Acton, MA Select Board Meeting 5/17/2021

001ed norton um so um noting the hour and the presence of a quorum i'd like to call the may 17 2021 meeting of the acting select board and the acting sewer commissioners to order uh note the uh town of acted in response to the copit 19 virus currently following the guidance from the acting board of health the massachusetts department of public health and the cdc um the acting town hall is now open to the public this meeting will be streamed online on the actin tv youtube channel and audio will be broadcast live on radio e w-a-w-a-e-n 94.9 fm to participate remotely uh from a computer loot use the link to join the public meeting actinma.gov slash uh meetings and enter webinar 503.918785 telephone users may dial star 9 to request to speak computer and app

002users may use to raise the hand feature to request to speak um john first item of business are sewer commissioners to discuss wastewater improvements and presentation of the sewer weight recommendation thank you uh members of the select board acting as sewer commissioners this evening um so the store commissioners haven't haven't formally met in a little bit we were on track to do this work that we're presenting tonight and then the pandemic got in the way but we're back tonight and we wanted to present to you a few things that are happening in terms of how we're looking to maintain and continue to maintain our infrastructure and also the work that we did to look at our rates and ways to make sure that the rates that the board and the sewer commissioners implement are sufficient

003to maintain operations going into the future so uh core new york runs the project for us he's our director of public works as you all know uh jack troidl is our engineer lead engineer for woodward and current toby fetter is another member of the team from wooden parent who helped with the rate analysis so corey if you want to just introduce jack and uh we'll do our presentation jack i think you can share your screen if you have uh if you have that yeah so john basically said it all in a nutshell so we've been working on this and um we just wanted to get before you to kind of show you where it was everything got kind of stalled you know it's all kind of coming together as far as uh just all the

004work we're doing and how it fits into the model so uh jack and toby helped us along with that rape study so um i'll hand it over to jack and he can take it from here hey corey good you see the the slideshow correctly yes okay perfect um thank you for the introduction but again i'm jack troidl with water and curran the town sewer consultant uh yeah toby fetter will um he worked on the rape model and he'll be presenting um towards the end of the presentation so we'll we'll cover an overview of the wastewater system we'll talk about the the main phase 2a project um and the rehabilitation work that that includes and we'll wrap up um also with some of the rates so jack am invisible you are toby okay wonderful i just

005don't see myself on my own screen yeah okay so in the agenda as i just kind of said we'll start with an overview of the wastewater system we'll talk about some of the planning needs of current and projected projects and we'll talk about the sewer operations plan and the work that's ongoing and then we'll conclude with some sewer rate discussion and what the rates look like and then we'll open it up to some q a on this slide the area shaded in gray is the existing sewer service area you see three colored areas adjacent to that those were identified in the 2006 cw rmp as future expansion areas the green area great road was originally planned to have its own satellite wastewater treatment facility and discharge we do think that a better solution for that

006if it is considered is that it would come into the district and it would make better use of the town's current sewer assets building building a new plant and an additional discharge can be very challenging the existing system includes 11 sewer pump stations um the majority of these pump stations have buildings um a few of them have on-site generators for backup power because they are critical assets the wastewater treatment plant is a sequencing batch reactor and don't worry you don't need to know what that means but we got a small graphic to the right that shows how the wastewater is processed through the plant but in short there's a bunch of concrete tanks and pumps and screening to remove debris from the water as well as uv disinfection all in the plant and all of

007that equipment was built about 20 years ago the grou the plant treats to a very high quality effluent which then gets discharged into the ground with the five uh rapid infiltration beds and they're just open sand beds that the wastewater gets discharged on onto and then it percolates into the ground those have a massdep permitted limit of about 300 000 gallons a day and that's on a maximum day basis so that's that's the most flow that we can send into the ribs at any given time so as i said these assets are all 20 years old and they require rehabilitation we want that we want everything to operate reliably and efficiently and you can assume that when a pump's been in operation for 20 years it's not operating as efficiently as it used to and

008sometimes not as reliably this graph should look familiar um the blue jagged line is the average flow going to the wastewater plant you see there's about 125 130 000 gallons a day there um we do look at the purple line when we start looking at the limits of the discharge and there's about 70 000 gallons remaining between what your current flows are and what your your permitted limit is so you are currently discharge limited so if you wanted to add more flow beyond the 73 000 gallons you got to raise the red line so looking at future flows to the treatment facility um the question is you know how much need is there south acton the powder mill road area was identified as a as a needs area and it is looking at being sewer

009as part of the powder mill apartments project so that is a potential area for new users powder mill will bring on about 230 new users so that is a significant amount of flow coming to the plant that's about 20 percent of your of the current flow and there's infill and redevelopment within the district and that's and that's ongoing both new connections for people who haven't tied in and redevelopment to more intensive uses and that's that's happening every year and great road that is a significant area and a lot of potential users as i said earlier that would be in lieu of its own satellite facility up there it would it can be treated more efficiently if it's connected into the existing plant more cost effectively this graphic has a lot on it but i think

010it really paints acton's wastewater picture um we talked about the flows and and the purple line as your max day flow and then the bar graph in the middle of the chart represents all the potential sewer connections so powder mold place is an ongoing project the sewer district infill is in green and then the powder mill road connections that could tie in later are shown in purple as well as great road and then long-term planning need a lot of the long-term planning it is just general infill beyond near-term projects on the left side of the graph we have a few different red lines but the existing treatment capacity is a little over 400 000 gallons per day we can easily raise that line close to the 600 it might i might have been a little

011aggressive on the 600 000 but we can raise that line to a number between 500 and 600 000 by adding some small equipment within the plant and and an equalization tank um which was um it is currently being funded by the otter mill apartments and then when we look at the plant overall it was built it designed and built with an eye to the future so there's about a million gallons per day of uh capacity in the plant so that's you have plenty of capacity with the sbrs it's just a matter of some equipment upgrades if you wanted to access that capacity looking at the discharge capacity that's on the right side of this graph so you've got 73 000 gallons remaining powder mill place will use quite a bit of that flow and then

012any remaining and any near-term projects that get approved for connections will use out of that 70 000 gallons so approaching the 300 000 fairly quickly and we show here adding 300 000 gallons of discharge that's going to be a function of the site that's identified and how much capacity how much wastewater can be discharged into that site so it's a very detailed hydrogeological study that will need to be performed once the site is selected there's a few different locations that we've been looking at um but we're the goal is to to identify that this year so and effectively for any of these users to tie in you have to have both the discharge capacity and the treatment capacity but as a stage you have plenty of treatment capacity in the near term but the discharge

013capacity is is your your your term limit so on the sewer operations plan uh the phase one ongoing repairs um that was a lot of near-term equipment that needed to get addressed quickly that was done out of the annual budget that's a matter of spending a few hundred thousand dollars every year um for just things that are that are failing we are seeing more and more equipment fail prematurely so instead of replacing something that's about to fail we're now starting to chase some of the equipment that has already failed the phase 2a project is on this year's annual top meeting it's a 6.2 million dollar project that's the total project cost that includes rehabilitation of the facility including the control system in that for instance the controls are no longer supported by the manufacturer electronics

014like that become outdated fairly quickly but they've been in there for a very long time and are still operating but you're starting to have some failures it also includes the limited upgrades to the equalization and aeration for capacity on the funding side we did act and was awarded a mass works grant and 900 000 comes off the cost of the project from massworks and there's half a million dollars coming from the developer mitigation money that leaves 4.8 million of project costs to be paid for by the enterprise 300 000 of that for the capacity related items will be paid for from stabilization funds we do think there's opportunity for potential stimulus funding so we'll we'll continue to look for those opportunities and hopefully more come out over the next few months the remainder approximately 4.5

015million dollars will be paid over a 20-year loan using the state revolving fund and that's a low interest loan it's it's gonna be about two percent or so and then the phase two 2b project is is the groundwater expansion um we're currently looking for the site this year um additional investigation would be next year and the earliest for construction of that would be 2023 and and the timing of the phase 2b work would really depend on on need and connections as far as those connections powder mill apartments is the biggest near term 446 mass ave is connecting uh there are other potential projects in kelly's corner and others so certainly seem to be the need is there um and then the phase three is the treatment capacity expansion that was the left side of the

016graph it was adding a lot more equalization tanks and and diffusers and other other equipment um to to to get more treatment out of the plan looking at it on a schedule the cpe report was completed in 2019 the massworks grant was awarded at the end of 2020 so that was a big win for the project the phase one repairs are ongoing as i said those are miscellaneous near-term replacements that need to happen and then the orange are the design and construction of the phase ii upgrades and that's rehabilitating a lot of pumps replacing any piping issues replacing valves we're actually seeing some valves or failing so a lot of reliability upgrades in that rehab project the phase 2b that at the time of that isn't exactly clear but we'll continue identifying additional sites and

017phase three the future capacity expansion i think that's down the road by the ways but i just wanted that to be noted at some point you'll reach the capacity of the existing so why why do you need to do the phase 2a rehab project now it was identified in the cpe so woodard and curran went through the plant we looked at the condition of equipment we looked at the conditions of tanks um of the roof of the windows and all the all the equipment in the plant um and it's 20 years old it's been operating for for um i think 19 or 20 years and when you look at some of these graphics on the right this is some failed equipment the pump at the bottom you can see it's corroded but at the bottom

018is there's actually a hole in the pump and that's the major issue there you're just not getting the efficiency out of that and eventually it's going to lead to failure the small photo on the left was a gate valve that actually failed and it took mike thompson the operator a few months to get somebody to come in get a valve order uh and and replace the slide gate so that that that system wasn't operating correctly uh for a series for many months um and then the lower picture are just some of the couplings in the wet well which is a very corrosive environment and those are all leaking and access to do those repairs is very difficult so doing this as part of the overall project was absolutely the most efficient way to do the

019work and also to look at the flow and and the overall needs of these upgrades to make sure we do everything um and it is efficient and um you know in the best manner that we can so we want to be proactive and not reactive as we see more equipment failing i know right now mike has has a valve that failed mostly open and lucky luckily that that works but that's a critical valve that he needs to get replaced so we're trying to get ahead of those types of failures with this project and obviously we want to maintain the treatment performance and reliability we don't want to have any violations with the with the discharge permits we want to make sure everything operates well and currently there's several funding sources i talked about mass works

020the developer mitigation funds and potential stimulus money so certainly that's coming off the top and helping to lower the overall cost to the sewer enterprise and ultimately it is required by massdep as a part of the groundwater discharge component so looking at the sewer rates i'll let toby cover some of the details of the model but first i just want to talk about the graphic on the right so that's showing the overall the way that this project is being paid for the massworks is money off the top it certainly helps a lot adding the 230 users those are new users that you currently don't have connected that's going to help pay this loan over the next 20 years and then there's additional money coming off the top the 500 000 of mitigation money from an

021equalization tank and some other pump station upgrades as well as the three hundred thousand dollars of reserves and that's landing at the two and a half percent increase um to cover the remainder of the project thanks jack i'll take it away from here i mean the the i think the big takeaway from this graph that that everyone should be aware of is the addition of new users who who present a new revenue stream entirely [Music] you know are a a massive impact and a very substantial benefit to the overall sewer utility [Music] we will still need you know small increases i i would say but the the fact of the matter is if you guys were unable to get new users without um or apartment if you were to finance the project without the users

022this would be a problematic situation that's that's all and jack i mean you you tell me what you want me to you know talk about here yeah you can i can bump you to the next slide toby but yeah effectively in in fiscal 20 and fiscal 21 um the rates were steady um but looking at the the two and a half percent to um to catch up a little bit um but again it it's you know that's more or less covering inflation of looking forward in many ways yeah you're outright go ahead and bump me up forward so this is what we're looking at for the rates we have the uh the current rates and we're proposing to increase the volumetric rates by two and a half percent for each of the next three years

023and um the rates are presented they're they're a little bit lower down on the uh on the table there but and well this is what the uh projected performance of the utility will be we will burn some of our reserves with those rates that was one thing that came up during the rate study was the question of do we have too much reserves and what is the right amount of reserves and and so we targeted the rate recommendation to if you look at the green line to basically break even in fiscal 24 while still maintaining reserves balances that were uh expected in the past and as far as the the timing of of that um a powder mill coming online i think we have that in 2023 um we we did update the model based

024on on the current schedule um that's all that's all accounted for and then if there were any any concerns as far as timing of there there's still remaining reserves that could help cover that debt service i think the debt service on the remaining loan is about 300 000 that would be could easily be covered out of out of reserves for a year or two as needed i mean you wouldn't want to draw it down much more but but i think there's some flexibility in there if needed right i think the big thing is just bringing on powder mill i mean it's such a big revenue source it's critical to the long-term i would say financial success of the utility that's all i'll say and actually i i just want to go back i know toby

025you did say it but yes the two and a half percent fixed for three years is the rate recommendation um and that's the the extent of our presentation we'd have to be happy to uh take any questions but the short version is is the phase 2a rehab project um you can see the the plant on on the right side of the aerial here um is is is just a rehab project uh primarily to keep everything operating well you know fix fix some issues on the roof fix some windows fix the heating system fix pumps and other equipment all the critical infrastructure at the plant if we look at the plant like your house you know a lot of these when you know windows and heating systems and appliances are 20 years old and they're not

026you know they're at risk of failing and if they do fail um you know in your house you can manage that you can go out to eat for dinner if you want but in the plants if that pump fails the wastewater still comes to the plant and mike needs to make sure that it keeps going through so he has to find a way to make that work so it's it's important to make sure that all of our primary systems and or backup systems are are fully reliable so we're you know it's really a process of getting into the plan upgrading the rehabbing the sbrs and pumps and and the tanks the tanks are actually all in great shape um a lot of other miscellaneous repairs okay are there questions or comments from board members please

027sure sure jim um so many questions uh it's been a long time since we've had a sewer commissioner's meeting um so if any of these questions uh mr chair you think are out of scope for this maybe we can just make a note and talk about them at a future meeting so first just an education question for me the gallon per day permitted limit uh is that actually permitted on a daily basis or is that what the average we have to hit every week or every month or what does that limit actually mean yeah that is the maximum amount of flow that can be discharged in a single day okay so it's in 24 hours on the calendar that's your that's your backstay so on the graph i didn't highlight it but there was one

028purple dot for each year that represented the highest flow that's what that purple line was drawn from got it um and um what you made you made a calculation about because you showed it on the chart about um developmental infill and i was wondering what how you whether you could send on the uh calculations that you used for that that kind of that kind of information about um you know calculated uh infill and future development is really important for a lot of things we do including this water study that the water resources advisory committee is just about to launch into so i'd love to know what planning assumptions you used and i assume they're relatively complicated so feel free to just send them to me but if they're if they're simple you could maybe explain

029them yeah yeah and it um near term we did look at some of the proposed expansion projects um but we we looked at infill potential within the district and we did look at um you know just say that there were you know say there's 100 properties in the district and 70 are connected you know we estimated the flow from the remaining but we also looked at known potential projects and then we tallied up yeah we have it all in a table so i can get that and send it along that would be great thanks so much so jim i just wanted to point out that the infill here may be different than infill for other things because there may be properties that have paid their betterment but just never hooked up and so there's zero

030flow from them now right but um and so the infill is just the connection next time they're you know instead of replacing a septic system got it thank you um let's see next one um is there is there any current modeling or assumptions about how much of the discharge water ends up in the river and how much ends up in the groundwater in such a way that it can get over to our drinking water supply pumps so the the the discharge was modeled um and back in 2007 so the initial discharge was uh 250 000 gallons it was modeled i think in 2007 when it was raised to the 299. so that's the limit the state would give for this this site the area is in the zone two of the wells which which basically

031says if it doesn't rain for um i forget i think it's six months if it doesn't rain for six months that this is the area that would ultimately go to the wells but since it doesn't not rain for six months it doesn't really go to the wells and it had to get closed down um along um towards the river okay so substantially all the all the discharge after it's filtered doing your filtration and then the natural filtration through the soils ends up in in the river i think it does i i don't know the path it takes i think it might actually go on this figure it might go more left it doesn't i don't think it flows directly to the river um but i mean it's going into the groundwater and area all that

032groundwater is is going to the river um yeah and and the plant does remove um you know a lot of pollutants and nitrogen and it does have a specific um phosphorus removal system as well yeah yeah no phosphorus is the big issue with the river um thanks um you you talked about the pros and cons of uh of how to deal with the needs on great run i had a couple thoughts about that and some questions um one was i noticed that in the in the the uh see how do we pronounce cwrmp the quorm rip um the comprehensive water resources management plan uh does describe these needs areas but in some cases it says needs could be addressed by having a a management district not necessarily even a shared septic system or a sewer

033connection so i just wanted to point that out just because there's needs doesn't mean they have to be addressed by sewers but in terms of great road um you mentioned that your calculations were looking that it would be more financially viable to send those that effluent down to our main treatment plant but the question i had about that was wouldn't that mean that wherever you sent that pipe would need to become part of the sewer district between great road and wherever it connects up with our existing sewer lines correct yes i think i think whichever road typically we would run a line like that down down the road um there might be some cross-country routes as well but typically yeah those those properties of budding it have will get serviced as well enacted okay so

034i guess this is then a comment from my fellow commissioners which is we haven't um debriefed uh the what we learned from the attempt to sewer west acton um and we need to do that if we're going to be thinking of expanding the sewer district i mean right now we have this financial structure where new members new households new lots that are in a new expansion sewer district pay for the costs of that expansion which made in the case of west acted the cost be so high that um you know we had we had a failed vote at town meeting just to have the sewers there um so i think we need to address that uh before we could entertain um you know expanding the sewer district the other question i had on that line

035was is the uh expansion to serve the powder mill development is that an expansion of the sewer district that that line would would sewer the needs area the southampton needs area okay so that's an expansion of this of this of the sewer is that right can i answer that sure yeah so um uh jim because this is being paid for by the project there is no betterment so betterments are used to pay off the loans for uh better properties or stores in this case right since they're since this is being paid for um there is no betterment and we can choose as sewer commissioners whether to allow connections along that route or not right yes and if they connect then they would pay a privileged fee you know so you know suppose one of the

036car dealers wants to connect if if we want to let them we can if we don't want to let them we don't have to um that's that's up to us but nobody gets better in here got it oh thank you that that makes a lot of sense um and can i can i just say another quicker clarify one of jim's questions tonight we're considering um uh just a rehabilitation project no expansion in what we're considering tonight but i completely agree with that we have to consider the financials of any expansion thanks dude um yeah it's just yeah like like i said it's just been a long time i don't i don't know if i've ever even sat as a sewer commissioner in my in my year as on the board so uh i just have

037a lot of catching up to do um let's see that might be about it yeah that's it thanks so much sure joan you had your hand up yes the alternative site for discharge that you're looking at how far away can that be and what would be the size of the parcel um the the the further it is um the more expensive it'll be to to run a discharge horse main um i i think in a perfect world when you look at the size of the ribs in this photo but the discharge rapid infiltration beds we'd love to have that same size again but i think it's a matter of what space is available potentially the other side of this site um you know is one that we're looking at and you definitely wouldn't get that

038much um there i do think we started looking within about a mile or two away from the plant but depending on availability of land you you you could go further and what's the size is it one acre four acres i should have that but i don't have that number in front of me as far as how many acres it is the current sewer parcel appears to be about the whole thing appears to be about 30 acres to get you a sense of the comparative size yeah which and it includes a lot of land on the other side so it's a couple acres i just wonder if i could pull it up on my phone uh david yeah so i i had a chance to review this and um i think this is really good one

039really important point um is that the dep will be requiring us basically to make these rehabilitation changes to keep everything up to scratch and so we don't have failures because a failure at the wrong time [Music] can mean violations of the the discharge um permit also um the uh various funding sources including the recent uh massworks grant has you know kind of aligned for us here and so um you know doing these things all at once means a a minimal increase in the rate that uh uh people in the sewer district now will will pay so just uh two and a half percent a year for for three years so it's uh um i i think you know things have come together very nicely here i do have one question for jack is is a

040roof actually a part of the project it's maintenance um of the roof we're not replacing it um it's a metal roof but there's some areas where there's some corrosion so it's a matter of of of repairing that and painting um portions of it okay thank you that's all thank you thank you uh joan did were your questions answered yes uh dean do you have any questions uh no questions i i think i'm up to speed on it thank you okay so um john what would you like us to do at this point uh um you so basically the purpose of this thing is just to give you the background on the recommended rate structure uh and we'll plan to come to the supercommissioners before the end of the fiscal year uh to ask you to

041formally adopt the rate structure and then the other portion of it was just because we accelerated the timing for this rehabilitation project and it's appearing on the warren in in june as article 5 we want to make sure that you had this foundation of information about the rationale for it and then we'll continue to provide more detail to support the one article that um is currently in draft form so so just one question the the uh i think it was a 4.5 million that will be borrowed under a state loan who uh who services that dad so um if jack if you could actually not share the screen anymore and someone could help you bring steve barron in he's he's in the meeting of steve barrett um stephen barrett i think as a member if

042you could help me with that here we go hey john can you hear it can everybody hear me uh yeah i did um so good evening everyone um thank you very much you know so so the the plan would be uh that we go out to the srf the state revolving fund and we borrow some money um ideally as you've heard in the presentation some of the infiltration of the new hookups will pay for that but if it doesn't materialize quickly um you know we have 1.6 million dollars in stabilization funds and also a million dollars in silver free cash and i just want to point out one is that is that a sewer stabilization fund it is mr chairman and um i just want to run one thing by jack live and see how

043this goes jack when you quoted four and a half million over twenty years at two percent that gets you a three 300 000 debt payment you know but you know the town of acton as you remember um i believe we have 30-year legislation out there that we adopted to try to push the payments out a little bit over the life of the you know or the loan but if we did this over 30 years instead of uh 20 it would cut that 300 down to 150 to 175 so to your question um the uh the town the the sewer enterprise fund would be funding those payments and um you know it's important to invest in our infrastructure and we do not you know we won't we don't want to have a lot of deferred maintenance

044here it's been um it's been run i think really well and uh you know as we as as far as john mangiardi says we're just trying to get the information out to the sewer commissioners on article five and and steve to um to add to that the um the srf will go to a 30 a 30-year loan but the rate bumps up by about half a percent but but we see a bunch of communities do that and it was also that housing production credit somehow so you know it's just you know when you take a 20 year loan and push it out to 30 you know you really get some inertia on that payment and you know i think the point to us has been the those funds will provide some stability um we could

045pay the debt service for years if we had to um without any worry and uh but thank you jack david can i ask a question of uh um uh steve uh does 30 years make sense is at considering that what we're seeing now is the useful life of many of these components is 20 years that's a that's a great point um because it was good as soon as i say in 2040 if we need to buy new pumps and valves um then we'd be paying still paying off 10 years of loan and we need another one yeah that's a great point i mean we we got the special legislation you know 20 years ago a lot of it was just to try to ease the you know the payment stream uh on that debt uh

046you know at this point you know the other thing i guess would be of information for the board of commissioners would be our capitalization on that 25 million dollar project was about 10 million dollars on the you know the treatment plan and facility and then 15 million dollars in the collection system just to kind of frame it for you okay but uh steve the source of the funds to repay the the 4.5 million dollar obligation over 20 years comes from boom the sewer enterprise fund from enterprise time okay so there's no betterment under article 5 there is no betterment that will be issued uh you know the plan again is to is to use the reserves as a backstop if we need them but just to take advantage of the of the infrastructure awards and

047the different things going on now um you know take advantage of it right now while the iron is hot and um that'll actually buy down in our minds the uh cost of the rehab okay um are there any further questions uh jim um just a couple quick things um one is that i i remember that every time i look at an aerial photo anywhere in actin i always wonder if solar panels can go there and it does seem like there's a bunch of open space there have you guys ever looked at solar panels as a way of you know generating some of the large amounts of electricity you need to use yeah yeah so um we're gonna turn a look at that ten years ago uh and we've more recently looked at it using the

048same vendor that we're using for the fire station roof the the north active fire station roof uh we're actually currently reviewing a proposal to do some of the roof repairs along with solar panels which i think we're not really comfortable if we want to do that yet but that's something that we're currently looking at in addition to other opportunities that may be presented as we do this major rehab which is the right time to to make some some changes like this um like adding solar so yes that's definitely something that will fold into this process okay yeah i mean there seems to be a bunch of open space around the ribs as well you know you could have ground mountain solar there too or who knows even floating solar panels i don't know if they

049can float but it seems likely um the only other comment i had was there's one there was one person unless i checked raising their hand on the public and we've got 28 participants so far which is great it's wonderful that people care enough about sewers and wastewater okay um are there any public comments from the audience uh we do have two currently new york let's first the first will be from richard kelleher richard you should be able to speak okay um thank you very much um i had a comment or a question on the graph of the sewer rate recommendation um this the sewer fund line is showing shown going up uh on the right side of the graph which has come more towards the current year and it doesn't show a drop wouldn't it

050drop next year if you take money from the sewer fund to pay for this jack would you go ahead and bring up that slide again please so so mr kelleher what you're seeing there is the the reserve balances in the blue bars okay over the next four years right and the green line is what we expect for fiscal performance in each of the annual uh you know sort of annual fiscal years and so what what you do see is a drop of well some amount of money in order to um bring down the reserve balances uh while while moderating reserve pardon me while moderating uh rate increases excuse me one about people in my group so you're saying that just the dip from 21 to 22 is all that it takes to get this project

051funded no no there will be um in the future there will be increased revenue requirements but a huge part of not having a major rate impact is having the additional customer base from south acton come online and then um my second i had three questions the second one is uh about that topic what if the powder male apartments don't go ahead i mean is that have you got that in the bank so to speak or a guarantee that they will pay even if say they get a permitting hang up are they fully permitted they have run out of money there's a crash financial crash unlikely but you know so we haven't factored that into the rates is the actual truth um [Music] i mean the fact of the matter is is there would be without

052the additional customer growth of south acton and powdermill there would be a major rate increase in order to fund the debt service and operational requirements of your existing system that's the truth and with the caveat that um you could cover a couple years um of that debt service with the stabilization fund right which would would hold that off and any of the those new projects that tie in those privilege fees could also pay for the debt service i know there's a handful of potential projects so there's i guess that that would be the backstop but the back's absolutely correct but i mean the fact of the matter is the state's going to require most of the things that virtually all of the things that are being recommended here if you don't do them in the

053next couple years anyway so we're sort of caught between a rock and a high place we have to pray that powder mill project goes ahead and comes up with their share of the money we certainly hope for that yes and then the third question was just or it wasn't really a question just a comment that i am concerned about discharge into zone two of the water district um there well so um if they weighed in on this we i mean we've communicated with them in the past um but the um the ribs have been there for 20 years and they've been in operation um our potential for finding a new discharge site um certainly staying outside of the zone two of any drinking water is our preference and that's what we are trying to do

054at this point okay okay thank you very much for your thank you richard um matt are there uh any other hands up we do have a hand up from a call-in user reminder please let us know your full name and where an action you're from when you are able to speak but you should be able to can you hear me sure yes yes um so my first question is to steve barrett um can i speak to him directly yeah um steve i hope you're well um i'm confused because when i was a select board member whenever you came by with the rate increases um and i was concerned because they seemed high and as it turned out they were some of the highest in the state um yeah year after year you were telling reassuring

055us that the rates included rehab and included saving for replacement and that there would be no big capital projects so my first question is what happened so thank you tara for that question um so yeah we've been in the uh o m business for almost 20 years now and over time we put uh together again if you look at the 1.6 million and the in stabilization in a million in free cash you know that's 2.6 million uh that we put aside um true it's not the four and a half million uh you know i think at times we struggle with high rates as you pointed out and if anything probably the last 10 years i think we've had no rate height six or seven years just trying to keep down the cost so you know

056if anything you know i i maybe we we kept down the cost too much to the to the o m users but you know it was just uh you know that's kind of you know we put in the rates we believe are necessary but over the last few years you know we've uh you know we haven't been running a surplus and you know with covet we weren't able to get in front of the border i wasn't able to get there it's just it's been it's been a little crazy but you know i think you're right we're not we do not have 100 of this money put aside that's correct and so how much of the money was set aside is it 1.3 million no i mean i'd look at it as um 1.6 million plus

057our free cash of a million or close to a million is 2.6 million so we have roughly 50 you know of the uh of the money set aside in cash and so how much of the article 5 will help with expansion that's not how you want to jump in it since the 505 handles the rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure and so none of the spending will assist or position the system to be expandable it will it will modernize the equipment but it's not going to be adding any new pipes out to any devices so it will it will increase the capacity of like the controllers and the valves or i mean so right it was built 20 years ago and this this rehabilitation will bring it up to the most modern uh controls and systems

058that we need to operate the plant um effectively so that we can you know invest something that we can invest in for a long term it'll be paid off over a long term uh while we're using it thank you my last question is about the betterments or the privilege fees or whatever it is the 230 users users at 30 dollars each that other people are paying would be about six point nine million but somehow the developer is only paying five hundred thousand because i'm a little confused about that uh well the the agreement with the developer which uh was executed by the select board um i would say about 18 months ago maybe longer um was based on the rate structure in place at the time which was not 30 000 um per unit it

059was closer to 12 i believe i think and so i don't remember a time meeting boat to allow the um the powder mill place to be relieved of its better mix i thought that the um the way that the sewer law is structured that the betterment has to be paid um by anybody joining the system no that's not accurate did i misunderstand it is it just the expansion cost that they would have to be covered the question i believe is a little bit difficult to answer the way it was structured so i'm sorry you want to re-ask it or um yeah i think i'm just curious as to why it's like okay the original system was like 10 million or did you say 15 whatever it was it was around that and so we're talking

060about is like 50 of the original cost of the system to be to bring it up to speed and then i don't quite understand how how the suddenly now we've got this project you know the fire mill place people are in favor of that so that's a good thing um but it just seems weird that the current users will be on the hook for um a very large um choke of change at the same time that this developer seems to have in fact gotten away with paying only five hundred thousand so it just seems a little bit and i guess that the board's left would have the um right to do that i would just be concerned that that that the current users are getting the shortest thickest beams that's all thank you well just

061to address that that was another question but if i could just address that please so the way you characterize the number of a grand agreement with a developer is inaccurate um in several ways um but i think that um you know and that's posted on our website if you want to review it okay um matt are there any further citizen comments uh we do have one from melissa nichol sure alyssa you should be able to speak thanks this is alyssa nichol on school street um i was wondering if it's known how many housing units are in the southampton sewer district that have not yet hooked up to the sewer do we know that we can calculate that i don't have that number offhand um if um if the graph or or spreadsheet that you uh

062promised to send to mr snyder graham if that could be placed in the docuseries so it's available to the public that would be much appreciated we'll do that thank you and i also want to um just state that i i share miss frederick's concerns about the [Music] the payment from powdermill place um we hooked up to sewer um because a home that we bought the title five uh inspection failed and our betterment was i believe about twelve thousand dollars um so if what mr mangerati is saying the units for powdermill place the betterment was about 12 000. if you multiply that by 230 units you should get closer to 3 million dollars and not five hundred thousand um so i do share a concern as a south acton sewer user that um current users are

063going to be on the hook for this um upgrade while the 230 new users that are coming in at cottermill place um seem to have gotten a a significant break so i just wanted to share that concern john can i respond actually that's not true right so the the total amount that the pottermore place is putting into the um sewer district is just being done for the most part in infrastructure rather than money and so they're they're adding pumping station piping and other things to the um system plus um 500 000 for whatever improvements we want to do to the plan so that 500 000 is on top of what they're already already in investing and then um and at the time we did this this was more than money than the um then current

064privilege fee structure which we have since increased but at the time um it was more than the the privileged fee structure and more than the privileged fee structure that existing users paid and and in addition to that anybody that we allowed to hook up between powder mill plays um and the the wastewater treatment plant will play pay the sewer enterprise fund um a privilege fee um and that money goes into the sewer enterprise fund so not only are they paying for uh the infrastructure including a net like i said a pumping station and stuff they are um we get the money back from that if we allow others to come okay great that additional information is super helpful so thank you for sharing that thank you david um were there any uh is that it

065mad on on citizen commons we do have one more from castings sure please kim you should be able to speak thank you uh this is kim castos from polk road i am not in the city of the um sewer district uh my household is not in the store district um but as i follow this conversation i'm sensing a lot of um and other conversations around sewer issues i'm sensing a lot of uncertainty and suspicion and discomfort and i'm feeling that from the perspective of good governance there's kind of a conflict of interest here in the sense that it's one organization one company that has it is advising the town on what was needed is putting the plan together and it's gonna profit from doing it and um i'm just suggesting that it might be wise

066to get an independent evaluation in particular of exactly what the state is going to require and how soon the state's going to require it and what the options are so my basic comment here is just to advise our elected officials to consider um going after an independent assessment of these costs and priorities thank you thank you are there any further citizen comments man uh that seems to do it okay so are there any further questions or comments from uh select board members okay so uh so john as i understand it um the um the uh the rehabilitation project will be article five at town meeting and what we heard tonight was a preview of that article and then before the end of the fiscal year we will the sewer commissioners will reconvene and vote on

067the recommended sewer rates yes that is the proposed plan of action okay okay so we'll take off our sewer commissioner hats and uh get back by the way jim uh get back into the uh the regular meeting we are kind of two minutes after seven o'clock we do have a public hearing at 7 10. so why don't we begin with um if uh begin with citizen concerns um just at the outset um uh these these comments that i'm not going to be taking any further comments either pro or con on the on the status of the chair and we have a very full agenda tonight um again all in the run-up to um town meeting a little more than a month from now um so if uh you know make your comments um you know

068count if they can be deferred to a later meeting that would be helpful i don't think we should be censoring people's comments i think people should be able to say what they want okay are there any comments um we have ken k um sorry kim castings again i'm not sure if her hand is just up from up she just dropped our first comment will be from joseph connor joseph o'connor um but that's chief o'connor he's here for the later i hide him okay i believe so are there any citizen comments um yep we'll hear from corey sallow sure i'm sorry i clicked on the wrong person corey you should be able to speak now thank you and thank you david for speaking up about letting us make um comments as we see fit because i

069do want to share a statement that racial justice for black lives emailed to the select board but we wanted to share it during a meeting for others to hear as well okay so we write this letter in response to john benson's statements at the acton select board meetings on april 5th and april 12 2021 on april 5th mr benson inappropriately singled out members of our community imploring senator eldridge to speak to the evelyn obayas the kira wilson cooks the amy krishna murphys the mike rothbounds the leela ramashardrans and really have a heart to heart with them about what they said about him during the election beyond the obvious point of rudely referring to each of these individuals as quote v before their names and failing to specify what the individual specifically said mr benson's comments

070were condescending an abuse of his position as the chair of the select board and simply put white supremacy at its core mr benson's comments are a call for silence and inaction ms ramachadran was a former student at acton-boxborough high school is currently attending college and is a tireless advocate for racial justice while also serving in a volunteer position as a member of acton's diversity equity and inclusion committee committee it's unclear to which statements mr benson was referring as quote untrue as ms broneshadron's public comments all provided citations to mr benson's statements then on april 12th mr benson again used his position as the chair of the select board to comment on his interactions with school committee member kiara cook only met one member of the select board spoke out against mr benson's statements the rest

071of the select board sat in silence while mr benson continued with his statement we would expect members of a governing board to speak up against injustice a leader would graciously accept defeat and admit that acton in all its glory still has much work to be done in the areas of racial equity or sorry equality and justice that is leadership to those who think we are divided and that our community is not racist we will leave you with one of many powerful quotes from robin d'angelo the author of white fragility quote to continue reproducing racial inequality the system only needs for white people to be really nice and carry on to smile at people of color to go to lunch with them on occasion to be clear being nice is generally a better policy than being

072mean but nightsmiths does not bring racism to the table and will not keep it on the table when so many of us who are white want it off niceness does not break with white solidarity and white silence in fact naming racism is often seen as not nice triggering white fragility and quote it is our hope that we all seek to do better in working to ensure justice and equal rights for the black indigenous and person of color members of our community a meaningful political voice and a sense of belonging lunch coffee and 250 dollars is not enough everything right with hope racial justice for black lives thank you are there any other um citizen comments matt we do uh melissa nichol is up next alyssa you should be able to speak thanks so much this

073is alissa nichol from school street um as mr benson just mentioned there is a special town election on june 29th to fill a seat on this board while that special town election is only six weeks away it is not yet listed on the calendar on the town website or anywhere on the home page thankfully there's mention in the managers update of the may municipal monthly but you have to open the municipal monthly to read this information and there's no information about voter registration the deadline is june 9 requesting a ballot or the names of the candidates available i'd like to see this information highlighted in a separate news flash update on the home page as soon as possible an announcement about the special town election can also be posted on the town's message board trailers

074located at the intersection of 2a and 27 and the transfer station it can also be posted to the town's social media handles another point that i want to make relative to elections i've noticed that campaigns in acton have a long history of endorsements from elected and appointed board and committee members the state ethics commission clearly prohibits endorsements by appointed board and committee members using their official titles they are considered public employees for the purposes of the conflict of interest law section 23 b2 iii of the conflict of interest law prohibits the use of one's public position to engage in political activity because a public employee who does so is using his official position to secure for himself or others such as a candidate or a ballot question committee unwarranted privileges of substantial value that are

075not properly available to similarly situated persons public employees may not if appointed use a public title while campaigning if appointed use a public title to endorse a candidate so while an elected select board or school committee member may use his or her title while endorsing a candidate an appointed member of any border committee such as finance committee acting community housing corporation open space committee planning board etc may not likewise a candidate who is currently an appointed member of a committee or board should not use his or her title when campaigning so while a candidate might acknowledge current service by naming the committee on which he or she serves using the title economic development committee chair for example is an ethics violation it makes complete sense that an appointed official should not be endorsing a candidate

076who has power of appointment over that individual it also makes sense that if the town is committed to improving accessibility and inclusion and welcoming participation in town government even those elected officials who are permitted to use their public office title when endorsing a candidate might choose not to do so i'd like to see all of us adhere to state ethics guidelines and demand integrity from those who serve in our town government thank you for listening all right next up we'll hear from charlie cadillac charlie should be able to speak hi can you hear me yes yes as you all probably know i am very much in favor of public comment at all public boarded committees so i applaud mr martin for his comment about censorship but i have a question for him is he going

077to allow public comment at the deic commission do you want me to respond please yeah do we have traditionally not taken public comment at the deic it's not really you know part of our purpose so um we just typically have not taken any well i suggest you may want to reconsider it you might find some interesting information if you allow it okay i want to make clear that we don't censor anybody and we don't say some people can speak and some people can't speak we just typically do not take that's kind of overall censorship thank you all right we do have one more comment from a calling user i believe um but if you could let us know be wired when you come to speak hi can you hear me yes i believe that the

078eip specifically has that policy to keep the environment safe and i agree with that um but this is a general citizen's comment so i appreciate the ability to speak um i i want to say that john um you've done a lot for the challenge not that i not everything i agree with as you know i'm sad about the tree kelly's going for car convenience and the risk of people the disability the lack of planning to bring into undue destruction but glad that you came around and became a strong advocate to save the vertical schools separately go on i don't suspect that you'll leave service of the town and i hope that you take the opportunity while you're still in office to apologize um to the people that were offended and i hope that you engage

079in personal work required to understand how racial justice can be achieved including engaging in humility that's required to have an inclusive community i know it's hard work i know personally and i invite you to sit down so to really know how to do this work david martin i've had my differences with him about sewers and pushing expansion because residents whatever but he has really done stellar work in terms of inclusivity and i hope you engage with them and i hope you apologize to these folks while you can thank you thank you so um let's jump before we do chairs update managers update um uh to our hearing our hearing um under um mgle 140 section 58 the actin select board will hold a public hearing on may 17 at 7 10 p.m remotely by video

080conference and call in on the application of actin um auto boutique for a class 2 auto dealer's license of 429 great road act and mass0172o from a computer enter into the link id actingma.gov slash meeting slash bos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9923 and enter into the webinar id 503-918-785 telephone users may dial star9 to request to speak after join after joining the meeting computer and half users may use the raise hand feature to request to speak john would you like to introduce the applicant thank you the applicant is present as a panel and um maybe we better introduce himself i'm sorry i don't know the full team so i don't want to speak hi good evening can everyone hear me yes adam uh yes good evening my name is adam ponte i'm the attorney

081that represents michael milano bacardi and acton auto boutique llc the applicant for the class 2 auto dealer's license um thank you so much for the opportunity to present this evening i'm just going to show you who's with me i have michael milano picardy hello and i also have olek migdalski and then also on the zoom should be zachary eaton and our commercial landlord leo bertolami i believe he's with mr eaton so if i if i may proceed is that okay please okay so as you all may know um active auto boutique llc has applied for a class ii auto dealer's license in connection with the commercial tenancy at 429 great road it's a brand new property and it's perfectly suited for auto dealership with me tonight mr melania bacardi and his team are looking to

082bring a unique luxury european focused car buying experience in this area of acton and i think from and if you have questions for them but really the the experience they're looking to provide to customers is a as a non-pressure type intimate auto buying experience so just by way of brief background uh mr milano picardy and his family they owned and operated the union oyster house in boston for decades michael has has made the decision to depart that business venture and is now pursuing his lifelong dream of owning a luxury car dealership mr mcdoulsky will be the customer-facing sales manager for the business he brings in excess of 10 years of experience two years as the head manager of the luxury foreign service dealership also um five years with the german auto parts wholesaler and most

083recently the head of procurement for vehicles for a luxury dealership out of newton with us is also mr zachary eaton who has more than 12 years of experience in the industry he will serve as the businesses director of finance in his prior experience includes working for the financial department for herb chambers and also serving as a regional territory manager for a boston-based automotive funding group and most recently the director of finance for a luxury group out of newton massachusetts the team also anticipates bringing a service manager in excess of 10 years of experience and a properly licensed european auto technician again within excess of 10 years of experience speaking to the application itself importantly the proposed hours of operation are monday to saturday 9 a.m to 6 p.m sundays by appointment only as you'll see

084in the application i know that vehicle storage is very important total of 35 vehicles to be stored at the premises 17 in the exterior 18 on the interior including the showroom and then specifically in terms of the business general umbrella liability coverage with respect to workers compensation proof of that coverage and the certificate of insurance has been submitted with the application with an effective date of june 1st 2021 we've also submitted proof of the required second hand auto dealer's bond with western surety and the penal sum of 25 000 that's been effective since april 23rd of 2021 um and then last but not least you know i i appreciate um and i believe the only comment we've received has been from the building commissioner understandably as the landlord is completing some construction work at the

085premises some lighting fixtures some some flooring and uh mr birdalami is here in the event there's questions about the property so with that all being said my clients really appreciate this opportunity to do business in your wonderful community they do believe that this business is needed in your town and it's been a really nice unique opportunity to link up with a commercial landlord who he himself has decades of experience in the automotive industry so this for us has been a match made in heaven um we're really excited about the property um so i'm not sure if there's any other questions or if i've gone on for too long but i just wanted to give you your select board of just an overall picture of what we're proposing so with that being said we respectfully request

086that the select board approve our application for a class 2 license thank you so much mr ponch that was a very fine presentation on your part um are there any questions or comments from board members uh jim um so i went back and looked at the [Music] 2016 uh special site permit just to make just to make sure if there are any questions or concerns that the that the board at that time had raised um and everything looked inorder to me i feel like this this step is the natural next step coming after that coming after that special permit approval and i wish you luck i mean it was my preference you'd put in a couple car chargers and sell some of those fancy european electric cars but i realize i can't make that a

087condition thank you so much and that's definitely something that's on the table you know these guys are not set in their ways they just want to bring a good luxury experience so thank you very much david yes i just wanted the class two licenses used cars only is that correct that is correct okay um is there going to be any uh uh automotive service at the site yes and so we have worked directly with the board of health matthew dow and we have a hearing with the board of health on june 7th and we received written confirmation that our submission on the hazardous materials was proper and sufficient and i'm happy to i think i provided a copy of that too i'm so sorry i don't know how to say her last name miss tommel

088um so i'm happy to send that to anyone else who wants to see that submission no i i can i can i can get it from her can you just tell me how many service days there are it's going to be for service based okay thank you and and overall what what is the i could find this out but i just don't know what's the uh acreage of the site in total mr bertolani do you know the acres off the top of your head you're muted mr pavani there you go one point four three one point six three it's in it's over an acre but it's under three yeah an eight and a half really once good thank you that's that's that's uh close enough for me okay thank you no more questions sure any

089uh further questions or comments from board members so then do i have a motion to close the public hearing [Music] is there a second a second charter uh david if you call the role please uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr benson bye and i say aye so we're closed okay um would i have a motion then um to approve the application of actin auto boutique for a class two auto dealer's license at 429 great road and acting so a second second day motion uh joan ii david um is there any further discussion okay so dave if you call the roll please uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr benson bye and i say i select your names okay thank you very much and all

090the best thank you so much for your time this evening have a great day thank you thank you so much thank you all very much um so um back to regular business of the chairs update um at the um action community housing corporation's monthly meeting last monday um steve jonkers who's the developer of the residences at kelly's corner announced that the new name of the development will be having your place in honor of nancy tabaniere and her many years of thank you jim and her many years of work for affordable housing in our community and there will be a groundbreaking coming up and a dedication um as well later this summer yeah nancy was totally caught off guard with with that announcement that was kept under wraps for at least three years than i know

091um just a reminder to the uh uh the board members there's a a mass municipal association women a webinar this thursday may 20th from 3 to 4 pm on the treasury guidelines on the use of ar pa funds acting will receive 6.9 million dollars those are the federal guidelines we'll start there and then we'll see what the state uh what adjustments the state makes for that but that's good information and then uh just a reminder that our next meeting will be next monday night at seven o'clock um where we'll review and make our recommendations on the town meeting warrant articles um we will do john's evaluation and then there will be um an executive session to discuss his compensation which will be voted on in public session at our meeting um on june 7th so

092that is my report john for the managers update please thank you just a few items uh we were very honored last week to have lieutenant governor karen pluto come to acton members of the slack board uh our state delegation uh we're intending to announce the celebration uh for the 2.75 million dollars that we receive from the mass works grant program it's a great program providing infrastructure to support economic development projects in this case it's been awarded to the town to help support the powdermill place project we'll be using it for uh wastewater and complete streets improvements on the uh part of the river corridor so it was great to have that celebration we've been trying to have it for six months and it kept getting delayed and postponed and so it was nice to actually

093have it and a nice sunny day so it was a lot of fun speaking a lot of fun saturday is hazmat day so if you have things that you need to get rid of in your garage you can bring them over to the transfer station this saturday night nine to 11 30. the most popular item that people bring is paint but don't forget that if it's latex paint you can actually throw it up if you just try it out at your house um the transfer speaker transfer station will be resuming normal operating hours starting june 1st if you recall during this pandemic we added an additional day on mondays and that will be discontinued on june 1st so actually the last actual monday i think is may 24th uh because the following was the world

094day so back to tuesday to saturday schedule um at the transfer station and another item is we're doing a lot of hiring we've we have a lot of positions open right now we're doing the best we can to get the word out there's positions of public works in land use on public safety finance communication so people that are out there that have skills and talents and want to come work with us we'd love to have you we want to get some we're excited about the potential bringing some new new people and uh look forward to uh making some announcements once we make these hires later this summer and finally um we had to schedule two additional alg meetings back in leadership group meetings at the meeting on thursday we discussed that the current alg plan

095needs to be adjusted because we include a debt service amount for the cost of the north african fire station we include it as its own separate line item to try to be extra transparent to people about what we're spending on it but we actually also included it in the operating budget expense so to to resolve that issue we'll have a surplus in the bottom line of the asg plan so the group had preliminary discussions last week about how we can address that uh do we use it to help plug potential revenue shortfalls do we look at other ways uh to address that this board uh it'll be on your agenda i believe on may 24th uh suddenly chair confirming that yes and that will be on for the 24th as well and then uh that'll

096give alg representatives from this fourth time to go back to alg on the 27th and if necessary on the third uh so i just wanted to make sure that people all were aware of that yeah i think john sent out an email to us this this evening with the latest alg spreadsheet and a summary of what he um i just laid out with with the potential options and we'll be discussing that next monday night so remember minutes uh jim let's see um first of all i gotta say i'm this is the first i heard about nancy tavernier's name being used uh and i just i'm still like i'm very moved by that i think that's wonderful tribute to the amazing work she's done on affordable housing for for many decades um the only other thing

097i had was um so since so many of our most difficult conversations over the last year started with this may 25th death of george floyd i was happy to and i'm happy to announce that um there'll be a a special event in acting on that day um it's going to be a remembrance service for george floyd followed by a community conversation with the acton-boxborough police chiefs so i think it's a it's a it's a wonderful chance to um kind of bring bring us together um in in a topic that's been hard for us to have relaxed conversations about um that's going to be a zoom event um it's you can get uh invitation information by writing to racial justice for black lives at gmail.com they're the one of the groups that's sponsoring it and they're

098handling the they're handling the invites so it's racial justice for black lives gmail.com uh it starts at 6 30 they'll there's a zoom invite that they can send and um they're especially for so for those of you in the audience that are um that are black or people of color there's a special hope that you may be able to attend and or that you could send in um questions or comments ahead of time to that email address um so they can be uh addressed everywhere um thanks that's it okay did you clarify with jim was that digit digit 4 in that email address oh thank you for asking that's the word for it's the word for it sorry yes thank you joan no i'm all set uh david uh yes uh at the past couple

099of select board meetings our diversity equity inclusion commission has been the target of criticism i've been trying to focus on the town's business despite the rank or select board meetings in april but as liaison and a member of deic i feel that i need to respond like every other board and committee in town the daic is composed of residents who volunteer their time to benefit the town the deic has to deal with many difficult issues the work of the deic is personally unsettling and stressful for all the members of the commission deic meetings are public of course there are reasoned discussions of policy and wording there's no hot-headedness or name-calling as some have implied the role of advisory committees like the deic is to advise the select board in their area of expertise recently the

100deic advised the select board members not to support the baseless attacks by the chair of this board on some residents of acting including elected officials school committee members and a member of the deic itself i attempted to have the vice chair take over to defend the honor of this board and the civil and cooperative way that we usually manage differences of opinion in action however a majority of this board including the vice chair continued to support the chair after his inappropriate actions this was extremely disheartening hurting to me personally and to hundreds of residents who have contacted the board and signed petitions objecting to the chair's actions some people object that the dic chose to criticize the select board at all but i appreciate that they had the courage to do so it's not easy

101to speak truth to power thank you uh nothing from me thank you okay um john um coveted 19 response update thank you uh just to give you an update on where we are from a case standpoint today we've had 975 people uh with cobia in in actin there are currently six active cases which is the lowest it's been in quite a while which is very encouraging uh the government made some pretty big announcements today about reopening and about the state of emergency uh one of the answers was that all remaining copied 19 restrictions will be lifted effective may 29th which is in two weeks or so and also that the commonwealth's face covering order will be rescinded on may 29th as well and finally that the state of emergency related to the kobe pandemic will

102end on june 15th so the board of health actually had recently taken a vote to align all of its orders with the state orders so no you know specific actions that need to be taken by the board of health on that issue but uh we think we need to have a conversation with with this board and others on how we're going to operate after june 15th and i think i'll be prepared to make some recommendations on that probably for your first june meeting which i think is the seventh and i'll be working with the team between now and then and anything that um needs to be addressed ahead of that i will get to you ahead of that but it's interesting i think we've all been planning for this uh but it's always been on

103the horizon but now it's actually here so it's very good news uh we've been open here for public business in town hall for a few weeks uh several weeks now and it's you know it's going really well no no issues and i expect that to continue uh one other thing regarding the american rescue plan funds um as the chair mentioned this webinars there's been a few webinars um mma is doing another one and we're still trying to pour through all these guidelines and i hope to have some more information for you on that in terms of how it impacts us and what ideas we have for that june meeting as well if not soon thereafter questions for john hi jim um so part of the governor's proclamation as i recall is what allows us to

104meet remotely both as a select board and all of our boards and committees so it sounds like what you're saying is that by june 15 we we need to revert to the earlier requirements about meeting which require for example the chair to be there in person uh for there to be a quorum in person as i recall um and is that part of what you're going to be looking at the staff there's gonna want to talk amongst the people in this business about that this may potentially find a way to get extended because it's been so successful in many ways it's been very successful for civic engagement and getting people involved you have 100 people show up to reading that you know you may usually get 15. so it's something that across the state people

105have recognized as a tool to get more people involved so i hope that it'll it'll be extended seamlessly but if it's not uh we'll be ready to start meeting in person we'll make sure any friend dean yeah i as regards the state of emergency uh i've gotten a lot of input from various opinions from folks in town certainly zoom has made some governmental meetings a lot more accessible but i think there's a lot of downside to not meeting a person so personally i i think that we should uh look forward towards reopening and having in-person meetings face to face uh i think that the uh it's important to do that i think there's a lot of nuance that's launched during the zoom meetings and i think there might be a lot more cordiality in in-person

106meetings and certainly want to make sure that to the maximum extent possible all public meetings are carried on acting tv or youtube will certainly be accessible but i don't really think that there's much future in continuing for a long period of time with this kind of zoom situation just my opinion david yeah i i agree i think there's a lot of things to figure out here um you know that as i would understand it unless there's another order by the governor it goes back to the way jim said and there's uh particular steps you have to take when one member is remote um and um but you know i think we also have to consider whether we want to allow um people to participate remotely you know ask questions remotely and for what meetings right

107certainly for the big meetings like select board where we can have a facilitator uh you know let people speak and we have a big screen and into a floor and things like that that's practical but it may not be practical for the smaller meetings um to have participants uh meet remotely and if we do we have to have accommodate that somehow right if you know choose your committee the planning board is meeting in in town hall um and you know they don't normally have a facilitator um how do they admit people you know remotely to speak or any other order committee um so uh i i think we're gonna need policies around those uh things as to which which meetings we think need facilitators and which ones don't and you know i think there's a

108whole host of questions do you want anything further no thanks okay uh john just one final yeah on this topic um i particularly call the i particularly note that the commission on disabilities has had a a wonderful revival of participation made possible by the ability of people to participate remotely so you know having having some sort of hybrid solutions available so that some people can be in person and some people can participate remotely would would be a real help for for the mission of the commission on disappointments thank you okay um until we move into um new um special business and the first item is the special open meeting law complaint um dated um may 10 2021 um it was filed by uh stephen ballard of boxborough and um john and i have been in

109contact um with with nina pickering cook and um the um suggestion was for lisa tommel to re-watch the segment of the meeting that was the subject you know of the complaint and to provide a more detailed summary of the comments that were made during the segment and um for those minutes to be completed this week to be in the packet that we receive for next monday's meeting we review those minutes and revoke them um next monday night does that make sense to the group jim um well when i when i looked through the open meeting law requirements for minutes i was struck that the requirements are very particularly focused on decision making what goes into making a decision what are the documents what are the main points uh that lead up to uh you know

110particular votes and decisions because that's the intent of the open meeting laws is to avoid the sort of backroom deal making um so to me i i didn't see merit in the complaint i thought the complaint was about items that were at citizens concerns and at manager minutes and member minutes that were not part of a particular deliberation um so i i'm you know i i defer to town council but i'd be comfortable with uh with an approach that just said sorry no yeah um david you're you're that on me sorry i i also think that the fact that um the uh the meetings are recorded in the video is available on youtube um means that also that there's no backroom deal and if someone wants to hear uh the complete comments of anybody who

111made a uh you know a statement before this board they can go hear the full text in their own words um so i i'm happy with either solution but uh uh mr chair i said i understand that we have to vote on this remedy is that correct so whatever remedy we choose if we choose what jim said uh and just say no we're happy the way it is or if we do what you suggested um and uh and and asked um uh lisa tommel to go in and uh update the the minutes and we re-vote on them i believe in either case uh someone can correct me if i'm wrong that requires that when someone make a motion and we vote on it yeah um let me just uh to help uh a jim out

112um i i i agree with you i mean the whole the the underlying purpose of the open meeting was to prevent chicanery um but um you know the balance you're trying to make here is that um um each topic that comes up during a meeting the minutes must have a summary of what was discussed not a verbatim transcript but just more of a summary and given that you know the length that um that discussion that segment went on um nina's recommendation to us that it it should have um had had more half to you know the summary that was that was in there uh the purpose when we just were required under the open meeting laws they've discussed the complaint as we're doing now and typically we instruct the town manager and the town council

113to um you know to respond on our behalf uh nina said in this particular case it doesn't have to go that far we don't need to respond just the action that we should take is having have lisa review the tape and uh give a more um um a healthy you know summary of what was said given that it you know it went on uh which he thought was for a better part of an hour between the public comments and then for my comments and reports comments um and that was the reason for it so you're saying we don't need a vote in either case um well um i i i i would then make make this motion um that we um um ask our executive assistant lisa tommel to re-watch the segment of the meeting

114and provide a more detailed summary of the comments and have those uh the revised minutes go out in this thursday's packet for us to review and then revoke the minutes um of our meeting next monday night i i would second that under uh mr chair there i don't know if you want to take comments there are two people with their hands raised um uh matt yes yeah you're in charge of this yeah there are if there are comments there are two i believe this is tara it's a call and user but if you confirm who you are that'd be great uh this is tara from westfacton and i had my hand raised for the for the auto dealer thing and you went straight to closing the hearing so i never got to speak on that

115story um i am sending in my comments but i would like the opportunity to say something for about 30 seconds would that be okay i'm with the auto dealer yeah well the hearings closed yeah do you have a comment on the matter on the open meeting law complaint so mr chair maybe we could come back to uh miss frederick's after we finished the open meeting log just to allow her to make her comment okay on the auto dealer although the hearing's closed you know i i understand but the action's taken yes okay but okay are there any other comments on the open meeting law complaint we do have charlie conway charlie you should be able to speak as a taxpayer i would strongly urge that you take no further action other than to reject mr

116ballard's complaint it's a waste of our resources this complaint has no merit jim's analysis was exactly correct the open meeting law does not require summary to be any kind of specific time or place or extent mr ballard has filed somewhere around the neighborhood of 40 open meeting or complaints he's not affected by any of this he's not even a resident of acton so i would urge you to not vote to have lisa spend any more or anybody else to spend any more time on this you're wasting my money thank you charlie um okay uh i i i david moved the motion to some second the motion you made the motion i seconded it okay is there any further discussion on the motion okay and david if you if you vote please if you'd call the

117role please yes mr snyder grant well i'll turn on this one i'll upstair uh ms gardner hi mr charter i i'm right with jim i'll abstain mr benson i and i will vote i so that uh mr chair that's uh three eyes no nays two abstentions okay thank you all thank you very much um i just charlie briefly you you we have an obligation to take action on the complaint or else it's gonna wind up going further into the system where we will incur um legal fees you know arguing about it this seems to be the most sensible practical way to deal with it okay a point of voting mr chairman are we gonna offer ms fredericks that chance to speak on uh if she wants 30 seconds yes tara you are allowed to speak

118yes i i oppose the idea that this is a new parcel a new piece of land as the applicant said out of respect for nature and first nations these parcels are not new i also object i wanted the opportunity to talk about mr biralami building buildings on the wrong place uh specifically prohibited spaces and he builds them he gets away with it and i don't like it and i know that wasn't the application that was of course but i had i wanted the opportunity to speak about it thank you okay thank you so um our next item mr chair one other person has their hand up i don't know why matt um dad this is your david if you would refrain okay it's it's max matt murphy's job as the facilitator not you okay barry

119rosen is permitted to speak barry good evening i tried to have my hand up but this gets back to the um the classical owner dealer license and it was a public hearing and unless i nodded off which i don't think i did i don't think the public had an opportunity to speak it was strictly among the select uh board members and i don't think that was a kosher hearing uh and i i did have something to say and i don't know who else did but it was i'm not looking at it as a willful thing but i think it was an error on the part of you gentle persons not allowing the public to speak at a public hearing sorry i think you need to reopen that public hearing if there were people who want

120to speak at it uh and have the applicants present i don't think that was an okay hearing guys oh emily i'm sorry john i apologize i used guys in a generic sense honestly okay okay thank you barry okay our our next item is a review of the draft governance agreement for recent emergency communications uh since we've conquered hi john thank you um the uh the team of team is here with me uh chief carlos chief heart i think just have to step up a chief o'connor chief judge from concord uh and stephen gray stephen crane the time manager from concord so we met with this board a few times earlier this year to talk about a project that we've been working on to see if we can combine our dispatch services between congress and acton

121we received the grant from the community compact program for 150 000 to do a feasibility study the collins center did the feasibility we presented to this board with the same team and we got some brilliant feedback from by both the boards and residents about questions that people had and and we worked out those questions and i think we've been uh advancing the effort uh the next stage of the process was to apply for another grant uh to help with startup and transitional costs and that was a two billion dollar grant that we applied for in um i think at the beginning of this month and beginning of april and we're expecting to hear from them within the next six weeks or so one of the conditions of this uh startup preamp was that a governance

122agreement between two communities be established and the reason for that is is they don't want to consider investing hundreds of thousands or in this case millions of dollars in a project unless they know that they're dealing with two willing parties so um the feedback we received uh from this board the first few times was yes moving forward um and we're at the point now where we want to uh submit a governance agreement uh to the state for them to review the government's agreement is signed by both town managers but like it needs to be approved by the board of selectmen if on the slack board rather and so it was provided to you last week it's something that we've been working on for several weeks of town council has reviewed it and provided comments finance

123department has reviewed it and provided comments uh it was sent to you through email and it was actually added to the packet today it's not an expectation that you would approve such a document tonight in one shot although we'd appreciate it um uh we are planning to come back next week uh if if the chair is okay with that to give to give another opportunity for you to review if there's any questions that come up tonight but basically the structure of the agreement is laid out in the um 13-page governance agreement and the thing that there's a lot in here but the thing that i the most important thing i want to communicate to all of you is that right now you hired me to oversee town operations one of those operations is dispatch and

124so i received this batch the chiefs helped do that and they're directly responsible for it and they report to me and i report to you uh the structure that we're posing is very similar or actually identical um except that i'll be sharing the work with my fellow town manager uh in concord train uh and we'll be working together to oversee a combined department through director structure and we will be making decisions like we do every year with the budget you know we'll be recommending um x dollars for dispatch services and we'll go to the select board in the finance committee and it'll be considered and then we'll use that to run this dispatch operation the difference will be it'll be set up with a creative and an innovative uh combined program that uses the best

125talents of two organizations and and also fosters a lot of communication and collaboration amongst the public safety agencies the fire and police departments already work together on a regular basis this would just be sort of cementing that partnership so the agreement lays out that there's a board of directors and that we have the same sort of level of oversight of dispatch as we do now there's a group called the operations committee it's just a fancy way of saying the police chief fire chiefs those are the people that are on the operations committee and just like today they'll be overseeing the operations of the dispatch center uh it's just called an operations committee instead of what's called now other key terms in the uh agreement um are related to staffing so as a signal and district

126this this wouldn't have a full staff it wouldn't have human resources it wouldn't have financed it wouldn't have all those things that are part of the overhead of running organization and so what we would do is we would contract either with acting or conquered to fulfill all of those services so the same way that as a dispatch center may be set up in our current public safety facility we'll be subject to a lease and any services that we provide otherwise what that concrete provides otherwise whether it's treasury finance i.t would be delivered to a contractual arrangement um some of the one of the things that we need to still work out are two things rather um are there is the retirement system and health insurance uh i mentioned in our last meeting and i think

127union leadership was at our last week and they may be here again tonight uh we need to bargain with the employees that are both enacted and conquered uh a new contract um to to allow you know to up to show off their working conditions and we're working away in starting that process uh we've scheduled a few meetings and we have to do that this summer if this advances so and we've already reached out to real sex retirement to see if they allow us to transition this district to being participants in that system and we have an appointment with the hit next week to ask them hit being the health insurance trust to ask them whether they would be okay with adding a few extra people from this district to that program so those things would

128work out among many other things if we're successful in getting this two million dollar grant and those will be worked out over the next six months or so and i think we'd be targeting a transition sometime next year or or whenever it comes together to do to do the total um consolidation of the district so that's my high level overview i hope you had a chance to look at some of the language in the conference agreement and actually before i ask for comments or questions i would love for our police chief to just provide any input on where we are in the process of course good evening uh thanks for allowing me to be here um i want to say that um i see this is a great opportunity for two high-performing dispatch centers police

129departments and fire departments to combine to to to leverage the ability to be able to ramp up incidents quickly and be able to respond effectively um chief judge i don't want to put you on the spot but if you could recap what you mentioned at the earlier meetings as far as that 10-minute window for the fire department that would be a great example of one of the benefits of regionalizing very happy too [Music] in at the concrete select board meeting today i just used the example of um one of the primary reasons that i support this and it really comes down to for me the first 10 minutes of a major incident when we go to a when we go to a building fire whether it be concord or react and that's a i'll use

130that i'll use a building fiber as the example that's that's a low frequency but high risk event for us and in the in the first 10 minutes things are happening extremely quickly and there was a lot to do for that one or two dispatchers that are working in the center and anytime that we could that we could have you know three or possibly four people working in there that we're going to be able to leverage their you know just their their availability and their ability to respond the example i used earlier today was the first fire company arrives and the officer realizes immediately that he or she needs more help and they strike a second alarm and everybody you know hears you know second alarm third alarm and really all that means we're calling for

131more help but when they say a second alarm in concord that's going to immediately trigger the movement of 14 pieces of fire apparatus five of them are conquered nine of them are from other guns in addition to that the dispatcher is responsible for moving law enforcement units utilities and then every other call that they're receiving about this incident and then hopefully not another incident on top of it so i look at the ability to have you know several people sitting in the same room working this incident as a it's i mean it improves public safety it improves firefighter safety improves law enforcement safety because while all of this is going on we now have you know much more ability to have the potential for one person one of those dispatchers to be dedicated to and

132focus on the radio traffic for that incident because when things are when things are happening on the fire ground they're happening quickly and one of the things that we rely heavily on is someone in that controlled environment of a dispatch center being able to be an extra set of ears for us to hear the things that we may miss and frankly it's it's i mean i'll go back to how i started it's all about the first 10 minutes because after after that i mean in general things settle down um the apparatus is moving you know all the pieces are all the pieces are coming together but it's that initial it's that initial period when when we really need the focused attention and you know not not an hour later when we can hopefully call somebody

133in um i just think that i think that this um this is something that really fills that gap thank you thank you and um and thank you chief heart um is very supportive of this effort too he had a conflict tonight um but he wanted to make sure that his actually particular comment was about surge events and and being able to have better preparation and more staffing for surge events if i could also call my colleague stephen crane to help me explain how the costs will be shared between the two communities yeah sure good evening members of the select board chiefs and john manager man girardi nice to see you uh so i guess you know as i think i mentioned last time we were here um at a previous stop i was on the

134board of directors for the western massachusetts emerging communication center in fact i was deeply involved in helping that get established and so i have some familiarity with the process and and of regeneration and um many of the issues that we're trying to sort through today we i was a part of sorting through with a dispatch center with two very different communities longmeadow suburban community like acting and conquering and the city of chicopee which is much more urban environment i think one of the things that really that made it compelling for those two communities to sort out the different very different ways that they operated before regionalizing was the level of investment that this commonwealth is making in regional dispatch centers um i think this may have been mentioned before but if you need if you

135need capital improvements for your dispatch center and you are a stand-alone then the commonwealth will no longer subsidize those so there's a capital component as a benefit and then if and then there are um right now each dispatch most police departments in this vet center and dispatches you know dispatch groups receive support incentive grants from the state um the incentive rate though for a regional dispatch center is much greater and much higher amount than you would receive as a scandal and the funds that that provide these subsidies are cell phone search arms so it is a revenue stream that is very solid um that you know you're not you're not fighting in the annual budget process at the state legislature it is money that is as solid as any money from the state can possibly

136be they are surcharges specified for this purpose um and i think and i know the reason why they do that is because um you know like it makes it attractive for other communities to regionalize as well and i think that that's with which and there are times where if you have more communities enter it can be more favorable for all the communities of participating um because i think even if you know the plan at least as i do is for acting in concord to establish the best acting conquered dispatch center we possibly can and that will be incentivized by the state i think we'll achieve meaningful cost savings for both communities the benefit that we have is that our operations are very similar and i think budgeted very similarly in staff very similarly so the

137kind of the fair formula will be it's pretty easy to figure out if you saw in the draft district agreement there's a lot of parity which makes this arrangement i think work very well and makes the incentive state a mutual benefit thank you steve john thank you i know just if there are questions or comments about the agreement and anything else about the project questions or comments from where it is david yes um just a clarification general majority the board of directors consists of both town managers are there others uh no the way this is structured it's it's just sort of it's meant it's meant to uh mirror the role that we serve now right now we kind of do this and since we're joined together we both want to have an opportunity to do

138it together and share that responsibility good great that's the way i read the agreement i just want to make sure i understood correctly my next question is um uh something i asked the information on last time but i just want to ask a little differently if there's an incident uh near one of the town lines where um the other town could respond more quickly um is the town that it's in always called first or is the other town get called so if it's um you know on the border between acton and and concord and it's actually closer to a fire house and concord but it's inactive right or vice versa it's close to you know it's actually in concrete we're closer to a firehouse in acton um is is that is the other town ever

139called first chief uh david i'd see us responding and dispatching and uh very similar to the way we do today the difference is if it's near the concrete line that we need and we're tied up and we need to check if concord is available instead of picking up that phone and dialing it we can just we we know who's we're aware we have situational awareness of what's going on between the two communities so that interaction would actually be enhanced and we share the largest thoroughfare in acton goes to route 2 goes into concrete and i think our second busiest road great road goes into concord and if we look at the map i didn't measure it but it looks like our largest border is with concord great yeah thank you i understand and and and

140one final thing just to ask a follow-up question to what uh chief judge said um and this is just uh not so critic uh connected agreement just an understanding on my part is is the dispatcher able to monitor um communication at an at a site at an incident um you know between firefighters for example does the can the dispatcher hear all that or is that there are two kind of separate channels between the firefighters on a site or officers out of sight and um and and dispatch think one they can monitor all of the radio traffic um i think the point i was trying to make probably not clearly enough is that if they're if they're occupied trying to get all of that other apparatus moving from sudbury and maynard and acton um and they

141have to deal with the police on another frequency and they're receiving phone calls and it takes them away from being able to kind of focus on that on that fire ground so having the additional people right on hand um i foresee a situation where they could then you know one person can be dedicated to that to that task thank you that's all from me john okay uh further comments from board members team yeah just just a comment to uh both managers uh you know it's been a really busy year and thank you for all your work on keeping this thing going um it's a tremendous piece of work i'm still pouring through it but uh you'd be commended for taking this on so thank you thanks steve so uh jim um yeah echo echo dean

142about the you know the immense challenge of the work and i know there's a lot more ahead a lot of the issues that got raised last time were really issues that will end up being settled in negotiations with unions so you know best of luck with that too and you know addressing the concerns of the of the employees we did get one specific question from a resident i just wanted to make sure it got said out loud and get a response which was uh that the the direct call number uh you know like our 978-263-2911 that goes right to the acting police department that would still go to this regional dispatch center am i am i correct in that assumption okay i see chief burroughs nodding his head so i'm reassured thank you so um

143so john and stephen you need approval of of this governance agreement from uh your respective boards and the applica the grant application with this agreement draft agreement needs to be sent it needs to be filed by may 31st well we already filed the application but one of the conditions of the the application was we have a signed governance agreement before they finish reviewing and so they reached out to us a few weeks ago and said hey we need that by may 31st um so that's um that's why we're um we're able to finalize it and get it before your draft form and if there's any comments or feedback we can make adjustments or or we can uh we can move forward after tonight if you're comfortable uh jim um i i would like to see

144a resolution of the of the issue about the middlesex county retirement board or removing it from the contract but having right now the state of it is that it's left in you know in red with a question mark so it seems like that should be resolved or removed before we would agree to the contract can i touch on that yeah i didn't see so i i think um actually john manger but thank you mr benson um i uh so one of the things that that we want to put in there that it would be clear um for the pension system because that wrote that that is a financial impact on the communities with regards to open um the district would have the open liability not the communities that's one thing that we talked about in

145congress there's no liability that will be with the district now like you have an open liability of exactly box pearl um but this is an existing op lab it just gets transferred into district it's not a new one that's created um in with westcon we did the same thing we wanted to be a part of camden county retirement board so the employees would still have the same pension benefits and that ended up requiring a special act and i haven't gotten into whether or not that was unique to hammond county or the middlesex county would have a would also require special legislation um the retirement board was supportive and as john said he's got an appointment to kind of we're working on to get in touch with them but timeline of this which you know if

146i was if i always be in charge of everything i wouldn't have i wouldn't have the timeline set up this way but this is the way it is in the state it just doesn't allow for us to kind of drill down into that but um you know i think that that really we want to declare our intent that's what we want to do and go through and have a note in there about what it may take to do that does that make sense to you jim um if i could say it back to make sure i got it it sounds like what the what the contract should read if we're going to agree to it soon is to express our strong mutual intent to uh to use the middlesex county retirement board and to work

147with them to help make that possible without promising it because you know the middlesex county retirement board isn't lost and we don't get to decide what they do yeah we we could we can make that change we could also say that you know that we'll make sure that they are just part of a retirement system and with our goal being middlesex either way that the intent is just to make sure we protect the employees and building a pension that they're uh promised uh how about with the health insurance trust so i think that is another thing that i don't know that we need to sort of for this degree to be finalized i think we will be providing benefits to the employees in one way or another um so the health insurance trust seems to

148be the easiest way but i think we need to get from them to make sure they agree with that um so that's kind of why i think i'm going to them on the 25th or sometime next week so we should have that answer employee of the month well um we were due to meet again on next monday would you be able to have would you be able to have this a further draft to us so we'd be in a position to vote on it the following monday is memorial day now yeah we can have a draft revised draft that addresses those two points uh in whatever way we feel most comfortable putting in writing uh for you for your monday meeting the 24th does that make sense to the board members comes up okay all

149right so um we'll add that to the agenda for next next monday night thank you jim um i'm i'm i'm sitting with um mr rosen's comments about the uh the auto dealer hearing not here not having the public comment period um it disturbs me i'm not sure what to make of that one possibility would be to have maybe the manager consult with town council about the legalities here and what we can do why don't why is mr rosen still here is he in the audience um i can check he does yes um why don't we do this why don't we take barry's comment we heard tara's comment and um we could do it right now and if if we decide that his comments might change our vote you know we could reopen the hearing next

150week well can we can we finalize with the chiefs yeah thanks okay i thought we did okay so what will what we're doing is we're uh john will send us out for next monday's meeting a revised um draft of the governance agreement with the several suggestions that came out of tonight and um we will further discuss and and hopefully be able to be in a position to vote on the uh the um the agreement makes sense thank you for your time and thank you chief and chief in chief mr mr chair there is a request for public comment on this item if you are taking it at this time all right is there public would there be any public comment yes okay tara you should be able to speak hi from west jackson and um

151can you hear me yes yes so last time we heard similar speech about this um it was said that the concerns had been addressed by you know the union's concerns had been addressed and when the union leaders came on they said that no their concerns were not addressed so um that's i'd like very much to know what the union leaders think i also feel like this agreement looks very serious is it binding john it's a formal commitment that the two parties want to work together on the regional district uh there are several opportunities for either community to change their mind but i think the intent here is that we want to do this and that we want to leverage this substantial investment from the state and this uh significant opportunity to collaborate with a very

152professional uh uh peer of ours and and provide better services to both of our communities and so when the is this a town meeting vote coming up what what is the opportunity for the the voters to have some you know to participate in this it seems like a pretty significant change to the way that um policing is conducted in action we feel strongly and i guess i would defer to the chief that this this this implementation of the regional dispatch district is not going to change how we police in the community it's just going to make it more cost effective and provide more opportunities for our advancement for professional career advancement for dispatch staff and more equipment and better resources for both communities all right two more questions is that okay chairman go ahead so

153the first question is that well it's actually a comment it seems like that would create layers of bureaucracy to remote further remove um operations from the voters that there wouldn't be more direct control over the budget or are you saying that the budget would still be controlled um and and how would complaints too that's been handled you know complaints about the dispatch operation be handled but that's the affordable collective function where we've got now by the regional group that has a regional board of directors and a regional bureaucracy that would be general support from the blackboard which one is there's no additional bureaucracy the town manager in each community that's in this district will provide leadership over the operations in the same way that does now we'll just have an opportunity to collaborate in doing

154so and then the last question is regarding the technology because um we've heard that there's a lot of technology the updated technology that connects in with the national federal databases and all this kind of stuff that wasn't being done before when we did the due process for immigrants some people call that sanctuary town work there was a guarantee that there was not uh already sharing of information about immigrants and other people who didn't give permission to share information outside of the town and so is that upgrade and technology also means sending information to the cloud into the federal databases i i was at one meeting in the police station and found all this fbi training material there and thought that was really concerning so i'm concerned about that um too and like i feel like

155it's going to really fast it's what i feel like this is going very fast and the agreement seems very sick and official that it's not going to be easy to get out of once we spend one dollar of that money then we're basically controlled by the state agency that decides what happens to uh towns that spend that money and what happens to the towns that don't want to do what they say they're going to do and don't have to give that money back that kind of thing achieve there's no plans to change any sharing technologies that that we're doing today the plan is to maintain similar similar operations we do now the opportunity exists to purchase maybe some new equipment to make the operations we're doing today more effective and efficient uh stephen yeah it's

156just just a comment on that i i can tell you from direct experience that uh the state does incentivize the regionalization as a as a policy priority but they are not involved in the operation of a regional dispatch center um the commonwealth if the commonwealth wanted to take over dispatch you know and establish its own regional dispatch and keep that cell phone surcharge money for itself they could do it tomorrow um for the state police they have elected over the years not to do that which is why the um law was changed to make it uh more inviting for local departments to join together to regionalize so while the state doesn't while the state does bind due to certain terms and conditions of the grant the decisions about how um dispatch operations are managed in

157the wreck itself are determined 100 are there any further comments public comments uh mr rosen has his hand up i'm not sure if it's related to this issue or the next um uh very it's related to this issue thank you my question uh i'm speaking as a private citizen uh are our uh are accounted for our board uh indicated to us very strongly that it was her professional opinion that in the future middlesex was going to have to make a major adjustment uh to get the funding to where it has to be is is her opinion they have been under charging all the municipalities belonging to the organization therefore my question is should this happen it shouldn't indicate when of a certain opinion should this happen how would that impact us because i don't know

158how underfunded concord is i don't know how underfunded acting is but presumably if they said okay guys this is makeup time how do we handle that are we are we 50 50 in the new pool or is it you're shifted one way or the other thank you so the people that retired from acton as dispatchers are going to be acting dispatcher retirees whatever real sex this size they want to do and act copper has its own retirement system and the same would happen for those that are retired the existing employees that go to the new district um we're going to sort out exactly how that cost sharing goes forward by expecting it to be the conquered ones uh covered by concord and the acting ones are covered by actin and then any new people that

159we hire after the district established will split 50 50. is uh how uh i would see this happening uh but stephen if you wanted to clarify anything i may have missed you no i think that that's you wouldn't change current retirees at all i think it would be um what it says independent districts uh it would be starting from like a new entry into the districts and um you know there are like i said it's there are ways to do it there may be um you know the asses the retirement board will figure out what's a proper assessment and then the way i look at it is with the incentives that we would get from the state to do this you would each town have the opportunity to perhaps apply some of that incentive offset

160uh you know open contributions or increased pension liabilities thank you thank you yeah you know through the assessment yeah i understand thank you very much i was just a little concerned when i heard her presentation to us about how this mixing and matching might take place in the future and i want to make sure that you you you all consider that figured out uh before we come together figured out how we'll hire this if she's correct in that there'll be a reckoning at some point she thought in the near future thank you very much mary just stick around for for a bit okay john paul okay um so getting back to jim's comment uh the suggestion i had um is we could take barry's comment of what he now what he would have said if

161i didn't earn uh had public comment and um if his comment and terrorist comments would cause anybody to change their vote um we could uh reopen the public hearing in our next meeting so barry if you if you'd offer your your the comment you would have made during the public hearing we just said goodbye to the chiefs goodbye thank you all for coming am i am i still on i don't know yes you are oh okay i'm sorry i thought it was crack muted okay i wasn't looking to change anybody's mind john or select board i'll get used to select board soon it takes me a while um i wasn't looking to change anything and i don't know how many people would have been in the queue which is part of my concern i did

162hear tara speak briefly my concern was knowing the landlord a little bit my concern was on whether the the applicant and or the landlord was going to uh take the opportunity to assure that chapter x of our bylaws specifically discharging to the ms4 was going to be then work on some sort of amelioration new car areas not only do they do service but they do car washing you may know that the rack recommended and the board approved for example to stop car washes at a b unless they did it on a special area where it didn't run into the recharge system of the town called the ms4 sorry it's it's it's a techie weenie turn guys don't worry about it um it's the re it's the uh it's the rainwater essentially liquid uh recharge system

163uh a sewer system for for uh other than sewage one so uh we have the the town has had to cite some businesses along 2a for doing this uh i wanted to assure and it's not an easy thing to do because it means you got to put in direct yes you got to keep run off going from your drive your impervious area into the street i wanted to get this out in the open ahead of time so the work the rack had done over the years for writing chapter u and the bylaws and regulations that came out of our engineering group and selby and others would be taken up with the applicant and or the and or the landlord that was the nature of why i i wanted to speak to you gentle persons not

164to change your vote to get that in the open people that's all okay thank you barry you're welcome so with that said are we comfortable with the decision that we made joe david um yeah yeah i think the barry's concern can be addressed by you know john's not heard it and he can pass it on to staff to make sure that um you know storm water issues are are addressed during the during the rest of the permitting process um yeah i'm fine okay right um and then john on on the on the prior item the governance agreement you'll get the further draft out to us and it will be on the agenda for next monday night okay yes thank you all right so um item eight would be presentation of a feasibility study for the

165new department of public works john thank you i'm going to ask matt and russia to help me bring some folks in john um poor do you bring it in sorry um michael richards and uh john comey okay thanks so um work has been underway and thought has been advanced about the needs of our public works facility and transfer station it's a building that has reached its useful life uh if you've driven through you're driven by it you know what i mean by that we we have been working on what you know what it looks like next and then last year the board it was the motorcycle at the time um did its goal setting and prioritized uh moving forward with uh what to do about the public works facilities as one of the top goals

166uh so we really accelerated the work on this uh and worked with weston sampson who's here with us tonight to do a feasibility study the feasibility study was a pretty detailed report if you had a chance to go through it but that's why we have the experts here to walk us through it and this is just the beginning of the process uh once we have understood the needs of the facility and what could go there and then the next discussion is what what should go there and what the board supports uh happening there so this is the first step in that and thank you john and mike and corey for this presentation great gentlemen proceed okay can everyone see my screen yes and hear my voice yes um thank you for inviting us here my

167name is john cuomo i'm here with mike richard we're from wesseman sampson and the town has hired us to perform a feasibility study to look at the existing department of public works facility and operations and the transfer station and recycling facility operations i'll be delivering a draft report on friday and we're here to give you an update on where things stand i'll talk about the dpw facility and mike richards will talk about the transfer stations um quick agenda we'll try to keep it to under 15 minutes we know time ends uh is valuable um we'll talk briefly about public works department responsibilities give you an update on the study and what we've come up with so far for proposed costs and then have leave some time for questions towns public works department has a highly

168division engineering division trees and grounds public facilities administration and the transfer station recycling station the dpw in town touches the lives of residents every day by maintaining the infrastructure that the community relies on touch on a few things they do so many things every day but they maintain all the towns 105 miles of roads the sidewalks in the parking lots take care and preserve the town's trees along the town roadways transfer station is responsible for managing collecting and transferring towns recyclables and delivering them to off-site facilities and that includes hazardous waste the dpw is the town's first responder they are on call 24 hours a day and what they do allows other first responders in town to do their jobs so they are on the roads in the event of emergency making it safe for

169others to do their jobs what they do also it enhances the quality of life for acton's residents and increases safety why does the town need a new facility um we went out and did a an assessment of the the facility have to say that corey and his his his crew do an amazing job of maintaining this building and the other buildings on the site but the building was built in 1970 um it's it's at the end of its useful life um structural problems with it there are code issues with it ventilation is poor lighting is poor space is inadequate for a modern dpw operation especially when moving forward into the next 50 years it no longer really serves the need of the town it doesn't protect the town's investment in their vehicle fleet and equipment

170fleet properly the town has millions of dollars invested in their equipment the facility can't adequately store everything properly inside that also has an impact on operations and employee safety some quick examples of what we found the single white single thickness cmu block wall which is unreinforced this is essentially failing it's it's has water damage structural deficiencies there is damage caused by vehicles hitting the block wall from the interior the vehicles are too big for the vehicle storage garage and they have to park so close to the wall that they occasionally will bump in and dislodge some of the wall itself this step cracking structural failure on the center bearing cmu wall that runs down the length of the building uh picture of the vehicle storage garage very neat kept kept up very well very small

171vehicles are parked in the center aisle which requires a lot of jostling and maneuvering to get certain vehicles in and out of the garage it also does duty as uh storage so it's small to begin with and then a large percentage is taken up with with storage and that's for example a photo of a recently constructed vehicle storage garage better with ample space for circulation and parking with larger vehicles there's also storage missing the towns the department's employees support spaces are just like everything else small everything's very undersized built for a different era not adequately sized to house all the employees or yearly training or even to gather in one place to muster in the morning again very well kept up but inadequately sized and within adequate amenities um no women's locker room uh handicapped

172accessibility is is lacking throughout the building vehicle maintenance areas again poorly ventilated poorly wet undersized very cramped and dangerous ocean clearances around dangerous equipment is lacking there's no automatic toxic gas removal or nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide so what is proposed we met with corey we met with his staff we interviewed each of the departments individually and gathered all the information that we needed to understand acting's specific needs which are different from any other jobs with the moving of engineering staff and some public facility staff to the department there will be about 40 employees located at forest road um there's a fleet of 48 large small vehicles and equipment 28 towable trailers we discovered i determined that we need 25 lockers lesser room for 34 and parking for 40. for that information we we went

173back and we developed space needs sheets and room data sheets we call them and what that does is kind of put a physical parameters around each of the space the size and then the requirements for mechanical electrical or other systems in space uh example men's locker room 780 square feet muscle training room at 676 square feet that will accommodate 35 employees and a vehicle storage garage is 25 000 square feet now to give you an example um the existing facility itself the entire footprint is 19 200 square feet currently so vehicle storage is larger than the entire building itself as as it stands now um we put together a space needs matrix where we gathered all the square footages for all the spaces that we determined we then came up with the all-in number of

17452 000 that's that's the cadillac we then went back and met with corey and his staff and we adjusted those numbers to find efficiencies where could we double up on a conference room where could we reduce size in a vehicle maintenance area without affecting operations and ongoing maintenance activities and at that first goal after that first go around we ended up at 000 square feet that's a reduction of about nine and a half percent from the original we still feel that there is an opportunity to find more savings and more spaces money we can come up with uh additional space savings we can we can come up with additional cost savings um from the room data sheets we came up with block plans and assembled them on the site as as contact points the forest

175road dpw site is it is the capped landfill it's the transfer station the total property is about 24 acres but the usable acreage for practically usable acreage for the dpw is really seven to eight acres and a lot of that is also limited by setbacks by um some wetlands and and some typography that's challenging um one of the goals would be to mitigate the impact of any new construction on the forest road neighborhood the the red line is is a um it's a 30 foot setback by byzoni we would try to maintain a 100 foot setback um to kind of buffer the the visually and acoustically the site from the neighborhood so we came up with a number of different schemes that looked at different arrangements of of how to organize the site and we

176came up with a preferred alternative scheme um and i'll give you some of the highlights of that that we maintain the 100 foot vegetative buffer between the dpw site and forest road the storage garage was placed also to enhance that buffer to block visually and acoustically the interior kind of w yard operations from the neighborhood we located the fuel island which is currently centrally located on the site right in the middle of kind of hectic dpw operations boot trucks moving front and motors moving you've got school buses coming in uh police cars coming in we'd like to move that closer to forest road what that allows the county vehicles to do is to fuel without entering the dpw cell um keep the salt shed it's bright practically brand new it's 10 years old and fantastic

177condition we would uh propose adding additional canopy storage to the noir the plan maintains counter-clockwise circulation around the site which is ideal for large vehicles for safety purposes i'm going to turn it over to mike richard it's going to talk about the transfer station we recycle thank you john thank you board members don't you want to take me to the next one so the approach we take to the transfer station recycling facility is is very similar to that of the dpw operations we listened to the staff we observed the operations in this case that included site walk as well as drone footage and we reviewed records records being existing permits in place tonnages sticker sales things of that nature next slide some things that we took away from the facility uh some positive things um

178first and foremost it's located above landfill it is a hindrance in some aspects but we view this as a positive because you're taking an otherwise futile piece of land and you turn into something beneficial to the town um we think that's a good thing you have counterclockwise traffic flow patterns uh this is encouraged from a safety perspective you have a long traffic cue length from the uh storage uh from i'm sorry from the gatehouse or the scale house out to route 2. um in the setup that you have recycling operations come first and this is a general industry practice put recycling operations first that helps to encourage or increase recycling and you have a your msw your refuge handling and transport method is via a tipping floor so in other words you put the trash

179on the floor it gets once on the floor a heavy equipment operator will come in and they'll crush it shred it and put it in an open top trailer for transport long distance to its ultimate disposal place and what you know years of data monitoring these facilities we find that that is the that is perhaps the most efficient density that you'll find next slide with this we also found some some key issues um despite your long track uh cueing capacity um you do have human issues um you also have operations that are spread out over a large area uh the building the trip the tipping building is in need of repair and your scale houses is outdated for today's today's operations and i'll talk a little bit more about these in the coming slides starting

180with the uh traffic feeling uh what we found is you have yet bottleneck bottlenecking occurring at the recycling center and the reason this is occurring is is 90 percent or so of the people come to this facility they have for two purposes one get rid of msw and two to get it rid of what we'll call right now primary recyclables primary recyclables being you cook your your paper and cardboard as well as your commendals which is plastics glass metal cans and those four containers are located right after this bend so you go right past the scale house you take a 90 degree turn and that's where the bottleneck happens in this photo right here what you're seeing is the first car that you see in that in that line is a great station wagon that's

181backing up and what you have is you have all those cars behind them just waiting for that car to back out next slide the next issue that we see is the site is spread out we have a staff of three work in this facility that's that's uh that's a fairly good amount that's that's industry standard is what we'll say um you have one that is pretty much used all the time to move material off-site uh whether it be recyclables or msw um they're they're on the road a lot you have one that's working the facility and the heavy equipment that he's moving containers he's moving uh materials around the site and that leaves the scale house operator to monitor most of the rest of the site and the scale house is up at the beginning

182of the operations and he didn't observe most of these operations most of the time and only that he has to care for the scale house duties which is answering questions uh collecting transactions and selling stickers so he's spread pretty thin and this is important because it is a regulatory matter in that the dep wants these these deposit areas to be monitored monitored continuously so we don't want to lose cyber next and then we have the tipping building which is in need of repair you have the insulation that's deteriorated you have the the metal panels that's the side the the wall panels as well with the roof panels that are damaged or missing you have your roll-up doors that do not function um this has resulted in an unsecured facility not only that you're leading to

183wind-blown litter breaking more work for your staff and you also have rodents and other vectors causing nuisance conditions um and essentially leaving leaving the town with a liability that i don't think i don't think you want um and then you have some other deteriorating metal inside that just could use some cleanup just exactly next slide so keeping what we found in mind we develop some goals for our concepts one we want to alleviate the bottleneck at the recycling area two we want to relocate that scale house to try to improve observations and share staff um three is we were asked to take a look at different options for msw handling as i mentioned earlier the means that you have right now is what we consider to be the most efficient but there are other options

184that we consider which is stationary compactors as well as trailer um also whenever we land on one of these facilities we want to try to separate the residential traffic from the operations we like to have the operations behind the scene so that you're not into mixing labor labor force and heavy equipment with the residents um because you're working above a landfill i mean well because the facility is located above the landfill cap we don't want to disturb that gap we can but you might get yourself into an unnecessary cost or unnecessary expense that we'd like to try to avoid and i think in this case we can um the other thing is you have an operating facility here you have people that use this facility every day we want to minimize the disruptions to this

185facility we don't want to shut it down for a long period of time if at all we want to try to avoid that so john next slide so with this we we developed a number of options uh we worthy of considering further um all these options consider almost the same thing which is you know moving those primary recyclables away from that 90 degree bend keep it more of a linear traffic flow pattern um try to get wider bypass lanes so that we're not having that bottlenecking and we're also trying to take those operations and have the container movement behind the scenes or in the operations area and in each of these options also we take the scale house and we move it closer to the operation um so that we can have shared shared shared

186staff and i think that's it for the transfer station component and john you want to talk about the uh anticipated costs sure thanks mike so um one thing that would help is to take a look at what um similar dpw facilities have cost um recently we've done at western sampson over 100 department of public works facilities in the last 15 years we've kept pretty close tab on on the costs um so the last these these facilities represent the last seven or so years and we've escalated the costs through 2023 as we did with the the active uh cost um the range is you know high four to low five hundreds typically and there's reasons why some are higher and some are lower you know depending on uh what amenities were programmed into the facility for

187instance uh some some facilities have new salt sheds um and others don't um in this case the average cost per square foot was 490 escalated to 2023. um acton's dpw cost construction cost only is 474 that doesn't include soft cost or escalation and so for the construction cost of the dpw along 22 million eight hundred thousand uh for eight to forty eight thousand square feet um soft costs typically uh an additional 18 to 24 we bumped up the escalation um and all contingencies as high as we could on this because of what's been going on recently with the construction costs related to golden and other supply lines shortages material shortages and it's been a little bit crazy the last three or four months but that would put the dpw the total project cost range of

18826.9 to 28.2 million the transfer station recycling construction costs came up 2.6 million that's site development costs repaired to the facility and new uh the new um tipping uh sorry scale house the um total together we're at 30 to 32.1 million that includes all contingencies soft costs included that concludes our update on the feasibility study and happy to take any questions or hear any comments that people might have um well just uh we can't afford that that it's current um you know scale and scope and size in dollars um we're already looking at you know projects that we want to do that we can't do because they cost a lot less than that um so i i think the the manager has and his staff have a really difficult job ahead of finding what are

189the pieces of this that are the most important in getting those done because i do recognize that the especially on the dpw side it's it's not it's not a livable situation for the people that work there something has to change um i think that's my main thought the only the only small thought i had was uh on the transfer station side um uh there were no interviews of users of the transfer station and um their experience and perspective is going to be important before we go ahead with changes there but we got time we got time for that thanks thank you dean thank you um you know i i appreciate what jim said about you know we can't afford it but you know we can never afford it we we couldn't afford the library we

190couldn't afford the expansion of the town hall we couldn't afford the public safety building this is critical infrastructure the building's down there now it's 50 years old was actually undersized 50 years ago when people said it's going to be too much money and now we've got a situation where you've got a 50 year old building which is yeah i know it rather intimately from my previous career it's not in great shape and it's undersized and you know it was designed when acting had a population about 50 of what we got right now it was designed when our street miles were probably 66 or 75 percent of what they are right now the town has continued to expand there have been entire departments that were not even conceived in 1970 that are operating out of there

191so you know we've kicked the can down the road and i find found it distressing in my career working to a certain number of years out of that building that it constantly gets put off to the back because you know let's face it it's not a cuddly building not cuddling operations but these are the kind of things when you've got a snow storm if you've got a hurricane or you need to get rid of trash these are kind of things that you need and uh i don't want to raise my taxes more than any other senior citizen in town who wants to raise their taxes but i think it's time we've got to bite the bullet um yeah if we can make it cheaper i'd love to make it cheaper but making it cheaper probably

192is not a real great option at this point um it's a big nugget that we're gonna have to bite off and uh and i think that it's time that we put some serious consideration to it so i'm ready to press ahead i know that it's uh not going to be an easy road to uh to follow here because of what i've said before it's not a cuddly building nobody likes to think about this kind of stuff but i can tell you from firsthand experience that these are the kind of services that people want and i've not noticed any decrease in the demand and services if if anything there's an increase in the demand for services provided by public works so i uh i'm fully prepared to uh to push through push this through as far

193as some more seed money to go to town meeting in june thank you dave you're muted i would support renovating the building can this feasibility study be broken into different portions so it doesn't all have to be done at once but i remember going into that building dean when florence ross was in there it can be faced one of the issues that we find when renovating or trying to repurpose a building that is of the similar nature to what exists in actin is becomes almost structurally infeasible to upgrade because we're going to put other additions onto it which is going to require that there's seismic racing additional snow loads snow drift loads by the time the the structure is upgraded to meet current codes it becomes extremely expensive and you're still left with uh kind

194of a substandard space to work with it dictates a lot of things that limit the the operations and limit the functionality of the building it's not insulated right now you know we need some meaning to insulate it the roof does have some insulation on i don't know how much but the space would still be um low you know in terms i could see possibly reusing it just as vehicle storage but again it would require an awful lot of structural upgrades and we've done this before it's almost a wash and then you're not left you're not left with um an optimal solution but it's something we can look into and we we are looking into it but it's our inclination is to not recommend reuse reusing that building further comments david yes um i i'm definitely

195in favor of uh doing something here i really hate um managing to a crisis and i think you know the these buildings are in uh in such a condition that they're not going to last forever and then you know if there's a crisis you know it's just gonna i just for me i hate doing that i'd rather you know do a a good job uh correctly having said that i do have a few detailed questions on the plan if that's okay i have one question on the transfer station and then a handful on the dpw building um first did i understand correctly that um the preferred and most efficient way to handle the the solid waste is as we do now with the front end loader pushing it to attract trash compactor i'm surprised that

196that is the most efficient way yeah we've been we've been tracking that information for for a a number of years and we see marginally better uh waste densities for only using this method as opposed to a trailer compactor um and it is about the way you handle the waste on the floor i mean you have to process it on the floor you have to crush it you have to shred it and then put it in in the um in the open top trailer um and we see even better results if once in the trailer they're able to compact it a little bit okay thank you that was just kind of surprising to uh someone someone who's uh not fully informed by these things and then the um the questions for the dpw uh building if

197i understand the proposal correctly uh uh it's to get rid of all the other buildings on the site except for the salt shed and replace them with one large building is that correct yes so so currently not not there's another building which is a pole barn that sits behind the salt shed we wouldn't propose removing that it's an unheated uh a building it's built on holes you know it doesn't have a foundation uh it's old but it serves a purpose it provides shelter for for equipment that doesn't need heat so we wouldn't propose removing that the salt shed is in great condition there is a temporary kind of storage arrangement made of conics boxes and fabric roof structure that houses a lot of equipment signage that can't fit indoors that would go that stuff would

198go inside the plows now that are sitting around the site would end up going inside what's nice about that is when the winter comes you can hook them up to the plow trucks and you can park them in the garage and they're ready to go uh when a storm event hits right now they're sitting outside they're rusting the hydraulics are getting damaged um and they need to be replaced more often than they should other vehicles are sitting outside that don't fit as well so the department has to pick and choose what they want to protect them you know the most valuable equipment goes inside and the other equipment gets relegated to the exterior under some some other canopies but some explosive elements um that's that's really it for physical kind of accessory buildings that the

199fuel island right now is a wood structure with two pumps in it and you kind of access the pumps uh you know reach in and grab the hose and there's a diesel side and a gas side but that they have underground storage tanks probably getting pretty close to their permit age and would need to be replaced probably in the next 10 years or less the idea would have would be to have on grounds fuel tanks in another location which safer and less environmental concern right um my next question is you know i understand that the maintenance phase would be heated but the large vehicle uh parking is that unheated space no it's heated space but it's it's minimally heated so it's not heated to 72 degrees or 68 it's you know 58 degrees it's if

200you want it warm enough so that you're in the winter time you're able to start vehicles easily um so that that's the that's the purpose it doesn't need to be heated to the same extent as habitable space uh like office space or vehicle units or shops right that there's a very large space i'm just i'm surprised that it's heated even to 58 i would have expected you know you know 40 something but i understand it's it's not yeah it's slow it's like there's insulation between that garage and other spaces inside so it's almost an exterior space but it would never get freezing it's it's going to have a fire sprinkler system um which means it's which requires a certain temperature right probably 50 degrees yes i understand yes um my my next question is what's

201the state of the septic on the site um and is that would that be replaced as part of this project um most most likely i i i'm actually not entirely clear i don't i i the septic system is would would have to be replaced it probably takes to the building i would guess but um unless it was replaced more recently um i don't recall it being replaced but that it may have predated when i was paying attention um and then um the last thing have you thought about uh transition during the time that the the building is being constructed how would you do that it would be difficult i mean we'd have to phase that as much as possible i think we could start construction on vehicle storage and then i think we'd have to

202come up with a temporary arrangement for admin i keep admin in the existing building as long as possible and then transition to trailers or i think that's typically what we do with site trailers in this instance it's it's a very it's a very tough site it's it's got photography as i mentioned there's there's not a lot of room in the building that exists now is central on the site so it's it has to be worked around but we have faced construction um and we've we've also built temporary facilities like um like a fabric structure or in some cases we've also rented facilities to perform vehicle maintenance while the construction of the new sole is taking place yeah i know that in the in the design it should pop various layouts for the building uh it

203sounds like uh one important consideration might be is what the transition plan is for that final layout you know like if you're proposing to build that phasing claim yeah the the vehicle parking first and that can only go where the building is not um now right then you you're you might be locked into um just one alternative for the layout yeah just a couple of follow-up comments about the inefficiency of the operation presently with the uh the excess number of vehicles that are in there um you know when i was working there and running a crew out of there in the morning and afternoon now there was probably a half hour of productive time lost both morning and afternoon just doing the rubik's cube move and trying to fit all the equipment in there finally

204in a lot of it we just had to give up and leave parked outside and creates all kinds of problems especially during the winter it also frankly in the past created some security issues when we were running mosquito control programs out of there we had folks who are coming in and cutting the lines on the mosquito farmer as a form of protest and creating huge hazardous waste bills for their activism the other point as far as reusing the buildings you know is there some cheaper way that we can save these things or you know i'll point out that right now acton-boxborough regional school district is in the process of demolishing one and soon a second elementary school in town both of which are actually newer than this building and that was done for the good

205reason that those buildings had exceeded the expected life span and the state with the funding situation felt that it was more advantageous to build new than to try to rehab so i think to a certain extent we're in the same situation here they've just reached the end of their life and it's time for them to go and it's time to build something new and yes it's a lot of money but we're gonna have to spend it are there any other comments um you know from watching it over the years um and this is where i grew up let's you know do it once and do it right and we have a long history of the dark side of you know new england frugality um you know how you know can we get away with an

206undersized building and then quickly realize it's not going to be good enough and then we um struggle and jump through hoops you know to make that building work we've continually you know done that you know with you know with school projects trying to save money and and then you pay you you pay the price for pretty quickly so do it once and do it right so anything else so um john we have on for town meeting um one of our capital articles of is it a um a full-fledged study or a design plan is that it yeah so in in the capital plan we've requested a million dollars to advance the next phase of design uh of that million uh 200 is proposed to come from the transfer station enterprise and uh corey i believe

207we're borrowing um in both cases 800 and 200 is that correct i believe that's correct yes so that so that's the proposal and of course that was brought forward you know three months ago before this feasibility study was completed but we anticipated and based on the board's prioritization of this project we anticipate that it would be necessary to move this forward uh at this upcoming town meeting so whether a million is enough to do a full design um i'm not sure that it is but certainly enough to advance the design to refine it and potentially find ways to do it more cost effectively and further find exactly what we would need and want to do out there hey so um corey and um weston and simpson thank you very much for your presentation this evening

208thank you thank you thank you item nine would be discussion of the actual center traffic improvement project secretary of york is back up uh this is a project that we've been working on and corey's made a presentation with this board a few times in the last few years or i guess five years and corey we have it on the tommy warren to do the construction of this improvement to this traffic circulation and we have tonight an update on the design for any comments and questions from the board and cory could you please walk us through where we are with the project well yeah thank you um i'm not sure if i can share my screen but i just had a few quick slides um as as john had mentioned we have the afghan center design

209so we've been work going through the process as far as doing a um an initial sort of traffic study to look at concepts called the preferred design we will get to that we're in the process now of doing our design plan so we've we've implemented that we've gone through the 25 design plan held a public forum and discussed that with the public and we talked with htc got input we're currently going through um sort of the next step to get to 75 design with the really uh fine-tuning details related to um really making it fit grading issues resolving that so it's that that's kind of like the really big piece uh very similar to what you see with the kelly's cool now it kind of follows that process so um we're we're well into that

210process now our hope is that we'll be um we'll be implementing that um having that 75 design plan by late summer um so um i think i'm gonna go to this page yeah if you you have that on so uh this is just sort of the concept that we that we've been i was approved and we're working on the on the design now so it has sort of the one-way flow around the common um we're doing sort of a lane reconfiguration across from town hall so bringing that in more 90 we went met with the apc and talked about moving the horse trough that's essentially with that lane out we're looking at complete streets of adding bike lanes and upon improved pedestrian crosswalks it it also is part of the process see woodbury lane it

211has a right turn only so it reduces sort of the points of conflict with we have conquered roads coming out and the one-way traffic for concord road at newtown road that helps to improve the safety conditions there is sometimes it's hard to tell what the angle of the cars right now to know if they're going left or straight across so um so we're in that process going through right now um like i said we should have that in by late summer as part of this we're also looking to look at sort of the town hall complex and it's been sort of a goal of working on the parking and the sort of woodberry landings are coming into it trying to improve safety within there unfortunately we have some we've had some close calls in the

212parking lot with cars coming and going at higher rates of speed or just and just volume so we're hoping to sort of pull that in as well and do some traffic calming and um these street improvements that would sort of make the whole area um sort of a safer more enjoyable experience whether you're biking walking or driving the vehicle there and just keep keep everyone at a safer space so if you're going to the town hall the library or going to the playground that we're sort of controlling how the flow is going through that make a little bit safer for all so our goal is to have that all kind of merge into the action center project so i think on the next slide i just have some sort of a rough timeline so we

213should have our 75 by late summer we're expecting to have final design by early fall and we're in the process of working through sort of the town hall complex so we should have concept plans by late june uh doing some outreach and hoping to incorporate that for uh sort of the whole sort of complete street kind of traffic comic kind of package that would would be able to move forward and have it all kind of meld well with uh with everything that's happening out there so we just wanted to give you a quick update on all that and just let you know that stands as john said we have funding in tel meeting um with the timing of this of the design plans being done that we'd be ready to start implementing the project itself

214so we're hoping to look forward to keep this project moving forward and getting some of these amenities kind of implemented i can thank you and answer any questions you might have or are there any questions or questions or comments from board members team yeah specifically i'm interested in whether your plans are going to include any provision for pedestrian scale street lighting on the site especially along the sidewalk on main street in front of town hall there's one existing street light which is a sort of it looks like about a place it's a concrete post but not in great shape certainly does not fit with the rest of the decor uh there's also lighting that's involved with the horse trough and of course there's also lighting involved around the davis monument all of which probably need

215to be upgraded um you know i hate to throw another boss factor into this thing at this point but perhaps when you work out your design you might find some way to at least get some conduit in the ground so that you can come back later on and put some some decent lighting in there that will maybe match uh what we propose for kelly's corner or it might match what we've got behind town hall in the library right now just so long look consistent sure yeah we we've talked about like mentioned that concrete post of the street light at the crosswalk the library we've looked at trying to replace that i know we've talked about it a little bit as far as uh can we move these things um we're going to reach out just

216um picking people's brains i know there's a lot of stickers over the horse crop so knowing where the actual service line goes we want dr water district and uh people that might be familiar with how that sort of connects and over there those those are things that we're kind of looking into and trying to come up with an approach with the design thank you yeah corey when you come on the right hand coming down onto main street can you make a left and a right hand turn there or will it just be a right turn it's still people coming up with berries to turn onto uh you know if you're coming down concord road toward town hall and you're bearing to the right when you come to main street can you turn both ways or

217only one way i turned both ways there so you'd be able to um take a left and sort of go towards newtown or take a right to get it so you you would be able to come down concord road take a quick left and then a right onto woodbury maine yes yeah yeah at newtown road bunker road just would be just a one way inn right well i used to live on woodbury lane and i remember when chris carroll said you can't make that turn anymore shown to get down wouldn't remain yeah they're difficult terms right now oh yeah questions from jim or david i have a david um uh hi uh corey the the lane the narrow lanes that are shown to the north of the north branch into the south of the south

218branch are those bike lanes or sidewalks um on as you're going up concord road yeah if you're uh if we're talking the the south of the south branch um you know there's there appears you know actually what's now in the uh uh uh upper left corner of the the screen where that the red arrow ends is that a bike path that comes in there or is that a sidewalk that goes to that crosswalk those are on pumpkin road those are both sidewalks that come out running along the side of concord road oh okay now now that you jump in and the bike lane is actually part of the street as you would expect yeah the white lanes are on main street as you can see yeah got it okay yeah very good thank you jim

219um sure i'm i'm still very comfortable with this plan i think it's a good improvement in lots of ways but we're moving ahead of it one of the things i'm remembering is that with a much larger scope and additional state funding that went into kelly's corner we had a lot of traffic studies that helped us to understand traffic modeling that helped us understand sort of the before and after and i wonder if we have the equivalent of that for here if we understand i don't imagine we have the goal of you know increasing the speed of traffic through here in fact it's probably the opposite goal but um i'm wondering what we understand about you know backups or what what will happen in our various rush hours yeah we did the beatability study that was

220all part of it we did um we did traffic counts we did sort of an analysis looking at the flow through and the various options that we're looking at um what would sort of still keep that um the flow going through and sort of improve the safety of these various effects so um that was something that we done we did during the earlier days in the capability great yeah i mean i i just want and i the only other comment would be just to echo dean's thoughts about pedestrian scale lighting i know we have the challenge now of of cars going too fast there and we do have the uh you know the the um that nice sign that always flashes at me for some reason when i get close to it and then i

221go right i'm supposed to go slower here uh what a um and um pedestrian scale lighting might also help at night with um you know signaling to signaling to cars that you know hey we're entering the kind of zone where you really need to go slow um uh cory i and chang had a question about will there still be parking in front of the library yeah currently what we have now um we have a bike lane through but we would still find this i believe we would still have um sort of that off area for a little bit there i'll double check that but i okay uh are there any questions from the public there is there is one yes yes thank you please don't put my name into the zoom thank you um so

222question coming in through uh if some people are at the htc meeting and uh facebook commenting um so the horse chop uh there's some disagreement about what some people don't like that being moved i agree with that i generally like the plan i think i see no new turning lane is that correct um as far as on main street we don't have turning lanes no so it's one one lane no driving lane okay thank you and so the horse trough it looks like it's you're planning to move it to the middle of the common sort of uh when we met with hsb and we we talked with them um the thought was is that it would be it would move um i guess it would move sort of north enough in that area that's the

223road down it would have sort of its own area that it could be kind of showcased yeah i would check with them again there seemed to be some disagreement about whether that should be closer to the road to the flowers and all that stuff um but in general i'm supportive of this and uh but i don't like moving a historic object for accommodating cars i don't like that so um i'd rather see that thing close to the street um where horses would drink from it and where flowers can be seen thank you thank you tara uh matt are there any other comments from the public uh there are no more hints okay corey thank you very much great thank you um we have one the remaining item the community center concept let's that'll probably go

224on for a while so um if it's okay let's do the consent items so we can clear those up so um consent items 11 approve meeting minutes april 12 26 and may 3 2021 a 12 approved executive session minutes april 5 and may 3 2021 13 approved letter of support for great road sidewalk installation from main street to meyer hill road of 14 uh committee appointments lenya zao associate member diversity equity and inclusion commission 15 except kelly's corner right of way acquisition one beverly road 16 except kelly's corner right-of-way acquisition 245 main street um 17 accept gift recreation department for fifteen hundred dollars from insulin corporation to support the 2021 concert series and special events um 18 accept gift recreation department for 7 500 from patrick gallagher for labor and materials donated for construction of

225stairs in the south building for the narrow sports pavilion 19 accept gift recreation department 4 800 4500 for brian griffin for labor and materials for work completed in the south building at panera sports pavilion 20 accept gift for the recreation department for fifty dollars from the morrison family to be used for constructing a dog park in acton 21 one day alcoholic beverage licensed league of women voters june 1 2020 at the narrow picnic park picnic pavilion um one day alcoholic beverage license james jackson may 22 narrow park picnic pavilion 23 one day alcoholic beverage licensed linda jones may 15th narrow park picnic pavilion conditional approval by chair on may 10 2021. so do i have a motion to approve um consent items three inclusive don't move moves is there a second second second david um

226if there's no further discussion david please call the roll uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr vincent i and i also say uh that's unanimous okay if no one needs a break um we can go right into the presentation of the proposed community center concept i believe uh chris hardy kelly stowe um and roxy rocker if we could bring them on to the screen mr chair i'm having some difficult difficulties um can you repeat those names um it would be christopher hardy roxy rocker you have and kelly stowe i think chris was gonna open up i believe i got everyone okay i think that uh chris chris is going to let roxy and me just go ahead and take the wheel if that's all right that's fine sure uh please

227uh proceed can i share my screen please okay thank you for having us let me put this into a presentation view for you guys you i wasn't quite ready even though i had like three hours to prepare oh just give me one moment okay thank you all right so i'm kelly stowe i live in acton on hayward road i've got two kids in the school district i've gotten involved with this community center team recently and i'm excited to present to you our ideas today i just want to preface this by saying that what we're presenting today as i mean is an evolving concept that continues to be informed by citizen feedback you may have seen an earlier version of this slide deck floating around on social media in the past few weeks and if you

228did you'll see tonight that we've made some revisions based on the many discussions we've had with other residents in the town we do hope that you'll listen to this presentation with an open mind and understand that in the overall spirit of a community center we wish to have constructive discussions around this concept with a goal of finding a way to make a community community center work for the town that said we felt a sense of urgency to bring this concept to the town right away given our recent knowledge of stop and shop's imminent plans to sell the kmart parcel to national development the assisted living developer if stop and shop determines by june 1st two weeks from now that they won't be using the property for their own purposes that is unless the town shows

229interest in purchasing the property and directly influencing what ultimately goes on that lot right in the center of town i would just also add the disclaimer we are not an official appointed town committee we had a question about that on social media and i wanted to be very transparent about that we're simply a group of citizen volunteers who feel there is a need for a community center enacted so getting into the nitty-gritty of what we wanted to talk about uh many of you know a key priority of the actin 2020 comprehensive community plan is to transform kelly's corner into a distinctive pedestrian-oriented town center the k-mart parcel is within the limits of the kelly's corner improvement initiative area what we have presently an empty commercial lot in the center of town provides an opportunity to

230bring our growing town together an opportunity to build a sustainable anchor point in the heart of actin our vision is to provide a centralized sustainable inclusive and functional community center to support the community wellness recreational and social needs of acton's growing and diverse population this initiative will transform an eyesore of a property into a beautiful gathering place for all and if we do it right we can make kelly's corner a distinctive pedestrian-oriented place that people want to go to that draws more business and businesses into the town this is especially true if we give it a flavor that highlights the unique cultural makeup of our growing town a cultural hub that offers programs and community supports a town center that encourages night time business and doesn't shut down at sundown a place for all in

231the heart of acton with that i'm going to hand it over to my teammate roxy rocker if you'd like to just do a quick introduction and take it over not a problem thank you for having me my name is roxy rocker i'm actually a boxborough resident i have worked in acton in the past for four and a half years at the historic exchange hall as a licensed massage therapist i'm also a very active member of the middlesex chamber of commerce and um and i have been an acton resident in the past i have an interest in this because my background is from civic engagement and human services i have switched to wellness recently and i'm a business owner i'm here because i very much believe in community and it's a place to grow gather and

232give back and we can take this building that has given acton very much opportunities for commercial and bring it into a place where all people can join solar panels can help with electricity costs and feed the grid and can help the environment and issues around climate change including recreational opportunities and functional meeting spaces making places accessible for all people of all abilities this parcel can also possibly provide as one concept of an idea street side restaurants and retails very similar to the west stackton village where our members of our community that are so diversified and are growing can actually meet at local taverns and shops and there could even be the concept of having residential units building even more revenue for the community a community center could increase business and economic development for our wonderful

233town of acton next slide so i will just speak briefly to this slide we did some research on the surrounding towns around acton and as you can see on this slide act in is highlighted in yellow closer to the top acton is the largest local town with no community center so some of our competitors one one surrounding town that i included that is not directly bordering acting is lexington but i included it because i think it's a relevant kind of competing town but you see here that the next the next largest town that has no community center is littleton with less than half as many residents as acting and i think that's compelling that tells an interesting story and i think we have some research to do on this as a town uh back to

234you roxy absolutely so as is another concept of one of the things of a community center could lay out there could be outside safety for our events and community conversations a health and wellness room so people can get treatment and and um have had wellness resources at their at their service uh co-working spaces flex meeting spaces and there could be a wide variety of different opportunities in this layout so this is just a concept but there could be many options to create an opportunity for growth diverse conversations and community programs next slide thanks roxy so we understand that the cost of this project is a major concern for many in the town that's what we're hearing and trust me i'm not interested in higher taxes either um there are some ways to make this parcel

235a social and economic hub for the town so let's talk about how it might work we are confident that the town can purchase the parcel for roughly 6.3 million um i'm hearing an echo i don't know if roxy you could mute while i'm talking yep thank you okay hopefully that will help so we're confident that the town can purchase this parcel for roughly 6.3 million based on our market research we think it would be most beneficial to pursue a public private partnership approach with this property so we're proposing that the town split the six acre parcel and sell off the frontage on main street for restaurant or retail development while we know it might be an uphill battle we could also consider some form of housing on the back side across from what will be

236the new entrance to the school and maybe some behind the verizon building thinking roughly 30 units plus or minus total which is considerably less than 120 plus units that have been promoted by developers in the past that many units will not overwhelm the site nor fundamentally have an impact on the schools and arguably could make the site better looking forward to actually using the property we could begin using the building for community purposes almost immediately after some light rehab to ensure everything is up to code and 100 safe for citizen use ultimately construction and operation uh construction and operations and maintenance costs will be dependent upon the degree agreed upon design if this if the town supports this use of the property we would certainly obtain citizen feedback as we work to achieve consensus on

237the design of programmatic uses but back to your roxy so when we're really investing in our community we can have some great economic benefits creating workforce solutions they keep collaborations with the one stops and bringing things closer to us having opportunities to working with the chamber of commerce and sba and having opportunities to build more businesses it can support local businesses by allowing them to use their space for event planning and other opportunities and at times these can also create opportunities to increase property values when being used for recreation and events next slide those social benefits which after this year that we have had and gone through i think this is a really important conversation because if we can have a multi-generational cross-cultural gathering place in arizona i used to participate in an interfaith seek

238event where we had interesting conversations and diverse conversations that mattered but we were fed a cross-cultural meal we can gather and have places that can help with health wellness and mental health and a place for all people to exercise and make it an inclusive place for all to join and possibly even have opportunities that gives low cost or free access to indoor recreation programs next slide and here's where maya makes my heart sing and what have done for many years in the state of arizona partnership opportunities and collaboration anytime you get to have collaboration there's a time for growth and opportunity in your community with rec departments non-profit organizations cultural group faith-based and all different clubs which could make for even a greater town and a greater opportunity for us to get to know our

239neighbors and get to know one another so with that we're just going to cut to the chase and tell you what we're hoping to accomplish and roxy sorry i'm getting that echo organic so if you don't mind um thank you so what we're asking is specifically we're asking that the town manager and the select board or the vice chair i guess it would be have a conversation with stop and shop and inform them that there is some interest in the parcel within the town that gives the town time to consider the feasibility of such an investment do some research make sure we do our digital diligence and consider what kind of public private partnerships or uh breaking up of the property could work um and you know i think that's some something that we need

240to do we don't want to make just a shotgun decision there is a sense of urgency around this parcel so we hope this presentation holds as much merit in your consideration as the national development presentation that was delivered in march the second thing that we'd like to ask is for the incoming select board to prioritize the establishment of a community center at their prior prioritization meeting in july and that will help focus town leadership on thoroughly investigating this issue so with that um are there any questions or comments or more okay so what uh so kelly and roxy what you're asking us to do is is it you want us to go to town meeting and get a sense of town meeting whether they would support the idea of of of the manager and uh

241the select board vice chair um going to stop and shop and saying the town has evident has um has an interest in buying the kmart parcel is that the idea or just for us to take action tonight well uh i guess that would depend on what the necessary protocols were um my impression was that it wasn't necessary to take that discussion to town meeting but if that's something that needs to happen then we would request that okay but okay so we could limit it then to what will would this board be willing to do it you know based on an action it takes tonight yes i think that's what we were intending okay okay okay that's clear okay so um let's have uh uh comments from board members uh around the board in the usual

242way start with jim um sure um kelly and roxy thanks for the presentation i think you've outlined the challenges exactly right which is that there's there's definitely a compelling interest in a community center and bringing people together and at the same time there's there is so much work to be done to understand um you know what do we actually need what is it feasible um you know the the sort of the preliminary work that would have to happen and at the same time we have this looming uh june first date when stop and shop has to decide whether to close the deal with national development or hold on to the parcel for a while so i think a proposed solution of having the town manager and the vice chair or whoever would be appropriate to

243go to stop and shop and say hey we haven't made any decisions yet but you should know that there is this conversation about buying the land for a community center they may or may not that may or may not change their mind um but at least it would be a way of saying you know this conversation started and we thought you should know about it um i think that seems entirely reasonable the uh you know having a feasibility and a needs assessment next year also seems like a fine you know thing that we can discuss as a new board and even to that in that sense even if the this particular parcel disappears i i believe there is still a need to understand what what could be done in a community center somewhere you know

244what what are the facilities we already have what's the advantages of bringing them together into a central location i think these are all good questions to be asking so whether or not the kmart parcel ends up the way we want i think it's still a good move for us to be uh you know addressing this this important yes sir thank you okay john i i think these two women have done a fine job outlining this but earlier in the meeting didn't we have a multi-million dollar at the dpw site we have a 30 million 32 million dollars yeah yeah and how much can we afford to do may i respond please yes okay that's something joan i appreciate your comments and that's something we are trying to iron out and something that we need to

245discuss with the town to determine what is feasible um the reason why we think the kmart lot would be a wise investment is because it is right there in the center of town so if the town owns that town has the opportunity to define it and give acton some additional character beyond what we already have maybe to ultimately positively influenced the town economically and socially so i understand there would be an investment it wouldn't be um 30 million dollars to start i can tell you that i mean you can start off small in phase um but i think there are more conversations that need to be had and that's why we are asking the next select board to prioritize this issue and to think about it critically and to consider some of those things because

246i know the board understands the nuances of this a little bit more than some of us volunteer citizens who haven't had a chance to engage in some of those conversations so thank you um david yeah yes there are um a number of questions here i mean a huge number of questions but i think this is worth investigating and and uh looking into to try to accomplish some of the answers to the other questions i mean as jim alluded to what kind of facilities do we need and uh would we want a community community center i know that there's um differences of opinion there because people have expressed differences of opinion to me and how much each type of um facility would be used um you know a lot of our recreation in town has been

247self um self-funded at least the operational cost what kind of facilities that could we put in here make that self-funding model what kind wouldn't and you know if we don't how would we fund them and how would the whole community center be run um basically i think um oh and also you know people have said that it should be uh combined with a future senior center and people other people have said no we gotta we need to come to have some consensus around around these things um that's the kind of thing that we would do in a feasibility study and you know i don't know whether the timing will work for the stop and job parcel or or not but i think it's it's it's worth um you know thinking about and answering um these

248questions uh you know to determine what we you know what what would make sense and how we might go about accomplishing it thank you dean team thank you um you know there's a lot to unpack here uh you know we're talking 6.3 million dollars the property right now generates about 175 000 a year property taxes it's um presumably if the town owned this price so there's there's an opportunity cost of 120 000 a year that's lost depending upon what a private developer might do there presumably there'd probably be more taxes generated so our opportunity cost loss would be even greater um i i expect that probably there's not been an architect in there looking at the building to see if it's at all feasible to do what's being suggested here i think the building is

249probably approaching 50 years in age and was built under obviously a totally different building code for a different purpose so i suspect we might be in the same situation that we encountered it an hour or so ago telling what the dpw building is that it's cheaper to demolish it that was the decision or that's the guidance we're getting on the dpw building and that's the guidance that the school district got for two elementary schools that are of about the same age i believe the fairbanks community center and century is being rebuilt as we speak and i believe our ex expanse uh i believe it's being expanded and renovated i think they're spending 20 to 25 million dollars on that so i think you know if we're talking about what it will likely cost i think

250we're probably in the same vicinity that my colleague jim snyder grant choked at when we were talking about public works building you know we're probably talking 30 million dollars these and this is just idle speculation on my part we haven't had a chance to think about it and look at it so there's lots of lots of questions i think it's i think there's good opportunities to start the conversation with the new board and i certainly support that to do some more investigation on you know what what to me is a community center and i'm not saying it should be one building necessarily i think we've got a lot of public space that's that's available that's been shut down for the last year and a half but then since our human services building it's about 22

251000 square feet this year is 38 hours a week so there might be some opportunities to get started with some additional programs there there's space available in the memorial library we're talking about doing a renovation expansion the ace of parliament house and providing space there so i think there's lots of opportunities for space and i'd suggest to you that that might be a good way to test out some of your assumptions and start to build a constituency that's the model we had to do with the senior center we had a very small senior center donated by a developer and it took quite a while to get out of that and into a decent space but in the meantime we developed a program we developed a constituency and we knew where we could move ahead so

252this is just very very ambitious i would certainly not be opposed of myself and the town manager can have a conversation with the folks at soccer shop and let them know that this conversation and this presentation took place tonight i'm not going to say at this point that i'm going to endorse it but certainly we would let them know what the uh you know what the tenor of the town is on this there is a group that's interested in it and i'd be certainly interested to see what kind of public feedback we get from the rest of the uh the citizenry that we're gonna end up having to pay for potentially a 30 million dollar building and then we haven't even discussed the maintenance and operational costs may i respond sure sure kelly thank you

253um dean i appreciate your comments and again as i mentioned earlier we know that people are concerned about the cost and so we're thinking about ways to offset that by potentially splitting the parcel and having some sort of a membership scheme and there are other towns across the country who have successful community center membership schemes and are able to sustain them without being an undue burden on taxpayers we just need to think about that one thing i would say is i think you're making some assumptions in your estimates for the costs here and for the dpw presentation they had the benefit of having a feasibility study to really look at that and see what the cost would be and i would just ask the same for something like this if we're going to do it

254i would ask that we do some sort of a feasibility study or needs assessment to help inform this and as citizen volunteers i do not as a citizen volunteer i do not have the resources to do that justice you know we need a professional to look at that so that's something that we would ask the next select board to look into but i do appreciate your willingness to chat with the stockton shop about this and i think that's really what we were hoping for tonight we just wanted someone yes okay so if um uh the you know the sense is um we would have to move on this with the first step to advance it would be to have representatives john and i would suggest dean approach stop and shop their they're brokers i think

255it's it's something we have their brokers who are handling the sale and expressed the interest that the town um you know what is you know is or the selector is considering um purchasing the parcel because that's really the first step that's the linchpin in all of this and uh it's taking the property away from potential third-party developers uh you know to give us time to uh you know develop a plan and and see if it works and you have to keep in mind with with stop and shop their uh lease with sears um runs out um at the beginning of november so they're not going to be getting any more rent to carry the cars will have 120 000 tax bill to to us plus whatever ongoing you know costs that would be to maintain

256on the store so um you know they're in a position or one way or another they you know i guess in all likelihood you don't want to sell it so i guess a logical first step for the outgoing board um if we can all get behind it it sounds like we we could um is to instruct a team to go over and uh speak with them and express interest in what sort of timetable they would be looking for for us to uh you know you know make a decision so um with that um you know um with their uh you know bm which can we move to send john and dean to um approach stop and shop and express an interest on the town's part and you know in buying the parcel what do you

257think um i would be happy to make that motion yeah okay is there a second you're muted i i i i will second that um i'm i'm sorry uh john i just wanted to mention that there are people who like have their hands up i'm not calling okay well we're just we have to have something before the house and uh and then we could have discussion on the motion it would somebody's your second did yes okay so let's take um a citizen discussion you know on the motion to approach stop and shop expressing the town's interest in buying the kmart person okay first up is going to be ellen feinstein ellen you should be able to speak can you hear me yes okay hi thanks everybody i think our guests have made a very dramatic

258and compelling presentation but i would like to speak my name is ellen feinstein i have lived in acton since approximately 1981 that would be december of 1981 and i have seen many changes taking place in acton i live a stone's throw from the k-mart carson so i am a very interested participant in this topic however i find that the idea of spending other people's money is a really nice thought if everybody agrees that everybody has an unlimited amount of money to pay for taxes to say in this presentation that certain things would be done and it would be free everybody could come and it would be free no it wouldn't be free because the taxes would go up in order to pay for whatever the amount is whether it's the 6.3 million or something up

259to and potentially including 20 or 30 million to get something like this going it took approximately 10 years to move from a very small senior center area to something that is very desirable what i didn't hear in any of this is what the alternatives are for whatever particular and specific activities we would want to absolutely put in this community center without any attempt at saying we your group or whoever ends up really fleshing this out what are the actual concrete activities that we enact and don't already enjoy enough space to do for example lots of outdoor space lots of recreational activities lots of places inside our very expensive schools and facilities that we already paying to support that would accommodate many many activities athletic activities community activities swimming all the things that we already have

260facilities to use the human services and senior center building has lots of space for people of every age to come and congregate you mentioned one of you in your excellent presentation mentioned health and wellness well i don't know if everyone on the phone knows this but acton has a nursing service and public health department that provides services for people of every age in the community including tests for students in the schools including concussion testing preparation for sports testing making sure people can be ready and safe people all ages have been helped by our public health and nursing service and that is located right in an existing building okay i make the point that i think this is way premature i think the idea of making a decision between now and june 1st and even hinting

261at a commitment to the potential seller is very premature and i think we should explore how community activities could be done elsewhere and then when we see that there are too many to be done elsewhere then consider purchasing or leasing space in other areas i'm sorry thank you ellen up we're going to hear from nancy cochran nancy you should be able to speak okay um i'm hoping that you can hear me this is uh i've seen this presentation twice it is intriguing um and you have certainly updated this from the last presentation but um i really am reluctant to have something as significant costly and nebulous as to what will actually happen inside this center happen at this time that feels like we're under the gun we have to do it now before june 1st

262it doesn't feel right it doesn't feel respectful of all the residents who have waited years to have a space that meets the needs their needs their current needs and are open those folks are open to their to the rest of the community using their spaces as well i concur with ellen and say that you need perhaps to investigate this concept what will you provide inside of your community space and then then let the rest of kelly's corner project go forward and find another site for a community center there are spaces in town as well thank you thank you nancy all right next up we'll hear from i believe this is tara but it is a calling user you us know who you are where you're from hi can you hear me yes okay so um

263i started doing a study a long time ago about the available spaces and found that they're all booked or they have requirements that are impossible to meet you know you have to be a certain religion or you have to be connected with these other groups it's impossible to do um i also looked at the rental costs or a building like that it's like three times the cost so i did some numbers i ran some numbers and i'm wondering if these if you all decide to go forward and go talk to stop and shop after if they'll take five million bucks sell off a million dollars up the front which i think we can actually even get more maybe and um the non-profit can lease it for 100 years and pay for the difference and it'll

264be no cost to the taxpayer that's what i would like to propose um just as an idea to see what they think about a 5 million offer a 4 million offer you know for just that building in that section or you know anyway just an idea i support the idea i think a community center is like investing in love um yes we can invest in trash and i think that the building needs to get fixed over there um but i also think that we gotta be focused on getting consultants that specialize in rehab instead of consultants that you know have a vested interest in these new buildings um it's over and over again it's the same people that'll benefit you know from these new facilities as opposed to getting some folks to understand rehab i

265know they're around somewhere um and i believe that we can do this i ran some numbers i don't know how much more time i have but um just as a small concert facility that is a big gap um in the national touring acts for 300 seat venue and you can book this up and pay for this dvd thank you thank you tara next up we'll hear from jeff bergart jeff you should be able to speak thank you very much uh my name is jeff bergart alcott street inactive i've lived in town 40 years and i'm a finance guy and i have two points to make one is growing up all my life i i kept being uh confronted with need versus want and um i think it's important for us to decide what we need

266versus what we want um especially since because we have a cow that produces tax revenue and you can't take too much out of the car before the car dies and um that's an important thing that uh the presentation is wonderful i think we want it i'm not sure that we need it previous speakers talked about alternatives and yeah maybe it is tough to get a basketball court but um [Music] that's the way you have to make trade-offs but the second thing i want to talk about which people may not have thought about is in town we can't tax based on how much money you can afford in your income stream we can't tax based on how wealthy you are we tax based on the real estate value so one of the points made by the

267presentation was our real estate value is going to go up well that i know doesn't directly tied to taxes but taxes are my biggest income item in my budget and i live on a fixed income i'm retired and um i think that that's important because as tax as values go up and taxes go up there's a huge segment of this town that um doesn't get as much value from living in town they don't have kids in several schools and we know schools represents three-quarters of the tax bill and they're going to be squeezed out and we have so much focus on diversity in the town but we're going to squeeze out the middle people there's a group of well-meaning people that want more and more affordable housing well that's fine if those condos are valued

268under market then they will pay less in taxes and the tax rate will go up for all the people in the middle or perhaps can't afford it so i just want to make sure that when we talk about diversity we're also talking about people who've lived a long time in town maybe a little bit older and you know yes they would benefit from a community center but i think they'd be hit quite quite high in terms of the cost so thank you very much thank you jeff are there further citizen comments matt hi this is alyssa nickel i got a prompt to unmute so i'm going to go ahead and speak i live in south acton been in town 20 years i'm very supportive of this project i know this group has some spent a

269lot of time gathering a lot of feedback and doing a lot of research and i'm encouraged that the board is considering um authorizing the town manager and the vice chair to approach stop and shop to have a conversation um i'm really excited about the possibility of a public private partnership and being creative and imaginative about a way to fund this project in a way that does not put a burden on the taxpayers and dividing the parcel so that there can be some some businesses on the main street side um i keep hearing talk about the the age and the lifespan of buildings and it seems like municipal buildings um have a much shorter life span than all of the homes in town which is interesting to me because homes are are built of wood and

270municipal buildings are usually built of concrete and brick so i would think that they would last a lot longer um my home is 67 years and we certainly weren't considering knocking it down and rebuilding new 15 years ago when it was 50 years old i believe that the twin school the triple school i should say was um the decision to to build new rather than rehab had more to do with the funding available all of the the grant leverage that happened and not because it wasn't possible to rehab it i followed this kelly's corner community center group on facebook and i've seen a lot of their ideas and a lot of photos that they've shared one happened to be an old kmart building that was turned into i believe it was a high school it

271was rehabbed and renovated and it was quite beautiful they showed some pictures inside and out so i think that it is possible to reuse that building and save some money there and um in terms of the cost of all these available spaces or availability of these spaces that folks are saying can be used um for meetings or or events or a swimming pool um i'm not i haven't found in the 20 years that i've lived in town that that's the case most most of the available rentals are too high for for our budget um a lot of times the meeting rooms are not available um a lot of times you need to have a membership in a church or you need to pay a custodian fee or to have staff on site i imagine that

272that's the case with the senior center and the large rooms that they have that they say are available for the public hello for you are out of time thanks matt no worries and i do want to apologize my um audio dropped off i'm not sure why um chris you are up next you are on the panel already hi everybody i am one of the team members of this volunteer effort to um propose this vision and this this type of building this the kmart has been has been built other places into community centers it's it's it's just gonna it's gonna there was a question by forget who was asked what kind of things can we do in a community center that we're proposing and one of the floor plans showed that and you know there's there's

273there's rooms in there that are available that people go outside the question is why do people in acting that have to have events go outside of acting to littleton to westford to concord to to wherever to have their events it's because we they don't have a community center or somewhere to do it because all the school rooms or other availability available venues are all booked up and they're too expensive they're not accessible they're not available i mean people were complaining about the pool why don't we have a pool well the pool is not accessible i'm not 100 sure but it's it's not it's not open 20 you know 12 hours a day for people to use a community center would be we would also the price that you're you're talking about 20 30 million dollars

274that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about purchasing for let's say six million we would sell the frontage to a retail developer who would then in turn build say two buildings like we had pictured in our renderings which would then generate some more tax revenue so we wouldn't be losing the whole however much to say 250 to 300 that we would just create an entire property for a community center now we're going to offset the cost of the whole base of the of the yearly cost of the taxpayer by rent having memberships by renting out rooms we've crunched numbers but we're not we don't want to share that because it's an estimate what we what i'd like to ask and i think is being voted on is that the town asked and talked

275to socks stop and shop and slow things down so we can then broach this in a slower manner as a goal that has been a goal since the 2020 study that's it's in the books that we are in need of a community center such as this 30 seconds remaining and we're asking that at the goals meeting that we we have that feasibility study and we see it what cost analysis in that bid so we would have a feasibility study maybe the cost analysis we would survey people what they want in there and that's what we're asking for we're not saying purchase it now we're gonna ask we're looking to purchase it but we need to do some more study and homework but we have a lot of support i understand there's support that's been talked

276about here that it's not anywhere else with the endeavor the vision but that's all i gotta say thank you chris mr chair that is all we have for hands raised okay are there further thank you matt are there further comments from board members speak one more moment again sure roxy thank you i just want to say that i think that you know some of the the comments that were made right this are also very important too but i also would like to say that i think that we're in the beginning ages of something that's being created and we've had a year and you know and i feel like also too that programs and projects and things that happen in a community center happen from the intergenerational level to the youth level to the adult level

277to every aspect of a town when you have community centers things are being brought in and morphing all the time because one minute you could have an incubator and the next minute you could be having a big powwow and celebrations of cultures going on in the evening so all that i'm saying is that when we're only seeing one thing from a lens i think we need to see it from a bigger lens and yes we talk so much about adversity but i think if we expand it in the concept of what community really means and even take the word calm and bring it to unity the whole reason why something like this is an important piece of community is it can bring people more unified and unity brings things together and that's my only last

278problem i want to make because i believe also in hard work and human suspect that makes change and i feel like even if this parcel at kmart can't happen that the fact of the matter of a community or somewhere in the acton or acton-boxborough nice would be a real big concept for these towns so that's my final point and thank you for that kelly do you have anything further to say no sir um i just welcome anyone who has concerns about this concept to please reach out to the kelly supporter community center group and we'd be happy to talk to you about it more and think uh strategically about how we could accomplish something like this without burdening any specific demographics in the town so uh further comments from board members um sure thanks john

279so i i'm thinking about the wording of the motion that's on the table and i i think we need to adjust it um i think the wording that you that you might have suggested is something about how that telling stop and shop that the town is interested in buying the parcel and i think that's not correct um we're what we want stop and shop to know is that we are discussing the possibility of buying which is true we are discussing this possibility we can't make a promise that um you know that at the end of uh you know a process of discovery and feasibility that will actually decide to buy this but i think the point here is that if if if dean and john communicate this you know this the essence of this discussion

280to stop and shop then they can make their own choices about whether they're you know whether they're they're willing and able to enter a conversation with us that would take us well beyond well beyond june 1st before we got to a decision um yeah june 1st to to i think to helen's comment and nancy's comment um it's it's it's not really um a drop today that's their own timetable for deciding whether they want to develop redevelop the property and then they would turn to national development um what they would i think one from us is a sincere you know interest um whether you know discussing the possibility or we are you know we're going to pursue the possibility of buying it um so it's not a conversation that goes off into space because they're going

281to want to move the property at some you know at some point they can put off national development for a couple of months it would probably be an easier sale to us because there's no permitting that's required you know give us your check and usually uh versus national development which uh would have a couple of month period to do their due diligence and see if they could get the necessary special permit they would require from the next board um but um i mean i don't care how you want to phrase the motion um but you know they're going to want to see you know a sincere interest that is not something that goes off into space but you really to do something like this you really have to buy and control the parcel to have

282the conversation we're talking about so other comments from members dean has his hand out the dean yeah i you know my offer was to appraise the uh stop shop folks of this conversation this meeting um i think you know it's it's really premature for us to even talk about gee we want to buy it or gee we're talking about buying it i think i think my favorite way for your next paper my only thought was that you know the board knowledge affirmatively and i don't think we particularly need a motion is the manager and i can just talk to them and say well is this discussion going on in the background if you guys aren't aware of it but i certainly would not intend to make any further commitments than that i think that's really

283premature and you know it's really preempting work and decisions gonna have to made by town meeting and certainly the next select board okay so dean what would you suggest in in terms of uh sending you and john off with what message to stop and shop i think i've got a pretty good sense of uh of things from consolidating what i heard from joan what i heard from you i heard from jim particularly and you know he had some good cautionary words a minute ago and i'll certainly take those along and frankly i'd like to hear what david has to say and you know just let uh let john and i have that conversation uh david yeah i i i thinking more along the lines of what jim and dean are saying i certainly don't want

284to give the impression that we're you know on track to buy the property and i would never vote for buying the property first and then figuring out what to do with it um i just that's that's an unworkable situation in my mind so uh what what i would like to know you know in when you talk to stop and shop is first of all understand their time frames tell them that we have this conversation going on in town um and um in the meantime if it's um a priority at the goal-setting meeting for the next board and we do a feasibility study and maybe those things align um that that something could happen but you know i a lot of things need to align there as you know in my when i spoke the first

285time there are a ton of questions here um there are many more questions than we have answers right now and you know we need time to answer those questions before we find the problem thank you okay so um um uh just without without uh necessarily taking a vote um why don't we do a thumbs up that um uh dean and john go off to atlantic retail those are the that's the brokers for stop and shop to inform them that the town is you know uh the suckers discussing you know a possibility with a town group of uh of buying the kmart parcel and what would be the time frame that's involved mr chair if i may citizens have asked to speak okay in the interest of hearing everyone please let's do let's hear from them

286first up we have collin user one call one user please identify yourself it's just kara and aruna from nepal her son wrote in favor of this and she was want to make sure that you guys got the email um because young people really love this idea apparently they want something to come back to and something to stay for and so i love where this is going and thank you i'm going to work on a revenue neutral proposal with these folks thanks bye right next speaker of math is yep next up we have jennifer jennifer you should be able to speak muted jennifer you may have a mute button on your screen you need to activate can you hear me now yeah yeah okay good okay so i am just i think that um some of

287you may recall i had called in a couple months ago in support of a community center so i 100 back this whole presentation that you've seen tonight um what i would say is that i think a lot of people on this meeting tonight unfortunately it is not representative of the town um because not one i'm so sorry that is my son yelling um there's not anyone i've heard tonight really representative uh that has kids in the school system and i think that the kmart parcel being kelly kelly's corner community center area really could be beneficial and that is one of the reasons why number one i believe in a community center but number two i believe in it being in this particular area near the schools so i guess along with the feasibility study if

288it could ever happen my request would be to try to somehow engage this community in a more [Music] reaching out scenario to try to be representative of the community because this call and quite often town meeting is not so that is what my statement for tonight is thank you jennifer thank you last up we have cultural nepal you should be able to speak hello can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak um as an immigrant mother coming from nepal and living in acton almost 30 years i have seen few changes not as much as you have but one thing i see that it definitely is evolving and the inclusion inclusive um [Music] inclusiveness is a very important to me and i think this having this

289community center will be some place where i can bring out what i have to offer to the community as well as learn from other members of the community so me and my son um really appreciate this and actually um talking with his friend um the you young they are all excited and i probably already you already know uh one of my friends son has um happily sent email to you with the support of the concept and um having that young generation and old generation getting involved um would be very very good for our community i believe thank you so much and i have um actually an interview um i have uh produced an interview in acting tv so if you get a chance um i highly recommend you to listen to that program and um

290that's my spirit for the community thank you so much appreciate your time okay thank you so um so let's if there's no further comments from from the public and board members um let's just buy a board members thumbs up that we're going to ask um john and dean to reach out to atlantic retail to inform them that we're discussing the possibility of buying the parcel and um what is their time frame for um selling the parcel um and hopefully you guys can get in to speak with them this week and be able to report back to us next monday night that make sense thumbs up dana you on board yeah i think you know one once again you've talked about the town's interested in buying the prop the parcel i i don't think that's what

291we've been talking about i think john and i are going to talk to them and explain that there's this undercurrent going on in town and there's interest in it but i think it's really reaching as a member of the select board to go to them and say the town's interested in buying it so i i think if you i think i'm reading how would you want the instructions rephrased i think i've got the point i don't think you need to take a vote on it i think john and i can handle it from here okay uh john benson just as a matter of formality i think you have to withdraw your motion and i have to withdraw my second okay uh okay i moved to withdraw my earlier motion and i'll try myself okay so

292it's off the table okay so dean and john you would be clear on what the board is asking you to do john you're good yeah all right joan you're with it i'm with dean okay so you're we're all together then okay well okay we're as together as we're gonna get um but we're good we're taking a step a positive step you know as you as you know we know from you know our experience over the years um you know go back you know 20 years ago and the three big non-school projects we did the memorial library renovation in addition the purchase and construction of narrow park the public safety building they were not initially warmly embraced and two of those projects took two two shots to get approval but they did demonstrate a lot of

293foresight in the end and they're very valued assets you know let's keep a real open mind on this and wise open so okay so we're good and let's hear back we'll put it on the agenda for next week and a few people can report back to us that's great all right so um that would conclude our agenda for the evening um do i have a motion to adjourn so a second joan um david if you call the roll please sure uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr benson hi and i say aye where are you okay good meeting see you all next week bye you