreement for an electrical inspector with the town of littleton mr manager thank you this is a project that we've been working on now for a little while and basically the town of littleton

224and the town of acton currently utilize similar staffing to do electrical inspections but there's no formal agreement for how their time is shared and we believe that having a formal intra-municipal agreement that makes the person an employee of littleton and we're just helping to cover the cost of that employment and they work for us i think the split that we're considering is they're actually going to work for us 55 percent of the time and there and and 45 over there which equates to 22 hours a week which which commissioner morberg believes is sufficient and so it's one of those scenarios where it could it works out well for both communities in this case and what this ask is of of the board center is for you to authorize me to enter into this municipal agreement

225which is drafted i believe as a three-year agreement but i would certainly be interested in just you authorizing for the first year to see how it goes if that's if you're more comfortable with that approach okay um do you would you like us to review the agreement or do you want to bring it back to us or do you think we should just yeah you don't want to just review without ever seeing it sorry i thought you i thought i sent it to you um i can describe it in great detail and i can also bring it back again on june 6th what's the uh i'll point out that we have a number of any municipal agreements that are usually engineered by our town manager and brought back to us and our eyes glaze over

226and we approve them so it's the view of the board would you like to see the agreement or should we authorize the manager to move ahead with it jim this feels close enough to an employment and staffing issue that i'm entirely comfortable with the town manager handling it david i i would agree with that i just have one question if i if i might today do how often do we hire an electrician an outside electrician to do an inspection how often do we use this the employee of littleton this this employee does all of our inspections currently thank you unless he's on vacation then we hire us up but he's our primary um jim i think your comment sounded like a motion oh yeah let's see if it was a motion it would be something

227like we approve the manager proceeding with this inner municipal agreement with littleton okay we've got a motion and second allow the town manager to move ahead uh with developing this and and getting it implemented well i'm sorry um are we doing that for the first year or for three years happy to take suggestions on my motion whether to make it one year or three david i'm happy to leave it open so that the town manager decides whatever he thinks is prudent if he's squeamish about it he could do one year he's confident about it he could do three years yeah authorized to create whatever length contract between one and three years that you choose and i'll i'll accept the friendly second okay okay so uh motion floored some second any final comments if not let's

228let's vote all in favor of mr snyder grant's motion say i i opposed abstentions hey mr manager i've got your marching orders thank you for the support i appreciate it okay item 12. um so acton is uh is being honored this year because this will be our 25th year as a tree city usa um it's it's actually something i was involved in early on in my career we were a tree city for a number of years and it lapsed and then uh due to the outstanding efforts of uh our public works director corey york and our tree warden ryan hunt we've been reestablished for the last couple of years and now we hit 25 years so it's it's kind of a big deal so department of conservation recreation has an award ceremony and a little

229get-together of representatives from all the towns getting tree city usa awards and this year they've asked to hold it at narrow park and they have asked for a member of the select board or the town manager to come up and make some remarks which i would be delighted to do and certainly i would invite anybody else on the board that would like to come up as well you know hang around with a bunch of people shaking the sawdust out of their clothes for the day and so i think it's a great honor and uh and i just really wanted to let everybody know that we are receiving this honor this year and it's uh it's it's really i think it's important for us because this board and previous boards have prioritized the environmental protection and

230planting trees and protecting trees and even the most recent town meeting that we had passed a non-binding resolution look at some more tree regulations so i think it's really important that you know acton has been sort of a leader in this sort of thing and we continue to be and uh it's a great honor for us to uh to host this event so that's it just advisory it's going to be on june 8th and certainly i will get more information out if any members of the board wish to attend uh say hi there'll probably be 50 or 63 wardens there and and brief ceremonies and training sessions so it's that um item 13 discuss non-resident membership for land stewardship committee uh mr snyder grant raised this question um so um turns out that for proper

231liability coverage we we have all of our land stewards who are assigned particular parcels to be associate members so we got a lot of associate members and a lot of parcels turns out you know if you have people walking around with you know sharp equipment you want them to have good liability insurance um so they've identified the lead stewards have identified a possible new land steward who lives like just over the line in a different town and the vcc has looked at this question in the past and determined that it's fine there's a very few special boards and committees chartered by state law that specifically require residents but the all those others the select board can choose to appoint non-resident committee members this was done for example to bring non-resident owners of acton businesses into

232some of our planning committees so i just wanted to make sure the board was comfortable with this general idea for the lan steward committee before having the vcc run through the interview process with this person uh discussion points might include whether a non-resident associate member could ever become a full voting member and whether we want to set an expectation about how many or what percentage of associate members can be from out of town or do you want to leave it all of this you know open okay thank you and i am actually liaison to the land stewardship committee and i we are constantly turning through folks uh there's lots of territory out there and it's great to have volunteers whether they be acting residents or not but certainly any reaction from other members of the

233board david yeah i i would be comfortable making associate non-voting members uh um non-actin residents i'd have more reservations with the voting members myself um i'm wondering whether we should actually change the charge to his officially say that um you know just so the vcc can you know when we're talking four years five years down the road you know what's our policy here again i think our policy should be enumerated and if we do that i was trying to find it here i can't seem to find it i'm pretty sure that bettina abe sent us a note asking that we increased the term of the associate members from one year to three years yeah um so if we choose to change the charge we could do both of those things um if it seems reasonable

234to me almost all of our committees are our three years um and it just reduces overhead of having to you know reappoint people every year um so i would be comfortable in both those uh things but i would like to modify the charge to say that associate members can be whatever we want to say residents of towns adjacent to act or something okay great um comments from other members of the board yeah um it's sunday's on an initial term it's good to have a single year then if you get a dud it's easy to let them go but you know i i struggled through that painful experience when i was chair of the llc so it's good to have short terms but after the first term yeah three years lovely less work okay one quick

235question has there been interest from other towns yeah there's a specific person they have in mind who lives right next to a conservation land over the border so they wanted to bring that person forward so if the board's comfy with that i'll go ahead and have that person go through the vcc process and put them on the consent calendar and it sounds like then you get the job of taking assuming you're still the liaison of the lsc in a couple weeks because who knows you'll take that back to them and say let's change the charter and bring it back okay okay um immediately thanks um yeah so a few questions so um if we allowed non-residents to become associate members by default they wouldn't be able to vote only full members can vote so do

236we want to put in something that says you know that some like a non-resident can become an associate member or a full-time member depending on like that process through which they move and they could be a voting member or should we codify that i'm happy to let the llc make the recommendation depending on what makes sense to them i don't have a strong feeling about it do you do i i don't really have any thoughts on that i i would talk to it while i've got this in my mind talk to the larger issue i know that there are several other boards and committees in town that are actually wrestling with the same idea members of existing committees who move out of town temporarily due to housing situations um and uh you know there's a

237couple of of individuals that have wanted to stay uh members in some fashion so you know this might be setting a bit of a precedent which is probably good things who know how to go about it david yes i um whatever we decide again i would just prefer that it'd be in the charge so that we know what we're doing and i'm fine with saying that associate members first year is a one-year term subsequent terms of three years terms whatever we want to put in the charge is is fine um and um uh i don't know whether that means gives a chicken and egg thing with the vcc whether we want to you know bring a charge back to the next meeting and and vote it up or whatever but you know you guys can

238decide that um i also think that it's really important and i we could add it to all of them if we wanted that you know full members have to be um town residents i i think it's in the past it's set up conflicts of interest that i personally haven't been comfortable with when people have moved out of town and made decisions for us that i thought were not appropriate um and um so anyway that's that's that's my feeling i think you know we if if we're modifying the charge in this case anyway we can just say to to clarify what imagery was bringing up that the full members would need to be acting residents which means no one could be promoted if they were out but i wouldn't mind adding that to every um board

239of committee that that that the select board charters okay great um i think jim we've got the sense of the board um i'd say reach out to vcc and have them get you know interview this person and in the meantime um i'll talk with you because you've got a much deeper history with land stewardship than i do and we can come up with a revised charge that we can bring back um so unless there's any other questions on that tariff mistaken uh what about these boards and committees that have town staff as a voting member i can think of one the water resources advisory committee has a staff member from the acton water district i think there might be a couple of other committees where there's a staff member having a vote i would hope

240that we would re-examine that i feel like it's important to have the residents be represented and staff and staff that's great um but i think it's important for the voting members to be residents thank you thank you okay um in i think we're ready to hit the consent items so i'll read through and if anybody wishes to hold please say hold i'm 14 approved meeting minutes april 25th 2022 [Applause] item 15 accept gift of 750 from acton pharmacy to support the 2022 summer concert series and special events item 16 accept gift of five hundred dollars from david martin and miriam wiesak to support the 2022 summer concert series and special events i'd like to hold that item seventeen accept gift of fifteen hundred dollars from rap scalia table and tap to support the 2022 summer

241concert series and special events 18 accept gift of 750 dollars from various donations to support the acton dog park and 19 one day alcoholic beverage licensed boston area gleaners stone field farm june 25 item 20 one-day alcoholic beverage license rebecca higgins powder mill animal hospital june 3rd 2022 and item 21 except gift to sidewalk fund of 65 000 from applewood realty company pursuant to the settlement agreement related to 62 to 64 pope road so i'll entertain a motion to accept items 14 and 15 and 17-21 inclusive so moved moved by mr snyder grant the second seconded by mr mr martin abstentions unanimous item 16 mr martin yeah i would just like to sing to this one that's all and i just want to thank you for making such a generous donation very good uh so

242accept a motion to accept item 16 accept gift of 500 with our thanks from david martin and miriam lizak you made a motion i would accept it oh okay sure some moves second okay moved in second all in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions okay one abstention all right um i'm looking for one more motion [Applause] [Laughter] okay it's like moved by fran seconded by imager all in favor say aye opposed extensions thank you very much and i thank everybody on the board this was a tough meeting a tough meeting and it could have gone really badly and and i'm really delighted with the way it turned out um not because of who got elected but just because the way we comported ourselves thank you thank you you